Adon woke slowly, blinking at the beeping lights, wondering why Lu would bring him to a—he sat upright, flicking the IV magnet out of the needle in his hand and yanking up his sleeve, scanning to count twenty-nine tallies, with one extra line added in pen rounding out thirty. 

Lu dropped the ink pen he’d been twirling absently, sitting back and smiling patiently, watching Adon piece the events together, lifting his shirt, surprised at the neat square bandage, poking the wound beneath it that was nearly healed, as annoying as a hangnail. 

Adon pinched his skin, his opinion of Sias sinking even lower now that he realized how simple the procedure was, absolving himself of any remaining responsibility. He’d only killed Sias—who he’d actively shoved at a Med-Pod (albeit after stabbing him)—as much as he’d killed Creon’s dusted grounders who’d been buried so deep in ringing sheet music that they’d practically fallen into Adon’s fists with their bloody teeth. He shuddered then folded in half, gripping his side—not healed, apparently. Adon lowered his hospital shirt, ignoring Lu gaping at his crosshatched torso, the corners of his mouth pinched uncomfortably because he was reminded that people like Y and Xeri, and to some extent Nika, the Grounders who looked like him, as scarred by their survival as they were hesitant to live in spite of it, were the exception. He didn’t want to see the guilt cross Lu’s face, so he stared mindlessly at the ugly pattern of the soft shirt, wondering if one of Heranika’s sweatshop textile factories contracted with the Charity House, letting his eyes wander anywhere but Lu’s face. Adon laughed at Lu’s white shirtsleeve, covered in inky doodles of small creatures he’d made out of the brown splotches of Adon’s blood, “what did you do?” 

Lu sighed, “you almost died.”

Adon blinked at him, meeting his eye, surprised to find not guilt, but something much hotter. Anger maybe? That made sense, Adon remembered getting blood on Lu’s coworker, or whoever that guy was. He sighed, shrugging, “but I didn’t.” Adon smiled, squeezing his knuckles reflexively, his emotions swinging with the cocktail of electrolytes and painkillers they were dripping into him, “I keep my promises.” He’d meant it teasingly, but there was too much still unsaid between them and they both cringed.

“But you almost did,” Lu reiterated, clicking the magnet of the IV line back into the needle still in Adon’s hand, blinking away his relieved tears. He sat back, confronting all his helplessness now that Adon was okay enough to make bad jokes, “you almost died. The forever kind, not the exaggeration of the track, not a hiccup in some plan, actually died.” 

“But I’m fine now,” Adon spread his arms. He rubbed at the haze of his vision, standing on the bed and turning in a circle, adrenaline from his dramatic wake-up fighting against the dull pain pulsing in his side sharpening as his blood moved. He was at the edge of a thought, but it kept flitting ahead of him, he couldn’t catch it. 

“Sit down,” Lu tugged gently at his wrist until Adon plopped cross-legged onto the bed with a wincing eye roll. “You’re not fine!” Lu waved a stack of papers, fanning Adon’s medical analysis print-out in front of him, “there are so many things wrong with you!” Lu rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes and tried to calm down, “you got three vaccines and you need one more, you already have the antibodies for half a dozen of them but they’re old and you don’t have the RNA vehicle plug to update, so you have to make your own with the raw exposure like the olden days, I don’t really understand it all, but you’re sick, two of the bacteria or viruses that you already have exposure to are known to mutate and pop out later, you’re a ticking time bomb without another check up. On top of that, you already had the antibodies for two of the most egregious viruses, which means you already survived them. They killed—” 

Lu inhaled a shaky breath and forced outß the reality check, every fact he’d been tumbling for hours, taunting how close he’d come to never finding his Adonis Caldera. “They killed sixty percent of people who contracted them, eighty-eight percent of Grounders. It’s why Gideon got away with the Navy destruction, because a lot of people saw it as necessary containment.” Lu shook his head at his own past and swallowed, continuing his rehearsed report, though he’d deviated away from all the calm explanations he’d practiced, “you had a lung infection, a fucking parasite as long as my arm, an abscess on a lab-grown tooth, nerve damage to your pinky, or what’s left of it, a fungal rash on your arm, some sort of chemical burn that was necrosing around your ear, a doctor checked your heel for, I kid you not, trench foot, and like, five other diseases I don’t understand!” Lu huffed, slapping the papers onto the bed in front of Adon, “you’re malnourished, you have a billion microfractures, your bone density makes no sense, and your base temperature keeps dropping into hypothermic but the doctor doesn’t know why. Your hair falls out in clumps because you haven’t had a vitamin in years, did you even notice? They want to study you as a miracle, Adon. Do you get it? You really almost died, for a thousand different reasons. This time you’re only lucky.” Lu pointed at the pen line he’d drawn on Adon’s forearm with the rest of his tallies, “it’s temporary because you didn’t survive yet, do you understand?”

Adon nodded so that Lu would drop his teary puppy eyes. He had no illusions of his fickle luck, he’d just been waiting for it to run out since the Pits. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud. Not to Lu-Lu, who was already wiping tears.

Lu sighed and sank back into the chair and Adon shuffled quietly through his print-o with an expert frown, nodding at all the grey blocks of his body scan that had been yellows and oranges the last time Nika had let him use the track pod. His contemplative frown deepened into confusion at the small red crosses heading each page with a code scanner for easy digital access and the thought he’d been chasing giggled, finally caught. He snapped to Lu, “are we in a… hospital?”

“Where else would we be?” Lu grumbled, “what part of almost died don’t you get?” 

Adon relaxed against the tone of Lu’s dismissive boredom, edged with a dare. They must be safe, Lu would understand that much, wouldn’t he? He would understand the reason Adon didn’t get check ups was because he only existed as a ghost ID, and once the Asylum, or the Quartet, or a third irrelevant party playing with puzzles just for fun, matched him to his official ID, the one his own mother had burned… no, Lu would know. Of all people, Lu-Lu would understand that much. Adon flopped back into his pillows, still bleary from the drugs and the waking up, and the urgent thought popped. They were in a hospital because that’s where hurt people went, and Adon was a hurt people. 

He inspected his new scar again, frowning at the gauze tape pulling the sensitive skin, annoyed that he’d almost let The Pig kill him. But all that remained of their encounter was a tiny line added to his patchwork collection. It didn’t do the pain justice, honestly. Adon began quietly counting his other scars as he sobered, the IV line running basic minerals and electrolytes through him as he slurred numbers with a giggle until he caught Lu’s glare and stopped picking at the bandage, smoothing it in place and dropping his shirt. He scooted to the far side of the bed, suddenly exhausted, and patted the space beside him, eyelids drooping. 

Lu slid between Adon and the handle at the side of the bed, placing his head lightly on the pillow, facing Adon, barely breathing, every movement too careful. Lu watched Adon struggle to focus with a soft smile, running a hand through his pink hair, petting his eyebrows, watching his eyes flutter closed, his voice barely a whisper, “Adon? Can you stop? The violence? Can it stop? Can you stop getting hurt or… Or did it… become a part of you already?” 

Adon shrugged, unsure how deep a question Lu was asking.

Lu snuffed a laugh, talking to himself, still caressing Adon’s temple, “because… I don’t think I will find any joy without you.” He moved his hand to Adon’s arm, as if he might erase the line of tallies there, choosing his words carefully, to say exactly what he meant to himself before he was ready to explain it to Adon. 

But Adon already understood him. He was drowsy but he did not sleep, nodding between liminal dreams, “I can try.” After a long pause, he nudged Lu, not bothering to choose his words carefully at all, “why aren’t you an artist?”

Lu’s brows shot up, balking at Adon’s confidence in his talent to assume his failure to achieve his dreams was by choice. He was surprised Adon was awake enough to converse at all, given the levels of painkillers mixing with cell repairers monitored on the progress screen above their heads. He sighed and shrugged out the truth in the quiet space between them, “I didn’t have the ego to compete.”

“Why?”

“I….” Lu rolled to the ceiling, guilt creasing his forehead, “I… sold it.”

Adon snorted, then groaned, “oh.”

“Doni?” Lu rolled back, cupping Adon’s half-ear then flicked it lightly, “will you hide from me again?”

Adon ground opened his eyes, looking over Lu’s face for a long moment before answering, waiting for enough alertness to return to his senses to convey his sincerity while he measured it himself. He announced his conclusion with a defeated sigh, “unless you sell me, I suppose you’re stuck with me.” He wasn’t thrilled with that truth, but he’d never run very far from it.

Lu smiled because Adon hadn’t said again, even though it was true. His smile faded with worry as Adon’s breathing slowed. Lu lowered his forehead against Adon’s temple, “I don’t think I could forgive myself if you became a monster.”

Adon fought the temptation of unconsciousness, curling against Lu’s chest, “what makes you think I’m not already.”

“You’re not,” Lu flopped beside him.

Adon didn’t like the haunted look in Lu’s eyes every time they landed on him. It made him try to force a smile, it made him try to pretend. He didn’t like the feeling in his gut, the anxious siren warning that Lu’s resilience was fragile, held by rebellion and hope, flickering each time Adon attempted any smile. “And when will you forgive yourself?” He watched Lu frown through the fading drugs that left him floating through the present, detached from their past, and gravity, and pain, and the context of a coherent conversation.  

“Don’t you regret it?” Lu bit his lip, “...me?”

Adon thought he’d missed Lu’s answer, unable to follow one timeline with all of the possibilities unraveling inside him. One corner of his mouth hitched with another wry truth, “the only thing I regret is wearing my nice shirt to meet Arty.” If he’d been in his coat, the knife would have missed, or maybe they would have run away at the sight of him. That would have been funny. Y would have laughed, instead of that fearful uncertainty on his back when he’d tried so hard not to limp away. 

Lu chuckled, “do you only have one?”

Adon nodded, pouting, wondering if Lu had his phone and how many threats Y had texted, demanding an explanation because he’s promised to report to Mess with a med-kit. Then there were Mess and Euri who’d probably called fifty times each. Maybe even Aphy—

Lu laughed harder, then whispered, “I made you a wardrobe.” He giggled at the sparkle in Adon’s bleary gaze, “I have lots of nice shirts for you. Every size, just in case.”

Adon nestled into Lu’s shoulder, thoughts of all the people he owed explanations and tallies to floating out of reach, “were you going to kidnap me or something?”

Lu shrugged, belatedly realizing how desperate he sounded, “or something.” His entire identity was built upon horror and self-hatred, looking for Adon and waiting to find him. There was nothing else of him left, and he suddenly understood that meant there was nothing for Adon to love but a grave-brick of ashes. He stilled, suddenly fearful, small and empty.

Adon watched Lu’s eyes well, a terrible epiphany frozen on his face. An older version of Adon might have held onto grudges. A fully sober version might have debated, but Adon was suspended in only the moment, and he didn’t like the distance Lu backpedaled between them. There was only one way he’d stopped it before, but the cat had told him he should stop randomly kissing Lu—it was rude. Adon sighed at the judgmental kitten and set his lips as close to Lu as he could reach without stretching his side, watching a corner of Lu’s mouth, beckoning him forward without any thought for the medical menthol taste of his mouth, “love me.” Adon watched Lu carefully through his eyelashes, his eyelids still heavy. He read all the doubts and stratified layers of rules and fears ringing Lu like a felled tree and demanded a different ending than the one printed in his expression with a single command, “love me, Lu-Lu.”