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]

It sounds enough like some of the conversations she'd had with the Professor about Anterwold and the importance of storytelling--if far less pompous, coming from Charlie rather than Lytten--that Rosie's briefly and quietly amused as she takes it all in. "No, that's true," she says. "It's all about perspective. How things change, depending on whose story's being told, or what's happened to influence everything."

She looks away, towards the window on the opposite wall of the room. "Doesn't make it any less strange when it happens to you, though."

[teenagerenegade]

Other than the time he'd spent held captive, Charlie has been pretty lucky with Darrow bullshit. He's escaped mostly unscathed. He reaches out for his cup, takes a sip of his terrible tea.

"I'm sorry it was you again, Rosie."

[forthsofar]

"Me too." It feels like it's always her, that so many of the terrible things that come to the city end up touching her or those she cares about or both at the same time. Unmarked and unblemished though she is now, as she clearly always was here in Darrow, she remembers the feeling of Jamie's blood drying sticky on her skin. She remembers it as clearly as she does that slick and bloodstained bar floor and the way she and Charlie had held cloth after cloth to Nick's wound only a few months ago.

She doesn't know how to say any of that, not without causing Charlie pain she doesn't think he needs, and so for a moment she says nothing at all.

"If..." she starts, watching him sip his tea and taking in the gentle rise and fall of Sabrina's chest as she dozes next to him, "if you can move without waking her, would you just hold my hand for a bit? I think I need that."

[teenagerenegade]

It takes a moment of maneuvering but Charlie manages to extricate himself from the chair, carefully draping Sabrina in the blanket that had been over both of them before he pads over to Rosie's bed. He sits down on the edge of the bed and, gently, takes her hand in his.

[forthsofar]

He does it the same way he does so many things, gentle and sweet and kind, and even though Rosie had expected it--asked for it--she still has to shut her eyes tight for a moment so she doesn't simply dissolve into tears. "Thank you," she says quietly, her fingers curving a bit against his as they sit there together.