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Otto's Room

She offered him a grateful smile, the idea of tracking mud into Otto's incredibly nice room full of clean, crisp colours had become a sudden worry as they climbed to the second floor. What was revealed under the mud, she accepted with a small, grim smile. They were bruised and twisted and cutcutcut all over, the ankles swelling with a pain she couldn't feel just yet. Several toenails were missing, and to anybody else they'd seem ugly, disgusting, painful to even look at. But she knew, she knew that this was just a price, and a temporary one at that.

It's worth it. It's worth it.

???

He'd neatly detached from them both at the door of the dorms, slipping away, and it only took seconds away from the magnetism of America's presence for him to remember that he was angry: for him to remember Kostya's boot to his gut and his cruel taunting, when all he'd given to America for endangering her life (and not just hers; theirs: the three of them) was a clucking admonition and a friendly hand.

And he'd wanted to go with her. Looking back on that moment in the rain (looking at her eyes was like seeing a wild animal in a cage that had realized the lock was broken) was like remembering a story told by someone else: a scene full of strange, bewitched compulsions.

Judas, he thought bitterly at Fionnghal, who returned a studied silence.

He was shivering and miserable and every bit of humiliation he'd felt under America's scrutiny since her intervention and at Kostya's frustrated hands snaked back in to replace whatever spell she'd temporarily put there that had made him think he might taste something euphoric he'd almost forgotten. They'd conspired to tell him he was dying, to scold and shun him for it, and she'd gone and nearly gotten herself killed.

It was, all things considered, the worst possible time to get the text.

Otto's Room

The entire walk back Taym had been mostly silent, speaking when spoken to and wrapped up quiet, falling back as much as he could with America's grip on his arm and only once more reaching up his free hand, in the midst of some Kostya lecture, to again touch his fingertips to hers before withdrawing them. He had been expressionless, turned inward, stoic.

Kostya opened the door to a face that was instead white with barely-suppressed anger, a jaw clenched, hands trembling (but that wasn't new).

He could hear the water running, and the thought that she was enjoying the luxury of a private shower (while he stood still dripping and covered in mud and shivering) rendered him incapable of even spitting the venom he'd planned. He shoved the bundle of America's belongings hard into Kostya's arms and turned to go without comment.

Otto's Room: shower

When her skin was flushed and pink all over, and her muscles felt raw and bruised and swollen, and she felt clean in every corner of her being, America just stood still under the spray.

Inhale.

Exhale.

She reached over and turned on the cold water, full blast. The shock of it took her breath away and when she regained it, she was laughing quietly. America knew she couldn't stay up much longer, but she wasn't passing out here, either.

Worth it. Worth it.

Sleep

The first few hours were a shivering, restless sleep she couldn't wake from.

Otto's Room

Before he left, Kostya darted out to grab Taym, not by the scruff but it might as well been, a fist full of collar and an insistent press of a towel into his arms.

Sleep

She'd taken the couch, and had gone out like a flame in the wind. He carefully spread out a sleeping bag, pressed against the wall of the far side of the room. He'd slept in worse places, and on the whole, a sleeping bag for a night wouldn't be so bad.

He slept facing America, just in case she awoke and needed something. He'd set two bottles of water on the end table, a baggy of trail mix, and a note instructing her on what things were safe (ie: not for Otto) to eat in the fridge.