Chapter Twenty-seven
IV - VI
Thinking ahead and Kyle Crane had always had a precarious relationship. Making a call on the spot? He could do that. Easy. Plot out a five-year career path? Nyyyeaah, that'd be a solid no. And all the shit in-between? Well, that tended to be a fast-moving and disjointed mess of constantly shifting priorities.
Like right now.
He'd been so preoccupied with finding Fi, he'd neglected to consider what he'd do once he'd managed. Beyond, you know, burying his face in her neck and practically digging at her with shaking hands, her skin was far too hot wherever they touched.
That she'd passed out hadn't exactly helped, either.
So, what did you do with a limp Fi slumped in one's arms? A glowing Fi, no less?
Figure out if he could still pull off a fireman's carry without fumbling and dropping her, that was what. "I'm getting us out of here," he told her, stuck his head under her, and slung her across his shoulders. She didn't offer any advice on how exactly he was going to accomplish the out bit, but there was a moment right after he'd gotten to his feet when he thought he heard her growl.
Faintly.
Not unlike a cat working up to a fit.
It kinda vibrated against his back.
Kyle scanned the hole he'd crashed into. It didn't have much going for it; nothing beyond the pile of rubble and scratchy weeds, with any discernible features crumpled and rotten. There was still a door, though. It was closed.
"See? Easy," he said and carried his precious cargo over to it.
The door immediately said, Not so fast, buddy. As in, its handle snapped off the second he applied any pressure. The door remained shut.
"Why, oh why, am I not surprised." Trying on a growl of his own, Kyle reset his grip on Fi and tightened his fingers around her wrist. Then, with a confident "I got this," he kicked the door.
Nine out of ten times, that shit worked. Today? Today was that one time.
The door held. It didn't even bounce, giving him the impression it was either a) one of those solid fire and burglary-proof doors or b) boarded shut from the other side to prevent visitors coming in through the hole in the roof.
"Oh, no. You do not," he muttered, worked himself up for another kick— and hit pause the moment he heard wood scrape and snap.
"Crane?" the door asked, sounding a lot like Aiden. More wood snapped and fell noisily to the side before the stubborn door finally swung open. Aiden waited on the other side, a length of bent pipe gripped in his hands. Splintered wood was scattered at his feet.
"Alright," Kyle said, "I'm officially happy you don't listen when someone tells you to sit shit out."
"You're welcome." The kid's eyes cut to Fi. "Is she…?"
Alive? Dead? In-between?
"She'll be alright," Kyle said.
Wow. What was that feeling building in his chest? All tight and tingly and tickling its way upwards? Kyle tried very hard not to grin.
Now was not the time, or so the sharp, fleshy thud of a blade hitting meat told him. A thump followed, along with Lawan calling from somewhere nearby. "Guys! Let's go!"
Not needing another invitation, Kyle exited into a dinged-up hallway to lumber after Aiden and Lawan. He stepped over dead Infected. Passed brittle skeletons. And, hey, now that he had more of his brain to work with again (Find Fi was done, and it'd taken up a lot of processing power), he even managed to come up with a plan of what to do next.
The plan solidified before they'd made it back out into the rain.
All the noise from the studio had drawn Villedor's attention. Meaning everything between here and a few blocks over was going to be on alert to one degree or the other, and Kyle didn't feel like testing his luck by wading through what may or may not turn into a tsunami of teeth.
Once his feet hit the street, Kyle turned a sharp right, angling himself back to the cartoon studio's front door.
Lawan kept going straight, heading across the street and back the way they'd come.
"What are you doing!" she snapped the moment she realized he'd quit following her.
"Not walking anymore," he said, adding a quieter, "If I can help it," as he passed the Hound with two bolts jutting from his chest. The rain had turned his blood into thin, red tendrils flowing down the steps. "Check him for a key."
"You want to steal their ride?" Lawan's shout from somewhere behind him sounded almost hysterical.
Except when Kyle shot a look back—mostly to check on Aiden performing a quick post-mortem pat-down on the dead Hound—he didn't find Lawan glaring or scowling. She straight up flashed him a smile. Granted, it was short-lived on account of a Speedster hurtling itself out from one of the overgrown backyards. But it'd been there.
"I like it!" she said before turning her attention to the shrieking, naked mummy on toothpicks for legs.
Kyle reached the van. It was a four-door box with sliding doors on each side and a shitty black spray job thrown over its original gray.
"Got it!" Aiden called. He threw the key—or what Kyle hoped to be the key—and Kyle caught it with a swipe of his free hand.
Jackpot.
The lumpy thing he'd snatched from the air was a car key fob, alright. Complete with a mandatory murder cult themed key chain hung with small delicate bones and a badly painted rubber skull. And, hey, color him fucking surprised when he squeezed the fob and the central locking system rewarded him with a muted but satisfying CLACK.
"Get in the back, you two." Kyle swung around the hood.
He yanked the passenger side open, gingerly deposited Fi in the seat, and dragged the seatbelt across her chest while the kids messed around with the sliding door on the other side.
There was a distant complaint of, "How— how do open these things?" from an exasperated Aiden, followed by Lawan groaning and the distinctly familiar noise of a van's door scooting aside.
"Ah," said Aiden. The van rocked.
Fi chose this moment to open her eyes. She did so with a meek flutter of her eyelids, just as Kyle had buckled her in. She gasped. Her body tensed. Then she threw herself forward, landing her chest against Kyle's flat palm. "Easy there," he said, his heart wringing itself into a new shape entirely. "You're okay. You're safe." She struggled weakly, her feet kicking and her fingers twitching at nothing but air. Her eyes followed his voice though — followed it, found him but did not catch. No matter how much he wished she'd see him, Fi stared right through him, distant and wild, their pupils blown to a point he could barely see the gray in them.
"Hurry up!" Lawan. Again.
Fi's eyes fell shut.
Kyle tore himself away. He slammed her door, dashed for the driver's seat, and had the key in the ignition at about the exact moment the first two Hounds rushed from the studio.
Timing. He excelled at it. (Sometimes.)
He also excelled at checking on his pals, and so Kyle spared a second to look behind him. Yep. Both kids were accounted for in the back. Not buckled in or anything, and the sliding door was still open, but he wasn't about to complain.
Kyle gunned the engine. It spluttered at him, turned over into an annoyed whine, and off they went, the van bumping down the remaining steps and sliding out into the wet street.
The Hounds?
Still on them.
Or making an effort, anyway, until the lead dude went down with a bolt wobbling from his head.
"Nice shot!" called Aiden from the back, just as Kyle had to yank the van around a pack of Biters having been drawn into the street. He swerved a hard right.
Kyle's arm shot out. Muscle memory. Hard to ditch. He caught Fi's shoulder, his fingers tightening to dig into the ridiculous heat rolling off her. In the rearview mirror—its glass cracked and smeared with years of grime—Aiden had lunged after Lawan and pulled her back before she could fly out the wide open door.
Kyle gave the wheel a leftward yank.
Was he overcorrecting? A little. Maybe. But it slid the kids over the backseat, where they piled together against a solid wall, safe and sound. Aiden—squished between the van and Lawan—wheezed for air. And Lawan—one leg sticking in the air while her crossbow pointed at the roof— laughed.
"Very funny!" the flattened Aiden spluttered while he squirmed his way out. He pulled the door shut. "You almost went out!"
"Yeah, yeah," she laughed.
And, wow, that feeling in Kyle's chest? That tight, tingly, tickling thing from elier? Still very much there and growing with every second. He gave the steering wheel a giddy squeeze.
He'd done it.
She was right there, next to him, her shoulder pressed to his palm and his fingers tight against her skin. She was here, and she was alive.
He'd done it.
"So that's the wife, huh?" Lawan asked and grabbed the back of Kyle's seat. She stuck her head out next to him to stare at Fi.
Almost immediately, the tight, tingly, tickling thing fucked off.
Kyle's teeth clenched all on their own. Yeah. Fi was alive, but he knew what Lawan saw: a woman with dried blood on her chin; a woman with cracks of amber marbling her skin and tumors knitting wounds back together.
Which was to say there was a good chance she wasn't seeing a woman at all.
Kyle dragged his attention to the street. Not because he was afraid he'd crash them if he kept looking at Fi (which would have been a reasonable fear, to be fair), but because his heart was back to aching.
Where are you even going, champ?
"You can't take her back to the Fish Eye like this," Lawan said, like she'd read his mind.
Aiden's head appeared alongside Lawan's. He'd draped himself over Fi's headrest. "Why?"
"Look at her."
Lawan's words tempted Kyle's foot to snap down on the brakes. You know. Teach her the importance of getting belted in.
He resisted.
"They'll either think she's one of the Lady's pets or she's turned and you're carrying a fresh Banshee around. There's no chance they'll let you up with her. Shit, I wouldn't."
"I know," Kyle said and made every effort to strangle the steering wheel with the one hand he had to spare. The other stayed right where he'd put it: clinging on to Fi. He wasn't entirely convinced he'd be able to let go.
Lawan's hand clapped onto Kyle's outstretched arm. "Hey, don't sweat it," she said with a coy grin before she bounced off and into the back. She shoved her foot against the driver's seat and gave it a teasing kick. "I know just the place."
Her eyes had seen a hundred sights, and her mind had chattered with a hundred thoughts, but none had been as deliberate or brazen as the 'You aren't supposed to be here,' getting in the way of her intent.
He ruined it.
Standing there. In the thick of it. Carrying all her demons on his shoulders and holding her heart in his fist.
No, he wasn't supposed to be here. Much as he wasn't supposed to fall down a hole. Yet fall he did, upending himself into a darkness unwilling to end and plummeting towards a bottom unwilling to be.
She dove after him.
Her fingers stretched far as they would. To no avail at all.
Soon, the darkness grew teeth and her fingers slick with hot blood. It wasn't her's, the blood. And her fingers were claws for all intents and purposes, claws she raked at tiny, wide-eyed faces.
They'd been screaming, the faces, mouths parted wide. The screams were shrill. Short-lived.
"Woah!" A warm weight pressed against her chest and another settled around her arm in a firm grip; two competing points of heat seeping into her bones. "Hey, hello— Fi, that's my nose. Be careful with that. Goddamn, stopit."
The weight grew heavier. Her eyes flew open.
No more teeth.
No more small, screaming faces.
Now, all she saw were colours blinding her. They weren't right. Some were too bright, others far too full, and all had uncanny, wobbling edges. And she was fairly certain they weren't meant to squirm.
"Fi?"
A bruised Crane swam out of the squirming mass of colours trying on different shapes all around. His nose was a swollen, purple-red lump. Her fault, she remembered. Except she couldn't recall how it was her fault or why. Only that she was—without doubt—responsible for it.
Sorry, she'd have liked to tell him, but before she got a chance to, the colours faded, Crane faded, and darkness sucked her under.
The next time she fled the dark, Zofia was in pain. It was overwhelming and it was everywhere: in her brittle joints, in her skin which'd stretched far beyond comfortable, in the fever flashing hot and cold, and in the sandpaper coursing through her blood.
Yet she couldn't make herself feel one way or the other about it. Not fully. She was removed from it, glitched to its side, the pain some far-off echo.
Less far-off was Crane. He was right there, alongside her.
How'd she know with her eyes still closed?
Simple. You spend long enough with someone, love them like they're the only part of you worth the bother, and their presence liked to turn into a palpable thing, impossible to dismiss.
. . .
Him poking at her midriff was also rather telling. It made one of the many aches covering her sting brighter than the others. Finally done not seeing a thing, she cracked her eyes open. Literally, in a way. They fought her, almost as if someone had glued them shut.
The effort bullied her. Merely looking exhausted her, truth be told, but Zofia kept her eyes open and marvelled at how normal all the colours had become. Their edges were gone. They'd even stopped squirming.
Crane muttered something under his breath.
He hadn't noticed her being awake. More the better. It meant she could wiggle her toes to check if they were still present, run her tongue over her teeth to reassure herself she'd not grown any extras or lost any, and then—finally—turn her head to look for him.
He was halfway turned away and wholly focused on a wound near her hip. Focused enough for his tongue to stick out.
Her heart pinched.
His hair was dishevelled and longer than she was used to, and he had deep furrowed painted over his preoccupied frown. He also had a lightly swollen nose. I've done that, she thought, but what she couldn't claim responsibility for were all those other bruises on him. Or could she? Should she? Like that shadow of a hard impact (like a fist) making to halfway hide under his—she squinted—beard.
Beard.
Crane's scruff hard turned into a thick, bristly mug rug, generously salted and thoroughly unkempt.
Okay. So she felt a certain way about the beard. About him.
But what about all those other emotions she tried on? Why'd they remain distant things? Aloof, almost. Experienced through a fluffy cloud.
Exhaustion nipped at her.
Her eyes fell shut.
She'd felt this way before, hadn't she? Where any attempt at having an emotion more complex than plain and grey was a chore. Yes. Yes, she had. Except back then she'd been coming down from a lovely trip.
Not… this.
Whatever this might have been. She couldn't rightfully tell since every time she tried to remember how she'd gotten here, all she found was a nebulous hole where her memories should've been.
Her mind set on filling said hole, Zofia willed her eyes open again.
They were outside, Crane and her. Wooden slats thickly wrapped in ivy crossed by overhead. Sunlight lanced through each gap, checkering everything they touched with blobs of light. A breeze whispered in passing. A bird sang nearby. Another answered.
Finally, her eyes turned back to Crane and she gave her throat a testing swallow. It was a sore and swollen mess, ill-equipped to carry a voice.
Fear swelled briefly.
Did she even have one still? A voice?
Then the fear met the cloud of not-quite-feeling and dulled to a distant, mushy thing.
Didn't matter. Convinced she'd lost her voice somewhere but unable to get worked up about it, Zofia tabled the Hi she'd have liked to start with and instead lifted her hand to nudge a finger against him.
Crane went stock still. For all but a squished second, anyway, before he captured her questing hand in his. Calloused fingers entwined with hers.
"Look who's awake," he said, his tone soft and scratchy. The hand trapping hers squeezed. A smile hung in his eyes. "Welcome back."
Zofia rummaged for her voice, just in case. It remained absent. Staring it was then. Maybe sitting, too. It afforded her a better view as she came up and bit by bit she pieced together where she was, even if she couldn't remember how she'd gotten here: on a terrace set up like a garden, walled in by trellis hung with all that ivy and the occasional string of painted lights.
She was lying on two shoved-together outdoor sofas, with Crane sitting on a low table to her left.
None of which helped her memory even a lick.
"Careful," he murmured while she laboured herself upright and leaned around to help her, his palm settling at the base of her nape. When she made to grab at him with her right hand, the silly thing snagged on a handcuff loop around her wrist.
She knew those cuffs. They were cushioned with cloth.
Crane put on one of his thoroughly rueful smiles. "A precaution. You almost took me out last night."
With a small noise stuck in her throat, Zofia took a look at herself while she made peace with being one-handed. She wore a... skirt? It was made from thick, dusky pink fabric and might have reached past her ankles if it hadn't been bunched up to just below her knees right this instance. Her top was a plain, light brown shirt. None of them were hers.
Way down, her feet were wrapped in bandages.
Back up, though. A skirt? She couldn't do shite in a skirt, yeah?
She took a pointed, long look at it, then narrowed her eyes at Crane.
"What? This?" He lifted a brow at it. "For easy access."
Her stare went flat.
"To your wounds, Fi. You got hurt," he blurted with a smile so bright it nearly had her heart flee her ribcage from kicking so hard. Alright. Turned out there were some emotions stubborn enough to smash through the squishy cloud.
"See?" Releasing her hand, Crane lifted her shirt enough to show her what he'd been working on.
She regretted taking a look.
Sitting a little ways above her hipbone was a deformed, badly healed knot of skin about the size of her fist. It was… wrong. Very wrong. Not only did it look as if it'd healed out of bounds, with tissue forming where there shouldn't be any, but the skin there was grey and thick.
(A wayward thought shuttled by. She wasn't only freshly dressed in clothes she did not own. She was also very clean. For a yet-to-be-deciphered reason, the realisation embarrassed her. Deeply. She tried not to think about it too much.)
"You had that shit growing on all your cuts when I found you." He scooped up her hand and turned the back of it towards her. Angry red lines of freshly healed, but otherwise ordinary skin formed letters across of it.
A Z.
An O.
And an F.
"Like Volly skin," he added. "Most of it started coming loose yesterday, and I've been working on picking it off you since then. Except for these two." He tapped a gentle finger near the leathery mess at her midriff, then swiped his thumb across her skin to land it on another knot on her back. "A through and through. I'm guessing you got shot."
Zofia struggled to remember. Had she been? Shot? She focused, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular. What she found was a headache crawling out of the hole where her memories hid.
"And don't get me started on working your old shirt out of it. You practically fused with that rag."
Now there was something she hadn't needed to know. She grimaced.
"Yeah, it was gnarly," he said. "But, ah— Hey. You." A warm palm cupped the side of her face. It smelled distinctly of whatever he'd disinfected his hand with, but she leaned into it anyway. Disinfectant or not. "You gonna talk to me anytime soon?"
Zofia turned her eyes to meet his and surrendered a bit more of herself to his hand. A mistake, as it turned out. The simple comfort of palm plus cheek nearly put her right to sleep. Her eyelids grew too heavy for her to hold up.
"I mean, you don't have to," Crane added. He'd always been happy to hold up a one-sided conversation between them. "But it'd be nice."
Having herself a battle way harder than it should have been, Zofia made one last-ditch effort to get her eyes open. She fumbled to poke at his face with her un-cuffed hand, sticking out her index finger. It caught on his scratchy beard.
Then she gathered all her strength and said, "Too much."
"Hm? Too much what? Too much sun? Too much noise?"
She huffed. Poked at his chin. "Beard."
At first, Crane went very still. Then, not a heartbeat later, his face turned into an open battleground. Whatever control he might have had a second ago took off and it left him with his lips twisting into about a myriad of different smiles.
His eyes shone with tears.
("You're crying," an echo of her said, distant and lost to the undertow.)
"This?" He scratched at his cheek. A laugh—soft and posing as a hiccup—hopped from his chest. "You don't love my 'I thought I lost you' stress beard?"
She shook her head. Once, anyway. Before she got the chance to do it properly, Zofia was wrapped up in him, his chin knocking against the top of her head and his hands alternating between grabbing fistfuls of her shirt and digging into her skin. It made breathing difficult. What with her nose buried in his chest. And that same chest heaving from all those desperate laughs and unashamed sobs.
Exhaustion rolled over her again, pressed in deep by Crane posing as an aggressively warm blanket. It made her so, so tired, and Zofia decided to tell him as much. An attempt was had, at any rate.
"Mtird."
He stuttered out a breath but wouldn't let her go. "What?"
"Mtiirrd," she repeated. Then her stomach squeezed and she added an equally clumsy, "Anungary."
"I see. You're a tyre from Hungary?" he teased, earning himself a click of her teeth. They only caught his shirt, but he laughed anyway before he peeled himself off her and planted his lips on her brow.
"I'll get you something to eat. You stay here, okay?"
She pulled on the cuffs. Made them rattle.
What that netted her was yet another kiss, a squeeze to her neck, and then the touch of a cool breeze as he left. She shivered. And was fast asleep long before he'd come back.
The third time's the charm.
It was evening by the time she woke again. A steady, cool wind made the ivy overhead rustle and the air smelled of rain that hadn't yet got around to falling.
Crane was by her side.
He'd put her into a warm, hooded sweater with a broken zipper at the front and half of its front pocket torn off. His hand crawled to her chest the moment she'd come to. She folded hers over it and squeezed.
This was alright, Zofia thought. She could live like this. Lying still, wrapped in clothes that weren't hers, and anchored by a familiar weight. Given time, she might even find it in here to have proper, full-fledged feelings again, not those distant, cautious things.
She ached still.
Her fever remained.
And she was sure her throat was swollen. Like she'd fallen down a tree and landed at the bottom with a case of the flu.
. . .
She'd not had a flu since Harran.
She'd not been sick since Fraser's lab.
Oh, bother...
She disliked being sick. But she did like the weight of Crane's hand on her chest and to lie about in silence.
Relative silence, anyway. There were voices here with them. A pair with them, floating by on the wind. Aiden's she recognised, but the second one she didn't. It belonged to a woman.
Zofia looked their way. They were moving around beyond the trellis. It was hard to make out what they were doing. Carrying things, maybe. She'd just about tried to twist her neck a little to try and get a better look, when a spoon appeared in front of her nose. It was covered in crystallised honey.
"Eat," Crane said.
She didn't argue. Not with him, and certainly not with her stomach and the embarrassing noise it made. But she did grab the spoon from Crane before he had himself tempted to do the whole helicopter landing routine on her.
"I did that to your nose, didn't I?" she asked once she'd cleaned the spoon and gotten the honey down her throat. Gosh, will you look at that. She'd found her voice. Scratchy from disuse as it might've been.
He hummed a quiet "Mhmm," and leaned over her, blotting out the windy scenery. "But don't worry, you're forgiven," he said, his fingers finding her bound wrist. The cuffs came off with a quick twist of an old key.
"Sorry," she whispered and used her newfound freedom to push her fingers into his hair.
He rolled his head against it, smiled, and stayed right where she'd trapped him, their noses almost touching. She liked that part. Much as she liked how he'd found the time to trim the beard to a well-mannered scruff.
What she didn't like was the mournful look in his eyes. Smile or not.
"No," he croaked. "You got nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one who fucked up." His voice was thick and tilted the entirely wrong way. "I let you get taken by Waltz. I took forever to get you. I—"
Zofia pushed herself up. Her nose bumped his cheek. "Kyle."
A slow inhale. A downward flutter of his lashes. "Yes, ma'am?"
"More food."
He gave her a playful growl—coloured in a little pain, maybe—and fetched the honey jar, along with some plain hard bread. They were about the best thing she'd had.
Ever.
All her life.
"What do you remember?" he finally asked after she'd worked down her first clump of bread.
"About Waltz?"
"Yeah, let's start with him," he said, his voice cautious.
"I remember when he showed up. I remember the kids he had with him."
"The Lady's Hands."
Zofia's eyes cut to him.
"Yep, I ran into them."
"And the Lady?" Ghostly, cold claws raked down her spine. On the inside, no less. She shivered. "Crane, she's trouble. When Waltz had me locked up, she came to visit and—I swear I am not making that up—she's got this freaky mind control thing going on with the Infected. She made a bunch of them sit. Like they were trained doggies. Doggies, Crane. And I could've sworn I heard her, too. Right in my head." She tapped at her temple. "She says Sit, and I nearly bloody sit."
Crane stared at her but didn't flinch. Any minute now, he'd pat her head and go there-there.
"I swear. I'm not mad."
"I know," he said, his tone gentle and yet again oddly cautious. "I met her. From a distance, anyway. She went all Moses on a courtyard full of Biters."
"Oh."
Crane's mouth curled into a faint smile. She didn't appreciate how it looked as if he was hiding something behind it. "What else do you remember?"
"Besides Waltz, his needles, and the Lady messing with my head. Well, I—" Zofia dropped her voice to a whisper. "I remember Mia."
Crane was finally taken by surprise. "What?"
"The Lady brought her down to the dungeon once. I reckon it was to make a point or to threaten Waltz."
Crane's eyebrows began to hike up.
"She's— she's not his sister". Zofia nodded towards where she'd last seen Aiden. "She's Waltz's daughter. Aiden's wires must've got crossed somewhere when he was a child."
"His… daughter. Waltz has a daughter? Here?"
"Yes. And she's sick, which is why he's doing what he's doing and, god, Crane, I've got to have to tell Aiden he got it all wrong, won't I?"
"Oh-kay, take your foot off the throttle there, babe. We're not gonna go and break the kid's heart today. Not until we've thought this through." He winced. "And I kinda warned him off from mentioning his sis while you're recovering. Shit, we don't get easy, do we?"
"Suppose not," she said.
Exhausted—and maybe a tad grateful for not having to upend someone's life right this instance—Zofia took another bite from her bread. It'd grown slightly soggy from the honey she'd scooped up with it.
"Now. Waltz. The Lady. Mia. What else?"
Zofia shrugged. "Nothing. I don't even remember how you got me out. Or how I busted up your nose. I only know it happened."
Silence. Tense silence, no less. Crane stared at her. He wore the look of a man who had trouble figuring out which thought he should be having first.
"Fi, I didn't get you out," he eventually said. Still so bloody careful. "You did that yourself."
"Me."
"Yeah. I— okay, I don't know the exact logistics, but— ah." Something desperate shuttled across his eyes. Zofia had the most rotten feeling over it, but there was, simply put, nothing between the cage, the needles, the Lady's rummaging in her head, and the now. Nothing save for a thick haze.
Crane shook his head. "You know what? We'll figure this out later."
"Crane…"
"Nuh-huh. I got you back. You're okay. Fuck the rest, alright? Waltz. Lady. Mia. Forget 'em. You take all the time you need to recover, and then we'll talk."
The rotten feeling wouldn't leave her, but… "I'm too tired to argue."
"Exactly. Here." He shoved the entire honey jar at her.
She took it. Blinked at it. And then motioned it in the general direction of Aiden and the stranger coming back around. "Can we talk about her?"
"Hm?"
"Who's she?"
"That's Lawan," Crane said. "She's—" He sighed, and Zofia caught his fingers drumming against his thigh in a familiar rhythm. "She's another one of Waltz's kids. Like Aiden and the Hands. Except she didn't join up with the Church like the rest of 'em."
"Got it."
"And—" Crane's fingers drummed their way off his thigh, hopping over to her elbow. He threw her one of his many smiles; the conspiratorial one. "—she's Aiden's wanna-be GF."
Zofia stared at him.
"If only he knew," he added. "The kid is dense. We're talking ignoring every signpost while they're whacking him in the head dense."
"I must have missed a lot."
"Eh. Thirteen days worth, two of those up here with me. Not like I've been keeping count or anything."
"That explains the arm. It's all better."
"Good as new." He pulled his shoulder up. "Swapped it for a bum leg."
Zofia's eyes momentarily slid past him, where they caught Lawan tapping Aiden's arm. She said a thing or two, he said very little, and then Lawan turned and vanished around a trellis corner, leaving Aiden where he'd stood.
"What happened to your leg?"
"Fought a Night Hunter," Crane said all casually. "Killed it."
"Pardon me? You— you what?" Honey jars, bread, holes in her memory, and Lawan put aside, Zofia gaped at her moron for a husband.
His brow wagged upwards. "You know, technically, there's a good chance I fought two," he said, holding up two fingers. "And I won. Twice." A pause. "Kinda."
"Two?"
"I mean…" he started, looking all sheepish before he broke into a grin and turned around. Grasping for a reason to change the subject, the weasel. "Oh, hey, Aiden. Done with the haul?"
Crane's timely distraction wandered up to them. He was wiping his palms on his trousers and didn't at all look like she remembered him— kicking and choking while Waltz had a hand clamped to his throat to dangle him helplessly over a long drop.
Aiden should have died that day. She recalled that well enough, at least.
So what on Earth had she forgotten?
She focused.
Her head immediately pounded.
"Yeah, we're all set," Aiden said. His eyes came up, met hers, and suddenly there was a smile on the young man's face. It was genuine. Soft and kind. Not exactly the sort of smile anyone should want to ruin with the terrible news of Hey, the sister you've been chasing all your life is, in truth, the daughter of the man who dragged you through hell.
Zofia's heart sank. Her stomach rolled.
"You're awake!" he went, oblivious and bright-eyed. "How you feeling?"
Why, awful, she thought. But that'd be impolite and wouldn't do. "Grateful," she said out loud and rolled her eyes towards Crane. "Mustn't have been easy keeping him alive for so long."
Aiden's smile turned into a grin. "It was a bit touch and go for a while, yeah."
"Do tell," she said, only for Crane to clap his hands together.
"Oh, will you look at the time," he said with a cough, "Looks like the kid can't stick around. He needs to get back to work before the storm hits and blows all our shit off the deck."
"Which would go so much faster if he wasn't doing it alone," Aiden retorted. Still smiling.
"Yeah, yeah. I got it. And you—" Crane landed a hand on her shoulder, using it for leverage to get him to his feet. "—you stay here."
"Mh."
"And eat.
"Mh."
"And holler if you need anything."
"Crane."
"Anything at all."
She looked up at him, plopped another spoonful of honey into her mouth, and wouldn't quit staring until he sighed and finally walked away.
Crane and Aiden buzzed about the terrace. They relocated furniture and equipment, strapped things down, and sometimes got caught up on directions when they had something heavy between them.
"Kiddo, left, go left—"
"I told you, it won't fit—"
Eventually, it started to rain and with that came her turn to relocate. Crane helped her out of the nest he'd kept her in all day and brought her into what turned out to be a penthouse studio hiding behind a makeshift wall. The wall was cobbled together from wood and must have replaced a panorama window and a glass door; none of which would have been very effective at keeping visitors out.
What it would've done a better job at would have been to keep the wet and the wind out.
The space wasn't overly large. There was a kitchen on one end with a small wood-topped island, now repurposed for storage full of boxes and tins. A wide space dedicated to a table with four chairs around it made up the majority of the studio, along with a lightly raised platform accessible with only two wide steps. The big table had all the hallmarks of a workspace crowded with necessities, which tumbled around the centrepiece at its middle: a radio flanked by a long UV rod. Her eyes wandered to the platform. That was where the 'beds' were, which was the direction Crane steered her into.
Not as if she couldn't have walked on her own. Her bandaged feet might have hurt (she limped terribly), and her joints might have been made of charcoal, but she'd have managed.
Somehow.
"This is where you've been staying?" Zofia asked and put her theory of walking alone to the test by ducking out from under Crane's arm.
With a grunt, he swung that same arm around her again and settled his hand on her hip, reeling her back in.
"Nah. We're just crashing here until you're feeling better. I couldn't risk taking you back to our usual, the locals would've freaked. Plus, the Church doesn't know about this place."
"No one does," called Aiden while he pulled the penthouse's wooden 'front' door closed. It had a little slit in it at eye level. "Except Lawan."
"Sooo—" Zofia tilted her head up, tracking a wire dead-ending at the wooden front. The wire ran along the ceiling, where it joined a bunch more crisscrossing every other way (many studded with lights like they wanted to be stars) before feeding into an ajar door. The bathroom, she suspected, now transformed into an electrical cabinet less likely to burst into flames. "We're hiding."
"Yeah." The hand at her hip pulled on her. "To bed with you."
The 'beds' were shoved together crates with sleeping bags and straw-stuffed mattresses thrown across. One fit two (just about). One fit a single. She got deposited in the bigger one.
Much to her distress, the drowsiness came quickly, sleep not far behind.
Fine. The fourth time's the charm.
A rumble woke her. It travelled through her, deep and mighty, and it'd brought rain. Loads of it. A hard downpour pelted the boarded-up penthouse windows, backed by wind whistling by and rattling the leaky wooden wall.
It was Zofia's favourite weather, situationally speaking.
Wet and violent on the outside, dry and cosy on the inside. Just the sort of thing you needed to put yourself back together after a wee bit of torture and a firsthand account of body horror. Now, if only her pillow wasn't so stiff and lumpy.
Still half-asleep, Zofia raised her head and made to squish her pillow down. The pillow did not like that. It grunted at her. Sort of. Turned out her pillow was a lap, and laps weren't meant to get pummelled.
"Gentle. Please," Crane complained and set his fingers against her scalp. They were warm and tender points of pressure she couldn't help but lean right into.
A few light scratches later, and she'd settled back down, her eyes turned up to him. He sat with his back to the wall, a mix of UV light and the dim glow of a naked bulb falling around him. A tattered book was in his hand.
The smile he wore was far too tempered to fit him.
They stared at each other for a little while like that, until a flash of light squeezed through every crack in the penthouse walls. Thunder whipped the air with a deafening crack.
Crane's eyes cut away from her. She followed them with a tilt of her head and found Aiden sitting by his lonesome at the table, his only meaningful company the UV rod and a pair of trousers he had bundled up in front of him. He clutched a needle and thread in one hand. His leg was bouncing. His shoulders were stiff. His jaw was visibly clenched.
Fear.
"Eleven days," Crane suddenly said. His voice was level and low. When she rolled her head to look at him again, the smile he'd put on earlier remained just as she'd first seen it: restrained. "You know what they've told me?"
"Hm?"
"How it doesn't matter how long we're apart. Days. Weeks. Months, Years. Keep us separate for however long you like, we'll snap right back together the second we get a chance."
She worried her heart might have popped. Like a balloon. A balloon stuffed with confetti, no less, and that was all sorts of silly, yeah? Covering up a grin with a sniff and a scratch at her nose, Zofia rolled her eyes at him. "Did you rehearse that?"
"Maybe." His chin dropped slightly, putting his face closer to hers. "Was it any good?"
"It was about one of the sweetest, corniest things you've ever said."
"Fair, but was it a wrong corny or an 'Oh shit you're right,' corny? Like, should I have had that in my vows?"
Her answer was to flick a finger over his chin. His smile came off its leash.
Then came more thunder. It rolled over the roof with enough force it made her bones want to vibrate. The storm must have been right above their heads.
Crane's eyes hiked up again. Back to Aiden.
"Go," she told him. Exhausted and feverish and aching she might have been, but she did still have eyes. And she still knew Crane. And right now, he was a man in distress. One who fought a terrible fight. In one corner of that particular ring was his need to remain glued to her side; in the other the urge to join a frightened young Pilgrim decked in solitude.
Because while Crane and her had someone to snap back together with, who'd Aiden have? Some warped memory of a sister he'd never had?
A kiss to the top of her head later, and Crane was up. He readjusted his clothes, hopped down the short steps, and finally pulled out the chair next to Aiden. Zofia watched from the bed, her curiosity keeping another spell of drowsiness at bay. That, and she didn't make the mistake of lying down again, instead sitting with her legs crossed under her and her hands idly snatching up the book Crane had left behind.
She paged through it.
It was a pocket book, about two-hundred pages, the paper yellowed at the corner, and as she flipped from page to page with her eyes skimming along, she came to two conclusions: the book was about a starship named Helva who liked to sing, and she understood enough of it to gather as much.
Zofia stared blankly at a single word.
She shouldn't have. Understood it, that is. Not nearly as well.
It was all French.
She looked up, over to Crane and Aiden. Had it taken until today for Crane's many attempts at teaching her to finally take? No, she reckoned that wasn't how languages worked and that maybe she'd just read that thing before, making it just familiar enough for her to pick up bits and pieces.
Must've been.
Over by the table, Crane had his hands wrapped around the backrest of a chair. He had his back to her, making him difficult to hear, but Aiden was expressive enough for her to get the gist of what was going on.
Crane was pitching him a story.
It started with scepticism. Whatever Crane led with, Aiden met it with a squint. But Crane kept at it until Aiden's arms finally fell open in one of those universal Fine, I give up, sort of gestures.
Then came the first wide sweeps of Crane's arm, like he was painting a picture in the air. Aiden's eyes cut to the motion, then to Crane.
Thunder cracked.
Aiden froze but nodded quietly along.
Zofia's attention fell back to the book. Or would have, hadn't her eyes snagged on the back of her hand. On the Z. The O. The F. She could guess why she'd put them there. To remember. To remember she had a name, because that'd been what Theo had taught them to never let go of. But she couldn't remember when she'd done it. How she'd done it.
Or what'd made her stop.
She pulled the sleeve of the sweater up, stretched her arm out, and let her eyes track along her skin. Wherever she looked, she found another fresh, pink scar. Her elbow looked especially grim, like she'd caught a fall in a pit of hot coals. The way it'd healed reminded her of how her scalp had scarred after a cultist had taken a blowtorch to her forehead.
Except— she squinted at her elbow. Some of the skin there was still discolored. Grey.
Was this going to stick around? Did she have more of those patches somewhere?
Dull fear (which was, maybe, just a tiny bit, born out of her worry for how she'd look when all this was over) made her drop the book in her lap and pull the hoodie up so she could look at the wound Crane had said wasn't healing right.
But she stopped herself. With her teeth clenched and one deep breath through her nose (ow, that hurt), Zofia relaxed her fingers and looked over to the table again.
While she'd been distracted by a spell of vainness, Crane had gone all in on stalking around the table, his hands and arms doing a lot of the talking for him. Aiden tracked him attentively — especially that bit where Crane mimicked bludgeoning something with an imaginary staff. The motion got an eyebrow raise out of the sister-less Pilgrim.
"—and he hits the sand," Zofia heard Crane say. "Out cold."
More gestures. More words, though they remained hard to catch from here. Between the storm whipping the penthouse and her ears having apparently been stuffed with cotton (and that cotton then set on fire), it was hard to keep up.
And then, finally, Crane shoved an arm out with a motion she'd seen him do hundreds of times, followed by a familiar, practised vroooom as he swung a make-believe lightsaber around.
. . .
Stifling what might or might not have turned into a laugh by biting down on the back of her scarred hand, Zofia convinced herself she wasn't going to miss this.
Eff her sudden penchant for understanding French.
Eff how she might look.
She'd join the show.
Slowly, Zofia climbed to her bandaged feet, swayed down the steps, and grabbed herself a chair — all while Crane remained neck deep in explaining how lightsabers worked. Only once that was well out of the way (leaving Aiden looking on in fascinated bewilderment), Crane went back to the main story. Namely, the story of a bright-eyed moisture farmer who was about to embark on a perfectly plotted-out hero's journey.
CRACK, rumble, said the world outside.
Aiden flinched. He hadn't forgotten about the storm, obviously. But he had leaned forward, his elbows propped up on the table and his posture much wider and welcoming than before. Not the tight, fearful ball he'd wanted to roll into earlier. He also refused to budge. Just stayed like this, staring up and Crane and didn't move a muscle; not until way later, when the storm had calmed, and when Crane's gravely "I am your father," led to Aiden bouncing back in the chair and blurting a startled, "No way!".
His eyes were practically saucer-sized.
Zofia experienced it all from the sidelines. She'd pulled her knees up, pressed them between the table and her chest, and dropped her chin on them.
Luke Skywalker's adventure as retold by Crane might not have been canon-compliant if one was going to be honest, but the end result remained the same. Luke found out he had a sister (which the boy without a sister reacted to with a smile). He fought his father. Fought the Emperor. Got nearly killed. Got saved by his father. And by the time he'd toppled an empire with the help of friends and family, the storm had long buggered off.
It'd been lovely, listening to the whole thing in silence.
Crane had always had a knack for telling stories. Yes, he liked to get sidetracked and might talk in circles or spend way too many words on explaining what a swoop bike was, when floating motorcycle that goes really fast would've been sufficient.
But he was good at it.
More so, Crane had always had a knack for tripping over young souls in dire need of a lifeline. Throw that in a pot with a paternal instinct too vast to fit his big head and you had the recipe to cook up a man desperate to step up wherever the world had stepped off.
Be it for a boy with a penchant to try and blow himself up, a child trapped in a monster's skin, or— this. A kid who'd clung on to family that wasn't family at all.
The story done, the storm gone, and Crane's voice sore from the effort, Aiden got up to find them all some water and himself a stretch. Predictably, Crane didn't waste a second before he'd slipped behind her chair. He cupped his hands over her shoulders and gave her a tender squeeze.
"Kyle?" Zofia tilted her head back into her neck, bumping into him.
His eyes narrowed. "One Kyle equals one new grey hair. You know that, right?"
"Mhm," she hummed before she gave his hand a pointed nudge with her cheek and flicked her eyes over to Aiden. Aiden had forgotten about the water he wanted to get and was busy fishing in one of the top drawers in the kitchen. "You're doing it again," she said.
"Doing what? What am I— Oh." He glanced over to the kid, a thoughtful weight settling on his brow.
A hush moved in. It was comfortable. Familiar. There weren't any words out there that'd ever be capable of filling the quiet space between them. None that could ever honor its significance.
"Yeah," the man who couldn't not step up eventually said. "I guess I am."
Taff Notes:
I had this big author's note planned out for the end. But then I started writing it and got maybe two sentences in, and, guess what? It turned out to be inadequate. There simply are no words I can put together that express how grateful I am for everyone who has read this fic and who has made it to the end. Let alone those who've read Latchkey Hero first. Not only have you read approximately 600k words worth of canon-mangling Dying Light fic, but you've also watched me grow as a writer. Which is ... humbling. I suppose.
So. Ah.
Anyway.
Here we are!
At the end of Blood From Stone, the second book in the Monsters, We. series and the fifth in the entire Latchkey thing.
What's next?
The Will To Live! Book three is proving to be a challenge to outline because I've got more plot threads to follow than ever before, but I've got a beginning, I've got my ending, and I have a solid middle.
Crane, Fi, Aiden, they'll all be back. But for now, they get a bit of rest.
Thank you.
All of you.
I appreciate you. Loads.