Chapter Text
Just when River Cartwright was convinced he was out of firsts, Jackson Lamb made River miss the ornery, old bastard.
Where the fuck was Lamb? And why did he find himself wanting to see the man first thing when he woke up in an unfamiliar hospital room?
Where the fuck had he gone?
Was he that annoyed with River for leaving the cabin? It's not like he had much of a choice; he was literally dragged from the dwelling. And sure, River wasn't kicking and screaming, but only because he was unconscious. The shards of glass wedged around his skull reminded him of that.
River remembered the ambulance ride in a blur of pain, confusion, Lamb squeezing his hand and then blessedly, drugs.
Louisa sat beside him, and that alone was enough to calm his rising heartbeat, the monitor next to him beeping traitorously. Louisa’s head was perched on her hand as she slept in the chair next to his bed. He checked the clock on the wall, but the numbers and hands blurred together, and he had to look away before the sight caused him to vomit. His leg ached, his head throbbed, his arm stung, but none of it was overwhelming. His brain told him he must be on the good drugs. His body reminded him there were some things even drugs couldn't hide. And yet still, his brain latched onto one question: where was Jackson Lamb?
River was really fucking sick of thinking he had been rescued one minute, only to wake up later after being unconscious.
Although at least this time, he seemed to have been actually rescued.
He chanced a glance at his leg. Its length was wrapped tightly and held rigid in a brace and elevated off the bed. River’s sock-covered foot protruded from the end as if it belonged to someone else. He had a momentary urge to giggle, thinking it was one of those non-slip socks like the ones they had at Sunny Times Homes, intended to prevent the user from falling, but it was clear to even a drugged River that he wouldn't be walking on his injured leg anytime soon.
One thing was clear: he really was on the good drugs.
One thing wasn’t clear: where the fuck was Jackson Lamb?
River chastised himself before he could think of it further. Of course, Lamb wouldn’t be here. The last thing River remembered clearly was Lamb yelling at him for not untying the tourniquet. His leg was still attached, so that was a good thing, but he had no idea of the extent of the damage.
Fuck he was thirsty.
He didn’t want to wake Louisa. Didn’t want to call for a nurse either. There was a pitcher and a cup on the sliding table by the bed as if waiting for him to wake up. River stretched his fingers searching for it, but it was just out of his reach. He grunted, adjusting himself slightly to try again, wincing with the effort.
“You’re going to pull your stitches like that.”
River’s head slowly wobbled towards Louisa. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You should have,” Louisa said, standing and walking towards the pitcher, filling the cup and bringing the straw to his lips. “Don’t be a hero, now.”
River had never tasted anything so delicious as plain water tasted at that moment.
“Thanks,” he offered quietly, licking his lips.
Louisa stretched before pressing the call button and then retaking the chair by his bed.
“Where’s Lamb?” River asked, the words slipping out before he could stop them, his voice still weak from disuse.
Something he couldn’t read crossed Louisa’s face before she pressed her lips together. “He’s being treated,” she said.
River found himself frowning. The drugs were confusing things in his brain, but something wasn’t making sense.
“What aren’t you telling me?” He asked, though he found it more difficult to speak than he ought to. His tongue felt thick, his head too heavy for his neck to hold up properly.
A nurse bustled in before he could answer. River tried to follow along as she asked questions and took notes of both his vitals and responses, but she kept jumping in and out of frame. His head still hurt, and his leg throbbed any time he thought of it, even despite the drugs that had his brain wrapped in wool.
“Don’t blame the drugs, your brain’s always like that,” Lamb offered unhelpfully from some recess of his brain.
“Not helpful,” River mumbled.
“What was that?” The nurse asked; she had been speaking to Louisa, but River had lost his train of thought.
“Where’s Lamb?” River asked again, his heart rate spiking in answer.
“Just rest, River, let them take care of you, you need to rest.”
“I’m in a hospital bed, Louisa. I can’t rest any more than this unless I’m unconscious,” he objected.
“That can be arranged, Louisa teased. At least River hoped she was teasing. “Seriously, River, you fucked your leg properly, don’t try to move.”
The nurse returned — River hadn’t even realised she left — and put something into his IV line. His body became heavy, sinking into the bed like an anvil. The last thoughts were that something was wrong before he succumbed.
Everything was wrong.
The next time River woke, it was as if he was slowly emerging from underwater. His hearing came first, the pain next, and his eyes finally opened last. He blinked against the harsh lights, remembering with a slap that he was in hospital. His head pulsed, his arm stung, and his leg throbbed, but the drugs were doing well enough to make him feel as if he was wrapped in cotton. Unfortunately, the cotton had also made its way down his throat.
River coughed against the dryness, or tried to at least, the sound coming out more of a choke than a cough. Catherine appeared beside him next, saying something he couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears, but when she brought the water to his lips, he understood that well enough. He gulped the water down, and Catherine said something else he couldn’t understand, but he could tell from her face she was likely scolding him. He knew that look.
Catherine pulled the water away, and River coughed again, this time a normal-sounding, but painful gesture. River shook his head, then immediately regretted it, squeezing his eyes shut against an onslaught of pain that had him wondering how someone managed to move his head into a vice without him knowing. Once he was able to open his eyes without someone stabbing a spike into his head, the ringing slowly subsided from his ears as his eyes opened.
“—er? Riv—? Can you hear me?”
“Ye—yes,” he stuttered, grateful he hadn’t nodded his head in agreement.
Catherine exhaled what sounded like relief. She looked tired, though even a concussed River knew not to mention it, especially if he was part of the reason. He and Lamb.
There was that nagging thought at the back of his mind.
“What?” River asked when he realised Catherine had said something he had missed.
Catherine frowned in disappointment — again. Or maybe it was concern. A bit of both, he conceded.
“How do you feel? Do you want me to get the doctor?”
“No, no, that’s okay,” he said quickly, chancing a glance at his injured leg again.
A wave of nausea rolled through him suddenly when he thought of the bullet potentially still lodged in his thigh. River squeezed his eyes shut against it and felt Catherine’s hand drop to his forearm. It was warm, and River felt it spread through him, but that could be the sick he swallowed down.
“I think I might—” River cut off to clamp his mouth shut against the nausea.
He looked around desperately for some receptacle, but his injured leg kept him tethered to the bed. Just when he didn’t think he could hold it any longer, Catherine appeared where he leaned to the side with a plastic tube she shoved in front of his mouth, barely catching his vomit in time.
Well, this is a new low, River thought as Catherine wiped at his mouth once he had expelled what little was left in his stomach. He could taste the beans, but he wasn’t sure if that was his imagination or not; he didn’t dare look at the contents of the vomit bag Catherine had expertly handed off to an undisturbed nurse. Catherine eased him back against the bed, lowering it before accepting something else from the nurse and placing a cool, damp cloth on his forehead.
River sighed.
“It’s alright, River, you’re safe now,” Catherine soothed.
“Lamb?” He asked, though his voice came out quieter than he thought it would.
He blinked a few times, desperately trying to keep his eyes open, suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion as a nurse buzzed around on the other side of his bed. River couldn’t sleep now; he needed to talk to Lamb. About what he couldn’t remember, but he knew deep inside, in a way he couldn’t explain, that he needed to see his boss. To debrief? To apologise? None of those seemed righ,t but they were the best River’s battered mind could come up with.
“It’s okay, River, just rest,” Catherine said, and he wasn’t sure if she was ignoring the question or hadn’t heard.
“Lamb,” he said again, forcing his voice louder as he attempted to grab her hand, though it just twitched sadly beside his ruined leg on the bed.
"Just rest, River."
River tried to sit up, but his neck only lifted his head slightly before spasming and dropping his heavy head back to the lumpy pillow behind it.
He needed Lamb.
He needed—
He—
Anything else he might’ve thought was lost to darkness.
River was getting really fucking sick of waking up disoriented, wondering where he was — hospital, which beat a lot of other options — and cataloguing how much pain he was in at the moment — more than he liked but less than he thought he should be. This wasn’t a new thing, only kept to today, but still, he could do with waking normally and never having to try and piece together what happened before he was knocked out again. Maybe River Cartwright wasn’t made for the easy-morning-warm-blood-no-problems life.
Lamb would say it was his own fault.
Lamb.
Where the fuck was Lamb?
River’s eyes shot open with a gasp that was enough to startle Louisa from where she sat by his bed scrolling through her phone. She jumped from the chair as he started to cough, her hands hovering over him, unsure what to do, before she picked up the cup of water on the sliding table. She held the straw to his lips, and he drank greedily.
“Thanks,” he managed once the straw was removed and the cup returned to the table.
Louisa stared at him a moment before brushing the fringe from his forehead. His hair hadn’t grown back to the previous length yet, but it was getting there. He hadn’t decided if he would cut it again. What a strange thing to be thinking about, he thought. His mind was like that recently, flitting from topic to topic like a bee hopping from flower to flower.
“Are you in pain? I can call a nurse,” Louisa offered.
“No. I’m alright,” he said automatically. His brain hadn’t decided yet if it was a lie or not.
Louisa again trained her eyes on him, or maybe they hadn't left. She seemed as if she too were deciding if he was lying or not. He shifted under her gaze, and pain spiked in his thigh.
“What’d, um, what’d they say about my leg?” He asked as he glanced at the elevated and wrapped appendage. He tried to wiggle his sock-covered toes and winced as a stab shot out from the wound site up towards his hip and down to his toes simultaneously.
“Don’t do that,” admonished Louisa.
“Do what?” River asked through gritted teeth.
“Whatever it is you just did,” Louisa answered, apparently, his wince wasn’t covered as well as he thought it was.
“I just wiggled my toes. Or tried to,” he admitted, distracted by the pain, he wasn’t fully sure they cooperated.
“Yeah, don’t do that.”
Fair enough.
“So, how bad is it?” He asked apprehensively, fully aware that Louisa had avoided answering the question.
“Worse than I hoped, better than I feared.”
River’s face scrunched up in confusion. “What does that mean? Just tell me.”
Louisa frowned. “A doctor can probably explain it better, but,” she paused, swallowed thickly, then looked around as if a doctor or nurse would save her. It wasn’t likely fair to her, but River would rather hear whatever was wrong with him from her than from anyone else. “The bullet tore through your hamstring and lodged in it. Did a right number on it. You’re going to need to keep your weight off it for a few weeks; that brace on for even longer. Crutches. Physio. The whole thing.”
River exhaled loudly, dropping his head back against the pillow. Great. He thought about the stairs at Slough House; they were a death trap in regular times, and navigating them on crutches would be next to impossible. He didn't hate the idea of an extended vacation from the monotony of Slough House drudgery but time off meant time to think. At least he would have more time to spend with Grandad if he was allowed to drive which he doubted he would be.
Shit.
Grandad must be worried sick.
Or he hadn't noticed. River wasn't sure which distressed him more.
“Has anyone spoken to my grandfather?”
Louisa frowned again before she plastered a slight smile on. “Yes. Well, no. Catherine called the facility, explained to them what happened, had them tell him you were busy at work, and they didn’t want to worry him.” David Cartwright likely had noticed his grandson had missed his regular visit. Lately, he hadn’t known River more often than he had during his every other day visits but even when he didn't, he often mentioned his grandson, River. “She was going to go see him herself, but she's been with Lamb.”
Lamb.
Double shit.
“How — how is he?” River stuttered.
Where is he?
Why wasn’t he smoking at River’s bedside, getting frownded at by nurses and ready to admonish him for some real or imagined failure?
“Catherine didn’t want me to tell you,” Louisa admitted, looking at the door as if their co-worker would appear to admonish her.
“Tell me what?” River questioned.
Louisa exhaled loudly, then explained, “he’s in the ICU. He had a brain bleed, they had to go in and stop it.”
River was glad he was sitting down. Lamb had been injured, his head bleeding, but he seemed so like Lamb that River couldn’t believe he had been slowly deteriorating all while saving River’s life. “But he’ll be fine, right? I mean, it’s Lamb.”
“They don’t know,” Louisa admitted. “They’ll know more if he wakes up.”
"If?"
“They just don’t know, River. It’s not like he’s in peak shape.”
“They’re doctors, they’re supposed to know these things.”
“I know, but they don’t. I’m sorry, I wish I had better information. But, you're right, it’s Lamb. He’s the most stubborn bastard I've ever met, you think he’d let a little brain bleed kill him?”
River spent more time than he would like to admit thinking about the stubbornness of Jackson Lamb. Initially, it was wondering how that unkempt disaster of a man could ever be the alleged Legend he was supposed to be. His grandfather hadn’t confirmed or denied many of the rumours swirling about Lamb’s time in Berlin. But it was hard to remedy his flatulent boss with someone of Lamb’s notoriety.
Catherine once said Charles Partner, former First Desk and Catherine’s former boss, that she mentioned with the reverence one usually held for someone like the Queen or at least the lead singer of Queen, thought Lamb was the best of them all. She said it with a disappointed shake of her head, but he got the idea that disappointment was based on wasted potential, not an incorrect observance.
Lamb had made River’s first eight months living hell, not even pretending that he didn’t dislike River and was now using whatever spy skills he had left to make River quit. He hadn’t known River well at the time, so he couldn’t have known that merely made River want to stick it out more. At least until Sid died — or didn’t die, River was still unsure on that in the general day-to-day of life — and Lamb had been compassionate for the span of a car ride. And then things went right back to the way they were. River was still at Slough House, Lamb was still Lamb, though admittedly not as actively antagonising River.
Then River finally lost it and attempted to leave Slough House for greener pastures, or at least pastures that weren’t sod and shame. He thought Lamb would be happy to be finally rid of the Cartwright family for good, only it seemed to piss Lamb off more. Maybe he had actually respected River for sticking it out at Slough House like he had. River disappointing someone wasn’t a surprise; him finding a new way to disappoint Lamb when he thought he had the market cornered was.
But as he counted his time at Slough House in years rather than months, he began to look at Jackson Lamb a a slightly different light. He was quite good at his job when he cared enough to do it. And it didn’t pass by River that caring enough to do it only involved someone at Slough House, or someone he had worked with even tangentially, like Dickie Bow. River was one of his Joes.
Years later, and River wasn’t sure if Jackson Lamb was too stubborn to die or had been slowly trying to kill himself bottle by bottle since he left Berlin. Maybe neither heaven nor hell wanted the old spook.
River couldn’t be part of the reason he finally shuffled off this mortal coil.
Then again, no one seemed to survive River Cartwright’s orbit, so why would Jackson Lamb be any different?
His eyes fell to Louisa’s worried face, swallowing thickly. If he weren’t a selfish prick, he would let Louisa escape his gravitational pull of pathetic mess and undignified death, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” she said, reading his mind and reaching for his hand, squeezing it once before releasing.
River tried to reply, but something — guilt, fear, selfishness, or some combo, he was unsure — lodged in his throat, preventing any reply, though he wasn’t sure he could come up with something coherent either way.
Louisa stood, running a hand through his hair before wiping a tear he didn’t realise had fallen and resting it on his cheek. “It’s going to be alright.”
He somehow managed a nod, though he knew better than to think he had convinced Louisa. And Louisa knew better than to try to assuage him through words she couldn’t guarantee.
On the third day, the day before he was due to be discharged, River finally convinced Louisa and Catherine to let him see Lamb. He hadn’t woken up, though he had been moved from the ICU to a regular floor. River’s floor as it turned out.
“I can walk,” River glared at the wheelchair Louisa leaned against.
“You can barely crutch,” Louisa corrected as she moved the chair closer to the bed and locked the wheels.
He scowled for good measure, but couldn’t object. The too-cheery physio, Jeff, had River on crutches the last two days, ensuring he could manage well enough before discharge. River hadn’t imagined how difficult crutches could be. Three more weeks without weight on his leg, and River’s palms and wrists ached already from the crutches.
Louisa helped him transfer — slowly, painfully, pathetically — into the wheelchair and propped his injured leg on a pillow. “You don’t—” Louisa silenced him with a glare. “Alright, thank you.”
River turned back, and Louisa squeezed his shoulder once before unlocking the wheels and pushing him forward.
Lamb’s room wasn’t far, but the ride felt both too short and too long. River counted the doorways they passed as a way to shut his brain off, but it didn’t work. Catherine looked up quickly and smiled, and for a moment, River could almost believe everything would be okay.
Almost.
Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, the OB offered unhelpfully from his head.
River hated grenades.
Louisa wheeled him closer to the bed, and River finally steeled himself to look at Lamb. River had seen his boss asleep before. Often, actually. He hadn’t seen him like this. There was a stark white bandage around his head, his skin a pallor that could only be described as a mix between haggard and sickly. But the worst part was his features. They were slack in a way that made Lamb look more like a husk than a man, even an unconscious one. River hadn’t realised he had sucked in a shocked breath until his ribs made their displeasure at the sudden movement known.
River looked quickly to Catherine and then to Louisa, who had taken the other chair on Catherine’s right.
“Has there been any change?” He asked, voice quieter than he meant it to be.
Catherine pursed her lips together, and that was enough of an answer for River, but she shook her head regretfully before offering a solemn, “No, I’m sorry.”
River’s head bobbed in answer. Thoughts or quips swirled through his head, but there was only one thought that kept jumping to the front of the queue:
This is your fault.
This is all your fucking fault.
River hadn't wanted to leave.
Which was a new feeling for him, not wanting to leave the side of Jackson Lamb. He hated the old man for it. He hated himself even more for hating it. Why had he agreed to that errand with Lamb? Because he basically agreed to everything Lamb offered lately. If he hadn't gone and gotten himself shot, then they probably would've made it out, and Lamb would've gotten treatment.
He wouldn't have had to traipse through the woods to get help for River.
Lamb could've gotten to a hospital, gotten treatment instead of waiting around while River was in surgery.
But he had.
And now Lamb was in a bloody coma.
Louisa rolled him back to his room, which was about as undignified as it sounded. He wanted out of the wheelchair, out of this hospital, but he could barely stand, let alone walk. Everything about the situation made his skin crawl, and not just the stitches lining his thigh.
River waved Louisa off when she tried to help him from the chair to the bed; instead, she watched with a raised eyebrow as he stubbornly did it himself, trying and failing to hide the hiss of pain that escaped his lips as his leg pulled.
Christ, this was going to get old fast.
He felt old. River wasn't even yet thirty, and here he was barely able to make it from a wheelchair to bed. He breathed heavily through his nose, not just to try and make it through the pain, but to stop himself from snapping at the fucking wheelchair, the bed, at Louisa.
"Do you need—"
"Nope," River answered too quickly.
Louisa exhaled loudly, likely fighting the same battle River was. "I'll be back tomorrow then."
"Thank you," River said, not enough but all he could manage at the moment.
Louisa squeezed his shoulder and walked slowly from the room.
He wanted to call after her, to beg her to stay, but he couldn't force the words past the lump of shame in his throat.
River couldn’t go home.
Not that his East London flat had never actually felt like home.
A fifth-floor walk-up on crutches was impractical if not impossible. So, Louisa had bundled him into a car and began driving to his real home, or at least the only place that had ever felt like home, though at his worst, he sometimes still felt like a visitor. His grandmother would hate to know that, and it wasn’t her fault, nor his grandfather’s; it was his mother’s.
Last time he drove to Tunbridge Wells, it had felt like a mauselouem. He had gone only a handful of times to get his grandfather new books or clothes, or flowers from the garden.
Now he would be staying there.
Now he would be staying there, without either of his grandparents, and Lamb was still in a fucking coma.
"You alright?" Louisa asked, glancing at him and asking for the hundredth time in the rear view mirror.
He gave her a half-hearted thumbs up.
She meant in the car, at the current moment, and while his pain was barely manageable and every pothole felt like another bullet, he wouldn't have admitted that. Nor would he have admitted how painful it was to leave the hospital knowing Lamb was still unconscious, still in a bloody coma. That pain had nothing to do with his leg and everything to do with his heart, with the pain that lodged behind his ribs and stayed.
Despite the pain, River hadn't been looking forward to the ride ending. The car slowed to a stop outside the house, and all River could think was that neither of his grandparents lived here anymore. Suddenly, the house felt as foreign as it did the first time his mother brought him there at six. As Louisa pulled his bag from the front seat and made her way to the back, River took an exaggerated breath as he steeled himself for the awkward dance to get out of the car. Louisa pulled the door open and pulled his crutches out first, resting them against the side of the car before gently grasping the foot of his bad leg in her hand and elevating it, he moved the pillow it had rested on and inched slowly out of the car. Louisa slowly lowered his braced leg to the ground, and River breathed slowly before taking her outstretched hands and letting her pull him to his good leg.
River grunted as he stood, and she handed him his crutches. He leaned on the crutches as she picked his bag off the ground and then followed Louisa to the front door. She unlocked it with the key she had gotten the day before when she dropped off groceries, and River followed her in, crutching straight to the den and sinking into his chair by the unlit fire. Louisa didn't follow him, depositing his bag in the guest room on the first floor and likely putting the kettle on. It was just gone four in the afternoon, but he was exhausted. He dropped his head to the back of the chair and closed his eyes, taking in the familiar scent of the house, even if it was slathered with a cover of musk of dust and disuse.
He must've fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes, the fire to his left was crackling, and Louisa was curled up under a blanket in the OB's chair, book open in her lap. River's heart fluttered at the sight of his favourite person in his grandfather's chair. He watched her for a moment, afraid to blink, afraid to alert her that he was concious and ruin the moment with words he would inevitably trip over.
"You're staring," Louisa said without looking up and a laugh bubbled from him unbidden.
"Sorry," River smiled.
He was not sorry.
Louisa looked up finally, returning his grin with one of your own. She stuck a bookmark in the novel, closed it and placed it on the table. "Hungry?"
River's stomach answered for him and he nodded sheepishly. Louisa disapearred and River slowly followed, lowering his leg from the ottoman Louisa placed it on while he slept, levering himself to stand, breathing heavily as the blood rushed down to his foot and his thigh threatened to sieze on him. It had only been a few days but River was already ready to toss the crutches into the fire. He made it to the kitchen without incident, barely, lowering himself into one of the kitchen chairs with a grunt.
Louisa looked back at him from where she stirred something on the stove. "I would've brought it to you."
"It's good for me to move around." She raised an eyebrow but didn't object before she turned back to the hob. River lifted his upper body, trying to peer around her from his seat. "What're you making?"
"Pasta," Louisa answered simply, not bothering to turn around.
"Smells good," River said and she hummed in agreement. "Anything from Catherine?"
Louisa turned. "No, I'm sorry."
River nodded his head, unable to find any words to offer. He leaned back slowly in the chair before lifting his leg onto one of the other unoccupied chairs. Louisa plated their food, depositing the steaming bowl of pasta onto the table in front of him, followed by a glass of water and a combination of the plethora of pills he needed to take for the next few days: antibiotics, pain pills, other ones he didn't know the names of but swallowed obediantly anyway.
“River," Louisa said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, putting her fork down and settling her eyes on him. "What happened out there?”
River was surprised it had taken her this long to ask. At the hospital he had been too out of it to ask what had happened to the other men, to the ones whose brains weren’t splattered against him when Shirley — at least River thought it was Dander — shot him. River scrubbed a hand down his face, the stitches in his arm pulling at the motion, but he ignored it and the urge to scratch at the healing skin.
“Uh, Lamb had me drive him to that wholesale place that was going out. There weren’t many people in there. I hadn’t even wanted to go in, but Lamb wanted me to carry the wine,” River swallowed thickly, putting his own fork down and wishing he could forget everything that had happened that day. “It was so stupid, I just bumped into a guy. I didn’t — I didn’t even do anything else. I apologised and he told me to fuck off.”
Louisa huffed a noise of surprise and he tried to piece together the order of everything that happened after before he work up in hospital.
“I did actually fuck off, and went to find Lamb who hefted a box of wine bottles into my arms and pushed me to the exit. The next thing I knew the guy I bumped into and his two friends were following us to the car. They were just being pricks, Lamb said something back to them, I don’t even know what I just started the car and drove away.”
River took another sip of the water, then another bite of the pasta Louisa had made, feeling the warmth spread pleasingly down his throat. He tried to concentrate on that, on the company, on the warmth of the room and not the burning ache of the bullet hole in his thigh.
“We didn’t get far,” River huffed a laugh, a depressing sound and the fire crackled, covering the depressing sound that followed. “They drove us off the road, I don’t know if Lamb hit his head, we hit a tree pretty hard. I was dazed but he dragged me out as they shot after us. One caught my leg pretty soon, I went down hard, my whole leg was on fire, I — I don’t know how—,” he swallowed again, the lump building in his throat becoming harder and harder to speak around.
Louisa leaned over the table and took his trembling hand in hers and the look she gave him almost tore him open anew. The worry, the fear, the rage, she felt all danced a ballet across her face.
“Hey, I know I asked but you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Bless her but River knew he couldn’t avoid it forever, and Louisa and Shirley had saved his life. He owed it to her.
“It’s alright. It’s alright. Uh. Lamb dragged me along. Wouldn’t leave me, though all I wanted to do was lie down in the dirt and die.”
He hadn’t realised he was crying until the tear dripped off his face. He hastily wiped at it with his free hand, then dragged it across his other cheek for good measure, sniffling an inhale. Louisa squeezed his hand tighter, grounding him.
“Yeah, he dragged me to that cabin. Made we eat some disgusting canned beans since we didn’t know how long we’d be out there. Then he went for help and I — I just let him go. I knew he was hurt and I just watched him walk out the door so he could save me.”
“River,” Louisa said, cupping his face in her hands when he didn’t look at her right away. “You didn’t let him do anything. It’s Lamb, you think he ever does anything he doesn’t want to do? You were hurt, he—“
“He was hurt too,” he interrupted, shaking his head slightly and she dropped her hands from his face to his own hand again. “Worse than me.”
“You didn’t know that. He didn’t know that either. No one did. Unless you have x-ray vision you haven’t told me about. And you had a bullet in your leg. You easily could've died out there without medical intervention, River."
River frowned. His eyes fell to his braced leg, and he knew it was bad, he knew he would be working to recover for months, but that didn't change the guilt and pain and he had no idea how to make Louisa understand.
“I’m a cancer, Louisa, ask anyone. Ask my mother. Ask Lamb if he ever wakes up.”
He looked away from her again, shame creeping up his spine with so much force it was paralyzing.
“River, this wasn’t your fault. None—,” she paused and he had the sudden urge to apologize to her for everything.
“You should get away before I drag you down, too.”
“Fuck you,” she said, standing up so quickly it almost gave River whiplash. “You don’t get to say that. Not to me. Not ever. Do you hear me?”
She pointed at him, one finger scolding him worse than he had since the time he broke Nan’s favorite tea pot after she told him not to run in the kitchen.
“Lou—“
“No! Don’t Lou me. Don’t you fucking dare," she shook her head, rage radiating off her like a fever.
Part of River was scared he had finally gone too far, but the other part of him thought, finally. Finally, she'll yell at me and leave. He didn't know which terrified him more, that she would leave or that she would stay.
"You don't get to tell me who to care about, and you don't get to try and scare me away because you're afraid."
"I'm not, I'm – I'm – fuck Louisa, you don't get it."
"I don't get it?" Louisa questioned, her eyebrows shooting to her hairline. "You don't think I blame myself for Min's death everyday? That it was my fault? That if we hadn't fought he wouldn't have been out alone that night? That if I hadn't agreed to take the job to begin with?"
"Lou, none of that is your fault."
"And this isn't fucking yours. River, Christ, you haven't even asked who the men were."
River frowned. "It doesn't – it doesn't matter."
Louisa laughed, but there was no humor in it as she dropped back into her chair. "Yes – yes it does you twat. You really thought this whole time everything happened because you bumped into someone?"
"Well, yeah. What other reason?"
"The wine, River. They were all members of organised crime. The store was a front only they hadn't gotten everything out and the box Lamb bought had drugs in the false bottom of the crate. MI5 got them from the boot of your car – it's totaled by the way."
River hadn't bothered asking about his car, he had figured as much, hadn't had the mental strength to think about it.
"Great," he mumbled.
"That's why one of them tried to take you. They thought you and Lamb were from the Patrick Crime Family."
"Christ.
"You're not a cancer, you're a – you're a – you're mine, okay? Stop trying to make me regret it."
River dropped his head to his hands. He still didn't know what to think. There being an actual motive beyond three deranged psychos was helpful, but it still didn't change everything Lamb did to save his life while he limped through the woods and got taken hostage.
Louisa's phone vibrated on the table, startling them both.
"This conversation isn't over," she said as she she stood and walked into the foyer.
River sighed in frustration, leaning back slightly in his chair, forcing himself to pick at the pasta. He wasn't hungry suddenly, unable to stomach more of his failure along with Louisa's cooking. He could hear Louisa's muffled voice and tried to listen but couldn't discern any words. River forced down another two bites and a gulp of water when Louisa walked back into the kitchen.
She hung up the phone and looked at him, her face breaking into a relieved smile.
"Lamb's awake."