The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

7.

Rook is the first one to wake up in the morning, which she'd feel even gloatier about if she didn't also feel—possibly more so than the day before—like she'd been hit by a truck.

Jacob is slumped in the chair beside her, chin tilted down to his chest, quiet and still enough that he'd look dead if she couldn't see his dogtags shifting slightly with the movement of his breathing. She'd fallen asleep touching him but at some point her hand had fallen away, though her arm is still hanging off the edge of the bed, and by now is completely numb. She lifts it up and hisses as the blood floods into it and the pins and needles kick up.

Jacob wakes instantly at her sound of pain, which is a shame, because she'd really enjoy figuring out a way to actually transfer her shackle to him, a task that would doubtless prove easier if he stayed asleep. His eyes, bright and suspicious, land on her, then shoot to the door before he figures out that they're alone and safe. "Wusswrong," he mumbles next as he rubs his eyes with both hands, his voice pleasantly gravelly with sleep.

"My arm fell asleep."

"What'd you expect." He lowers his hands and blinks hard for a second. "What time is it."

She checks the bare skin of her wrist where a watch would be, if she had ever in her life worn a watch. "About eight-thirty." He shoots her a look of unveiled disgust and she says, "You asked a stupid question, what did you expect? Take this thing off of me," she adds, rattling her shackle again.

"We can talk about it later," he says, standing up. "I need a piss. I'll get you a doctor."

"I don't want a doctor, I want to be uncuffed." She thinks about it, then adds, "Also, ice water and like, a massive steak."

"Tough shit," he says, and leaves her, and it's genuinely unfair that she has not just one, but two stomach wounds that make it hurt to laugh, because not only is Jacob an asshole but now she can't even laugh to herself about how much of an asshole he is without suffering for it.

She actually kind of likes the doctor who comes to check on her, which strengthens her longstanding-suspicion based on way too many overheard conversations between Peggies that Eden's Gate uses the jerks and idiots as their boots-on-the-ground cannon fodder. The doctor is a mousy, matter-of-fact lady that introduces herself as Keter, and she's pretty patient with Rook's questions (or at least, she isn't put off by them, or apparently the fact that Rook is the Project's nemesis, going through the examination unhurriedly and without a trace of awkwardness).

"How bad was my appendix?"

"Not actually bad, but since we were in there anyway—better now than in the bunker, where resources will be more limited."

"You think I'm gonna be in the bunker?"

"You think you're not?" Rook laughs and then winces, and Dr. Keter gives her a stern look through black-framed glasses. "Don't laugh."

"People keep saying funny shit," Rook grouses. "How long till I start feeling normal again?"

"That depends on many factors."

"How tempted were you to let the knife slip while you were in there? Or accidentally prescribe too much morphine?"

"Not tempted at all," says Keter, giving her another sharp look. "I abide by my oath."

"How does that work, with you supporting Eden's Gate?"

"The Hippocratic Oath charges me with caring for my fellow human beings. Joseph Seed is the best hope humanity has, so caring for him and his people is the best thing I could be doing right now. Sit up, please."

The part of the exam that consisted mostly of the doctor poking and prodding in the general area of the wounds and re-bandaging things appears to be over, and Rook sits up to submit to having light shone in her eyes and her temperature taken, which is around the time Jacob returns. He stands just inside the door and folds his arms over his chest, and Rook catches his eye and lifts her shackled wrist and again says, "Get this off of me," though she has a mouthful of thermometer and might not be as comprehensible as she would like.

"Don't talk, please," Keter says sharply.

Jacob raises his eyebrows. "You want something, Deputy?" She glares and just rattles the shackle at him hard, spotting the faintest trace of a smirk on his face before he gives up the pretense. "Something tells me that without that thing keeping you in bed, you'd already be out of it. About when do you think she should be up and about, Doc?"

"It depends a lot on these first couple of days. Barring complications, the more rest she gets now, the quicker she'll be back on her feet—in a limited capacity, of course."

Jacob raises an eyebrow at Rook. "You hear that?"

Rook makes a jerk-off motion, and then the thermometer beeps and Keter removes it and notes, "The fever's staying away, so the antibiotics are doing their job. You'll be on periodic intravenous dosage for a few days at least, then depending on how you're looking, you can probably switch to pill form. Best case scenario, though, it'll still be a while before you're entirely back up to speed. You can lie back down now."

Rook stays sitting upright, though it's starting to hurt a little more than she'd like. She looks at Jacob and says, "You're not really just gonna make me stay here, are you?"

"You deaf?"

"No, but I'm not comatose, either. I don't believe you guys exactly have a wide variety of books, TV, or radio available; if I'm just bedridden with nothing but cult materials to look at for days I'm going to lose my mind."

He gives her a little half-shrug. "Shoulda thought about that before you got near-fatally wounded, huh?"

"I'm not just going to stay down," she says. It's a threat, and he recognizes that, narrows his eyes, but before he can decide how to answer it, Dr. Keter interjects.

"If it's a concern, then ongoing sedation is an option. Her healing will progress more slowly than if she were sleeping naturally, but it would keep her from getting into trouble around here."

Okay, feeling a little less positive about Dr. Keter. She flashes a quick, worried look at Jacob, realizing, perhaps belatedly, that he really could do this, could keep her drugged and comatose and completely out of the game for as little or as long as it suits his fancy. All he has to do is say the word.

Keter and Rook are both watching Jacob, awaiting his decision, but he's only looking at Rook, light eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "No," he says after a beat. "I don't think that'll be necessary."

Keter nods, clearly indifferent one way or another. "Then she needs at least two or three days before she can even think about getting on her feet again."

Jacob nods. "Dismissed."

Keter leaves, to Rook's relief, and as soon as she's gone, Rook says, "You gotta give me something to do because sitting still is going to bore the life out of me. I'm serious."

"I'm aware."

"You always have a ton of work to do around here, so it isn't like you can camp out at my bedside and talk to me or whatever; I'll be lucky if I see you for five minutes a day. I doubt your people will take kindly to being ordered to take shifts playing poker with me, if cards are even allowed in Eden's Gate. The only TV signal in the county patches exclusively into John's broadcasts, and let me tell you honestly, I would rather kill myself."

"My heart bleeds for you, kid, it really does."

"I'm serious," she repeats.

"You ever thought about trying to just get rest and heal up?"

As a matter of fact, she's starting to feel exhausted again, which is ridiculous, because she's been unconscious for something like ninety percent of the previous few days. Still, if she gives up and goes to sleep, then who knows when she'll get the opportunity to make her case again? "Would you send me to Sharky's if I promise to come back once I'm better?"

He glares at the mere mention of Sharky's name. "You tryin' to be funny?"

"Yeah, come on, it'd be awesome. He could hang out with me while I recovered."

"That idiot would get you killed."

"Sharky's not an idiot!"

"Anybody sexually attracted to fire is not the sharpest tool in the shed." She's opened her mouth to defend Sharky some more, and it stays open as she tries to figure out how that particular piece of gossip had reached Jacob Seed, of all people. "I doubt he'd mean to do it, but the odds of you dying of smoke inhalation within forty-eight hours are good. And the doctors are here. No."

It had been a long shot anyway. And maybe he's just tired and not himself, but the fact that Jacob is actually giving her a reason instead of just saying no and leaving it at that is encouraging to her. She sighs, shakes her head. "Bad things happen when I get bored, Jacob, you know that."

"Yeah, I do. That's why you're shackled to the damn bed."

"What if I promised not to cause trouble?"

"Do I look like I was born yesterday?"

She laughs, then groans in pain. "Ow. Asshole."

"Go back to sleep," he says, clearly exasperated. "You look half-dead."

"Thanks, it's the half-dying," she grumbles, easing herself down onto her back. "You know what sucks most about this?"

"Tell me."

"I'm a side sleeper. Hate sleeping on my back. I get bad sleep paralysis of late; I see demons and shit. But now not one but both of my sides have gaping holes in them, so I don't have a choice."

"You live a hard life, Deputy." She does her now-standard laugh-groan combo by way of response. He turns like he's about to leave, but pauses, turns his head, looks at her. "You take care of yourself and get back on your feet, and I'll move you outta here and to my office in a couple of days. Might feel a little less confined there."

He's telling, not asking, she notices, which is kind of a dick move, but she's getting to know him well enough to read between the lines. He doesn't want to ask because he doesn't want her to say no. She's completely sure she could say no, Jacob's never been shitty and coercive in a rapey way, but it's kind of a moot point anyway, because she's not going to.

She lets her eyes drift shut, feeling the weariness in every inch of her body. She says, "Then you better get a different bed cause that shitty little cot isn't going to cut it for the two of us."

There's a long pause, then he says, "I'll take that into consideration." She doesn't hear him leave, already halfway asleep again.

The next couple of days are difficult, though maybe not quite as much so as Rook anticipated—she's sleeping a lot more than she thought she would, feeling just a little bit better every time she wakes up again. Sleep kills the bulk of the first two days, but by day three she's feeling much less tired, and as she predicted, she's about to climb up the walls. There's nothing to do but sit there and think and it's starting to drive her crazy. Jacob isn't really around—business to tend to, she assumes, though she wonders if he isn't feeling a little bit awkward after some of the things he told her, after indicating that he's come around on the idea of them, has committed something of himself to fighting for it. In theory, that's fine, she knows he's the kind of guy who needs a certain amount of space, but in practice, he's effectively her only friend here. (And isn't that a pathetic commentary on the state of things?)

There are the doctors, two others aside from Dr. Keter, and those two make Keter look basically warm by comparison. They tend to her with poorly-concealed malevolence, shooting her looks that make her think that they, at least, would be comfortable breaking their oath if not for the unspoken threat of retribution from the boss, and she barely manages to keep herself from taking potshots at them to relieve the simmering, steadily-growing sense of frustration she's feeling from being stuck in a hospital bed and totally reliant on their mercies.

It comes to a head at the end of the third day, when she gets caught trying to pick the cuff lock with a scalpel she'd managed to lift from one of them when they were checking her over. There's scolding and threats on their parts, yelling on hers (she remembers screaming something about The Yellow Wallpaper—in her defense she's living through the haze of a drug hangover most of the times she's conscious), and when one finally gets the balls to come at her with a needle, she slices his hand open with the scalpel before he grabs her wrist with bruising force, banging her hand on the bed frame until she's forced to drop the weapon, then the needle jabs her arm and it's lights out.

She's not sure exactly how long she drifts in and out of consciousness after that. Later, she'll guess that the doctors kept her out until her run of intravenous antibiotics was done, because next time she's awake, Dr. Keter is removing various tubes from her body and telling her it's time to try walking. (She doesn't seem either scared of Rook or pissed off that Rook had stabbed her colleague. Rook revises her opinion of her once again.)

She's got bruises on her hand from the one doctor bashing it against the bedrail, more bruising on her wrist where she'd strained against the shackle, but that's really just par for the course. She gets up, finally, and laps the room a couple of times.

"How do you feel?" Keter asks, eyeing her shrewdly.

"Like one million dollars," Rook says with transparently false brightness. Keter gives her a sharp look, and Rook sighs. "Weak, kind of shaky. No pain, though."

"None?"

"Not as such." She lightly rests a hand on her stomach, over the knife wound. "A weird sort of pressure, here. I feel like moving too fast would be stupid. But it doesn't hurt."

"Moving fast would be stupid. We had to put six stitches in."

"Really?" asks Rook, interested. "I'd have thought it would be more."

"It would have if he'd jerked the blade around any, but it seemed a fairly straightforward puncture, and the blade was narrow. A stiletto, or a switchblade, maybe."

Rook gets a flash of memory at that, a blur of forest, a feeling of confused dread, a skinny bit of steel glinting wetly with shining red. She presses her eyes closed abruptly, shaking it off, and Keter goes on, seemingly oblivious. "The combined lack of trauma to the entry site, multiple wounds, and damage to the internal organs makes me think that he wasn't trying to kill you—at least, not right away. More likely he just wanted you to bleed."

"…think I'll just bury you," her memory whispers in a voice that isn't hers, and she shakes her head, laughing with some difficulty. When she opens her eyes again, Keter is looking strangely at her.

"Everything all right?"

"Totally fine. You don't happen to have a background in forensics, do you?"

Keter smiles faintly. "A partner did. You pick a thing or two up, watching from the armchair. Now, you're probably a week out from getting your stitches removed, and that's if you take good care of the injured sites and give them room to heal. You can shower, but don't let the stream hit your wounds directly, and dry them thoroughly and gently after. Keep them covered, don't jostle them or strain them."

Rook reads the writing on the wall. "Am I checking out of here, Doc?" she says, careful not to sound too eager.

"Brother Jacob… well, I won't repeat exactly what he said, but he wasn't happy to hear about your attack on Dr. Forster. Said if you felt good enough to draw blood then you didn't need to be taking up space in the infirmary."

"Back to the cages, then?"

Keter shakes her head. "He didn't say. Just told me to get you ready to move. Now listen: your first run of antibiotics is finished, and it went after the infection aggressively—but it's very important that you take these twice daily until they're gone." She shows Rook a bottle of pills, and adds, "If you stop because you feel fine, you could easily relapse."

"I'll keep that in mind," Rook says, a little sourly. "This long-term recovery shit is for the birds. Why can't I just, like, eat a magic pill or sandwich or something and be totally healed? That would suit my lifestyle a little better."

"You're lucky you don't have broken bones or damage to your head or organs," Keter says, rather severely. "Frankly, you're getting off lightly. Especially given your lifestyle."

"You've taken good care of me, Doc, despite me being the enemy, so I'm going to ignore your pointed tone and just say thank you."

"You're welcome. Here. Change into these." Keter hands her some folded clothes that appear to be half-sweats, half standard Peggie attire. At Rook's skeptical look, Keter shrugs. "If you'd rather, you can just keep the hospital gown."

By the time Rook is changed, a soldier has showed up to escort her to… wherever. She's hoping for Jacob's office. The solider doesn't really say much—she gauges that he's either scared and pretending not to be or genuinely contemptuous of her, and while normally she'd take the opportunity to prod and pry and figure out which, she stays uncharacteristically quiet as she follows him along. She's starting to feel tired again, and the little flashes of what she's pretty sure are memories of getting stabbed have spooked her a bit.

He ends up taking her up to Jacob's office after all, alleviating her minor (but still present) fears that Jacob's just going to throw her into the cages again. Her escort pauses at the door, clears his throat, but when she looks at him, he doesn't say anything. God, he's just a kid, she thinks, spotting pimples and peach fuzz. He can't be older than eighteen—but then, she remembers, that's the age at which Jacob enlisted, so this kid must look like fair game to him.

She's a little cranky from her whole stay here, and kind of winded just from walking up two flights of stairs, a surprising state of things which just makes her crankier, so she's short on patience. "You got something to say, Junior, then you better spit it out, because I'm not gonna wait around here all day."

He pauses, shoots her a funny look, like that was not what he had expected her to say. Then, so quietly she has to lean forward to hear, he says, "You have to stay inside."

She raises an eyebrow. "You going to stand guard, make sure?" He frowns, but doesn't answer, and she doesn't wait for one. "Don't worry. I'm still weak as a newborn. Doubt I'll do much more than sleep, at least for a while." Without another word, she enters the office, closing the door behind her.

Jacob has listened to her suggestion. Sort of. The desk and file cabinets have been moved slightly to make room for a utilitarian double bed, but across the room, the tiny cot remains. Rook decides not to come to any conclusions about that—Jacob won't be able to avoid her forever, they can talk about it then. Right now, she's starved (she's sure she'd been getting some kind of nutrients while in the infirmary, but she hasn't eaten properly in probably close to a week now), and she's tired, and most of all, she's disgusting. Dr. Keter had said she could shower, and that's what she's going to do.

It's not great—the "hot" water is closer to lukewarm and the cold water is absolutely frigid, and of course Jacob just has basic bar soap that she can feel pulling every last bit of moisture from her skin as she uses it, but the bathroom is clean, and washing away the funk of days in bed makes up for the drawbacks. She also gets a good look at her injuries for the first time since the stabbing—the knife wound, like Keter said, is a tiny little thing for all the fuss it kicked up, black stitches and brown scabbing and ugly, but the skin around it looks healthy and there's no pain, not even from the water. The bullet graze is a bit bigger and messier, still raw-looking under the bandage, but it looks considerably less angry, there is no sign of pus, and it's still a little sore but not hot and aching like it had been for so long.

"Thank God for Peggy medics," she mutters, carefully drying around the wounds with a scratchy old towel before rebandaging them with the first aid kit she used last time she was here.

After she's showered and re-dressed in the clean clothing Keter had given her, she's still feeling half-starved, but she's also been drugged a lot lately, and her body's been through a lot, and she is impossibly tired again given how much she's slept the last few days. Since there's no food here and the thought of venturing out to try and find some makes her feel newly exhausted, she drags her body over to the new bed (if Jacob's intention is to have her sleep on the cot, he's going to have to fight her). The blanket on top is heavy and red (of course it's red) and is cool to the touch, slippery beneath her fingertips. "Fuck yeah, cozy," she mumbles, eyelids already heavy, and she wriggles beneath it, careful not to put any pressure or strain on her injuries.

She doesn't remember falling asleep. She only becomes aware that she was sleeping when she wakes up to a chill in the air and the faint smell of cigarette smoke.

She sits up, squinting. It takes a beat for her to realize where she is, another beat for her to see that the doors to the balcony are open and it's nighttime. There's a lamp on, the only light in the otherwise dark room, and she can see the spotlights of the veteran's center beyond, can hear faint shouts and the noise of Peggies working into the night.

She gets up, pulling the blanket with her and wrapping it around her shoulders against the cold. She ventures slowly to the open doorway. As she suspected, Jacob is out on the balcony, standing at the railing and watching the movements of his men below as he smokes a cigarette. He doesn't speak to her or acknowledge her approach, though she has no doubt he heard her coming. She leans against the doorjamb, staying silent and just studying him for a moment. She feels like she hasn't seen him in forever. He looks much the same as he always has, although at some point he's traded the light green camo jacket out for a heavier gray one, and she realizes with a start that they must be closing in on the end of October.

Nearly two months, she marvels, almost in disbelief. They've been fighting this stupid war for almost two months now. And nobody seems to have noticed.

She shakes off the latter thought and focuses instead on watching him watching the goings-on below. God, he and his brothers are all so skinny. Jacob is broader than his younger brothers, wide through the shoulders, packed with more muscle, but he and his brothers all have that narrow waist, not an ounce of spare fat on them. She'd noticed it first with Joseph, after seeing him wearing no shirt way more times than she should have, but quickly enough came to realize that it's a family trait, like the shape and color of their eyes and the way they smile.

And speaking of shoulders—the lines of Jacob's are tense, rigid. Hm. Interesting. She's almost certain that that tension has something to do with her presence, so, deciding to poke at it, find a way to bleed it out, she says, "Why's the cot still here?"

He exhales smoke. "It's for me."

She makes a dismissive pbbbt sound; he turns his head slightly, so he can look at her out of the corner of his eye, and says, "What, you want me in the bed with you?"

"Worked pretty well last time."

"Last time you weren't full of holes."

"I really wish you'd quit using that turn of phrase. Technically there's only one hole. The other one is more like a flesh wound."

"Point stands."

"No, it doesn't, I'm not made of glass."

He chuckles hoarsely. He takes a drag from the cigarette, taps the ash off over the railing—the spotlights catch it, silvery and drifting down—then turns sideways and looks at her. "Let me ask you, you waking up fighting more often than not these days? On your feet and looking for a threat before you even know where you are?"

Yeah, usually after a nightmare involving you, she thinks, but she doesn't think that's prudent to say right this second. She doesn't want to give him extra ammo, and she's also, as usual, reluctant to examine whatever it is her subconscious is screaming about him too closely. "So?" she asks instead.

"Yeah," he says, nodding. "For me it's worse. You don't want to share a bed with me. Least of all when you're already hurt."

She considers this, then points out, "You were fine that night at the cabin."

He snorts and turns away again. He's still speaking quietly, but his voice carries to her just fine. "I'd already woken up swinging once that night. Just gambled on it not happening again, that's all."

Rook shrugs. He's right, she's not exactly up to fighting a night-terror crazed Jacob off at the moment. Anyway, the fact that he'd opted for a double bed instead of just bringing in another cot tells her he hasn't totally ruled it out, even if he's not acknowledging it consciously. This is something they can (and will) pick up again later, so she changes the subject. "You spoken to Joseph anymore?"

"Mm-hmm."

"He's still cool with me being here?"

A slow exhale of smoke. "Let me worry about Joseph."

"Reassuring." He doesn't say anything to that. Weird and taciturn isn't exactly unusual for Jacob, but she'd expected him to have thawed a little more, after everything. Then again… she can see him just locking down after maybe-accidentally showing his hand, her near-death experience having forced him to re-evaluate the position she occupied in his life. It kind of makes sense that he'd be embarrassed about admitting to it and reflexively close himself back off to her (at least, it makes sense going by weird, stilted Jacob-logic).

Still: "You know this whole… not telling me anything can't last forever, right?"

"No, but maybe it'll last for as long as you're sleeping twenty hours a day and in no shape to handle much of anything."

Again, he's got a point. She's digging because it's how she's had to live for the past couple of months, has had to constantly keep her antennae up for intel, to track changes in the whole situation—minute or major—as soon as possible after they occur so that nothing comes around to bite her in the ass unexpectedly. He's right, though: right now, she can't actually do anything about objectionable developments, even if he would tell her what was going on and she had the faintest clue of where to start. The fatigue she feels down to her bones, even after so much time spent resting, tells her that at least for now, she'd probably be best off listening to him.

He senses the amenable shift in her mood—that or he just wants to move on, because after another brief silence, he says, casually, "Kim Rye had her baby. Thought you'd want to know."

Rook blinks, feeling a startled little shock run through her. Of course, she realizes, she was getting close when I got here. It's just another jarring reminder that time is passing by quickly. Too quickly. "I did. Thank you," she says. "How'd you find out?"

"John mentioned it."

"Boy or girl?"

"I didn't ask."

Jacob Seed not having the humanity to ask basic questions about a local newborn is just rude, not funny, she tells herself severely, but it doesn't do much to keep her from smiling about it. "Well, are they okay?"

"I assume so. He didn't say they weren't."

"Is he planning to do something horrible to them?"

"Probably. It's John."

She snorts. "Yeah, probably. Did you know he stole all their baby stuff right after this all started?"

He just twitches an indifferent shoulder. "It's John," he repeats, as if there's no more discussion to be had on the topic (and he's likely right). Rook doesn't comment further, already caught up in thought—wondering about the gaps in the information, how the birth had gone, if the baby is all right, if Kim is all right (if Nick is all right). She's surprised to find that she feels a little upset that she hadn't been there for it—though of course, at this point, she doubts she'd have been welcome—and starts thinking about how best to slip out of the Veteran's Center for a quick visit, just to meet the baby, if Nick will let her. (She's not worried about Kim worrying about her being a threat. Kim has confidence that she can take down the entirety of Eden's Gate single-handed, whether Rook is part of the cult or not.)

Jacob abruptly flicks his cigarette in a glowing arc down to the ground and turns to pin her with a hard stare. "You scheming again?"

"Always," she says reflexively.

"Thought so," he says. "Never good news when you go quiet. Before you start thinking of doing something stupid, remember that the man who tried to gut you is in a cage downstairs. Maybe think about finishing your business with him before starting more trouble."

All at once, she's aware of her heart thudding hard in her chest, and again, in some corner of her brain, the whisper I think I'll just bury you. "Um," she says immediately, grasping for control—or at least distraction—"he didn't try to gut me."

"What?" Jacob sounds irritated, eyes narrowed as he watches her.

I think I'll just bury you.

She forces out a chuckle that sounds hollow even to her ears, glancing away. "Yeah, so, Dr. Keter thinks he was just bleeding me. Tiny little entry point, you know?"

Jacob takes a step towards her. "Rook?" His voice sounds a little rougher than usual.

"I'm fine, I just—" She draws a deep, deep breath and then has to release it, slowly and shakily, before she's willing to meet his eye again. "The memories. You know? Of that day. They aren't gone." He keeps scowling for another second or two before his expression clears slightly, and she nods at him. "I mean, I don't think they're gone. I keep getting… flashes."

"Flashes."

"Like the memory of a dream. Or like I'm watching a movie, maybe? Except…" She swallows hard. "Even though it feels like it didn't really happen to me, every time, I get this, like… fear response. Heart beats faster, dry mouth, general feeling of panic, the works." She breathes in and out a couple more times, trying to stabilize, to get rid of the feeling of fear in her chest, then, as casually as she can manage to sound, she adds, "It's really annoying, actually, cause the bad part is over. If I was gonna feel all weird about it, I should've done it then."

"Yeah. Well, that's not really how it works."

She wants to ask well, how does it work?, but there's something forbidding and closed-off in his expression that makes her think better of it, and after a second, the moment passes—he says, "We don't have to deal with him tonight. But soon. It'll help. Some."

She's not really sure what he means by that, either, but again opts not to ask. He steps closer again, now within arm's length, and begins to say, "You should probably—"

This is right around the time Rook realizes that she's on her feet and has complete freedom of motion for the first time in what feels like forever, and she goes for him. It's probably a dumb move, she realizes as he reels slightly back, fists flying up in a quickly-aborted gesture of self-defense as she gets her arms around him. "Jesus," he grumbles, half startled exclamation and half complaint, but she's not about to let him ruin this for her and ignores that. She rests her soft cheek against his hard shoulder and doesn't hold him quite close enough to freshly hurt herself, but she's treading a thin line.

He just stands there, arms raised slightly to accommodate hers wrapped around his trunk but not hugging her back (if she's being generous, she'd attribute it to a desire to keep from putting more pressure on her stitches, but most likely he just doesn't want her to make the mistake of thinking he wants to). She doesn't really care. She feels her heartbeat slowing down (which is absurd, if her body has started to react to perceived threats from people who aren't actively hurting her, Jacob should be at the top of that list, not the one to calm her down), and after a second, once she feels safe enough to speak, she says, her voice slightly muffled by his shoulder, "Thank you for not letting me die."

A pause. The rigid tension in him she'd initially met with is easing, his stomach and chest relaxing a little against hers, and eventually he says, "Sure you want to say that? I thought you wished I'd left you to bleed out."

She groans. "Don't be a dick when I'm being nice."

"I'm just repeating what you said."

"When I was mad. Obviously I'm glad I didn't die." She goes quiet for a second, then adds, "I'm glad he didn't kill me."

She relaxes her grip on him, finally, even though she doesn't really want to, and isn't surprised at all when he reaches up and grabs her by the shoulders and pries her away from him. She is surprised when he doesn't push her further away, instead just keeps a tight grip on her shoulder with one hand and lifts the other to methodically brush the loose hair out of her face. He's not really one for affectionate touching, and she frowns up at him, tensing up beneath his hands and searching his expression for some verification that this means trouble.

She doesn't really find it. His brow is furrowed thoughtfully as he looks her over, and the rough pad of his thumb grazes her cheekbone, briefly enough that she can't tell if it was an accident or not. This close, the warmth of his body blocks the chill of the night air, and her heartbeat is slow and steady. He meets her eye, and for a second she thinks he's going to actually talk to her.

The moment passes, though; she sees him straighten near-imperceptibly, his eyelids lowering with something like boredom. His hands slide away from her and he says, "You need to eat. I brought you some food."

Talking can wait. She feels her eyes get huge as her stomach wakes up instantly at the mention of food, and she says, maybe a little too loudly, "What, for real? You didn't think to bring this up before?"

If he was anybody but Jacob, he would have rolled his eyes. Instead he just turns her around, points her back towards the office. "Maybe if you weren't yammering the whole time. Can't get a word in edgewise."

Rook thinks this is rich, coming from the guy for whom long, awkward silences count as sparkling conversation, but she's too hungry to delay her meal with quibbling. She gets her chance a second later, anyway, when she opens the still-warm Tupperware container on his desk and spots the chili within and—making a Herculean effort not to just start scooping it up with her bare hands, he'd brought her a spoon, she's not a barbarian—asks dubiously, "What kind of meat is this?"

"If I told you, you wouldn't eat it."

She snorts. "Squirrel, got it." Obviously squirrel meat is not her concern, but her concern isn't all that serious—Jacob and his crew are all kinds of fucked up, but she doesn't believe they're just chowing down on humans as routine. Even if Jacob for some reason wanted to keep revisiting what was probably the worst day of his life, she thinks Joseph would have something to say about it. John certainly would. Anyway, after examining the food a little closer, giving it a solid sniff, she's pretty sure it's beef.

Jacob, apparently having decided to ignore her, takes a seat at the desk and starts tapping at the old computer's keyboard. Rook, whose feet are bare and clean after her shower, just hops up onto the empty opposite side of the desk and sits cross-legged as she takes up the spoon and starts eating. He hates that she's up there, she can tell—he pauses for just a second when she climbs up and she sees him glance at her out of the corners of his eyes—but he's not using his big boy words and telling her so, so she stays right where she is.

Whoever made the chili must not be related to the Seeds, because it's good. Unfortunately, she only makes it through half the bowl before eating starts to get uncomfortable. As if he's read her mind, Jacob, without looking at her, says, "Don't eat too much. Don't want to lose it all again."

She sighs and puts the bowl down. "I still want to eat the whole world."

"Yeah, well, your stomach's probably about the size of a peanut right now, so I wouldn't recommend it."

She figures he would know. She carefully replaces the lid, and then, since he's doing such a great job of pretending he doesn't see her, she takes a moment to just watch him.

He looks tired. That's an understatement, really—he's always had bags under his eyes, but they're so deep right now they look bruised in to the bone, the normal brownish-purple color of them having given way to an alarming shade of blue at the edges. Her eyes travel down to his hands. They're battered to hell, knuckles a mismatch of blackened scabs and raw pink splits, fingers bruised and knobby and swollen in places. Reflexively, she glances around, looking for new holes in the walls, but doesn't see any, and the one from the last time she was here has been patched up.

What has he been hitting, she wonders, or who? She feels a sudden, visceral surge of relief that Jacob has heretofore been content with just commanding instead of wading into the fray himself. She's scrapped with him once or twice, sure, but that had always just been something they did when the words ran out. (The only time she'd ever felt in any actual danger had been the last time, and that wasn't a fight so much as an ambush.) Going against him hand-to-hand, in earnest… well. Rook considers herself an accomplished fighter, extremely so after these last two months, but if Jacob had been doing for Eden's Gate what she's done for the Resistance, she doesn't think she'd have made it this far.

Jacob speaks suddenly, interrupting her train of thought. "You just gonna stare at me all night?"

Taken off-guard, she does what she typically does to defend herself from him. She wiggles her eyebrows lasciviously—not that he's even looking at her to notice—and says, "You got somethin' else in mind?"

"I think a taste of 'something else' would about kill you right now."

She barks out a laugh, and is pleased to note that although it's still a little uncomfortable, it doesn't hurt like it did before. "You think you could fuck me to death? That's a lot of confidence, old man." He's right, actually, she's really in no shape to be even talking about fucking, but she never can resist the opportunity to try and get a rise out of him.

Instead of the disgusted glare she's mostly expecting, though, Jacob looks up and over at her and gives her a solemn little wink before returning his attention to his work. She nearly falls off the desk then and there.

It's obscene, is what it is. Creepy and unnatural. Rook can flirt with Jacob all she wants, anyone who's spent even five minutes with her knows that's just to be expected, but Jacob is not supposed to flirt back. In fact, it's been so long since he has that she's rendered speechless. (Which was probably his intent in the first place.)

"Catching flies there, Deputy," he says mildly without bothering to look at her, and she realizes that her mouth has been hanging open.

She closes it with an audible click and glares at him for a second, then mutters, "Demon." He doesn't react in any visible way, and she thinks it'd be best to change the subject before he realizes exactly how much power he could have over her if he loosened up and did this more often. "Can I go play with the Judges?"

"The Judges are wild animals."

She waits for more, but that appears to be all. "So… is that a… nooooo…?"

"Leave the Judges alone."

"It's not like I'm going to bother them," she says indignantly.

"They'll kill you soon as look at you. They aren't pets."

"Not with that attitude," she mutters, and ah, there's that glare she was looking for earlier.

"They're wild animals," he repeats. "You can't domesticate them."

"Jacob," she says pointedly. "Who're you talking to?"

"The fucking bear is a fluke."

"Jacob."

"So's the cougar."

"Don't talk about Adelaide that way."

That appears to have caught him off-guard enough to have gotten through his defenses—she sees the beginnings of a smile a split second before he's conveniently seized by a coughing fit. She grins, pleased with herself, and hops off the desk, stretching her arms high over her head. It feels good to be able to move around again, weak as she is. Won't be long before she can start building muscle back up—maybe once she can eat more than a thimbleful of food at a time, anyway.

Behind her, Jacob says, "You gonna be this obnoxious the whole time?"

She turns around, flashes him a grin. "Do you pray, Jacob?"

"No."

"Well, you might wanna start."

a/n - if you're out there reading, say hey!