He opened his eyes with a start.
His heart was beating a thousand beats an hour. Each beat was painful like the impact of a hammer.
He had the acute sensation that he was precisely where he shouldn't be. It felt as if the walls were sinking in. Closing in around him.
As if he were running out of air.
The lights, too. The lights were blinding and hurting his eyes.
It was as if all his sensations, as if the whole world was assaulting him. But worst of all was the fear that gripped his heart.
Worst of all was that...
"Desmond."
Hands on his shoulders. A sweet voice.
It's you. It is you, isn't it? At last we meet again. My savior.
Desmond opened and closed his eyes.
His vision gradually cleared.
His surroundings, the indistinct form he had mistaken for his savior while half awake, became clear.
It was Christina.
It was Christina and all was well.
Well, as fine as could be expected.
That had just been...
Desmond took a deep breath, struggling to calm himself.
Nothing.
It was nothing. Less than nothing.
He had fallen asleep.
Desmond rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He had fallen asleep next to Christina while Amy, whose life was at stake, was receiving medical attention.
Shameful.
"We're safe, Desmond," Christina continued. You can relax.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's just...." He didn't know how to finish the sentence.
Well, no.
It wasn't that. It wasn't that exactly. The closest thing to the truth was that he simply preferred to keep quiet.
"Did you have a nightmare? I'm surprised."
"What do you mean?"
Christina looked away, smiling slightly.
"Don't take this the wrong way. But you've always seemed too strong for that. As if nothing could affect you. Even after seeing you cry that time."
He' d rather she hadn't mentioned that.
Desmond was ashamed just remembering it.
He had no regrets... his sincerity, that show of emotion, had probably helped him a lot in getting closer to his teammates.
At the very least, more than keeping quiet would have helped.
But it was embarrassing. That didn't make it any less embarrassing.
"It's silly. You're as human as anyone else. Of course things affect you, and it's natural to have nightmares."
"Before, maybe I was too strong for that. But now I'm too weak."
"What are you saying?"
"Before, I had nothing to lose. That's why I could be strong. But now I have too much to lose and it scares me, you can't imagine how scared I am."
"Amy will be fine," she said, slowly and after a while. "The worst is over. What you saw... Well, dreams are dreams. Nothing more, nothing less."
Yes.
Desmond was not one of those who believed that dreams were, or could be, like messages from the gods.
But...
"Ah, no. I know it'll be fine. I'm not worried. .... Well, yes, I do. Of course it does. But, you know... Not really. I know she' ll come out of it. There's no way she won't pull through."
"What were you dreaming about, Desmond?"
Desmond swallowed hard. He couldn't help that highly suspicious reaction.
"Nothing."
Christina gave him a sidelong glance. It was a blatant lie.
He was sure she had seen through it as usual.
The question was whether the girl would press the issue or leave it alone. That wasn't so clear to him, really.
"You weren't dreaming... about me?"
Desmond jumped as if he had received an electric shock.
What? How could she think that he...?
He had widened his eyes, and Christina's eyes looked back at him as if the girl wouldn't understand why he had reacted this way.
As if he was overreacting.
"I would never look at you that way. "He said it so fast that she bit her tongue. By the way, it would be better if he swallowed it before he said something else stupid... But for the moment he had to make use of it, to undo the gaffe, the tremendous blunder, he had just made. "I mean, you are very beautiful. Inside and out. Anybody would be lucky to have you by their side. But... you're my teammate."
Christina nodded her head slowly.
She seemed to have taken it well, or not? Yes, he still couldn't breathe a sigh of relief.
He couldn't be entirely sure.
"Desmond. I appreciate what you just told me, I really do. I'm used to getting compliments, but not such sincere ones. But I just... I wasn't going there."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't ask you if you'd had a dream... of that type about me. I thought if you hadn't dreamt about Amy, maybe you dreamt about me. Worrying about what might happen to me. What's almost inevitable, really."
Ah, fuck.
What a fuck-up.
Now that was a fuck"up. And he was never going to be able to forget it.
"In my defense, I woke up a few minutes ago," he stammered, eyes averted, cheeks burning.
"Don't worry, it's already forgotten. Okay, you didn't dream about Amy, you didn't dream about me. Sorry for being a pain, if you want me to stop, I will. But I'd like to know what you dreamt about. Because when you woke up... you had a face... I just care about you."
Desmond folded his hands in his lap. He looked down.
"I know. Someday I'll tell you."
"Okay," she accepted it without further ado. That made him feel guilty.
As if he owed her an explanation. He gave it to her.
"I don't want to tell you because I don't want you to think less of me."
"I would never do that."
"I know it here," he said, touching two fingers to his forehead, "but not here," he added, holding his hand to his heart. "Not yet. It's a delicate thing."
"Okay. You don't have to feel forced to speak. I don't mean to put pressure on you."
She understood him perfectly without needing him to say a word.
How jealous.
Desmond scratched the back of his head. Meanwhile, he looked for a good way to say what he had to say.
Despite what Christina had just told him, he did feel compelled.
But it wasn't something he could talk about lightly.
He had to think it through.
Desmond didn't intend to tell her the truth. Not now, nor ever, more likely. But... he wanted her to understand his silence without having to break it.
Complicated.
Boy, was it complicated.
"Years ago, I lived on the street."
Desmond was silent.
Christina didn't fill the silence by saying something like you already told me that.
"During that time, I killed a child. For a bit of food. Because he wanted to take it from me. I killed him and then his friends ran away. But that's not what I was dreaming about. This is something I'm willing to tell you."
"But that, whatever it is, I'm not. Because it's more serious."
"I hope... I hope you're not worried. Wondering how serious it could be, that I wouldn't be able to tell you, when I've told you such a thing without any trouble."
Christina nudged him on the shoulder. Her smile was open and beaming.
Like a child's smile.
"Of course I'm going to worry, you idiot. But there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to feel guilty about this too. Besides, I liked it."
"What?" Desmond asked, blinking, genuinely confused.
"Knowing something more about you." And her smile, which was already almost blinding, widened a little more as she said it.
Desmond responded to that smile with a grin.
But his was less bright.
Smaller. Cohibited.
Like him.
He looked away.
It's true, I can't look at you like that.
But, if you keep it up... I'm going to get the wrong ideas in the end. Because I'm such an idiot.
His cheeks burned.
■
She opened her eyes.
Through the window, whose curtains were drawn, the long fingers of night were filtering through. Still. As if this wretched night had no end....
Or as if she had been here long enough for the day to have come and given way to night once again.
A day, several days, who knows?
No. Surely it had only been a day.
If she had spent that long under treatment, she would most likely be dead right now.
Amy felt strange.
Alive, but very strange, and she quickly identified the source of that strangeness.
She was alone in this hospital room. Neither her teammates nor the healers were there, but that wasn't it.
It was this.
Amy raised an arm toward the ceiling. She opened her hand.
She stared at her outstretched arm that seemed to want to catch the light from the ceiling.
This arm... it wasn't her arm.
She had lost it, but the healers had made it regenerate. Her original arm, the arm she had been born with and grown up with, would be burning right now.
Or in the trash.
In any case, out of her reach.
Amy had lost it and now she would always have... this thing.
It's not like it was any different than her "'original" arm. In fact, it was exactly the same.
There wasn't even the slightest difference, and Amy could move it to her satisfaction. It was as if nothing had happened. As if she had come out of the fight unscathed.
However...
Something.
Something was missing.
Amy covered her eyes with the back of her arm.
I'm not going to cry.
I'm not going to cry, she told herself over and over, as if to convince herself.
But, of course, she ended up crying.
Bitterly.
■
When she managed to calm down, Amy dragged herself to the bathroom to wash her eyes. She didn't want her teammates, when they were let in, to notice that she had been crying.
Her face was all red, and that wouldn't be a problem.
The problem was her red, slightly puffy eyes.
How could she hide that or even disguise it?
They had enough worries on their hands. Desmond, especially. She didn't want to add to their burden by making them worry that she had lost an arm.
She hadn't lost anything. Nothing was missing.
Her arm was still there. It was a most stupid reason to cry. If she' d had a legitimate reason to feel this way...like a trodden down piece of shit, she would have been honest with them.
Amy would have leaned on them, if that were the case. But to worry them over something so petty?
She couldn't.
She didn't want to.
But it's not like she could do anything about it, really.
What was done was done.
At most, she could dry her cheeks with a towel, which she had already done. Tears weren't like bruises; something she could hide with makeup and move on, pretending things were fine.
The most she could do was to reassure herself. Make sure to never cry again.
And, with any luck, her eyes would be back to looking normal by the time Desmond and Christina were allowed in.
She wouldn't be the one to go out looking for them. Not like this.
Amy wanted to see them, wanted to check with her own eyes that they were okay as soon as possible. But...
She would wait. For their sake.
Amy was to greet them with a smile, not tears in her eyes.
They had had enough tonight. And, in general... Truth be told, Amy often had the feeling that she was what she had been in the woods.
A dead weight for the team.
Someone who didn't give, who only took what she was given.
That was why she was determined not to add to the mental burden of the two people most important to her.
The most important?
Even that was an understatement.
Amy looked at her reflection as if it were a different person.
-They're all I have.
And, once something was damaged, it would never go back to the way it was before. It would never be like before, even if it looked like it on the surface.
She knew that well.
■
With his heart pounding, Desmond touched the doorknob and turned it.
It seemed to him to pass slowly.
But it was over before he could blink.
Amy was there, in bed. She was fine. A nurse had already told them that, of course. Told them the details. But he was only reassured when he saw her well with his own eyes.
They approached the bed.
Amy held out her arms before Desmond made a move to hug her.
He took the invitation.
He held her in his arms tighter than was really necessary, to feel her, to feel that she was real, that she hadn't disappeared into the night.
Like Abigail.
He felt her heartbeat in his chest again, but it wasn't the same.
It wasn't the same at all.
Having people around, that was....
Desmond swallowed.
-I'm sorry," he whispered.
Amy, by way of reply, patted him on the back a few times.
-You're always the same," she replied just as softly. Too hard on yourself. You had nothing to do with what happened to me. With anything that ever happened to me.
They both knew that wasn't true.
He had made a decision. And dragged all the others down with him in the current of that decision.
Abigail had lost her freedom.
Amy, an arm.
It wasn't certain she could have kept it if they had gotten there sooner, but....
She had lost it and had come too close to death.
Too close.
And all... All for nothing, as he had already explained.
Absolutely nothing.
He pulled away from her, at last, and let Christina have her turn.
The flame that had flared in his chest grew warmer, seeing that.
Desmond rubbed his eyes. They stung.
For some reason, his eyes stung.
Yes... The reason was that he had come home.