"Rise and shine," an irritatingly familiar voice called.
"Shut up!" My beautiful songbird voice screeched back. "It's too early for this shit!"
I heard the other two girls climbing out of their bed, but was too tired to open my eyes. Last night's adventure had left me even more tired than I'd hoped. I groaned in hatred as a hand took hold of the back of my shirt.
"Screw off."
"You're the last person who can complain," Levi's voice called from the other side of the room. Hm, I don't remember him coming in. "Us in the guys room get the worst of the early bird wrath. Bryce here's still half asleep."
I groaned again, tightly wrapping my arms around the wooden beams of the top bunk. Whoever was pulling me seriously wanted to get their ass handed to them today.
"Well, laying here, doing nothing sounds great and all," Theo's voice said with that there's an or coming tone, "or," told you, "you could come outside with us."
"Meh, the halls aren't that enticing."
"I don't think I ever said the halls."
"You mean outside?"
"Yep."
"Like outside outside?"
"The one and only."
"Like not trapped in this hellhole of a-"
"Yes!" Bryce's pissed off voice said. "Now go get dressed so we don't have to wait all day for you. I'll meet you all in the cafeteria."
Thank god he was gone. I would've tackled him if I'd spent another minute with him.
"Come on," Mercy's soft voice said, "I wanna eat before the lines get long."
"I wouldn't worry about that," Levi said. "No one gets up at this early in the morning except loons."
I groaned as I forced my body up and into a slow turtle faced action.
"And she lives!" Mercy laughed. "But wow does she look beat."
"Angel," you know who's voice said, and no not Voldemort, "as much as I love to see your beautiful face in the morning, and hear your melodious voice, you look like some has continually beat your face in with a brick."
"Repeatedly," Mila inserted meekly.
"Thank you, Levi, for your one of a kind wake up calls. I love hearing your insults in the morning."
I crawled to where the ladder was hanging on the bed and easily slid down. I looked to the clock to see that it read... Too god damned early. No, it was five ten in the morning, and it felt like it. No, it felt like I hadn't slept in two days, which I nearly haven't. Over the past forty-eight hours, I've gotten about an hour and a half of sleep. And the whole Seventh Sword incident sure as hell hasn't helped.
"Boys, out of the room so we can change," Mercy said, saving me from my daily ritual of kicking them out and then giving Levi a smartass comment after he tried to flirt with me. Seriously, this takes effort. Lucky for Mercy and Mila, Levi doesn't really flirt with them. Either he never really did, or he found new prey in me.
The boys kindly left us to our privacy.
"Seriously," Mercy said walking over to the dresser where she kept her clothes, "you look dead tired."
She tossed me a black long sleeve shirt and a pair of jean pants. It's been like this since I got here. I had no clothes of my own, so I ended up wearing hers. Luckily, we were close enough to the same size, even if her clothes did end up being a little tight on me.
"Yeah," Mila said, pulling a short sleeve blue V-neck on. "Are you okay?"
I pulled the pants up, tightening the last button as I replied, "I'm fine. Just been really tired lately."
We finished getting dressed and then headed out to where the two guys were waiting. We headed to the cafeteria without running into anyone. Thank the gods for that. I didn't have the patience to deal with any of them.
"It's about time you guys got here," Bryce complained from the table he sat at. His eyes glided over to me as he raised a questioning eyebrow. "What happened to you? Get run over by a carriage or something?"
"Feels like it," I replied. "Theo, wanna grab me some cinnamon and sugar toast? Three slices, please."
"Uh, sure."
"Wow, manners and everything," Mercy said, sitting besides me. "You've got to be really tires, huh?"
I groaned a response as my head rested on the cold table.
I might've drifted off for a minute because the next thing I remember was the sound of a plate landing dangerously close to my head. I jumped, a bit surprised by the sudden sound. I was horrified with myself. Falling asleep in a public place like this was high on my taboo list, right next to pointless murder and sleeping with my prey. Yes, it was that bad.
A delicious scent entered my nose as I looked down at the plate in front of me. Sighing, I gave up the lecture I was giving myself in my head. I was too tired to listen to that endless ranting anyways.
I gingerly took a piece and ate it, enjoying the warmth of the toast. The cinnamon taste struck me with sudden joy, the sugar acting as the perfect accent.
"You sure you're okay?" Theo asked. "Cause it looks like you fell in love with the toast."
I quickly gobbled up the last of the slice and said, with a full mouth, "Shut up." Though it came out as more of a, 'Thuh ut.'
We all quickly finished our breakfasts before heading to the front door. It seems that the others were going easy on me. They weren't giving me any more drama with my newfound infatuation for the bread slathered with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.
"So," I said, "where're we goin?"
Theo looked back at me, bright smile that I was too tired to hate plastered on his face. "Since you don't really have anything of your own, and you're been borrowing Mercy's clothes, I figured we'd take you out shopping." His face fell a little, clearly disappointed, even if he wasn't going to admit it. "Of course, if you're too tired, we can always have an easy day."
I gave him a genuine smile as I replied, "No, that sounds great."
He looked at me a bit taken back. What? Did I do something wrong?
"Ah, and the angel smiles! And what a beautiful smile it is!"
What? Okay, now I'm confused. All I did was smile, so what's the big deal? It's not like I'm Mr. Moody like Bryce or anything. Seriously, a genuine smile on his face would be world ending. Like get under the table cause there's and earthquake and somehow this helps world ending.
I followed closely behind the others as we headed out, east towards Maple. Made sense, they did have the most businesses in all of Lament. I mean, it's not amazing or anything, but if you wanted to start a small business, this is where you go.
Maple was made mostly of wood. It had very few houses, and even at that, they were only occupied by business owners and were often attached to their stores.
Theo lead us to a small shop whose name I've already forgotten and sat me down on a bench.
"I sent the guys off to do their own thing cause I figured they'd be bored."
"You're not one of the guys?"
"Ha ha, very funny. Anyways, the girls went off to find you some clothes in your size. I'm here because I'm the one with the money."
"You're spending your own money on this?"
"Hell no. I kept complaining to the higher ups and they finally gave me the money to pay for clothes."
I couldn't help but laugh at this. "Oh the irony. The government's paying for a thief and a murders new wardrobe."
Mila and Mercy came back with piles of clothes. They made me try some on, made me watch them try some on and, when they were done with me, they dressed Theo up in all kinds of clothes and we laughed at him. In the end, he should just be glad that this store sells girls and guys clothes.
After an hour or so, we headed to some more stores. Each of which we bought clothes from. When I was starting to doubt the governments budget, Theo cut the girls off. He sent them off to get food while me and him watch the clothes. Though, he was doing more of the watching while I just kinda...dozed.
"You know," he said, "I heard some news about someone breaking into the information room. That's a pretty big crime. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?"
"I'm ashamed of you," I said in my dramatic voice, "blaming the young lady who's too tired to even convince her dear students that she's not tired."
"I guess you're right. I mean, look at you. This morning, you were too tired to give a smart ass comeback to Bryce. I considered taking you to the nurse after you said please."
"Oh, come on! My manners aren't that bad."
He gave me a sideways glance and replied to me in a sarcastic tone. "Right, cause threatening a woman by saying you'll kill everyone in the building is that most courteous thing possible."
"Hey, at least I don't tie my guests down to a hospital bad and then send a decent and a shitty guard to get them."
"Are you still bitter about that?"
"Should I not be? I mean, come on, Officer One kinda beat me."
I glanced at him to see him looking at me. A smile was plastered to his lips and I could feel one of my own forming. Was this what it was like to be normal? Sitting around with friends, talking and having a good day? Even if we were talking about me being capture and beaten. I'm pretty sure that's outside the lines of normal.
We sat in comfortable silence as the world seemed to be getting smaller. I could feel my eyes drifting as the last of my energy was drained. I was so tired that I wasn't even afraid to hit the ground when I fell into a deep sleep.
---
My eyes slowly drifted open as I felt a cold stinging on my right wrist. I peeled a single eye open to see that my wrist was cuffed to the metal bars of a hospital bed. Wow, can you say deja vu? I opened my other eye to take in the rest of the room. Just like before, I was in a hospital room. And, as I said before, I wasn't comfortable with it.
I turned my head to my left to see an unfamiliar woman's back turned to me. She wore a plain top, a tight navy blue, and black pants. Her head, from what I could tell, was decently round. But my line of vision was ruined by her long, brown hair, which cascaded down her back in long curls. She looked to be holding something in her hands, but by what I could tell, she wasn't holding any weapons.
I worked up my politest tone and spoke to the woman. "Excuse me, Miss?"
She jumped and suddenly turned back to me. Three feet away from me, far out of my reach, she stood, holding a cup in her hand. So that's what she had. She looked at me with wide brown eyes, a bit of fear mixed with curiosity. I seemed to get that often here.
"Um, yeah, hi. I'm sure you know who I am, so I'll just skip to the questions. Where am I?"
"The hospital wing of the main governments building," she replied with surprising calm.
"Okay, and why am I here?"
"You passed out while outside Pacific Rose. I believe Mr. West said you were in Maple. Your Squadron carried you here. When I checked you out, you had a bad fever. You've only been here for..." Her eyes wandered to the clock hanging on the wall. "You've been here for about eleven and a half hours."
"Well, that's most of them. Just one more. Why am I cuffed to the bed?"
"I thought you were supposed to be smart?"
"And I thought doctors were supposed to be kind to patients." I gave her my signature piss off smile.
She scoffed at me, actually scoffed at me, and then headed out the door. I was left in comfortable silence for a few minutes before I heard a stampede coming through the hall, outside the door. I had a feeling who that was for. The door burst open as five familiar faces burst in. Okay, four burst in, the last leisurely strolled in.
Theo was besides my bed in seconds, his six foot two height towering over my three foot high bed. He gave me a smile that looked almost grateful.
"I'm so glad you're awake!" He cried. "I, we, were worried when you passed out. We didn't know what to do. Next time, if you feel so tired that you might pass out, tell us before hand."
Levi stood behind Theo and glanced over his shoulder, looking relieved. "Angel, please, never do that again."
Mila came around to my right side of the bed and held onto my hand. I looked at her and was surprised to see puffy red eyes.
"Woah there," I said to all of them, "it's not like I died or anything. Just a bit sleep deprived. You guys can take it down a notch now."
Mercy stood behind Mila, smiling down at me. "Never do that again, got it. You scared the shit out of us. I mean, even Bryce seemed concerned."
I looked at Bryce who, suddenly, felt the need to look away from me. My regular snake like smile easily wiggled its way onto my lips.
"Aww, it's good to know you actually do care."
He turned even further away from me so that I couldn't see the expression on his face. I could, however, see the tips of his ears light up a bright red.
"So," Theo said, now looking at my Doc, "what happened? She's not like, deathly sick or anything, right? Just tired?"
The doctor looked back at him and replied, "If I had to guess, I'd says it's a combination of sleep deprivation and stress. That would explain the fever as well. She was over a hundred, you know. Shadow," she was looking at me now, "over the forty eight hours before you passed out, how much would you say you slept?"
"I don't know, maybe about an hour and a half, on and off. Especially last night, though I guess that was two nights ago, huh?"
"Yep," she looked to Theo now, "that's sleep deprivation. Her immune system probably weakened, which is why she was so sick. I have some sleeping pills, if you want?"
"Uh no," I replied, "I'm good, really."
"We'll take them, thanks." Theo seemed pretty used to replying for me, and I still didn't like it. I hated medicine, though I guess pills were better than liquids. But, even if they were pills, I didn't want to take any chemicals given to me by the government. The last time I got something like that from them, I ended up in a hospital and then with a bunch of soldier trainees.
Theo took the pills and the unlocked my cuff, letting me go. I rubbed my wrist where the cuffs chaffed an stood. Levi tried getting under my arm, saying that I probably needed help walking. I batted him away with moderate ease. Eleven hours of sleep was just what I needed. I felt great. Well, I was a bit cold, but oh well. Better than dead tired.
We went back to Squadron Fives common room where Theo asked for food to be brought to our room. Apparently, you get that if one of your team members is sick.
"Oh, so Shadow," Theo said, looking up from his salad to me, "while you were out, there was an announcement. There's going to be a competition between all the squadron's."
"Oh yeah, what kind of competition?"
He smiled at me, and I knew some good news was coming.
"A combat tournament, they call it."
My signature snake smile came up again. "Sounds like fun."