Sullha
"You want to put him in there." Her arms tightened around Tomek until he made a small sound of protest. "In this box? Underwater?"
"Yes," the Guardian said. He was crouched beside the case, a good-looking, calm man with kind eyes.
"I'll be in there with him the whole way.
I'll keep him asleep, and I'll manage the air, and I'll have my eyes on him every second.
He won't wake, and he won't be afraid, because he'll close his eyes here and open them on the boat. "
"Then let me go in with him." The pitch of her voice was climbing, and she couldn't prevent it from doing that. "He'll feel safer with me there. Take us both or put me there instead of you. You can show me what to do."
The Guardian's expression softened. "I'm sorry, but there is only room for one adult and the child, and the adult can't be you.
I can thrall him here and remove it on the ship, but I have to manage the air inside, and it's tricky.
It's the first time any of us have attempted that.
If he wakes in there frightened, he'll thrash around and he'll use up the air much faster than if he were sleeping.
We're short on tanks as it is. Every set is spoken for, and we'll barely reach the sub on what we're carrying.
There's no margin. If he panics and burns through his air, there's nothing left for him or you.
That's why it has to be me, and why it has to be one adult, not two, even if there was room. "
The Guardian sure knew how to not reassure her. This was the first time they were trying this method of transportation, and her son was the test subject?
They were short on air and were barely going to make it with what they had?
He'd been truthful, which she appreciated, but it was the worst thing he could have told her, and it lodged in her chest, making it hard to breathe. As her anxiety rose, she tightened her arms around her son, and staring at the padded case, she couldn't bring herself to put him down in it.
Yaaf walked over and stood beside her, and she couldn't help wincing at the sight of his ruined fatigues. The fabric was stiff and black with the blood he'd shed over her and Tomek in the truck, and it was full of holes where the bullets had torn through it.
She'd felt him flinch every time he'd been hit, and she could only imagine how painful it had been, but he'd never budged, had never left them exposed. He'd made sure they came out alive.
He surprised her by putting an arm around her and Tomek both, gathering them against his side. He was solid, warm, and reeking of iron, and he held them.
Tomek burrowed his face into Sullha's neck and clutched a fistful of her coveralls, making sure she knew he wasn't going anywhere.
"Can you look at me, Tomek?" Yaaf asked quietly in the Brotherhood tongue that Tomek understood.
Tomek shook his head against her neck.
"That's all right. You don't have to look if you don't want to.
Just listen." Yaaf's voice had dropped into a register Sullha had not heard from him before.
It was slow and warm, the kind of tone she used when Tomek was scared of something.
"This man who is going inside the case with you is a very good man.
His job is to save people. That's all he does.
He's going to keep you safe in the water and bring you to the boat, and he is going to protect you the whole way.
He won't let anything happen to you. He will protect you with his life. "
"Like you protect me and Mama?" Tomek's words came out muffled because he was resting his nose and mouth against her neck.
"Yes," Yaaf said. "Just like that. He will protect you with his body. If anything tries to hurt you, he will put himself between you and whatever it is. That's what he does. That's what they all do."
Tomek lifted his head, turned in Sullha's arms, and looked at Yaaf, his big brown eyes, her eyes, roving over the crusted blood covering Yaaf's uniform and the many holes in the fabric where the rounds had gone in.
The evidence of what he'd done for them was written all over him, and her son, her serious, wary, slow-to-trust son, unwound one arm from Sullha's neck and reached it toward Yaaf.
Sullha went still, and beside her, Yaaf went still too, both of them caught in the same stunned moment of speechlessness, because Tomek had never reached for anyone but her.
Not sure what he meant, Yaaf extended his arms but didn't take him until Tomek unwound the second arm as well and reached with both for Yaaf. For the blood-covered soldier who'd saved them from a certain death.
Yaaf lifted Tomek from her arms with a care that made her throat constrict and gathered him against his bloodied chest. Tomek's small, skinny arms went around Yaaf's neck, and he pressed his face into the curve of Yaaf's throat the way he'd pressed it into Sullha's.
"Thank you for saving my mama," Tomek whispered.
"You were very brave." Yaaf stroked one large hand down her son's small back and bowed his head over the boy's dark hair.
"You and your mother are precious to me, and you are vulnerable, while I'm not.
My body can take bullets and expel them.
Yours cannot, not yet, but one day it will.
You're going to become immortal, and you'll be fast and powerful, and you'll heal the way I heal, and because you are brave, you will also put yourself between the people you love and anything that wants to hurt them.
You'll take bullets for them, and the people you love will be safe because you will protect them. "
Tomek's little face scrunched as he considered what Yaaf had told him. "Does it hurt to take the bullets?"
"It does," Yaaf said honestly. "But we heal fast, so it doesn't hurt for long, and knowing that the people you love are safe because you shielded them is the greatest feeling of all."
Sullha's vision blurred, tears spilling from her eyes, sliding hot down her face. She didn't wipe them away because her hands had gone slack at her sides and there didn't seem to be a point to it.
Something had loosened in her chest at the sight in front of her, and the thing she'd been fighting since Yaaf had told her that he was one of eight floated up and soaked her in warmth.
She loved him.
There was no point in denying it, not anymore, not after this, not after she'd lain beneath his body while he bled to keep the rounds from hitting her and her son.
She had watched him soothe a terrified child with more tenderness than she'd known men were capable of, before seeing the scientists and their women interact.
But Yaaf was not gentle in the same way they were with those they cared about.
There was a quality to his gentleness that only the truly dangerous could manifest, and he had turned all of that power, every lethal ounce of it, toward standing between Tomek and her and harm.
He was not perfect. He came with seven others inside his mind, who saw what he saw and felt what he felt. She would never have him just to herself. The dream with the seven other faces at the edge of the bed had horrified her, and she'd believed love between just the two of them was impossible .
But she'd seen him and his teammates throw their bodies over the people they had come to save, forming a shield of flesh and bone.
That had been the most heroic act of selflessness she had ever witnessed.
It had shown her a side of them she would never have otherwise seen.
The other seven were not a flaw. They were simply more of him, more hands to shield, more bodies to stand in the way, and if loving him meant loving the whole strange shape of what he was, then she would find a way to do that.
They would work it out.
She did not know how, but it didn't matter right now. They would figure it out once they were on the other side of this.
Yaaf lifted his head and caught her looking at him with her teary eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and he reached for her, enveloping her in an embrace together with Tomek.
"It's going to be okay," he said into her hair. "I promise. I will not let anything happen to either of you."