Chapter 56
NO REASSURANCE
Us Against The World - Chris Grey
Kookaburra
The world doesn’t move for a few seconds longer.
We stay like that – breathing, steadying – and then Nightshade’s hand shifts at my back, deliberate, grounding. Not an invitation. A decision.
“Come on,” he says quietly. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
I don’t argue. The idea of warm water settles something tight inside my chest before I even realise it’s there. My body is already leaning toward the next instruction, the next contained step.
It’s funny. I don’t take orders. I barely take suggestions most of the time. But Nightshade taking control right now, telling me what to do, brings me a certain kind of relief I haven’t felt in a long time.
He keeps a hand on me as we move, guiding rather than steering, opening the bathroom door with his free hand. The light inside is soft, yellowed, deliberately not harsh. He reaches immediately for the tap, adjusting the temperature before I’m even fully inside.
“Sit,” he says, nodding toward the edge of the tub.
I do.
The porcelain is cool beneath me. It’s not a full size bath, but who cares. I’ve not had the option to bathe since the asylum. There were only showers at…what should I call the place? I never really gave it much thought when I was there but now it feels like I should.
“Where was I?” I ask, my voice croaking slightly as I try to get the words out.
“Abandoned medical facility,” Nightshade informs me.
Facility then, I think. The asylum had a bath. The facility only had showers. And this hotel looks like the bath has seen many a dead body.
It’s actually a reassuring thought.
Steam begins to curl upward as the bath fills, water whispering instead of roaring. He tests it with his hand, adjusts it again, precise. Nothing rushed. Nothing left to chance.
I watch him from where I’m perched, heart still too loud in my ears, adrenaline dragging its heels on the way out. My hands shake faintly when I rest them on my thighs.
Nightshade notices.
He always did and now he seems more intense than ever. Obsessed. With me? Or the parasite?
“That’s fine,” he says, calm as a flatline. “You don’t have to hold it together yet.”
The bath fills. The sound is steady, almost hypnotic.
When he turns back to me, his gaze drops briefly to the bruises at my throat, my wrist. Something hardens there – not anger exactly, but intent. He reaches for the hem of my shirt and pauses, eyes lifting to mine.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
I nod once. “I won’t.”
That earns me the faintest tightening at the corner of his mouth. Approval, maybe. Or acknowledgement.
He moves slowly. Shirt first, careful not to jar me, not to catch fabric against sore skin. His hands are warm, steady, entirely focused on function. When my bra comes next, he avoids my ribs without me asking, adjusting automatically.
I breathe.
When he helps me step into the bath, the water laps gently around my legs, then my hips, heat sinking into muscle and bone. The relief is immediate and treacherous. My knees threaten to give.
Nightshade’s hand closes around my forearm, solid. “I’ve got you. Relax.”
I lower myself fully into the water, steam rising, shoulders finally dropping an inch. The ache doesn’t vanish, but it dulls, spreads out, becomes manageable.
He kneels beside the tub and rolls up his sleeves.
Soap next. Neutral. Unscented. Nothing that could turn this into something else.
He works methodically. Wrist first – careful, light. Forearm. Shoulder. He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t linger either. When he reaches my hair, he gathers it gently and pours water over my scalp, one measured cup snatched from beside the sink at a time.
“Lean forward,” he says.
I do.
His fingers move through my hair with the same controlled attention he gives everything else, massaging soap into my scalp just enough to clean, not enough to soothe too deeply. The touch is intimate without being indulgent, grounding without pretending this is comfort.
I close my eyes.
For the first time since I was taken, maybe even arrested, my body stops bracing for the next impact.
The silence stretches, broken only by water and breath. My breathing slows. My pulse follows.
When he’s finished, he rinses me carefully, then helps me stand. A towel appears around my shoulders immediately, thick and warm, cocooning. The towels are nicer than the rest of the place, which is a welcome surprise. Or maybe they’re just better than the ones at the facility.
He dries me without ceremony, only hesitating when it comes to dressing me, eyeing my stained clothes disdainfully before pulling his own shirt over his head and enveloping me in it.
It’s soft, warm, smells of him and I instinctively relax.
By the time he guides me back to the bed, my limbs feel heavy in a way that borders on sleep.
He tucks the blankets around me with the same precision he’s used all night.
“I’ll be right here,” he says, already settling into the chair.
I manage to turn my head enough to see him before my eyes close again. “I know.”
Sleep takes me before the room has time to argue.
I surface slowly, like I’m rising through thick water.
I’m warm. That’s the first thing I notice – not pain, not fear. Warmth. Heavy blankets, heat sunk deep into my muscles like I’ve been resting for longer than I remember agreeing to.
For a few seconds I don’t move. I let the sensation exist without interrogating it, because I’ve learned that the moment I ask questions, answers tend to arrive with teeth.
The bed is unfamiliar. Too wide. Sheets smooth and clean against my skin, tucked properly, hospital-tight without the smell of disinfectant. My hair is damp at the ends, loose against my neck.
Memory filters back in fragments: Water, steaming gently instead of scalding. Strong hands, precise, unhurried. Soap worked into my skin like a ritual, not a rush. His voice low, controlled, narrating just enough to keep me anchored. I’ve got you. Lean forward. Breathe.
I swallow and listen as the room breathes around me – the low hum of electricity, the distant city muffled by height and glass. No alarms. No raised voices. No footsteps pacing outside the door. A chair creaks.
That’s enough.
My body feels…wrong. Settled. Not healed – I can feel the bruises if I focus, the deep ache under my ribs, the faint soreness at my throat – but contained.
Dulled to background noise. Like everything is where it’s supposed to be, even if I don’t like that idea.
My chest rises and falls steadily, pulse even, obedient.
Too obedient.
My hand drifts to my stomach before I can stop it.
There you are.
The calm there is immediate, unwavering. No echo of fear. No residual tension. Just a quiet, steady presence, like whatever happened barely registered.
You should be unsettled, I silently tell it. I know I was.
Nothing answers that thought. No flutter of anxiety. No protest. Just quiet continuity, as if whatever happened never interrupted it at all.
A cold thread slips through me. I swallow and shift slightly. The movement is smooth. Efficient. My body responds like it knows exactly what it’s doing, like it’s already recalibrated.
I don’t like that.
This isn’t adrenaline. This isn’t shock.
This is something else.
I don’t feel watched. That’s the part that unnerves me most. No prickle between my shoulder blades. No sense of pursuit.
I try to catalogue what I feel. Fear: present, but muted. Pain: present, but retreating. Anger: distant. Banked.
Control.
That one sits wrong.
I didn’t escape.
The thought arrives fully formed, unquestioned.
I was allowed to leave.
My hand returns to my stomach, this time consciously. The calm there hasn’t changed. If anything, it feels reinforced, like a system that stabilised under pressure and learned from it.
Whatever they were measuring didn’t fail.
It adjusted.
I open my eyes.
Nightshade is still there, seated in the armchair near the window, posture unchanged, attention fixed entirely on me. He doesn’t move when I wake. Doesn’t rush. Doesn’t speak.
He was waiting for this moment.
“You’re awake,” he says, tone low and measured.
It isn’t a question.
“I shouldn’t feel like this,” I say quietly.
“No,” he agrees. “You shouldn’t.”
That’s all.
No reassurance. No correction. Just confirmation that I’m not imagining it.
I close my eyes for a second, letting the thought settle. This wasn’t an escape. The words don’t finish forming, but the weight of them presses in anyway.
Something about me moved through that place without breaking.
Something adjusted.
When I open my eyes again, he’s watching me closely. Waiting.
“I don’t think it’s finished,” I say.
His jaw tightens – just a fraction. “It’s not. But we’ll deal with it later. Together.”
“When?”
“When you’re not half-asleep and your nervous system isn’t lying to you.”
I huff a breath that might almost be a laugh. “It feels very convincing.”
“I know.” He reaches out then, resting his hand briefly against my forearm. Grounding. Solid. “That’s why you’re going back to sleep.”
I hesitate.
Not because I don’t want to – because part of me is afraid of what might continue while I’m not conscious.
He reads it anyway.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “And neither are you.”
The words settle something sharp and anxious inside my chest. I nod once, the decision made.
“Okay,” I murmur.
He settles back, deeper into the chair as I turn onto my side, drawing the blankets closer without really thinking about it. Sleep pulls at me again, heavier this time, faster.
As it takes me, one last certainty sinks in, quiet and undeniable.
Whatever they were testing didn’t end when I left.
It learned.
And for now, the safest thing I can do is rest.