PAINTED LADIES | AFTERNOON
The suspended Sergeant ate when told and moved and washed like a mechanical mockery of himself, he made conversation when talked to and attempted to simply hide behind his injuries as a way to hide the writhing darkness that threatened to consume him from the inside ou and when he was deemed well enough to travel, when they'd surely overstayed their unwanted welcome, he went home.
Well.
Not to the home he knew.
It was obvious there was no safety in his flat in Kingsway Court, not now and perhaps not ever. His delicate pianist had surprised him, perhaps surprised herself, in the fistful of days they hid like frightened hingles in Miss Ecks' house by using her own money and taking her own time to find them somewhere quaint and quiet in the Painted Ladies. In the clocking Dives.
Like a pair of clever tsats.
Had the circumstances been different, it would have been endearing, exhilarating, adorable. It would have been awkward, considering his delicate pianist of a wife was a galdor and he was not, but she'd done it all on her own and Rhys didn't ask questions. He couldn't even help move his entire life somewhere new, only struggle upstairs and curl up in a new bed as if he wanted nothing else.
Voices followed him into the darkness behind his eyelids. Faces. Taunts. Threats. Promises. Disappointments. Anger. Fear. His attackers haunted him, waking him in helplessness. His mistakes whispered to him, Charity's closeness in bed not a comfort when he knew he'd betrayed all of her trust, crushed all his promises.
Bastard.
You fucking bastard.
Idiot.
Charity was an idiot, she is an idiot. She was enamoured with the idea of you, with the escape you offered on her depressing little lot in life.
Failure.
Give my regards to my daughter, Mister Valentin.
His bruised and broken ribs kept him mostly in bed. His arm, slung and immobilized, kept him mostly helpless without assistance. While he had no choice to ask, he had no choice but to need, he just made sure he needed as little as possible. He ate and drank just enough to keep him alive. He washed to be bearable. He hadn't shaved in days.
Rhys was angry—so angry—that it seethed into his tone of voice, quickened his temper, stole his gentleness. He became withdrawn and grumpy, not belligerent so much as quiet and blunt. He'd stared at bruises made by Benjamin's hands and found he had no more words to say, especially when Charity refused to be rid of them like some godsbedamned purposeful reminder of his stupidity. He'd apologized but, as far as he could tell, like the blackened bits of his face and ribs that had begun to turn the ugly colors, the damage had been done and he was helpless to fix it.
He didn't want to talk about things. He didn't want to hear how wrong he had been. He didn't want to hear the mistakes he'd made. He didn't want to be asked how he would make it better. He didn't want to. He just didn't. What did it matter? Could anything even be fixed? He'd broken everything. He'd ruined the only good thing. The one good thing he'd clung to for so much of his life—snuffed out like a candle by his own stupidity.
Any attempt at conversation only led to he was sorry and he was going to bed. In that order. Every damn time. Small talk was possible, but awkward. It was simply weighed down by an unspoken sadness that permeated his entire existence.
He slept. A lot. Houses. Hours. Half a day at a time. More. It was easy—so clocking easy—to blame it on pain. Physical pain, of course. Something hurt. He was tired. Effort was exhausting. He didn't want any opiates in the house for reasons he wasn't about to disclose to Drezda or anyone else in Charity's obvious company and so he'd refused the doctor with vehemence when he'd offered.
Instead, he just dealt with the pain. Poorly.
A week slipped by too quickly. Not quickly enough. He let the sore feelings swell between himself and the one person he loved—the only person in all of Vita he felt he could even trust no matter how much he knew she hated him now. He let the silence between them fester like an untreated wound. Rhys was unwilling to process anything, unwilling to follow the dark trails of his thoughts where he knew they were calling him to go, unwilling to offer peace to something he was afraid to hope in after his ugly mistake. Unable to act, he simply shut down, disappearing into himself instead of turning to Charity to make things right.
Why should he? There was nothing she could want from him—
Now the delicate galdor was stuck with him. With a wick. A nothing. An ersehole.
Where else could she go?
He'd done this. This was all his fault. Every tear. Every bruise. Every bloody smear and broken bone. All of it was his fault.
Rhys could only curl further under the covers, cocooned in a warm darkness that did not reject him, that had not pushed him away but had welcomed him instead. Ten days and he'd become some ghost of himself, unable to summon the will to make the right choices because of the painful weight of his guilt.
Because everyone had been right. All this time. All his life.
He was nothing.
Golden afternoon light, the last light of this particular winter day, filtered through curtains. Jynx stubbornly insisted on sleeping on his feet as if she might have, somehow, still cared about the not-galdor, as if she waited on praise for her daring rescue. He'd not eaten. He'd hardly strung words together in conversation. His arm ached, bones knitting together at their accelerated rate excruciating, but not as full of sharp discomfort as the awareness he'd left Charity alone, that he had yet to really be home since that afternoon on the Eighth.
He'd just left.
Did he want to come back? Did he—
Of course, he had to pee. With great effort, Rhys began to peel away the layers of his hiding place, to sit up (much to his osta's displeasure), to gingerly swing his legs over the edge of the bed, to whine and hiss at the crushing weight of gravity, curling toes of his bare feet against the cold floor, and summoning the elusive will to stand. Shuffling from the bedroom and into the hall toward the admittedly lackluster plumbing of this little house in the Painted Ladies—which was actually rather nice by comparison to what was beyond the neighborhood and two blocks over and was something money could fix for sure—the suspended officer trailed fingers over doors and walls, moving slowly and ignoring the rumble of his stomach as it announced its hunger.
Clock it all. One thing at a time.