The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

9.

Jacob orders O'Hara's body removed from the cage and burned. Better than you deserved, he thinks as he dispassionately watches his soldiers drag the corpse away, towards the pits on the back of the property where they dispose of the dishonorable dead. Shining red blood marks their path, showing up bright against the dull gray-brown of the muddy courtyard, and Jacob follows a leisurely twelve paces back, wanting to see it done with his own eyes. In case she asks.

After last night's conversation, he hadn't been sure she would do it. She seemed to feel pity for O'Hara, some obstinate, perverse sense of sympathy that she had no business extending to him after what he'd done to her. She could be hard to get a bead on in that sense—killing machine one second, tearing through outpost defenses twenty men strong, a bleeding heart in the next, concerned about civilians and wildlife, people's feelings.

Killing machine won out after all, he thinks as he stands at a distance, arms crossed over his chest, watching as his people hurl O'Hara in with the two or three others that have accumulated in the last day or so. He'd had his doubts right up till she asked him for his gun and he'd seen that look in her eye he'd only ever seen from a distance, cold and determined—and angry. That too.

His men shake gasoline over the pile, fling a lit match in, and the flames shoot up with an audible rush. Their job done, the soldiers retreat, and Jacob moves closer, till he can feel the heat of the fire on his face and arms, irritating, just on the side of painful. The smell is already rising, a smell that tends to make people sick the first time they experience it and realize what it is they're actually smelling, but Jacob's gotten used to it by now, the way burning human smells like any other cooked meat—smells good, makes you hungry. Long pork, isn't that what they call it? For good reason.

She'd been angry, but not at O'Hara. At Jacob, maybe—she'd certainly conked him on the head like she'd wanted him to back off—but he wasn't so sure. Anger was an old friend of his, he was familiar with many of the ways it manifested, and the way she'd barely been able to hold still under his hand, hightailed it out of the courtyard the second he let her go… well. Being angry is better than being scared.

He's been feeling a little stirring of alarm from the second she moved out of his sight, knowing that Rook has a tendency to bolt when she feels caged, but he ignores it. He could put a guard on her, lock her in his office again till the impulse passes, but things have shifted since he pulled her out of the woods, in more ways than one. The outside with its resistance is hostile territory for her now, but even if she wants to risk it (and he can see her risking it), he's moved beyond the role of jailer for her. That's the unspoken part of the current tension between him and Joseph, after all, the reason Joseph had sent her away when the news about them broke in the first place: he knows Jacob no longer regards her as the enemy. If she wants to run, he's not about to stop her anymore.

So he ignores the impulse to go find her and instead watches as O'Hara's flesh blackens and peels away from his charring bones. Even after the corpse is swallowed up by the bright blazing flame, Jacob sticks to his usual routine, overseeing the daily functions of the base, signing off on several shipments of supplies for the bunker (Joseph promises the collapse is coming any day now), sending reinforcements to a couple of beacons that recently lost a few people to the Whitetails, and getting some sparring in for good measure. (He's eased up on his sparring partners in the last week or so, so he doesn't come out of it feeling like the bones in his hand are a fine powder like he has been, but the scabbing on his knuckles is still at least a week out from healing to start with and is fully torn open and bleeding again by the time he's finished, even with wrappings.)

By the time he returns to his office, the overcast sky is darkening with the day's end. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of Rook, but he also hasn't heard any reports of her departure, so he isn't surprised when he opens the door and spots her sitting cross-legged against the headboard of the bed he'd procured for her, reading something from the pile of books that has been keeping her busy for the last few days. At his arrival, she looks up, her expression perfectly blank, then back to her book.

Okay, still a little raw. He ignores the little flash of discomfort that comes with witnessing a Rook who isn't willfully projecting everything she thinks and feels out for everyone to see and instead gives her some more space—he unlaces his boots, grabs some fresh clothing from the locker he keeps his sparse wardrobe in, and leaves to take a shower.

The cool water is bracing, drives away some of the weariness of the day. After, he dresses again, jeans and a gray t-shirt, dogtags, no boots, no jacket. The day's been busy, but nothing out of the ordinary—he thinks maybe he can get something to eat, maybe a few hours of sleep before he's needed again.

When he emerges, Rook has moved from the bed, and now sits instead on the floor at the balcony door, leaning back against the doorjamb and staring out at the trees and sky in the distance. A light rain has begun, the ubiquitous patter underscoring the distant shouts of people at work, and the sky is a darkening gray-blue in the overcast autumn twilight.

He thinks about saying something—he's not sure what—but a few papers on his desk that weren't there when he left in the morning catch his eye, and he finds his reading glasses so he can investigate, privately glad for something to distract him. They're reports from several of his people in charge of various outposts across the mountains, but none of the news is dramatic (he'd stopped getting those sorts of reports after the Deputy had essentially gone into hiding) or particularly unexpected.

He's shuffling through them, making mental notes, when there's a distant BOOM, followed by the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire, cleanly audible through the open balcony doors. It's not an unusual sound, but in his peripheral vision, he sees Rook's posture go rigid—even sitting down, every line of her is tense, head lifted, staring through the doors at the terrain beyond like she's expecting the Resistance to converge on them then and there.

"Miles away," he says without really thinking it through. She turns her head, looks at him, but he's not sure she's really seeing him. He can practically see the gears turning behind her eyes, like she's strategizing for a battle she's not even involved in. He's not sure he can do soothing even if he tries, so he just keeps his voice low and quiet, unalarmed, as he adds, "It's common enough. Never comes within a couple of miles of the Center. I wouldn't pay it any mind."

Like someone cut a string, she relaxes, shoulders sloping down, returning to herself in some way. She blinks, slowly, and then turns away from him again in silence.

Leaving Jacob to stew in a strange feeling of discomfort.

He can't shake the feeling that she needs something from him, which is… well, part of the reason this thing ever progressed in the first place is that she doesn't seem to be looking for anything normal from him. Never once in his life has been good at that…intuitive, understanding shit that he gathers is a normal thing with functional couples, people like the Ryes. Call it lack of a good model to watch growing up, call it intentional, some kind of bone-deep, instinctive self-defense, not wanting to get locked into the hell he'd seen with his parents, but even when he was younger, going through a short series of (always-brief) relationships, he'd been utter shit at figuring out solutions when personal problems arose. Something needed punching, killing, or fixing, he could handle it; otherwise, he was useless. Worse than useless, actually—anything he said or did always seemed to make things deteriorate faster.

Rook hasn't seemed to mind it too much so far. In fact, with her, he's always gotten the faint impression that she's going along much as she would if he didn't factor in her life at all, except for some reason she's decided to stick with him while she does it. This might be the tipping point, though—the inevitable moment when she realizes that he can't offer her anything worth hanging around for. He's torn about that. Part of him thinks good, this was a shitty idea in the first place, the sooner she leaves the sooner things'll go back to normal, but he knows better than that by now. The damage is already done, both their reputations are in tatters, and neither can turn around and pretend like it never happened. Beyond that, just the thought of her taking off, wandering back to those Resistance idiots—it makes his blood boil. See how that goes for you, he thinks with unexpected viciousness. See how happy they are to have you back after you've gone radio silent, after you've been camping out up here for this long.

Just as quickly as his temper flares, though, it calms again. He watches her over the frames of his glasses. She looks smaller than usual, hugging her knees loosely and watching the darkening sky. She's smart, he thinks. She's not going anywhere. She knows there's nowhere to go. Still, it's worth trying to take a shot in the dark, to at least try to ease whatever's eating her right now.

She seems to like it when he talks to her, for some ungodly reason. He should probably just try that—but true to form, as he's puzzling out the best thing to say, Rook speaks up before he has to. "It's always kind of trippy to me, how much distant gunshots just sound like fireworks. Or—vice versa, I guess."

He has no response to that. She goes on, says, "My brother and I used to shoot them at each other." After a pause, she adds, "Not guns. Fireworks"—like she thinks that's much better. "And that sound—it's not fireworks, it's never fireworks anymore, always guns, but still, I think of him every time I hear it." It's just a statement, matter of fact, no indication that she's telling him something that costs her in any way.

"I didn't know you had a brother," he says before he can think better of it.

She snorts again but still doesn't bother looking at him. "Well, you never asked," she says lightly.

She wants him to ask, that much is obvious. Still, it takes a moment struggling with himself—his reflexive resentment at feeling led anywhere or prompted in any way battling with his genuine curiosity and the feeling that he should at least help the conversation along in some way—and he's so goddamn sick of himself, so fed up that it's always a whole ordeal to force himself just to speak, that he probably sounds pretty brusque when he asks, "He dead?"

She looks at him and raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, not backing down. She'd used the past tense—his question made sense. "No," she says, though her expression had already given him an answer. "He lives across the country, near my mother and sister."

"Father?" He realizes, a second too late, that his tone is making this sound like an interrogation, but it's too late to take it back. She hears it, too; he can see the corner of her mouth turned up in a faint smile. It occurs to him, far from the first time, that maybe he should take it personally, the way she seems to find his orneriness funny rather than threatening, but he dismisses the thought immediately. She's stopped flinching away from him—even when she should—and he's not particularly surprised to realize he doesn't want her to start again now.

"He passed," she says. "I was seventeen."

There's a part of Jacob that always, even now, wants to know how other people's fathers were with them, and the answer always seems to enrage him, no matter what it is. He doesn't like that feeling, that sense of being out of control of his anger, like his old man has one hand out of the grave, still has a grip on him, even decades later, so he long ago stopped asking.

Rook doesn't seem to want to get into it, anyway. "I'm the middle child," she says, a little dreamily, talking quietly, but the words carry to him even over the rain and even though she's facing away from him. "Like Joseph. Isn't that funny?"

His reflexive reaction is no, it's not; she's nothing like Joseph, maybe even his polar opposite, and for some reason the comparison lifts his hackles, though he's not sure on whose behalf he's annoyed. He should say something—she's acting strange, he thinks maybe Keter gave her something—but he's curious, too, wondering where this train of thought will lead.

He compromises. He removes his glasses and steps out from behind the desk, goes over to the other side of the open doorway. He doesn't sit, but leans his shoulders back against the opposite side of the door frame from her. She raises her chin and meets his gaze easily, like it's the most natural thing in the world, like she hasn't been avoiding him practically since he set foot in the room. She doesn't look glassy-eyed or loopy. A little distant, maybe.

"He more or less held the family together," she tells him as thunder rumbles somewhere far away. Her voice takes a conspiratorial edge. "I was kind of the black sheep, did I ever tell you that?"

"I am shocked to hear that," he says deadpan, and she grins, looking a little more like herself.

"So, like… my big sister, she's two years older than me, and she's sort of the platonic ideal of a girl, you know? I don't mean that in a bad way, I know how it sounds, but, you know. She was sort of the perfect daughter. Then I came along, and I'm—well, you know me."

"Less so."

"Right," she says, nodding decisively, looking back out at the forest in thought as she finds her words. "And my little brother, I mean, he's six years younger than I am, so Dad just got in the habit of doing boy stuff with me, even after he was born. Mom was fine with that when I was little and it was still cute, but when I was a teenager, that meant a lot of my friends were boys, I started picking up habits she disapproved of, acted too wild and not ladylike enough for her… and you know, she was—is—super religious, and for her that means that girls should basically be nice and quiet and plan to get married and have babies and take care of the house, you know?"

Jacob's nodding before she even looks up at him searching for understanding. "I might've heard a screed or two like that in my time."

"Right, with the…" she trails off into a mutter, leaves the thought unspoken, and looks meditatively up at the rain dripping off the edge of the roof. "So. Lotta tension. Dad was the peacemaker. He told her it'd be fine, that teenage years were for figuring stuff out and testing parents along the way. He could usually talk her into getting off my back. It worked, for a while. Then…" Her mouth twists into something wry, an attempt at humor that doesn't quite come through, and, wrists wresting on her knees, she lets her hands flop open, palms up.

Once again, Jacob's not sure what to say. He doesn't know what a person should say about the death of a father, especially given that he'd laughed when he'd heard the news of his own father's passing. (Joseph hadn't approved. John took him out to get blackout drunk that night—the one and only time they'd done that before the Project really started taking off and Joseph got a lot stricter about what he called "vainglorious, worldly behavior.")

Instead of saying anything about that, he tries changing the subject. "Did Keter give you something?" Better late than never.

If she hears him, she doesn't let on. She draws in a slow breath—it hisses through her teeth—and then she says, "A year later, I was in college, as many states away as I could swing, scraping together every last scholarship I could, going headfirst into debt just to get away from them." She laughs then, a surprised little huh. "I guess if Joseph's right and the apocalypse is coming, I don't need to worry about that anymore, right? One of the overlooked perks of the Collapse. Student loan forgiveness."

"Rook."

"I wonder how they're doing," she mumbles absently. "It wasn't a complete amputation, you know. Mom and I still pretend to have a relationship, but the unspoken tension takes a toll. I haven't talked to them other than, like, bi-monthly check-ins in years. My kid brother's almost nineteen. I wonder if he's happy or if he found a way out, like I had to."

Jacob stoops, slowly, lowering himself to roughly eye level and reaching out with one hand, brushing her fingertips with his own. "Hey," he says, in a tone of voice that startles him—he hasn't heard that from himself since John was a kid. It seems to startle Rook, too: she finally looks at him, her brows furrowed slightly. "Did Keter give you meds?"

When she rolls her eyes at him, he chooses to see it as a good thing. "You mean besides my antibiotics? No. God, can't I be maudlin and reflective sober?"

"It's not usually a good sign," he says.

"Did you get rid of O'Hara's body?"

The question is abrupt and unexpected enough to take him aback for a second or two. He'd expected her to avoid the topic, and had been torn on whether or not to broach it (the commander in him knows that she needs to face up to it, acknowledges that it was the right—the only—thing to do, and the sooner the better. On the other hand, she's still recovering, and he's inclined to take it a little easier on her, at least for now. (Another part of him altogether knows for a fact that she's changing the subject on purpose, but given that he's fairly uncomfortable with the subject at hand, he lets it slide.)

"Watched him burn myself," he says, keeping a careful eye on her, watching for her reaction. She nods, but her eyes are distant again. Jacob, in an effort to pull her back, says, "You know you had to do it."

"No, I know," she says. "It's just shitty."

He feels another flare of temper, gets it under control before saying, "He was a psychotic murderer who should have been executed a long time ago. How is that shitty?"

"He was out of his mind," she says, a little more stridently. "He needed help."

"I'd say you helped him plenty."

"Well, sorry if the Peggy habit of just killing anyone and everyone inconvenient to them doesn't sit right with me."

"Inconv—" he starts before the words briefly fail him. He gets his voice back quick, though, and in a near-shout he says, "He was gonna bury you!"

She winces, but he's all out of sympathy. He says, "Yeah, he was crazy, but he killed people, he tried to kill you, and I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kinda short on psych wards up here. He's just lucky you made it quick instead of letting that leg kill him."

"I know," she says in a small voice. "Just sucks, is all."

A silence stretches out between them, and Jacob sighs, casting his gaze out to the lower courtyard. He's not sure how this always happens—a normal, even pleasant conversation turns into an argument, ends with him reaming her out. If he was a different man, a better one, he'd apologize, maybe pull her up into his arms, try to make it better—but he's not, and so he stays put and doesn't look at her.

At least, not till she says, "You're red." That commands his attention. He glances over, and she frowns. "Well, redder."

He glances down at his arms. She's right—the skin there has brightened with irritation. "The fire," he explains briefly. "Must've stood too close. It gets all… worked up around direct heat."

She nods, and she doesn't ask. He realizes, though, that he can do something.

Once again, it takes him some time to work up to it, but Rook, maybe picking up on that endless eternal struggle, is quiet for once, letting him choose the words—which, when they come, are blunt as ever:

"The burns, they… happened after Miller. Right after, as a matter of fact," he adds with a wry little snort. "I ever tell you how that resolved?"

She shakes her head, but he already knows he didn't—the mess that followed the worst day of his life hadn't made it into the neat script he'd fed her that day an eternity ago, when she was caged and he was still obstinately plodding along in his efforts to turn her into a soldier, despite the clear signs evolving to signal to him that it was never going to happen.

He nods, a sound like a low rumble emerging from his chest, acknowledging her answer. "Well. I got picked up just the next night. Finally made it close enough to the base to hit the outer edge of a patrol. It was late, dark, I'm sure I wasn't making much sense—they damn near gunned me down before spotting what was left of my fatigues."

She's staring, her eyes large and unblinking, but as he gets into the tale, Jacob finds himself relaxing. It's a trait he shares with his brothers, one Faith was able to identify and replicate almost immediately, further locking herself into the family: he can tell a story. It's harder for him to get started than it is for the others, he thinks, to get past that stiltedness and the sense that he and everyone else would be better off if he just kept his mouth shut, but once he gets past the beginning, he finds himself settling into it, every bit as comfortable talking as Joseph or John or Faith.

"They talked to me a bit, managed to piece together enough to know they needed to get me in the vehicle, back to base and the med bay, fast as they could. We loaded up and I thought… this is it. It's over now. The worst is done."

He pauses. The rain has picked up, a steady patter on the roof and the tree canopy beyond the wall, turning the courtyard into a muddy soup. The last glimmers of twilight have vanished; it's full dark by now. He hasn't heard any more gunfire since that initial burst.

"IEDs weren't as common back then as I gather they are now," he says finally. "They've always been a cheap'n effective way to rip holes in the enemy, but they didn't really start showing up everywhere till about ten years later. The driver, uh—I never did get his name—he was kind of preoccupied with the half-dead, half-crazy soldier in his backseat, didn't realize that between that night's patrol and the last, someone had slipped in and planted something next to the path.

"I don't really remember the moment of impact, to tell you the truth. One minute we were going along, the next, I can't hear for shit and everything is… burning." He sighs at the memory, runs a hand over his suddenly-stinging face. Normally he wouldn't even notice the pain, but talking about it like this, thinking about it all over again—it sparks an uncomfortable awareness that he's usually fine doing without. Shouldn't have stood so close to that fire.

He blinks and drops his hand, shaking his head briskly, like he can dislodge the irritating pain and unpleasant memories just like that, with a quick little motion. Nothing happens, of course, and his tone is perhaps a little brusque as he says, "Got dragged out less than a minute later by the only other guy to survive—he was by the window, got thrown loose at the impact and by some miracle suffered nothing more than a bruised elbow, was able to kick the back doors open and grab hold of me. Gilpin was his name. I was already half-melted but still alive, awake enough to help him get me a couple dozen feet away from the mess. I passed out as he was radioing for backup. Woke up full of needles and covered in bandages, a couple days later."

He doesn't tell her that for the thirty seconds or so before Gilpin got the doors open and grabbed him, while he was just wedged in the wreckage with a pair of fresh corpses and flames creeping across his clothing and biting into him from all sides, two thoughts marched unending through his mind: first, it was all for nothing; I'm going to die here and second, the old man was right.

He hears the echo of those thoughts now, an unasked-for reminder of why he doesn't talk about this with anyone. He doesn't like to give anything—let alone a goddamn memory—too much power over him, doesn't like to believe there's anything so unpleasant to think about that he'll actively avoid it, but of all the things… this one has some weight to it.

But are you strong, or aren't you?

He shakes it off again, squares his shoulders. He hasn't looked at Rook in a while, not sure what she'll be wearing on that expressive face of hers and sure that whatever it is, he doesn't want to see it. His tone as cavalier as he can make it, he says, "They stabilized me then shipped me out to a real hospital. Did some skin grafts, believe it or not—mostly on the chest and back—but there was enough damage that that wasn't gonna work for all of it, so there you go."

All falls silent again except for the rainfall. At some point Jacob has crossed his arms over his chest, turned to lean sideways against the door jamb, away from her, and he becomes conscious of this avoidant body language too late to change it without being obvious about it, so he stays where he is. Predictably, Rook doesn't let things linger for too long—after twenty seconds, maybe, she asks softly, "Where's Gilpin now?"

Jacob snorts. It's not funny, not really—just the essential ugliness of life, is all. "Gilpin was killed less than a month later. Friendly fire. I didn't even get to see him before I left the base. When I got back stateside I tried to get in touch with his family, I, uh—found his mother, I think, but I was in Atlanta and she was in Iowa, and she… well. She wouldn't have a way to respond to the letter I sent her. Soon enough just keepin' my head above water took all I had, so I let it drop."

Despite his determination not to, after saying that, he glances over at her, unable to resist. She'd told him that she read Joseph's book—himself, he's only read the damn thing once, but he remembers the passages about him, about John, relayed with Joseph's unflinching I don't need people to lie to make me feel better, why should you? approach to everything. John hadn't come out looking great. Jacob had looked even worse, and the shittiest thing about it is that he can't argue with Joseph's portrayal of him. He had been miserable and pathetic and basically catatonic when his brothers had found him. Harrowed by his close scrapes with death, he'd been unable to move on from them—it's coming for me, for us all, at any time, why not just stop this slog and wait it out?

Still. Fifteen years out, it's humiliating to look back on. More so knowing that everyone with the wherewithal to pick up one of the books scattered everywhere across the county knows all about it, too. He's talked about it with Rook before, and maintained his general loyal stance, which is that if Joseph found it necessary, then he was all right with it, but it's a lie to say he's not a little piqued, and he's willing to bet Rook knows it, too.

When he sees her face, though, it seems clear that she's not thinking about his days back in Atlanta. She isn't looking at him, either—has her hand folded over her mouth, chin tilted up, staring past the balcony to the trees beyond. She looks distant—he realizes he's actually not sure if she's even listening to him anymore. Part of him is relieved that she's drifted off, given how uncomfortable he is with this topic. Another part is miffed—she's always so goddamn nosy, then the one time he's willing to tell her things, she's not paying attention?

He shakes it off. He's spent enough time yelling at her lately; he can handle some absent-mindedness from her for now. He clears his throat and attempts to change the subject: "What did Keter say about your stitches? You sure you're not on—"

"What were you like before?" She drops her hand, turns her head, and stares at him, eyebrows slightly furrowed, something challenging in her gaze.

The question stumps him, in no small part because the way she's looking at him is like she's daring him to answer wrong. Reflexively, he scowls. "Before what?"

"Before, you know, Miller. Between juvie and Miller. That's what I'm curious about."

The years when he was her age, roughly. He guesses he can understand the curiosity there, but still, he's not sure how to answer that. "Well, I was… deployed for most of it. Living on bases when I wasn't. Day-to-day life was just… what you'd expect from a grunt."

"Were you ever married?"

"What?"

"It's a thing."

"A what."

"That the barracks suck to live in, so eighteen-year-old soldiers marry girls they've known for like, a month so that they get better living quarters. Right?" He must be staring, because she raises her eyebrows at him, and he gets the distinct impression that he's being teased. "You can tell me. I'm not gonna feel one way or another about it, I'd just like to know if there's another Seed ex-wife under the surface so I don't get blindsided by it like last time."

"I never married," he says, still frowning hard, his eyes never leaving her now that they've landed on her again. "Lot of my comrades did, but… I couldn't ever find a girl that wanted to."

Rook narrows her eyes. "Oh, come on," she says, her tone singing out bullshit as clear as if she'd said it. "You couldn't find a girl that wanted to marry you?" Jacob feels his ears heat up at her incredulous tone—he's not sure whether she's making fun of him or not, though if the way she's been talking about how she sees him over the past two months has even a shred of truth to it, she's dead serious. He's not sure how to respond (his gut reaction is to bite her head off, but something tells him that'd be a misstep), but she's back to filling the silence on her own, apparently. "I mean, if you look like this in your forties, I bet you were lethal at twenty-five. You're very handsome, you know."

"You need to get your eyes checked," Jacob says, a reflexive deflection that does nothing to cool his ears off. Rook snorts, loud and graceless and sounding more like herself than she has all day.

"And you need to learn how to take a compliment. God. Thank you, Rook. You're pretty hot stuff yourself, Rook."

To his horror, he feels himself smiling before he realizes what's happening, covers it up fast by clearing his throat, but from the sly little grin she shoots him, he can tell she saw. He moves on quickly, before she can really dig in, returning to a moderately saner topic. "I never found a girl I wanted to marry, how's that?"

"Not even for swanky digs?"

"No." It's close enough to the truth that he figures it counts. He thinks she'd probably understand—that he hadn't even wanted to pretend to get that close to another person, that he'd traded looking out for his brothers to looking out for his squadmates and had no desire to add anyone else on top of that, especially if it looked anything like what he'd seen in his parents—but it's easier not to talk about it.

She doesn't press the issue, anyway, just looks thoughtful again. Jacob changes the subject once more to one she seems to be avoiding. "When are those stitches coming out?"

This time, she actually answers. "Keter thinks tomorrow morning, can you believe that? She says I still have to take it easy, but apparently I'm kicking this thing's ass."

"I'm not surprised," he says. "You've always been hardier than most."

That takes her off-guard, he can tell, because she doesn't say anything, just stares at him with a slightly-open mouth. Fortunately, he's saved from another potentially awkward exchange: the wind shifts, spattering them both with a spray of icy rain, and Rook makes a sound of disgust that strikes him as a little bit precious coming from a woman who he knows for a fact has had her fair share of sleeping on the ground and bathing in creeks over the last month. He doesn't say so, though, just reaches both hands down to her, and she takes them willingly enough, letting him haul her up to her feet.

The touch of her hands clues him in to why she's so bothered by the rain—she's freezing, fingers like ice cubes, and he pulls her in without even thinking about it, letting her go just to bring his hands to her upper arms, chafe some warmth into her. On cue, like she hadn't noticed before now, her teeth start to chatter, and she laughs at herself. At the sight, crinkled eyes and flash of teeth, that unself-conscious joy of hers he's gotten so familiar with, he feels something strange in his chest, something like pain, but not quite.

He's been intentionally keeping her at arm's length, giving her space to heal, to adjust (of course, she didn't always stay at arm's length, but that was her business). He's been staying out of her bed, avoiding touching her too much, and frankly, he's been busy enough that he hasn't thought twice about it. Now, though… it'd be easy to pull her in closer. It'd be easy to kiss her hard and urge her back into the room and not stop even when they hit the bed.

She knows it too, he can see it in her eyes and all over her face, a complicated network of micro-expressions as her smile fades. She reaches up, grips the underside of his forearms (her grip is tight; he thinks she's trying to figure out whether to pull him closer or push him away), and he's just about to think fuck it and step in when her expression shutters; her fingers twitch.

Yeah. Right. He knows, too. If she's healing, if her stitches are coming out, it means this weird limbo they've been trapped in is nearly over, and what follows…

Well, he's not really sure what follows this. He has no doubt Joseph's been keeping tabs on him, maybe even through Keter herself. He's pretty sure that as soon as Rook is fit for it, Joseph's going to want to resume the effort to recruit her. Jacob isn't opposed to the recruitment itself, never has been, but he'll be damned if he ships her off to John again, or down to Faith's to get zombified on Bliss. He could put her in the chair again, no aims at getting Eli this time, solely focused on bringing her around to their side, but…

…he flinches away from the idea, for some reason, and the mere fact that he can't put his finger on why bothers him. He's done this to dozens before, maybe even hundreds. He's good at it. It works. Above all, it looks like the only path forward for them now, unless she wants to just surrender on her own. Doubtful.

But she'll hate it. And she'll hate him. He's not sure he could brainwash that out of her. He's not sure he would want to, cause it'd feel too much like stripping out the last of what makes Rook Rook.

His expression must have gone flinty at the train of thought, because she releases him, drops her hands. He's still gripping her upper arms, though he's ceased the warming motion and, he realizes, might be holding her a little too tightly, and he lets her go fast, like maybe he can undo it, like maybe if he's quick enough she won't have noticed.

She'd asked him in the infirmary that first night what guarantees he could offer her, how she could be sure he wouldn't just hand her straight over to his siblings once she'd recovered, and he'd equivocated rather than give her an answer—because he didn't have an answer then, and he doesn't have one now. He's had over a week to figure this shit out and he's done nothing but throw himself into his work when he's away from her, and focus on other shit when he's with her, like if she was healing and eating and sleeping okay, and how to handle that son of a bitch who stabbed her in the first place.

And now they're out of time, or almost. Briefly, and a little madly, he considers just holing up with her overnight and talking it out, negotiating privately until they come up with an acceptable solution—or not talking at all, just ignoring everything outside of their room, which would certainly be more fun, though probably not ultimately helpful.

But she hands him an out. "I'm starving," she says, looking up at him in a hesitant way that's not like her—and that tells him she's skittish, definitely not up for a grueling marathon argument, or marathon anything.

And truth be told, neither is he. He can't see a realistic way out of it where both of them are happy (where either of them are happy), and since it seems futile, he doesn't really see the point in wasting whatever peace they have left butting their heads into a brick wall.

Maybe avoiding reality is weak.

(But he'll be the only one who knows.

He can live with that, for now.)

"Come on," he says, gripping her shoulders just to touch her again and turning her away from the balcony, back towards the light and relative warmth of the room beyond. "Let's see if we can scrounge up some chow."