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24. Naifu: Survivor

Naifu blinked back to consciousness and immediately wished she hadn't. Everything hurt. Everything.She felt like she had tried to tackle a tree. Not just any tree, either; a very large tree with an extensive root system and sharp bits all over. She thought about shutting her eyes and pretending she was still unconscious. Perhaps she could fool her body into stopping pain signals from reaching her brain, like a secretary holding all calls to a super-important boss.

The idea only lasted a second. That was how long it took to realise she was on her back, in a bed with a sheet pulled up to her armpits. Her arms were outside, pinning the sheet to her body like a second skin. Little of her outline had been left to the imagination, not least of all because she was naked underneath.

Panic suffused her, followed by fear and shame. She shook off the fear and panic, though the shame stuck around, making her grip handfuls of bed-sheet and curse inwardly. What the hell was going on? She struggled to sit up and her body cried out against it.

"Whoa there, Sureshot. Move too fast and you're gonna undo all the good that medic did."

She turned to the voice. Legend sat in a ridiculously bohemian rattan chair, long floating white curtains billowing against the back of it from the window behind him. His suit looked as out of place as a high necked dress at a lingerie party. He had one leg crossed over the other, ankle balanced on his thigh. She recognised the archetypal masculine pose. His single eyes fixed unwaveringly on her face.

The sheet felt very, very definite against her skin. Very thin, too. Costa del Sol was hot, so of course nobody slept in duvets. You could almost tell whether a girl had shaved through the bed linen.

Shit.

Humiliation rose inside her like a column of ice. She felt self-conscious in a way she hadn't in a long time. Why would she? There had been no reason for embarrassment about her body to creep in. Turk suits were the ultimate cover-up and she had never let a relationship get physical. She wasn't frigid, it had just never appealed. Reno sometimes made cracks about her playing for the 'other team', but she took the jibes with promises of hot-sauce in his coffee and itching power in his undies. She took cracks about her sexuality better than cracks about her age, in fact. She wasn't some closet romantic dreaming of her happy ending in the arms of some guy – or girl – so she had never put herself in the position where showing her body was an issue. Ever since she first signed her contract with Shinra she had worked to conceal her body. It had become second nature. She had even reached the stage where she didn't think about what her suit concealed anymore; it was a non-issue.

So her feelings now were doubly shocking. It wasn't that Legend, famous womaniser, was staring at her in such a compromising position as naked in his bed. It was what he may have seen while she reaching this stage that made spine try to concertina into the back of her head. She was very different than any other naked girl he had ever got into this big double bed.

She had trained herself not to look in the mirror until she was fully suited up. Brushing her teeth without getting chalky spittle on black fabric was an art-form, as was putting on deodorant without blinding herself in the dark. She had started cutting her hair short so she could comb it without putting the light on. If she could get away with a brief glance in the half-darkness of dawn or dusk, that was fine. Fabulous. Fan-dabby-doozy.

She never looked at herself with the kind of intensity he was. Not with any kind of intensity.

Her fists cramped. She had clutched the sheet to herself when she sat up, like some stupid swoony romance novel heroine. "Where am I? No, wait, scratch that; it'll be my second question. First question: what the hell happened between when I shut my eyes and five seconds ago?"

"We brought you back to my place. Shinra sent a medic. He fixed you up and then left. You were zonked and needed recovery time. You woke up when you were done sleeping."

"That's all?" She raised a sceptical eyebrow. The room spun. She raised a hand went to her forehead, even more like a romance heroine. Her other hand remained cemented against her collarbone, holding the sheet in place over her front.

"I thought I said for you to be careful," Legend said in a low voice.

She bit back the pain. "You say a lot of stuff I ignore." A groan worked free, but not because her brain felt like it was trying to jump ship through her eye sockets. Embarrassment set it loose from her vocal chords. "Did I really get jumped by amateurs on my way to buy muffins?"

"Not so sure about the amateur part, but pretty much, yeah."

"That's embarrassing."

"I'd sure be embarrassed."

"Well you can put a cork in it." Naifu glanced around. The rest of bedroom was as bohemian at the chair; all flowing fabric, wicker furniture and pale colours. Very relaxing. Too bad she was wound tighter than a spring in a clock. If she stood up she would snap the tension and drill right through the floorboards feet-first. "Where's my suit?"

"It got shredded."

More panic. Tasted like bile. She needed her suit. She forced the panic down and realised the bile was real. "Gonna hurl!" she garbled.

Legend rose and brought what looked like a plastic washing up bowl to her face. She upchucked what little was in her stomach and heaved until her chest ached. Hair clung to her cheek, wet with sweat or puke or whatever. Legend gently brushed it back but she was too busy hurting to smack him away.

"By … the amateurs?" she coughed.

"By you fighting back," he replied easily, as if he wasn't holding a bowl of her spew and hadn't seen her scars.

Memory drip-fed the details. She glanced at her knuckles. They weren't torn and bloodied anymore. Neither was her face. Nothing on her showed any sign she had been in a fight, let alone nearly died in it. Well, not this time, anyhow.

Abruptly she wanted to look under the sheet, but even as the urge rose, she knew she would only see what she had been seeing since –

Sack smell and blood smell and sweat smell and fear smell and who's crying who's screaming who's laughing I hate this I hate this I don't want to die –

She shut her eyes against the tide of memories. She knew what she would see.

Veld had set healers on her at the beginning of her training. They had done what they could, but scars were scars. You couldn't cut open old wounds and re-heal them smooth, the way you could re-break bones that had healed crooked. All you got was uglier, knobbier scars. Kind of like people, actually: you cut and healed and cut and healed people's spirits and all you got was bitterness and cynicism that wept like pus if you poked the old wounds.

She retched some more. Legend tried to steady her shoulder but she shrugged him off.

"D-don't touch me!"

He pulled the hand back, palm raised. "Okay, Sureshot."

Naifu breathed in, despite the puke smell. "I remember that part. Did I kill the guy?"

"Your guard? Yup. The guys who kidnapped you? Nope. We picked them up near where we found you."

"But will they ever play the piano again?" The joke fell flat. She hadn't expected any less. She hadn't said it to get a laugh, just to break the tension created by Legend staring like she was a bug under a magnifying glass. She pushed back her shoulders and squared her chin. The best defence was a good offence, right? "You gonna make me drink that or something?" She nodded at the bowl.

He retreated to the en suite. She heard the sound of running water and the toilet flushed a couple of times. When he returned it was without the bowl. He stopped in the doorway, still staring.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nuthin'."

"Bullshit. Getting an eyeful while you can, huh? Or did you already do that?" She raked wet hair from her forehead with her splayed palm, realising too late that she had just wiped her own vomit into her hairline. Nice. "What are you even doing in here, anyway? Shouldn't the healer be doing the whole observe-the-patient schtick?"

"He had another case to get to. I said I'd keep watch until you came to, since it's my house and it was my Phoenix Down that saved your ass from dying."

She blinked, momentarily thrown. Okay, that part she hadn't known. "Oh. Um … thanks." She waited a beat. "Just my ass? The rest of me didn't merit saving?"

Legend shrugged without blinking.

"You're creepy when you stare like that."

"It's the eye patch."

"No, the eye patch is roguish. The creepiness is aaaall you. I need clothes."

"You need bed rest."

"Clothes."

"Stay in that bed."

She shifted to swing her legs over the side of the mattress, trying to hook her elbows under the sheet even though it was too late for modesty. "No, I need to –"

"Cover up more? Why bother?"

She froze, but only for a second. "Pervert. I knew you'd already gotten an eyeful."

"The medic needed someone to hold you down while he worked. You were thrashing a lot. You gave him a shiner. I already carried you home and up the stairs, so I stuck around to finish the job. Wasn't nuthin' perverted about it."

"Yeah right." She wondered if the desire to toss her cookies yet again was an after-effect of the beating-and-healing combo, or a psychosomatic response to knowing he had seen her naked. Probably a bit of both.

She felt laid bare and not just in the literal sense. She felt exposed and violated: a smaller version of that long-ago emotional cocktail and no more enjoyable the second time. She felt vulnerable without her suit. Clothes may not make the man, but they made this woman.

Damn it, he was still staring.

"If you dare feel sorry for me," she gritted like she was chewing broken glass, "I will personally hang your balls from the light fitting. And you won't be attached."

Legend raised his hands. "Sounds fair. But do I get to exchange saving your life for a question?"

"No."

"Tough shit, I'm asking it anyway."

"It happened a long time ago," she replied pre-emptively. "I don't like to talk about it."

"Bully for you, but I was actually gonna ask whether this has turned you off baked goods."

"Excuse me?"

He shrugged. "I'm famished. I was gonna make subs with the works – ham, cheese, pickle, salad, chutney that burns your mouth, those little snot-green olives nobody eats, plus the rest – but if you're gonna have flashbacks and run screaming from anything outta the bakery, I'll be damned if I waste the effort fixing one for you."

She stared at him. Then her jaw clicked back into place. Her stomach finally unclenched. "How much of a wuss do you think I am? Bring on the food! I could eat a horse and all four of its shoes." She shifted sideways and her stomach gurgled rebelliously. "Um … actually, could I get a rain-check on that? And get out of my way, or your décor in here will be radically and rapidly different in a pebble-dashed, icky kind of way."