Page 85 of Marked by the Demigod

She smiles at him, and even the stretching of the skin on her face feels odd. "Don't do that again."

"I like my inner organs where they belong, don't worry."

"No, don't do that again. Don't hide me away." She stares at him, as if she is able to willpower him to agree to it from all the way on the tiny cot.

As if summoned, he drags his chair over to the cot and grasps her hand. Then, after a moment, he buries his head in the blankets on her lap, hiding his face away from her, his breathing ragged.

Though if they had tried to actually remove his heart, they probably fucked with his lungs to get to it.

With great effort, she rests her hand in his hair, and he presses his head against her. "I was trying to protect you," he mumbles into the blankets, his voice muted and wet. "If they got to you, they'd kill you."

She leans her head against the pillow, her eyes fluttering shut, but she forces them open again. "Still don't."

He doesn't answer, but his shoulders shake, and in a split second of horror she realizes he's crying.

"Aww Jeez," she manages out, feeling her eyes fill up in some weird feedback loop from being so close to him. "I'm okay, I'm okay." She pauses, "I think. I will be."

He nods into the blankets, and he's getting blood everywhere. "I don't wan' you to die." He mumbles into the sheets, his shoulders still shaking.

She pauses in the petting of his hair, feeling almost dizzy. "Of course you don't, then you'd be..." she trails off, her head pounding. "I dunno. Vulnerable?" He doesn't respond, so she resumes running her fingers in his hair. "That's the word, right?"

He doesn't look up at her so much as roll his head over and peer at her. For a few seconds he just looks, as if weighing the words and finding them wanting.

But instead of responding, he just lets his eyes drift shut again, the furrow between his brow, and within a few minutes, he's fast asleep.

Or passed out from blood loss, Aimes can't tell the difference.

After a few minutes, the door opens and Katya strides in, giving Iakov's bloody mess over her sheets only a spare glance. "He needs stitches, you're not wrong," she says, but it's in a kind enough whisper.

Iakov doesn't stir.

"Is it...more difficult than regular stitches?" She asks, her head feeling like it's drifting off as well. "Or just...regular human stitches? Can you stitch a god?"

Katya smoothes the hair out of Aimes’s face, and it's so maternal she leans into it. "His mother was human, Aimes. His skin would work the same." She gives him another critical glance. "Are you actually asleep or just passed out?"

He doesn't move.

Katya sighs, then gestures at the door and the doctor walks in, looking all sorts of terrified. "Aimes, if he wakes up...be reassuring." Without waiting for a response, she grabs Iakov by the shoulder and limply pulls him back to sitting up in the chair.

His head lolls to the side, and if it wasn't for the wet bubble of breathing, Aimes would swear he was dead, his skin paper white and his hair plastered to his forehead. Her throat closes up, difficult to swallow, and she reaches out, impulsively, but her arm is too heavy to reach.

The splash of blood on her bed is viciously cold, sticky.

Her face feels like it's stuffed full of cotton. "He doesn't want anyone to do that," she says, forcing the words through the lump in her throat.

The doctor briefly glances at her, then slips on rubber gloves with a snap, and starts picking off the tattered fragments of his shirt. They stick to his skin, showing a gaping, ragged wound, like something you'd see out of a horror movie or bad special effects.

The edges of his skin move, almost flutter, with each breath. Aimes gasps, bile climbing up her throat, choking her off, and Katya steps smoothly between them, blocking her view.

"Hey," she says, in her professional calming voice, the one she brings out at the support meetings. "Hey, you're okay."

Aimes can hear the sounds of bloody skin, and, somehow the sound of the stitching is much, much worse. "He doesn't --"

Katya gets close, as if blocking more of the view will help. "We're not drugging him, just helping."

She tries to crane her neck to see around Katya, but her head is too heavy, and Katya strokes the sweaty hair out of her face. She's in a little vortex of terror, in this too-stark little hospital room, with Iakov so close she can hear him but not see him, with him so obviously injured and --

She must've made a strangled noise, for Katya pauses. "Hey," she says, her voice still too kind. "Nothing is happening. It's just stitches." Her blue screen of death eyes lock in hers, and they look surprisingly affected. "Do you promise not to panic if I tell you what happened?"

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