Evergreen

five.

Akari hadn't woken up fully in 24 hours.

Sage had spent the day keeping a cool towel on his head and changing his wound dressing as needed. He was running a high fever that kept him trembling even when sweat was beading off of his face.

The wound on his abdomen was just short of gaping. The dressings Sage would apply were soaked through with blood within the hour. She was beginning to feel hopeless.

As soon as they were able to make it through their front door last night, Akari immediately collapsed in his room and he hadn't gotten up since. He was barely coherent. She called her local pack doctor, Dr. Cristo, and she walked Sage through the steps of cleaning and wrapping the abdominal wound.

Akari hadn't had health insurance since last year. Sage's last tongue-lashing of the Elder Council.

It was on her to-do list to have them both apply for government health insurance, but it always escaped her.

And today, as she drank her morning cup of tea in the same disheveled clothes she'd shifted in from the attack yesterday, she watched her brother's chest rise and fall as she held her own breath. Watching him laying there with pain etched on his face felt eerily like looking down on her father when he was too sick to move during his wolf split. Oh how Akari and Cain favored one another.

Sage held the cup with such force she could feel the mug crack slightly. 

She had no words.

She had to tell someone though.

A rogue gracing their lands was no good.

We have no resources, we barely have land. Hell, we barely have people.

Sage ran over anything that would make the pack a target for someone else.

Akari makes a slight movement which breaks her train of thought and her attention snaps to him. His face screwed up, his thick brows furrowed just the slightest. Sage lightly dabs his forehead with the now lukewarm damp towel. He shudders in response.

"Come back to me, buddy. Don't leave me here." Sage whispers to her brother. She hoped the sound of her voice would stir him to open his eyes, but nothing.

Her small plea now felt bigger.

Glancing at the microwave's clock, it blinked 9 PM back at her and she needed to get her own self ready for work in the morning. With a sigh, she picked up the empty chicken soup bowl and the towel she was tending to her brother with and took it into the kitchen. For some reason, Sage threw the bowl into the sink hoping the loud banging would wake Akari up.

As she began washing the dishes, Sage didn't even flinch at the scalding hot water that immediately starting steaming as it gushed from the tap. 

"Dad's gonna be so proud of you."

Akari's last words to her  reverberated in her head.

If only her father could see the two of his kids now. Cain was dedicated to protecting the pack no matter what. From knowing everyone's birthdays to making sure that the rogues that passed through their territory were known by name. His teachings were the reason Sage knew how to find her way home using the north star if it was visible. 

They were the reason that Akari could name every poisonous piece of foliage that grew in their forests. Cain knew that in order to ensure the survival of his children, they'd have to know how to start from scratch.

Would he be proud to know his children were living in the rubble of his own mistakes?

Sage knew it would kill him ten times over.