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For a rebellion settlement, the hospital rooms were pretty good. It was clean enough. Some anonymous rattling could be heard from the hallway vent. Till wasn't sure which was worse, a rat infestation or the guts of the building failing. Maybe both. The walls were painted beige, though laced with cracks. Plastic curtains lined a window, out of which he could glimpse violet dusk. Inside it was dark because they didn’t have the budget for twenty-four hour electricity.
Till grimaced and chewed on his lip. That air vent was too fucking loud.
It would be nice to have a wider view, but Till was hospitalised. Couldn't move anything from the waist down without searing pain shooting up his legs, like his bones had turned to razor blades inside of his flesh.
So he lay still, bored and sulking. Nobody but a nurse had come to visit him yet, and there wasn't much they could do considering the main damage was various types of bone fracture. They offered him some pills for the pain, and he refused. He had a lurking feeling that it was deserved to the fullest.
A knock at his door. He steeled himself and put on his most unbothered facial expression. "Come in."
Ivan poked his head in. "Aw, now I don’t want to anymore." He wore his signature thick green hoodie and jeans, but it was hard to see in the murky dark.
Till resisted rolling his eyes to the back of his head in annoyance and the conversation hadn't even started. Usually, he'd ignore him but he was bored out of his mind. "...Get inside."
He came in and gently shut the door behind him, revealing a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. They were wrapped in shiny transparent plastic and dotted with water droplets, which shone somehow, glinting with tiny fragments of moonlight. Their petals were thin and fragile. He carefully put it down on the table next to Till and smiled. "Do you like them?"
Till glanced at the flowers and then eyed Ivan carefully. These were not a gift.
Chrysanthemums were an earthly flower, but segyein had harvested and preserved almost every species. The colony they lived in had an impressive floral selection for a rebellion their size, but Ivan must have had some trouble to get his hands on these. He was the smartass type to know flower meanings- he probably knew Till was clueless about them too.
The dark shadowed his face but Till could tell that Ivan's smile wasn't genuine– it was slightly too overbearing. But he hadn't tossed the bouquet onto the bed, or stormed in without knocking. Whatever Till had done, it couldn't have been that bad. "Uh. Yes. Very... elegant?"
Ivan took a seat. "Enjoying the free meals and sitting on your ass?" Till's resolve weakened.
"Pretty boring. I don't think being temporarily disabled is as fun as you think."
"Be grateful it wasn't permanent." Now he was sure; Ivan was pissed.
Ivan took a look around them incase anyone else was nearby (was he going to hurt Till?) and then leaned in, glowering. "Do you know how worried I was?" He spoke quicky in low tones. "What the hell do you think you're doing, throwing yourself in front of a car?"
Till looked back to the window and tried to seem unfazed. The pretty hues of the sky were beginning to dull out. "It bought us time."
Thinking back to the blurry memory, it was a kind of heat-of-the-moment decision. Humans were destroying, looting, setting fire to buildings. It was the evening so not many people were around in the business district. The first of the reinforcements had arrived and Till had the bright idea to hurl himself over the hood of the car and crash through the windshield.
It worked. For a split second, the driver was very shocked, and then Till’s foot burst into the his skull like a young child jumping into a swimming pool. The passenger was killed by the crash that followed shortly after the driver lost their frontal lobe and control of the car. Till's legs pretty much broke on impact, but he miraculously survived the crash itself.
Ivan didn't work in the field that much. He was definitely more strong than Till- but his smarts had made him a more useful resource in intercepting messages, planning missions and other strategic jobs in the rebellion. Like Till said, a smartass.
"Was 'human missile' really your first thought? Couldn't you have just shot them?"
"Hyuna thought it was cool." Till retorted. "And I haven't been allowed a gun, specifically at your orders." He pointed an index finger at Ivan and prodded it to his chest indignantly. "Lord fucking knows why."
Ivan scoffed. "I meant your team. Most of them are pretty good with guns, couldn't they shoot? And I know why. You know why. Don't play dumb."
"I'm not? I don't know what kind of mental gymnastics you do to get by, but I actually say what I mean, like a normal person-"
"Because-!" He caught his raised voice and lowered it, because they both knew the walls were thin. Till wondered if they had been completely alone, somewhere private, whether Ivan would have been so considerate. "Because you threw yourself in front of a car for no reason. So what will you do with a gun?"
A tense silence lingered for far too long.
Till wrung his wrists and turned back to face him. Ivan's eyes bore into him. Tried to grasp the seams of his iris, pull them apart till his whole eye was void, and parse something in the darkness.
"I would never. I know... I know what it took to save us. I would never."
"Don’t be a martyr. Anakt would have tightened security after any successful escape."
"..." Till felt small. He felt like Ivan had made an incision into his skull and laid the sludge bare. Tears threatened to fall. His childhood self would be ashamed.
"I'll kill myself if you do. If you die, you'll kill me." Ivan’s voice was suddenly uncharacteristically weak.
"Ivan-!" His eyes stung. “… I won’t." The dam broke and the saltwater spilled. He told himself it was because of the painkillers he didn’t take.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” Ivan felt himself tear into halves. Seeing Till try to hold his composure made him feel like scum.
“Uh… I guess… All I can do is promise you.” His words were laced with voice cracks.
Ivan sighed. “Fine.” He put his head down on the edge of the hospital bed and let out a breath. Felt around for Till’s hand and grasped it with both of his own. “Don’t fucking scare me like that ever again.” Rubbed each of his knuckles with a solitary thumb, held the fingers tightly.
They sat there for a while. It was too dark to read the analogue clock, so either one of them wouldn’t be able to tell if minutes or hours had passed, talking quietly in the somber night.