Revival

9. We're Both Damned Things

~~We're Both Damned things~~

Pro veritas veni.

The truth will come. "Are you awake?"

The voice was soft, but it ricocheted like a gunshot in Stella's ears. It was a blow to her already bruised brain.

She jerked bolt upright, grappling for whatever she could as a defense. She wrapped her fingers tight around something thick and large. A duvet? Stella realized with a sunken heart that it seemed the only thing in her vicinity was the same comforter she'd woken up swaddled under the last two nights. Something about it was incredibly jarring. "Stella?"

Stella flinched at the voice, pulling the cover up under her chin as her best defense before looking in the direction of the voice. It was a boy. He was sitting in the chair beside her bed, staring curiously at Stella with a pile of Manga in his lap.

She blinked once, wiping the sleep from her eyes, as she tried to place a name on a slightly familiar face. The velvet wingback chair seemed to swallow his scrawny, narrow frame and he looked incongruously adorable in it. His faded T-shirt hung loose over his shoulders and his feet just about brushed the floor. His fair hair, fairer than his siblings, stuck up in odd, tangled loops and tendrils and his green eyes were wide and luminous like eerie green lamps in the dark.

Stella sucked in a breath, dropping her covers in her lap when she realized there was no present danger, and the last thing she remembered floated past the front of her memory, and she cringed. A shiver ran down her spine as she remembered the Lieutenant's cruel, beady eyes and his questioning.

Stella was pretty sure that the memory of her interrogation was burned into her mind like a brand, filed directly under torture. She remembered Carter's father telling her once that the line between truth and pain was thin. Stella imagined that if that was true, that line for her was burned to a crisp.

"Jazz," she breathed out, slowly starting to relax as a yawn spread through her body, stretching her torso and arms above her head, relieving herself of her aching joints. Orange light spilled out from under the drawn curtains, letting her know it was late. Her mouth dried up, "What happened to me?"

He shrugged leaning back in his seat. "You couldn't handle the Lieutenant's interrogation, and you knocked out. You almost died, so Jesse took you back up here," he explained calmly, as though he was answering a math question.

Stella's brows shot upwards. "Died?" She asked in shock, "Really?"

Jazz frowned at her, unimpressed. "That's what I said. Can you hear?"

Stella frowned, shaking her head, as she pulled the covers off her legs, revealing the clothes she was wearing earlier. She pulled herself out of bed, feeling an unbearable desire to get out of this stuffy room. "What do you mean I almost died?"

Jazz looked up at her with a startled expression. Stella felt a little bad for being so tart, but she couldn't help it. "I mean that the spell he used overwhelmed you. When you first passed out, they couldn't find a pulse," he continued in a slightly unnerved voice. "It's usually pretty painful. Dad says it's because the spell acts against our will, but you reacted worse than most do, and the Lieutenant wouldn't stop. He didn't care," he continued, his voice hollowing out at the end, "He hates half-breeds though, so it makes sense."

"Half-Breeds?" Stella thought it was strange that a teenage boy thought it made sense that a man could almost kill her because of hatred, but she kept that to herself. She looked away from his piercing stare, deciding to focus on getting out of the apartment, "I remember him calling me that."