Chapter Sixteen: Resurface

A sharp pain wracked her body, and her eyes flew open as a cry of surprise tore from her. Reaver's face appeared in her eyeline, hovering above her. He sported a few cuts and bruises that hadn't been there before, but he looked somewhat relieved when she made eye contact with him.

Her breathing was short and labored, but she somehow knew that she was out of danger. Reaver had come back for her. She was immediately angry, and she threw the best punch she could right at his face.

It was impressive enough to knock him back onto his haunches, cradling the side of his face.

"Blasted void, woman!" he snarled. "You are in no condition to throw punches-especially at the only one present that can tend to your wounds."

He shoved her back down into the softness of a mattress, and he pinned one of her shoulders down while he cursed under his breath. He dug in a small wooden box for something, and he produced a curved needle and thread.

"I'll have to redo the stitches now," he muttered, his eyes slashing up to her face with violent accusation. "You've ripped my perfect work with the littlest of effort."

Sparrow finally turned her head to look about the room. It was wholly unfamiliar to her, but she reckoned it was the room of a seedy tavern somewhere in Bloodstone. This one, it seemed, had survived Lucien's assault on the port town, but it was not as if it were much to gloat about. The window was boarded up, letting only the faintest rays of sunlight from between the planks, and the air had a stale, dusty aroma.

"I carried you the rest of the way through Wraithmarsh," Reaver explained. "You are very welcome, by the way."

"For not leaving me to die, damned to the Void for all eternity?" Sparrow snorted, "Thank you so much for your generosity."

"I very well could have left you to die," Reaver spat with scorn. He yanked the cork out of a bottle of liquor with his teeth, and he spit it onto the bed, pouring a bit of the alcohol onto a handkerchief. "Those Banshees had no quarrel with me until I turned around to drag you out of the mud. They would have let me go on my merry way."

"What made you change your mind then, oh benevolent one?" she demanded to know, pushing up onto her elbows to observe what he was doing. She winced when he patted her wound with the alcohol-soaked cloth.

"These will become inflamed if we don't look after them immediately," Reaver said, outright ignoring her demand for the truth. "This was not a mortal blade that pierced you." He passed his needle over the flame of the candle on the bedside table, and he threaded it with total ease.

He held up the bottle, taking a hefty swig before offering it to her.

Sparrow leaned forward, gasping from the acute pain, and he moved to cradle her head, helping her to take a few desperate gulps before putting the bottle to the side. The moment the needle pierced her skin, she hissed softly through her teeth.

"You, only a short while ago, were impaled on a spectral blade, and you wince at a needle?" Reaver said, glancing up to her as he drew the thread across her wound and tied it with nimble fingers. There was a deadpan sort of humor in those crystal blue eyes, but his mouth was set in a decidedly humorless frown.

She rolled her eyes and laid her head back onto the pillow. "You came back for me. Why?"

"Why not?" he asked. "I deigned to be generous, and this is the thanks I get? I could have easily abandoned you, but I did not. I fought those vile beings, getting rather bruised up in the process, and you lay here questioning me."

"You were as good as gone, already. What made you turn back?"

He exhaled heavily, being much less gentle in his ministrations. "I knew that I would not hear the end of it if I were to return to the others without you."

"So you would have returned to the others?" Sparrow questioned. "You would have kept that promise?"

"It was made clear to me that if I were not to cooperate in this little plot to save the world, I would have no one with which to appease the Shadow Court each year," Reaver replied speedily.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as he continued to stitch her wound with precision and tedious attention.

"Do try not to rip these," Reaver urged her. "Now turn over. I'll likely have to repair the stitches on your back as well."

It was painful even to shift, but when she started to turn over, she couldn't hold back the strangled cry of pain. She could feel Reaver's hand on her hip, helping her turn up onto her side. It lingered there as he inspected his handiwork.

"As I suspected," he huffed. "You'll have to keep very still when I'm through with these. At least for a few hours until your Heroic constitution heals them."

She closed her eyes, her body sinking with exhaustion further into the mattress.

As he tended to the wound on her back, she balked at the idea of thanking him for turning back for her. Any decent person would have done it without so much as a moment's hesitation, but Reaver had all but left her to die. The only justification for risking his life to save her was that he might save himself a lecture or retaliation from Sparrow's companions.

Did she matter that little to him?

The fact that her heart sank at the thought made her insides unruly with contempt and anger, but she did her best to remain still. How could she have allowed herself to develop any sort of affinity for the loathsome pirate? Even if it was a fleeting moment of emotional distress, the meaning behind it was bothersome and worrying, especially if he regarded her as nothing more than another expendable companion.

"You've become awfully silent. Are you awake, ma Moineau?" he inquired softly, a sliver of tenderness laced into his voice. She felt his fingers in her hair, pulling it away from her face. He traced the curve of her neck, as if to test her consciousness.

"If you are, indeed, asleep, I suppose you wouldn't mind if I just-"

She felt the sharp prick of the needle piercing inflamed flesh, but she remained motionless and kept her breathing steady. She didn't have the energy to argue with him, and she didn't want to hear any excuses he might have offered for abandoning her to die horribly in Wraithmarsh. She settled on seething silence, feigning unconsciousness to escape that ever-gabbing mouth of his. She'd grown adept at keeping her body completely still and her breathing steady and shallow during her incarceration in The Spire-useful for tricking the Commandant into believing he'd tortured her into total exhaustion.

He made a soft sound of satisfaction with the fact that she appeared to be asleep, and he continued his task, though with a lighter hand. His fingers moved swiftly, sewing and knotting with near-mechanical speed and precision until Sparrow felt him stop and heard the sound of the bottle being uncorked once more. The liquid sloshed in the nearly empty bottle, and she heard the low squeak of his chair as he leaned back into it.

"For a few dreadful moments, I hated myself for turning my back on you," Reaver sighed with tangible disgust with himself. "And I have never hated myself, mind you." Another loud swig.

"I wish you could have seen what those things did to me when I turned back for you," he sneered. "They ripped at me, leaving my face torn to utter shreds. My face. But I, of course, healed before you had the decency to awaken to see the sacrifice I'd made for you."

She could feel him leaning over her, his whiskey-laced breath sweeping slowly across her bared shoulder. His hand touched hesitantly to her skin, caressing gently with a shaky manner that was so very unlike him.

His touch almost caused her coma-like facade to slip away, but she endured, exploiting the effect the drink was having on him.

"Yet, I am satisfied," he said finally. "Satisfied to see that you live. Satisfied that, despite your anger, you still have that look in your eyes. The look that says that you still want me just as much as I want you. That you care for me, in some way or another."

She clenched her jaw, her breathing hitching slightly.

His mouth drew so very close to her ear. "You can stop pretending now, ma Moineau. I've drunkenly divulged my thoughts, now I think it is time for you to unburden yourself as well."

She stirred, and Reaver assisted her in turning slowly onto her back., and their eyes locked.

"Reaver, you left me to die," Sparrow croaked.

"I didn't," he said.

"You almost did."

"But I didn't. How can you hold me accountable for things I didn't do?" He asked, his brow arching with quizzical interrogation. "I think you are simply looking for excuses to tear yourself from me." He loomed closer, leaning over her body like a monster ready to devour her in one swift bite.

"That would imply that you have some sort of hold on...or connection to me."She met his eyes without an ounce of fear or hesitation, her jaw tight with defiance.

"You daft thing," he murmured, fingers brushing against her jaw to tilt her head upward. "Have I not made it clear that I adore you?"

At that, she nearly laughed aloud, but she held it in. She instead expressed her surprise with wide eyes. "Adore me?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "Despite your painfully black and white view of the world, I care about whether you live or die. I care whether or not I get to see you again."

Sparrow drew a deep breath, the sharp pain causing the rest of her body to tense and her eyes to squeeze shut. She felt his hand on the side of her face, fingers feathering with tender affection. "You do, don't you?"

"You think I would lie about something as silly as that?" He snorted. "I do have a reputation to uphold. Reaver — pirate scoundrel extraordinaire. "

With that, her face softened. Leaning into his touch, she opened her eyes to find that he had silently moved closer. Her heartbeat quickened as he drew his hand up the length of her torso leaving soft pain and weak pleasure in their wake.

"Broken ribs — most likely healed or healing," he diagnosed. "Your wrist was rather broken from the sheer power it took to pull you from the muck, but that too is now mostly mended.. Honestly, you're bruised from nose to toes…"

"I've had worse," she chuckled, but she felt the evidence of the broken rib Reaver had diagnosed in a sharp dagger of pain in her side.

"You are a Hero, and yet….you are still so fragile," he breathed, his eyes skimming over her features once more. "I forget, sometimes."

He looked so vulnerable, now, and Sparrow suddenly felt the same. She gulped softly, and she tilted her head back into the pillow. She allowed her eyes to flutter shut momentarily, and she tried to compose herself.

"You should probably try to rest, Ma Moineau," Reaver said. "Now that I am confident you will survive, I will try to find something that even resembles something edible." He rose from his seat, reaching for his coat.

She nodded softly, agreeing that rest was probably the most important thing. She heard his footsteps retreating from the room, and the door closed. She winced as she settled back into the pillow, trying to keep her mind off of her most recent brush with death. It was probably the closest she had ever come, aside from her fall from Lucien Farifax's tower.

She opened her eyes, and she saw that Reaver had left the remainder of their shared bottle on the bedside table, apparently for her. She uncorked it with her teeth and downed the rest of the bottle, hoping the intoxication would carry her off into a dreamless sleep.

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A/N: Thanks so much for your continued patience. I will try to keep up my pace of publishing weekly or every few weeks, and I hope you enjoy what's to come! Thanks again to my always amazing beta reader : Indiegarona. She writes, too in case you wanted to check out any of her fics.