With only a low grunt to betray her presence, Charmian dropped unceremoniously into the guest bedroom Lucas had made up for her. It was a simple, Spartan setting though he would soon live to regret decorating it in white. Under other circumstances it would have been perfect for her.

“Ahh!”

Charmian let out a low hiss of breath as she tried to shrug off her jacket. It was slow going. There was no concern for the jacket – it was ruined anyway – but the gaping hole in her side was making movement painful. The problem for Lucas’s nice white room was that even if she didn’t die she still bled. Her blood was slightly thicker than a normal human’s but when the wound was this severe it made little visible difference to the speed at which it flowed. She had teleported straight into the room both to avoid Lucas and spare his other carpets, but now she was here she was making it look like a crime scene. Bloody pumped steadily out and ran a warm sticky path down her leg.

Finally the offending garment dropped to the floor. Gingerly she kicked it to the side, groaning with the effort, and took a few sluggish steps to the mirror to take a look at her wound. An ugly red slash of flesh sprawled from underneath her breast down to the end of her rib cage. A mortal would have been on the floor bleeding out; luckily the luxury of eternal life spared her the death though not the blinding agony.  She had suffered worse but she would heal.

“Hey, umm, I was wondering if… holy shit, what happened?”

The thought idly crossed her mind that it was wrong to say people went green in these situations. Justin’s face had lost some of its blood and was far more white than green, albeit with a sallow yellow tinge.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It looks like Hannibal Lecter cut himself a fucking steak! Shouldn’t you go to a hospital?”

“This is too big to stitch up. Besides, it gets awkward when you heal faster than they can sew so hospitals are a no for us.”

Justin’s eyes were bugging out of his head. He’d seen plenty of horror movies and crime shows so it wasn’t as if he’d never seen some gross looking wounds. In the past he’d required stitches himself. They’d never made him at all nauseous or squeamish but there was something about seeing it for real which was turning his stomach. What really blew his mind was how matter of fact she was about it.

“So why is it so bad?” It occurred to him. “I thought you guys healed practically on the spot.”

“Normally we do.” Her face screwed up in pain as she tried to brush a stray spot of dirt out. “But this guy tipped his blade with something.”

“Like with Lucas?”

“Like with Lucas.” She nodded. “I was trying to snatch the knife so I could bring it back to Nate and I forgot my blind spot. Guess he got a good chunk.”

He couldn’t figure her out – she sounded more bothered that she’d made a mistake than that she was losing what looked like pints of blood. “So… what, you just sit there and keep bleeding?”

“No. Next stop was the bathroom and the med kit. Which, give me a few minutes and we can talk about…” He brushed straight past her and into the bathroom. “Whatever it is you wanted to talk about,” she finished lamely.

Justin strode back out into the bedroom with the medical kit in his hand. Without comment he pointed at the bed. Charmian arched her eyebrow at him, jerking it left to order him out, but he stared impassively back at her. Clearly he wasn’t giving up and she was too sore to put up a fight so instead she acquiesced. Sinking down onto the mattress actually hurt more than standing up. As her weight shifted from her feet and legs to the sitting position it was more strain on her torso.

“So… I watched Band of Brothers but field dressings passed me by.”

Despite herself, a corner of her lips crept upwards. “Clean it as best you can, then put some padding over it and tape it round me nice and tight. Pressure should help the bleeding.”

“Okay.” He looked back up at her and then blushed as the next step dawned on him. “Uhh… excuse me, but…”

“Once you get past a millennium nudity’s not such a big deal.”

Clearly that had been meant to put him at ease but it didn’t. Pink crept across his cheeks as he grasped the hem of her t-shirt and pulled gently upward. There was a grimace and some gritted teeth but he didn’t think he’d hurt her too much. He was trying to ignore her breasts, though it was difficult when he was busy chastising himself for even thinking about them when he had a gaping hole in somebody’s ribs to fix. Telling himself off for noticing only reinforced the noticing. On the bright side the blood stains would be better masked on the black bra than Lucas’s crisp white bed linen.

“Fuck.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault, antiseptic is a bitch.”

“Heh. I wouldn’t talk to my mom for like an hour after she used it on me as a kid.”

If they hadn’t had such a huge fight when they’d last spoken Charmian might have asked him a little more about it. Details like his childhood and things he’d done before they met were of endless fascination to her. Even the mundane details were enthralling.

“So assuming you didn’t come in here to play Doctor House…”

“Oh, right.” The back of his neck suddenly felt hot. “Umm, I just wanted to, uhh, talk.”

She expected him to continue, but after a few seconds it became evident he wouldn’t. “Well you got a captive audience.”

“I just… this is an awkward conversation when I have my fingers in your side.”

“Again, this is a regular occurrence for me. Besides it’s better to have a distraction from the fact that you have your fingers in my side, which is not unpainful by the way.”

“Oh, right.” Hurriedly he withdrew them. “I just… our last conversation didn’t go so great.”

“Conversation implies communication. I’m not sure screaming over the top of each other counts.”

Justin glanced up at her, unsure how to take her tone. Her eyes seemed to have a little light in them so he took it for a joke. She could be so deadpan it was hard to tell.

“I guess I wanted to try again without the screaming. Only I have no clue what the fuck to say.”

“Understandable.”

“I mean, fuck, what do you say about learning you’ve been in some huge Shakespeare kind of shit that you don’t even remember?” He started to ramble. “I barely met you a few weeks ago and now I’m stuck in some avenging angel’s home with you because demons want to kidnap me or something and by the way we’re soul mates.”

Charmian wanted to butt in and correct him about the ‘angel’ thing. Quickly she thought better of it. “I get it. I just… I’m sorry I got so angry but I felt a little cornered. I don’t know as much as I’d like either so with you interrogating me for answers I didn’t have and getting mad at me when I couldn’t tell you it flipped me out.”

“I get that but you have to see my side.” Justin awkwardly tried to keep the padding pressed against her side while wrangling with the tape. He could have simply asked her to hold it there but it was a point of pride. “You’ve had centuries to deal with this. I’ve had a few days.”

“I do see that,” she said. “Believe it or not I can understand that you might resent being informed we’re in some huge destined love affair before you’ve even had a chance to feel anything for me, especially when you have all this other new info to process. But then the flip side of that for me is that while you get to forget I have to carry all that baggage and I’ve been doing it for centuries. It’s not so much fun to be me right now either.”

“I didn’t think it was with you being carved up like a ham and all.” He smiled sheepishly at her, knowing it was a terrible joke. “I’m sorry, this is just all totally insane and way beyond my ability to deal. Everybody’s looking at me expecting me to fall madly in love with you and I don’t know a damn thing about you. Except that you’re immortal and you make Jet Li look like an amateur.”

“Oww!”

“Sorry. Will that work?”

Gently she prodded at the tape. “I think so. Long enough for me to stop bleeding.”

“So did you at least get what you wanted for all this trouble?”

“Yep. It’s in the pocket of my jacket, could you get it?”

“Sure.”

“Wrap your hand with something first, if it’ll hurt me it’ll probably kill you.”

“Suddenly wishing I hadn’t been so accommodating.”

Wrapping his hand in her discarded t-shirt, Justin picked up the jacket and delved cautiously into the pocket. After withdrawing the knife he noticed the ornately carved blade. Once he had handed it over Charmian put her nose to it and breathed in.

“It’s just like Lucas said. Almonds.”

Her brow creased into neat lines as she stared at it, turning it over and over in her hand. Concentration blazed in her brown eyes.

“Any idea what it is?”

“No. Only that I don’t like it.”

Without warning the door was thrown open and Lucas stepped in. Initially he looked cheerful, but on assessing the situation he immediately looked angry.

“I’m sorry; I’ll pay for the sheets.”

“Like I give a fuck about the sheets, boss. What the hell happened to you to make you bleed this much and why the fuck didn’t you come straight to me?”

Justin couldn’t get over the fact hat he seemed to be the only one conscious Charmian wasn’t wearing a shirt. He understood that most immortals weren’t into sex and lust and such things (Nate had told him) but how could Lucas not take even a tiny peek? Then again, there had to be little novelty in it after you’d spent lifetimes playing surgeon to each other.

“I got sliced with the same poison you did. Got the knife though so not a total waste.”

She held it out to him and carefully he took it from her. With amusement Justin noticed that he handled it almost exactly the same way and had almost exactly the same look on his face. His was understandably a little less pained than Charmian’s.

“So you want me to bandage you up properly?”

“Tactful, hon. Real tactful.”

“Oh, sorry Justin.” He didn’t sound particularly contrite. “Take it this was your first?”

“It’s okay. I kind of knew she was just being nice.”

“It’s not that bad for your first,” Charmian said as Lucas peeled back Justin’s handiwork.

“Shit. You probably got a heft dose with an injury like this, Char. Knife passed through a lot of flesh.”

“It hadn’t escaped me.”

“What does that mean?” Justin was concerned.

Lucas had in half the time and without any of the fumbling already got most of the padding in place. “Means Charmian’s out of the field for a while.”

“I’d argue with you if I thought being in charge would actually do me any good in this situation. No need to worry Justin, it just means I’ll be a little slower to heal than Lucas was.” He looked unconvinced, his lips pinched. “Seriously, don’t worry. I’m immortal, remember?”

Lucas stood back up, already finished with the replacement. He’d had a lot of practice. “We’ll cover you, it’s no problem. Carmel’s on the phone trying to see if we can call in some extra bodies to cover patrols anyway so might as well ask for one more while she’s at it.”

He was already striding out of the room to find her when Charmian turned to Justin and smiled. “Oh well. While I’m an invalid you’ll have plenty of time to ask all the stuff you wanna know.”

“But you said you had no idea why you were my guardian?”

“Not about that, about me. You said you didn’t know me well enough. For starters long walks on the beach are way overrated.”

Her tone was jovial but Justin saw through it. Her flippancy was forced. She was anxious and Lucas was anxious. They could tell him not to worry all they liked but he wasn’t stupid. He might not have been around for hundreds of years to know everything but he was still old enough to recognise shit going down when he saw it.

To top it all off, for all his complaining about not knowing her he had no idea what to ask.