The world is worse than us (Stephie, Lucas, Jinx)
A proper medical crew met them at the hospital, and Stephie sat in the van near his head, trying to keep out of the way as they moved him. Lucas was waiting when she finally emerged, and gave her his hand to help her jump down. She looked pale – not Miles pale, but pale.
“Ruined your hoodie,” she said, wiping a bloody hand on the bloody hoodie. One sticky clot fell to the ground from where it was clinging to the centre pocket. Stephie made a face.
“Gross,” said Lucas.
Stephie blinked down at her hands. There was blood dried into the creases between her fingers, blood under her nails. “I need a bit of a shower.”
Lucas snort-laughed in the back of his throat. “You needed a shower before you smeared his blood all over you.”
Stephie thought about punching Lucas in the arm.
She closed her eyes instead.
“So true,” she agreed.
~
She gave the hoodie to Joel when she passed him in the hall on the way to meet Peter, knowing how Peter felt about blood. Joel was still, after all this time, willing to do anything it took to get her to like him, even though Stephie had long gotten over the accidentally-kidnapping-you-in-Rome incident. He took the hoodie eagerly (demons were weird) and promised he’d take it down to the laundry and clean it up real good.
~
The debrief with the hospital was short. “I don’t know anything,” Stephie told them. “We got to the house and everyone was gone except Miles. There were tranquiliser darts on the floor, I didn’t pick any up,” she looked over at Lucas, who shook his head apologetically. Stephie wanted to stab herself for not thinking of it earlier. What if it would help. Dumbass.
~
“Hey,” Lucas grabbed her shoulder to stop her leaving and turned her around. “Uh, I just wanted to say that, I saw you looking after him back there, and, for someone who I literally had to pick up out of a gutter this morning, you’re doing kinda pretty well. I just don’t wantcha going home still thinking you’re a piece of shit, you know?”
~
Did she still feel like she was a piece of shit, Stephie wondered, after Lucas had gone. She was in the shower at the hospital, as the blood from her hands swirling down the drain as it washed off her.
Yes, but the Templar were worse.
Yes, but there were bigger things to worry about. There were worse things out there. Stephie leaned against the wall in the shower – had Jinx said something like that last night?
Her stomach clenched inside her. She had a memory of yelling at Jinx, so bad, she remembered being loud and puffed up and wanting to ruin something, yelling about dying and giving up and then storming out the drive with the intention of walking all the way to Cambridge, or something. But she remembered the way Jinx said that they weren’t supposed to be the ones who hurt each other.
And how last night she wanted to destroy Jinx and this morning she wanted to save Miles and how was this her world now?
~
She walked back through the ER but they wouldn’t let her see Miles. One of the doctors Stephie didn’t know very well said they were worried about organ failure, that he was on the brink of hypothermia, and something else – Stephie stopped listening, couldn’t deal with more information than that.
~
While Peter was organising the troops to search, Stephie locked herself in his office and rang Josie over and over and over and over.
~
The last thing she’d said to Astrid was something about her being manipulative. The last thing she’d said to Josie was that she didn’t give a shit about her. How did you suck all the poison out of that wound when the wound was maybe not even in the country any more. The twin feelings of loss and damnation each grabbed a handful of her guts and twisted as hard as they could.
She felt like crying again. She forgot to remind herself that she could breathe, that she could survive. She couldn’t find the bottom with her feet any more, kicking wildly, hands grabbing for anything to hold on to. That’s why she reached across Peter’s desk for the phone, why her fingers sought out Jinx’s number.
It was Templar and Demons and the rest of the world that was supposed to hurt her, not him.
“It’s me,” she said, when he picked up. “Jinx, you’re right. It’s… not supposed to be us that hurts each other. I don’t… really remember what else you said last night and I don’treally remember what I was yelling at you but I remember you said that. And – and I really want it not to matter anymore, can it just not matter anymore? Because the world is worse than us, and everything got back to front, and I was caring about Miles more than I cared about you and that’s all wrong. And the world’s gone to shit and I, um, am having a bit of trouble dealing.”