stevie universe (hellostarlight) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-03-06 15:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: vamps vs wolves, character: gretel, character: negan, character: stevie universe |
Who: Stevie, Negan and later Gretel
What: Stevie does not taste very delicious.
When: Still Thursday, I think?
Where: The woods, then Negan and Gretel's den.
Warnings: Negan's mouth, ouchieness.
Status: Completed in gdocs during the dark times.
Stevie was not trying to be quiet. She liked the sound her boots made on the dry leaves and twigs. A forest like this could be like walking through fall all year round. It smelled nice, more forestry than any woods she’d ever been in. These were real woods, somehow. The realest woods she’d ever seen.
She missed her flip flops. Looking around, she unlaced her shoes, pulled off her damp socks, and tied them together and threw them over her shoulder. Bare feet were nice, too, better than boots.
The use of her powers were improving! She hadn't cried much at all, learning to find calm. Calm was really just wariness with a dash of loneliness. But it was still improvement! By the end of the week she’d probably have it figured out. And then get her old powers back.
Though she’d told Bucky she left the room to give him privacy, while not a lie, was not her only motivation. After meeting a friendly giant wolf yesterday, she couldn't wait to see if she’d meet them again. Despite being stranded, alone, for months before the hotel picked her up, Stevie found herself searching for the company of an animal. An animal wouldn't judge her. They were nice to talk to.
It was on of the very rare occasions during the week that Negan was prowling around somewhere, as a wolf, without Gretel. Truth be told, he probably should have just gone right back to her room after talking with Judith, and then Claire, but he had some frustrations to take out, and Gretel wasn’t quite ready to go out and around.
Still, he’d told Gretel he didn’t want her walking around by herself. It shouldn’t have been any different for him, but he was being careful. He was on high alert, and though his first instinct if he came across one of the dead, blood-sucking shitbags would be to kill the shit out of them, he’d contain himself. Maybe. He’d try.
The smell he picked up as he roamed around wasn’t death and rot, though; it was familiar. He stopped, nose lifted in the air, and gave a few sniffs, trying to determine who it was, when it clicked. If he could have grinned, he would have, but instead, he set off to trotting towards her scent rather than away from it.
He was an intimidating sight: huge and black and silver, and despite his size, silent as he weaved through the trees and over leaves and branches, until he stopped. He could hear her footsteps and decided, rather than sneak up on her like the giant fucking monster he was, that he’d let her find him, stopping to take a drink from a creek.
Stevie, unfortunately, was far too accepting and caring of a human being.
Just like the encounter with the giant wolf before him, when Stevie spotted the wolf with the solid black coat, her eyes grew as wide as saucers. He was beautiful. Normal people might have seen a giant black wolf and run screaming. Stevie saw a giant black wolf and was awed.
She also occasionally rode a giant, cotton candy colored lion nearly the size of a horse, so that might have tainted her perspective on animal safety somewhat.
“Hey, buddy,” Stevie said softly to the wolf. She didn’t want to disturb him or chase him off. Wild animals could be timid like that. The creature in front of her looked fine, though. At least, she didn’t hear immediate growling which she assumed meant she could step closer.
“I met another one of your friends yesterday,” she said, speaking evenly to the wolf, uncertain if he could even understand her. As long as he remained still or unphased by her, she continued stepping closer to him. “I wonder if you are the werewolves people were talking about. I wonder if you can actually understand me? ...That would be really awkward.”
A sheepish half smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. It was one of the happiest, genuine expressions she made since arriving at the hotel, embarrassed or not.
“Maybe you won’t remember,” she said, as if to reassure herself. By the time she was close enough to touch him, she kneeled down first by the creek, so that she did not tower over him standing, just as she had before. And just as she had before, her hands slowly reached to comb through the fur at his shoulder.
Negan’s ears perked up, and he turned to look over his shoulder when she spoke up. He understood everything she was saying perfectly well, and he would’ve smirked at her if he could. He turned to face her, sat on his haunches, and tilted his head at her.
This kid had some serious fucking self-preservation issues. He didn’t know which of his friends she might have met, but he knew it couldn’t be Gretel. She would’ve mentioned it. Daisy wasn’t exactly a friend as much as she was a gigantic pain in the ass, and Buffy still needed to loosen up.
While he couldn’t laugh at her comment about it being awkward, he gave a snort and wrinkled his nose at her. No fucking duh he was one of the werewolves. Wolves didn’t come this fucking big, or this not eating-your-face.
Even when she was standing next to him, Stevie wasn’t much taller than he was, and when she kneeled, he sat taller than she did. When she reached out to pet him, he tilted his head in the other direction at first, but let her touch him without complaint. While she was leaning forward, he leaned down and plucked the shoes off of her shoulder, then hopped backwards, crouched with his front end down and his back end up in the air, her shoes in his mouth held by the laces that tied them together. He had plans to get to, serious fucking plans, but he hadn’t actually gotten to interact with any humans this way this week. He could fuck around for a while, first.
“Hey!” Stevie looked at the wolf and laughed. “I’ll have you know I was a professional wrestler, once! You sure you wanna tangle with me?”
It has hard to picture a scrawny teenaged girl like Stevie as one of those costumed professional wrestlers on TV. To be fair, her first debut was on a much smaller, local circuit. Also she wasn’t always so short. Or scrawny.
Stevie stood up and got into position, faking a few times with her foot as though she was going to bolt toward him and make a break for her shoes. She knew she wasn’t nearly as fast or as strong as she was with her new power set, but this was just for pretend.
“Tiger Millionaire says those shoes are designer!” It wasn’t much of a battle cry as she charged toward him, and her own laughter kind of killed the performance, but it had also been ages since she’d done anything like this.
Negan darted to the side when Stevie ran forward, evading her easily and running in a circle around and behind her, where he paused again. He wouldn’t play dog for too long, but the last time he’d seen the kid, she’d been crying her eyes out the whole time. Now she was smiling and laughing, and that was an improvement.
He’d let her keep that for a few minutes before he sent it all to shit. He still didn’t know exactly how the whole thing worked. The only thing Claire told him was they had to get bit, and they had to get bit bad, and that it wasn’t a fucking pleasant experience.
At least he wasn’t the one who’d be experiencing it. And Stevie might not, either, if he accidentally killed her, but he was banking on that not happening.
“Aw, man!” Stevie was still laughing after it became perfectly clear that she was absolutely, on her best day, no match for him. The brief appearance of Tiger Millionaire was dropped when she returned to normal self. “This would probably be a lot more fun if I had my other powers.”
At least then she’d be faster, and stronger, and able to keep up. Being human, or near human, or inhuman as Daisy had called it, was a lot more exhausting. But the wolf looked like he was having fun -- Daisy could now see it was a he, but she didn’t want to be rude by staring or dwelling too much on that -- and she didn’t want to disappoint him.
“I really hope you don’t go running off with my shoes,” she realized, and then grinned, because well, at least she would have a pretty funny story about why she didn’t have any shoes. Stevie was good natured to a fault.
She charged at him again, fully expecting him to evade her easily once more.
Just as she expected, Negan dodged her again, darting to the other side this time. He ran a big circle around her, before stopping ten feet in front of her, her shoes still in his mouth. If he didn’t have other plans, he probably would run off with her shoes, just because she’d said that.
But he didn’t want to run off. This was exactly where he wanted to be right now, and good decision or not, Stevie wasn’t leaving the forest the same way she’d come in.
He gave a playful half-bark before he dropped the shoes on the ground in front of him, resting in front of his paws. Then he looked at her again, and tilted his head, his ears perked up. It was an invitation.
Stevie grinned. This felt like a trap, and the way she half rolled her eyes, indicated that she knew this was a trap. But given the way she jogged toward him, happy expression on her face, it was more like she expected him to pick up her shoes and run again. She was Charlie Brown, he was Lucy, and somehow she knew he was going to pull the football out from under her before she got the chance to kick.
Being a good sport about it, she went anyway, and when she got close enough, she reached down to pick up her boots, teasing, “You’re worse than Lion.”
As soon as she reached out for her shoes, Negan lunged forward quicker than a blink, clamping his jaws hard around her forearm. His head was so big, he got her elbow, too, and he could feel at least one of the bones break in his mouth. For a second, he wondered if he’d get some crazy bloodlust for human flesh, but to his relief, she didn’t taste nearly as appetizing as the deer he and Gretel had been hunting.
He didn’t hold on for very long, letting go as soon as he’d done the damage he set out to do. There were no other signs of aggression; he hadn’t growled, he hadn’t bared his teeth, and he wasn’t doing that now. Aside from the blood on his mouth, he looked just the same as before- only now, they weren’t playing.
The good news was that Stevie had enough control of her powers that she didn’t shatter every tooth in his mouth when he bit down. She did vibrate, deep in the bone he snapped easily. But good news for him, she had enough control over her abilities that the ground didn’t even shake underneath them, which would have made the damage worse.
Instead, several trees surrounding them cracked. The sound was loud and it echoed worse than the sound of her cry. She didn’t scream, but she did moan once he released her. Stevie had been physically punished in enough battles that, while she cradled her freely bleeding arm against her chest, she didn’t sob, though she might have curled up into a ball and laid on the ground.
“...Bad wolf,” she wheezed. “Not a chew toy….”
He wasn’t growling at her and, Stevie realized, this was her fault for playing with a giant wolf with long sharp razor teeth. Her eyes opened to regard him again from her position on the ground. Laying there wasn’t going to help, but she tried to get an idea first if he was going to snap at her again.
Running wouldn’t do anything. He had already shown how much faster and stronger he was. But he didn’t look like he wanted to fight, and Stevie wasn’t the kind of person to retaliate, even in cases where she probably should have.
“I’m going home,” she told the wolf. “...I guess you can keep the shoes.”
She wasn’t going to be reaching for those again. Her eyes were welled up with tears, but they weren’t sad. Having your arm snapped in half hurt. That wasn’t including all the puncture wounds from his teeth. Given his size and power, she was damn lucky to still have an arm. Much more effort and he would have taken it clean off.
She rolled to her front and stood up. The minute she did that, she shivered as a fever started to set into her flesh. Stevie mistook it for a reaction to the pain of the bite.
For someone who practically had her arm ripped off, Stevie was surprisingly keeping her shit together. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she didn’t freak the fuck out and run away. She was just fucking bizarre. Negan could tell that much from meeting her the first time, but this just proved it.
Seriously, did she even feel pain?
She was bleeding like crazy, and already shaking as she got up to try to go back to the hotel. Negan really didn’t give a fuck about her shoes, but he did take them when he ran off.
He knew the forest well enough by now to know exactly where he was leaving her, and how to get to where his clothes were from there. If Stevie actually made it back to the hotel, it’d be a fucking miracle. Rather than actually take the chance of that not happening, and her dying somewhere that wasn’t the hotel, he figured the least he could do after practically biting her arm off was help her get back.
When he went to find her again, he was still a wolf, holding his clothes (just a pair of jeans) and her shoes in his mouth as he followed the overwhelming stench of her blood through the forest. That was another thing: if he left her out there by herself for too long, some dead shitbag might stumble upon her and finish her off. She’d draw them in from fucking miles away.
He shifted back into his human form somewhere out of sight, and pulled his jeans on, before he came out into the open again, holding her shoes in one hand, his eyes a flickering orange-yellow instead of their usual brown. And, to complete the picture, he had blood - her blood - smeared through his beard and down the front of his throat.
“Hey, Munchkin! Wait the fuck up!”
Stevie had a weird concept of pain, and almost no concept of what the human body was capable of withstanding. She’d been dragging her feet, limping along, holding her arm when she spotted Negan. Well, more like he’d called out to her and made it obvious he was there.
Stevie’s half alien body had taken a lot of physical abuse before. She’d been through this level of pain before, but apparently her now mostly human body wasn’t having that. It was only just starting to dawn on the teenager that she might be in a little over her head.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, seeing the blood in his beard.
No, that wasn’t quite right. The fever and the pain made it harder to think straight. When the idea came to her, the correct thought, she brushed it off verbally, “You didn’t bite me…”
Negan wasn’t a wolf. He was human shaped.
Stevie looked like shit, but she was starting to feel worse.
Negan gave her a sympathetic smile, and then chuckled, and shook his head. Oh, man, she was fucked. He didn’t know if it was just the blood loss, or the pain, or what, but she was missing the blatantly goddamn obvious. He slung her shoes over his shoulder, then walked right up to her.
“Yeah, Munchkin, I did,” he said, and looked at her arm with a grimace. “And holy fuck, I barely left you with any fucking arm, did I?” He laughed, and then sighed. It wasn’t really that funny. “My bad.”
She was already starting to go pale, and he wondered if there was an actual possibility of her bleeding out before she turned. Well, shit.
“But, to make it up to you, I’m gonna carry your adorable little ass all the way back to the hotel,” he said, and before she could protest, he leaned down and scooped her up into his arms. She was by far the lightest person he’d carried at the hotel so far, and the fact that she was getting blood all over him didn’t seem to bother him one bit. “And I’ll get someone to look at your arm, but as long as you don’t fucking die first, I’m pretty fucking sure that’s gonna fix itself.”
“I’m like six feet tall,” Stevie protested weakly. She was that large, once. She hadn’t been that big in months, but for some reason Stevie seemed to forget that in her blood loss and fever. She shivered violently in his arms but before she could bleed out, the bleeding itself stopped.
The wounds were closed, but they were healing. If it hadn’t been a werewolf bite she might not have made it back to the hotel in a human state. Her forehead glistened with beaded sweat. Maybe she should have fought or struggled against being picked up and held by Negan, but she wasn’t in much condition to fight and he was so avuncular about it all, that Stevie would have had difficulty processing his actions even if she wasn’t feverish and hurt.
“You shouldn’t bite people,” she said. Her voice was weak, but her eyes refused to close, looking around them and trying in vain to stay alert. That was the fever, mostly.
Stevie was burning up in his arms. He could feel the heat, searing against his skin, hotter than even his had been that week, and she just seemed like she was shaking and shivering the longer they walked along.
“Yeah, and I used to be Frosty the fucking Snowman,” he replied with a snort. It didn’t occur to him that maybe that wasn’t just another statement brought out by the fever. The fact that she was even stringing sentences together at all was pretty fucking impressive.
“And you shouldn’t go up to giant fucking wolves in the middle of the forest,” he said. They’d reached the hotel, and a quick sniff once he was in the lobby told him there was nobody around to give them any trouble. Hopefully it would stay that way. “I mean, seriously, Munchkin, didn’t anybody teach you any fucking self-preservation skills? What the fuck did you think was gonna happen?”
“Is that something they teach in school?” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to Stevie. She’d never been. Public education always mystified her a little, half envious she never got to go and half glad she’d had probably way too much freedom as a child growing up in a strange house with aliens. Her face searched Negan’s for the answer.
“It shouldn’t have to fucking be taught in school,” Negan said, glancing down at her for a second. She did not fucking look good. “It should be common fucking sense. But what the fuck do I know? Maybe where you’re from, trying to make friends with giant fucking wild animals is a good idea.”
The trip up to Gretel’s room was fairly uneventful, and he stopped and gave the door a kick with one of his feet. He’d thought about bringing her PDA with him before, but that would’ve felt way too much like locking her in. She wasn’t going anywhere- hell, he could still smell her behind the door.
If Gretel’s ears hadn’t been fine-tuned to catch a humming bird’s heartbeat, the sudden bang at the door would’ve come out of nowhere and likely startled five years off her life- as it was, she’d caught the sound of Negan’s voice as soon as he crossed the landing from the stairs, and was already at the door when he kicked it.
What she didn’t expect, was the frail teenager dying in his arms. She’d smelled the blood, but besides that of deer or vampire, she had no reference to what it could belong to. The surprise and alarm was plainly written on her face- but she still quickly backed up, making room for him to side-step through the door.
“-what the hell happened?” Gretel pushed the door closed once he cleared it, following close behind. Out of both decades of experience and blaring, red-hot instinct, she was already twisting and knotting her hair at the nape, getting it out of the way for what was going to be a very messy job.
“Negan’s fucking the snowman,” Stevie answered. Stevie would never normally use that kind of language in her life, but to be fair, she couldn’t actually recall opening her mouth shortly after it closed.
She felt both hot and cold, shivering as though she were trapped in an industrial meat freezer, while her skin seared as though it were burning. Her eyes were no longer focusing on either of their faces, but apparently friendly Stevie was still doing her best to carry on a conversation as though nothing were wrong at all.
“Y’know, I kinda like her explanation,” Negan said, seemingly unphased by the fact that he was carrying a tiny dying girl in his arms. He brought her over to the unused bed in the room and laid her down, before he looked over at Gretel. He was fairly well-soaked in blood, now, and it had dripped down to his jeans.
“So, really fucking long story short… I tried to make another werewolf.” ‘Tried’ being the operative word, because he didn’t even know if it was actually going to work yet, but by the fever Stevie was already developing, he had a feeling he was on the right track. “If it’s gonna work, it’s gonna fucking work, and she should be just fucking fine, but if not…”
Well. He knew that was a possibility, but staring at it was a little different than thinking about it. Still, if the idea of maybe having killed a cute teenager bothered him, he didn’t let it show.
Gretel didn’t have the luxury of time to really give his explanation any thought, but for a few short moments she blinked at him in sudden disbelief and more alarm. She felt her blood pressure spike, but she couldn’t interpret the reaction yet. She felt both nervous and ...exhilarated? Definitely worried, but optimistic. Frustrated at the confusing and complexity of her feelings, she just huffed through her nose, flaring her nostrils, and headed straight for the poor girl on the bed.
Even though blood was everywhere, clearly her arm was the source of the problem. Gretel examined it closely, touching as little as absolutely possible, to see the extent of the damage- meanwhile, her other hand laid gently on the girl’s brow, then pressed the back of it to her neck. Even against her hot skin, the girl was boiling.
“Get me cold water, and the salve-” she told Negan, her voice calm but tense.
Negan didn’t hesitate- he went off dutifully to grab their empty ice bucket and fill it with cold water from the bathroom. When he came back to Gretel, he had the bucket and a washcloth, which he left with her while he went to get the jar of salve from her equipment.
“I was really fucking hoping to do it inside the hotel, ‘cause I knew how fucking brutal it was going to be, but she just fucking found me out in the forest,” he said, handing the jar over and hovering by the side of the bed. “She’s fucking something else already, though. She barely fucking flinched when I bit her.” He looked down at her, shivering and shaking and sweating on the bed, and frowned. “Could just be the fucking shock, though.”
“I’m putting my cards on shock-” she said in the same tone, quickly wringing a towel in the water to place over the girl’s brow. She did it fast, but gently, brushing sweat-damp hair out of the way in the process. “Cover her up with a blanket, except the arm and her face,” she said, pulling back enough to pick up the small bucket and move it to the side. Using both hands, Gretel very carefully lifted the mangled forearm as much to the side as possible, supported by the bed- which was going to be a complete, bloody mess by the time this was over. Little by little, she delicately poured water over the skin to see where it was broken, and how bad the damage really went.
That’s when she noticed…
“...Jesus-” she breathed, hovering closer to what should be a very mangled limb. Instead of puncture marks and torn flesh, there were red divots and jagged lines. They were still angry looking, like week-old scars, but the skin wasn’t actually broken.
Not anymore, anyway.
Negan did as he was told, carefully adjusting the blankets around Stevie, trying not to get them completely soaked in blood, but there wasn’t much he could do to avoid it. It was a good thing they had a spare bed in the room at all. The bloody sheets weren’t that big of a deal when they could just get rid of them.
He didn’t notice what Gretel did until she spoke up, and when he looked at her arm, his eyebrows shot up. He distinctly remembered ripping her arm open, and the bones cracking underneath his jaw, but there her arm was, mostly in one piece again.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said, and then he grinned. “It fucking worked!” He clapped his hands together and laughed, his eyes flashing orange-yellow and full of excitement because he’d fucking done it. “Hot damn, look at that. That might be the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
His whoop and hollering stirred something similar in Gretel’s chest, but it was stifled and reserved by a net of other feelings- some simple and straightforward, indistinguishable between what was this creature she’d been turned into and her own soul, like taking care of this girl the best she could. Others were more complicated. Gretel’s jaw tightened, even though she shot a quick half-smile back at his excitement, but her attention quickly swung back to the poor thing burning up on the bed.
At least it was evident she wasn’t going to just bleed out or seize from shock, if her body was healing catastrophic wounds like that, it wasn’t going to just give up and let her die. Still, she was suffering, and that was a very physical thorn sticking between Gretel’s ribs. She rounded the bed, placing herself near the girl’s head to re-moisten the cold rag for her brow.
“I wish you would have told me,” she said quietly, using another cloth to clean the girl’s hot skin. “I’m ...not entirely sure how I feel about this…”
Negan took a deep breath in, and let it out in a long sigh. Nobody was fucking happy with his decision-making skills today. That was something he was used to, of course, but still, it was getting old real fucking fast. Especially now that he’d already bitten someone, and she was laying there, not dead, and probably wouldn’t fucking remember any of it anyway.
“I don’t get why everyone’s acting like it’s such a big fucking deal,” he said, and came to sit at the foot of the bed, looking at Stevie with his head tilted. “Clearly she’s tough as fucking nails. She’s gonna be fine.” He shifted his gaze to Gretel. “This is what we fucking are this week. I’m just fucking embracing it. Besides, this little Munchkin could’ve fucking brought the hotel down with an earthquake by the end of the fucking week. I did us a favor.”
With a bit of vibrant gold in her eyes, Gretel snapped her gaze up to meet his. She didn’t challenge him, but there was a distinct flare of something critical in her expression.
“Did I say I think you’re wrong?” she asked calmly, then looked back down at her work, wringing the pink out of the cloth. “I’m not disagreeing with you- I’m saying I would like to be a little more prepared. And not just about… Munchkin.” That was a very strange name.
Negan frowned a bit, and then sighed again, but smaller this time. Not really defeated, but something along those lines.
“I promise I’ll keep you in the know next time, okay?” he said, and shifted up on the bed until he could lean over and kiss the side of her head. At least she wasn’t disagreeing with him. “Also, her actual name is Stevie. I just like callin’ her Munchkin ‘cause she’s so fucking cute and tiny.”
Gretel didn’t look up when he kissed her, but she did lean into it slightly- tactile acknowledgement and return of the affection, mostly without conscious thought.
“Does anyone else know you did this?” she asked without pretension in her voice- not toward him, and the reason why would have alarmed her truly-human self. She was still the planner, the one who calculated the next move and tried to anticipate where the retaliation blows would hit, but on the other side of the battle. The feeling was strange, and fleeting. The more she tried to concentrate on it, the more it evaded.
“Not as far as I know,” Negan said, looking down at Stevie while Gretel tended to her. She was still alive, so that was something. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember this part, and hopefully it wouldn’t last that long, but either way, it would be worth it. And it was only temporary. She’d be fine. Once it was done, she’d have a whole new kind of freedom.
Then something occurred to him.
“Y’know, I wonder…” He trailed off for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “So, she got a new fancy fuckin’ set of powers this week, too, right? She can start earthquakes or some shit. I wonder if that’s gonna stick around if this works. ‘Cause the room’s not fucking shaking right now.” On the one hand, that was a relief- on the other hand, it might’ve been cool to have a werewolf on his side that had that kind of power.
“I doubt it will,” she said, a little breathy. “The magic in my blood is gone- for one. It isn’t that much of a leap to think the same thing will happen to her.” Gretel lifted the mostly-fresh cloth from Stevie’s brow and tested her skin with the inside of her wrist- her frown deepened.
“That’s if this fever doesn’t fry her brain first,” she huffed, pushing to her feet. Still in her underwear (wearing clothes this week seemed like a completely wasted effort), she moved quickly around the bed and flipped the blanket off the frail-looking young girl. It had been to keep her from sliding into shock too fast, but that worry was past. Like Negan had before, Gretel scooped her up as if she were made of dried flowers, and headed straight into the bathroom. She brought them both into the shower and shifted her against her chest in order to flip the water on. The cold didn’t bother her, nor did the blood-soaked clothes.
Stevie sputtered under the shower, seemingly drifting back into semi consciousness as her eyelids fluttered to find she was being held not by Negan but by a strange, beautiful woman in her undies instead. Stevie would have blushed if her skin wasn’t already flushed with fever.
“You’re really beautiful,” Stevie mumbled before settling into Gretel’s powerful arms, forgetting that she’d spoken once more after the words left her lips. Her shivering was still violent, but she didn’t feel nearly as terrible under the cold running water.
A few moments later Stevie started mumbling, “Garnet? I think we should go find Eyeball. It’s not her fault. She’s just floating out there in space...” It was hard to tell if Stevie was dreaming or awake or if whatever she said would have made any lucid sense at all to her at her most rational.
Negan hovered nearby in the bathroom, but there wasn’t much else he could do besides wait and watch. And as far as he was still concerned, if she was going to die, she was going to die, and there wasn’t much they could do about it. He had half a mind to say as much to Gretel, but he knew that probably wouldn’t stop her from trying to help anyway, and he did not want to think about the judgemental glare he’d probably get for it.
He leaned against the wall outside of the shower, his arms crossed as he watched Gretel and Stevie in the shower. Nothing coming out of the kid’s mouth was making any sense, but he knew she was pretty fucking weird to begin with, so he couldn’t how bad she was really hallucinating.
“I think half the shit she’s saying might actually make some fucking sense to her,” he said, and tilted his head.
Still cradling the girl like a gangly toddler in her arms, Gretel rested her back against the shower wall and eased down to sit, letting the cone of cold water soak them both. She kept her eyes on her sallow face, brushing back wet hair with her fingers, adjusting her to the most natural position possible, with Stevie’s head pillowed by her shoulder.
The water hit their skin cold, but by the time it snaked down bloody clothes and dripped to the tile floor, it was already quite warm. If anything, it might bring the heat down a few degrees. She’d never felt a fever that high on a person who was still living.
“Did you know her?” Gretel asked, briefly glancing up to him from the floor. Then back down to the girl, she whispered. “Not Garnet, Stevie- Gretel.”
“Huh?” Stevie tried to open her eyes but was being sprayed in the face with a freezing spray of water. The arm which had nearly been ripped off less than an hour ago was held up to try and block the spray so she could see where she was.
Her brain, still in a haze, she was trying to figure out why they were in the shower to begin, blinking owlishly as she looked down at her bloodied clothing.
“Is the washing machine broke?” Wait. Was that the question she wanted to ask? She remembered Negan’s beard and the blood smeared in it, and saw him standing over her and the woman holding her.
“Are you okay?” Was everyone okay? “Where did all this blood come from?” Who’s blood was it?
“I met her earlier this week,” Negan said, and shrugged. “So… technically, yes? I think wherever the fuck she’s from is way different. Like, more different than where you and I come from.” And the fact that she was talking about outer space only solidified that thought in his mind.
He went to the sink, then, and looked in the mirror, frowning at the blood that was dried into his beard, and still smeared down his neck and chest. “That’s all from you, Munchkin,” he said, and ran warm water from the sink to start washing himself off. “You bleed like a stuck fucking pig. But I gotta hand it to you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone take getting their fucking arm destroyed so fucking well.” And he knew from firsthand experience.
Knowing Stevie apparently came from some strange place where fever-talk possibly made sense made it more difficult to discern if her brain was over boiled or not, but there wasn’t much else she could do at this point.
“You’ve got a very bad fever,” Gretel told her, watching Stevie’s eyes with careful, intense study, but her expression was mostly soft. She even offered the ghost of a reassuring smile, once their gazes connected. “But it’s alright now… we’ve got you.”
“Oh,” Stevie frowned. “I’ve never had a fever before.”
She looked back down at her shirt. Even with the water turning much of it to pink, it was still a large amount of blood. Her fingers barely cooperated with her as she shivered, trying to brush off the blood stains like crumbs.
“I should tell Bucky I’m okay,” she said. Stevie lifted her head, half expecting to see the one armed man in the room with them. But lifting her head was about all the effort she decided to put into her search at that moment, and then she let it rest back on Gretel’s shoulder.
“What the fuck’s a Bucky?” Negan asked through a snort. He scrubbed his beard through with soap, and brought it down over the blood caked onto his throat. Once it was rinsed out, he grabbed a towel to dry off and, despite how clean he’d gotten, still ended up stained.
He turned his attention back to the two in the shower. Stevie’s arm was looking better than it had been on the bed, now that the blood was completely washed away.
“When she makes it through this, she’s gonna be the cutest fucking thing,” he said, smirking as he rubbed his towel through his beard. “Maybe she’ll be a puppy. Can you fucking imagine?”
Now that Stevie’s eyes were more open than not, Gretel angled her a little more so the water stream wasn’t directly on her face. She couldn’t help the huff that flared her nostrils at Negan’s comment- though her reaction may partly be from his enthusiasm.
“You want puppies now?” she murmured at him rhetorically, though with enough smirk to get the point across before she hushed to Stevie. “We’ll find your friend, don’t worry.”
“When I make it through what?” Stevie asked. Her brain was still moving at a snail’s pace, but at least she was aware of where she was and able to hold a small amount of conversation. She realized she couldn’t recall how she’d gotten into the bathtub, but it felt like too much effort to ask at that moment. Just trying to remember took energy.
They kept talking about puppies. Stevie frowned, “I’m almost twenty…”
Negan just wrinkled his nose at Gretel. Comments like that didn’t weird him out, partly because he knew it wasn’t actually possible, but also partly because he just didn’t fucking mind.
“Almost twenty? Oh my god, Munchkin, you just keep getting cuter and cuter,” he said, and grinned. “And to answer your question, you’re gonna be a werewolf. Hopefully. That’s what the fucking goal is, anyway.” And so far, it looked like it was working… maybe. He didn’t really know what it would look like if it was working.
“Oh,” Stevie said. “Cool.”
She turned her head to look at Gretel and said, “Don’t let me get catfingers. I didn’t get catfingers, right?” The last time Stevie tried to shapeshift into an animal it’d taken a serious spray of water to fight back the uncontrolled changes. “I’d much rather be a werewolf.”
Well- Gretel thought. At least that’s something.
“Catfingers?” she couldn’t help but ask, her mouth twisting up a little on one side, just for the silliness of the term. She glanced up at Negan as if he might have a clue, but somehow she doubted it. In the meantime, she extracted her hand from under Stevie’s legs in order to check her temperature again, resting the inside of her wrist against the side of the girl’s temple. Still hot, but not boiling.
Negan frowned and raised his eyebrows in a way that clearly said I have no fucking idea, and then he had to smirk about it, too. Catfingers. The more Stevie talked, the more Negan wanted to listen just because everything that came out of her mouth was entertaining. Maybe that was the fever talking, but if not, he might’ve just found something else to amuse him.
“You won’t get fucking catfingers,” he promised. “You’ll get to be a fucking awesome werewolf. And you probably won’t have to worry about makin’ earthquakes all the fucking time, too, so you can stop being so damn sad all the time.” That just seemed like a bonus on top of everything else, but in his opinion, it was a pretty fucking big bonus.
Stevie looked back and forth between Gretel and Negan, trying to follow the conversation, only realizing after that she was in the middle of that conversation, and trying to decide what to respond to. “I tried to shapeshift,” Stevie explained. “I thought a cat would be easy. But instead of turning into a cat, I turned my finger into a cat, and then all my fingers turned into catfingers and it was really bad.”
When Stevie shuddered, she wasn’t sure if it was the memory or the fever. She lacked the awareness needed to convince Gretel and Negan this was actually something that happened and not the illness talking.
“I thought you put me in the shower to get rid of catfingers,” Stevie said, as if that were the reasonable conclusion to come to when being held under a freezing cold spray of shower water.
Gretel couldn’t stop the small chortle in the back of her throat. That was...descriptive. And inventive, whether it was true or just her brain firing incorrectly.
“How long has it been since you ate something?” she asked Stevie softly, brushing more of her hair back. “We’ll stay in here until Negan comes back with food-” she added, glancing yellow-brown eyes up at him briefly. “Then try to eat and sleep, alright?”
Negan didn’t protest. Now that it looked like Stevie was pulling through, and she was going to be one of the pack, taking care of her felt instinctual. Plus, it was Gretel asking, and he was having a hard time saying no to anything she asked for this week.
He double-checked that he wasn’t still covered in blood, and went to go pull a clean (well, mostly clean) t-shirt on, before he ventured out of the room to go make Stevie something to eat.
“No, that’s not right,” Stevie said. “First I thought you put me in the shower to wash the blood out of my clothes, then I thought you put me in the shower to get rid of catfingers.” Her eyes tried to blink for more clarity. Actually, her first thought probably made slightly more sense. Slightly.
It felt right being next to Gretel. Stevie couldn’t explain it. She could barely remember her name, but Gretel felt familiar. Her body relaxed a little next to her and nestled in. She didn’t ask for Bucky again.
“Why are we in the shower?” Stevie finally asked, getting the sense she was still wrong.
Gretel noticed the way Stevie melted more comfortably into her, despite the cold water and what should have been mildly awkward position; she responded without thought, cradling her a little closer. The cold water didn’t bother- most of it became instantly warm as soon as it touched her skin anyway, and especially the young woman in her arms.
“To kill your fever,” she said gently, no mind given to the chaotic line of questioning and short-term memory problems; fevers could be murder on the mind. “How are you feeling?”
“Like everything is sore and I can't tell if I'm too hot or too cold and my body won't stop shivering all over and my brain is probably made of grape jelly.” Stevie had no idea if any of those things were supposed to be normal or not. At this point it was just easier to go with it. She wasn't dying, there were people to take care of her, and being sick sounded like a pretty normal thing she might not otherwise get to experience.
“Sounds about right,” Gretel hummed softly, but she didn’t sound alarmed. Considering the state she’d been in when Negan brought her upstairs, sluggish thought and shivers were a great improvement.