"Hey, you."
The sound of Annie's voice - though understandably lacking in its usual spark - somehow managed to dissipate the tightness in his shoulders, the knot in his stomach uncoiling. Auggie was reminded, grimly, of a time when he had sat in one of these rooms before, and she could not answer him. It was a nightmare he had no desire to relive, and he quickly did away with the unwanted memories rearing their ugly heads. Standing in the threshold of the room, he frowned at the distinct creak of the hospital bed-frame, accompanied by her unsuccessful attempt to stifle her own groan when she moved.
"Don't get up." He adjusted his cane accordingly, increasing the vertical angle and positioning it closer to his body.
"Auggie, I'm fine."
"Quit being such a martyr, Walker." Auggie's tone was patronizing, though his smile said otherwise.
"Bossy," Annie huffed indignantly. Surprisingly she remained still. Her concession had been far easier to obtain than he'd expected, which only further cultivated his growing concern. "To your right-" When her words faltered, a chill of alarm raced through his body. With quick, calculated precision he moved toward the sound of her voice, the middle of his cane finding the end of the bed. He drew himself closer with short, deliberate strides, allowing his freehand to run along the edge.
"Annie?"
Auggie stopped when her fingers ensnared his wrist. He immediately released a sigh of relief, attempting to tamp down the brief flicker of panic, but it lingered despite his best efforts. Even her grip, usually strong and sure, felt weaker than normal - her movements sluggish. The direction of her hold alerted Auggie that she was sitting up. She let go of him just long enough for him to sit beside her, folding his cane and placing it gently at the foot of the bed. He offered her his left hand, palm up, and without hesitation her fingers wove their way through his, but she said nothing else. Auggie did not miss rigidity of her body, the way he could feel her lean forward, the labored, shallow pattern of her breathing - the sound of someone in pain.
"Hey," his thumb brushed her wrist, and he could feel her pulse, erratic and racing, "you gonna make it?"
"Mhm," her body quivered, and she stiffened, her grip on his hand tightening, "just dizzy."
Auggie knew, better than most, what it felt like to be hit with wave of nausea, for your skull to feel like it was constantly on the edge of exploding, all while the world seemed to spin out of control. He wanted to tell her to lay down, to rest, but he knew it would be a lost cause. If she had been hard-headed before, her stubbornness would be unassailable now. Annie would have no qualms telling him, or the nursing staff, what she thought about their suggested twenty-four hours of monitoring either. She had always been the type to push herself too hard, too fast, and Auggie feared the increased likelihood of that behavior given the circumstances.
His internal brooding must have bled over to his facial expressions, because she straightened up, squeezing his hand. "Hey," she said softly, "I'm ok." She cautiously drew closer to him, "I'm right here."
"Yeah," Auggie lifted her hand, kissing her knuckles, "yeah, you are."
Annie's breathing seemed to steady at that, and she relaxed into his side, sighing softly. They sat in silence, at least for a moment, content to just be. And Auggie tried to remember if there had ever been another time in his life when something had felt so easy, so right, in spite of everything that had happened. In spite of everything that was happening.
He braced himself for the lull to break. If there was one thing he he had learned over the course of their relationship, it was that Annie often said the most when she said nothing. Despite her silence, her semblance of stillness, he knew inside her heart was raging, and he could feel it; the remorse, the anguish, the demons. She had been that way for a while now, and it saddened him to try and remember a time when she hadn't been.
"Auggie…" her words are fueled by despair, agony, one whisper with a thousand regrets. "This is my fault."
It killed him.
It killed him to sit there, to listen to her crucify herself, and take the blame - trying to carry all the weight even in the midst of struggling to stand. Yet in the same breath, her courage - her selflessness - had always been one of the things about her that he had admired most. It never ceased to amaze him how she always seemed to be the last to see it in herself.
"It's not, Annie - you know it's not."
"She has Danielle. She has my sister."
"And we're going to find her."
Auggie was apprehensive of what another round of hysteria would do for Annie's already fractious mental state, especially given Calder's retelling of the previous episode. The severity of her concussion did little to help the matter, and more than likely exacerbated the instability, amplifying her anxiety, her fears. What he feared most, though, was that Annie (who calculated risk based on emotional investment) was known to make brash and brazen decisions with complete disregard for her own safety. These tendencies especially occurred when said decisions involved the people she cared about.
And now, Annie's decisions would revolve around one, sole purpose, with no hope of deterring her, regardless of whether or not her own condition would hinder her from doing so.
Finding Danielle.
Finally, after another pause, she said: "Did Calder find it, the SUV? Did they run the plates?" Her tone had changed, flattened - business only - pushing him away, pushing him out.
"Barber's working on it," Auggie nodded, noting that she had shifted uncomfortably, hearing her sharp intake of air. "How's the shoulder?"
"They reset it, I'm wearing an immobilizer." The tone of her voice was distant, her thoughts elsewhere. "My ribs are worse though, and my head…" She hesitated, almost as if she were worried about giving him too much information, but if she had been trying to hide something it was too late.
Auggie released her hand, very carefully allowing it to travel up the length of her arm and across her shoulders, his fingers finding the back of the neoprene-like brace she was sporting. He hesitated, then asked, "Where?" Without having to be told, he felt her tilt her head to the side, using her good hand to pull her hair out of the way. Auggie then slowly drew his hand back across the flat plane her shoulders, until his index finger could trace the smooth curve of her shoulder where it tied into her neck, noting the unusual warmth of her skin. She trembled. He stopped when he encountered the edge of the gauze bandage, small and square, set just behind her ear and the curve of her jaw, below her hairline - his throat tightened, jaw set.
She craved the contact, and turned into his touch. It would have been so easy to kiss her…
"Auggie," Her voice softened, seemed smaller, "can I tell you something?"
Auggie could feel the weight behind her words, the exhaustion, like gravity, slowly sinking. He wanted nothing more than to hold her up.
But, before she could say anything else, before he could say anything, a knock at the door startled them both. Auggie tensed at the sound of someone entering the room, but when Annie remained unmoved beside him, he relaxed, drawing his hands back and letting them fold in his lap.
"You're a sight for sore eyes, Walker." Calder Michael's commented wryly. "How's the head?"
"I've been better." Annie deadpanned.
Auggie interjected pointedly with a question to change the subject. "News?" The last thing Calder needed to do was start a fight he couldn't win.
"Yes, but we can't discuss it here." Calder moved into the room. Auggie could detect the heavy fall of combat boots against the tile floor, different from his usual, more debonair business footwear. "Think you can manage walking? We set up shop at the JMPC, I have a ride waiting curbside to take us there."
"I hit my head," Annie's snarl was defensive, and unexpected, "my legs are fine-" Auggie rested his hand on her knee in caution. She exhaled, hesitated, and then continued more calmly: "I'm fine."
"Between you and me, Walker, it's your head I'm worried about."
Not being the kind to sugarcoat his opinion, Calder's retort was just as scathing as Annie's initial riposte, and hardly out of character. It was no secret that between the three of them, there was no love lost, and the chances of them ever finding common ground were close to impossible. Regardless, Auggie had to try and suppress the defensive flash of irritation that started to fester in his chest (something Calder's attitude seemed to invoke on a regular basis) when Calder targeted Annie directly. He could feel Annie smoldering beside him, livid, but she remained silent, and so he convinced himself to do the same.
"Curbside," Calder reiterated flatly, "10 minutes."
"We'll be there." Auggie was glacial in comparison, but if he got a rise out of the belligerent "Sheriff", he could not tell.
Calder said nothing else, turning on his heels and leaving just as quickly as he'd come. Auggie waited for the man's distinctive, stomping stride to washout into a distant echo down the infirmary corridor. He then gently found Annie's hand again, pleasantly surprised to find her hold on him seemed stronger than before.
"Ready?" Auggie felt for his cane, fingers curling around it and pulling it close, but he kept it folded.
"Auggie?"
"Yeah?"
"You're not worried, are you?"
Auggie hesitated at that. They both knew it wasn't her head she was talking about, at least not in the physical sense.
"No," he finally decided. "No, I'm not."
She didn't respond at first, and Auggie waited uncertainly, beginning to think he might have said the wrong thing - until he heard her sigh.
Like blowing out a birthday candle.
He grinned.
"OK," she squeezed his hand, "I'm ready."
"We're good?"
"We're good."
Her head was still pounding, even now. She blinked, but saw nothing.
How much time had passed?
She tried to remember when it happened, but the memory escaped her, distorted and lost with the other manic, fleeting pieces of the images that float in and out of focus inside her head. The car rolling through the air, the crunch of glass, the cold as she was dragged across asphalt through snow. She tried to hold onto them, but couldn't. The past few weeks of her life were a jumbled, muddled blur. She couldn't even remember her captors face, only the hand and the rag that had smelled overwhelmingly like acetone smothering her, and then empty, awful nothing.
She hadn't forgotten the fear, though. How the blood in her veins turned to ice.
She tried not to remember how she had struggled to get away, the cold stab of a gun pressed against her head. She tried not to remember the sound of her own screaming, and how helpless it had felt to wake up to shadows.
To wake up to nightmares.
There were not any windows here - no sunlight, no stars, no sense of time. Just endless black, as if the universe had swallowed her. A closet, maybe? Storage? Try as she might the locked door handle wouldn't give, and she wondered if they - whoever they, or he, or she was - had left her here to rot, to die. The thought sent a trill of terror down her spine and made her sick. Or maybe the nausea was from her arm, and the excruciating pain that kept her from moving it.
Common sense tried to drown out the panic of her thoughts. If they were going to kill her, surely they would have done it already. If it was the same person who had been hunting them, the same person hunting her sister, then they needed her alive, right?
Danielle closed her eyes against the darkness, and wondered if this, this empty, hopeless, desperate feeling, was what it felt like.
What Annie had felt like.
Moments like this, I think of you and the girls.
She knew the clock was racing.
She just prayed her sister would find her before it ran out.
A/N: This chapter is a huge milestone for me, for many reasons, but especially because it's the first written piece I've ever broke 40K words on. Thanks for enjoying the ride with me, readers. I hope you continue to do so! Thanks, as always, to Ash! xox