“You’ve already done everything you can. And when he wakes, he’ll be too high to crack a shit about anything. I’ll keep him that way until this is healed.” He couples the comment with a smile. It is a nice notion. How we’d all love to be given drugs for the pain.
But drugs cloud your mind and your movements. “He needs to be able to train.”
Evander doesn’t look up as he grabs a bottle of saline solution. “He needs to heal.”
“Evander…”
“Later. We’ll talk about it later.” His wall goes up, and he gets to work on Cas.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for him. He gets little to no thanks. Most of the men hate him. But I know, when I’m made free, when I walk out of Victora alive, it will be entirely because of his skill and patience. “You’re a good man, Evander.”
He gives me one of those rare, fleeting moments of vulnerability that are so foreign to this city. A flash of the eyes and a slanted lift of the lips. “It’s nice to be told that on occasion.”
“If you need me, send for me. I’ll be home all night.”
He deepens his smile into wry. “Go now. I’ve got him.”
I don’t want to. But I need to. I have to let him work, and I have to check on the men.
I came straight over here from the game, and I haven’t set eyes on them yet. They’ll be a mess from today, each of them in their own way.
I give Evander a nod goodbye and turn for the door.
There’s no training today. Not in person anyway. The men have been encouraged to spend a few hours in the gym to burn off whatever grief and anxiety they can. I find some of them there, do some work with them, try to help them process it as casually as I can. Especially the ones who were closest to Andreas.
But those are the new men. The more seasoned players, like Jason, Max, and René, turned hateful or cold a long time ago. That’s what makes them champions. Being dead inside, not caring who dies or how. They’re in the dining hall, accompanied by those more recent drafts who are either trying to stay in denial or born killers.
I make my time short with them.
A few hours after leaving Cas and Evander, the only person I haven’t seen is Robin.
Some small, cowardly part of me would like to keep it that way.
What he did to me yesterday…
I want him. I want him so badly.
I want him back, and I want him inside me.
He hates me.
But his anger was like a drug.
I can’t even explain it. They’re always angry at me. They always hate me. But Robin’s anger came laced with… more. Like it mattered how I’d treated him. Beyond the reprehensible way I held him underwater, beyond the fact that I almost killed him.
It’s like he expects better from me. Like he has some right to it. Like he senses, somehow, how deep my feelings run.
But everything, all these feelings, can’t matter.
I need to push them down, be captain.
Robin is friends with Cas. I saw the way he crumpled when Cas went down today. I saw it, real and brutal.
Maybe they even have something more than friendship.
It makes me sick to think of them that way.
But he and I are nothing to each other, nor will we ever be, so what does it matter if he finds someone else here for the few days or weeks he has left? He should have some comfort.
