The medical center was deserted save for the handful of medical staff, Lille and Aaron. The rest of Lille's team had either been treated already or were in another room. Lille had been lucky, the bullet had gone into the soft tissue of her calf but not deep enough to fracture her fibula.
After the doctor removed the fragments of the bullet, she was discharged with instructions to rotate to light duty with physical therapy but not prosthetics or grafting. To Aaron, modern medicine was magic. Gone were the days of needless amputation and leeches. Lille would recover without fear of gangrene or needing maggots to eat the dead tissue.
Aaron wasn't a SDS employee but their medical team treated his injuries just the same. His own injuries were superficial thanks to his body armor consisting of grazes and bruises. The next few hours went by in a blur of medical treatment and idle chatter.
Once their respective treatments were completed, Aaron and Lille waited together in a treatment room for Luke to arrive to drive them to the safe house. Aaron watched Lille curiously as she laid on the bed, her leg bandaged and raised, trying to get a read on her soul pattern.
Lille was capable of magic but he was still trying to discover what her limits were. On the battlefield, she had manipulated a pocket of time and had correlated people and places at a distance. If she had done all this without a teacher he wondered what her potential was now that she'd returned to her.
His body finished its reconstruction. Aaron suspected that wounds from the gunfight during their escape would heal by tomorrow if this went well. He didn't know where they were, aside from the SDS compound. "Where is this?"
Lille rubbed the grogginess from her eyes and softly yawned, still shaking off the effects of the anesthesia from her surgery. "Texas, south of San Antonio."
"How did you end up here?" Aaron focused on his hands, he was more accustomed to the weight of them and controlling them now. He glanced up at her to find her watching him.
Lille sat up, adjusting the back of the bed up with a sigh. "Joined the Marines, did my time in and left. I met Morris during one of my tours but didn't call him until much later. I gave college a try and found that I missed being in the heat of things so I drifted towards contracting work." She shrugged.
"What did you study?" He wasn't sure how modern women lived. Even in the early days, women could receive an education within convents from nun. It made sense that she'd continue her education after her early years with the nuns but did that mean she hadn't been impacted by the exorcism like he had been afraid of?
"European history," Lille stretched her arms. "Obviously, I'm gaining a lot of real world experience from my work."
Aaron smiled at the comment. He hoped that maybe with the magic and the life of a warrior that some of her memories as Iehan had returned but there was no way for him to know. "I'm curious. What do you remember?"
Lille glanced over to him. "Like from my childhood? Or do you mean something else?"
Aaron ran his hand over what felt like long hair, he hadn't gotten to look at himself in a mirror yet and wasn't sure what his face looked like. "Your past life, you remember it at all?"
Lille was about to answer when a knock at the door interrupted her. A blond man peeked into the room with a friendly wave. "I heard you needed a lift out to the manor? You guys ready?"
Lille slid her legs over the side of the bed, grabbing the cane the staff had provided her. "Yeah, give me a second. Still coming out of the fog. Luke this is Aaron. Aaron, Luke."
"Nice to meet you." Luke was tall but lean and muscular, wearing a black jacket over a white shirt and jeans. He was friendly enough as he shook Aaron's hand, appraising the stranger with bright blue eyes before shifting his attention to Lille. "That looks pretty inconvenient, Lille. Did you want help?"
"Nah, I got it." Lille shook her head, with a roll of her shoulders. She fussed with her hair with her free hand for a moment before looking up at Luke. "I want to grab food on the way so I can just crash out when we get there."
"Sure." Luke nodded. "I guess old habits die hard."
Uncertain of what this meant, Aaron looked between the two with growing curiosity. He read an unspoken tension between Lille and Luke that wasn't inadvertently hostile. "Were you two lovers?"
"Don't you dare." Lille blushed and growled, shoving past the two. Luke grinned as he held his hands up and got out of Lille's way.
Aaron watched Lille get halfway down the hall before he nudged Luke and quietly asked. "Well?"
Luke considered the retreating form of Lille and wondered if she could hear him. He glanced to Aaron and shrugged with a grin. Aaron squinted at Luke, it was a rather straightforward question, yes or no. But if they weren't talking about it, perhaps it was forbidden to discuss in the domain of their work.
"After you then," Aaron commented, motioning after Lille who stopped to glare at them over her shoulder. "Why is she so mad about it?"
"Not so much mad," Luke replied softly, patting Aaron on the shoulder as he passed through the doorway. "She doesn't like talking about her personal life here." He straightened and headed after Lille.
----
The drive to the safehouse was quiet. Lille was still annoyed and groggy, she dozed in the front passenger seat only perking up to order food at the drive thru window. Luke was content to listen to the radio and let them rest. It seemed natural for the both of them in a way that made Aaron feel a little jealous. Had Luke taken his place as Lille's guardian?
Luke had called the safehouse a manor earlier, and Aaron could see why. It was a two story beige brick house with a gray roof beyond a large iron and brick gate in the middle of farm country. The nearest neighbor was concealed behind a narrow line of trees as they drove up a long driveway. This Morris and SDS were clearly well connected and wealthy. It made him wonder how the country was run if a mercenary lived like this.