"At least the girl did something right this time," the Swedish woman muttered, dropping down and gathering up the bullets from the fallen men.
She looked up as the Sparrow went by to the bush where Night Stalker had come from, a frown on his face. As she watched, the color drained from his skin.
"Skandar?" The Wolf moved to his side, looking as well. Silence fell over the two for a long while before the youth whispered, "Should've listened."
"You? Listen?" The big man took his hand and led him back to the group. The boy nodded, a shiver running up his spine as he gripped with white knuckles the hand that fitted about his own like an overlarge glove. Connor returned the squeeze. The She-Wolf went over to the boy, rubbing his back, as the bloody Englishman returned.
The Sparrow looked up at him as he stopped in front of him, the blood from his boots staining the snow and giving his assorted odds and ends of equipment a red sheen. Then arms slipped beneath his, lifting him up until he was resting in the man's gorey arms. Joe looked at him then, smiling an odd sort of half-smile, a deep sadness in his eyes.
"Don't be afeared, wee one." He tapped his nose lightly, leaving a red smudge behind. "Tis only a bad dream. And true, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy." He pressed his lips to the young man's brow, blowing on it lightly. "Which is thin a substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind."
The young man looked at him and nodded silently, feeling his own eyes watering. Running his tongue over his lips, he whispered in response, "I fear too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night's revels, and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death."
The Englishman snorted, "The stars are not in position for that tribute." He pointed upward. "The stars. Can't do it. Not today." A broad grin broke out on Lex's face as a little laugh left him, the Night Stalker cuddling him into his arms.