Chapter Text
“Rainy?”
He’s seven and she’s nine.
“Rainy.”
He says her name again, but she can’t answer.
She can’t even breathe.
They’ve been alone in the house all afternoon, since school ended and she walked him home. She’s limp on the porch like a rag-doll. He’s sitting in the doorway, keeping the door open with his body, folded in on himself because Rainy can’t breathe and can’t talk and can’t tell him what to do.
The TV is on inside, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it sounds so far away.
And there aren’t any grown ups here to help.
She reaches for him, her cool pale hand closing around his thin dark wrist and he sees it.
A bee! A bee is in her arm.
A little yellow and black bee, stuck to her skin like a burr on the dog they had at the last house.
And he knows what to do.
Leto knows because the school nurse had told him, shown him.
That pretty school nurse with pretty blue eyes. He’d been too shy to look at her for too long, but he listened to everything she said, because she told him that he needed to know, because someday it might save his sister.
His Rainy.
The school nurse had shown him how to open the little needle. She said the one she had wouldn’t stick him but a real one would. She opened it and brought it against his thigh while he sat on the cot in her office. He’d jumped, because Leto never liked people touching him and he wasn’t expecting her to do that; Rainy had giggled behind her hands.
Inside the pen was medicine would save his Rainy. He knows where it is. He runs inside and gets it, the screen door shutting between them.
He thinks about the pretty school nurse’s hands as he opens it, kneeling next to Rainy who is so, so quiet but still awake. He injects it into Rainy’s thigh, through her jeans, just like the nurse had taught him to. He had paid attention. He had to.
Because even then he knew that there wasn’t going to be anyone else to save her.
“Oh, fuck.”
He’s standing up, and then in a second, he isn’t.
“Garrett?” I can’t see him; he went down behind the island in the kitchen.
I move fast because this is wrong.
He said oh, fuck and then is quiet. No explanation. No laugh. Nothing. And his voice sounded off.
Wrong.
He just folded and went down and he’s so quiet now that I can’t even hear him breathing.
Because he isn’t breathing, Fen; he isn’t breathing.
“Garrett, look at me!”
He tries to.
Fuck.
He can’t tell me, can’t look, can’t breathe.
“What—”
He shifts one long leg under me, bends the knee, and I look down. He’s barefoot. And in the arch of his foot—
I’m up, because I know he keeps one in the kitchen where he keeps the asprin and the cough drops – the medicine.
“Look at me,” I’m trying to sound calm, because he’s pale and tight and can’t focus. Don’t die, Garrett, I’m right here, it’s right here.
I uncap the epipen and drop the cap coming back down next to him and hold it against the side of his thigh, activate, and wait for it to inject.
He reels forward when it does, relief, and his head collides with my chest.
I have to hold this here, in place, and I do, but I try to hold him too. Hold on to him.
I count. Seconds that seem too long. I pull it away from him and I rub the injection site with my fingertips.
He breathes against me, shuddering, tight gasps of air.
The bee. I reach down and scrape it out of his skin. It’s a warm day and we left the windows open. It came in, was on the kitchen floor. He stepped on it. A fucking bee in the fucking kitchen.
“You’re okay, I’m here, I’m right here,” I hold on to him, just him, but I need to get him up, because he needs to go to the ER; he’s breathing but this isn’t done yet.
He’d told me he was allergic. That he’s very allergic. It’s worse than Rainy, it happened faster. I was losing him faster.
“Hawke,” I bury my nose in his hair for a second; he smells like panic and he grips me, holds onto me, “You’re okay, Hawke, I’ve got you. We have to get up. Now. Can you stand up?”
He grunts and I help get him up, slowly, because his blood pressure is too low, wrong.
He’s heavy, shaking from deep inside. Hawke. I’ve got you.
I call Leandra from the hospital. I sound so much calmer than I feel.
When she comes through the doors she hugs me. Tight. Without hesitation.
“He’s okay,” I tell her, bringing my arms up around her, patting her back – she smells like honey.
She pulls back after a moment and kisses my temple and says thank you but she doesn’t need to say that. Not to me.
We go in to see him together. He’s comfortable. Safe. His foot it swollen and he’s hooked up to an IV and I can’t look at the place where the needle disappears into his skin.
But he’s smiling.
There’s a TV on in the room. I glance at it while Leandra is fussing sweetly about his pillows and asking him what the fuck he was thinking stepping on a goddamn bee.
It’s The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On the TV. With the volume down low.
I let out a breath and think about that pretty blue-eyed school nurse because she’s easier to think about than Rain is. I haven’t thought about her for so long.
“Fen.”
He says my name and I turn back to him.
And I smile.