Chapter Text
Caleb leans against the frame of the bathroom door of your apartment, his lips only inches from the white-washed wood, pleading with you.
“Please unlock the door.” He sounds defeated, dejected, as he begs you to let him in.
“I just need a minute, Caleb.” You reply, your voice echoing off the walls of the shower and ringing in your ears. The sound causes your stomach to churn, contracting painfully, as you retch loudly, heaving into the porcelain bowl. The caustic smell of bleach stings your nose as you force labored breaths through to your lungs - the room spins around you - the chemicals must be making you dizzy.
He rests his forehead against the door with a soft thump, closing his eyes. He waits for your sounds of distress to cease, before he begins petitioning you again.
“Please let me in, I can help.”
You cough, your lungs spasming painfully against your ribcage. You try to dissuade him, appealing to him through the safety of the door between you.
“I’m fine, I’ll be out in a minute.” Your voice wavers, as you lie yourself down on the cool, white tile floors. A whine of relief breaks from your lips as the temperature soothes the pounding in your head, providing comfort from the invisible flames that dance across every inch of your skin.
Outside of the bathroom, Caleb pushes himself away from the door, pacing around the kitchen island in frustration.
“Do I break down the door?” He mutters to himself, eyebrows knit together as the cogs inside his mind turn in search of a solution. “No, that would only scare her.”
Something on the other side of the counter reflects a glint of light back at him - your cell phone. He stares at it for a moment, considering the implications.
It’s worth it, he decides, as he rushes to the other side of the island and takes the device into his hands. He searches for the number, and finds it at the very bottom of your contact list. His finger hovers over the name, giving himself one last second of hesitation, before he presses his finger hastily against the text and brings the phone to his ear.
Caleb holds his breath as the phone rings once, then twice. His mind races, creating contingency plans in the event that the person he is trying to reach does not answer, but just as the third tone begins to sound, the voice on the other line picks up.
“Hello.” The greeting is tinged with a slight sweetness, barely discernible to the untrained ear. It isn’t meant for Caleb.
Caleb wastes not a moment with pleasantries, and launches into an explanation.
“They fought some kind of new, undocumented wanderer today, something they’d never seen before. When everything was over they sent all of the Hunters home as a precaution, and shortly after I arrived she started to look sick -“
The voice on the other line interrupts. Caleb hears the engine of a car start as the other caller launches into an interrogation of symptoms and timelines.
“She was pale, but also flushed in the cheeks. Her eyes seemed unfocused. Unsteady on her feet - I’m not sure, she was definitely making sounds like she was, but I don't know if anything came up." Caleb pauses, listening to the voice on the other line ask a barrage of additional questions. "Yes. Yes. No, not that I know of. Okay, see you then."
The line disconnects.
Caleb discards the phone, sending it skidding across the soapstone countertop, and rushes back to the bathroom door.
"Pips, can you hear me?" He knocks gently with one fist against the surface, the skin of his knuckles streched taut over the bones. "I called someone to help, he's on the way." Only silence answers him. He turns and presses his tense shoulders against the door, sliding down to the carpet, his face buried in his hands. In an attempt to calm himself, he focuses on the steady inhale and exhale of his lungs, pumping oxygen to his frantically beating heart.
The sound of a urgent rap upon the apartment door startles him out of his trance. He rises from the floor, tripping over himself, and launches his body at the handle, turning it and wrenching it open to to find him standing there.
Dr. Zayne regards Caleb, his hulking frame filling the doorway, panting, and puts a foot over the threshold. When Caleb doesn't immediatley make way, Zayne looks him in his violet eyes and utters a single word.
"Move."
Caleb obeys, taking his body out of the doorway as Zayne sidesteps him and enters the apartment. He is holding a black leather bag, which he grips tightly as he makes his way to the bathroom door.
"In here?" he questions, glancing towards Caleb for only a fraction of a second.
"Yes." Caleb answers, trying to conceal the stomach-churning thought that the doctor knows the exact location of her apartment, her bathroom.
Zayne outstretches his arm, still covered in his thick woolen coat, and reaches his fingers towards the knob on the bathroom door. With a quick flick of his wrist, he fills the cavity in the wall that holds the slide-lock with ice, pushing it to disengage with a soft "click." The door swings open, just barely.
Caleb and Zayne both take a step towards the door, but Zayne holds up a hand, warning Caleb to stop. Every muscle in his body screams against him as he freezes, his heart pounding, begging him to move forward, but he follows the Doctor's orders, standing in place as Zayne dashes into the bathroom.
Zayne tosses his medical bag on the floor, slipping himself out of jacket, and falling to his knees, hands reaching for you without hesitation. He calls your name, soft, slender fingers gripping your shoulder, shaking you gently. When you don't respond, he drags them down to the artery in your neck, feeling for a pulse.
He exhales a ragged breath as he feels the familiar tick of blood beneath your skin.
"She unconscious," he calls out to the kitchen. He moves a hand to your forehead, testing the temperature against his frozen hands. "She's on fire, Caleb, how long has she been like this?"
"I don't know." Caleb appears in the doorway, his fauce gaunt with worry.
Zayne wraps his tawny jacket around your body, taking care to cover your extremeties, before hefting you into his scarred arms. "Get the door."
Caleb opens the front door, as Zayne walks brisky through it, his jacket dangling from your body. He makes several strides towards the elevator, before pausing, for the briefest of moments, to glance back at Caleb with his hazel-green eyes.
"Are you coming?" He asks. He doesn't wait for an answer, but turns to continue his mission.
An olive branch, Caleb thinks. A truce, if only for now.
Caleb shuts the door swiftly, rattling it on it's hinges and takes off down the hallway in the wake of the doctor.
The two men stand silently in the elevator, waiting for it to descend from the fifth to the first floor. Zayne adjusts his positioning slightly, covering your face with the collar of his jacket to protect you from the impending cold outside. You shift slightly in his arms, peering up through watery lashes at the doctors face.
"Zayne?" The effort of saying his name feels akin to draining an entire battery on a single text message.
"Shhh." Zayne replies. "I'm here."
Caleb backs away from the two of you, his stomach threatening to turn itself inside out within the metal cage.
Saved by the bell, the elevator reaches the ground floor and chimes, doors opening. Zayne steps out first, his gait hurried, as he turns to push the door to the entrace openwith his back. His sleek black sedan is still waiting in the fire lane, headlights illuminating the snow swirling in the whipping wind.
"Get in the back." He calls to Caleb over the gale.
Caleb slides himsef easily into the backseat, an air of surprise crossing his face as Zayne lowers you into his lap. The back of his hand makes contact with Caleb's arms as he transfers your body - the heat from Caleb's muscular limbs a stark contrast to the icy chill of Zayne's appendages.
"Hold onto her tightly." Zayne instructs, his fingers just barely grazing the back of her hair as he pulls away with all the effort of a barge against an anchor wedged in a rocky trench below the sea.
Caleb nods his head in acknowledgement, brave enough to look down at your face as the door closes from the outside.
Sweat beads against your forehead, cheeks flushed, body struggling to pull oxygen from the frigid outside air. Your brows are furrowed in what appears to be pain. You frame is both still and trembling, fighting against itself to maintain its temperature.
Zayne opens the drivers side door, throwing himself in the seat and shifting the car into gear the moment it closes behind him. He takes off in the direction of his workplace, the Akso hospital, navigating the snowy terrain with perceived ease despite the hazardous conditions.
"Do you drive like this with her in the car." Cable asks, an accusatory tone to his words.
"This is the first time." Zayne admits, taking a corner sharply. "I am trusting you to ensure her safety until we reach the hospital."
Caleb averts his gaze from Zayne to the window, a look of shame on his face. He squeezes you a little tighter, the twill of Zayne's jacket like thorns against his embrace, reminding him that he was not the one to come to your rescue today.
"We're here." Zayne announces, pulling the car in front of the glowing EMERGENCY sign at the front of the Hospital. As quickly as he put the vehicle in park, he was back at the rear of it, wrenching open the door and reaching to take you from Caleb's arms. Reluctantly, he passes you over to the doctor, who immediately turns heel into the trackless double doors of the ER, car still in running in the snow.
Caleb, stunned, finds the good sense to park the Doctors car in the employee lot, removing the key fob and locking it with a double click of the button engraved with a padlock. The headlights flash brightly, indicating the car as secure. He then begins to trudge through the accumulating snow, his heavy footfalls revealing the rough, black asphalt below with each step towards the entrance.
Meanwhile, Zayne has already made his way past the nurses station, and into the depths of the emergency unit. He finds the first available room, and lies you gingerly on the colorless, sterile sheets of the hospital bed - you cough weakly as he rolls you onto your side. Nurses and Akso staff flood the room, aware that the Doctor’s presence here at this time of night is an anomaly that signals an issue of great concern. As soon as the first person enters, Zayne begins giving concise orders, with military precision instruction.
“I need a blood draw with a full panel, including a tox screen,” he begins, eyes transfixed upon your body, studying the rise and fall of your chest like a textbook. “Intravenous fluids, oxygen.” His hands dip into a pocket and resurfaces gripping a pen light. A trembling hand reaches for your eyelid, gently pushing it upward to reveal a bloodshot eye. He shines the light at it, the pupil just barely dilating in response. “Get me 3 CC’s of Epinephrine.”
“Dr. Li,” a hand of a colleague reaches out, covering his shaking hand with theirs. “Do you need a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute.” Zayne pulls his hand away, reaching for the gauzy curtain that hangs on a rolling track from the ceiling, pulling it towards the door to obscure the line of sight from the hallway outside.
He removes his coat from you carefully, like an archaeologist uncovering a precious piece of history, and tosses it on the blue, vinyl chair in the corner of the room. With nimble fingers, he begins to unfasten the belts of your Hunters Uniform, eyes scanning every inch of you as he reveals more of you with each tug of the fabric. He runs his hands over the top half of your body, checking for anything unusual, but all he finds is an expanse of umarred skin.
He opens a palm to one of the nurses beside him. “Trauma shears.” He orders. It takes only a moment for the hand to be filled with the gleaming silver scissors, one blade shorter than the other, the longer end featuring a flat safety tip. He slips his fingers through the handles and begins to cut away at your leather bottoms, revealing your hip, a slip of your underwear, and then.
The scissors clatter to the floor as Dr. Zayne uncovers the source of the your illness.
A spiderweb of bright, purple veins radiate from the pinhole of a wound on your left thigh, just under your hip. The center of it oozes a dribble of thick, yellow liquid towards the floor.
Zayne drops to his knees next to the scissors, penlight back in his hand, shining it directly on the wound, that is no bigger than the mark left behind by a routine injection. He shines it black and forth, studying it, unblinking, until the light catches on it just right.
There’s something inside.
“Get me gloves, and a small pair of surgical forceps.” He orders. One nurse hands over the gloves, which he dons quickly, as the other rushes out to find a sterile instrument. Returning, she places it in Zayne’s now covered hands. He leans in close to the wound, taking two fingers in an attempt to spread the wound open to loosen the grip it has on whatever is stuck inside. With surgical precision, he digs the end of the forceps into the tiny hole, pressing down and hearing a light click as the corrugated tips grasp onto something hard and foreign. Holding his breath, and steadying his hand, he begins to pull the instrument away from your thigh.
The confidence in his actions is shaken as the foreign object begins to take shape outside of your body. What he suspected to be a needle-like stinger was actually more closely described as a quill. He had only just begun to extract is when you shift uncomfortably in your barely-conscious state, sucking in a pained breath between you teeth. The spiny quill was barbed, and each pull of his forceps tore at the muscles in your thigh, resisting the draw of Zayne’s hands.
“Caleb.” Zayne’s voice calls past the white curtain, the volume at barely more than his normal speaking voice.
A shadow appears on the other side, hesitating for a moment, before his fingers grip the curtain and pull it back, stepping into the room. His face is white, his steps uncertain, but his frame displays no signs of weakness. Zayne directs him, the same as any of the others at his command in the room.
“Hold her down.”
Caleb hesitates for only the briefest of moments before he ducks into the room, taking you into his arms. He wraps one around your back, pressing his head and chest into your shoulders, and uses his other arm to encircle your hips and thighs, constricting their movement. He turns his head to lock eyes with Zayne, nodding his head to confirm he has you, before turning back and burying his face in the crook of your neck, close to your ear.
“I’m going to try to pull it out slowly first.” Zayne announces to the room. “I need bandages prepped in case of excessive bleeding - is everybody ready?”
The medical staff present confirm with a chorus of ‘Yes, Doctor’ as Zayne braces to pull the first inch or so of the quill from your leg. Caleb does not move from his post, still holding onto you, bracing for your body to react.
“I’ll count down from three.” Zayne starts, adjusting his grip on the forceps. His hands are slick with sweat beneath his blue nitrile gloves.
Caleb whispers into your ear. “It’s going to be okay, Pips.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
Zayne pulls the first inch of the quill from your body, the first two lancets cutting into the skin as they exit, oozing blood like two bloody tears down the side of your thigh. To his horror, your body convulses, and a scream rips itself from your throat in your barely conscious state. Through it all, Caleb’s hold never falters, his arms wrapped around you as if he let go, it would untether him from the planet.
Another bark of orders fall from Zayne’s lips - less refined, less professional - the mask slipping. Caleb doesn’t dare take his eyes off of you, pressing his face deeper into the crook of your neck, tensed from head to toe as he cradles you through the tremors. In the safety of your skin, the shadow of your hair, the blur of medical terminology and glint of sterile objects is softened, but he can still make out the basics. Zayne is calling for a local anesthetic for your leg.
“C-Caleb.” Your voice is hoarse, weak, barely audible over the scrape of surgical steel and shuffle of hurried footsteps.
“I’m here, Pips.” Caleb breathes. “Zayne, too.” He doesn’t know why he adds that - it’s of no benefit to him.
“We need to place a Peripheral IV Catheter.” Zayne orders someone in the room. You shift uncomfortably beneath Caleb at the words, tying to shake your head no.
“You have to.” Caleb’s voice is barely more than a whisper, but he puts on his best older brother voice, like he did back when you were kids and he needed to show you he meant business. A single tear slides down your cheek, running down your face until it meets his forehead in the crook of your neck. “I know, you don’t like needles, but Zayne wouldn’t make you do anything he didn’t need to.”
A whimper, and then the distinct feeling of her muscles relaxing. It made Caleb relax in response. It also made him sick to his stomach.
A nurse rounds the side of the bed, and asks Caleb to release your arm, which he does. A cotton ball of cold antiseptic wipes over the inside of your elbow, followed by the harsh rip of a sterile bag being torn open. Before the needle punctures the vein, Zayne’s voice can be heard from the floor.
“It will be so quick you won’t feel.” He promises. “Hold Caleb’s hand, it’ll be over in just a moment.”
Caleb intertwines his fingers with yours, squeezing reassuringly. What kind of sick game is Zayne playing, he can’t help but wonder.
But his thoughts are interrupted by a squeak from your throat as the needle slips in. As quickly as it’s there, it’s removed, replaced with a tiny plastic tubing that feeds directly into your veins.
“Is it in?” Zayne asks the nurse. She responds with a verbal confirmation before Zayne turns his attention back to you. You can’t see him, but his words soften as he addresses you, even in this room full of strangers.
“I’m going to order a sedative, it will relax your muscles and help you sleep.” He explains. “It will make this easier for you, and when it’s all done, Caleb and I will be right here when you wake up.”
You couldn’t fight it even if you wanted to. When no sounds of protest break forth, Zayne nods to a nurse holding a syringed full of milky fluid, which he places into the catheter, pushing the plunger slowly to release it into your bloodstream. You are vaguely aware of a tingling sensation in your fingers as they grow numb, and then suddenly, you’re asleep.
“Sedation administered, Dr. Li.” The nurse reports. “Patient is no longer responsive.”
“Thank you.” Zayne lets out a shaky breath. “And thank you, Caleb.”
The gratitude makes Caleb’s muscles tightened beneath his shirt, his teeth grinding together so hard he wonders if they might break.
“No need to thank me, just doing my job.” The word job comes out a little too sharp, too punctuated.
“I’m afraid that I have to ask you leave.” Zayne’s words hit Caleb harder than a sucker punch.
“I’m her next of kin.” The fact leaves a sour taste in Caleb’s mouth, but he’s recoiling from Zayne’s request, like an animal in a cage. He’s listed on your contact form because he’s your adoptive brother. If Zayne was listed there, it would be because -
The Doctor interrupts Caleb’s spiraling thoughts, speaking to him as a longtime childhood friend, instead of his rival. “I’ll come out to the waiting room as soon as she’s stable.” It’s a promise, and even thought Caleb doesn’t like Zayne, he trusts him.
Caleb stands, unthreading himself from your body, and placing your limp limbs gentle on the rough hospital blankets, scratchy from hundreds of bleach soaked washes. If he didn’t know better, he might be able to convince himself you were sleeping. His boots are lead anchors underwater as he drags himself from the room, his mind screaming obscenities as him from within, every fiber of his being telling him not to leave. He takes one look back before stepping out of your airspace to survey the scene - your still body, the nurses waiting with bated breath for instruction, the wound in your leg, and finally, Zayne, kneeling below you like a supplicant, tools of his trade ready on a nearby silver tray to do what he does best - saving you.
Caleb lets the white curtain fall between you, feeling more like iron in his hands than thin fabric, creating a separation that feels worlds apart. He may as well be in deep space, he may as well be anywhere else at all.
But instead, he finds himself in the waiting room, staring at the clock, the gravitation pull too strong to pull him out of your orbit.