how can you change what is altered

[forthsofar]

Somehow, she manages to stop the bleeding, that strip of sailcloth turning into as close to a lifeline as it's possible for a thing to be. A group of them get Jamie to the ship, to something approximating safety; the pirates have seen this kind of injury before, and know more than the rest of them what to do. It's so easy to let them take control of the situation, to salvage from it what they can.

Clothes splashed with blood, Rosie wanders belowdeck, passing hammocks and coils of rope until she finds a hidden nook in the ribs of the ship. It's narrow and shadowed, barely large enough for her to fit inside, but she climbs in and sits, folding her arms around her bent knees to make herself just that much smaller. She stays there, numb and silent and waiting for whatever happens next. Her eyes close, just for a minute.

When they open again, it's to the sight of a stark white ceiling and a fluorescent light so bright it almost shocks her. There's a slow, steady beeping coming from somewhere nearby, the strange sensation of tape against the back of one of her hands keeping something in place. She lies there in confusion for another moment more, then tries to sit up, the motion slow and full of so much effort she shakes with it.

"What..." she starts, looking to one side of the bed--the hospital bed, she's at a hospital now, somehow--and then the other. "What happened to the ship?"

Comments

[forthsofar]

"Some sense," she says, though the last she'd spoken to anyone they'd seemed a little harried, even irritated she was even there at all. "Since all it was, at least in their view, was that I'd fallen asleep for a few days, I don't think they're overly concerned."

It's annoying, having it chalked up to just one of those things Darrow does sometimes--as though that mattered, when she'd been so frightened!--but it's understandable too, in its own way. "They'll probably want to check me over and make sure, but I should be able to go home before the end of the day."

[awickedtime]

"I'll wait so that I can drive you home," he says, stroking her hair. "I'll drive all of us home." He's not sure when he started thinking of his apartment as home for all of them, but he does. No changing that, now.

[forthsofar]

And when he says home, she knows instinctively, immediately, what he means. She'll want to go back to Candlewood before too long--to see Neil and reassure him she's okay, to find her phone and hopefully a word from Jamie or any of the others that none of the Island's horrors had pursued them into Darrow--but for right now, the only home she wants to see is Nick's; the only people, him and Sabrina and Charlie.

She loves them all, more than she ever thought it possible to love even one person. More than she ever dreamed she'd be loved herself.

"That sounds perfect," she says, her eyes closing as he strokes her hair. "We'll all go home, and be together."