“Jesus fucking Christ,” Elgar hisses, sleep-muddled and still thrumming with adrenaline.
“Fetch a glass of water,” Forsyth shouts over Pip’s wails, and even knowing that it’s make-work, that it isn’t actually important, Elgar is eager for the excuse to get out of there. To not have to watch. To not be forced to witness.
More than that, Elgar doesn’t know Lucy as well as he knows Forsyth, or even Juan. She plays it close to her vest, doesn’t like to be emotional in public, and is almost ridiculously desperate to distance herself from anything feminine or “weak” looking. Elgar has a feeling that she won’t appreciate her deepest and most personal pain being goggled at. He drops the lamp, spins on his bare heel, and goes.
“Pip, bao bei,” Elgar hears Forsyth shout as he stumbles over to the galley kitchen.
His feet are unsteady. His vision swims, and he leans down over the counter, rests his forehead on the cool rim of the stainless-steel sink for a minute, squeezing his eyes shut and willing his head to stop spinning.
The screams peter out, replaced by a mewling whimper.
“Wake now. It’s just a nightmare, my darling. Wake up,” Forsyth commands from the other room, his voice a soothing cadence. Elgar feels his heart rate settling, the flush draining from his cheeks, his whole body trembling from the unspent adrenaline.
There’s a choking gasp, another small yelp, and then the sound of what is probably soft sobs muffled by the presence of clothing, or a pillow. Mortified by the thought of Lucy—strong Lucy; no-nonsense Lucy—weeping against her husband’s chest, Elgar straightens and turns the tap on full-blast. He pulls down a cup, clattering the cupboard door, and fills it.
By the time he goes back to the room, Elgar is feeling a bit calmer. The sounds of crying have faded. He peeks around the threshold. Forsyth is still crouched over Lucy, sitting upright, her hands fisted into his pajama top. Lucy sucks in air through her teeth, hard, hissing inhales that make her nostrils flare and suck closed, sweat painting her hair along her forehead like ink-strokes. Her exhale is reedy and mumbled.
“Lucy?” Elgar gasps. Her head jerks to the side. She blinks hard, eyes coming into focus.
“E’gar?” she mumbles, and all at once, her body goes lax. Instead of tensing upon waking, this seems more like wakefulness-induced freedom.
“Is it-t-t . . . is h-he . . . ?” Forsyth tries to ask, hands shaking, teeth clattering and blocking whatever it is he actually wants to say, and Elgar realizes that his soothing and commanding act was just that—an act.
Lucy turns her head a little further and kisses one of Forsyth’s palms. “No,” she says. “No, I promise. He can’t get back in.”
“B-uh-but he’s tra-try-trying?”
“I don’t think so,” she whispers, and her voice crackles. She licks her lips, and Elgar’s glad Forsyth sent him on his silly errand. Lucy must be parched after all that screaming. “Don’t even think he knows we’re here. I don’t know where he is. It’s just . . . thanks,” she says as Elgar steps around the lamp on the floor to hand her the glass of water, careful not to let go until he is sure she won’t drop it.
“Ma-ma-magic r-ru-runoff,” Forsyth finishes for her, when she seems more concerned about draining the glass than completing her thought. She sets the empty glass down on the side table, and Forsyth leans down, scrunching unattractively to press a reassuring kiss against her mouth.
“Is that what that was?” Elgar asks.
“Yeah,” Pip croaks, and struggles to sit up properly. Forsyth helps her prop herself against the headboard. She scrubs her forehead, making her fringe stand askew, and Forsyth pets it back and away from her face.
“So, that’s what magic looks like,” Elgar hears himself say, echoey and hollow and feeling a bit like the words haven’t really come from himself. He assumes his expression must have some sort of stunned, smashed-in-the-back-of-the-head-by-a-branch look to it. ’Cause that’s definitely how he feels.
Lucy lets out an exhausted huff of laughter. Her eyes crinkle, and her mouth quirks up. Elgar’s not sure why she’s feeling so warmly toward him right this moment. Hysterical fatigue, maybe? “Yeah. Is it what you imagined?”
“Of course it is,” Elgar says, blinking and trying to get his head back into the present, to stop floating along on a current of shock, of . . . traumatism and consternance. “Exactly like it. Even with the . . . the watercolor brush-stroke swirls around the outside of the aura that—” Forsyth flashes a glare over Lucy’s head at him, and Elgar stumbles to a halt mid-sentence. “Right, sorry. I should maybe be less excited about this than I am.”
Lucy huffs again, then plants her head in her husband’s lap. “Can I get you an-anything?” Forsyth asks, voice tremulous and small.
“Not yet,” Lucy whispers, fingernails digging into his thigh as if she fears he’ll jump up and run out the door. “Just . . . not yet.”
“Very well,” Forsyth says. Elgar is not entirely sure what he’s doing, but Forsyth makes a show of breathing in tandem with Lucy, slowing his own cycle of in-and-out imperceptibly, so that she follows along. Elgar, desperate to get his heart jammed back down where it belongs, copies them. Eventually, Lucy’s pained panting evens out to a light wheeze.
Lucy turns her head just enough to grin wearily up at Forsyth. “You think you’re so subtle.”
“I am subtle,” he protests.
“Are not.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
Lucy grumbles and resumes her careful breathing. But Elgar isn’t following this time. He stares unashamedly at her back, hungrily fascinated and intrigued, all wrapped up in awe and wonder and . . . trepidation. Alarm. Dread.
The green in the deepest part of her scars is still fading, slowly, just visible
