He Who Controls the Flame (001 fanfic)

Chapter Thirty Two- Tying up Loose Ends

I could taste ash on my tongue and could see fire staining the back of my eyelids and if I focused hard enough, I could hear Sebastian's screams echoing in my ears.

I awoke but didn't open my eyes right away, trying to recollect myself, but also trying to soak in as much of my dream as I could. I had been dreaming of Sebastian's burning body and I wanted to remember it. Wanted to remember the sweet satisfaction of watching him burn.

When I finally opened my eyes, it was to the sight of a plain white ceiling. I registered that I was in a bed with soft sheets around my legs, a starchy hospital gown around my frame. My heart beat spiked as I panicked, thinking I was still in Sebastian's lab.

I looked down at myself to see IV's were stuck in my arms along with other needles and I gasped, trying to yank them out. I didn't want any more drugs. I was so sick of being pumped through with things.

"Hey, hey, hey, you're okay," a voice said, covering my trembling hand with his own, stopping me from yanking out the tubes. "It's saline, to get you hydrated, and morphine. You're okay. You're safe."

I looked up at Peter. He looked tired. He was wearing his Orderly uniform but he didn't put it on with the same care he usually did. His button down was open, revealing the white tanktop underneath, and his pants were wrinkled. They were never, ever wrinkled.

"No more needles. No more drugs. I want them out." My voice shook and tears filled my eyes.

Peter nodded understandingly. He wasn't going to stop me. "Okay," he said. "But can you let me?"

I nodded, baring my arms to him. I looked...pale. I guessed I hadn't noticed before seeing as I had other things to worry about being as I was kidnapped by the world's craziest man, but my skin had lost all the color it had gained when we had been at the cabin. I could see the veins in my arms, blue and green.

Peter took the tape off of the tubes and gently slid them out. I winced as it pulled at my skin with a deep ache, but I didn't stop him. I stared with rapt attention, spine as stiff as a metal rod, until each one was out.

Once they were gone, Peter bent down and kissed the spaces they had been, pressing his lips gently to one crook of my elbow then to the other.

"All better," he said, sitting upwards, soothing his thumb over the skin of my arm.

"We're back in Hawkins lab?" I asked, recognizing the white-tiled walls and fluorescent lights, and the signature hospital gown decorating my frame. Once again, I was without pants.

Peter nodded. "Brenner found us and took us back. You were unconscious for the whole ride over. You were...you had a temperature of one-twenty, love."

My fingers curled around the bedsheets. "I did burn down a whole staff so..." I trailed off, looking at my hands, pale and thin. Not hands capable of killing.

Peter's fingers were suddenly on my knee, squeezing it gently through the stiff sheets. "Juliette," he murmured, "talk to me."

"There's nothing to say."

"There's everything to say."

I jerked my head up to look at him. "Do you want me to say I'm guilty? Cause I'm not. Did you see that my underwear was in a ripped pile on the floor when we left? That I have bruises all up and down my body from where he hit and kicked me?" My voice cracked and I swallowed hard. "He deserved what he got and I don't feel guilty. I feel like he broke that part of me that allowed me to feel that way. Both of them did."

Sebastian and Robby. The boys that broke me.

"No," Peter said, gripping my chin, forcing me to look at him. "I'm proud of what you did, Juliette. I am. He got what he deserved and waking up and hearing what you did made me love you all the more."