This is AU.
Barely There
Chapter One
Oh, god, why the hell couldn't he remember anything?
He could see plenty of it- bright lights, smoke, fireworks, a laser show gone wrong. He remembered wine and beer and Perseid Vodka and Makran Absinthe. Weed. Acid. Mush. Girls. Boys. Other people. Too much of everything in a bad combination.
And then came the lectures, and the sickness, and the rampaging headaches and falling asleep on the floor of the Maru, and Beka's disgusted 'pfft' as she left him there.
But...what?
Once his face made contact with the Maru's floor he should've been safe. But the loud noises and the blossoming lights in the back of his head didn't stop, and he felt rough hands around his waist, and yelling, and confusion and...what happened then?
Harper's ragged, red eyes cracked open and he regretted doing it. He rolled over in the pristine white sheets he was lying in, naked. He was hot, he was burning up. It felt like there was a party in his mouth and everyone was throwing up. He wished very hard that he was behind a couch in a dark corner in the obs deck, instead of lying on blinding white sheets in a blinding white room, with a small, curtainless window open and breezy.
Harper rolled over and buried his head and felt like crying a little, too hurt and sick to do anything else, really.
You brought it on yourself, you dumbass the same self-censoring tirade that he subjected himself to since he first started drinking at twelve. He cringed and coughed a bit, and managed to open his eyes enough to look for some water.
There wasn't any at hand. He was on a low, billowy pallet in the room, which was small, clean, and white. He was alone. The rest of the room was bare. Harper felt a shiver go up his bare back and pulled the breezy sheets over himself a bit more. He was too sick and tired to feel scared.
What happened?
He lay back down, staring up at the rooftop, wondering if he had finally gone insane and been committed. That would make sense. He was *really* fucked up that night. Probably ruined the whole state affair- wait, no, Dylan had let him go planetside to spend the weekend, he didn't have any diplomatic duties this time.
Harper narrowed his red eyes. When did he get back to the Maru? Had Beka come looking for him? He was going to spend the night in a hostel.
Where was he now?
Oh, crap. He had to pee.
Harper glanced around the room once more, still finding it bare. He barely saw the outline of the door in the white wall. He sighed and closed his eyes again, resigning himself to a long wait.
After a while he realized he could hear the crash of waves outside the window. That calmed him a bit. He smiled. Then he realized he had to pee more.
Just then, the door creaked open with frightening subtletly. Harper's eyes flew open and he pressed himself up into the corner. Tyr was standing there, dressed in black, taking up most of the doorway. He looked at Harper softly.
"Tyr," Harper breathed, relieved. He was surprised at how horrible and small his voice sounded. He rubbed at his throat miserably. Tyr didn't answer. "Why...why can't I remember anything?" Harper asked. Harper didn't know if Nietszcheans could have broken hearts, but that's what it seemed like Tyr was suffering from, judging from the look on his face.
"Tyr?" Harper's high, scratchy voice cracked a bit more and he coughed, the sand papery, horrible sort of cough you get when the front of your throat sticks to the back.
Tyr visibly winced and he came into the room, holding a large glass of water.
"What happened?" Harper could barely hear himself. Tyr didn't answer him.
"Drink," the big Nietzschean commanded, and Harper looked at him through reddened puffy eyes before obeying. He drank greedily, and emptied the glass before Tyr took it away again.
"What happened?" He asked again. When Tyr didn't answer a second time, instead busied himself untangling Harper's skinny legs from the wrapped up sheets, he panicked a little. "Oh, god, I fucked things up, didn't I? I know I should've stayed away from the drugs, I know I've promised that before. I didn't think I'd go back home so early. It wasn't like I was on Flash or anyth-"
"It's not that," Tyr cut him short.
"I did something stupid, didn't I?" Harper's voice was still scratchy and high. It was barely there. "I played some prank, or-"
"Be quiet," Tyr said, and his voice sounded a little weary, but he finished what he was doing with the sheets and turned away. "You did nothing."
"Where are we?"
"With friends."
Harper furrowed his brow. What a cryptic response. What a fucking convoluted, snakey, non-Tyr response. "What?"
"We crashed."
"Crashed? Where? The Andromeda crashed?" He was panicking again.
"No. The Maru crashed."
This confused Harper even more. He was sick and tired and he had to pee. He didn't want to have to put up with this shit. "What?" He squeaked. "What happened to the Andromeda?"
"The Ship..." Tyr trailed off, still looking away. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."
"What?" Harper glared up at Tyr, who was resolutley not looking at him. "Tyr, what are you...what are you telling me?" Harper's already ghostly voice dropped several decibals. His face looked crestfallen. "Are you...are you serious?"
Tyr looked at Harper this time, his deep brown eyes troubled, as if he saw something in Harper that disturbed him.
"Oh, god," Harper's voice sounded like it had years ago, when he was a child. He felt much the same way. His skinny, starving, sickened body started convulsing, and tears welled up. Tyr stood there looking like he didn't know what to do. "You're not...you're kidding!"
"I'll tell you when you're feeling better," Tyr said softly. He moved a little closer to Harper, who was sobbing in earnest, his spindly hands covering his sallow face. "Boy..." Tyr said softly, his own voice threatening to break. He sighed and covered his own face with one big hand.
"Why..." Harper barely said, and he didn't expect a response. He wiped his face, his reddened eyes, and through the tears that kept coming he pretended he was okay. "Tyr, am I sick?"
"Yes."
"Very sick?"
"Yes."
"With what?"
Tyr hesitated. "We don't know yet."
"Who's we?"
Tyr knelt down this time, draping sheets around Harper's shaking, diseased frame, trying not to show his inbred disgust at having to touch something so sickly and weak. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."
Harper looked up at him and started crying again.
"Stop that," Tyr wiped roughly at Harper's bruised, sunken face.
"Fuck off!" Harper drew back harshly. Tyr still had a grip on the sheets that were cocooned around Harper, however, and he pulled him closer, still sobbing.
"Listen to me, child," Tyr said, unusually soft. "We're not going to feel sorry for ourselves. We survived. Where's there's life, there's-"
"Fuck off!" Harper's voice whispered, choking, harshly. His throat closed up and he gasped, startled, panicking for air.
Tyr sighed, and looked like he was trying very hard to not look worried. He gently lay Harper back down on the bed, and sat with him until the panic subsided and Harper could breathe the way he was before, which still wasn't very well.
"Tyr?" Harper said after a moment's pause.
"Yes?"
"I hafta go pee." His voice was low. Tyr sighed, and slowly, carefully, helped Harper to his feet. Harper almost fell immediately, and Tyr caught him on one arm. He looked down at himself and almost cried again at what he saw- he had lost more weight than he could imagine loosing, his little, bony feet skipped painfully in front of him, a painful parody of walking, as Tyr was mostly holding him up.
He let out a tiny, pained whimper, and Tyr said: "Boy, stop that", and he knew that Tyr didn't mean the noise but that he meant feeling defeated.
Tyr brought him out to the hallway, which was just as bare and white, and stretched on in both directions forever. No one was there. There were wide open windows overlooking a courtyard; they were in a low, stucco white villa. Harper couldn't see the ocean from this view but he could hear it and that made him feel, somewhat, better. Brilliant green trees of unusual leafy shapes grew up in the courtyard. It was deserted.
"Where is everyone?" Harper asked, trying to get his mind off the travesty of a body that he had just seen as his own.
"Prayers," Tyr said, disdain evident in his voice.
"What planet are we on?"
Tyr paused. "Our hosts don't...really think of planets the way we do." He said.
Tyr took Harper to an urn, a red urn that stood up in one corner in the breezy corridor. Harper stood in front of it, staring down at his emaciated, bruised up little body. Tyr turned around and Harper was glad, even though he could've sworn the older man was suppressing disgust.
Harper leaned his aching head against the stucco white wall in front of him, and hissed as his loins burned and stabbed as he relieved himself.
"Does it hurt?" He heard Tyr asked, and could've sworn the man sounded worried.
"Yes, goddammit!" Harper cried, and didn't tell Tyr that he saw blood.
"Don't curse at me," Tyr almost growled, and Harper rolled his reddened eyes.
"Oh, what the fuck..." He trailed off as another pang of hurt exploded in the back of his head, and rested his forehead wearily again on the white stucco wall. He closed his eyes against reality and felt himself closing up again, convulsing.
"Are you going to faint, boy?" Tyr's voice seemed very far away. Harper shook his head defiantly. He willed his eyes open again and stared at the whiteness in front of him, and all of a sudden the grief, the not knowing, the utter loneliness overwhelmed him and a few tears fell from his red and jaundiced eyes.
He was done, apparently, and Tyr wrapped the sheets around him again. Harper covered his sallow face defiantly again, not willing to let the big Nietzschean see his weakness.
The shaking of his weak, sickly shoulders gave it away though. Tyr sighed, and Harper felt big arms, reluctantly, move around his skinny frame.
He buried his face into the other man's expansive chest, but he didn't let himself sob. He barely acknowledged the fact that Tyr was holding him at all- pride got in the way.
He felt a deep breath move through Tyr's body and wiped ineffectually at his bruised face. "What happened to them?" He asked angrily.
Tyr looked down at the boy, right into his eyes. "I've told you that I will let you know when you're feeling better."
"When the hell will that be?" Harper yelled. Tyr clamped a hand over Harper's mouth, anger evident in his eyes.
"Be silent. It's dangerous here." Harper glared out at him with his reddened, jaundiced eyes, and he would have bit him if he had the energy. "I'm not telling you know because you're too sick to benefit from it, and you're too exhausted to remember it. We've had this conversation before, Harper."
Harper was just confused now. He furrowed one eyebrow at Tyr, who let go of his mouth and wrapped him up tighter in his pristine white sheets. "You've been in and out of consciousness for four days now," The Nietzschean said, guide-carrying Harper back to the nondescript room in the low white villa. "You've asked what happened twice now. I told you the first time and...when I told you the second time I think you fell asleep while I was talking." Harper yawned. He was awfully tired... "So I won't tell you until you are up for it, because it's too long and involved. You just sleep and worry about healing."
"What if I don't heal?" Harper asked weakly. He was lying back in bed now, Tyr standing over him, offishly.
"You will. You've already recovered..." Tyr narrowed his eyes a little, the same disturbed look he had before. "...remarkably." Harper blinked slowly, his little, sickly body wracked with coughs.
"Are you hungry?" Tyr asked off-handedly.
Harper was about to say 'yes' when he yawned again.
"I'll have someone bring you food in a little while, after you've rested some. When they come, don't...do anything. Don't talk to them, they won't talk back. Just ignore them and eat when they're gone. Can you do that, boy?"
Harper scowled. "Why?"
"Don't ask questions."
Harper sneered at this a bit, and would have flipped Tyr off if he were up to it. "Wait. You...you're not going to stay here with me?" Tyr's face softened a little, if that were possible. "I cannot," He said. "I'm risking it being here now."
"Why?"
"I'll tell you-"
"When I'm better. Right. Whatever." Harper was too exhausted to even tirade sarcastically.
"Go to sleep, boy," Tyr said, his voice low and barely there. White closed on white with a soft *click*. Harper sighed, staring at the vapid white wall in front of him, listening to the breeze and the ocean in the high window. He took in a deep, shaky breath, and fought the guilt and the grief and loneliness that stabbed at him. He didn't even know where he was for Christ's sake, and he was lonely. That was pathetic.
So, since he was too tired to find ways of not being pathetic, he lay his weary, aching head back down on the pillow, tried not to think of the blood in his urine, and went back to sleep eventually.
Harper awoke maybe an hour or two later. His reddened, jaundiced eyes blinked languidly a couple times and he yawned, staring into the blindingly white wall. He heard the muffled clinks of crockery behind him and turned, still snuggled deep into his sheets.
A girl, who, if she was human, was no more than sixteen, was setting a tray on the floor with a few simple plates. She didn't look at him.
Harper was about to say something when he remembered what Tyr had said. He drew back a bit in his sheets, staring up at the strange, silent girl.
She had long, black-black, almost purple hair that swept ethereally around her shoulders. She was paler than anything Harper had ever seen, and most of the kids he knew in Boston were pretty pale. She must have spent every waking moment indoors.
Eventually she did turn and looked right at him, and Harper was startled a little by her large, not particularly attractive puke green eyes. He drew back in his sheets, cocooning underneath them like a baby.
She didn't smile, but she didn't frown either. She cocked her head a bit, and narrowed her eyes, and then turned to leave, blending in almost perfectly with the stucco white walls.
"Wait," He creaked out, his voice scratchy and high. The girl turned and waited. Harper hesitated, remembering that he wasn't supposed to speak to her, and then mentally telling Tyr to fuck right off already. "Where...where's Tyr?"
"Who?" She said, umimpressed.
"Tyr Anasazi."
Her eyebrows raised a little, but she still didn't look impressed. "Master General Anasazi? He's dining. Why?"
"Just...I would like to know."
The girl narrowed her unattractive green eyes. "You're arrogant." She said, simply, and then flounced off. Harper, surprised, didn't move for a full two minutes. Then- "Master General?"
--
The 'dining hall' was filled to the brim with tough-talking, mostly soft people, all big and dark and deadly. Tyr hung around in the back, not comfortable enough in his present situation to really join in on any conversation. He held a glass of wine stiffly in one hand, not quite trusting it, and refused to initiate any 'schmoozing'.
"Ah, General Anasazi," Someone- Representative Okasha- came up on his left. "Are you enjoying yourself this afternoon?"
Tyr took a forced sip from his wine. "Yes, Representative, I am." He answered woodenly, shrugging slightly to make sure his long black sleeves were covering his bone spurs.
"I was wondering if I may speak to you about your attack."
Tyr narrowed his eyes. They believed he had been ambushed by highwaymen on the way from one town to another. Harper's 'injury' and subsequent illness had forced them to seek hospitality in this villa, which, Tyr had learned slowly, was owned by a powerful local politician. There had been a real 'General Anasazi', but so far he hadn't turned up, and Tyr intended to milk the false identity as long as he could. None of the softened politicians, apparently, had met the famed General Anasazi face to face, and it was an absurd sort of luck that the name occurred here.
Another absurd sort of luck that made the real General Anasazi a victim of the Maru's fiery jetsam striking him in the back of the skull.
"Yes?" Tyr neutrally prodded.
Representative Okasha smiled saccharinely. "I have heard reports of fire falling from the sky that night," Tyr didn't even blink. "Some are saying it was miracle, a good omen that brought you into our presence."
"Thank you," Tyr tried to remain as neutral as possible. The knowledge that 'General Anasazi' was, outside of Tyr's impersonation, a private warlord, probably would have helped.
--
Harper couldn't take it anymore. He tried to eat what the strange, not particularly attractive, rude girl had left, but he was having a hard time. There was some very putrid broth and a stale little chunk of bread, something that tasted like stagnant shaving water and something that was probably vegetables, but probably not something that human physiology could handle. The only reason Harper choked down most of the mess (except for the vegetables that he seriously thought would harm him) was that growing up in starvation made him grateful for anything, and life aboard the Andromeda hadn't conditioned that from him yet.
After his meal he was feeling marginally better. His head ached less than it did when he first awoke. He still couldn't stand very well, but he could pull himself up enough to look out the porthole window high above his billowy pallet.
He could see the ocean from here. This window faced away from the courtyard, and far in the distance, past expanse of leafy trees, was the ocean, beautiful and bluish green.
"Hello? Tyr? Anybody?" Harper's voice was still sandpapery as he called out around him, wrapping a sheet haphazardly about himself like a toga for the damned. His eyes narrowed a bit and he painfully hoisted himself up into the windowsill again, staring longingly at the ocean.
Oh, fuck it He thought. I'm young, I'm...healthy. I can do whatever I want. He looked around the bland white room again. No one's even going to notice I'm gone.
And for one brainsick moment he believed that, and began to climb his sickly little body out the window of the low, stucco white villa.
Barely There
Chapter One
Oh, god, why the hell couldn't he remember anything?
He could see plenty of it- bright lights, smoke, fireworks, a laser show gone wrong. He remembered wine and beer and Perseid Vodka and Makran Absinthe. Weed. Acid. Mush. Girls. Boys. Other people. Too much of everything in a bad combination.
And then came the lectures, and the sickness, and the rampaging headaches and falling asleep on the floor of the Maru, and Beka's disgusted 'pfft' as she left him there.
But...what?
Once his face made contact with the Maru's floor he should've been safe. But the loud noises and the blossoming lights in the back of his head didn't stop, and he felt rough hands around his waist, and yelling, and confusion and...what happened then?
Harper's ragged, red eyes cracked open and he regretted doing it. He rolled over in the pristine white sheets he was lying in, naked. He was hot, he was burning up. It felt like there was a party in his mouth and everyone was throwing up. He wished very hard that he was behind a couch in a dark corner in the obs deck, instead of lying on blinding white sheets in a blinding white room, with a small, curtainless window open and breezy.
Harper rolled over and buried his head and felt like crying a little, too hurt and sick to do anything else, really.
You brought it on yourself, you dumbass the same self-censoring tirade that he subjected himself to since he first started drinking at twelve. He cringed and coughed a bit, and managed to open his eyes enough to look for some water.
There wasn't any at hand. He was on a low, billowy pallet in the room, which was small, clean, and white. He was alone. The rest of the room was bare. Harper felt a shiver go up his bare back and pulled the breezy sheets over himself a bit more. He was too sick and tired to feel scared.
What happened?
He lay back down, staring up at the rooftop, wondering if he had finally gone insane and been committed. That would make sense. He was *really* fucked up that night. Probably ruined the whole state affair- wait, no, Dylan had let him go planetside to spend the weekend, he didn't have any diplomatic duties this time.
Harper narrowed his red eyes. When did he get back to the Maru? Had Beka come looking for him? He was going to spend the night in a hostel.
Where was he now?
Oh, crap. He had to pee.
Harper glanced around the room once more, still finding it bare. He barely saw the outline of the door in the white wall. He sighed and closed his eyes again, resigning himself to a long wait.
After a while he realized he could hear the crash of waves outside the window. That calmed him a bit. He smiled. Then he realized he had to pee more.
Just then, the door creaked open with frightening subtletly. Harper's eyes flew open and he pressed himself up into the corner. Tyr was standing there, dressed in black, taking up most of the doorway. He looked at Harper softly.
"Tyr," Harper breathed, relieved. He was surprised at how horrible and small his voice sounded. He rubbed at his throat miserably. Tyr didn't answer. "Why...why can't I remember anything?" Harper asked. Harper didn't know if Nietszcheans could have broken hearts, but that's what it seemed like Tyr was suffering from, judging from the look on his face.
"Tyr?" Harper's high, scratchy voice cracked a bit more and he coughed, the sand papery, horrible sort of cough you get when the front of your throat sticks to the back.
Tyr visibly winced and he came into the room, holding a large glass of water.
"What happened?" Harper could barely hear himself. Tyr didn't answer him.
"Drink," the big Nietzschean commanded, and Harper looked at him through reddened puffy eyes before obeying. He drank greedily, and emptied the glass before Tyr took it away again.
"What happened?" He asked again. When Tyr didn't answer a second time, instead busied himself untangling Harper's skinny legs from the wrapped up sheets, he panicked a little. "Oh, god, I fucked things up, didn't I? I know I should've stayed away from the drugs, I know I've promised that before. I didn't think I'd go back home so early. It wasn't like I was on Flash or anyth-"
"It's not that," Tyr cut him short.
"I did something stupid, didn't I?" Harper's voice was still scratchy and high. It was barely there. "I played some prank, or-"
"Be quiet," Tyr said, and his voice sounded a little weary, but he finished what he was doing with the sheets and turned away. "You did nothing."
"Where are we?"
"With friends."
Harper furrowed his brow. What a cryptic response. What a fucking convoluted, snakey, non-Tyr response. "What?"
"We crashed."
"Crashed? Where? The Andromeda crashed?" He was panicking again.
"No. The Maru crashed."
This confused Harper even more. He was sick and tired and he had to pee. He didn't want to have to put up with this shit. "What?" He squeaked. "What happened to the Andromeda?"
"The Ship..." Tyr trailed off, still looking away. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."
"What?" Harper glared up at Tyr, who was resolutley not looking at him. "Tyr, what are you...what are you telling me?" Harper's already ghostly voice dropped several decibals. His face looked crestfallen. "Are you...are you serious?"
Tyr looked at Harper this time, his deep brown eyes troubled, as if he saw something in Harper that disturbed him.
"Oh, god," Harper's voice sounded like it had years ago, when he was a child. He felt much the same way. His skinny, starving, sickened body started convulsing, and tears welled up. Tyr stood there looking like he didn't know what to do. "You're not...you're kidding!"
"I'll tell you when you're feeling better," Tyr said softly. He moved a little closer to Harper, who was sobbing in earnest, his spindly hands covering his sallow face. "Boy..." Tyr said softly, his own voice threatening to break. He sighed and covered his own face with one big hand.
"Why..." Harper barely said, and he didn't expect a response. He wiped his face, his reddened eyes, and through the tears that kept coming he pretended he was okay. "Tyr, am I sick?"
"Yes."
"Very sick?"
"Yes."
"With what?"
Tyr hesitated. "We don't know yet."
"Who's we?"
Tyr knelt down this time, draping sheets around Harper's shaking, diseased frame, trying not to show his inbred disgust at having to touch something so sickly and weak. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."
Harper looked up at him and started crying again.
"Stop that," Tyr wiped roughly at Harper's bruised, sunken face.
"Fuck off!" Harper drew back harshly. Tyr still had a grip on the sheets that were cocooned around Harper, however, and he pulled him closer, still sobbing.
"Listen to me, child," Tyr said, unusually soft. "We're not going to feel sorry for ourselves. We survived. Where's there's life, there's-"
"Fuck off!" Harper's voice whispered, choking, harshly. His throat closed up and he gasped, startled, panicking for air.
Tyr sighed, and looked like he was trying very hard to not look worried. He gently lay Harper back down on the bed, and sat with him until the panic subsided and Harper could breathe the way he was before, which still wasn't very well.
"Tyr?" Harper said after a moment's pause.
"Yes?"
"I hafta go pee." His voice was low. Tyr sighed, and slowly, carefully, helped Harper to his feet. Harper almost fell immediately, and Tyr caught him on one arm. He looked down at himself and almost cried again at what he saw- he had lost more weight than he could imagine loosing, his little, bony feet skipped painfully in front of him, a painful parody of walking, as Tyr was mostly holding him up.
He let out a tiny, pained whimper, and Tyr said: "Boy, stop that", and he knew that Tyr didn't mean the noise but that he meant feeling defeated.
Tyr brought him out to the hallway, which was just as bare and white, and stretched on in both directions forever. No one was there. There were wide open windows overlooking a courtyard; they were in a low, stucco white villa. Harper couldn't see the ocean from this view but he could hear it and that made him feel, somewhat, better. Brilliant green trees of unusual leafy shapes grew up in the courtyard. It was deserted.
"Where is everyone?" Harper asked, trying to get his mind off the travesty of a body that he had just seen as his own.
"Prayers," Tyr said, disdain evident in his voice.
"What planet are we on?"
Tyr paused. "Our hosts don't...really think of planets the way we do." He said.
Tyr took Harper to an urn, a red urn that stood up in one corner in the breezy corridor. Harper stood in front of it, staring down at his emaciated, bruised up little body. Tyr turned around and Harper was glad, even though he could've sworn the older man was suppressing disgust.
Harper leaned his aching head against the stucco white wall in front of him, and hissed as his loins burned and stabbed as he relieved himself.
"Does it hurt?" He heard Tyr asked, and could've sworn the man sounded worried.
"Yes, goddammit!" Harper cried, and didn't tell Tyr that he saw blood.
"Don't curse at me," Tyr almost growled, and Harper rolled his reddened eyes.
"Oh, what the fuck..." He trailed off as another pang of hurt exploded in the back of his head, and rested his forehead wearily again on the white stucco wall. He closed his eyes against reality and felt himself closing up again, convulsing.
"Are you going to faint, boy?" Tyr's voice seemed very far away. Harper shook his head defiantly. He willed his eyes open again and stared at the whiteness in front of him, and all of a sudden the grief, the not knowing, the utter loneliness overwhelmed him and a few tears fell from his red and jaundiced eyes.
He was done, apparently, and Tyr wrapped the sheets around him again. Harper covered his sallow face defiantly again, not willing to let the big Nietzschean see his weakness.
The shaking of his weak, sickly shoulders gave it away though. Tyr sighed, and Harper felt big arms, reluctantly, move around his skinny frame.
He buried his face into the other man's expansive chest, but he didn't let himself sob. He barely acknowledged the fact that Tyr was holding him at all- pride got in the way.
He felt a deep breath move through Tyr's body and wiped ineffectually at his bruised face. "What happened to them?" He asked angrily.
Tyr looked down at the boy, right into his eyes. "I've told you that I will let you know when you're feeling better."
"When the hell will that be?" Harper yelled. Tyr clamped a hand over Harper's mouth, anger evident in his eyes.
"Be silent. It's dangerous here." Harper glared out at him with his reddened, jaundiced eyes, and he would have bit him if he had the energy. "I'm not telling you know because you're too sick to benefit from it, and you're too exhausted to remember it. We've had this conversation before, Harper."
Harper was just confused now. He furrowed one eyebrow at Tyr, who let go of his mouth and wrapped him up tighter in his pristine white sheets. "You've been in and out of consciousness for four days now," The Nietzschean said, guide-carrying Harper back to the nondescript room in the low white villa. "You've asked what happened twice now. I told you the first time and...when I told you the second time I think you fell asleep while I was talking." Harper yawned. He was awfully tired... "So I won't tell you until you are up for it, because it's too long and involved. You just sleep and worry about healing."
"What if I don't heal?" Harper asked weakly. He was lying back in bed now, Tyr standing over him, offishly.
"You will. You've already recovered..." Tyr narrowed his eyes a little, the same disturbed look he had before. "...remarkably." Harper blinked slowly, his little, sickly body wracked with coughs.
"Are you hungry?" Tyr asked off-handedly.
Harper was about to say 'yes' when he yawned again.
"I'll have someone bring you food in a little while, after you've rested some. When they come, don't...do anything. Don't talk to them, they won't talk back. Just ignore them and eat when they're gone. Can you do that, boy?"
Harper scowled. "Why?"
"Don't ask questions."
Harper sneered at this a bit, and would have flipped Tyr off if he were up to it. "Wait. You...you're not going to stay here with me?" Tyr's face softened a little, if that were possible. "I cannot," He said. "I'm risking it being here now."
"Why?"
"I'll tell you-"
"When I'm better. Right. Whatever." Harper was too exhausted to even tirade sarcastically.
"Go to sleep, boy," Tyr said, his voice low and barely there. White closed on white with a soft *click*. Harper sighed, staring at the vapid white wall in front of him, listening to the breeze and the ocean in the high window. He took in a deep, shaky breath, and fought the guilt and the grief and loneliness that stabbed at him. He didn't even know where he was for Christ's sake, and he was lonely. That was pathetic.
So, since he was too tired to find ways of not being pathetic, he lay his weary, aching head back down on the pillow, tried not to think of the blood in his urine, and went back to sleep eventually.
Harper awoke maybe an hour or two later. His reddened, jaundiced eyes blinked languidly a couple times and he yawned, staring into the blindingly white wall. He heard the muffled clinks of crockery behind him and turned, still snuggled deep into his sheets.
A girl, who, if she was human, was no more than sixteen, was setting a tray on the floor with a few simple plates. She didn't look at him.
Harper was about to say something when he remembered what Tyr had said. He drew back a bit in his sheets, staring up at the strange, silent girl.
She had long, black-black, almost purple hair that swept ethereally around her shoulders. She was paler than anything Harper had ever seen, and most of the kids he knew in Boston were pretty pale. She must have spent every waking moment indoors.
Eventually she did turn and looked right at him, and Harper was startled a little by her large, not particularly attractive puke green eyes. He drew back in his sheets, cocooning underneath them like a baby.
She didn't smile, but she didn't frown either. She cocked her head a bit, and narrowed her eyes, and then turned to leave, blending in almost perfectly with the stucco white walls.
"Wait," He creaked out, his voice scratchy and high. The girl turned and waited. Harper hesitated, remembering that he wasn't supposed to speak to her, and then mentally telling Tyr to fuck right off already. "Where...where's Tyr?"
"Who?" She said, umimpressed.
"Tyr Anasazi."
Her eyebrows raised a little, but she still didn't look impressed. "Master General Anasazi? He's dining. Why?"
"Just...I would like to know."
The girl narrowed her unattractive green eyes. "You're arrogant." She said, simply, and then flounced off. Harper, surprised, didn't move for a full two minutes. Then- "Master General?"
--
The 'dining hall' was filled to the brim with tough-talking, mostly soft people, all big and dark and deadly. Tyr hung around in the back, not comfortable enough in his present situation to really join in on any conversation. He held a glass of wine stiffly in one hand, not quite trusting it, and refused to initiate any 'schmoozing'.
"Ah, General Anasazi," Someone- Representative Okasha- came up on his left. "Are you enjoying yourself this afternoon?"
Tyr took a forced sip from his wine. "Yes, Representative, I am." He answered woodenly, shrugging slightly to make sure his long black sleeves were covering his bone spurs.
"I was wondering if I may speak to you about your attack."
Tyr narrowed his eyes. They believed he had been ambushed by highwaymen on the way from one town to another. Harper's 'injury' and subsequent illness had forced them to seek hospitality in this villa, which, Tyr had learned slowly, was owned by a powerful local politician. There had been a real 'General Anasazi', but so far he hadn't turned up, and Tyr intended to milk the false identity as long as he could. None of the softened politicians, apparently, had met the famed General Anasazi face to face, and it was an absurd sort of luck that the name occurred here.
Another absurd sort of luck that made the real General Anasazi a victim of the Maru's fiery jetsam striking him in the back of the skull.
"Yes?" Tyr neutrally prodded.
Representative Okasha smiled saccharinely. "I have heard reports of fire falling from the sky that night," Tyr didn't even blink. "Some are saying it was miracle, a good omen that brought you into our presence."
"Thank you," Tyr tried to remain as neutral as possible. The knowledge that 'General Anasazi' was, outside of Tyr's impersonation, a private warlord, probably would have helped.
--
Harper couldn't take it anymore. He tried to eat what the strange, not particularly attractive, rude girl had left, but he was having a hard time. There was some very putrid broth and a stale little chunk of bread, something that tasted like stagnant shaving water and something that was probably vegetables, but probably not something that human physiology could handle. The only reason Harper choked down most of the mess (except for the vegetables that he seriously thought would harm him) was that growing up in starvation made him grateful for anything, and life aboard the Andromeda hadn't conditioned that from him yet.
After his meal he was feeling marginally better. His head ached less than it did when he first awoke. He still couldn't stand very well, but he could pull himself up enough to look out the porthole window high above his billowy pallet.
He could see the ocean from here. This window faced away from the courtyard, and far in the distance, past expanse of leafy trees, was the ocean, beautiful and bluish green.
"Hello? Tyr? Anybody?" Harper's voice was still sandpapery as he called out around him, wrapping a sheet haphazardly about himself like a toga for the damned. His eyes narrowed a bit and he painfully hoisted himself up into the windowsill again, staring longingly at the ocean.
Oh, fuck it He thought. I'm young, I'm...healthy. I can do whatever I want. He looked around the bland white room again. No one's even going to notice I'm gone.
And for one brainsick moment he believed that, and began to climb his sickly little body out the window of the low, stucco white villa.