"Why? Why would she do that?! She wanted you to bring him back, but let him be found just anywhere?! I don't get it! Why make sure you did it instead of Graves and your father bringing him back, but leaving him where they could get their hands on him! Why bring him back at all? Why did she have to give me this damn curse?!"
The questions poured out of me once I was able to regain my thoughts. Now, here I am, cradling my head like a damn child, asking why me?
Bavarthos was quiet while a silently raged inside my head. After a few more moments, I dropped my hands and picked my head up. "Doesn't matter now. What's done is done."
I hear a sigh of relief escape from Bavarthos, "Thank you for that moment of clarity kicking in! I was starting to question if you were having a episode of psychosis or not. Listening to that was," he grips his temples thinking of the word to say, "exhausting, to say the least. WHY is not the question anyone should be asking anymore. Now, do you know what the question you should be asking now?"
My jaw had dropped, and I couldn't help but chew on my bottom lips right side as I cocked my head and asked him A question.
"Are you always such an asshole, or do you reserve that shit for me?"
Bavarthos chuckles, amused at my response. "Come now Sin, you're special, but you're not that special." Wrinkling his nose up at me, he nods his head.
'Great.... I'm surrounded by assholes.' The line rolls through my mind, but I doubt he'd get the reference.
I roll my eyes at him, flipping him the bird. "Right when I started to think you weren't so bad after-all." I mutter.
"Look Sin, I can't answer the questions for my mother that you are asking. Like you said the events can't be changed so there's no point in trying to figure it out, for now. Now, let's focus on what we are going to do about these bullets." Clapping his hands together, rubbing them he asks me, "By chance can you snap your suit you were wearing earlier? I want to see where exactly that thing hit you."
We worked together on checking the suit and then setting up ways to do different tests. The strange thing about the bullet was it didn't frag or flatten, making it possible to reuse it infinity.
It pierced through the heavy Kevlar armored pieces on the suits. So, we were testing to see if wards and extra pieces of our armor would make it stop the bullet.
We were not having any luck with it...
"Damn it."
We're checking the block of clear gel that has been catching the bullet after our tests, sure enough we see the red glow.
"How many pieces did we stack this last time?" Bavarthos asks me, going to write a calculation down after measuring the depth the bullet went into the gel.
"Four. How deep did it go in?" I ask going to check the kevlar pieces we still had to use.
"Two inches. We've made progress but that's still not good enough..." Bavarthos grumbles trying to think.
"Come on, take a break." I tell him, pointing to the fresh pot of coffee Viekar just brought us.
He grumbles something incoherently and pours a cup. After taking a sip, he blinks his eyes rapidly, like he just processed something.
"Sin, I do appreciate the help you've been giving me, but isn't John going to be a little upset? You've been here almost 6 hours now." He takes another sip of his coffee.
"I left a note for him to call me when he got back home." I shrugged.
Bavarthos laughs, "How does he call a place you don't get reception at?"
I balked before muttering, "Shit."
Bavarthos holds out his hand and rolling his eyes at me, "Let me see your phone."
I hand it over to him and he mutters, "The things I do for you..."
"Thank you, B." I watch as a golden glow forms on his fingertip that he touches to the phone.
"There. It'll work but your GPS won't work inside any of the strongholds or my places." He tosses the phone back to me and I start checking it.
"Thanks B." When I see nothing showing up in messages or missed calls, I put it away.
"Guess he just needs some more time to work through his thoughts." I mumble to myself.
Bavarthos looks me over with a questioning eye, brow raised in silent query. I just shrug it off and he sighs.
"Sin, can you go grab those books on that shelf." He points to a bookcase with a large number of books on it. "The dark brown ones with the gold, metal binding. There's four of them."
Seeing the ones that he's referring to, I grab them, shocked at their weight.
"These are like lead weights!" I exclaim in my surprise, feeling like I just grabbed a bag of cement, instead of one book.
Bavarthos chuckles, "That's why I asked you to grab them." His lips formed into a tight, thin smile that curl up into his cheeks.
I let out a long, slow breath and take the book to the table and set it down. Annoyance riddles my tone as I spit out, "You're cute. You know that?"
A deep low chuckle escapes Bavarthos' mouth, "So I've heard." Snapping his fingers, the rest of the books appear on the table.
"You know Sin... If I am starting to get on your nerves, you are more than welcome to leave. Go home and patch things up with our dear Johnny boy. Since you did come here, maybe he knows that the phone wouldn't work? That's why he's not called?"
'That does make sense... maybe I should go...'
*ringing*
I pull out my phone and look at the screen, "Speaking of the devil...." I mutter and answer it.
"Hey John, are you.." I'm cut off suddenly by a different voice.
"Sin, it's not John it's Suites. I have him here with me, but he's pretty wasted right now. I could hardly get him to stand up to get him to the bathroom." He sounds concerned and irritated slightly.
I sigh, "He's wasted? That's so unlike him.."
"He's been going on about something between you two since I showed up about two hours ago. He was wasted when I got here too. Did you guys fight?"
"Yeah... Kind of. I didn't think it was that bad for him though. Where are you guys?" I ask, chewing on my bottom lip.
"We're at HQ. We're up in the offices right now. We were in the mess hub, I thought food would be a good idea for him.... BOY WAS I WRONG." He laughed at the last part and that's when I heard retching in the background. The sound of a muffled phone being set down and footsteps are heard.
Far off from the phone I can hear, "Dude, the trash can is right here. That's right get it out man."
I hear the footsteps again and him picking up the phone.
"Yeah, hey Sin, you're coming soon right?" He pleas with the whiny tone of voice.
"Yes, I'll be there in just a few minutes. Bye." I hang up and turn to Bavarthos, who looks at me and waves lazily.
"Ta-ta. I'll let you know if I make any real progress. Go take care of your hubby."
I nod and wave. "Thanks, B." Snapping myself to his office in HQ, I'm greeted by the smell of vomit and Suites trying to keep John's head over the trash can. I look down and see he's sprayed vomit across the floor, of which, I'm standing in.
'Well this is lovely.'
In between John's retching, he's muttering almost incoherently, "Why won't she believe me?"
Suites just keeps the trash under his mouth, "Come on man, get it up and out. She'll be here any second now."
John sounds like he's going to cry, "It doesn't matter, she thinks I'm a fake. Her face said it all earlier." He ends up vomiting more and I'm in shocked silence.
"Dude, it's not like that, you know better. Let me get you some water, help you get the taste of vomit out of your mouth." Suites turns to get water from the sink and sees me and tenses up in startled shock.
"Oh Sin! Did you just get here? I didn't even hear you." He laughs his reaction off.
"Yeah, I did." I head to the sink and fill a glass handing it to Suites who hands it to John.
"What is this?! I don't want water! Give me a damn drink!" He pushes the glass from Suites away.
'So he's THAT drunk. Lovely.'
I carefully avoid the vomit and grab the glass from Suites, "You need to drink some water John. You're going to feel like shit tomorrow, might as well drink some fluids now."
"Mary?" John mumbles looking up from the trash can.
"Yes, John. It's me, your Mary. Now, drink some water please." I tell him running my fingers through his hair, only for him to flinch away from me. It was like my touch had burned him.
"Just take me back home." Is all John mumbles.
"Okay." I go to snap me and John, but Suites grabs him and the trash can as John starts to fall from the chair.
"Where the hell are we?" Suites asks looking around, setting the trash can down on the ground.
"Our place." I tell him as he leans John back against the couch, who's snoring now.
"Do you know who kept giving him alcohol for him to get like this? He's got a high tolerance, so this doesn't happen too often."
"Sin, I'm not responsible for this. I showed up two hours ago and they were trying to give him water and get him to leave from the mess halls bar. I talked to him and got him to try and eat. He had a flask that he was drinking off of though." He holds his hands up in the air and takes a step back.
"A flask? A large metal silver flask, etched with a design?" I have a hunch I know which flask he's talking about.
"Yeah." He says it slowly.
"That idiot." I cover my eyes in disappointment and annoyance. "That was 151 rum..." I groan.
'No wonder he's so messed up.'
"Thank you Suites, for trying to take care of him. How are you doing?" I ask him and watch as a shadow crosses his face.
"I'm trying to keep it together. Futere, he.. he was a damn good friend." Suites clears his throat and pulls himself together. "Can I get back from here? Or do I need you to..snap me back to HQ?" Suites inquired.
"I'll snap you back. Thank you, Suites. Oh, one thing when you are back. IF you could please throw some of the powder on the vomit? I'll go clean it up once I know he'll be alright for a few." I ask him.
Suites gives me a grim smile. "Yeah, that's not too much to ask."
"Thank you, Suites."
"No problem, Sin." I snap and he's gone.
I turn my attention to the passed out, inebriated, husband of mine, who still snores at the moment.
'I do not envy that headache he's going to have tomorrow.'