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( 34 一 SLOW TOUCHES AND HEALING. )
Clara was leant against a wall, Vida sitting in front of her gripping her hand with a death-like grip. She was spewing every vulgar word she could think of at Chubs as he tried to pick the leftover bits of her charred shirt from the burns on her back.
Clara felt terrible, she hadn't even noticed the burns and Vida's pain until Chubs had pulled out water and tweezers insisting on cleaning them.
"Can you stop moving, for god's sake!"
"Well, maybe I would if you stopped fucking stabbing me with the fucking tweezers you fucking moron!"
"Oh very descriptive, it's good to see you have such a comprehensive grasp of the English language that you can only think of one adjective to use."
Just when Vida tried to pull her hands out of Clara's grasp, no doubt to throttle Chubs, Clara stepped in. "Guys! Give it a rest. Chubs, try and be a bit more gentle. Vida, love, stop swearing you know it drives Chubs mental and stop squirming so much."
They both started protesting immediately but Clara halted them with a hand. Their bickering was getting old.
Before Chubs' attention was turned to Vida he had patched Clara up. He concluded that she didn't have a concussion but was very dehydrated. She also didn't need stitches but instead had a big white bandage wrapped around her head that he had fished out of some sort of supply closet similar to the one Clara was held in.
He had explained everything that happened, the white tent out the back, the trading of kids, the initiation, the Red boy. Clara's heart ached at the thought of Mason. A child who lived and suffered through so much pain and died in the same matter. He didn't deserve what happened to him.
Clara had also caught up with Olivia, which was a complete and utter surprise. She was just about the last person Clara expected to see when Chubs said he wanted to introduce her to an old friend.
Ruby had been hovering anxiously near Liam since Clara got out of the supply closet. Ruby had been passing around water and washcloths to the other sick kids but that did stop her eyes from darting to him nearly every two minutes as though she was checking he was still there, still breathing.
Clara wanted to go up to him, to see how he was doing, to just look at his face but she knew she couldn't. She didn't know how Ruby's memory erasure worked and she didn't want to mess anything up. But that wasn't the only reason, Clara also felt such immeasurable guilt at his current condition that she couldn't face looking at him.
If Ruby and Clara had stayed with him, if they figured out a different plan, maybe he wouldn't have ended up getting sick, he wouldn't be knocking on death's door. Sure, he would have been with the league, but surely that would have been better than this?
