Paragon ✓

XI. The Best All Lack Conviction

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.

CS Lewis- As The Ruin Falls

"Irina, turn off your alarm clock," she moaned.

She wanted to sleep for longer. The beeping was constant, insistent, regular. Now she would have to get up and go into Irina's room to turn it off. She just had to open her eyes.

Her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds each, and lifting them was like lifting up the front of her car: not impossible, but not particularly easy. They fluttered uselessly. There was a buzz in her hand, and it spread through her arm, up to her face, and she found the weight was no longer so difficult to carry. It came with the realization that she wasn't at home.

She opened her eyes. Holden was sitting next to her, his hand on hers.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," she mumbled. She let her eyes drift lazily away from him, gaining an awareness of her surroundings. There was a drip in her arm, and she was lying on a bed. The insistent beep was the monitor that reflected the beating of her heart. She was wearing a light gown, and she felt cleaner than she had in weeks. "Where am I?"

"Back at the compound." Holden, too, was wearing a gown, and though there was a white plug in the back of his hand, he was not hooked up to any tubes. There was an empty bed next to her, but he was sitting on a plastic chair, perhaps intended for visitors. "In the infirmary."

"Did we make it?" Her tongue still felt three times its normal size, and her throat still burned with thirst.

Feeling her discomfort, Holden handed her a cup of water from the bedside table. He helped her sit up so that she could drink. "Go easy," he advised. "You've been out for about twelve hours."

"Did we make it?" she asked again once she'd finished her cup. She handed it back to him and settled back on her pillow.

"Of course," he said. He put the cup back down, and turned back to her slowly. For a moment, he just looked at her, and then he pushed the hair from her face. "Well, you made it. I just came along for the ride."

"Don't be silly," she said. "I wouldn't have gotten to the mountain in the first place without you."

"You dragged me up the mountain – "

"Did I hurt you?" She sat up, suddenly worried for him. There were no scratches or obvious wounds that she could see.

He grinned crookedly and shook his head. "Only my pride."

"You needed to be taken down a notch, anyway." Relieved, she settled back down. "You would have done the same, if our positions were reversed."

"But they weren't reversed," he said quietly, sobering. "You were the stronger one."

"Quite the opposite," she corrected him. "It's because you're taller and stronger that you faltered. You know that as well as I do."

He nodded, conceding defeat – or perhaps victory – with a small smile.

She held his eyes, and said haltingly, "I can be helpful to you. There are things I'm not as good at. I don't anticipate danger. I'm not on guard all the time. I've lived a safe, nice life, and I take it for granted. I know you haven't. Maybe you can teach me to... be better at this."

Clutching the sleeve of his shirt, she caught the thrum of something stronger pass from him to her, but she could not identify it. He patted her hand reassuringly. "You're very good at this Katia. Don't ever think you're not, and don't think that my trying to... to watch over you, is because I think you're not good at it."