I'd left him dreaming; a dangerous feat

[forthsofar]

Most mornings, she and Neil keep, if not the same hours, at least similar ones; close enough that there's sometimes a good-natured battle between them for the bathroom, or that it's easy for one or the other to make an extra few pieces of toast while they're putting together their own breakfast. And when they differ, when Neil's been out late or Rosie's spent the night at Nick's, they know each other well enough not to be concerned. Those quieter mornings can even be nice sometimes, a chance to settle into the day at the very start, to have some time without another person around.

All this to say, if it hadn't been for Beau, she might have simply gone to school and left him.

The dog had parked himself just outside Neil's closed bedroom door, something Rosie could only think of as concern in the low note of his whine. "Come away," she'd said, trying to call him over first with words, then the click of her tongue, then finally by taking hold of his collar and pulling. He resisted it all, settling the weight of his stocky body along the floor in a way that made him nearly immoveable. Finally, she'd tapped on the door, listening for the sound of anything within before she pushed it open. "Neil? I'm not trying to--oh."

This had happened before, but she'd been on the other side of it then. Now, it seemed it was her turn to be the one left behind. In a way, she's almost glad for the recentness of her experience, the way it keeps her fear mostly at bay. After looking up the number for Darrow General, she calls for an ambulance: Yes, someone else who won't wake up, please hurry if you can. As she waits, she sends texts to Sabrina, Nick, Charlie; calls Neil's work and makes up a plausible enough excuse as to why he'll be missing his scheduled shifts today and tomorrow. It's only what she knows he'd done for her, not long at all ago. When the paramedics arrive, Rosie follows them down, riding in the back of the ambulance and holding Neil's limp hand the entire way there. He's booked into a room, has an IV set up for hydration, and though the nurses encourage her to leave, claiming he'll be just fine in a matter of days, all she does is pull a chair over to his bedside and settle in.

Perhaps a bit shamefully, she doesn't think about Harry until just then. For all that he's been a little distant to her--and still she thinks it's awfully rude, the way he sometimes acts the few times he's been over when she's there, almost as though it's she who has no business being in her own flat--Rosie knows Neil cares about him. He deserves to know what's happened. Having brought Neil's phone with her just in case, she taps in his passcode, looking up Harry's number. In the hopes of avoiding confusion, she texts him from her own phone; a few short messages, all in quick succession.

Hello Mr Starks, it's Neil's friend Rosie, he's in hospital (unconscious but othrwise fine), wanted you to know
Room # is 387, have put you on visitor list if you'd like to stop by
Please don't worry, it's something the city does at times, very stupid

Comments

[borntohang]

"Ever been to London?" Harry asks casually. Neil moves then - or Harry imagines that he did - and instantly his attention shifts entirely to the boy, forgetting anything and anyone else in the room.

Unfortunately, whatever it was, Neil shows no sign of waking and it all just leaves him thinking he's far too invested in the kid and it's showing. He sighs. "Got him under my skin, Rosie," he admits and shakes his head briefly.

[forthsofar]

"Not often," she says, having no reason to lie. "A family trip, just for the day. And once for a school competition." She hesitates, if only for a moment. "I thought about going to live there someday, when I was older and on my own."

Harry's attention is drawn to Neil then, something both tense and hopeful in the shift of his posture and the turn of his head, and Rosie's not even sure he'd heard her at all. She pushes back the thought--one she thought she'd mostly rid herself of since coming to Darrow--that it hardly mattered anyway; that she wasn't saying anything of importance, at least not to him. Neil sleeps on, unaware of either of them, and when Harry sighs and turns back once more Rosie takes another moment to consider her words before she speaks.

"Speaking purely for myself," she says carefully, "I wouldn't call that a bad thing. Caring about someone that much, I mean."

[borntohang]

Jimmy; cut up into bits - they never found his torso. Or his murderer, who had suffered his own painful death at the hands of Harry, who did not take kindly to one of his boys being killed. Then there was Tommy, whose murder was his own fault, but whose death Harry did count amongst the regrets in his life. He never blamed Ruby for pulling the trigger, though; she was acting in self-defense. And then there were others....well.

Boys around him had a tendency to disappear, inspector Mooney said. No lie there.

"Depends on how many people you loose along the way," he said, eyes on Neil who was sleeping sweetly still.

[forthsofar]

"Perhaps it does," Rosie says. She's been fortunate on that count; maybe more fortunate than she knows. Despite all the disappearances that happen here in the city, the only one that had struck close enough to hurt had been Daine, who'd returned after only a matter of months, her knowledge of the friends she'd left behind still mostly intact, if foggy at the start. And at home...

Well, at home it might have been Rosie who'd vanished without a trace, after what had happened in Lytten's cellar. It might be that she'll never know for sure.

"That might just make it mean more, though. When you find someone new to care about."

[borntohang]

He eyes Rosie for a moment. She's being quite friendly despite everything. That makes her rise in Harry's estimation. The caution that is evident in her voice is only self preservation. Smart girl.

"Yeah?" He sighs. "Not in my experience... But it's a nice thought," he concedes.

[forthsofar]

There's almost something in the way he looks at her that makes Rosie think she's passed some kind of test--not one she'd known she was taking, perhaps not even one she's entirely sure she wants to pass in the first place. Whatever it is, it seems to resolve something between them, and for now that's good enough for her.

There's still that sense of danger taking root at the back of her mind, of course, but it's quiet and faint for now.

"I hope you'll have a different experience here, then," she says. "As much as the city will...to say let you sounds mad, but with the kinds of things that happen, it's not untrue." Breathing out another sigh, she takes a sip of her tea, her gaze going back to the still-sleeping Neil.

[borntohang]

Well, he's got himself a nice flat and a lovely boy, so whatever this is, it's better than where he was heading. Twenty in D block - nicknamed the Submarine for lack of oxygen and daylight. No, this was infinitely better. "No, you're right," he can concede that. "How about you, Rosie?"

[forthsofar]

She's still cautious and uncertain about him--more so, even, than she had been before today--but the question prompts a genuine smile from her. In another circumstance, she might have even laughed. "There's very little about my life in Darrow that's anything like it might have been at home," she says. "I like it that way. For the most part."

[borntohang]

Harry arches an eyebrow. She has no obligation to talk about anything, but she does end her words in a cliff-hanger, so he wonders if there's more. "Oh?"

[forthsofar]

Harry quirks that skeptical eyebrow at her and Rosie's thoughtless impertinence almost charges its way to the fore again, held in check at the last moment by the caution she's only just relearned. "I could do without things like this, that's all," she says, looking back over at Neil as he lies there in bed. "The nastier things that happen in Darrow. People going to sleep and not waking up for days, awful gifts from home or memories of things that had yet to happen. Friends getting hurt."

Something occurs to her, a question she thinks carefully about phrasing before she asks it. "Is this the first one you've been through, then? When the city does something bad to someone you know?"

[borntohang]

"No," Harry says, and it's a moment before he continues. "There was that thing in the summer." That thing. That thing that got Neil abducted - and Rosie too, he knows. Neil still won't talk about it, but Harry knows it was bad.

And Harry? Did he fight, did he help, did he save the boy he claimed to hold so dear? No, Harry had been overcome by a black mood, and had done nothing much except lying in bed, drinking brandy and forgetting to take his pills. He's not proud of it, but he knows he can't really fight it.

[forthsofar]

Rosie herself had a summer full of altogether too many things, but she knows what Harry's referencing. The others had been either her own private humiliations, or traumas shared by only a close handful of people. Only one had threatened the city at large.

"Of course," she says. "Lots of people got caught up in that. In one way or another."

[borntohang]

"Neil won't talk about it," Harry observes as he watches Neil again. The boy had come back covered in bruises and looking as if he'd been tortured. It bothered Harry a lot that he didn't know what happened. It bothered him that he couldn't kill whoever was to blame for it.

[forthsofar]

"He hasn't said much about it to me, either," she admits, her features settling briefly into an expression of concern that's not unlike Harry's, if sprung from a different source. "Even if he had...it wouldn't be my story to share, I don't think."

Rosie glances down at the cup of tea still in her hand, her own memories of those terrifying few weeks filling her head. "I didn't even know until it was all over that he'd been taken too," she says quietly. "Up at the...dungeon, or castle, or whatever that horrible place was, they kept us separate. I was in something like a throne room, or a banquet hall. In a cage."

[borntohang]

Her words get to Harry more than she probably thinks it might. He thinks of Neil in a cage, he thinks of the bruises and the misery he so obviously felt. It had been hard to come out of it. But Neil's misery had somehow cured Harry's black mood - as if he had no time for it any more. The pills might have something to do with it also, but he prefers to think it's Neil's doing.

"Let's not dwell on that, ey?" He suggests. "You all came out alive - thankfully."

[forthsofar]

"That's true," she says, offering Harry a small smile of thanks. "Bad as it was, we all got past it. And Neil will too, where this is concerned. Whatever it is, wherever he's gone."

She says it with as much confidence--and no small amount of hope--as she can manage.

[borntohang]

Harry nods thoughtfully. "I hope so."