Now You See Me

Twenty-Four: Under Duress

I woke up submerged in a bathtub.

My first instinct was to panic; I sat up so fast my head span and grabbed the edges in an effort to lever myself out. My arms just shook and failed on me, dumping me back in the water with a splash. At the noise, presumably, someone walked in. It took me a long moment to recognise Feila, who was stood in the doorway in a nightgown, frowning at me.

"You shook off those anaesthetics remarkably fast, Herr Smith," she said. She drifted over and tried to take my arm. My heart leapt into my throat and I backed up against the far side, hissing at her. I couldn't explain my reaction, but I did know that I didn't want her to touch me.

I didn't want anyone to touch me.

"What's the matter, Damien?" she asked.

"Please don't touch me," I whispered. Emotion came rushing back to me with the force of a battering ram, and I felt helpless in it, as everything I'd felt, through the attack and through my memory, came to flood me at once. I didn't know where to turn. I touched my mouth, where only moments before it had felt as though Chris's had been, timid and soft and familiar. And then I remembered that monster mentioning his name, and the sadness turned to anger and loss.

It seemed that my body's solution to the problem was to turn to crying.

Feila didn't try to touch me again; she left the room and returned shortly with Courtney, whose face crumpled at the mess I must have looked. Feila whispered something in her ear and she nodded, before the fae left for good, closing the door quietly behind her.

I wiped my eyes and tried to bring myself under some modicum of control. "Where am I?"

"You're in the hospital room," Courtney said. She came over and perched herself on the ledge of the bath as if she was scared I'd lash out, but I didn't mind her there, just so long as she didn't come any closer.

"Where's that?"

"Oh, you haven't been in here before, have you? It's essentially the attic, but Leia had it converted to a kind of hospital so we didn't have to take any supernaturals into human hospitals."

"I thought the staff knew about us, though."

"They do." She smiled slightly. "But the other patients don't, and we wouldn't want to risk it. You were only in there because we hadn't confirmed your species yet, and we couldn't legally take you out until we had."

"Oh."

A long silence stretched between us.

"I want him back."

Courtney blinked and then stared at me in surprise, and I realised I'd said that aloud. Heat rushed to my face, but I didn't deem it necessary to try and explain myself. She probably guessed who I meant – it wasn't exactly rocket science. I'd had no idea how much of a struggle it had been for Chris to admit that he liked me; from the sound of that snippet of conversation that I remembered, we'd both been suffering under illusions that our feelings weren't reciprocal for weeks, possibly months. I wasn't sure whether to find it amusing or to give into the burning regret that we hadn't had longer, which seemed a petty response considering I couldn't remember the majority of what we had had.

"Do you think he'll blame me?" I asked Courtney, when she didn't seem to have anything to say. "For what's happened?"

She shook her head. "No. It wasn't your fault. And if he does blame you, it's because those witches have made him think that, not because you deserve it. He's smart enough to know."

My eyebrows drew together. "How do you know he's smart?"

She gave me a snort and a sceptical look. "You went to Imperial together, Damien. That doesn't scream 'thick' to me."