He’d made tea. We’d laid on his bed and chatted till we fell asleep. Maybe it wasn’t as good as the evenings I’d had with Kaspar but it sure felt a hell of a lot easier on me. I’d drifted awake a couple of times and spent those empty moments just looking at him, and they didn’t feel at all empty when I did. It was almost eerie the way I’d lain beside him, only a breath of moonlight on the sheets, feeling like I’d known him my whole life. Feeling like I was already set to know him for the rest of my life too. His apartment had only the essentials plus a little decoration here and there, but with him in it, it felt like a grotto of endless treasures.

  I let him sleep. He deserved it. His clock finally rang at eight, a sonorous chime that made me miss the mechanical birds of the Institute. The instant he blinked his eyes open and saw me, he snatched at the sheets and scrambled back, legs frantically kicking some distance between us, but then the fright cleared from his face like a blackboard erased. “Oh. Sorry. It’s you, I forgot, I…”

  I shrank down on the other side of his bed. “Are you okay? Should I ask what happened just now?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said in a small voice. “Sometimes stuff comes up out of the undergrowth and surprises me. I’ll be okay once I’ve had breakfast and can get to the hospital. Oh –” He looked at me with curious eyes. “Maybe you should take a break today instead of coming along. Y’know, after upchucking by my boots last week. You looked rough.”

  He seemed so concerned. “I’ll be fine. Saw someone I… I knew. I didn’t know I knew them but then I did and it… That doesn’t make any sense. But I’ll be fine. I have to go back and help out. I’d feel terrible if I didn’t.” Chewed the inside of my cheek. “We should make something to eat. We’ll need it.”

  *

  A vague apprehension over any smell from my day-worn clothes evaporated into the viscous cloud of stench that greeted us like a sledgehammer before we’d even entered the square. The canvas citadel grew every time I came back to it. Much like a festering wound.

  I did my rounds. Tried not to think about it too much. But everyone here, each body on each makeshift bed, was an Omen. All had family to get back to, friends who missed them, loved ones who’d fret and sweat over their lingering absence. They had to get home. We had to get them home. So every application, every dab of medicine, every drop of anodyne was more purposeful. Intention infused into every application. I looked back at Robin, and he’d almost finished his side of our ward. I was barely halfway down mine.

  So I pushed through and he helped me and I excused myself when I was done, wended my way down the halls and sought the face I needed to see. Grimaced at myself for the choice of words and before I could back out or more likely pass out, I slipped the curtain open. “Omen,” I said like it was an apology. His head rested on the pillow, and by the time I’d pulled a spare chair from across the convalescent tent, his eyes were open. Sharp grey-gold eyes, the very same that had first inspired a curious nascence of feelings in me – ones I’d never expected to have, but ones I never hoped to lose now. They surged within me as fresh as ever, and in front of him, I let my hood drop. “Omen?”

  He peered up like even that alone was an exertion. “You’re… Mori? Are you… huh, a nurse, now? What’s…?” As his voice faded he seemed to forget he’d even had a question to start with.

  “I’m not. It’s a long story from me, but how are you doing? I mean – well – I can see some of it. Most of it. What’s left of it. Sorry, my head’s spinning.” Tried leaning on the chair, gave up and sat on it. Shook more than I’m proud to admit. “You look… Well, you’re alive.”

  He barked a wheezing laugh. “Or so they tell me. Feels like a year that I’ve been… stuck in here, and that’s no life.” The same confidence shone from his face still, though reduced to a glimmer. Like the small ember of a fire you weren’t sure would reignite or dwindle away. “I’m on the mend. I’ll be up… to join the walking groups, yeah… soon enough.”

  I swallowed heavily. “How are you feeling? What did you – how’s it going with, uh…?”

  “Oh, y’know how these things are.” Omen looked up at me and something plummeted inside me. I don’t think in my entire life before today, I’d ever seen him looking up at me before. Wait – once – but the memory of that would destroy me right now. “We fortified the high ground over the… uh, landslip, that’s the only easy way out of the Marshmen’s… caldera, and thought it’d be over quickly. Starve them into submission, toss a few explosives at anyone who… tried anything.” He coughed and took a minute to recover. “Mostly Oldfield’s ideas – he’s been such a great commander to work under. But those sneaky Marshmen… developed new compounds with their minerals, forged giant shields that are… impervious to our ammunition. Set them up in, uh… strategic positions, yeah, and our sighters suggest they’re protecting their…”

  I tried not to lean in expectantly. He was the guy I knew, but a shadow of him. But he’d get better if given the space, right? “So how else is it going?” He looked at me vacantly. “Well?”

  “Yes, yes. Their wells, exactly. And their farms too. We can’t haven’t been able to hit them yet but… Oldfield’s been working the problem over. Volunteered myself for his… scouting mission, yeah, close to enemy lines under darkness, and I… guess their patrol must’ve spotted me.”

  I held myself back from telling him how unimaginably little I cared about any of that right now. “I meant how’s it been going with you? You’re my only concern right now, Omen.” Even his name felt like an acid on my tongue.

  “Me? Hey, you probably know more about how I’m healing up than I do.” He issued a cracked smile, looked like it pained him to make it. “I’m lying here day after day and sure I feel like I’m healing but the nurses… they won’t even let me have a mirror to check myself out. Oh, Mori, how about it? They must have a mirror around here somewhere.” I looked down at him: a mangled amalgamation of facial parts and crusted scars and patches that still looked raw and burned on his soft mulberry skin. No way could I show him that. Omen deserved far better. My hesitation registered, and he heaved a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, no one wants me to see. Sure I look like a toy soldier some kid smashed up – I get it. I’d wanna do the same if I were you.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I winced. “Maybe you could run your hands over it and see how it feels?”

  Groaning a little, he shifted and dredged his arms out from under the sheets. Both hands were bandaged up like mittens. One clearly missing a couple fingers. “So yeah, if you wanna know how I’m doing, most everything hurts, and most of the bits that don’t hurt are… cos I haven’t got ‘em anymore. But it hurts a little less each week. Deep spirits, I must have been in such… such a state when I came here. Yeah. Bandages and muffled voices and spoon-feeding for, what did they say, a month perhaps. Is this better?”

  “Better that it could be,” I suggested.

  “And a stinking pile of a lot worse than it could be.” He hacked up a cough, needed another full minute to catch his breath. “Mori, they should have left me on the dirt. Let me have a real Forester send-off. A proper, honourable way out. Not this con-val-scent bullshit.” He coughed again, so heavily it racked his shoulders, and in the bandage up there, a spot of red blossomed and quickly spread.

  “You’re bleeding,” I said.

  “What’s new?”

  I stole myself from the curtained room without waiting to ask him because in this state, given what I’d heard, he’d probably say no anyway. So I didn’t give him the choice. Albeit without being aware, I’d got him this far already. I needed to see it through. I found a roll of bandages not far down the walkway and sliced off a measure with my claws, brought it back, and found him wheezing but at least he was still again. “Let me,” I said, and he had the decency not to protest. And I pulled up my chair and began to redress his wound.

  Omen was a wonder. Always had been. A stark miracle of nature to have accidentally thrown out a guy nearly perfect in every aspect. Everything a Forester should be. Brave, outgoing, confident, self-important, reckless, daring, aspirational, dedicated, and most of all, a born fighter. No surprise he’d been the hero of our training classes right from the first few weeks. And what had happened when he’d been knocked out by the blunt side of Oldfield’s wooden practice sword? He’d woken up moments later to me over him, falling to pieces thinking he’d died, then stood himself up like it was barely a playground tumble and threw himself right into the action again.

  But he didn’t know how to accept help. How to admit or handle a weakness of any kind. Omen was more familiar to me than my own soul, closer to my heart than my own ribs, and the only one I’d ever accepted that choice of nickname from, but one of these days the valour and pride he clinged to was going to get himself killed. Properly this time. No amount of patching up I could do would fix that. He didn’t know how to accept help, and it irritated the hell out of me. I’d have to get him away from this place and the war before anything more happened to him.

  “All done,” I said, and I’d done a fair good job of it too. “Try not to stretch it, blah blah, you must’ve heard it a hundred times by now.”

  He sank back onto the pillow. “Yeah, but never in your voice. You say stuff nice to me, Mori. Always have.” He exhaled, and this close to him, he’d never looked so small. “Cos I was good, can you get me a mirror now, please?”

  “No,” I said firmly, and already hated myself for it. “You’re still gonna heal up more and however it ends up, everyone else is gonna look at your face way more than you do. So – so it’s their issue to figure out and accept you.”

  With a half-hearted laugh, he said, “How long have you known me? On an average day I’d say I look at my face at least as much as anyone I meet sees it.” The laugh became a cough again, and he seemed to try not to strain the bandages. “I know I’m a little self-obsessed,” he said lightly. “It’s okay to say it. I think that’s why I’m going so stir-crazy stuck on my back here. Man, I need to get into that walking group soon. When will they let me? Did the other nurses say?”

  “I’m still not a nurse or anything. I’m just coming down and helping out where I can.”

  “Yeah, how come?” He eyed me wearily. “I thought they’d have you in the strategy camp with the maps on tables and those long sticks they push the markers around with. You’ve always been good with that stuff on the occasions you joined in. Planning and all.”

  “I, uh, I’ve been on messenger duty. If I get time off, I come here to help.”

  “Bah,” he snorted. “Skip that. Do the important stuff. We’ve got a war needs winning.” I rubbed a hand into my chin, found a stray hair there. “Our parents’ generation knew how to fight, and they could only do it by leaving behind those who fell. Not wasting time waiting for them.” Picked at it. Scratched a little. “Time and energy are limited in life, and we may not see it when we’re young, but the sooner we learn to use it effectively… to achieve our goals, the sooner we get ahead… and the sooner we have an advantage over anyone else. Oldfield always said that. Hey, stop doing that to your face.” A bandaged hand folded around my wrist and my fingers stopped. Like I’d drained the last of my willpower. “Last thing we need here is two torn-up faces.”

  I let him hold me for a moment. “It’s probably not as bad as you think.”

  “I dunno what to think anymore. I’m told it’s been about six weeks but to me, it’s just an ongoing mess of daytimes and nighttimes, of treatments and hours of endless rest times. I didn’t trust any of it was real at first. Still feels like I should have died somewhere along it all.”

  “Don’t say that –”

  “It’s true. Everything feels like a weird, hazy, painful dream, forever stuck in this fucking bed. It always hurts most everywhere until I sip down the liquids they bring, and my body feels awkward… and resistant, yeah, like given a choice it’d prefer to be left to the vultures. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I can’t tell which one I’m doing. Some memories feel real; others don’t. What’s real now? I only realised I’d dreamt my family visiting me when two nurses both insisted it hadn’t happened. I couldn’t…” Another deep, visceral, hacking cough. “It’s hell having to live like this – I can barely call it living. What’s even waiting for me when I’m back upright again? Or can I just dream whatever I want and it’ll feel like it’s actually happening? What’s real?”

  I twisted my hand round to hold his, not too hard that I’d hurt him but firmly enough that he’d damn well feel it, and our eyes met. “Does this feel real to you?”

  *

  “I cannot believe you’d stay overnight with him again given how he treated you!” exclaimed Holly the instant I’d got back to the dorm.

  I rubbed my eyes wearily. “What?”

  “Your rich tall pretty-boy. The asshole.”

  “Oh. I was with someone else.”

  She left her writing to the side and looked up at me suspiciously. “And this new guy made you bleed onto your cloak, Leafy?”

  “He did what?” I glanced down. “Uh, I think that might be from the bandages.”

  “Bandages?”

  “I was helping at the tent hospital. With the other guy.” I crossed the room and slumped onto my bed, shucking out of the cloak and dropping it into the hatch at the bottom of the closet. It vanished with an oddly satisfying whumpff. Decided I’d wait for it to return since no way was I wearing anything Kaspar had bought me anymore. Bad enough that I was using what he’d told me, to clean the stuff I had. “Trust me, I’m keeping away from him.”

  She hummed as she scribbled. “Don’t you think one guy is plenty trouble enough? My mama warned me plenty well what boys could be like.”

  “No, this is… He’s called Robin. He’s really nice. He’s considerate and observant and he’s really… nice. It actually feels like he cares about me, not just that he wants me.” I was aware she’d stopped scribbling and started staring at me. A specific focus on my face. “I need a rest,” I said clearly. “We can talk about stuff later.”