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Title: the end of the world (as we know it)
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 51,562
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, illness, involuntary vampirism.
Summary: When the vampire virus starts to develop a resistance to the Nightstalkers' Daystar weapon, Abigail is left watching helplessly as King has to fight not just for his life, but for his soul and his sanity.
Masterlist: AO3 :: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Previous Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Sullivan was tapping his fingers on the desk impatiently, a little staccato rhythm of which he was barely aware. Whistler had stolen the one laptop they had that still worked - or at least the one that wasn't dedicated to running Caulder's viral load projections. He hadn't been kidding when he'd told Whistler that trying to cure King was going to use up resources they couldn't spare. He just hadn't figured it would mean that he was reduced to manually pulling together all of the evidence they had of potential vampire activity, instead of being able to dump the data into a database and use the search algorithms that Hedges had developed.
How the hell that they done this before the invention of the microchip? He guessed that the world had been smaller then, less anonymous than big-city life. Or maybe he was just sulking; Whistler had stolen the last can of soda as well, and Sullivan never functioned very well without his daily dose of caffeine.
Still, at least she was back to doing her own research instead of mooning over King, even if Sullivan knew damned well that she'd come up with the same answer that he already had. Maybe there was hope for her yet, but he wasn't counting on it.
He tapped his fingers again, ignoring Caulder as the other man walked right by him, giving him a strange look as he headed back towards his microscope.
Yeah, okay, maybe he was hanging out in the lab a little more frequently than he used to, but this whole situation with King had him on edge. Even if she seemed to have rediscovered her love of hunting, it wasn't like Whistler was going to start treating King with the caution he deserved any time soon. And that meant that Sullivan had to step up to the plate, whether he wanted to or not.
He didn't. Babysitting didn't sound like his idea of fun. And babysitting King seemed like his idea of absolute hell. Still, it could have been worse - Caulder hadn't called him on the impromptu guard he'd set up outside King's door, indulging him with a heavy sigh and the odd look or two. Whistler, on the other hand, wouldn't be anywhere near as understanding when she finally figured out what he was up to.
Tonight, the sound of King's voice had become a constant, low-level drone that Sullivan had tuned out. King had been talking when he'd arrived and he was still talking now, as if Sullivan needed any confirmation that King loved the sound of his own voice. He had no idea who King was talking to. He'd thought Caulder at first, until Caulder had sauntered back from the bathroom break he'd taken, and it couldn't be Whistler, not tonight. He'd passed her on his way to the infirmary, and the last he'd seen of her, she'd been buried elbow deep in paperwork in the Ops room.
Poor Marta. It had to be her - no one else it could be - but he hadn't thought she had much time for King. She was too no-nonsense to put up with his attitude, much like Sullivan himself.
His fingers tapped the desk again and Caulder shot him a glare, his patience obviously wearing thin. Sullivan stopped, his fingers hovering just above the surface, before he thought better of it and placed them flat. Never piss off the medic - not when there was a good chance that needles would loom in your future.
Maybe Marta could do with a break - seemed like Caulder could. He pushed himself to his feet and headed towards the small room in back. He was half way there before he heard the high-pitched giggle that sounded nothing like Marta. It didn't sound like Whistler either, and that assumed she'd managed to sneak past him. The sound raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and he found himself picking up the pace, his hands sliding automatically to the small of his back where he stashed his spare blade. He never took it off these days, even when he was supposedly safe in HQ.
Nowhere and nothing was safe these days. Maybe that was why his heart rate had also kicked up a notch.
He wasn't quite running by the time he skidded to a stop in King's doorway, but it was as close as made no difference. He took in the scene in front of him with a single glance, and his blood froze in his veins.
Zoë looked up at him, her small, heart-shaped face frowning at the interruption. She was way too close to King for comfort, curled up in the crook of his arm and leaning against his chest. The book that King had been reading was propped up in front of her, and King was now staring at him over the top of it, the light from the infirmary overheads behind Sullivan reflected in his eyes.
His eyes were yellow.
Sullivan took in a deep breath, keeping enough wit to stay where he was in spite of every instinct screaming at him to get the hell over to Zoë and get her away from King, by force if necessary. But he didn't want to spook the kid, and he sure as hell didn't want to start something he had fuck all chance of stopping.
Zoë was so close to King that he could rip Zoë's throat out before Sullivan was even half way there. Marta's views on firearms in the home be damned - from now on, Sullivan was carrying a gun as well as a knife around indoors.
"What are you doing?" he asked softly, keeping his voice as calm and even as he edged his way towards them, moving as nonthreateningly as possible.
King stared back at him, a frown creasing the skin between his brows. "I'm reading Zoë a story," he said. "Why? What did you think I was doing?"
His voice sounded the same as it always had, even if his eyes clearly showed that his less-than-human side was rearing its ugly head again. But Sullivan wasn't going to be fooled by King's usual sardonic and slightly sarcastic tone, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let King put him at ease.
That was Whistler's mistake, and there was no way Sullivan was going to let Zoë pay for it.
"Do you think that's a smart idea?" he asked, gradually closing the distance between them.
"Would you rather she watched hours of TV instead? I mean, I'm not exactly reading her Playboy. Believe me, tonight's choice of reading material is completely age-appropriate." King held up the book, flashing the front cover at him.
Sullivan ignored it, finally coming to a stop a couple of feet from King's bed - close enough to grab Zoë if he needed to, but far enough away that King wouldn't have time to grab him before he got Zoë away.
"Zoë, honey?" Zoë frowned up at him, not fooled by his tone for a second. They'd never exactly been friends - he didn't have time for kids, not even ones as smart as Zoë seemed. "You want to come over here?"
"No," she said, turning him down with a six-year-old's irrefutable logic. She tilted her head to the side to study him, weighing him up and apparently finding him wanting. The assessing expression on her face was so like Whistler's that for a second it was difficult to believe that they weren't actually blood-related.
King's weight shifted on the bed, setting the springs underneath creaking. He was still watching Sullivan, and his expression was no less assessing than Zoë's. He couldn't have missed the way that Sullivan had tensed up as he'd started to move, and he didn't seem to have missed the implications either. He stopped moving before finally settling slowly back down into his original position, his eyes staying fixed on Sullivan as he eased his arm from around Zoë.
"I think it's bedtime, sweetheart," he said, ignoring Zoë's little whine of protest. "You want to go and find Abby?"
Zoë pouted, the glare she shot at Sullivan leaving no doubt who she blamed for her story being cut short. She slid off the bed reluctantly, dragging her feet as though that was going to lead to a reprieve. And then she turned back to face King, holding her arms up for a goodnight hug.
Fuck. Sullivan measured the distance between him and King, trying to calculate the point at which it would be safe to snatch Zoë, just in case the girl decided to be completely uncooperative or King's self-control failed.
But King, it seemed, was completely in control. Completely in control and as much of an ass as he always was. He stared straight at Sullivan, his look challenging as he wrapped both of his arms around Zoë, dwarfing her tiny frame. Sullivan held his gaze, impotent fury rising up in him, until King finally dropped his face towards Zoë's head, squeezing the girl gently and pressing his mouth against her hair. It would have been touching if it hadn't been for King's fangs or the hungry light that flared in his eyes.
But before Sullivan could move, end this and maybe even end King, King let go of her, reaching up to push her hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear.
"Good night, sweetheart," he said. "Try and be good for Abigail, okay?"
Zoë nodded obediently, trotting out of the door, but not without giving Sullivan an uncertain look on the way.
Sullivan waited until she was out of earshot before he turned back to King, snarling, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
King settled back on the bed, making a production of it, but his eyes, when they met Sullivan's again, were hard and cold. His voice, however, stayed deceptively mild as he replied, "I told you - I was reading the kid a bedtime story."
"A bedtime story?" Sullivan didn't bother to keep the contempt out of his voice, or hide the anger. "A fucking bedtime story? Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"Well, that's debatable..."
He lost it, getting right up in King's face and shaking with rage. His voice was also shaking as he growled, low and dangerous in the back of his throat, "You wanna know what I was debating? Whether I'd manage to kill you before you killed Zoë."
King froze, his eyes widening fractionally as he took Sullivan's words in, absorbing them. And then the fight drained from him, the light vanishing from his eyes.
"I wasn't going to hurt her," he said. "I'd never -"
He swallowed the next words down, and Sullivan hoped they'd choke him. He opened his mouth, probably to say as much, given how pissed he was, but Whistler finally chose that moment to start being a goddamned parent, interrupting them. Her expression was worried and it grew even more so as she glanced between them, taking in the tension in the room.
"Zoë asked me to check on you," she said, directing her remark at King but staring at Sullivan. There was a look of calculation in her eyes now, as though she was adding to and two together and coming up with an answer she didn't like.
Sullivan took a step back, putting enough distance between him and King to let Whistler relax. And to make sure that he didn't wrap his hands around the bastard's throat and throttle him.
"I'm fine," King said colourlessly. "Just tired."
She nodded, her expression not quite believing, but she didn't look as though she was going to call him on it. Instead she shot a hard, suspicious look at Sullivan, a barely veiled threat lurking in her eyes.
He had no fucking patience for this, not tonight and not ever. He opened his mouth to say as much, but once again King beat him to the punch.
"You should probably keep Zoë away from me. At least for the moment."
King somehow managed to avoid Whistler's eyes as he said it, but that meant that his gaze landed on Sullivan, who glared back at him, pissed and relieved in equal measures.
Whistler, however, wasn't quite as easy to convince.
"What? King...?"
"Look -" King broke off, still managing to avoid looking at Whistler as he scrubbed his hand across his face. "Let's not take any chances, okay?"
"Chances?" Whistler stared at him, her expression dumbfounded, and then her temper began to rise, the anger bubbling up towards the surface. "What the hell are you talking about? Did something happen?" And then it was like a light bulb had suddenly lit up above her head. She turned to look at Sullivan and if he'd thought that her eyes were hard before, it had nothing to the look in them now. "Did someone say something?" she asked icily, the temperature in the room plummeting.
"He's right, Abby."
King's sudden defence of him still didn't warm Sullivan to him any, and it didn't seem to hold water with Whistler either.
"Right?" Her voice started to climb, both in pitch and volume. "He's not right - he's wrong. He couldn't be more wrong. You think I don't know that?" She took a ragged breath, but the pause wasn't long enough for Sullivan to interject before she continued, her voice now low and intense rather than shaking with the high-pitched anger it had held. "Two days," she said. "You were locked in that room with me for two days after you turned and I'm still here. There isn't a chance in hell you'd hurt Zoë."
The fury in her voice made Sullivan want to take at least a couple of steps back, put a safe minimum distance between them, not least because there was something else beneath the fury, something lost and scared. Scared people were never rational. He knew that for a damn fact.
But it didn't seem to faze King, at least not long enough for the man to keep his mouth shut.
"Not if I was in my right mind, no," he said. "But what if I'm not?"
That took the wind out of Whistler's sails. Or, he reassessed, she'd already run out of steam in the face of the inevitable. But that didn't mean she was going to quit. He should have figured she wouldn't go down without a fight.
"Why wouldn't you be in your right mind?" she asked him quietly, something desperate underneath her question.
"Oh, let me see. How about the fact that I'm already running a fever of a hundred and three. Or the fact that the thirst is getting worse and worse all of the time. Or the fact that Caulder's cure isn't actually curing me. Any of those working for you, sweetheart?"
To give Whistler due credit, she didn't react to King's savage tone. She simply stood there and took it, her expression sliding back into its usual impassive mask as the words rolled over her, harsh and bruising. And even after he'd finished talking, she simply stood there, looking at him and saying nothing.
King was the first to look away, shame clouding his face. And then he sighed, his shoulders slumping as he stared down at the hands he had in his lap.
"We can't risk it, Abby," he said more seriously, the hard, sarcastic edge gone from his voice. "Not Zoë."
"You want me to keep her away from you?" Whistler's voice now was giving nothing away, as impassive and unreadable as her face.
King nodded, but something in her tone - something Sullivan had missed - seemed to put him on edge.
"And do you want me to stay away from you, too?"
King stilled, panic flashing briefly in his eyes. He swallowed, unable to mask the hurt or the fear completely, but he nodded slowly anyway, his eyes searching Whistler's face. Or maybe he was just memorising how she looked, some kind of romantic shit like that.
Whistler snorted. "Tough," she said, and the tension bled away from King's frame. "I'll talk to Zoë, tell her she needs to leave you to rest if you're going to get better."
"You might want to... spend a little more time with her," King suggested, which only confirmed Sullivan's low opinion of his survival instinct.
Whistler's stance shifted slightly, becoming something dangerous and predatory.
"Or not," King added, his face creasing apologetically, like that was going to be enough to save him. "Just..."
"I'll keep Zoë away, but I'm not going anywhere."
Sullivan was still watching King, even if King's focus was now entirely on Whistler, which meant he didn't miss the relief Whistler's words had triggered. Neither had she, judging by the way her expression finally softened for a moment, or the way that she reached out and pressed her fingers lightly against King's arm before she moved away. Her expression only hardened again when she realised that Sullivan was still watching them, giving him a look that promised a world of pain if he stepped out of line again or threatened King even implicitly, as she passed him on the way out of the door.
And that meant that Sullivan was alone with King, a situation Sullivan had no desire to be in. He didn't know what King wanted, and he didn't give a fuck either way. He was already heading back into the infirmary when King's voice stopped him.
"I wouldn't have hurt her," he said. Sullivan huffed out an impatient breath - he had zero interest in playing semantics. He turned on his heel, ready to rip King a new one, but King's expression, when he finally faced him, was serious, no sign of the fool that King was all too happy to play. "But you were right - there may come a time when I won't be able to stop myself."
Sullivan raised one eyebrow, folding his arms and waiting. "I was right?" he prompted.
"Yeah, well, don't get too cocky, Sullivan. Even a stopped clock manages that twice a day." He paused, giving Sullivan another one of those assessing looks, the ones that Sullivan was getting sick and tired of. "You don't like me much, do you?"
"What gave it away?"
"Well, the silver blade you have tucked in the back of your pants was my first clue. Actually, I lie. I've never thought you liked me, even before recent developments."
He made a little air quotes around the word 'developments', but Sullivan didn't rise to the bait, meeting his eyes calmly. "And here was me thinking you were stupid."
"I'm wounded. But that will make what I have to say next a little easier."
Sullivan didn't like the sound of that, but King's look was challenging, just waiting for him to throw the fight, and that pissed him off enough to stick around and hear King out. "Go on."
"I made Abby a promise after that fucker bit me. I promised her I'd try, that I'd fight this as long as I could."
Sullivan shifted uncomfortably, not liking where this was going.
"You talk to Caulder recently?"
He shook his head.
"I'm not doing so good, but I suspect you already knew that." Sullivan didn't react this time, not willing to either confirm or deny. Either seemed rather pointless, but King nodded anyway, like he'd confirmed it. "And that's where you come in."
"And how do you figure that one out?"
King smiled at him, but there was no amusement in it, just something dark and bitter in his eyes. "Abby made me a promise, too. It was a shitty thing to make her promise, but the way I see it we're pretty much even on that front, she and I. Aren't you going to ask what it was?"
Sullivan suspected he already knew, but some part of him - a small, petty part but at least he was man enough to admit that - refused to give King the satisfaction of answering. Not that King needed it - he really did like the sound of his own voice.
"I made her promise she wouldn't let me hurt anybody. That she'd take me down if necessary. I think we both know that she's not going to be able to do that. I mean, she's tough, no doubt about that, and I wouldn't bet on my chances if..."
"If it was anyone but you," Sullivan completed for him.
King's smile this time was slightly more genuine. Slightly. "Yeah, waste of resources that I am."
Sullivan froze, giving King a narrow-eyed look. "Whistler tell you that?"
"No," King said brightly. "You really should think about using your indoor voice if you don't want the person in the next room to hear you."
Bastard.
"But I'm not one to hold grudges. Especially not if you promise to kill me if it becomes necessary."
He'd been expecting something like that, but hearing King state it so calmly, like it was nothing, gave him pause. King, however, didn't seem to notice his hesitation, or if he noticed, he just plain ignored it.
"Please note the 'necessary' caveat. And just in case you're thinking of getting a little trigger-happy, I think I should point out that even if it does become necessary, Whistler is going to be seriously fucking pissed at you. She'll probably come to terms with it if you had to do it to save someone else, but I'm also pretty sure that if she decides it wasn't? She'll probably just shoot you."
King wasn't wrong, but then what was it he'd said about stopped clocks? Sullivan didn't let any of that show on his face, meeting King's eyes calmly and hiding behind his best stone face.
"Do we have a deal?"
"Doesn't the word 'deal' imply I get something out of it?"
"Well you hate me and you might get to shoot me. I'm not sure what else you want?"
Sullivan nodded slowly, his brain whirring away. King was right, on all counts, as much as he hated to admit it. Whistler wasn't going to be able to do it; she'd believe in King to the very last, and the very last might be her death at King's hands. Sullivan wouldn't have any such hesitation, but there was a hell of a difference between killing somebody - something - in the heat of the moment or in self-defence and talking about it as calmly as King was doing.
"Okay," he said eventually. "If it comes down to it, your life or somebody else's, I'll make the right call. You have my word on it."
Some of King's tension ebbed away, leaving him less brittle, a little less hyper. Instead he just looked sick, and tired, and too damned young. Maybe that was a side product of however long he'd lived as the vamp, but for the first time since he'd met the man, Sullivan didn't think so. He had no idea how old King really was - he'd never bothered to ask.
It would be kind of hypocritical to ask now.
King sank back down into his pillows, sweat breaking out on his forehead. "Just one more thing," he said, and Sullivan braced himself, strangling his first impulse to scowl at King for putting conditions on it at this point. "Just make it quick, okay? As quick and clean as you can."
A sudden surge of pity overwhelmed him, evaporating the last remnants of his anger, at least for now. In all of his consideration of King as a problem, in all of his weighing up of the potential solutions, he'd missed a variable - how fucking scared King was.
Yeah. No matter what, he could promise King that.
-o-
Sullivan had never been one to put off what needed to be done, preferring to take his licks sooner rather than later, and this was no exception.
He found Whistler on the roof, sitting in the darkness with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was supposed to be on watch, and the bow lying on the ground by her side was mute testimony to that. She looked up when she heard the crunch of his boots on the tarred roofing, but she didn't say anything and, after a moment, he settled down beside her, mimicking her position.
"The kid with Marta?" he asked, and she stiffened, obviously expecting another lecture from him. But he was tired of lecturing her, and it wasn't like she listened to him anyway.
"Yes," she said and her tone made it clear that she wasn't willing to discuss it. Any of it, up to and including King.
He nodded, more to himself than at her, and then he cleared his throat, choosing his next words with care, making them as non-inflammatory as possible. "Want me to take over?" he asked. "So you can go sit with King?" As peace offerings went, he didn't think that one sucked, but Whistler shot a look, one that was confused and distrusting, and he forced himself to add, "I don't mind."
There was a long pause before she said, quietly, "I need to start pulling my weight."
He had no idea whether that was a less-than-subtle dig at his resources comment, except for the fact that while Whistler might to do subtle, she didn't tend to do passive-aggressive. That was one thing he admired about her - she wasn't shy about making her point.
He nodded again, automatically scanning the skyline for any movement. Some habits died hard, but better the habit than him.
"I didn't think he could hear me, you know," he said. "When I said what I said about resources. Not that I wouldn't have made the same point, but I'd have made doubly sure I was out of earshot. I'm not quite that much of an asshole."
"That's debatable," she said, a small frown now furrowing her brow. But her tone was dry, not confrontational, and his mouth twitched upwards wryly. Girl had a point.
"Caulder thinks that whatever's going on with King might provide him with valuable data about why Daystar isn't as effective any more. So... I might have been wrong about it being a waste of resources." That could have come out better; in fact, when he replayed the words over in his head, he really did sound like that much of an asshole. Whistler seemed to think so, the way she was staring at him, but the next words out of her mouth surprised him.
"King would probably agree with you," she said quietly. "Even if -"
She broke off, swallowing suddenly and tearing her eyes away from his to stare back out over the derelict buildings surrounding them. He knew what she'd been going to say, though. It wasn't like it was hard to guess.
"I'm sorry," he said, and for the first time he meant it.
She nodded, her eyes still fixed on the horizon. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't know about your wife. But you know that doesn't change anything."
He cleared his throat, feeling strangely like he had to make it up to her. Maybe it was a side effect of keeping watch together, especially at night - silence and the stars seemed to encourage confidences. He'd noticed that before, out in the desert. "I married young," he said, the words coming out stilted and awkward. "Too young, as it turned out. It was a fucking disaster, but at least we didn't have kids when we finally called an end to it. No one's lives to fuck up but our own."
She turned her head to look at him, the starlight catching in her hair. He couldn't read her expression, and maybe that was for the best.
"I swore off marriage after that, figured I'd had my shot and learned my lesson. But then I met Suzie..." His Suzie, with her belly laugh and a smile that could rival the sun. He trailed off, thinking about her, the hurt still fresh and raw. "I guess what I'm trying to say is..." Words failed him again, but maybe, being so guarded herself, Whistler got what he was trying to say anyway.
"Everyone who fights has a reason to hate vamps," she said. "Including King."
Or maybe she didn't get it, but then since Sullivan barely knew what he'd been trying to say, it wasn't surprising that Whistler had misunderstood. He scratched absently at his scalp, still trying to find the right words.
They still wouldn't come. He was reduced to asking, "What's your story, then?"
For a second, he thought she wouldn't answer him. He wouldn't have blamed her if she hadn't, but instead she tilted her head towards him again, watching him in the moonlight, and then finally said, "I always knew vampires were real."
"You never lost anyone?"
"Before? No. But I've lost my dad, my team. And now -"
She broke off, obviously thinking about King, and Sullivan kicked himself for making things worse instead of trying to build some kind of rickety bridge between them.
"You haven't lost him yet," he said softly, the least he could offer her after putting his foot in it. "And if Caulder has anything to do with it, you won't."
She smiled at that - he caught a faint glimpse of the corner of her mouth turning up in the moonlight - and said, "He's not Sommerfield, but he'll do."
He supposed that was high praise coming from Whistler. "He's pretty determined. I think he actually likes King."
"A lot of people do," she said quietly, and he found that difficult to believe.
"I take it you do," he said dryly, and the corner of her mouth turned up again. "How long have you two been together?"
She stilled, a sudden, painful lack of movement, and he kicked himself again. Seemed he was always putting his foot in it these days with Whistler. "I thought there'd be time," she said, and her tone now was faint, as though the only way she could cope was to distance herself from what she was saying. "When we'd finally won and, you know, I thought we were winning."
Shit. Now he really did hate himself. He was surprised at King not pushing it, not when he couldn't imagine the man ever meeting a boundary without feeling the itch to kick it over. He cleared his throat awkwardly, but he'd opened the floodgates and now he just had to hold on through the torrent that escaped.
"I shouldn't have waited," she said, her voice tight, on the edge of some barely checked emotion. "But I was too fucking scared. And King -"
"And King?" he prompted, because this was like a train wreck and he couldn't look away, even if that made him a complete bastard.
She shrugged, lost for a moment in her own private little world of grief and regret. "I've always been able to read him," she said. "I knew how he felt."
Sullivan felt even more like a heel, but he couldn't leave it like this. "How he feels," he said gently, or as gently as he could, and he figured it was the thought that counted. "I'll take the rest of the watch. You can go do the dutiful girlfriend thing, sit by his bedside and hold his hand, whatever you think you need to do. Just promise me you'll be careful." And, yeah, he wasn't her fucking father - he didn't need her look to tell him that. He had no right to dictate that, but from everything he'd heard it sounded like her father had been a peach. It wouldn't hurt for Whistler to know that one person other than King gave a shit about her, even if that person had to be him.
She studied him for a long moment, reading his expression as well as his words. She must have decided that his heart was in the right place, even if he had a fucking awkward way of saying it, because she finally nodded, pushing herself gracefully to her feet and reaching down for her bow.
"Thank you," she said, and then she was gone, scrabbling back the way he'd come a hell of a lot more nimbly than he had on the way out.
-o-
She wasn't surprised when Caulder tracked her down on one of the few occasions that she wasn't camped out by King's bed in the infirmary - she'd known something was coming when King still wasn't showing any signs of improvement and the length of time he'd been infected could now be measured in weeks instead of days. Even with Sullivan now - reluctantly and to King's immense second-hand amusement when he'd heard about it - picking up some of the slack with Zoë, she'd been growing more and more on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for someone to just rip the ground out from underneath her feet.
Seemed like it was finally happening.
"I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?"
Caulder always sounded serious, but there was something in his expression this time that told Abby clearly that she wasn't going to like what he had to say.
She straightened up slowly, closing the lid of her laptop and bracing herself.
"Perhaps you would like to sit down?"
Her mouth had gone dry and she pressed her fingers hard into the surface of the table, letting the pressure anchor her. Her knuckles were white, bent back painfully, by the time she met Caulder's eyes again.
"I'm fine."
He nodded, but he didn't look like he believed her. When she didn't sit, he did instead, settling himself down into one of the battered chairs opposite her. He was a big man - she forgot that sometimes, so used to King's height that everyone else seemed small - and he dwarfed the rough, wooden frame, making it look flimsy instead of something that had survived more than one rough and tumble 'we're still alive' drinking session.
He steepled his fingers together, staring down at his hands rather than looking at her. Maybe he was gathering his thoughts, but she didn't think that was it. He seemed nervous, and weirdly that made it easier.
"Tell me."
She said the words softly, but Caulder looked up at her, meeting her eyes. His were tired, and she wondered when he'd last slept, whether he was finding dealing with King's condition as difficult as she was.
He nodded slowly, taking in a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh.
"I believe we should stop the antivirus treatment," he said. "I have already discussed this with King and he understands why."
It was even worse than she'd expected and the words hit her hard, yanking the ground from under her feet and leaving her reeling. She couldn't believe that King would go along with this. It didn't matter if he understood, she didn't understand. She couldn't. She wouldn't accept it.
"You're giving up?"
"No, no." He shook his head decisively enough, but how could she believe him? "It is not a case of giving up. The antivirus that Sommerfield developed..."
"It's still not working?"
She wanted him to deny it, was desperate for it in spite of guessing that herself, but he disappointed her. He hesitated for the slightest of moments before he nodded reluctantly.
It didn't matter how reluctant he was to admit it, it still hurt, tearing through her heart and leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.
"You have to keep trying," she said, dropping her voice low and hating the pleading tone that was creeping into it. "If you stop the treatment now, he'll die." Her voice cracked, becoming something ugly and painful, but it was nothing to the pain that was surging up inside her, pain she was barely keeping in check. "You can't. I can't let you."
His expression grew pitying and it felt like a slap in the face, silencing anything else she might have said. Not that there was anything else to say - she wasn't going to let King die, not while she drew breath.
"I have not given up, Abigail," Caulder insisted, pushing himself back to his feet as she shook her head, rejecting what he was saying. "This is a setback. It's not a defeat. You have to believe that."
She didn't, not when it couldn't feel like anything but a defeat. It felt like abandoning King, something she'd sworn she'd never do, and the agony twisted inside her again at the thought.
"Listen to me." Caulder came closer, catching hold of her hands and holding both of them in his big paws, holding on tightly when she tried to pull away and forcing her to pay attention to what he was saying. He leaned in closer to her, dropping his voice to something low and intense as though that would get through to her when nothing else had. "We can keep treating him with Sommerfield's antivirus, but it will simply continue to weaken him, not the virus. His body is too stressed, trapped between being human and being vampire. And the longer we use the antivirus, the less effective it is becoming. Soon it will not be enough to prevent him from turning again anyway, but my concern is that he may not survive that long if we do not stop it now."
"But... but he's... he's not..."
Caulder's fingers tightened around hers, warm and sure, and she wished she could believe him. "His blood pressure is too low. I cannot keep him hydrated and while the transfusions are helping they are not doing enough to maintain his core systems. It is his heart I'm concerned about. The amount of stress on it... He is already beginning to suffer from arrhythmia and that is only going to get worse. I have tried so many things to keep him stable... This may be the only thing that works."
King had a big heart, Abby thought numbly. No one would ever believe it if she told them that - he played the fool too well, both bite and bark on the surface, using words like weapons to hide behind. But he had a big heart underneath all of that and it couldn't let him down now.
"Abigail." Caulder seemed to have pulled himself together while she was falling apart. "I promise you. I am not giving up. I will bring him back to you, I promise."
But people kept making her promises that they couldn't keep. Why should Caulder be any different?
-o-
She'd mostly stopped shaking by the time she made it back to King's room, but she still hesitated for a long moment outside the door, trying to compose herself, stay strong for him, and for herself.
It was a wasted effort - as soon as she opened the door and stepped in, King saw everything that she was trying to hide. He knew her too well, and she'd never regretted that before now.
"I'm going to guess that you've heard the good news, then?"
She didn't know how he could be so flippant about it, even given his propensity to make a joke out of everything, especially the things that shouldn't be joked about. She moved further into the room, shutting the door behind her and avoiding King's eyes until she'd regained at least some control of her emotions.
It was a wasted effort. She dug deep - so fucking deep - into her reserves and it still wasn't enough.
"Caulder told me, yes." Her voice wasn't shaking now, and that was something at least.
King nodded slowly, his eyes drifting away from her face as he lost himself in his own thoughts for a moment, and when he came back to her, his expression was twisting ruefully.
"Not really the outcome we were hoping for, I guess," he said, and the corner of his mouth quirked up a little.
"Caulder's not giving up." It was important to hold onto that. She had to hold on to that, and so did King.
"Yeah, I know." His smile this time was no more genuine than the first, just a bit bigger. "But just to be on the safe side, I think I'll be cancelling any holidays in the sun for the foreseeable future. Don't want to burn, after all."
Her eyes prickled, tears welling up in them in spite of her best efforts to keep them at bay. She took a deep, shaky breath, holding it down inside her and trying to stay calm, but then she caught sight of his face, the concern crinkling his brow, and she let it all out again, even more shakily.
"Hey, now. You're supposed to be the strong, silent type, remember, Whistler? I'm the spunky, emotionally available sidekick."
That helped - her breath, when she released it, came out in an explosive little chuckle, one that was cracked and broken around the edges but still better than a sob.
"That right?"
"Damn straight. Of course, you realise this makes me the cute one?"
"In your dreams, King."
"Only the really good ones," he said, and just like that she was struggling to keep it together again, fighting back the tears and the screams of anguish, knowing that neither would help him.
It was a close call, but she forced it back down again, slamming the lid down as hard as she could and fastening it as tightly as she knew how.
"Are you okay?" she asked him when she'd finally managed to lock everything away, knowing that it was a stupid question but needing to hear the answer anyway.
"I'll -" He trailed off, his mouth twisting wryly again. "I was going to say 'live', but somehow that doesn't seem appropriate."
"You promised me," she said, surprising herself with the ferocity of the words. She surprised King, as well. He retreated into a wary kind of silence, watching her closely but not answering her, not at first. "You -"
She bit off the words, clamping down on them before she let them out but it didn't matter. Her meaning was clear.
"And you promised me, too," he said quietly, his words lacking the force of hers but hitting home anyway. He held her gaze steadily, and she was the first one to look away, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat, the one that was threatening to choke her. "Abby..."
He trailed off again, searching her face for some sign, something she couldn't even begin to grasp. She had no idea if he found it or not, but he settled back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling rather than looking in her direction, and sighed softly. "I'm not giving up, okay?" He shot her a quick glance, his eyes tracing over her face again. "But I think I'm entitled to think that this whole thing sucks donkey balls."
He was a master of understatement, but she'd take it. She'd take anything if it meant he was sticking with her, refusing to quit even after this latest setback.
Setback. It sounded so innocuous in her head, like it was a minor hurdle when it was anything but.
"Can you do something for me, please?"
She nodded, knowing from the slightly diffident tone in his voice that she probably wasn't going to like it much. But she guessed her feelings about stuff like that didn't matter anymore, not in the grand scheme of things.
"Make sure you do keep Zoë away from me," he asked, turning his head again and looking straight back at her. "That might be the one thing I'm not joking about."
This time he didn't look away and neither did she.
"King..."
His face twisted, something dark and dangerous flashing through his eyes. "Do you know what Danica threatened me with? The last time she got her talons into me?"
The switch in subject confused her and she shook her head mutely, searching her memory and coming up blank. He'd never mentioned it and that didn't bode well, even given the fact that he was talking about his psychotic ex.
"She told me that she knew what scared me most. And she was right, to give the horse-humping bitch her dues. Do you want to know what it was?"
She didn't, she really didn't, but she nodded anyway, unable to help itself. It was the very least she could offer him and yet lurking underneath that was a dreadful kind of fascination, the need to keep poking at it, just to see how horrific it could get.
"She told me that she'd turn me again, make me into the thing I hate most. Then she'd wait, and for someone with impulse control as poor as hers, she could be really fucking patient if it was going to get her what she wanted. And then, when I couldn't stand the thirst any longer, she'd feed Zoë to me."
It took a second for the words to sink in, heavy and bitter, and then she focused on tamping down any reaction, biting back the instinctive denial that rose to her lips. She couldn't afford to indulge it, not when he was watching her as closely as he was, waiting for her to fall apart. To give him the confirmation he expected - that he wasn't worth fighting for. His steady, half-expectant gaze scared her more than the words themselves, like he was hanging by a thread and just waiting for - wanting - her to cut it.
She took a deep breath and nodded, keeping it brisk and business-like, burying the screaming so deep that not even King would be able to hear it.
"And I'd have done it, too. There's no point in pretending otherwise. What was it Drake told Blade? 'Sooner or later, the thirst always wins'? Well, the fucker had a point."
"King..."
"Don't." His smile, broken as it was, managed to take the sting out of the word. "You promised me that you wouldn't let me hurt anyone, and by anyone I mean you and Zoë. The rest of the world can go fuck itself." He paused for a moment, his eyes crinkling as he thought. "Okay, maybe I'd pass on Caulder. Maybe. I mean, Marta I'd definitely pass on. She makes a mean chicken soup that's - pardon the pun - to die for, but Caulder's kind of on my shit list at the moment, for obvious reasons."
She dredged up a smile from somewhere, even though she wasn't feeling it. "I notice you don't include Sullivan in that little list of exemptions."
"Yeah, well, he's kind of an ass. Just in case you hadn't noticed."
"I'd noticed," she said, and he nodded slightly, giving her another of those half-smiles even as his fingers tapped against his waist, the jerky rhythm giving him away.
"And what about you?" he asked suddenly. "How are you doing?"
"I'm..." How the hell was she supposed to tell him and not make it worse for him? How the hell was she going to lie? "I've been better," she admitted, because King must have figured that much out. It wasn't exactly rocket science. "The whole situation... well, I've heard it described as sucking donkey balls. Gotta say, I can't really argue with that."
"Yeah," he said. "I've heard the same thing." His smile this time was more genuine, more like King, and a pang went through her. There was no way she could find anything to say that would make this whole fucked up situation bearable.
When it came down to it, she'd always been better with actions.
She started to unlace her boots, which took longer than she would have liked. Her fingers were still shaking and the fact that he was watching her silently, a slight frown creasing his face as though he was trying to figure out what she was up to, simply made it worse. Eventually she managed to toe them off, and settled on the bed beside him. He hesitated for a moment before shifting sideways, moving towards the wall and giving her room to lie down.
She slid her hand across his waist, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and his arm came around her automatically, pulling her closer. He smelled of antiseptic and the faint, lingering odour of fever sweat, and his skin was still a little too warm to the touch, but he was breathing and his heart was still beating. She burrowed in, closing her eyes and holding on until his other arm came to wrap around her too, tightening imperceptibly when she twisted her fingers into the fabric of his T-shirt.
"What happens now?" she asked softly. She hadn't been able to follow all of Caulder's monologue as he'd explained - all she'd been able to focus on was the howl of denial echoing around and around inside her brain, blocking everything else out. Shock, she supposed, as if she had the right to be shocked when King was the one going through it. "When does...?"
She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence and it didn't help when he didn't answer her immediately. Maybe her question hadn't been clear, and she was running through it in her mind, looking for a better way to phrase it, a way she could live with, when he finally said, quietly and subdued, "Caulder's going to stop administering the antivirus tomorrow. I think that's what he said. I kind of..."
"Tuned him out?" she suggested when he didn't seem able to finish his sentence either.
"I'd argue with that but... yeah. Sounds about right. So, I don't know whether he's just going to stop and make me go cold-turkey or whether he has to wean me off gradually. You know, like a twelve step programme or something. A 'hello, my name is Hannibal King and I used to be a vamp' kind of deal."
She nodded, the move rubbing her cheek against his chest. It was oddly comforting, feeling his heart beating underneath her, the sound of it strong and steady.
Only it hadn't turned out to be strong enough.
That wasn't fair and she knew it, just like she knew that Caulder wouldn't be stopping the antivirus without really good reason. But life, as she'd known from a very young age, was about as far from fair as it was possible to get, and this whole situation really wasn't fucking fair. It just wasn't.
"I'm scared," he said suddenly. His voice was tight and tense, startling her for a moment before his words sank in. Something inside her broke, shattering into a thousand pieces all of them cutting into her. She tried to sit up and look at him, but his arms tightened around her, holding her against his chest as his breath caught in his throat.
She stopped fighting him, trying to be whatever the hell he needed and taking her cue from him. Her heart was racing, matching his, and all she could do was cling to him, holding him as tightly as she could because she couldn't let go if she tried.
She wasn't going to try.
"I know," she whispered, her heart breaking for him all over again. She didn't need to see his face to get how scared he was - it sang out in the timbre of his voice, the way stress made it crack and break, and the subtle trembling of his body where it pressed up against hers. "It's..."
She was going to say 'it's okay' but she couldn't lie to him, not about this.
"I'm scared, too," she admitted instead, her voice cracking like his had. She had no right to be scared, not when he was the one going through this and not her, but she couldn't let go of it, not when the fear had wrapped itself around the very centre of her. "But I'm not losing you, okay? I'm just not."
He nodded, his breath catching again, a little click in his throat and a ragged exhale. She closed her eyes, pressing herself even more tightly against him and able to feel his pain all too clearly, too clearly for comfort. He buried his face in her hair, his breath wet and warm against her scalp.
She held him while he shook. He never made a sound, nothing outside of the occasional hitching of his breath and the soft rhythmic beating of his heart.
Her face was wet against his shirt when his shoulders finally eased, but he didn't call her on it, avoiding his normal cheap jokes and saying nothing to ease the tension. But then the tension had already eased, washed out of her by her tears, and by his. She felt empty, hollow with exhaustion, but that still seemed more bearable than the weight of everything she'd been carrying for days now.
It wouldn't last. She wasn't quite stupid enough to believe that it would even if she had been capable of lying to herself.
"Thanks." His voice was hoarse, but stronger than it had been, not as bright and brittle, but more real somehow in spite of its roughness. "See, I told you I was the emotional sidekick."
She smiled, just a small one but it still felt like a victory. "You also told me you were the cute one."
"Are you disagreeing?"
"No. You feeling better?" she added softly, and he nodded, his cheek brushing against her hair. She hesitated, the inevitable words forcing themselves to the surface to come out in a comforting lie or two. "It's going to be okay, you know. Caulder's going to find the cure and... it's... it's going to be okay."
He nodded again, but she didn't think he believed her. She couldn't fault him for that - she didn't believe it herself.
-o-
Next Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 51,562
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, illness, involuntary vampirism.
Summary: When the vampire virus starts to develop a resistance to the Nightstalkers' Daystar weapon, Abigail is left watching helplessly as King has to fight not just for his life, but for his soul and his sanity.
Masterlist: AO3 :: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Previous Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Sullivan was tapping his fingers on the desk impatiently, a little staccato rhythm of which he was barely aware. Whistler had stolen the one laptop they had that still worked - or at least the one that wasn't dedicated to running Caulder's viral load projections. He hadn't been kidding when he'd told Whistler that trying to cure King was going to use up resources they couldn't spare. He just hadn't figured it would mean that he was reduced to manually pulling together all of the evidence they had of potential vampire activity, instead of being able to dump the data into a database and use the search algorithms that Hedges had developed.
How the hell that they done this before the invention of the microchip? He guessed that the world had been smaller then, less anonymous than big-city life. Or maybe he was just sulking; Whistler had stolen the last can of soda as well, and Sullivan never functioned very well without his daily dose of caffeine.
Still, at least she was back to doing her own research instead of mooning over King, even if Sullivan knew damned well that she'd come up with the same answer that he already had. Maybe there was hope for her yet, but he wasn't counting on it.
He tapped his fingers again, ignoring Caulder as the other man walked right by him, giving him a strange look as he headed back towards his microscope.
Yeah, okay, maybe he was hanging out in the lab a little more frequently than he used to, but this whole situation with King had him on edge. Even if she seemed to have rediscovered her love of hunting, it wasn't like Whistler was going to start treating King with the caution he deserved any time soon. And that meant that Sullivan had to step up to the plate, whether he wanted to or not.
He didn't. Babysitting didn't sound like his idea of fun. And babysitting King seemed like his idea of absolute hell. Still, it could have been worse - Caulder hadn't called him on the impromptu guard he'd set up outside King's door, indulging him with a heavy sigh and the odd look or two. Whistler, on the other hand, wouldn't be anywhere near as understanding when she finally figured out what he was up to.
Tonight, the sound of King's voice had become a constant, low-level drone that Sullivan had tuned out. King had been talking when he'd arrived and he was still talking now, as if Sullivan needed any confirmation that King loved the sound of his own voice. He had no idea who King was talking to. He'd thought Caulder at first, until Caulder had sauntered back from the bathroom break he'd taken, and it couldn't be Whistler, not tonight. He'd passed her on his way to the infirmary, and the last he'd seen of her, she'd been buried elbow deep in paperwork in the Ops room.
Poor Marta. It had to be her - no one else it could be - but he hadn't thought she had much time for King. She was too no-nonsense to put up with his attitude, much like Sullivan himself.
His fingers tapped the desk again and Caulder shot him a glare, his patience obviously wearing thin. Sullivan stopped, his fingers hovering just above the surface, before he thought better of it and placed them flat. Never piss off the medic - not when there was a good chance that needles would loom in your future.
Maybe Marta could do with a break - seemed like Caulder could. He pushed himself to his feet and headed towards the small room in back. He was half way there before he heard the high-pitched giggle that sounded nothing like Marta. It didn't sound like Whistler either, and that assumed she'd managed to sneak past him. The sound raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and he found himself picking up the pace, his hands sliding automatically to the small of his back where he stashed his spare blade. He never took it off these days, even when he was supposedly safe in HQ.
Nowhere and nothing was safe these days. Maybe that was why his heart rate had also kicked up a notch.
He wasn't quite running by the time he skidded to a stop in King's doorway, but it was as close as made no difference. He took in the scene in front of him with a single glance, and his blood froze in his veins.
Zoë looked up at him, her small, heart-shaped face frowning at the interruption. She was way too close to King for comfort, curled up in the crook of his arm and leaning against his chest. The book that King had been reading was propped up in front of her, and King was now staring at him over the top of it, the light from the infirmary overheads behind Sullivan reflected in his eyes.
His eyes were yellow.
Sullivan took in a deep breath, keeping enough wit to stay where he was in spite of every instinct screaming at him to get the hell over to Zoë and get her away from King, by force if necessary. But he didn't want to spook the kid, and he sure as hell didn't want to start something he had fuck all chance of stopping.
Zoë was so close to King that he could rip Zoë's throat out before Sullivan was even half way there. Marta's views on firearms in the home be damned - from now on, Sullivan was carrying a gun as well as a knife around indoors.
"What are you doing?" he asked softly, keeping his voice as calm and even as he edged his way towards them, moving as nonthreateningly as possible.
King stared back at him, a frown creasing the skin between his brows. "I'm reading Zoë a story," he said. "Why? What did you think I was doing?"
His voice sounded the same as it always had, even if his eyes clearly showed that his less-than-human side was rearing its ugly head again. But Sullivan wasn't going to be fooled by King's usual sardonic and slightly sarcastic tone, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let King put him at ease.
That was Whistler's mistake, and there was no way Sullivan was going to let Zoë pay for it.
"Do you think that's a smart idea?" he asked, gradually closing the distance between them.
"Would you rather she watched hours of TV instead? I mean, I'm not exactly reading her Playboy. Believe me, tonight's choice of reading material is completely age-appropriate." King held up the book, flashing the front cover at him.
Sullivan ignored it, finally coming to a stop a couple of feet from King's bed - close enough to grab Zoë if he needed to, but far enough away that King wouldn't have time to grab him before he got Zoë away.
"Zoë, honey?" Zoë frowned up at him, not fooled by his tone for a second. They'd never exactly been friends - he didn't have time for kids, not even ones as smart as Zoë seemed. "You want to come over here?"
"No," she said, turning him down with a six-year-old's irrefutable logic. She tilted her head to the side to study him, weighing him up and apparently finding him wanting. The assessing expression on her face was so like Whistler's that for a second it was difficult to believe that they weren't actually blood-related.
King's weight shifted on the bed, setting the springs underneath creaking. He was still watching Sullivan, and his expression was no less assessing than Zoë's. He couldn't have missed the way that Sullivan had tensed up as he'd started to move, and he didn't seem to have missed the implications either. He stopped moving before finally settling slowly back down into his original position, his eyes staying fixed on Sullivan as he eased his arm from around Zoë.
"I think it's bedtime, sweetheart," he said, ignoring Zoë's little whine of protest. "You want to go and find Abby?"
Zoë pouted, the glare she shot at Sullivan leaving no doubt who she blamed for her story being cut short. She slid off the bed reluctantly, dragging her feet as though that was going to lead to a reprieve. And then she turned back to face King, holding her arms up for a goodnight hug.
Fuck. Sullivan measured the distance between him and King, trying to calculate the point at which it would be safe to snatch Zoë, just in case the girl decided to be completely uncooperative or King's self-control failed.
But King, it seemed, was completely in control. Completely in control and as much of an ass as he always was. He stared straight at Sullivan, his look challenging as he wrapped both of his arms around Zoë, dwarfing her tiny frame. Sullivan held his gaze, impotent fury rising up in him, until King finally dropped his face towards Zoë's head, squeezing the girl gently and pressing his mouth against her hair. It would have been touching if it hadn't been for King's fangs or the hungry light that flared in his eyes.
But before Sullivan could move, end this and maybe even end King, King let go of her, reaching up to push her hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear.
"Good night, sweetheart," he said. "Try and be good for Abigail, okay?"
Zoë nodded obediently, trotting out of the door, but not without giving Sullivan an uncertain look on the way.
Sullivan waited until she was out of earshot before he turned back to King, snarling, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
King settled back on the bed, making a production of it, but his eyes, when they met Sullivan's again, were hard and cold. His voice, however, stayed deceptively mild as he replied, "I told you - I was reading the kid a bedtime story."
"A bedtime story?" Sullivan didn't bother to keep the contempt out of his voice, or hide the anger. "A fucking bedtime story? Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"Well, that's debatable..."
He lost it, getting right up in King's face and shaking with rage. His voice was also shaking as he growled, low and dangerous in the back of his throat, "You wanna know what I was debating? Whether I'd manage to kill you before you killed Zoë."
King froze, his eyes widening fractionally as he took Sullivan's words in, absorbing them. And then the fight drained from him, the light vanishing from his eyes.
"I wasn't going to hurt her," he said. "I'd never -"
He swallowed the next words down, and Sullivan hoped they'd choke him. He opened his mouth, probably to say as much, given how pissed he was, but Whistler finally chose that moment to start being a goddamned parent, interrupting them. Her expression was worried and it grew even more so as she glanced between them, taking in the tension in the room.
"Zoë asked me to check on you," she said, directing her remark at King but staring at Sullivan. There was a look of calculation in her eyes now, as though she was adding to and two together and coming up with an answer she didn't like.
Sullivan took a step back, putting enough distance between him and King to let Whistler relax. And to make sure that he didn't wrap his hands around the bastard's throat and throttle him.
"I'm fine," King said colourlessly. "Just tired."
She nodded, her expression not quite believing, but she didn't look as though she was going to call him on it. Instead she shot a hard, suspicious look at Sullivan, a barely veiled threat lurking in her eyes.
He had no fucking patience for this, not tonight and not ever. He opened his mouth to say as much, but once again King beat him to the punch.
"You should probably keep Zoë away from me. At least for the moment."
King somehow managed to avoid Whistler's eyes as he said it, but that meant that his gaze landed on Sullivan, who glared back at him, pissed and relieved in equal measures.
Whistler, however, wasn't quite as easy to convince.
"What? King...?"
"Look -" King broke off, still managing to avoid looking at Whistler as he scrubbed his hand across his face. "Let's not take any chances, okay?"
"Chances?" Whistler stared at him, her expression dumbfounded, and then her temper began to rise, the anger bubbling up towards the surface. "What the hell are you talking about? Did something happen?" And then it was like a light bulb had suddenly lit up above her head. She turned to look at Sullivan and if he'd thought that her eyes were hard before, it had nothing to the look in them now. "Did someone say something?" she asked icily, the temperature in the room plummeting.
"He's right, Abby."
King's sudden defence of him still didn't warm Sullivan to him any, and it didn't seem to hold water with Whistler either.
"Right?" Her voice started to climb, both in pitch and volume. "He's not right - he's wrong. He couldn't be more wrong. You think I don't know that?" She took a ragged breath, but the pause wasn't long enough for Sullivan to interject before she continued, her voice now low and intense rather than shaking with the high-pitched anger it had held. "Two days," she said. "You were locked in that room with me for two days after you turned and I'm still here. There isn't a chance in hell you'd hurt Zoë."
The fury in her voice made Sullivan want to take at least a couple of steps back, put a safe minimum distance between them, not least because there was something else beneath the fury, something lost and scared. Scared people were never rational. He knew that for a damn fact.
But it didn't seem to faze King, at least not long enough for the man to keep his mouth shut.
"Not if I was in my right mind, no," he said. "But what if I'm not?"
That took the wind out of Whistler's sails. Or, he reassessed, she'd already run out of steam in the face of the inevitable. But that didn't mean she was going to quit. He should have figured she wouldn't go down without a fight.
"Why wouldn't you be in your right mind?" she asked him quietly, something desperate underneath her question.
"Oh, let me see. How about the fact that I'm already running a fever of a hundred and three. Or the fact that the thirst is getting worse and worse all of the time. Or the fact that Caulder's cure isn't actually curing me. Any of those working for you, sweetheart?"
To give Whistler due credit, she didn't react to King's savage tone. She simply stood there and took it, her expression sliding back into its usual impassive mask as the words rolled over her, harsh and bruising. And even after he'd finished talking, she simply stood there, looking at him and saying nothing.
King was the first to look away, shame clouding his face. And then he sighed, his shoulders slumping as he stared down at the hands he had in his lap.
"We can't risk it, Abby," he said more seriously, the hard, sarcastic edge gone from his voice. "Not Zoë."
"You want me to keep her away from you?" Whistler's voice now was giving nothing away, as impassive and unreadable as her face.
King nodded, but something in her tone - something Sullivan had missed - seemed to put him on edge.
"And do you want me to stay away from you, too?"
King stilled, panic flashing briefly in his eyes. He swallowed, unable to mask the hurt or the fear completely, but he nodded slowly anyway, his eyes searching Whistler's face. Or maybe he was just memorising how she looked, some kind of romantic shit like that.
Whistler snorted. "Tough," she said, and the tension bled away from King's frame. "I'll talk to Zoë, tell her she needs to leave you to rest if you're going to get better."
"You might want to... spend a little more time with her," King suggested, which only confirmed Sullivan's low opinion of his survival instinct.
Whistler's stance shifted slightly, becoming something dangerous and predatory.
"Or not," King added, his face creasing apologetically, like that was going to be enough to save him. "Just..."
"I'll keep Zoë away, but I'm not going anywhere."
Sullivan was still watching King, even if King's focus was now entirely on Whistler, which meant he didn't miss the relief Whistler's words had triggered. Neither had she, judging by the way her expression finally softened for a moment, or the way that she reached out and pressed her fingers lightly against King's arm before she moved away. Her expression only hardened again when she realised that Sullivan was still watching them, giving him a look that promised a world of pain if he stepped out of line again or threatened King even implicitly, as she passed him on the way out of the door.
And that meant that Sullivan was alone with King, a situation Sullivan had no desire to be in. He didn't know what King wanted, and he didn't give a fuck either way. He was already heading back into the infirmary when King's voice stopped him.
"I wouldn't have hurt her," he said. Sullivan huffed out an impatient breath - he had zero interest in playing semantics. He turned on his heel, ready to rip King a new one, but King's expression, when he finally faced him, was serious, no sign of the fool that King was all too happy to play. "But you were right - there may come a time when I won't be able to stop myself."
Sullivan raised one eyebrow, folding his arms and waiting. "I was right?" he prompted.
"Yeah, well, don't get too cocky, Sullivan. Even a stopped clock manages that twice a day." He paused, giving Sullivan another one of those assessing looks, the ones that Sullivan was getting sick and tired of. "You don't like me much, do you?"
"What gave it away?"
"Well, the silver blade you have tucked in the back of your pants was my first clue. Actually, I lie. I've never thought you liked me, even before recent developments."
He made a little air quotes around the word 'developments', but Sullivan didn't rise to the bait, meeting his eyes calmly. "And here was me thinking you were stupid."
"I'm wounded. But that will make what I have to say next a little easier."
Sullivan didn't like the sound of that, but King's look was challenging, just waiting for him to throw the fight, and that pissed him off enough to stick around and hear King out. "Go on."
"I made Abby a promise after that fucker bit me. I promised her I'd try, that I'd fight this as long as I could."
Sullivan shifted uncomfortably, not liking where this was going.
"You talk to Caulder recently?"
He shook his head.
"I'm not doing so good, but I suspect you already knew that." Sullivan didn't react this time, not willing to either confirm or deny. Either seemed rather pointless, but King nodded anyway, like he'd confirmed it. "And that's where you come in."
"And how do you figure that one out?"
King smiled at him, but there was no amusement in it, just something dark and bitter in his eyes. "Abby made me a promise, too. It was a shitty thing to make her promise, but the way I see it we're pretty much even on that front, she and I. Aren't you going to ask what it was?"
Sullivan suspected he already knew, but some part of him - a small, petty part but at least he was man enough to admit that - refused to give King the satisfaction of answering. Not that King needed it - he really did like the sound of his own voice.
"I made her promise she wouldn't let me hurt anybody. That she'd take me down if necessary. I think we both know that she's not going to be able to do that. I mean, she's tough, no doubt about that, and I wouldn't bet on my chances if..."
"If it was anyone but you," Sullivan completed for him.
King's smile this time was slightly more genuine. Slightly. "Yeah, waste of resources that I am."
Sullivan froze, giving King a narrow-eyed look. "Whistler tell you that?"
"No," King said brightly. "You really should think about using your indoor voice if you don't want the person in the next room to hear you."
Bastard.
"But I'm not one to hold grudges. Especially not if you promise to kill me if it becomes necessary."
He'd been expecting something like that, but hearing King state it so calmly, like it was nothing, gave him pause. King, however, didn't seem to notice his hesitation, or if he noticed, he just plain ignored it.
"Please note the 'necessary' caveat. And just in case you're thinking of getting a little trigger-happy, I think I should point out that even if it does become necessary, Whistler is going to be seriously fucking pissed at you. She'll probably come to terms with it if you had to do it to save someone else, but I'm also pretty sure that if she decides it wasn't? She'll probably just shoot you."
King wasn't wrong, but then what was it he'd said about stopped clocks? Sullivan didn't let any of that show on his face, meeting King's eyes calmly and hiding behind his best stone face.
"Do we have a deal?"
"Doesn't the word 'deal' imply I get something out of it?"
"Well you hate me and you might get to shoot me. I'm not sure what else you want?"
Sullivan nodded slowly, his brain whirring away. King was right, on all counts, as much as he hated to admit it. Whistler wasn't going to be able to do it; she'd believe in King to the very last, and the very last might be her death at King's hands. Sullivan wouldn't have any such hesitation, but there was a hell of a difference between killing somebody - something - in the heat of the moment or in self-defence and talking about it as calmly as King was doing.
"Okay," he said eventually. "If it comes down to it, your life or somebody else's, I'll make the right call. You have my word on it."
Some of King's tension ebbed away, leaving him less brittle, a little less hyper. Instead he just looked sick, and tired, and too damned young. Maybe that was a side product of however long he'd lived as the vamp, but for the first time since he'd met the man, Sullivan didn't think so. He had no idea how old King really was - he'd never bothered to ask.
It would be kind of hypocritical to ask now.
King sank back down into his pillows, sweat breaking out on his forehead. "Just one more thing," he said, and Sullivan braced himself, strangling his first impulse to scowl at King for putting conditions on it at this point. "Just make it quick, okay? As quick and clean as you can."
A sudden surge of pity overwhelmed him, evaporating the last remnants of his anger, at least for now. In all of his consideration of King as a problem, in all of his weighing up of the potential solutions, he'd missed a variable - how fucking scared King was.
Yeah. No matter what, he could promise King that.
-o-
Sullivan had never been one to put off what needed to be done, preferring to take his licks sooner rather than later, and this was no exception.
He found Whistler on the roof, sitting in the darkness with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was supposed to be on watch, and the bow lying on the ground by her side was mute testimony to that. She looked up when she heard the crunch of his boots on the tarred roofing, but she didn't say anything and, after a moment, he settled down beside her, mimicking her position.
"The kid with Marta?" he asked, and she stiffened, obviously expecting another lecture from him. But he was tired of lecturing her, and it wasn't like she listened to him anyway.
"Yes," she said and her tone made it clear that she wasn't willing to discuss it. Any of it, up to and including King.
He nodded, more to himself than at her, and then he cleared his throat, choosing his next words with care, making them as non-inflammatory as possible. "Want me to take over?" he asked. "So you can go sit with King?" As peace offerings went, he didn't think that one sucked, but Whistler shot a look, one that was confused and distrusting, and he forced himself to add, "I don't mind."
There was a long pause before she said, quietly, "I need to start pulling my weight."
He had no idea whether that was a less-than-subtle dig at his resources comment, except for the fact that while Whistler might to do subtle, she didn't tend to do passive-aggressive. That was one thing he admired about her - she wasn't shy about making her point.
He nodded again, automatically scanning the skyline for any movement. Some habits died hard, but better the habit than him.
"I didn't think he could hear me, you know," he said. "When I said what I said about resources. Not that I wouldn't have made the same point, but I'd have made doubly sure I was out of earshot. I'm not quite that much of an asshole."
"That's debatable," she said, a small frown now furrowing her brow. But her tone was dry, not confrontational, and his mouth twitched upwards wryly. Girl had a point.
"Caulder thinks that whatever's going on with King might provide him with valuable data about why Daystar isn't as effective any more. So... I might have been wrong about it being a waste of resources." That could have come out better; in fact, when he replayed the words over in his head, he really did sound like that much of an asshole. Whistler seemed to think so, the way she was staring at him, but the next words out of her mouth surprised him.
"King would probably agree with you," she said quietly. "Even if -"
She broke off, swallowing suddenly and tearing her eyes away from his to stare back out over the derelict buildings surrounding them. He knew what she'd been going to say, though. It wasn't like it was hard to guess.
"I'm sorry," he said, and for the first time he meant it.
She nodded, her eyes still fixed on the horizon. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't know about your wife. But you know that doesn't change anything."
He cleared his throat, feeling strangely like he had to make it up to her. Maybe it was a side effect of keeping watch together, especially at night - silence and the stars seemed to encourage confidences. He'd noticed that before, out in the desert. "I married young," he said, the words coming out stilted and awkward. "Too young, as it turned out. It was a fucking disaster, but at least we didn't have kids when we finally called an end to it. No one's lives to fuck up but our own."
She turned her head to look at him, the starlight catching in her hair. He couldn't read her expression, and maybe that was for the best.
"I swore off marriage after that, figured I'd had my shot and learned my lesson. But then I met Suzie..." His Suzie, with her belly laugh and a smile that could rival the sun. He trailed off, thinking about her, the hurt still fresh and raw. "I guess what I'm trying to say is..." Words failed him again, but maybe, being so guarded herself, Whistler got what he was trying to say anyway.
"Everyone who fights has a reason to hate vamps," she said. "Including King."
Or maybe she didn't get it, but then since Sullivan barely knew what he'd been trying to say, it wasn't surprising that Whistler had misunderstood. He scratched absently at his scalp, still trying to find the right words.
They still wouldn't come. He was reduced to asking, "What's your story, then?"
For a second, he thought she wouldn't answer him. He wouldn't have blamed her if she hadn't, but instead she tilted her head towards him again, watching him in the moonlight, and then finally said, "I always knew vampires were real."
"You never lost anyone?"
"Before? No. But I've lost my dad, my team. And now -"
She broke off, obviously thinking about King, and Sullivan kicked himself for making things worse instead of trying to build some kind of rickety bridge between them.
"You haven't lost him yet," he said softly, the least he could offer her after putting his foot in it. "And if Caulder has anything to do with it, you won't."
She smiled at that - he caught a faint glimpse of the corner of her mouth turning up in the moonlight - and said, "He's not Sommerfield, but he'll do."
He supposed that was high praise coming from Whistler. "He's pretty determined. I think he actually likes King."
"A lot of people do," she said quietly, and he found that difficult to believe.
"I take it you do," he said dryly, and the corner of her mouth turned up again. "How long have you two been together?"
She stilled, a sudden, painful lack of movement, and he kicked himself again. Seemed he was always putting his foot in it these days with Whistler. "I thought there'd be time," she said, and her tone now was faint, as though the only way she could cope was to distance herself from what she was saying. "When we'd finally won and, you know, I thought we were winning."
Shit. Now he really did hate himself. He was surprised at King not pushing it, not when he couldn't imagine the man ever meeting a boundary without feeling the itch to kick it over. He cleared his throat awkwardly, but he'd opened the floodgates and now he just had to hold on through the torrent that escaped.
"I shouldn't have waited," she said, her voice tight, on the edge of some barely checked emotion. "But I was too fucking scared. And King -"
"And King?" he prompted, because this was like a train wreck and he couldn't look away, even if that made him a complete bastard.
She shrugged, lost for a moment in her own private little world of grief and regret. "I've always been able to read him," she said. "I knew how he felt."
Sullivan felt even more like a heel, but he couldn't leave it like this. "How he feels," he said gently, or as gently as he could, and he figured it was the thought that counted. "I'll take the rest of the watch. You can go do the dutiful girlfriend thing, sit by his bedside and hold his hand, whatever you think you need to do. Just promise me you'll be careful." And, yeah, he wasn't her fucking father - he didn't need her look to tell him that. He had no right to dictate that, but from everything he'd heard it sounded like her father had been a peach. It wouldn't hurt for Whistler to know that one person other than King gave a shit about her, even if that person had to be him.
She studied him for a long moment, reading his expression as well as his words. She must have decided that his heart was in the right place, even if he had a fucking awkward way of saying it, because she finally nodded, pushing herself gracefully to her feet and reaching down for her bow.
"Thank you," she said, and then she was gone, scrabbling back the way he'd come a hell of a lot more nimbly than he had on the way out.
-o-
She wasn't surprised when Caulder tracked her down on one of the few occasions that she wasn't camped out by King's bed in the infirmary - she'd known something was coming when King still wasn't showing any signs of improvement and the length of time he'd been infected could now be measured in weeks instead of days. Even with Sullivan now - reluctantly and to King's immense second-hand amusement when he'd heard about it - picking up some of the slack with Zoë, she'd been growing more and more on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for someone to just rip the ground out from underneath her feet.
Seemed like it was finally happening.
"I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?"
Caulder always sounded serious, but there was something in his expression this time that told Abby clearly that she wasn't going to like what he had to say.
She straightened up slowly, closing the lid of her laptop and bracing herself.
"Perhaps you would like to sit down?"
Her mouth had gone dry and she pressed her fingers hard into the surface of the table, letting the pressure anchor her. Her knuckles were white, bent back painfully, by the time she met Caulder's eyes again.
"I'm fine."
He nodded, but he didn't look like he believed her. When she didn't sit, he did instead, settling himself down into one of the battered chairs opposite her. He was a big man - she forgot that sometimes, so used to King's height that everyone else seemed small - and he dwarfed the rough, wooden frame, making it look flimsy instead of something that had survived more than one rough and tumble 'we're still alive' drinking session.
He steepled his fingers together, staring down at his hands rather than looking at her. Maybe he was gathering his thoughts, but she didn't think that was it. He seemed nervous, and weirdly that made it easier.
"Tell me."
She said the words softly, but Caulder looked up at her, meeting her eyes. His were tired, and she wondered when he'd last slept, whether he was finding dealing with King's condition as difficult as she was.
He nodded slowly, taking in a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh.
"I believe we should stop the antivirus treatment," he said. "I have already discussed this with King and he understands why."
It was even worse than she'd expected and the words hit her hard, yanking the ground from under her feet and leaving her reeling. She couldn't believe that King would go along with this. It didn't matter if he understood, she didn't understand. She couldn't. She wouldn't accept it.
"You're giving up?"
"No, no." He shook his head decisively enough, but how could she believe him? "It is not a case of giving up. The antivirus that Sommerfield developed..."
"It's still not working?"
She wanted him to deny it, was desperate for it in spite of guessing that herself, but he disappointed her. He hesitated for the slightest of moments before he nodded reluctantly.
It didn't matter how reluctant he was to admit it, it still hurt, tearing through her heart and leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.
"You have to keep trying," she said, dropping her voice low and hating the pleading tone that was creeping into it. "If you stop the treatment now, he'll die." Her voice cracked, becoming something ugly and painful, but it was nothing to the pain that was surging up inside her, pain she was barely keeping in check. "You can't. I can't let you."
His expression grew pitying and it felt like a slap in the face, silencing anything else she might have said. Not that there was anything else to say - she wasn't going to let King die, not while she drew breath.
"I have not given up, Abigail," Caulder insisted, pushing himself back to his feet as she shook her head, rejecting what he was saying. "This is a setback. It's not a defeat. You have to believe that."
She didn't, not when it couldn't feel like anything but a defeat. It felt like abandoning King, something she'd sworn she'd never do, and the agony twisted inside her again at the thought.
"Listen to me." Caulder came closer, catching hold of her hands and holding both of them in his big paws, holding on tightly when she tried to pull away and forcing her to pay attention to what he was saying. He leaned in closer to her, dropping his voice to something low and intense as though that would get through to her when nothing else had. "We can keep treating him with Sommerfield's antivirus, but it will simply continue to weaken him, not the virus. His body is too stressed, trapped between being human and being vampire. And the longer we use the antivirus, the less effective it is becoming. Soon it will not be enough to prevent him from turning again anyway, but my concern is that he may not survive that long if we do not stop it now."
"But... but he's... he's not..."
Caulder's fingers tightened around hers, warm and sure, and she wished she could believe him. "His blood pressure is too low. I cannot keep him hydrated and while the transfusions are helping they are not doing enough to maintain his core systems. It is his heart I'm concerned about. The amount of stress on it... He is already beginning to suffer from arrhythmia and that is only going to get worse. I have tried so many things to keep him stable... This may be the only thing that works."
King had a big heart, Abby thought numbly. No one would ever believe it if she told them that - he played the fool too well, both bite and bark on the surface, using words like weapons to hide behind. But he had a big heart underneath all of that and it couldn't let him down now.
"Abigail." Caulder seemed to have pulled himself together while she was falling apart. "I promise you. I am not giving up. I will bring him back to you, I promise."
But people kept making her promises that they couldn't keep. Why should Caulder be any different?
-o-
She'd mostly stopped shaking by the time she made it back to King's room, but she still hesitated for a long moment outside the door, trying to compose herself, stay strong for him, and for herself.
It was a wasted effort - as soon as she opened the door and stepped in, King saw everything that she was trying to hide. He knew her too well, and she'd never regretted that before now.
"I'm going to guess that you've heard the good news, then?"
She didn't know how he could be so flippant about it, even given his propensity to make a joke out of everything, especially the things that shouldn't be joked about. She moved further into the room, shutting the door behind her and avoiding King's eyes until she'd regained at least some control of her emotions.
It was a wasted effort. She dug deep - so fucking deep - into her reserves and it still wasn't enough.
"Caulder told me, yes." Her voice wasn't shaking now, and that was something at least.
King nodded slowly, his eyes drifting away from her face as he lost himself in his own thoughts for a moment, and when he came back to her, his expression was twisting ruefully.
"Not really the outcome we were hoping for, I guess," he said, and the corner of his mouth quirked up a little.
"Caulder's not giving up." It was important to hold onto that. She had to hold on to that, and so did King.
"Yeah, I know." His smile this time was no more genuine than the first, just a bit bigger. "But just to be on the safe side, I think I'll be cancelling any holidays in the sun for the foreseeable future. Don't want to burn, after all."
Her eyes prickled, tears welling up in them in spite of her best efforts to keep them at bay. She took a deep, shaky breath, holding it down inside her and trying to stay calm, but then she caught sight of his face, the concern crinkling his brow, and she let it all out again, even more shakily.
"Hey, now. You're supposed to be the strong, silent type, remember, Whistler? I'm the spunky, emotionally available sidekick."
That helped - her breath, when she released it, came out in an explosive little chuckle, one that was cracked and broken around the edges but still better than a sob.
"That right?"
"Damn straight. Of course, you realise this makes me the cute one?"
"In your dreams, King."
"Only the really good ones," he said, and just like that she was struggling to keep it together again, fighting back the tears and the screams of anguish, knowing that neither would help him.
It was a close call, but she forced it back down again, slamming the lid down as hard as she could and fastening it as tightly as she knew how.
"Are you okay?" she asked him when she'd finally managed to lock everything away, knowing that it was a stupid question but needing to hear the answer anyway.
"I'll -" He trailed off, his mouth twisting wryly again. "I was going to say 'live', but somehow that doesn't seem appropriate."
"You promised me," she said, surprising herself with the ferocity of the words. She surprised King, as well. He retreated into a wary kind of silence, watching her closely but not answering her, not at first. "You -"
She bit off the words, clamping down on them before she let them out but it didn't matter. Her meaning was clear.
"And you promised me, too," he said quietly, his words lacking the force of hers but hitting home anyway. He held her gaze steadily, and she was the first one to look away, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat, the one that was threatening to choke her. "Abby..."
He trailed off again, searching her face for some sign, something she couldn't even begin to grasp. She had no idea if he found it or not, but he settled back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling rather than looking in her direction, and sighed softly. "I'm not giving up, okay?" He shot her a quick glance, his eyes tracing over her face again. "But I think I'm entitled to think that this whole thing sucks donkey balls."
He was a master of understatement, but she'd take it. She'd take anything if it meant he was sticking with her, refusing to quit even after this latest setback.
Setback. It sounded so innocuous in her head, like it was a minor hurdle when it was anything but.
"Can you do something for me, please?"
She nodded, knowing from the slightly diffident tone in his voice that she probably wasn't going to like it much. But she guessed her feelings about stuff like that didn't matter anymore, not in the grand scheme of things.
"Make sure you do keep Zoë away from me," he asked, turning his head again and looking straight back at her. "That might be the one thing I'm not joking about."
This time he didn't look away and neither did she.
"King..."
His face twisted, something dark and dangerous flashing through his eyes. "Do you know what Danica threatened me with? The last time she got her talons into me?"
The switch in subject confused her and she shook her head mutely, searching her memory and coming up blank. He'd never mentioned it and that didn't bode well, even given the fact that he was talking about his psychotic ex.
"She told me that she knew what scared me most. And she was right, to give the horse-humping bitch her dues. Do you want to know what it was?"
She didn't, she really didn't, but she nodded anyway, unable to help itself. It was the very least she could offer him and yet lurking underneath that was a dreadful kind of fascination, the need to keep poking at it, just to see how horrific it could get.
"She told me that she'd turn me again, make me into the thing I hate most. Then she'd wait, and for someone with impulse control as poor as hers, she could be really fucking patient if it was going to get her what she wanted. And then, when I couldn't stand the thirst any longer, she'd feed Zoë to me."
It took a second for the words to sink in, heavy and bitter, and then she focused on tamping down any reaction, biting back the instinctive denial that rose to her lips. She couldn't afford to indulge it, not when he was watching her as closely as he was, waiting for her to fall apart. To give him the confirmation he expected - that he wasn't worth fighting for. His steady, half-expectant gaze scared her more than the words themselves, like he was hanging by a thread and just waiting for - wanting - her to cut it.
She took a deep breath and nodded, keeping it brisk and business-like, burying the screaming so deep that not even King would be able to hear it.
"And I'd have done it, too. There's no point in pretending otherwise. What was it Drake told Blade? 'Sooner or later, the thirst always wins'? Well, the fucker had a point."
"King..."
"Don't." His smile, broken as it was, managed to take the sting out of the word. "You promised me that you wouldn't let me hurt anyone, and by anyone I mean you and Zoë. The rest of the world can go fuck itself." He paused for a moment, his eyes crinkling as he thought. "Okay, maybe I'd pass on Caulder. Maybe. I mean, Marta I'd definitely pass on. She makes a mean chicken soup that's - pardon the pun - to die for, but Caulder's kind of on my shit list at the moment, for obvious reasons."
She dredged up a smile from somewhere, even though she wasn't feeling it. "I notice you don't include Sullivan in that little list of exemptions."
"Yeah, well, he's kind of an ass. Just in case you hadn't noticed."
"I'd noticed," she said, and he nodded slightly, giving her another of those half-smiles even as his fingers tapped against his waist, the jerky rhythm giving him away.
"And what about you?" he asked suddenly. "How are you doing?"
"I'm..." How the hell was she supposed to tell him and not make it worse for him? How the hell was she going to lie? "I've been better," she admitted, because King must have figured that much out. It wasn't exactly rocket science. "The whole situation... well, I've heard it described as sucking donkey balls. Gotta say, I can't really argue with that."
"Yeah," he said. "I've heard the same thing." His smile this time was more genuine, more like King, and a pang went through her. There was no way she could find anything to say that would make this whole fucked up situation bearable.
When it came down to it, she'd always been better with actions.
She started to unlace her boots, which took longer than she would have liked. Her fingers were still shaking and the fact that he was watching her silently, a slight frown creasing his face as though he was trying to figure out what she was up to, simply made it worse. Eventually she managed to toe them off, and settled on the bed beside him. He hesitated for a moment before shifting sideways, moving towards the wall and giving her room to lie down.
She slid her hand across his waist, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and his arm came around her automatically, pulling her closer. He smelled of antiseptic and the faint, lingering odour of fever sweat, and his skin was still a little too warm to the touch, but he was breathing and his heart was still beating. She burrowed in, closing her eyes and holding on until his other arm came to wrap around her too, tightening imperceptibly when she twisted her fingers into the fabric of his T-shirt.
"What happens now?" she asked softly. She hadn't been able to follow all of Caulder's monologue as he'd explained - all she'd been able to focus on was the howl of denial echoing around and around inside her brain, blocking everything else out. Shock, she supposed, as if she had the right to be shocked when King was the one going through it. "When does...?"
She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence and it didn't help when he didn't answer her immediately. Maybe her question hadn't been clear, and she was running through it in her mind, looking for a better way to phrase it, a way she could live with, when he finally said, quietly and subdued, "Caulder's going to stop administering the antivirus tomorrow. I think that's what he said. I kind of..."
"Tuned him out?" she suggested when he didn't seem able to finish his sentence either.
"I'd argue with that but... yeah. Sounds about right. So, I don't know whether he's just going to stop and make me go cold-turkey or whether he has to wean me off gradually. You know, like a twelve step programme or something. A 'hello, my name is Hannibal King and I used to be a vamp' kind of deal."
She nodded, the move rubbing her cheek against his chest. It was oddly comforting, feeling his heart beating underneath her, the sound of it strong and steady.
Only it hadn't turned out to be strong enough.
That wasn't fair and she knew it, just like she knew that Caulder wouldn't be stopping the antivirus without really good reason. But life, as she'd known from a very young age, was about as far from fair as it was possible to get, and this whole situation really wasn't fucking fair. It just wasn't.
"I'm scared," he said suddenly. His voice was tight and tense, startling her for a moment before his words sank in. Something inside her broke, shattering into a thousand pieces all of them cutting into her. She tried to sit up and look at him, but his arms tightened around her, holding her against his chest as his breath caught in his throat.
She stopped fighting him, trying to be whatever the hell he needed and taking her cue from him. Her heart was racing, matching his, and all she could do was cling to him, holding him as tightly as she could because she couldn't let go if she tried.
She wasn't going to try.
"I know," she whispered, her heart breaking for him all over again. She didn't need to see his face to get how scared he was - it sang out in the timbre of his voice, the way stress made it crack and break, and the subtle trembling of his body where it pressed up against hers. "It's..."
She was going to say 'it's okay' but she couldn't lie to him, not about this.
"I'm scared, too," she admitted instead, her voice cracking like his had. She had no right to be scared, not when he was the one going through this and not her, but she couldn't let go of it, not when the fear had wrapped itself around the very centre of her. "But I'm not losing you, okay? I'm just not."
He nodded, his breath catching again, a little click in his throat and a ragged exhale. She closed her eyes, pressing herself even more tightly against him and able to feel his pain all too clearly, too clearly for comfort. He buried his face in her hair, his breath wet and warm against her scalp.
She held him while he shook. He never made a sound, nothing outside of the occasional hitching of his breath and the soft rhythmic beating of his heart.
Her face was wet against his shirt when his shoulders finally eased, but he didn't call her on it, avoiding his normal cheap jokes and saying nothing to ease the tension. But then the tension had already eased, washed out of her by her tears, and by his. She felt empty, hollow with exhaustion, but that still seemed more bearable than the weight of everything she'd been carrying for days now.
It wouldn't last. She wasn't quite stupid enough to believe that it would even if she had been capable of lying to herself.
"Thanks." His voice was hoarse, but stronger than it had been, not as bright and brittle, but more real somehow in spite of its roughness. "See, I told you I was the emotional sidekick."
She smiled, just a small one but it still felt like a victory. "You also told me you were the cute one."
"Are you disagreeing?"
"No. You feeling better?" she added softly, and he nodded, his cheek brushing against her hair. She hesitated, the inevitable words forcing themselves to the surface to come out in a comforting lie or two. "It's going to be okay, you know. Caulder's going to find the cure and... it's... it's going to be okay."
He nodded again, but she didn't think he believed her. She couldn't fault him for that - she didn't believe it herself.
-o-
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