Broken Doll {ManxMan}

CHAPTER 25

Tobias and I fell asleep around the same. It startled me when I first woke up, framing his face with my hands in panic, but he was still breathing and seemed to be fine, even the color had returned to his face, so I just dropped my face against his chest and fell back to sleep for a few more hours. The next time I woke, Tobias was raking his fingers through my hair.

He was talking with Bryn, who had taken a seat to the left of the bed, and I had to keep myself still so I could pick out their words. Unfortunately they were talking in German, so I only caught a few words like "funeral" and "angry".

My body felt heavy while my head felt light, my vision blurring a bit as I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, Tobias' hand squeezing my shoulder, "Good morning, darling." 

"Hm," I rubbed my eyes with the base of my wrist and looked directly at Tobias, "How's your head?" I asked before anything else, and Tobias smiled. 

"No headache yet, but there's still the rest of the day," he sighed, his eyes shifting to the side, "They're holding a briefing in a bit, I was just waiting for you to wake up so we could join them." 

"Oh," I breathed, as I'd momentarily forgotten about the briefing, but Tobias kept me from panicking by pulling me closer and kissing me quickly on the lips. 

"Change your clothes. You're still wearing what you wore yesterday, the coat is damp even." 

I straightened and felt the front of my coat, wincing at the slightly dampened but oddly warm feeling. It was kind of gross, and I was annoyed at myself for not realizing it was still kind of wet. I probably got the comforter wet too. Maybe that was why I felt so heady, because I was getting sick. God I hoped not, I didn't do well when I was sick. 

Part of me wanted to take a warm shower before getting dressed, but decided to save it for later and just changed into drier, warmer clothes. My throat started to hurt when I left the bathroom and lifted an arm to cough into, wincing. 

"Carter, are you getting sick?" I heard Tobias ask before his hand was on my shoulder, another hand holding my face, and I grumbled. 

"I'm fine." 

"You're forehead is warm," Tobias argued, and I shook my head. 

"It's nothing. I can't get sick right now. I have to be at the briefing like everyone else." 

"He's right," Bryn offered, "It'll be fine. Even if he's getting sick, he can rest when this is over." 

Tobias sighed, looking fully against the idea, but he didn't complain or argue, instead putting an arm around my shoulders to lead me towards the door, "Fine, but I want you to stay in bed after this until you're feeling better." 

"I'm feeling fine, really." 

That might've been a lie, but I really couldn't afford to miss this. They were going to bring up Cormac, and I was the only one who really knew how he died or why. They needed the information I had. Even if explaining it would be difficult. I hated it, but it seemed like my time had run out. I needed to tell the rebellion what I knew about the new government. 

I clung to Tobias' hand as we entered the conference room, thankfully empty for the most part, though Josie and Logan were there, standing on the far side of the room talking in sign language. Josie was moving his hands insanely fast, and though I didn't read sign language myself, I was pretty sure he was cursing, if his expression was any indicator. 

Whatever they were arguing about, it couldn't have been good, but I tried to block their presences as I sat down to wait for the rest to show up. I couldn't help but wonder how this would go, making guesses and trying to figure out what I was going to say. Unfortunately for me, my thoughts continued to think of worst case scenarios that ended with me getting shot, so I decided as long as that didn't happen, it would be a good meeting.