Robbin

29. Visions

She woke to visions, as usual, and her stomach felt funny.

"You ready for another day of walking?" she asked Jake, but he merely grumbled.

"Did you eat?" she asked Robbin, and he shook his head.

She frowned. Was she the only sane one anymore?

Terra peered toward Jake. He hulked since moonrise, as if his Grecian spine couldn't withhold the burden of Robbin's misery and her sudden dependence—and she was dependent upon him, whether that had been his plan or not. Because he had saved Robbin before, and she couldn't do it alone.

"Do you think Robbin's bandage is holding up okay?" she asked as they sat before a fire he had started. He just grumbled. She choked his sentiments up to the character flaws of a begrudging hero and turned back to Robbin, who sat on the other side of her.

"How are your bandages?" she asked, and he shrugged. Blackened at the edges with dirt, Terra wondered how he had managed it. Maybe it had been when he had lain down to sleep, or maybe he fancied playing in mud puddles between meals, but whatever the reason, he would undo all the pain she and Jake had gone through to make him better. She just wished Jake still cared as much as she did.

She searched her mind for the name of the Shylock Doctor. "Where did Dane put the antibiotics?"

Robbin drunkenly pointed to his jacket, abandoned to the forest floor. His drunkenness was of the mind and not the body, however.

"I hear a stream that way." Jake offered, finally noticing her look of dejection at the lump of spare bandages, blackened with dirt, which had found a way into Robbin's jacket pocket as well. His slight smile didn't look the way it usually did under his gaunt cheeks and thoughts swimming in his eyes.

"Thank you." Terra offered a meager smile as well, grateful he was at least good for something as he took them from her and trudged off. She was depending on him for more than just cleaning bandages. She demanded Robbin to lift his shirt and felt her face go hot.

***

His name was undisputibly Jake, but since waking it didn't feel as if the name fit. Maybe, he didn't fit the name. Jake. It was supposed to sound like air being sucked from a tire, but instead it sounded like a damn bird.

The way Terra chirped it made him uncomfortable, as if she was counting on him for something, but he didn't know what. Robbin, though nearly catatonic, still managed a particularly frustrating look which Jake thought might be gratefulness, whatever that was about.

He wasn't a bird, he didn't know why they thought he was a bird. But, who else was there to decide what his name should sound like?

"Jake..."

He looked up. It was Terra, of course, who else would chirp his name like a damn bird?

"Is it ready?"

He pulled the string of gauze from the stream and tossed it back to her before Robbin. She snatched it swiftly.

The feeling which erupted into his chest when she nursed his friend was unexpected. He deserved to be taken care of more than Robbin.

What's more deserving about you versus him? he asked himself, but the direction of his mind today didn't allow that thought to fester. Jake deserved those fingers to slave over unclean fabric and slowly wrap the cleaned white around him. He didn't need a reason. He was better than Robbin.