When the car had gone off the road, Elke hadn't been screaming. She'd balled up, just like every time a Negaverse fight had gone bad, she'd clenched her teeth and tried to just keep breathing until that terrible crunch. Her head had ricocheted, hard, off the window of the car; a piece of shrapnel had slashed the line of her jaw, chin to just behind her ear. That had brought her eyes snapping open, not just from the pain, but because she knew what the abrupt end to Grayson's scream meant. She just barely caught sight of her brother's body before she'd passed out.

Then, she had awoken here, in the hospital. Not Memorial, of course. It was far too crowded. She had sat there, quiet as a mouse, as the occasional visitor wandered through. There was nothing overtly wrong; the bruise on her head had gone down, the gash on the side of her face was sewed up.

She hoped it scarred. She knew that it wouldn't.

Her fingers curled around the railings on the side of the bed, grinding into the fabric of her sheets. She wasn't in her dorm room at Crystal--no, the hospital. They'd found something wrong in her brain. But it didn't matter that her brain was broken, she didn't want to go back to Crystal. Couldn't bear the memories or the heartache, even though it was worse here, alone in a hospital room. Worse, but better: He'd never been here, never sat next to her. It was clean of memories, of associations.

It didn't really help. Her mind drifted, off to his room, to the mattress there. When he slept by himself, he slept on his stomach, arms under his pillow; when they had shared the bed, she had curled into his side, her fingertips laced around his forearm, pressed against her collarbone. She would wake up with her back to her brother's stomach, his knees dipping in behind hers, and his lips against her ear as he said something about breakfast. That was how it went, sometimes, when she wasn't the one rolling inside the loop of his arms to poke him in the chin and ask about pancakes.

Grayson was dead.

Elke didn't know how to deal with that. Grayson, her brother, was dead. Grayson, her brother, dead, dead, dead. They hadn't let her see the body, hadn't let her near the morgue. Didn't they understand she needed to see him? Just one more time. One last look at his preciousbelovedbeautifulfamiliar face, one more moment where she could pretend he'd wake up and then smile at her, his eyes scrunched up with the longblacklashesinky against her fingertips the curve of his cheekbone.

The smooth metal of the hospital headboard was cool against the back of her neck as she leaned against it, staring at the ceiling. Her nails were grinding into the palms of her hands. The veins in her wrist stood out starkly against the chalky undertone of her olive skin. They were blue--it was safe inside her body.

(It had been Grayson who had knelt with her in the bathroom after fights the most often; his fingers, combing through her hair as he crooned that it was all right, it was fine. Ally had done that, too. Hero had stood awkwardly in the doorway, once; had left without comment, and Elke had been bitterly ashamed.)

There was a burning now, behind her eyes, as she closed them tightly, her lips clenched into a thin line. They formed a rictus, exposing teeth too bright for her ashen face, as one sob clawed its way out from her throat. The tears came hot and fast, falling to soak into the hospital gown.

He had promised! He'd promised: This will be the last time, he'd told her the night before he died. Our last reincarnation. We'll do what we have to do and then we'll live our lives and we'll grow up and you'll have children and it will be wonderful. Her lips had curled up at the corners and she'd told him she loved him so very much, and they had sat on the couch and watched the Princess Bride, and like always he had held her hand when the Prince was torturing Wesley, poor Wesley, and she'd kissed him on the cheek and they'd laid down and slept. The next morning there had been grades, sent before the coma sickness, and Pop and Grayson had started to argue...

And she had thought that Hero watching her vomit from the sickness and fear of blood was bad--sobbing alone, in an empty hospital room, set shame boiling through her veins.

Pop peeked in the door, came to sit next to her; she set her head on his shoulder, snuggled closer to his side. Van didn't look much like Grayson, but in some respects he smelled similar and if she closed her eyes she could pretend almost that he was her brother and not her father. She ground her teeth into her lip, held her breath to hold back the sobs. Pop didn't need her tears; his grief was deeper than hers, he'd known Grayson for eighteen years. Virgo had known Leo for a thousand, but she'd never seen him grow up. It would have been worse, she thought. "I love you, Pop."

He pressed her tighter to his chest. "I love you, too," he said.

Dad had come to visit; Papa had called, Maman had actually been to the edge of the quarantine and pitched a fit when the National Guard wouldn't let her through. Pop had been here almost constantly, sometimes with Tristan in tow and sometimes without, but he'd been here...

Like always, he stayed until it was time for the lights to go out. Then he tucked her in, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and brushed her hair behind her ears. And he stood at the door until she fell asleep, just like every night since the accident.

This night was different, because she never woke up.