Chapter 8: It All Hits the Fan by: DragonMouse ~( 8>
I awoke at about 8:20 on Saturday morning and felt completely refreshed, even though Edward, Crys, the Donna pard, er, family and myself had taken in a pretty late movie. Edward then headed out on a job and came in, well, God knows when. So I was pretty shocked when Crys was already awake, sprawled on the couch. That rat sat on her stomach, looking as if it were considering chewing on the pages of the Stephen King book she was reading between bits of a cartoon. �Hey, �Nita,� she piped upon spotting me. �Ready to go bike riding and to the shooting range today?� I just nodded, not capable of verbal communication before my first cup of java. �Oh, there�s coffee already made. I just put I some flaky biscuits form a tube, so it�ll be a bit before breakfast.�
I headed to the kitchen without a word, only one mission on my mind: coffee. After I�d gotten a mug, pleasantly surprised that it was good, I came back out and asked, �So where�s Edward?�
�The day after a hunt, he sleeps in. I get up an� make breakfast, get dressed, then gather the laundry. When I get his, I just tell him its time to wake up. He throws some thing at me, an� I keep going.�
�He throws stuff at you?�
I heard the grin in her voice when she replied, �Only once. Now it�s a running joke. �Lookout, Eddy has deadly aim with a tennis shoe,� stuff like that.�
/Man, this kid has great blackmail info/, I thought, grinning. After only a few minutes, the cartoon went over and Crys got up to go get dressed, taking the rat with her, but leaving the book. By the time she came back, I�d resolved that I needed to find a copy of the book and time to read it, like that would ever happen. �So, do you have stuff to wash too?� she asked, interrupting my thoughts.
�Sure, if you�ve got room for it.� I was struck by the fact that no one can ever truly understand teenage fashion. If someone claims to, they�ve got tot be lying. All designers can do is hope to come up with the next fad, but they probably don�t know why something will be a hit and something else won�t be. The kid wore a bright red hockey jersey that had a few tears from use, one showing off the fake superhero tattoo on her upper right arm. Her jeans, at one time a medium blue, but faded and worn to within an inch of their lives, hung on her hips and were at least three inches too long. Walking on the backs of them had taken off some of the excessive length. Fringe decorated the bottom of the legs and the edge of her pockets. A rip cut across the right knee from seam to seam. It was a definite turn around from the clothes I normally saw on those I hung out with, which were torn and tattered, but skin tight, not this baggy, comfortable wardrobe. Maybe I could convince Jean-Claude that this was the going rage and he�d let his entourage dress normally, but I doubted it.
�So, if you wanna come help me gather laundry, you can grill me about Donna,� Crys offered, wiggling her eyebrows. I don�t know why, but that thought appealed to me a lot and I was on my feet quickly, even eagerly. This kid is a bad influence on me.
We went to get the hamper so we could begin our chore, her jeans making a slight *swish swish* noise as she walked. Couldn�t sneak up on someone wearing _those_ pants. My room was the first stop, so Crys waited while I changed so I could get all of my dirty clothes washed. Meanwhile, I found out, that Donna and Edward had �sleepovers� so the �children can visit.� The last was said with such sarcasm, I had to ask why. �Because we �children� have to be in bed in our separate rooms by nine. Eddy knows that Pete comes to sleep in my room, though. Donna would _die_ if she knew. She is such a, a-� Crys sighed, at a lose for words for once. I came out of my doors and dumped an armful of jeans, shirts and other stuff into the basket. We continued without a definite statement of Donna�s awfulness, at least for the Edward/ Crys pair.
Quickly, we grabbed towels from the bathroom, then Crys�s clothes. When we came to Edward�s room, she warned, �You stay out here, an� I�ll pass you the clothes. Edward� pretty protective of his room.� I nodded, knowing how he could be. Protective and dangerous. I noted that she made a lot of noise as she entered the room, probably to keep form being shot for stealthness.
�Hey, Eddy, time to wake up,� she called loudly after banging the door open. I watched through said door as she addressed a lump on the king-sized bed under black sheets. As she picked up strewn articles of clothing, she tossed them back to me and continued talking to Edward. �So, �Ted� killed that bastard dead last night, huh? It was probably too easy.� She scooped up a black shirt, cringed and switched hands with it casually to examine her now blood stained palm. �God, that punk bled all over you,� Crys muttered as she held the shirt up to see how badly messed up it was. I realized as soon as she did that the shirt was in tatters and all that blood probably didn�t come just from Edward�s prey of the night before.
The girl dropped the rag to the floor and stared, frozen, at the bed of her adoptive father, as if willing him to move, to sit up and yell, �April Fool�s!� though it was only March. In a flash, I was through the door and at the bedside, flipping the sheet back from the assassin�s still form. �Crys, get the lights,� I barked and she jumped, startled from her shock and went to do so.
The first thing I noted when light flooded the room was that he was breathing, shallow, but breathing. I�m certain that the thing the kid saw first was his paleness and the blood that had soaked through his self-applied gauze bandages. �I-I�ll go call 911 and get the first-aid kit,� she stammered, backing out of the room. When she was gone, I offered up a little prayer for Edward�s life, though it seemed weird to be praying for Death, and one for Crys�s sanity.
As I pulled the soaked bandages off of the claw wounds that spanned form his right shoulder down across his chest to low on his left side, I kept talking to him. �You�re not allowed to die, Edward. You can�t do that to Crys. I�m sure that fuzzball bastard doesn�t deserve to be the one to kill Death. Spite him. Don�t let him win.� I thought I saw him give the barest of nods, but I probably imagined it, since he was pretty much unconscience, or close enough to it that it didn�t matter.
Right then, Crys dashed back in, the panicked look gone from her face, or at least well hidden. She handed me a box that looked a lot like a fisherman�s tackle box and when I opened it, I found an impressive medical kit. The girl looked solemnly at Edward, saying, �Rio just told me Eddy came in 6 hours ago.� She blinked, turning her attention to me. �That�s a hell of a long time, Anita.� I nodded, just because I didn�t know what to say to that, and she lifted the phone handset she�d been holding. After thumbing a few buttons, the girl proceeded to tell the person on the line that, yes, she needed an ambulance, yes, we were trying to stop blood flow, and so on very calmly.
*~*
Trailing the ambulance to the hospital in Edward�s Hummer, bikes hitched to the back in anticipation of a happy day that wouldn�t occur today, Crys used her cell phone to call Peter�s. He was en route to Edward�s place so he could shoot and bike too, but he told Donna to head to the hospital at Crys�s direction. Then the girl broke down, crying into the phone rather quietly. It seemed such a cold hard shoulder to cry on, but at the moment with me driving, it was the best she could do. Yet soon, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She took off her glasses, scrubbed her palm across her eyes and proceeded to clean the glasses as she spoke. �Yeah, Pete, I couldn�t have said it better myself. We�ll talk more when you get to the, um, the hospital. Thanks man. I owe you.� After a pause to listen to whatever he said she gave a small smile and laughed, �Yeah, right. I�ll see you there. �Bye.�
After she hung up the phone and replaced her glasses, we rode in silence for a bit, Crys staring straight ahead at nothing. �Better now?� I asked, unable to take the smothering quietness. Unlike the lulls with Edward that I actually enjoyed, this one was tense and lay there like a dragon poised to take out anyone unwary enough to cross it.
She nodded grimly, once up, once down. The child turned to look at me and there was very little of anything in her eyes. Then she gave a small, strange smile, a quirk of the lips and said in a voice that sounded different, more dangerous then her norm, �I�m seeing much more clearly now.�
~( 8>