[MAX]
Everything was dark, and pain swirled around my head along with demolished shreds of my coherency. It felt like trying to surface in an unfathomable ocean.
Then, there were warm hands on my arm and back, propping me up.
"Just sit up and sip this for a second, sweetheart ..."
Something cool touched my lips, the tip of my tongue, the back of my throat — and then the ocean swallowed me whole.
—
There were voices. Sometimes it was mumbling. Sometimes it was too loud, but still so far away ... it all made about as much sense as a droning siren off in the distance. I though at some point I might've been sitting upright and eating something, but I wasn't sure.
I saw eyes, always concerned, but the color was ever-changing.
—
"SHE ALMOST STABBED ME!"
"Max— Max, sweetheart, just— give me the knife, please—"
"SHE WAS UNCONSCIOUS THIS LONG AND YOU DIDN'T THINK TO DISARM HER?!"
—
My head hurt.
That was my first coherent thought. My head hurt, and everything on the other side of my eyelids seemed too bright.
I didn't sit up right away — the pounding in my skull made that a less than appealing idea — and instead opted to slowly open my eyes. Crud had since tried to glue my eyelashes together, so it took some effort. When I had managed to pry them open after I rubbed them, the first thing I saw was just ... light. Everywhere.
I stared at what slowly transformed into a ceiling for a solid few minutes before I could remember anything. And the last thing I could recall was running away from a warehouse in Romania.
Which was a far cry from where I happened to be. So the next logical question was, how did I end up in a warm, well-lit room with a ceiling?
That was when I tried to sit up, and I almost immediately regretted it. The pounding in my head increased, and dizziness hit me out of nowhere, which in turn made the room sway. I still stubbornly pulled myself up into a seated position, but I'll admit, once I realized that the bed was pushed against the wall, I leaned back against it. After I took a few seconds to try and reorient myself again, I began to recognize where I was.
Then the door swung open. Dylan stopped in the doorway with a hand still on the handle. His blue eyes glowed in the warm lighting of the bedroom, and his face was the picture of surprise. In any other situation I probably would've made a wisecrack comment. As it was I stared right back at him, my own expression hardened and pained. It was the most I could manage, under the circumstances.
"You're awake," he finally said as he stepped fully into the room and let go of the doorknob.
I allowed myself a moment to give him a once over. He looked perfectly fine, which while a relief, was not necessarily a surprise. One of the last things I could remember was him getting out of the warehouse safely, so there was no reason that he should be injured. The nice thing was that he looked well-rested, which was a rarity for him. When I finally made eye contact with him again, he cracked a smile.
Instead of smiling back, I did what seemed perfectly reasonable in my head at the time, and tried to get to my feet.
Yeah, that went about as well as you'd imagine it would. That is to say, it went terribly, and Dylan almost lunged across the room to stop me. He called for people whose names did not register in my head until I saw them.
