A Lullaby for Gods chapter 39

I kept rewriting and adding and cutting things out of this, but I think I'm happy with this version.

xxxix. (Lean Not) On Your Own Understanding

He practically has to drag Sapphrel out of the sun room, but at least he manages to achieve the feat. Skywalking the distance from there to Cecil’s room might only make them sick with how shaky they already are, and he’s already learned this lesson while helping Cecil when the boy had started getting his troubling visions. 

Cecil. Right. They probably shouldn’t be trespassing in the poor boy’s room, but this is an emergency, and he and Loki have an understanding anyway, they’ve talked about this before.

Anything pertaining to this - they have no name for it, it’s just This - is top priority. 

He’ll tell Cecil later. He’ll tell him what he’s discovered, because it might put the boy at ease. He just needs to wake up first. 

Loki grits his teeth. He will wake up.

The front door to the Palmers’ flat is locked, but Loki draws a rune over it, and it easily opens to him, which earns him a very confused protest from Sapphrel, but he just nudges them inside. The living room is less than a mess than it had been the last time he’d been here, which is good, but Cecil’s room is still a wreck. Blankets and cards are everywhere, one plushie has fallen off the bed, and the recycled soda can the boy’s kept on his desk as a pen holder has been knocked over, pens spilling all over the floor.

Sapphrel trips and crashes onto the floor as soon as he lets go of their arm, walking speed too slow to match his that they imbalance as soon as he stops pulling them along. Loki winces.

“Ow.” He hears them mutter and pick themself off the floor as he walks around Cecil’s bed to get to the wall beside it. There’s blank papers scattered by his feet, and he frowns slightly, feeling guilt rise up in his chest again.

He turns to the wall and undoes the working on it. 

The wall is covered in papers, tacked and taped onto the surface with everything Cecil could find - pins, duct tape, washi tape, glue - each paper clearly hastily written on and hastily placed onto the wall, the work of a frantic, panicking boy. There’s red ink everywhere, underlining words and encircling certain sentences, putting a few questions marks at some spaces. It’s the sort of conspiracy wall one would see in movies, with red strings and all, and Loki bites his lower lip. 

He’d helped Cecil put this together as best as he could, but he hadn’t been there every single time the boy had had a vision.

“What is that?” Sapphrel says behind him. When he turns to them, their eyes are wide, the fear and confusion clear in them. They glance at him for a second before they continue taking in the whole mess that is the wall.

“It’s what’s been keeping Cecil awake for nights,” Loki says. 

“I thought we discussed everything that Cecil’s been seeing!” Sapphrel says, and then falters, “S-save the part where he...seemed to get possessed and he passed out and…” they trail off.

“There is a lot we haven’t discussed yet.”

“Then why didn’t you tell us?”

“We didn’t want to alarm you.”

A pause. 

Sapphrel shifts on their feet, and then finally steps forward to look at the wall closer. Loki sits down on Cecil’s bed, and then decides it’s better if he cleans the room. He steps over the bed and gathers the blankets and the fallen plushie, setting everything in their place, and once he’s done with the bed, he goes over to Cecil’s desk to set it right.

He works in silence, giving Sapphrel enough space and time to take in and read everything on the wall, following the thread that connects certain pieces of paper together. He cleans up as best as he can, and by the time he’s done, the room is better than it is before, as if Cecil had never made a mess in it in the first place.

Loki wishes he still doesn’t feel guilty.

Then he sits on the bed and waits for Sapphrel to speak.

And waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And wa - 

“Okay,” Sapphrel says, “I don’t get it.”

Loki looks up at them for a moment and then sighs. He motions his head to the space beside him, lacing his hands together. “Sit. I’ll try to explain.”

Sapphrel studies him. “...everything?”

“Everything that I understand,” he says, “That we understand.”

“Why don’t you ever tell the others this?” they ask.

He turns away and starts cracking his knuckles, mostly as a way to fidget rather than as a threat, but the human beside him backs away a little, so he stops and sighs again. “I will tell them,” he says. “I just haven’t had the time to yet.”

He gets another scrutinizing look, but Sapphrel says nothing and just sits beside him.

“So?”

“So,” he starts, “Do you have any questions you wish to get out of the way first?”

“Yeah, what’s all this about?”

Loki chuckles. “It may be a lot to take at once.”

Sapphrel levels him with an unamused look. “I’ll understand everything better if you start from the beginning.”

Loki nods and then turns to the wall. “Okay,” he says. He thinks over his words for a moment. “As you know, Cecil was having nightmares.”

“Yeah,” they say, looking down at the ground, “He wasn’t - he wasn’t in a good place for a while.”

“It wasn’t just nightmares,” Loki says, and when Sapphrel looks like they’re about to interrupt, he holds up a hand. “Let me continue, please. It’ll make sense, I promise.”

They nod.

“Thank you,” he says, “It wasn’t just nightmares. They were visions. Horrifying ones, but still visions. The first one - the first one only seemed like a nightmare, and even Cecil thought it was a nightmare. He didn’t pay it any mind. He thought it would pass. And we didn’t pay any attention to it either.”

“Until it seemed to constantly happen.”

“Yes,” he confirms. 

“And then Cecil suddenly started - started staying up and wouldn’t eat. He seemed to just be - ” Sapphrel falters. “ - obsessed with it.”

“He was trying to make sense of it,” Loki says. “His visions are usually warnings. I don’t blame him for trying to make sense of it.”

“B-but it doesn’t make sense,” Sapphrel says, motioning towards the wall. “None of this does.”

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

“Still!”

“It might,” Loki says, “It might already be happening now. I don’t know.”

There’s another pause, and then Sapphrel motions a hand. “Continue.”

“Do you recall when the others told us about a game they played, one that birthed an entire universe as a prize?” 

“I passed out, remember?”

“Oh,” Loki says, “Yes, you did.”

They laugh dryly. “Ruben gave me a rundown. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything about it, but yeah, why?”

“With our current setting - with only Earth as a setting, what Cecil’s visions show may be impossible,” Loki says. He stands, and then puts a hand on one of the papers tacked there, one finger pointing to the words Interdimensional Game? written in red and encircled too many times. “But with a game like that, one that would break the rules of the universe to rebuild it - ”

“Oh, no,” Sapphrel says. “No, don’t - don’t break a speech at me with this. How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know,” Loki says. “But alternate universes have always been a possibility. It was something studied in Asgard, a theory that has always been debated. It is arrogant to think there is only one iteration, one sphere of existence out there, just as it is arrogant to reject other possibilities and trains of thought especially when nothing is proven.”

When he gets no answer, he continues, pointing to one of the papers near the bottom of the wall. It lights up in green. “In his visions, Cecil saw a battlefield,” he says, “According to him, it looked tiled, black and white, as if it was a chessboard.”

Saph nods, and Loki points to another piece of paper to light it up. “In one vision, Cecil noted that the chessboard was clean, and that it looked...smaller. Less tiles. You could have walked to the edge of it.”

“What’s past the edge?”

Loki’s lips turn up a little. “I don’t know.” Another piece of paper is lit up, this one near the very top. “However, Cecil also noted that in most of his visions, the battlefield was bigger. And messier.” He pauses. “There was a lot of blood all over it, and a lot of corpses, all shredded and violently murdered.”

“How violently?”

Loki turns to them for a moment. “Limbs thrown across the battlefield, clearly ripped by something from the body,” he says, “Disembowelment clearly done by bare hands.”

“Bare hands can’t - ”

“They can if someone compelled enough to do so would scratch and scratch repeatedly, with enough force,” Loki says, “Possession lends for inhuman strength, isn’t that the trope in your movies?”

Saph puts a hand over their mouth and gags. “T-their own bare hands?”

Loki nods.

“Oh,” they say, “Oh god, I’m going to puke.”

“Perhaps we should stop talking about that part, then,” Loki says, “Simply know that Cecil did not mostly see the battlefield as a good place. It looked exactly like it should be, a battlefield, but in his own words, it looked as if it was...needlessly violent.” His eyes become unfocused as he thinks, remembering the way the battlefields looked like when he and Thor and the Warriors Three had gone out on an adventure, and not one to defend Asgard but to hunt for fun. Monsters slain all over the area, monsters who, while they were considered monsters, were for all intents and purposes simply animals hunted for sport. Animals who had their own families and their own broods to go back to.

Needlessly violent.

“Why would he say that?”

“According to him, it was as if someone just let this happen because it would be entertaining. He said it was a permeating feeling he got from standing on that battlefield,” Loki continues, snapping back to the present. “And he said that he also felt as if this wasn’t what the battlefield was normally like. It was like there some other presence there that changed it. That corrupted it and forced it to be like that.”

Sapphrel stills. They turn their attention to one piece of paper with the red word INFECTED on it. “Like it was infected or something?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t know what was infecting it, of course,” Loki says, “We’re still trying to figure it out.” He slowly starts tracing a part of the red thread with a finger. “One notable thing about his visions, of course, is that he saw...certain people.”

Sapphrel narrows their eyes. “Who?”

“He couldn’t remember their faces,” Loki says. “He says it was a bit like a dream. He couldn’t remember their faces, but he did know that he saw them while he was still seeing the vision. And he remembered a few minutes after he saw the vision, but it all seemed to disappear from his memory later.”

“Is there a pattern for how long he remembered?”

“He said it was almost random,” Loki says, “Sometimes he couldn’t remember at all, sometimes it disappeared as soon as he was going to write them down, and sometimes it was a little in between.”

“Huh,” Saph says. “Does he know who those people are? Get a bit of a feeling, I mean?”

Loki pauses again. “He could feel their personality, I suppose. Or, their essence. Their very character. He could feel - no, see the secrets they held, and even though it was all gone when he woke up, he remembered, at least, that he could see into them.”

Saph deflates a little and hunches in on themself. 

“Some of it was enough to pinpoint certain people,” Loki says, and watches as they lean forward as he lights up another piece of paper in green. “Himself,” he says, “His brother.” Then he motions to his own chest, “And me.”

“I...see,” Sapphrel says, “Does Kevin know?”

“Kevin knows nothing,” Loki says, “Cecil doesn’t want to tell him.”

They frown. “Why not?”

Loki hesitates, then. “This is under our agreement in which you keep secrets, yes?”

“On my mother’s honor,” Sapphrel says, raising a hand as if in a promise. 

“Cecil saw his brother die in one of his visions.”

Sapphrel stands suddenly. 

Loki turns to them, patient, waiting for them to process the information, but his eyes are sad.

“What?”

“Kevin died in his visions,” he repeats. “No - I think the term better used here is violently killed.”

“Needlessly violently killed?”

Despite it all, Loki’s lips turn up. They’re catching up. “Yes.”

“W-who - why would -” Tears are welling up in Sapphrel’s eyes again. They’re shaking, and their voice is cracking. “Why would anyone do that, I - ”

“I don’t know,” Loki says, “But we do know we want to do everything in our power to stop that from happening.”

Sapphrel sucks in a breath, and then swallows thickly, making a face, like bile had risen up their throat. They look away, heaving. “Okay, but – but if you've been keeping this a secret for this long, why are you telling me?”

Loki turns to them slowly and looks them in the eye. “I have multiple theories.”

“You don't need to say that all sinister-like,” they say, but he ignores it.

“One of them is that whoever's doing this is cutting off the useful, or cutting off the weak. Devil take the hindmost is still effective when you're cutting down manpower,” Loki says, “Cecil is a Seer.” He reaches up rub at his neck. There is a thin line there, a scar from where he'd pressed his own knife to his skin. “As well as a very powerful silvertongue. Taking him down would be tactical.”

Saph looks ill again. “Silvertongue.”

Loki sees the pieces click in their head. “Yes.”

“That's why they - “ Their hands tremble as they reach up their face, as if to take off their glasses, but they realize they're not there. “ - his tongue - ”

“This is warfare, after all,” Loki says. “It's just tactics.”

“He's a kid,” Saph says. “He's seventeen.”

“That's never mattered in wars before.”

“It should!” They're sobbing into their hands now. “It should.”

Loki listens to them as they silently cry, waiting, but they surprise him by forcing themself to steady their voice. 

“Tell Rose,” they say, “I really think you should tell Rose.”

“I will,” he says. Pauses again. “Soon.”

They take a while to answer, but when they do, their voice cracks, and it sounds so small. “Okay,” they say, nodding. “I…I need to take a nap. I need to eat, or something. I’m getting lightheaded. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, “We’ll talk later.”

They nod again, then turn around and move to slide off the other side of the bed, towards where the door is, but as they do, their hand knocks over a pile of cards on Cecil's desk. They topple over in a slope, and one of them flutters to the floor.

Loki reaches over to set the cards on the desk upright while they crouch down to pick up the card on the floor. They laugh.

“Look,” they say, getting to their feet and showing the card to him. 

He doesn't know what it means, as he's never encountered this sort of card before – he's handled playing cards before, but these don't look like playing cards – but it's illustrated, and it looks beautiful. 

“Two of Cups,” Sapphrel says, “Reversed, though.”

Loki takes the card in his hand and stares down at it. He's only aware Sapphrel has left the room when the door softly shuts behind them.

-

The lights in the hospital room are harsh and bright, although that might just be because Rose hasn’t had decent sleep in close to a week. God tier bodies easily survive without sleep – any damage done to the cells and internal organs easily repair themselves as a slow death by sleep deprivation counted as neither Heroic nor Just – but that didn’t mean they didn’t get tired. They simply didn’t die. It’s something that would be a useful form of torture if someone were to attempt to tap into it, maybe find a way for their victim to keep healing, and once they’ve healed, break them open again.

Rose reaches up to massage her forehead. Morbid thoughts suit her, but they only ever really become truly morbid when she needs her rest.

Across the room, there is Kevin, asleep by his brother’s side. He hasn’t gone home in days, has refused to, and Rose understands his predicament.

A floor above them is where her brother is currently laid up. She’s just come down to wake Kevin and remind him to eat.

“Kevin,” she says softly, placing a hand on his shoulder and gently shaking it. “Kevin, wake up.”

He doesn’t stir, so she shakes him just a little bit harder. “Kevin.”

“Wh – ” His voice is croaky as he blinks up at her, confused. He turns to Cecil for a second, sees that he’s still asleep, and then turns back to Rose with a frown. “Whass’it?”

“You need to eat,” she says, and he shakes his head immediately.

“No, I, uh. I need to stay here.”

“Kevin,” Rose says, as she’s said many times before over the course of their stay here in the hospital. “You need to stretch your legs. You need to eat. Cecil isn’t going anywhere, if he wakes up, everyone else – ” She motions to the whole room; some of their group is passed out here, while the others are in Dave’s room “ – will get us. It’ll be fine.”

A pinched expression flickers on his face for a moment, and he turns to his brother. He shifts, leaning back in his chair, and as he does, Rose notices that he’s been holding Cecil’s hand this entire time.

Something squeezes inside her chest.

“Okay,” Kevin says. He clears his throat and says, in a louder voice, “Okay.”

Rose nods, and lends him a hand. He staggers as he gets to his feet, legs shaky from days of inadequate rest and from being stuck in the same position. The walk downstairs is spent in silence, not that either of them are in any mood for conversation. It’s tiring enough keeping one foot in front of the other.

Kevin tries to buy only a muffin from the cafeteria, but Rose insists he at least buy more food to snack on later, even if his appetite isn’t too great at the moment. He doesn’t protest, so Rose buys an entire bag for him, and he chews slowly on the muffin he has in hand as they trudge up the stairs. 

His breathing starts to get a little ragged on the second flight of stairs they climb though, so he stops for a second, leaning his back on the rail to catch his breath. 

“Elevator?” Rose asks.

“No,” he says, almost frantic, and then shakes his head, heaving. “No. No, please. I don’t want – I don’t want to be in confined spaces right now, I’m scared – I – ” He spends a few seconds taking in deep breaths. “I always think the lights are going to go out again and…”

Rose nods, understanding. She sits on the steps instead, close to the rail, waiting.

Kevin eventually slides down to sit and lean forward, resting his forehead on his knees, bag of food beside him. He’s silent for a while, and then after a few minutes, he lets out a small sob.

Rose watches as his shoulders start to shake, and as he curls in on himself as he begins crying.

The hospital is silent. It’s not empty, but it’s so early in the morning that most of everyone is asleep, and the cold from the outside has seeped in through its walls, lending the entire building the atmosphere of a graveyard. 

Kevin’s sobs, no matter how small, sound loud in the silence.

“I’m sorry,” Rose says. She doesn’t know what else to say, really.

Kevin takes a while to answer. “It’s not your fault.”

“I still feel like I should say it,” she says, “I had him there. I was fighting him. We were – he was possessed by Horrorterrors and we could have done something but instead, he – ” Rose’s voice chokes off. She puts a hand to her mouth and closes her eyes. “I was hoping all of our troubles were left in the game.”

Kevin shakes his head. “We both know that nothing ever really ends,” he says, “Especially not something so unfinished like that. It’s always going to come back. Unfinished business always haunts you. Comeuppance always finds you.”

Rose nods, letting that sink in. “I wish it didn’t,” she says, and spreads her hands, as if giving up. “What did we do to deserve this?”

Kevin snorts. “The universe is hardly fair.”

She laughs bitterly at that, thinking of her mother, and of finding a game at thirteen, and how that had destroyed everything she’d loved. “Yeah,” she says, “I hear you.”

They sit there for a while, saying nothing. Kevin forces himself to finish off two more muffins, and then they continue their trek up to Cecil’s room. Rose opens the door for him and is about to simply drop him off there and be on her way, but she notices something black sitting on Cecil’s chest.

She frowns. “What on earth?”

Khoshekh, Cecil’s pet cat, is sitting on the boy’s chest as he continues to sleep, breathing steady but slow. On the chair, where Kevin had been sitting earlier, is Winston, resting his head on the mattress, appearing troubled as he looks at Cecil.

“How did they get here?” Kevin mumbles, too tired to even be surprised.

“They snuck past the receptionist?” Rose asks, joking, but – that’s the only explanation she has unless Loki had decided it was a good idea to skywalk the pets here.

“I don’t know,” Kevin says. He goes over to where Winston is, and Rose follows him, noting the mud on Winston’s paws, and the piece of paper rolled up and tied to his collar.

“At least we know he was somewhere before he got here,” she says, reaching over to take the rolled up paper. It’s wet, maybe from rainwater as it’s been storming a lot in the city lately. As she unfurls the paper, she finds that most of the ink has unfortunately bled, and she’s too tired to make sense of what’s written right now, so she tucks it away for later.

“Khosekh?” Kevin’s petting the cat on his brother’s chest, and the animal turns to him, bright, near-luminescent green eyes fixating on him. “How did you get in here?”

Khoshekh mewls. Unfortunately, however, neither of them understand catspeak, and Loki’s not around, so Kevin just nervously laughs. 

“Guess we won’t know for a while, buddy,” he says. He looks at the seat where Winston’s on, but it’s already muddy, so he just sighs and sits on the edge of the bed, looking down at his brother.

“Do you know where Loki is?” he asks Rose.

She stills, and then huffs out a breath. “We had a fight.”

Kevin turns to her so fast she’s surprised he doesn’t fall off the bed. “What?”

“We had a fight,” she says. “I was frustrated with the current situation.”

“Oh,” Kevin says. “Oh. You two are really close. He’s like your brother already, so I was just – I was surprised.”

“Mm.” She nods. “I imagine that’s why he hasn’t been here a while.”

“I thought he was resting,” Kevin says. His shoulders drop, and he turns back to Cecil. “Or, you know.”

“Run off?”

“I’m tired,” Kevin says, “And frustrated too. My thoughts have not been very rational.”

“That’s understandable,” she says, walking over to the other side of the bed to sit on its edge. From where she’s perched she can see Kevin run a thumb over his brother’s bruised knuckles.

“I guess. I still feel bad,” he says.

Khoshekh shifts from where he’s sitting on Cecil, and both of them watch as the cat hunches down to tuck its legs underneath its body, closing its eyes. Even it is tired, and Rose finds herself yawing.

“We should both get some sleep,” Kevin says.

“Yeah,” Rose nods. She knows she’s going to risk nightmares, but she also knows she’s going to just be tired and irritable for the next few days if she doesn’t rest. She stands and inclines her head towards Kevin, bidding him goodbye, and then starts towards the door.

The heartbeat monitor suddenly spikes.

Everything happens so fast, the sudden beep startling everyone to life. 

Kevin is so surprised he almost falls off the bed. Rose quickly turns to him as everyone else in the room startles awake at the loud beeping, but notably – most notably, what catches Rose’s attention is how calm Khoshekh and Winston sit at their respective places, as if no loud noise has broken through the hospital’s silence. Around her, everyone is trying to get to Cecil’s bedside, half-running, half-crawling, most of them still drowsy but trying to be alert.

Rose draws in a breath and rushes to the bed.

And then Cecil opens his eyes.

-

Cecil isn’t very coherent when he awakens, but at least he’s awake. He’s in and out for the first two days, and Kevin is back to never leaving his side, constantly holding his hand. Sometimes he reads to him, and during those times Rose observes that he is calmer. Perhaps it’s the comfort of slipping into his radio host persona, extending to the art of simply reading to his brother. At least he’s finding some comfort in the troubling events of the past few days.

Loki arrives with the pool master and their best friend a few hours after he wakes up. He and Rose only share a look, but for the rest of the two days in which Cecil is still struggling for lucidity, they don’t acknowledge each other more than a few nods, and a passing of a coffee mug. 

The animals stay with all of them the whole time.

Whenever a nurse comes to check, they obediently shuffle into the bathroom to hide, and when someone comes to clean, they’re strangely gone, which intrigues Rose, but it’s quite difficult to get answers out of Khoshekh and Winston even when Loki and Jade are already around. 

On the third day, Cecil wakes up before Kevin does, and he’s able to weakly squeeze his brother’s hand. Kevin groggily lifts his head up, and he gasps, and Rose looks up from the book she’s been staring at for five minutes, spacing out, at the sound.

Cecil is awake.

He tries to crack a smile, but that’s as far as he gets because Kevin throws himself at him and cries into his shoulder, days of stress and grief finally cracking under the strain of overwhelming relief.

Rose smiles, and wishes bitterly that Dave would wake up too.

They try not to overwhelm Cecil and give him space, but it’s hard not to constantly fuss over him given everyone’s worry over him. They all crowd his bed, giving him gentle hugs or patting his head, before John decides that everyone really does still need rest, so it’s best if some of them went home to take showers and sleep in proper beds.

He squeezes Rose’s shoulder as he himself prepares to go home.

“He’ll wake up, Rose,” he says, and smiles at her. Rose tries to return his smile, and watches as he dissipates into wind.

She stays with Cecil, sitting by his bedside along with Kevin. He can’t really eat right now, so he’s mostly being fed through a tube, but Kevin can, so his brother is scarfing down food he really needs, making up for days of no appetite. Rose doubts he has any appetite now, but maybe he’s eating for Cecil’s sake, so he doesn’t worry.

Cecil motions with his hands, and Rose tilts her head. 

“I’ve eaten, yes,” she says. That gets her a small smile. She waits as Cecil signs again, and then frowns. “That...is a point. I haven’t seen Mr. G all day, but he was here yesterday. I think he might have gone home earlier or something.”

“He did, you were asleep,” Kevin confirms, “Both of you, I mean. He tried to bring Winston home with him, but.” He nods his head to where the dog is sleeping in the corner of the room, Khoshekh on top of him. “Big guy’s stubborn.”

“I still don’t know how he got here,” Rose says, “Or why he’s here.”

“Went along with Khoshekh, maybe?” Kevin says, “I know Khoshekh’s here for Cecil.” He pauses. “Didn’t he have a scrap of paper?”

“It’s in my sylladex, I am – way too tired to attempt to try and read it right now,” Rose says.

Kevin nods. “Fair, maybe later when you’ve had actual rest in a proper bed,” he says. He turns to his brother. “Why are you looking for Mr. G?”

Cecil’s brow creases, and he looks worried. He signs – I need to talk to him.

Rose leans back in her chair, intrigued, and pulls out her phone to begin texting the man. She gets a response two minutes later. “He’s on his way,” she says. “I think we might have startled the poor man, he was making sure everything in the house was in order.”

Cecil looks a little sheepish, but signs that it’s just important.

They don’t have to wait long. Mr. G arrives in about fifteen minutes, and in those fifteen minutes, Cecil alternates between picking at the bandages on his hands and reaching up to pull on a lock of his hair. Kevin has to gently stop him from doing that, and he gives his brother a weak, apologetic smile.

Mr. G arrives and he looks harried, glasses askew, curls all over the place, and his eyes are wide and worried as he looks Cecil over the second he opens the door to the hospital room. His shoulders relax when he sees that Cecil is fine, but then tense again as the boy is now tearing up, making awful, choking, sobbing noises.

Kevin is immediately on his feet, one hand on Cecil’s back, gently telling him to breathe, and Rose is picking up the phone beside his bed to ring the nurse. Mr. G crosses the room in quick strides, ready to help Kevin before his brother chokes, as his tongue is still too thick and swollen in his mouth for him to breathe properly when he’s almost crying.

“Ceec, we need you to breathe slowly for us,” the man is murmuring, one hand behind the boy’s head, cradling him, almost. Kevin is rubbing circles on his brother’s back. “Breathe, Ceec.”

Cecil nods jerkily, and tries to slow down his breathing, but makes more of his awful noises. Mr. G continues to instruct him, gently guiding Cecil’s head so he’s looking the man straight in the eye.

His breathing is close to normal when the nurses finally file in. Rose herself lets out a sigh as they make their way towards Cecil’s bed, but before they can do anything, Cecil suddenly pulls Mr. G forward and wraps his arms around him.

The man tenses, uncomfortable and unused to the affection, but slowly looks down at Cecil as the boy is shaking and sobbing again. His expression falls, shock melting into concern, and then sadness, and he slowly brings Cecil close for a hug.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, “You’re okay. You’re here. I’m here.”

Cecil’s making small, strained noises, Rose notices, and she feels her chest tighten when she realizes he’s trying to speak.

“Hey, hey.” Mr. G is patting the boy’s head softly. The nurses are hovering around him, but clearly see that Cecil isn’t going to let him go any time soon and as he isn’t choking anymore it’s probably best to let him get all of this out. “You don’t have to talk. It’s okay.”

Cecil’s making shaky motions with his hands, but as he’s still trying to cling to Mr. G, it’s hard to understand what he’s trying to say. 

“Easy, Cecil,” Mr. G says when the boy tries to speak again. He gently loosens his hold on him, and Cecil pulls back to put his fingers to his chin and tilt them outward.

Thank you. His hands are shaking, and he's still crying, but Rose can't deny that there's gratitude and almost...relief in his eyes as he signs it. 

Then he moves his hands again, and Rose frowns at what he’s signing. 

I'm going to help you, he's saying, I promise. I'm going to help you. I'm going to save you.

Mr. G is frowning now too. He turns to Kevin, and then to Rose, but as she has no answers, Rose only lightly shakes her head.

“I – I don't understand, Cecil,” he says.

Cecil smiles and looks down. He looks sad. You don't now, Cecil says. But you will later. He nods to himself and wipes at his cheeks.

The nurses slowly help him sit properly on his bed, making him move back a bit as he'd leaned over too much that he's in the danger of falling over. He lets them, and Mr. G takes a step back, adjusting his glasses before they slip off his face, but then Cecil signs again, still looking at him.

And I pray that you never will.