Chapter Text
She stops hopping along after only a few feet, and for a second he's afraid that the only way he's going to be able to get her out of here is hoisting her over his shoulder, but then she points at one of the fallen guards, specifically at what the fallen guard is holding. Smart. A handgun for her and a handgun for him, weighed first to make sure they still have a few rounds left, and tucked into the waistbands of their pants, where hopefully they'll stay while the two of them continue to hobble their way out of the bunker.
Neither of them spares a last look at where Shaman's body lay, or towards the bend in the hallway that leads back to their mother's bloody corpse.
They exit the elevator and proceed to the deserted studio garage where they are confronted with a choice: Van Der Koy 1, the family car where he stowed away earlier , or 06 27, Mina's motorcycle. She produces a key for one from a lock box and a key for the other from her pocket, and then turns her head questioningly to him. Neither option is particularly discreet.
Mina's thinking seems to be heading in the same direction; she catches the corner of his bright red vest and waves it at him. Right. The entire city had seen him kill Melanie while wearing it. It was uncommon and flashy enough to be a problem.
It's hard to say how well Mina will blend in, either. Without her distinctive helmet, will she be able to pass for just another of the regime's guards? He doubts it. There's something unique about every aspect of her look, curiosities that had begun to worm their way into his head, even before he learned who she really was.
And now he wonders even more about all of it – when she had started wearing her hair like that, if she had designed her outfit the way she used to draw clothes all of the time, and what the family's flower symbol means to her now. There was a time when he had worn it, too. Ceremonies, portraits, dinners. It's all flooding back. Fingering the pin when he was nervous. His mother adjusting where he had placed it. Mina moving it again just to spite her, and putting her own in an even crazier place.
Taking the keys from her, he pops the trunk of the car, where the dead body he had found there earlier, apparently neglected in the busyness of the Culling, had begun to smell a little worse.
He returns the murdered man's blood- and sweat-caked vest to him with a nod of gratitude, taking back his own shirt, such as it was, that he had abandoned there. Mina watches him attentively as he airs it and puts it on, observing he's not quite sure what.
He gives the car one last look and then settles on the motorcycle. It will be a lot less comfortable, but he's got an idea about where they can go for tonight, and this will get them a lot closer.
She's in no condition to drive it; one of her legs is messed up - hopefully not broken - and she's barely hanging onto consciousness. They had raced motorcycles at the arcade a hundred times, but he has never driven a real one, and she can see the hesitation on his face. “Gas,” she points weakly. “Brake.” Then she goes quickly through the most necessary gears. She speaks tiredly and is slurring, but he can still read her lips.
He can see her groan of pain as he helps her onto the bike in front, while he mounts it behind her. He thought it would be tight, but they both fit comfortably enough. She gets them moving slowly out of the parking area and onto a street that is thankfully mostly vacant at this hour, then she removes her hands from the handlebars and her good foot from the pedal and nods to him. His turn now.
It's a little wobbly at first, but he gets the hang of it, moving just fast enough to easily keep their balance. Before they collapsed for the night, they needed medical things - pain killers, bandages, ointments. Most of the businesses are closed at this hour. He drives methodically, in a grid, searching for a pharmacy or at least a convenience store that might still be open.
Mina had been holding herself as compactly as she could to allow him more freedom to operate the bike. He feels the change as she slumps against him, her head falling back against his shoulder, her hair tickling his arm in the wind. She must have passed out. He slings an arm around her waist to hold her in place, almost expecting her to wake up as his hand passes over her exposed midriff and lands to rest on her opposite hip, her skin hot to the touch despite the breeze created by their momentum.
It feels a little strange, his bare arm across her bare stomach, resting there. Would it be as startling to her as it had been to him, if she were awake?
Involuntarily, he squeezes. She's really there, right? It's a lot harder to believe than some of the things he has seen.
But she's real. She's there. And she's so close... She smells like sweat and blood, but there's something else, too. Vanilla. Her shampoo, maybe. It smells good. Really good.
He spots some activity up ahead, but it turns out to be a lounge. Another few blocks and he finds a winner – a drugstore that's open all night. The emptiness of the street allows him to slow down enough to pull in nice and easy to the curb. He fumbles a little with the kickstand until it locks and then he turns his attention back to Mina. Her lolling head rolls into the crook of his elbow and he lifts his palm to her cheek, lightly tapping. She looks beautiful, bathed in the neon lights of the drugstore's sign. For a minute, he forgets what he's in the middle of doing, forgets their hurry.
Her eyes flutter open, but she's in no rush to move, and he studies her face. How could he not have recognized her? It's not a different face, not really, it has just changed a little. The familiar freckles are all there. The familiar shape of her nose, like their father's. And Mina's eyes... If he had ever really looked into her eyes, he would have seen it. He might not have believed it, but he would have seen it. But he had never done that. There had been the helmet between them. And when there hadn't been, he had avoided really looking deeply into her eyes, because... Well, because he was afraid he might be interested in what he saw there. And he couldn't afford to be interested.
Her swimming gaze focuses and she tilts her head slightly towards the drugstore, giving him an agreeing nod. With more grunts, they dismount. She pulls out her gun, and he follows her lead. He supposes he had figured they would have to rob the place, but he's still not to keen on the idea. Things go quickly inside. A clerk behind the counter and a lonely patron recoil in horror at his and Mina's blood-spattered faces, and then they recoil again when they see the guns. “Grab a bag,” Mina orders the clerk, and she lists off various things she wants him to put inside of it, her gun trained on him while he moves around the store.
They're not too far from an aisle of frozen food. Mina turns briefly to him: “Get some bags of peas.”
Peas?
He shakes his head, reaching instead for a box of ice cream sandwiches and holding it out imploringly. She laughs. He hasn't seen her smile yet, with this changed-but-not-new face. Not a nice smile, anyway, not a smile that didn't mean she was about to throw an ax at him.
Her smile sparkles, and for a second he can't even feel his pounding headache anymore. Does she still laugh the way she used to? It wouldn't sound exactly the same, but is it the same laugh? Tinkling? Life-giving? “They're not for eating,” she responds, still laughing. “They're ice packs, for swelling.”
The shopping bag, and a second one, too, are full when they leave, including at least a meal's worth of snacks and groceries, a box of Frosty Puffs that he grabbed on the way out, some pretty powerful pain medication, and the cash from the register. Mina told them to charge Hilda Van Der Koy.
This time she rides in the back with the bags, one of her arms looped around his waist, holding tightly. He panics anytime he feels it loosen, but she stays awake, pointing the way towards the market which he had asked her to do, having mouthed the words several times until she understood. From there, he knows the way.
The motorcycle just barely fits through the hole in the wire fence. The paths through the jungle are narrow and full of roots and rocks, but still, the the motorcycle manages to bump along most of the way to their destination, the two of them occasionally slapped in the face by branches. Fortunately, the path he and Shaman maintained for their cart was adequate for the bike, too.
Eventually the ground is too uneven and they can't go any further on the bike. He gestures for Mina to wait there, and he comes back a few minutes later with a sled he sometimes uses for hauling. He invites her to sit on it with their supplies. She tries to assure him that she can walk herself, but he insists, pushing down on her shoulders until she's on it. He trudges slowly, limited by his body's dwindling energy, but he doesn't really feel the weight. This might be the closest he has been to happy since Before, despite how twisted everything has become.
When they were kids, carrying the supplies was always his job, because he was bigger. He can still remember the feel of the backpack on his shoulders, the day they ran away to their magical perfect place, weighed down with soda and coins.
Where they are headed now isn't their magical perfect place. There is nothing magical or perfect about it. But it will do for the night.
When they arrive, he helps her up to her feet. There's not much to see when it's this dark.
She looks around, taking it all in, at least as much as she can, as a tired as she is. When she turns to him, he mouths one word: “Safe.” And she nods, her shoulders sagging as she releases some of the tension she had been holding on to.
They hadn't encountered any Van Der Koy soldiers on their way out of the city, but they had seen emergency lights reflected in the windows of the tall buildings, and Mina had heard sirens. He doesn't know what will happen in the city, who will take power or how Hilda's children, both of them Van Der Koys and assassins of Van Der Koys at the same time, will be viewed or charged. He hopes Basho and Benny will get the revolution they wanted. But in this moment, all he really cares about is making sure he and Mina are safe long enough to get a night of rest.
But Mina isn't looking at their accommodations anymore, she's looking at him. She seems to be struggling to hold her head up, and he wonders if she's going to faint, but she starts crying instead. “Oh my God,” she says, “it's really you”. Shaking her head, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, she closes the gap between them and throws herself at him, both of her arms soon tight around his waist.
He has forgotten how nice hugs are, and what it feels like to have someone who wants to hug him.
She cries freely into his chest, and he hesitantly lifts a hand to the back of her head, weaving it into her hair and pressing her against him. He would cry, too, hard like she is instead of the tears here and there that slip from the corner of his eye, but his head hurts too much, and it's possible he's too dehydrated, too.
She turns her eyes up to him, makeup smeared all over her face, and she whispers his name. He can tell it's a whisper by how little effort it takes, how shallowly she breathes and how little her lips move. He has never wanted to hear something so much.
He nods. It's me.
Not-real-Mina had been right when she called her pretty. She's very pretty. She's luminous. Mina, luminously, takes his free hand and lifts it up to her cheek, covering it with her own, swallowing. He mouths her name in return. Mina. A name he has thought so many times that it's etched on his brain, it's part of his DNA. His many wounds bleed it out.
Her chest shakes and erupts into a sob, and she dives against his chest again, He holds her tightly until he feels her stop. When she pulls away, she apologizes, swiping a hand brusquely underneath her eyes and then turning back towards the hut.
This place should sicken him, but he can't shake the feeling that Shaman ingrained in him of it being a refuge. It was the place where Shaman took him after rescuing him, or so he had believed. The place where he was able to train in secret for many years. Shaman, the dynasty's most wanted, had lived here and was never found. That's all they need right now. Somewhere they'll never be found.
“So, this is where you were all that time.” She regards the hut through eyes narrowed with contempt. She had been one of the ones searching and never finding. Then her expression softens: “This was your home?” she asks him. Home. Past tense. Maybe the idea of leaving this place behind should scare him a little, but when he looks at her, all he feels is ready.
He nods, though he never really thought of it has home, just where he lived. Mina looks...horrified. But it wasn't all bad. He got used to it. A pang passes through him, as he remembers Shaman will never come home, will never be here again, will never teach him anything else. But that was probably more feeling than Shaman had ever spent on him, the entire time they had lived here together. If there had been anything in his stomach, he might have thrown up as the memories resurfaced of what Shaman had done to him. Shaman was the reason he would never hear Mina's voice again. Shaman was the reason he couldn't speak to her. Shaman was the reason they had spent over a decade apart, and had nearly killed each other tonight.
His face must betray his turbulent thoughts. Mina reaches out, her fingers clasping around his forearm and giving it a quick, comforting squeeze. After a long quiet moment, she says, “I want to know everything. All of it. But tomorrow, OK? Let's just rest tonight.”
He leads her inside, turning on the dim lights and lighting several oil lamps and candles for extra illumination.
Then he clears off the table so that they can spread out their supplies. Mina doles out pills first, eyeing the two she had already set out for each of them and then adding a third. That one must be the pain killer. She adds several others to the pile, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and he's not sure what else. She seems to know what they all are and what they do.
He had filled all the jugs of water the day before from the stream and they are still mostly full. He and Mina thirstily chug what must be half a gallon between them, then he picks up one of the new towels from the drugstore and dips it into a bowl of water, beginning to clean around one of the gashes Shaman had inflicted on him.
Mina shakes her head, sliding her chair over until its flush against his, and she takes the towel from him, tending to the injury herself. He points at her shoulder in confusion; her wounds are more serious than his. But she points back in return, her finger pressing insistently into his chest: “You, then me.”
She frowns at the slit on the underside of his forearm once it has been wiped clean. “This probably needs stitches,” she says, wide-eyed and scared. “It's deep.”
He shakes his head. “I'll be OK,” he mouths, giving her an assuring nod. Stitches aren't really an option.
Among their supplies are laceration kits with microstaples. They flush the cut with bottled water from the drugstore, give it a pass over with an antiseptic wipe, cover it generously with antibiotic ointment, and then apply the microstaple bandages, wrapping the outside with medical tape for good measure. He smiles and nods at it with satisfaction. “Good job,” he mouths. Mina lets out a nervous breath, like she just now for the first time believes they might be able to do this themselves. She was probably used to having the best medical care available, almost instantly.
She begins moving on to where a bullet had grazed his upper arm, but he stops her, pointing to the gunshot wound in her shoulder. Whatever clotting had formed has ripped, and the wound is oozing small amounts of blood. She nods and agrees, and he helps her remove her yellow jacket. Underneath, she is wearing a black tank top, if it even could be called that. It's barely half of one.
It doesn't cover very much, but it does manage to cover the gunshot wound as well as where Shaman had stabbed her in the shoulder. He can see her sigh as she realizes she'll have to take it off, too. It's very tight and will be painful. At the hospital, they would probably cut it off of her, but she doesn't have any other clothes with her.
Pursing her lips and pressing her eyes shut hard in agony, she lifts both arms above her head, and that's when he realizes it's going to be his job to take it off for her. He gets behind her, and he's glad she can't see him hesitating and stupidly holding his hands out in preparation.
Right. Just do it.
Her skin is still hot, or maybe it's just his imagination. He slips a finger under the elastic band and then several more until he can grip it, and he slides it off. She's not wearing anything underneath it, and he had put what he considered was probably, or at least possibly, a normal amount of thought into wondering whether or not that would be the case. He closes his eyes and blindly sets the top aside somewhere, bumping into this and that as he tries to maneuver his way back to his chair. He was half blind already, one of the bags of peas wrapped in a towel and roped over his eye. Mina taps his hand, and when he opens his free eye, she has lifted her jacket to her chest and tucked it under her arms so that it covers...what needs covering. He can just barely see where the curves of her breasts begin. Those are new, she definitely didn't use to have those.
She laughs at him, but he thinks there's a small crack in it, like she might be a little uncomfortable, too.
He decides the best way to deal with that is to set about his task. Fortunately, the bullet appears to have passed cleanly through, and there's an exit wound next to the place where Shaman had jammed a jagged piece of her helmet's visor into her back. She holds up the tweezers questioningly, and he shakes his head. “Thank God,” she says. He checks the entry wound for bits of clothing, very aware of how close his face is to everything – her bare shoulder, her neck, her face, her scantily-covered chest.
He patches the open wounds in the same manner that she had attended to his. He can see her hissing in pain. They're both relieved when it's done. After they have rested, he'll rig up a sling for her. It will heal faster if she avoids using her right arm as much as possible. But she won't have much use of her left hand, which Shaman had also pierced clear through. He patches that up next, but he doesn't think the microstaples will stay. He wraps the medical tape extra tight and extra thick.
Shaman also stabbed her on each side, near the waist. He readies the bandages, but she stops his hand and pushes him down into the chair. “Your turn.” She cleans and bandages the graze quickly, and then looks him over, trying to determine what needs attention most. One of his fingers is dislocated, an easy fix. He presents it to her, biting his lip in anticipation of the pain. She lifts his hand up towards her chest, and his mind races wondering why. Because she's trying not to move her arm very much? Or is she reminding him of that night at the arcade, when she took his hand and held it close and asked him if he was with her? A perfect moment. He doesn't need reminding; he thinks about it all of them.
Or, for just one wild second, he wonders if she is trying to distract him. He doesn't get his answer, but if she was trying to distract him, it worked. It's over before he realizes she's about to do it. She strokes his hand once and then returns it to him.
He kneels down and has her stand, leaning against the table for support, while he ministers to the stab wounds at the curves of her sides. Watching Shaman plunge that shard over and over into her while he could only lay there, powerless, barely able to focus, was unbearable - each one as if it were happening to him, too. At least these ones appear to be flesh wounds, and rather shallow at that. They must not hurt too much, as she seems almost ticklish the way she's squirming while he wipes away the blood, eye-to eye with her belly button.
Once those are bandaged, he holds up his palm to her. Wait here.
He returns a couple of minutes later with one of his shirts. He doesn't have very many, and he spent probably too long trying to decide which one to give her. They are all worn thin, faded, with holes. Embarrassing. While he had been training, he hadn't cared. He hadn't cared what he wore or what anyone in the city thought of him. He had a higher calling. But now, with her, he doesn't feel very...presentable.
He had deliberated first over which she would look best in, which was, maybe, not what he should have been thinking about, but that's how girls choose clothes, isn't it? That was how Mina had chosen clothes as a kid, exclaiming how pretty she would look in this shirt or that dress and running off to try it on. Just like back then she would look pretty in anything and that did not help him choose. He eventually picked his black Frosty Puffs tank top because it was less threadbare than the others, though not particularly nice. Not nice like what she's used to.
She smiles gratefully when he hands it to her, a little surprised by the offering but soon eager to put it on. He turns his back to her to give her some privacy, his eyes shifting to all of the familiar objects around the shack, which had all seemed so benign before, but which now feel like tools Shaman used again him.
Every day for over a decade he had believed his sister was dead, her extraordinary life cut tragically short, and her brother left all alone with nothing but revenge. Every day – every hour – he had mourned her. His eyes begin to sting, remembering the nights he had spent crying, unable to hear his own wails, and the long days spent staring blankly into space while his heart tried to scab over but never could.
He wishes he could kill Shaman again. This time it wouldn't be to protect Mina, but to avenge the years they were forced to spend apart, when they could have been together instead. Wasted years. Miserable years.
He's startled out of his thoughts by another one of Mina's taps. He blinks hard to clear the forming tears and then rotates towards her, shocked to see she has removed everything else – her pants, her shoes, her socks. She's only wearing the shirt, but it's large enough on her to cover everything. He used to call her short just to tease her, but she really is a little thing compared to him, even all grown up.
He's even more speechless than usual, if that's possible. He stares just a little too long and then sits back down at the table. She lifts her foot to his lap, her bare leg stretched between them. It takes him a moment to remember that it's injured. Drawing one of the lanterns closer, he feels along the ankle and then slightly up her calf, maybe further than he needs to, avoiding her eyes, though he can feel them on him. He can't tell if the bone is broken. They've had ice on it (well, peas), and the swelling's not bad, but it's purple and yellow with bruising.
He crosses his arms to form an X. “You need an x-ray,” he mouths.
She disagrees, shaking her head. “I don't think so. I actually think it's getting better already.”
That's probably just the drugs, he thinks. He thought just looking at her was making him feel better, and then remembered they had just taken a bunch of pills.
He had been hurt enough while training that he had made himself some crutches. He could get them out for her to use. And they could pray it was just a twist or a sprain and would heal on its own.
They tend to their other injuries. The gash on his leg, not as deep as the one on his arm, but a lot longer. The puncture on her arm where he had stabbed her with a lobster cracker. And countless smaller others. They don't bother cleaning themselves up very much, except to pass a rag quickly over their faces. They're too tired for anything else. For him, bathing normally meant a hike to the waterfall, but that isn't going to be happening anytime soon.
Wearily, he rummages through the bag of groceries. All he wants to do is go to sleep, but he has to eat something first to fill the gnawing hole in his stomach. His eyes alight on the box of cereal excitedly and he pulls it towards him, already tearing away at the top of the box, but Mina reaches out to stop him, shaking her head. He frowns at her, puzzled. Gently, she takes the box from him and sets it aside. “Let's do it right,” she says. “Milk, bowls. At the very least. Let's make it special.” Then she runs her hand with a smile over the Frosty Puffs logo on the front of the shirt he lent her. She knows how to make things to special.
Reluctantly, he concedes, his eyes hungrily roving over the other items and settling happily on the box of cheesy crackers. They eat enough of a few different items to sate their hunger, and he finds a semi-squished chocolate macaron in his pocket for dessert, and then Mina starts looking around for the bed. He shows her Shaman's bed. She probably wants her own bed and it's nicer – a real mattress from a manufacturer. But she shakes her head. She points at him: “Yours.”
His bed isn't much more than a rug, some animal pelts, some moss-stuffed cushions he made himself, a couple of adequate "real" pillows, and some old blankets that are about as soft as burlap sacks, but she doesn't hesitate, dropping into it and then scooting over to make room for him. He climbs in behind her, pulling one of the lighter blankets over them, and wishing it was a cooler night. Her eyes are closed, and he thinks she's asleep already, but then she reaches behind her to take his arm and place it around her stomach.
She used to do that, when they were little. If she had had a bad day, or if she knew the next day was going to be bad. She wouldn't say anything, she would just cross over from her bed and slip into his, and make him hold her if he didn't do it automatically. Her bad days were usually his, too. And he could never understand why it felt so much better to have her there right beside him. But some things didn't change.
The simple gesture makes him feel like he really is with Mina in a way he hasn't felt yet. All the years just crumble away. He closes his eyes and they're back there, brother and sister, in their bedroom, after one of those bad days. A particularly bad one.
With so many thoughts racing through his head, he wonders if he'll struggle to fall asleep, but his tiredness wins out. And as much as he wants to just stay in the moment and appreciate the feel of her in his arms, escaping his pain into sleep is too tempting.
OOO
Erotic: Relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement.
He's not sure how long it has been when he wakes. The pain meds are still working, and it's still dark, so it can't have been too long, but he feels the difference even a couple of hours of sleep has made. At some point, Mina had rolled over into his chest, and her hot breath against his neck might explain the dream he was just having. Blood rushes to his cheeks as he remembers it, and he doesn't have much blood to spare. He can feel her fingertips through his thin shirt. She has her hands against his chest...
Maybe they shouldn't have shared a bed.
Her leg, which he can't help but remember is completely bare, had found its way onto his, and in her sleep she slides it once against him, right against the 18-inch cut Shaman gave him. He hisses in pain, but it doesn't wake her. Regretfully, but resolutely, he puts a couple of inches of distance between them, positions his back to her, and lets sleep reclaim him.
But not before squeezing her once more, just to make sure she's really there.
OOO
He wakes to the insistent shaking of his arm. She's already sitting and he shoots up in a panic, assuming something is wrong, but she's smiling. He can't hear it like she can, but he can smell it: heavy rain. A cool breeze blows through the hut; the ambient temperature has dropped 20 degrees or more even though the sun seems to be up now. Localized rainstorms are common in the jungle. They aren't far from the city, but it rains a lot more out here.
She throws her head towards the door. He rises, groaning, and follows her. She's still hobbling, dragging her injured leg behind her, but she can walk on her own now. She steps out into the rain, turning her face up. “Shower,” she says, still smiling. It must be just a little after dawn. Despite the heavy cloud cover and dim early light, he can easily read her lips. She stretches her arms out as if she were taking a shower, exposing her underarms to the sky, and then she bends her head forward and lifts up her hair to get the back of her neck. It's raining so hard, it only takes a minute before their hair and clothes are soaked through, and red water cascades off their bodies.
He removes his shirt and pants, dropping them into a clean bucket that has already collected half an inch or more of water in the bottom, then he follows her lead, washing under his arms and then addressing his cheeks and forehead. He feels a little awkward about being almost naked, but the pants were filthy. At least he always wears his black trunks when they go into the city, which is a little more modest than the white briefs she probably remembers him wearing as a kid.
She stretches out the neck of his shirt that she's wearing, and he can see rivulets of water flowing down her neck and shoulders into the regions below. Until then it had been clinging to her. She seems to be considering removing her shirt, too, and then she decides against it. He really shouldn't feel disappointed, and what's worse is that he thinks she might have seen it on his face.
Shit.
Something is wrong here. Things aren't quite...right. Of course they couldn't just pick up where they left off like nothing had happened and nothing had changed. But he's not supposed to wonder what she tastes like...
Mina looks him up and down, then reaches over and runs her hand along his upper arm. The dried blood is stubborn. She collects water in her palm and then rubs until the area is washed clean. There are spots of blood on his chest as well from when the vest had come open, and she attends to them next while he watches at her, seemingly unable to fully catch his breath. Her hands move slow, and not particularly deliberately, and when she raises her eyes to his, she looks a little embarrassed. Her hand falls and she backs away.
Next, she takes her hair ties out and lets her hair fall down, free. It's so long. She used to talk about wanting to have really long hair. She runs her fingers through it, letting the rain rinse every inch of it clean.
Mesmerizing: Capturing one's complete attention as if by magic.
Then she lifts the bottom of the shirt up to her eyes to wipe away some of the running makeup, and he turns away politely because he can see her pink panties. She still likes pink. It delights him.
He washes his shirt and pants in the bucket with a bit of the rudimentary soap he and Shaman make themselves, and then he hangs them up to dry on one of the covered racks. Not long after this time he would normally be waking up, and then he would begin on all of his chores. If they aren't going to live here, none of those chores mattered anymore. But if they don't stay here, where would they go? He finally has enough energy to start asking the big questions. He knows how to survive in the jungle, but not how to navigate it, beyond the area he is already familiar with. The city doesn't have many options, if any, for an outlaw. He had never thought much beyond killing Hilda. Getting his revenge had been all that mattered.
The rain hasn't let up yet. It's muddy beneath their bare feet, but she doesn't seem to care. In the light, she takes in the view. The training arena, the cabbage field, the stacks of firewood, the drying racks. He can see her jaw moving, but she's facing away from him. In general, he doesn't miss much of what she says, his eyes always seem to be on her lips. But this time he has to reach two fingers out to her chin and gently turn her face towards him.
She stares at him in response, her mouth hanging open in surprise. It takes her a moment to realize why he did it. “I'm sorry, I forgot.” Her brow furrows sadly, and she takes a deep breath. “What happened to you?” She lightly touches his ear, shaking her head. “Why can't you hear anymore? Why don't you speak?”
She cries when he shows her his tongue. Shaman must have drugged him a lot then; he remembers it happening, but he barely remembers healing from it. When he and Mina are clean, and their blood and the blood of all the people they killed is washed off, he takes her inside and shows her what Shaman did to his ears, and she shakes with rage. “He's lucky he died before I knew,” she eventually says, her teeth gritted.
Soaking wet and half-naked, she's still terrifying, and there's something strangely beautiful and bewitching about her when she's murderous, something he had noticed at the mansion before he knew who she was, and wishes he hadn't. Those hours before their mother revealed her to him are going to damn him. Something else to blame Shaman for, and it feels good to blame him, and to try to believe that it's not his own fault that his brotherly feelings are becoming so...unbrotherly.
He goes to get her a dry shirt, and when he comes back, she has been exploring, picking up this and that and puzzling at them. She's holding his journal now. He had filled it up years ago, but not much had changed for him between then and yesterday. She glances inside of it only long enough to see what it is and then turns to him. “Is it OK with you if I read this?”
He had not written it with his sister in mind as a potential reader. If anything, he should have already burned it, because what parts of it weren't boring were embarrassing, or incomprehensible. But he wants her to know what's in there, and reading it is the best way for her to understand what he has spent all of these years believing. Maybe it was his fault, maybe he was weak. Shaman broke his mind and he let him. But he has to make sure Mina knows that if he had remembered things as they had really happened, he would have returned to her the first second he could have. He wouldn't have stopped trying until he was home with her again.
He swallows and then nods. She nods back, and then sets it gently aside. “After I've slept some more.”
He hands her the fresh shirt. She thanks him and then gives him an indecipherable look and turns her back to him, removing the wet shirt she's wearing and tossing it over a nearby chair. Over her shoulder, her eyes catch his, like she's checking to see if she's watching, or checking to make sure he's watching. Shit Shit Shit. Ashamed, he quickly averts his gaze, flushing.
He was really fucking up being a big brother. First, he lets someone brainwash him into thinking she's dead. Then he tries to kill her. Then he doesn't recognize her, even when she's inches from his face. Mina! His Mina!
And now he wants...he wants something from her that he shouldn't.
He should be able to just see her as his sister...but he can't stop seeing her as a woman, too. He thought it would go away, but it hasn't, it has only gotten worse. And he can't even begin to compartmentalize it, because he can't pull the two things apart. It seems like they should come apart, but they don't, like two colors that have mixed to become a third.
It's taking her a long time, and he's afraid he upset her, but when he finally feels her hand on the back of his arm, she's handing him another dose of the pills. She takes hers with a drink of water, and then hands the cup over to him and he takes his. She looks very pretty in his yellow shirt in the early morning light, it compliments her skin and pales her bruises.
He follows her back to his bed, but hesitates after watching her climb in. Sleeping together isn't going to fix this situation; so far, it has only made it worse. But she scoots over like before, to show him where she wants him to be, and she insists when his reluctance continues, patting the empty space with her brows raised. It is such a familiar expression from when they were kids. With a single movement of her eyebrow she could always make it clear when she was giving him an order.
He lies down and she slides back into his eager arms.