Chapter 123: Pink Silk

I woke up warm. The sort that comes from a heavy quilt and a room somebody has kept warm on purpose, with morning light lying low and gold across the bed from a window on my left.

For a long while I did nothing at all with that information.

I just lay there breathing, floating somewhere near the surface of myself, while the light sat on the quilt and dust drifted through it in slow little galaxies.

My body reported nothing, and my head reported nothing, and nothing anywhere hurt.

Then my eyes drifted left, and found the window naked.

The black tape was gone off it, peeled away in careful strips and balled into a neat pile on the sill, and past the clean glass the sky stood enormous and pale blue over a city that had no opinion about it.

My hand came up over my face on its own and found new geography, ridged scab lines under a week of stubble, the old claw marks gone hard and smooth, cheekbones sitting closer under the skin than I remembered owning them.

And then I turned my head the other way.

There was an armchair pulled up beside the bed, close enough to touch.

And on it, Nia with her legs crossed, her right arm resting in a sling across her front, messy black hair loose around her face, and... she was wearing pink pajamas.

My brain arrived at that and simply stopped, the way an engine stops, everything in my skull going quiet at once while I stared.

[...I’m dreaming.]

Because I have known this woman across two lifetimes. In the first one we slept in plate carriers with our boots laced, and in this one we never once got the chance. I have never, not one single time in either life, seen Nia in pajamas.

Let alone pink. Let alone silk.

[I’m dreaming... this is a dream, this is a-]

"Nope~"

Her eyes were already on me, bright green and very steady, and she said it like she’d been holding it loaded for days.

"This isn’t a dream."

My eyes went wide, my whole body surged up toward sitting, and the bill for the entire trip down stupidity arrived at once.

"-Ngh-!"

Every muscle I own detonated in place, my ribs, my back, my arms, all of it lighting up together and slamming me flat back into the mattress with my breath punched out, while the ceiling swam and the fire rolled through me from scalp to heels.

[It hurts...Dreams don’t hurt this bad. Thank god. Thank god it hurts.]

"Easy! Easy..." She was already out of the chair and half over me, her good hand flat on my chest, pressing me down into the bed with exactly zero effort because I had exactly zero fight. "Down, big guy... You’re not going anywhere. Doctor’s orders."

"Which... doctor..."

"Me... I appointed myself Tuesday."

I lay there and let my lungs figure themselves out while she settled onto the edge of the bed, and when my voice finally came back it came out as gravel.

"Where’s everyone... any contact?"

"West..." Her answer came fast and complete, a report she’d kept warm for me. "Off the highway, by a dirt trail behind an old rest stop, tucked in tight, engines cold... I’ve had them on the radio twice a day, every day... They’re fine, Nikki. All of them... Fed, armed, and bored. Leo’s learning to whittle... I hear it’s going terribly."

The breath went out of me long and shaking, and my fist closed in the quilt without asking me.

"Your dad..."

"On the radio too."

"What did he say? When you first called... when he heard you."

Something crossed her face, fast, and her eyes went to the window and stayed there for a second.

"...That one’s mine."

And I let it stay hers.

"How long was I out?"

"Five days..."

[Five-]

My head started the arithmetic on its own, thirty minus five, and she watched my face do it and got there ahead of me.

"Twenty-five," she said. "...Yes, I too can do math."

I stared at her, and she stared right back, and neither of us put anything else on that number yet.

"...How?" I asked instead. "Last thing I have is a doorway... After that, nothing. How are you... how is any of this..."

"Mm." She tucked her feet back up under herself on the edge of the bed, getting comfortable, and her voice went lighter. "Honestly? The first part I barely remember, and I’ve decided I’m fine with that... I remember dark... I remember being angry... at, mmm, everything? The air... I was furious at the air, Nikki, like the air had personally wronged me."

"Sounds right."

"And I remember something small kept ramming my shin. Over and over... A little furry battering ram, headfirst, absolutely relentless... herding me. Every time I turned the wrong way, wham, shin. So I went where I was herded."

Her voice slowed down.

"And you were face-down half in the sick bay doorway with your hand locked around that injector... knuckles all split. I couldn’t get your fingers open... I had to peel them off it one at a time, with one hand, in the dark, while my own head was... loud."

She flexed her left hand slowly, looking at it.

"There was no label on it, but looking at your state, I put two and two together. So I jammed it into my thigh, and I sat down on the floor with your big stupid head in my lap, and I listened to you breathe wrong until the sun came up."

And that’s when the door to my room nudged wider and a small shape shouldered through the gap, crossed the floor without hurry, and came up onto the bed in one hop.

Tikki walked the length of the quilt like a landlord inspecting the property before planting himself squarely on my sternum, two and a half kilograms of absolute certainty, and looked down into my face.

"Mea."

It came out cracked. Rough and thin and scraped at the edges, half the sound missing out of the middle of it, and my chest went tight around the exact shape of why.

"Yeah," Nia said quietly, watching him. "He screamed for you that night for hours, Nikki. By the time I was me again, there was nothing left of his voice; he was just... opening his mouth. When I finally got my head clear, I found the IV line on the floor... someone had ripped the drip straight out of my hand."

Tikki kneaded the quilt once, twice, then folded down into a loaf on my chest with his eyes closing, as though embarrassed.

"He saved us both," she said. "Start to finish..."

My hand came up and settled over his back, and his whole small weight rose and fell with my breathing, and for a while I didn’t trust my voice with anything.

"...Yeah," I managed. "He does that."

We let the room be quiet.

Then she pulled one knee up, rested her chin on it, and looked at me with her eyes narrowing.

"Your turn... I watched the smoke up north from our balcony for two days, Nikki... The whole northern sky..."