Hope Remains: A Hope Springs Fanfiction

Chapter 35

Muffled voices approached on long stretches of darkness, like gurgles of sound underneath the deepest recesses of water. The voices were impossible to decipher, stifled on clogged ears.

Finbarr's head swam sickeningly, his body aching from head to toe like a wildfire that had sprouted inside of him. The flames licked his legs, his arms, every muscle in his body. Only once had he remembered the torment of such pain—the days and weeks following getting buried beneath a flaming pile of barn remains.

His eyebrows furrowed as the memories consumed him. The fire. The blinding pain in his eyes. The scorching sensation that had covered his entire body from the burns that had afflicted him. But this pain was different. It was a deep, throbbing, aching pain. A soreness that refused to subside.

"He's waking up," a voice said, finally understandable when the fog of darkness cleared the slightest bit. "Get Da. Hurry."

Where was he?

He let out a breath, his lungs squeezing with the pained effort. Why did everything hurt so much?

A hand touched his shoulder, and he struggled to blink his eyes open over the heaviness of his lids. "Do you remember anything, Finbarr?" the same voice asked. "You must've hit your head hard, judging from how much you bled."

Tavish.

Different memories flashed across his mind. Stinging cold. Biting rocks. Grady's shivering wet form. He remembered the wagon getting caught on the bridge, and then the water that had washed over them in an instant, too quickly to avoid.

He blinked several more times as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was lying on a bed. A soft one. It wasn't his own. The room was so very blessedly warm, as if more than one stove was burning at a time. Tavish certainly was in the room with him, but he also heard several more pairs of feet shuffling nervously on the other side of the room. The way the bed sunk in near his feet told him that somebody sat near to him. There were at least four people in the room, and that didn't count the person that just left to fetch Da. Six people.

Seven, he corrected himself when he heard Eimear's heavy breathing next to him in the bed.

He was at Joseph Archer's house. That was the only logical explanation.

"Do you remember anything?" Tavish asked again. "Anything at all."

Finbarr turned his head toward Tavish's voice, hardly able to manage the feat. He was starting to suspect that on top of his aching, sore muscles, someone had given him powders. They always made him feel sluggish and not quite there in the mind, which was why he avoided taking them altogether.

"I'm sorry," he finally said, his voice dry and raspy. Thankfully, someone held a cup of water to his lips, and this time it wasn't full of dirt. "I'm sorry," he tried again, the sound now clearer. "I don't mean to be a burden. Was anyone else hurt?"

"That's just like you," Patrick chuckled, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Always worrying about others before yourself. That much hasn't changed."

"Mr. Johnson suffered from a cut in the leg in need of stitches," Tavish answered. "Joseph's wagon will need quite a few repairs before it can be used again, and we lost some supplies."

Although he couldn't see, he could sense the tension in the air, thick and full like a large wool blanket. "What aren't you telling me?"

Blazes, his body ached.

A larger hand touched his shoulder, and he recognized it as belonging to his da. "We searched for you for hours, son," Da said slowly, his voice full of sorrow. "I reckon you were in the water a good long while before Grady pulled you out."