Welcome to Gaia! ::

Both Miriam Jacobs and Hero Barrett had likenesses in large amounts, which they both steadfastly ignored. They shared one about sleeping; they liked to do it in the full dark with both of the curtains drawn, in complete silence. If either read in bed the other one couldn't sleep, and you could feel them lying there with hate radiating as the other turned the pages with what sounded like loud, grating rasps. They slept in the total, whole dark. Sometimes Hero worked on her laptop and Miriam was ready to garotte her.

But then again, they were at the point where their ceasefire consisted of guerilla-planted espionage. Hero had shortsheeted the brunette's bed more than once. "That is very mature," Miriam had said. "That's completely adult."

Ping.

She eschewed earplugs. She eschewed an iPod. That night they had a pact of non-aggression, and had gone to bed at the same time with little blood shed -- ping. She didn't need to hear Miriam stir to know that her eyes had probably flown open at the noise. Miriam Jacobs had a cast on her foot; that was the mystery that nobody knew, but it was rumoured to be an athletics injury. Hero knew one better, but not one true. Ping.

She rolled out of bed and went to the window just as another pebble flew off it, sliding it open to let in a blast of arctic air. Down at the bottom of the dormitory building was Jude Lawson, holding his good arm gingerly against his chest, so covered in blood that his blue hair stuck up in stiff points at the front where a temple wound driggled down his face.

"Lawson!" she hissed, aghast at the pebble-throwing, aghast with how he looked. "Lawson, for God's sake!"

How had he circumvented Crystal security?

Stupid question: it was Jude.

I found him.

She suspected that it had not ended in murder, otherwise Jude would not be standing, rocking gently where he stood -- it had probably ended in mayhem, but not murder. Something in her told her that it would not be over yet. Not yet. That would be too easy. He was doubled over in pain and laughter both, drunk on it, incandescent -- God, what the hell did you do with a problem like Jude Lawson?

He was completely out of place on the neat lawn outside of the dormitory. How he hadn't set off the security light she had no idea either. Hero left the window and started pulling on clothes -- a t-shirt, some sweatpants. Gym equipment. She was opening drawers as silently as possible, but it would never be silent enough.

She heard Miriam stir behind her. Hero said, stiff with pride and annoyance: "It's my cousin."

Yes. The cousin with the Alabama accent.

"Oh, goddamn you all to hell, Jacobs," said Hero, and she slipped out the window instead. Jude saw her crouch on the sill and carefully close it after her, and then start clambering down the rose trellis (praying that it bore her weight) until she could drop down to the garden outside the dormitory house. Jude was still giving not-so-muffled war whoops of joy, blood and adrenaline; she was checking his eyes, checking the wound to his temple, probing at his arm (he yanked it away, hissing).

"You cannot be found here," she said, instead of 'hi, hello, you appear to be bleeding, that's not very nice', and started guiding him towards the fencing that he had obviously clambered over -- guided him east so that he wouldn't try to clamber over it again, ducked down a side alley that lead out into the main road. "You have sixty seconds to tell me exactly what went on with him."

Hey, it had worked for Miriam.

"Fifty-nine."

"You are not henshining up at this time of night, you damned idiot," said his Captain. "You're bleeding. You're wounded. I am not sure that your arm isn't dislocated -- no, you won't let me touch it, of course you won't. You do know that using your power exhausts you? Of course you do. For God's sake, Lawson, do not make me school you."

She was brushing back his hair, checking that ugly, bleeding wound at his temple again. Obsidian did not screw around. "I'm taking you home. I'm not entirely sure you're not sleeping on a park bench."

Jude Lawson: voted most likely Zodiac to sleep on a park bench in the dead of winter, possibly covered by a couple of newspapers.

"He's not dead, is he."

Her voice was flat; her scarlet eyes were, too.

"Grayson Graves loves summertime, Hawaiian pizza, and long walks along the beach," said Hero, who was being unnaturally sharp. "Get Giselle Petrova to love you and then I'll be impressed. Mr. Graves hands out his love as though it were candy from his pocket." This were distinctly untrue, and unfair; but Hero had seen Grayson Graves with Benson Beldon, a lifetime ago, and had not thought much of Gray's taste in men. Or in anyone.

And then Hero Barrett did what every rich girl did in time of need:

Flipped out her cellphone and called a taxi.

It took every ounce of haranguing, bitching, just about grabbing the sore arm and yanking it behind his head to keep Jude from running and fleeing then and there -- but he'd lost a lot of blood, and even if he was effervescent with his success. The taxi came with (she was grateful for it) excess speed, and before Jude could protest any more he was being driven up in front of a townhouse only a few blocks away in the neighbourhood -- a shut up, carless townhouse. A really nice townhouse. Trust Hero Barrett to be a goddamned rich girl. She paid the taxi driver and was fishing keys out of her pockets to open the front door; she manhandled him in, closing the door behind them.

The house was in complete disuse. It showed cursory cleaning (probably a cleaning lady every two weeks or so) but not signs of life: if the Barretts lived here, they didn't do it often. Or at all. Hero had taken him by the scruff of his neck and was walking him down the corridor, grim-mouthed, pushing a door open like she was Jack Bauer and sending him barrelling towards a king-size bed. Ooh, her parents' bed. Kinky.

"What in God's name am I going to do with you?" she despaired, and went into the ensuite bathroom.

Asleep, Jude Lawson was a much easier creature to deal with.

Asleep he was even angelic; she sat down next to him with a first-aid kit and gently loosened his shirt from his neck. The blood was easy enough to scrub off -- scrub off on her parents' bed: damn her parents, and damn the bed itself -- head wounds bled. He looked exhausted. Hero mopped up at him a little clumsily, as she was no born nurse and never would be, feeling along the shoulder to try to pry out any sign of dislocation -- the arm was probably just a little sprained, that was all. And Jude Lawson had long lashes for a boy, brushing his cheeks, his breathing coming slow and even.

Bruises. Bruises could be mended with arnica; cuts were disinfected, and he woke up for not a one. She pushed up his shirt to deal with everything on his chest. She couldn't be a startled virgin about that now. There were gashes, gashes with splinters -- she took the tweezers and the bedlamp and spent some time picking them all out, painstakingly, before dressing it up. He smelled uninvitingly of Dettol and arnica.

She yanked off his trousers, too (he really was exhausted: he didn't wake up for that) and attended to one hell of a gash on his thigh. When she was done Hero untucked the blankets and laid the coverlet over him, his dark blue hair an inky splash on the pillow, his features sharply defined even by the mellow light of one bedside lamp. Shoulders aching from hunching, Hero took to the other side of the bed and rested on it on her side.

And she watched him sleep a while, because you couldn't accuse Hero Barrett of not being obsessive.

"Be still and know that I am God."

As Jude would say, you couldn't also accuse Hero of not being kind of insane.

She reached out to touch his hair, touch his hairline, touch his mouth. When she was done she entered into an uneasy sleep next to him, the first-aid kit as some kind of sword between them both, setting the alarm clock should the worst happen and she would sleep through the night -- and she put herself close, because everything be damned if Jude Lawson try to wake up and escape.

Her hand shot out, grabbing onto his wrist (the sore one, ow, thanks, Hero). Her eyes were half-closed, looking at him, trapping him in this horrible hell of middle to upper class mores -- and now she was sitting up, disguising her yawn with her other hand. "Do you know where you're going?" she said, almost pleasantly. "You're staying or you're going to the ER. That's where you're going."

She cleared her throat. "Get back on the bed."

He could probably make fun of this.

"I don't even want to think about how much blood you've lost." That was for the next Sagittarius, he didn't care, he didn't mind, that was for Barnaby to think about -- "Lie. Down. You'll open up your wounds again. For God's sake."

"Lie down." God, he probably was developing a fever. Chills. Pneumonia. For a clear, shining moment, Hero Barrett deeply missed Alistair McGill and his dimly remembered nursing, his ability to look at any Zodiac and note immediately what they had wrong with them. Whether or not Jude was going to die of morbid sore throat. She was already reaching up to touch his cheeks, trying to feel if he was developing something other than being Jude Lawson. "Lawson."

She didn't know. How could she know? She was happy with being alive, was safe in her own skin as Aries -- she had been the one who had tugged him back from his rest. From Heaven. It hadn't been Hell. The one chance he'd had to go, and she stole it. So why couldn't he hate her. It was because she was looking at him with grim, badly hidden anxiety, reaching out to lean on one of the stands of the ridiculous four-poster bed they were on. "What do you mean. Because currently I think you're higher than a kite; I fed you baby Tylenol."