Unsteady

Introductions

Regaining consciousness is a struggle within itself, as the pain coursing through his body makes everything difficult. He subconsciously tries thrashing out at the hand that’s on his left shoulder, the one that’s sending the pain skyrocketing through the roof. His movements are stilled though by the restraints holding down his legs and right arm. His howls echo through the room, howls of him relentlessly begging for his torturer to stop. Eventually he passes out again, this time staying in the dark for a few hours.

Waking again to a sky saying that it’s around 6pm he slowly shifts himself off of his bed and checks on his shoulder. Dimly he remembers the pain from getting his shoulder worked on, but mostly it’s just all a blur. He notices that his shoulder is bandaged good, the bleeding’s been stopped. As his head slowly clears he notices that he can smell meat cooking  outside, most likely in his fire pit. Grabbing the knife tucked under his pillow he wobbles to his doorway, ready to defend himself even in his weakened state.

Getting outside of his house is a challenge, as he has to stop to rest against the walls multiple times from pain and dizziness. He gazes out at the scene before him that’s laid out across his backyard. Em, cooking the meat from the rabbit that he killed and she seemingly skinned. Her baby is clutched to her chest, wrapped in a pink blanket as Em rocks her to sleep. Em has donned one of his shirts, along with a bandana that’s wrapped around her prickly scalp. Trying to regain his strength he tucks his knife into the front of his jeans, watching quietly as Em walks over to a spread out blanket and sets her baby down.

Em searches the backyard a bit after relinquishing her baby, annoyance written in her face. Spotting whatever it is that she was looking for she walks over to one of the trees, bending down to pick up what she was searching for. Bobby’s heart stops when she walks out with a 2 or 3-year-old boy on her hip. She broke his rule and brought someone else to live in his house. After taking a bullet for her she has the audacity to spit in his face like this? Rage starts to build in his gut and his vision dims red.

“Now Charlie,” she sets the boy down on the blanket and stands up to scold him, “what did I tell you about playing where I can’t see you?”

The little boy looks down at his feet, shame plastered across his dimpled face and staining his scalp up to his dirty blond hair. “I’m sorry momma, I just wanted to look at the mouse.”

“You and your mice good Lordy. Remember what I told you, I want you to be on your best behavior when Mr. Bobby wakes up okay? He doesn’t know that mommy has you too, and I want him to see in what I can see.”

“What’s that you see momma?”

“A beautiful young little boy that needs to remember his manners. Now, go wash up. Supper’s almost done.”

“Okay, I love you.” Hugging his mother Charlie starts to scamper off towards the kitchen door but stops when he sees Bobby looming in the doorway. By now Bobby has calmed down some, but he still wants to hear the whole story from Em. She is breaking one of his detrimental conditions after all. He takes a step out of the house towards Charlie, right hand clutching his left shoulder to attempt to lessen the dull throb. Charlie turns around and runs back to Em who’s testing the roasting bunny with a knife. He tugs on her pant leg and simply points, quieted by Bobby’s alpha male presence. Looking up she sees Bobby and nearly drops the blade into the flames.

Taking a step away from the fire she pushes Charlie behind her, keeping herself between him and Bobby. “Now I know what you said, that I was only allowed to bring myself and my infant. But I couldn’t very well take Jessica and leave my baby Charlie with their father. Punish me if you want, but please don’t hurt them.” At this point he starts walking in their direction, causing her speaking to become faster and more hurried. “It’s like you said, now they’re away from that thing. That’s all I wanted for them, a good solid place to call home that has food and shelter. Charlie here actually turned three today, and I knew for a fact that I didn’t want him there anymore.”

Bobby stands before them now, his 6’3” frame towering over Em’s 5’5” one, simply listening to Em and watching her son as he hides behind her legs. “In a few years’ time he can start helping out around here, gathering berries or helping to take care of the garden. Please Bobby, please don’t hurt my baby he’s the only thing I have left from before the bombs fell,” this last sentence was rushed and panicky sounding, as Bobby had squatted down and was gesturing for Charlie to come to him. There was still ice in his eyes as he started at the small boy.

“If I wanted to hurt the boy I would’ve done it when I first saw him. I wanted your explanation first though, before I started chucking knives.”

“I promise that you won’t regret letting him staying here, he is one of the hardest working children I know.” Relief is starting to work its way into her eyes, as she sees Bobby start visibly relaxing.

“Good, now may I see him?” Wordlessly Em gestures for Charlie to stand in front of Bobby, where he grasps Charlie’s chin in his strong right hand. He turns his chin this way and that, checking his appearance overall and silently taking in Charlie’s skinniness and slight malnutrition. Spotting a bruise he pulls harder than he had intended on Charlie’s jaw, immediately letting go when a whimper strikes through the air at Bobby’s prodding fingers.

Em kneels down with them, wrapping her arms securely around her son’s body. “It’s alright baby, shush, it’s okay, daddy isn’t here anymore. Bobby made him go away.” Looking up briefly she meets Bobby’s questioning gaze before continuing, “I’m sorry about that, but when their ‘father’ laid on hand on Charlie just for asking for a hug on his birthday I knew it was time to leave. Coming here was just a gut reaction, I truly am sorry that you were injured because of us. The bullet went through all the way though, as far as I could tell. I learned some things over the past year about natural herbs and stuff, I found a few drying in your sunroom and used them to stop the bleeding. I also bandaged it up to reduce infection. You were asleep for 6 hours though and you lost quite a bit of blood, the bandage needs to be changed soon. And I had to leave you shirtless, your arms are heavy enough as it is I didn’t think I would’ve been able to get a shirt on without damaging something even more.” Here her cheeks lightly pinken, showing her innocence even through everything that’s happened in her life so far.

A light smirk works its way onto Bobby’s face at her discomfort, but disappears as quickly as it appeared. “He can stay here, but feeding us all is going to be interesting with my busted wing. I won’t be able to do much with this arm for a few weeks now. Who was the bastard that shot me anyway? Their bodies need to burned, but I need my arrows and anything else of value off of them first.”

“We can work on that later or after supper, I already got all of your arrows out though and pulled off the clothing that I could. I washed it all and hung everything up inside your sunroom to dry out. I managed to get off the two shirts that got holes in them from your arrows, I did my best to not rip them anymore anyway. I figured I could sew the one and use the others for bandages. Your arrows are in your quiver, all 4. As you can see I skinned the rabbit, I kept the hide. I don’t know if it’s good anymore, but I don’t know how to treat animal skins unfortunately. It was skinned about half an hour ago, if it’s any good anymore you could walk me through the process. Also, it was Johnny that shot you. Johnny is the bi- excuse me the man that shared DNA with my children. Thanks to you though, now him and his brothers can’t hurt anyone ever again. You really have no idea the amount of gratitude I have towards you, living with them was not… fun. Thank you.”

Silently he watches her, letting her information wash over him. “Could you help me…?” He reaches a hand out towards her, beckoning her to help him back up to his feet. Giving Charlie one last quick squeeze she instructs him to watch over his sister, before coming over to give Bobby her support. Together they manage to stumble to their feet, Bobby leaning on her heavily for support due to his wound and blood loss. They shuffle to the house, portraying quite the picture along the way. Em’s face is red from straining to keep Bobby on his feet, and her charge’s face is ashen from the effort of simply walking in a straight line. His heart stutters beneath his chest, his skin hot and almost feverish where her arm meets his torso to help him move.

“Did you get all of the blood out of the clothes?” He’s attempting to distract himself from the pain by keeping at least one of them talking.

She tenses against him at the mention of blood and shakes her head no. “I got out as much as I could but… Johnny’s and Jim’s entire shirt fronts were soaked. Jackson’s has pretty much no blood though, he’s the one that you got in the head.”

“Well, I guess that’s all I can really ask for right now, huh?” Well work on what needs to happen later, but for right now, thank you Em. For everything.”