"May I sit?" Kali asked, nodding to the mattress. The kids looked at Steve -- except for El, who was looking down at her hands and refusing to look at anyone -- and the teenager nodded, gesturing for the kids to make room for Kali.

The young woman walked over to the group and joined them on the already crowded mattress. "Here," she said after a moment, handing Steve the bottle of pills she'd found, "These should help."

He took them from her gratefully and took the cap off, tipping a couple of the tablets into his palm. "Don't you need some water or something?" Mike asked; to which Steve shook his head a little in response. "S'fine," he said, popping the pills into his mouth.

Kali had been watching her sister since she'd entered the room, and she could tell that the young girl was just as shaken as Kali herself was -- if not more so -- and she sighed quietly. She turned to the other children and asked, "May I have a moment alone with your brother?"

Once again, six heads turned to look at Steve, who nodded his consent. Once the kids had left the room, Steve crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Kali expectantly.

"I want to help her," Kali said after a moment, "I know what you think of me, but you can't help her the way I can."

"Trying to get her to kill people isn't helping her."

"I only kill people who deserve it -- but this isn't about killing people. This is about Jane confronting her pain -- her past -- so that she can heal."

Steve stared at her skeptically for a few moments before speaking, "Has it helped you?"

"What?"

"Has confronting your past helped you? Are you happy?"

"What I am doing is not about being happy. It's about--"

"--Revenge. And I get it --really -- but what you're doing, this crusade your on, this isn't healthy. And it's not fair to drag El into this."

"...I frighten you, don't I?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Well I did see you gun down a man tonight."

"An evil man. A man who hurt our sister. A man who would have continued to hurt other's sisters and brothers if I had shown him mercy."

"...Our sister?" Steve asked, staring at the young woman sitting in front of him in surprise.

"Jane considers you her brother, does she not?"

"...I-- I don't... I mean... I guess...?"

Kali smiled slightly in spite of herself. It was clear to her, as it would be to nearly anyone who saw the teenager interact with those children, that Steve was very much the big brother of the group; and so it was amusing to her that the boy himself didn't see it.

"The point is--" Steve started after a moment, but was interrupted by several coughs. He gave a somewhat frustrated sigh and tried again, his voice a little more rough than before, "The point is that El is too young to be part of this thing your doing. And as her sister, you should want to protect the tiny bit of innocence she has left, instead of taking it away by having her murder people."

"She's killed before."

"Yeah, in self defense. This is different. This is--"

Before he could finish, however, a red-haired girl poked her head around the doorframe. "Can we come back now?" she asked, and Steve sighed, nodding slightly. "Yeah," he said, "Sure." He gave the kids a tired smile as they reentered the room and gathered on the mattress again. Kali stood up, thinking that the group wouldn't want her around.

"Where are you going?" El asked, surprising everyone.

"There's something I need to do. I'll come back later, though. Don't worry."

She briefly considered offering for El to help her sort through the information they had received from their latest mark, but decided against it, the things Steve had said echoing in her mind. The teenager had had a point, although she didn't want to admit it; El was still just a kid, and if it was painful for Kali to go through the information herself, then she knew it would be much more painful for El.

El nodded slightly in response and leaned into Mike a little bit, clearly tired, and Kali left without another word.

It was already close to midnight at this point and all of the kids were visibly tired; no one more so than Steve, however, and the temporary guardian of the group insisted that everyone get ready for bed. Much to his surprise, none of them fought him on this -- even Mike, who still tended to give the babysitter trouble, although he had started getting along with Steve better over the past few months -- and they were all lying relatively comfortably on the floor. They'd found blankets and pillows fairly quickly, although there weren't enough for each of them to have their own, requiring Mike and El to pair up -- something El certainly didn't mind, having wanted to be close to Mike after what had happened earlier that night anyway.

Dustin had gotten Steve an extra blanket, disputing every protest from the teen with "You're sick, you need it more than any of us do," or simply shushing him until he stopped arguing.

It didn't take long for everyone to fall asleep -- everyone except Steve, who was lying awake and staring at the dark ceiling. He always had trouble sleeping when he was sick, even when he was in his own bed. Now, trying to sleep on a lumpy mattress, in a cold and drafty warehouse, with a body-racking cough that only seemed to be getting worse, there was no way he'd be able to fall asleep tonight.

He was surprised that the kids were getting any sleep considering he couldn't stop coughing -- loudly -- and he was pretty sure it was echoing throughout the warehouse with every cough. Somehow they were all comfortably asleep, though, and that was a small relief to the babysitter.

Steve wasn't sure how long he'd been lying there, time becoming non-existent in the dark and quiet of the night, when there was a soft knock at the doorway. He looked over and saw a familiar figure standing there which he knew to be El's sister.

"May I come in?" she asked softly and Steve sat up a little, nodding his consent.

"Yeah," the teenager said, "sure."

Kali walked over to the mattress, sitting on the edge of it, and looked at the boy. She couldn't make him out well in the dim light, but it was clear that he was miserable and wanted nothing more than to sleep, and she couldn't help but feel bad for him.

"I brought you something," she said as she handed him a bottle of liquid medicine.

"...What is it?" he asked, looking at the bottle skeptically.

"It'll help with that cough, and help you sleep."

Steve took the bottle and hesitantly opened it, sniffing the contents as though checking for poison -- although he wouldn't have known what poison would smell like, even if he could smell anything through his excruciatingly stuffed up nose.

Kali sighed exasperatedly, "It's safe, I promise. Please, just take it. If Axel interrupts me while I'm trying to work one more time just to complain about your coughing, I very well might kill him."

This earned a small, amused smile from the teen who nodded slightly and took a swig from the bottle, capped it, and handed it back to Kali, who placed it on the floor next to the bed. "Now get some sleep," she said, "You're going to need it."

Steve wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but it didn't inspire confidence. He was too tired to question her about it, though, and lied down, curling up under the blankets that Dustin had insisted he take.

Kali stared at him for a minute, seeing how miserable he was, and remembering the brief time she'd had something of a family shortly after she escaped from the lab. She was, understandably, prone to nightmares, and remembered how her adoptive mother would sit with her until she'd fallen back asleep any time she had one of these nightmares.

This wasn't very different from those nights, and although she knew the teenager would be considered "too old" to have someone sit up with him while he was sick, she didn't feel right leaving him alone in this state.

"...Move," she said, sitting next to him.

"...What?"

"Move over."

He did as he was told and Kali sat next to him, resting her back against the wall and stretching her legs out in front of her -- just as Steve had done the previous night at the motel when Eleven had wanted him to sit up with her.

"...You don't have to do this," Steve said, looking up at Kali from where he was lying, "You don't have to take care of me, I'll be fine. I know you hate me, and that's fine, but you don't have to watch over me -- I can take care of myself."

He turned away from her, pulling the blanket closer around his shoulders and closing his eyes. Believing that Kali hated him didn't really bother him, but he didn't want her to feel like she had to take care of him just because he was sick.

Kali stared down at him for a minute in surprise. "I don't hate you," she said eventually and Steve turned onto his back to look at her again, a slightly confused expression on his face.

"...You don't?"

Kali shook her head, still looking down at the boy, "No. ...It's just..."

"...Just what?"

"Just that... When I see you with Jane... and the others... and how much you care about them... It reminds me that I don't have that anymore. So sometimes it hurts to look at you. ...But I don't hate you."

"...What happened?"

"When I escaped from the lab, I found a family who took me in, just like Jane found all of you. But they couldn't protect me, and I lost them."

"I'm sorry," Steve said, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

She smiled slightly, quickly wiping away the tears that had gathered in her eyes with her free hand. "Now get some sleep," she said after a few moments, and the teenager at her side nodded slightly, absentmindedly pressing his head against her side for comfort, not unlike a cat.

Kali didn't try to push him away, finding it endearing how affectionate the boy was in this state of exhaustion... as well as possibly being just a little bit high on the medicine he'd taken earlier.

She sighed a little and leaned further into the wall -behind her, feeling like part of a family for the first time since she'd lost her own makeshift family. --Her collection of outcasts wasn't quite a family. She cared about them, of course, but it was... different. Different in a way she couldn't quite describe, but that she seemed to understand as she lay surrounded by children, with a sick teenager, who really couldn't have been much younger than herself, pressed up against her side, seeking comfort.