Medsi

[Jay Carpenter]

His new cast was sleek, some futuristic white polymer sculpted perfectly to his hand and halfway up his forearm. He kept flexing his fingers like it might suddenly disappear, like he’d imagined the whole thing. The doctor had asked, as they always do, how the injury occurred. Jay had scratched the back of his neck and muttered something about a wall, a really dumb moment, and too much adrenaline. The doctor, stone-faced, informed him that punching solid concrete was, in fact, an excellent way to break bones. A solitary “yep” was all he replied.

Jensen had flickered through his mind for half a second. One call and the guy would probably materialize right there, but Jay couldn’t stomach the thought of that kind of pity. Better to suffer than be seen suffering. That was the rule, right? Especially after bringing this on himself.

Not that he was suffering now. No, whatever they’d shot him up with had turned the sharp pain of reality into something soft and fuzzy and far-off, like a memory you weren’t sure actually happened. His brain felt pleasantly unglued, thoughts floating up and away like helium balloons. Even the led lighting had lost its usual sting. He blinked a few times just to see the shadows bend. That was trippy.

Outside, the city air was colder than he remembered, but in a good way, like mint on the tongue. He and Natalie hadn’t really agreed what came next, just moved forward like inertia would carry them somewhere. Jay stood on the sidewalk for a moment, head tilted, watching the road like a taxi might appear.

And then, somehow, a car actually pulled up. He blinked again. “Huh. That actually worked.” he said aloud, deeply impressed with his own luck.

A slow, satisfied smack of his lips followed. He felt great. Dangerous thought. 
“Alright,” he said to Natalie, leaning in slightly like he was about to share state secrets. “Two options. Kremlin…” He raised a finger solemnly. “Or Radiance Hotel. Technically I have claim to both. Probably.”

A lopsided grin followed, like half his face was unglued from the other half, “dealer’s choice,” he nodded, suddenly needing to steady himself as he climbed into the car.

[Natalie Grey]

Natalie was relieved to finally be free of the hospital, an additional tension she hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying until they were out in the cold, clean air of the street. Jay was floating by then, eyes glassy from the morphine and whatever else was still lingering in his system. She wasn’t about to disabuse the miracle of the car with the more mundane truth: that she’d messaged Toma while the doctors were applying the cast. So she only chuckled a little at the wonder in his tone, and told him to ask the universe for something else to see if his luck held.

In the meanwhile his options for sanctuary were abysmal, but she listened to the solemn logic anyway. In other circumstances a hotel would have been an easy option, and closer given the hour, but even if it hadn’t been that one, the idea of rootlessness tonight twisted a knotted pain in her chest. Not for the loss of the apartment, but for the fragile balance life had become in the aftermath of Mexico. She didn't want more temporary, ephemeral survival until the next disaster or break down. Not for either of them. Nothing but restrained affection showed in her expression, and a softer patience than the one in the waiting room. Tonight’s fears were packed neatly away by now, and for the prosaic crisis of where to go in the early hours of the morning she was entirely unruffled.

“Dealer’s choice,” she agreed easily, reaching to gently cup his head so he didn’t bash it while he wobbled into the backseat. Toma’s eyes were amused in the driver’s mirror when Natalie joined him, to no great surprise. Natalie met the gaze without comment.

She dozed while they travelled, head light against Jay’s shoulder. Sleep threatened a deeper tide despite everything, though she roused by the time the car hit the gravel of Belizna’s drive. By then fingers of sunrise were glowing on a deep purple horizon, and the castle loomed like a shadow in the lightening gloom. She’d spoken about it to Jay before, but she wasn’t sure what context he retained of her activities in Moscow while he was fighting through the motions to survive grief. A renovation project was quite removed from the majesty of the reality though, even though it was still very much a work in progress. Habitable, though. For the most part at least. She’d already been living here the majority of her time prior to Emily’s wedding, and that was several months ago.

She touched his leg to see if he was awake. “Third option,” she murmured with a coy, slightly sleepy smirk. “Belizna.”

[Jay Carpenter]

He smirked at Natalie’s claim for dealer’s choice, then realized a second too late that he had no idea where they were going. He didn’t ask. He wasn’t familiar with this part of the city, and he let himself assume they were drifting somewhere toward the center.

Natalie shifted against him, her weight settling into something still. The city blurred past the windows, lights smearing together in the middle of the night. Whatever they’d given him dulled the edges, but he hated the way it also threatened to blur him. He hated that slipping feeling, like losing his grip on himself one molecule at a time. It had been a hell of a day.

Leaving Natalie’s flat without knowing it would be the last time he saw it intact. The surprise of Matias. The wall. The crack and flare of pain when his fist gave out. His casted hand traced slow, absent circles over Natalie’s fingers where they rested in his lap. He remembered those same hands clenched tight at the ball, nails biting into her palms while he hauled her out of that building in Sierra Leone. They looked delicate now. Fragile. But he knew better. There was steel under the skin. His own hands felt filthy.

He tried to push Nox out of his head. Forced the thought down, swearing again that he wouldn’t dig it back up. But the question gnawed anyway. Was it really Nox he’d been desperate to reclaim? Or the version of himself that existed when their friendship was at its peak. Before the States, before Cayli, before the long shadow of murder and torture settled into his soul? Back when he texted dumb pictures of Stetsons and despair and thought that counted as honesty.

No. It wasn’t Nox he wanted back. Not really. Not in that same way. It was the past.

He’d been clawing at it like Nox himself was some key to time travel, some door back to a life that no longer existed. And the way Nox had looked at him. Shit. Half longing. Half apology. Completely alone. Standing there naked in his room while Jay hovered in the doorway like a coward. He might as well have tried to fuck a ghost.

Which meant the truth was uglier than he wanted to admit. Jay had been the asshole.

He’d used Nox. Used the closeness, the attention, and the heat like a drug. If he’d cared at all, it had been shallow and self-serving. Something to fill the hollow spaces without ever asking what it would cost someone else.

He rubbed a hand over his face and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window.

Yeah. That tracked. Jay as the villain. If their lives were a movie, the audience would be rooting for him to rot alone by the end.

And yet. He looked down at Natalie, dozing peacefully against him, trusting him with the simple weight of her body. The question hit him like a sucker punch.

What the hell was he doing with her?

She deserved something solid. Someone whole. Someone who didn’t feel like half a man stitched together by duty and bad habits. Not someone only half alive, half present, half somewhere else even when he was right beside her. The guilt pressed heavier than the drugs.

He fought sleep as long as he could. Stared out at the passing city, counted breaths, tried to keep himself upright. But the hum of the vehicle and the fragile safety of the moment finally dragged him under.

Belizna was the third most preferable option. He’d never seen it himself. Only the version Natalie painted with her words. It felt like her world, and he approached it with the same caution he would a freshly mopped floor, afraid of tracking his mess across something clean.

Dawn washed the building in pale gold when they arrived.

Jay watched the light creep along the edges of the place and wondered not for the first time whether this was a new day. Or just the same failures, drenched in better light.

[Natalie Grey]

Toma didn’t say anything when they got out of the car. Nor did Jay. In the predawn light deep shadows clung to his face. Whatever relief he’d chased seemed to have come full circle in its torments. Natalie didn't look away, but neither did she speak. She only shifted the bag back over her shoulder, pressed her hands in the pockets of her coat against the cold, and led the way inside. Without meaning to her fingers found the edges of the pendant Toma had handed her in the aftermath, forgotten until now. She hadn’t even properly looked at it before she deposited it, and she didn’t pull it out now either, but her thumb found a sharp edge. Toma implied the visit had been a warning. One she knew she ought to heed, even as she already knew with free-falling certainty that she wouldn’t. Answers wouldn't solve anything, but it felt like purpose anyway. Her grip squeezed until it bit.

“The builders will probably be here soon. But all the work's on the other side of the manor now. There’s electricity and water. No heating.”

She didn’t flick on any of the lights. Partly that was mercy for them both. Windows softened the gloom, and there were barely any furnishings yet; nothing to trip over or stub a toe at any rate. It couldn’t exactly be called homely – their steps echoed in the silence, and it was cold, unfinished. A shell yet to fully mold. But it was hers.

Her hands felt raw from glass dust when she pressed the right door. Natalie desperately wanted to shower, scrub away the night and the lingering smell of bleach on her skin, and especially the hospital smell. But exhaustion won the brief argument in her head. Once they were in the room she pulled out the music box Emily had gifted her, carefully placed it on the side, and then dumped the bag down at her feet. The coat followed unceremoniously despite the chill. The power already unfurled; she’d spent enough nights here alone that it was second nature to make it comfortable.

There had been more she’d planned to tell him, but she only tidied it away. The walls of her mind were as solid as the walls of this castle. None of it mattered.

She turned to help Jay with his buttons. That seemed second nature too, mindless in a way she wasn't thinking about. Her gaze didn’t shy from his, though only when it connected naturally. It was the sort most people flinched from, not because it was hard, but because it pierced without meaning to. Others seldom liked the way it made them feel. She didn’t pretend Jay didn’t look roused from a waiting grave. She didn’t pretend she wasn’t aware of the distance, even when he was close enough to touch. But she wasn’t here because he invited her in. It was stubborn choice, like a squatter outside locked gates. If he was going to let darkness swallow him whole, he’d have to do it looking at her face.

Talking wouldn't help. It might well slam a shutter down on what was left, pull him further away from truths he’d prefer not to face. It nearly always did, in a way she’d slowly grown afraid of. But it was also like pressing the pad of her thumb into the edge of that necklace: self-managed, intentional pain despite that fear. She’d continue now, even when it began to hurt. “The thing that haunts me most is knowing I wasn't enough. That I couldn't do anything to stop any of it.” Her voice was soft, matter-of-fact like it always was when she offered something that cost her. Her eyes burned tired in their sockets but there were no tears. For a moment her chest felt like someone had stamped on it. She didn't clarify, she didn't need to. She meant her father. The children from St James. Azu. Cayli. Jay had trusted her to keep his sister safe. She’d failed him too. Then, and now. It was a confession that went deeper than any single thing; a sideways glance at scar tissue calcified by time, and long before Africa. It made her who she was: hardened, untrusting, reckless with her own safety.

She didn’t check his expression then; she didn’t want to witness if he were blank, not trusting her own reaction. But it wasn’t honesty she shared for the sake of intimacy or in vulnerability, and it wasn’t to draw comfort; it was shared in recognition, a glimpse of hollow space she understood the shape of, at least in part. Natalie wasn’t talking about grief; Jay had long since slipped those simpler chains into some place darker. If she never said anything it had only ever been respect for how deeply he hurt – and her culpability in that pain – knowing she made it worse, fearing she would not only deepen the wedge but deliver something more fatal in the process. She’d thought he’d come back, if given time and support from the brotherhood symbolised by the pin on his coat. But more and more she realised it was only a slower demise with the same singular end, and not one she was prepared to watch while they both pretended otherwise. Even if he grew to hate her for the persistence.

”I worked in a women's shelter before St. James,” she continued softly, her attention just on the buttons now. “Their stories varied, as bad as you could imagine, and none of them mine to repeat. But they all had a common thread. Every single one of those girls blamed themselves for what had been done to them. Or what they thought had been done to others because of them. The line between villain and victim is slim sometimes. I’m not telling you they were all innocent, good people. But none of them were to blame for the actions of others. And none of them deserved it, no matter what they had done.”

The distance Jay had nearly always cultivated grew deeper over the months, his gaze moving through her more often, like she’d finally blurred with the world he no longer found himself a part of. This morning he kissed her cheek like an act of treading water, oblivious to her reaction. They both knew it wasn’t just a man’s face which had broken Jay’s hand. That the RLD hadn’t been about pain-relief, but numbness and chasing sparks to give shape, meaning, something. Jay blamed himself for everything. He was still doing it; carving up the pieces of his life for punishment, letting it bleed him out. Every drop of blood was not self-mutilation, it was just more proof of the world extracting justice; a self fulfilling prophecy. She didn’t know how to stem that tide, or how to give him enough to hold onto. Not beyond the steel core of her: all she had left. All she always had left. But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t try.

“It was called Jasiri because of the gates. The building itself was a grey compound, chainlink fence, barbed wire – like a prison, because of where it was. But they’d painted the gates in bright colours and flowers and a board that said kuwa jasiri. It means “be brave” in Swahili, and when I first got there I assumed it meant the bravery it took to make it that far. But I was wrong. The brave part was the living after. The hardest part, too.”

The buttons were done, and she lifted her hand like she was about to help him shoulder out of the coat. But on whim she ended up cupping his cheek instead. Her thumb traced the hard line of his jaw like so simple a touch could chase the tension away. Once he’d tried to soothe the tension from her clenched hands the same way. Her words penetrated or they didn’t. She didn’t expect a response, or an acknowledgement. She was prepared for him to crumble. She was prepared for him to say nothing, crawl into bed and sleep the drugs and pain off. Yet she held the moment a little longer, close enough to feel heat and heartbeat, like she always did when he’d been absent; because he meant something to her, and because this time he came back. Right now the small victories were all they had to count, and she did. That last moment wasn’t for him, it was for her.

She switched off her phone before she got into bed. Jay was the only one who knew about the apartment beside Toma, but Natalie presumed she’d report it. And that was a familial fallout she’d deal with on her own terms, and in her own time.

[[apparently i had already written this, so i am posting it. no need to reply]]