The Great Below

The Way Back

"She'll ruin you," Victor called, voice strained. "She's done it before."

"Do you need help walking?" Alex asked Octavia. She shook her head, crossing her arms tenderly over her chest, and followed him to the bathroom.

He grabbed a towel off the counter and ran the hot tap over it, then tore the paper off a complimentary bar of soap. Alex felt more comfortable with his back to her, but he could still watch Octavia sitting on the closed lid of the toilet from the mirror. She stared at nothing. She might have been in shock. He was quick to soap up the towel and began to wipe the blood away in short strokes, careful not to let it drip onto the floor. The proprietor was going to have to call police for the break-in, at a minimum. Better not to leave evidence of anything worse.

On a return trip from the sink, Alex was trying to find a part of the towel that wasn't irrevocably stained pink when she spoke.

"I could have shot him."

He could look up into her eyes; it gave him a chance to stop thinking about the blood, streaked up her white thighs in front of him, or the nest of short black hair where they met. "Just now?" he asked.

"I was holding that gun and I could have shot him."

"Why didn't you?"

Octavia waited while the last of the blood went down the bathroom sink, and then Alex opened a tube of first aid cream and a roll of bandages. "I don't know," she said. "Why couldn't I kill Jacob Corrigan?"

"Because you know it's wrong." He put the cream where he could, careful not to linger too long in any one place. One of the cuts on her thigh was deeper than the others, and continued to weep even after he'd wrapped it with the gauze and taped it in place. It would have to hold until they got back.

"I never wanted to kill him. I just wanted to leave him."

Alex shoved his supplies back into the first aid kit and dumped the stained washcloth on top of it. He took a clean hand towel and scrubbed all of the surfaces they'd used, offering a hand so Octavia could stand up and step away from her seat. She did, awkwardly, and was clearly in pain. "Maybe you should want to kill him. I don't think anyone would blame you. Where are your clothes?" he asked.

"They're no good."

"We could take some more towels or a blanket," he said.

She nodded. "Alex..."

He glanced down at the bad leg, where blood seeped through the cotton fiber in bunches, like red, melting snowflakes. In fact, several bandages wept. His roll of gauze hadn't been long enough to cover all of them well. "Don't worry, I'll get you home."

Her fingers were digging into his arm. "I was angry the last time we talked," she said, "and I haven't been very nice to you."

"It's okay—" he began.

"No, shut up. I need to say this." She released him. "I haven't appreciate all the things you've done, you and Nick. And...I need your help. I really need you."

Alex smiled. Then he realized he'd spent their entire conversation not thinking about the bare skin in front of him. That, even now, he was comfortably looking her in the eye and talking like friends. That he was only concerned about getting her safely back to the Infirmary. "All right," he said. "Let me go grab that blanket."

#

Alex carried her across the parking lot. The rain was lighter then, more of a mist, and Octavia had wrapped herself in the stolen coverlet. Her ruined clothes and the first aid kit had been wrapped in a towel like a hobo's bundle and she held them suspended in front of her, careful not to let them press on her wounds.