Sineult was sleeping, lying more still than Onyx had ever seen him in all the nine years of their marriage, and the room felt much too quiet without the sound of his chatter. If not for the worry nagging at him, Onyx would have fallen asleep himself.
Onyx's mate was never sick, not even with colds and small, human things like that, and Fern seemed to take after him, so Onyx's nursing abilities hadn't gotten much exercise since marriage. Jade, now-Jade had gotten sick plenty. Onyx had spent many summer days like this, feeding his twin soup and cool juice and listening to the soft raspy breathing that came of a congested chest or nose. But Sineult... his Sineult, as small as he had been and still was, had always been so strong where it counted. His childhood, hard and lonely and full of the perils that living on the lower levels of human cities came with, had trained into him some of that. Most of it was simply the way Sineult was. It had never occurred to Onyx before, how much he relied on Sineult just being there, ready with whatever he needed, and the idea now felt rather dirty. He hadn't meant to take his husband for granted. He did love him.
He knew suddenly how Sineult had been created. If it hurt so much to think that his mate might be dying, how much more pain would there be if it really happened?
Sineult stirred restlessly, and the thought skittered away into the tired caverns of Onyx's inner mind, replaced by instant anxiety. He sat up, pushing his chair closer to the bed.
"Sineult?"
Face flushed yet dry, eyelids seeming paperthin with the bruised shadows that surrounded them, Sineult looked worse than that morning's close inspection had shown. For the hundredth time that evening, Onyx wished that change was readily apparent to the unChanged eye rather than bursting into clarity like human eyes did, yet that thought was pressed into storage too as he took stock of sleeping Sineult's expression.
His heart sped up.
"Sineult, wake up. C'mon, wake up! Are you all right?"
Sineult's green eyes slitted open, shifting in a directionless way that made their owner look more than a touch insane. From deep in his throat Onyx heard a distinctly angry growl, and instinct drove the redhead instantly backwards from the sound.
Once Onyx was out of range Sineult sat up, tucking his legs under him as he went so that the motion looked more like a canine's rousing than a human's. His hair stood out around his head like a ragged yellow halo. His eyes, still glassy with fever, rolled once and were still.
Silent except for his laboured breathing, the cub-bearer began fretfully tracing his tongue over the aching surface of his gums.
All that afternoon, Hazel and Hyssop did not lie still. They drank whatever was pushed upon them, threw it up, and were given more to drink again. Bathroom breaks were frequent. It was as if every minute of sickness, every miniscule organism that had been swimming inside their bodies, safe and sound and busy building whatever malicious city it was that those things dreamed of, was now being flushed out in one enormous purge.
Of course, the not lying still actually had little to do with this. They seemed to be almost in pain, and though Jessamine was sure that it was discomfort, not encompassed by the definition of 'pain', it would have been cruel to pass it off like that. To them, it was pain. Hazel, who got upset over very little and cried over even less, was clinging to Hyssop as hard as Hyssop was clinging to him. (It felt good to see them acknowledging each other, even under the circumstances.) Neither twin was exactly crying either, but there were moments when the desire to could be seen hovering just beneath the surface of their skin, ready for the time when endurance would give way.
After the first burst of crying, Sedge's entire outlook on the enterprise seemed much better: he worked with the sort of frenzy that he had at the beginning of things, as if he believed that something might possibly come of it. He and Jessamine were the ones who suggested trying stronger measures to aid in the cleaning of the younglings' systems, which ended in a rapid foray to the kitchen to boil and steep a few teas that the healer knew might help.
Jessamine was a paradox. Mixed fear and hope battled openly on his face as he worked, slicked with almost as much moisture as Hazel and Hyssop were wearing-and yet at the same time he seemed to be in his element, directing himself and the others with the elated certainty of someone who has come out of a place they do not recognise and suddenly realises that they now know the path home from where they are. For the first time since Beryl had arrived, borne by his confused and frightened da, there was an actual feeling of getting somewhere, of working toward something. It made each of them work with a little more enthusiasm and hope.
Minutes passed, blending into hours, and the afternoon faded away in a burst of thick, sticky heat and rich sunset colours. Jade's reluctant offer to make dinner saved Jessamine from that interruption, so he paused for a quick instruction on how much medicine to mix into the sick ones' servings and went back to tipping his tea, mouthful by mouthful, down the twins' throats while Oak and Sedge kept their faces and bodies wet. Jade slipped off to cook with a parting glance at Amber and Beryl, telling his husband to get him if anything happened.
Gradually the tension in the room quieted, until the only sounds the twins were making were the unhappy whimpers and groans associated with higher degrees of discomfort, instead of the middling degrees of pain they had been expressing that morning. None of the adults' forebrains noticed, though something in them must have, because motion everywhere about the bedside began to lose its air of desperate haste and fall into a state of tiredly gentle care. They had simply gotten so used to the level they were on that its ending, slow and lethargic as it was, refused to connect to the more human portion of their minds. Barring some stimulation to the innate sense that all Kindred had of pending death, there was no need to see.
Jade, on his return to the room, noticed the change better.
He passed trays out one by one, assured Jessamine that the others had gotten their dinners and medicine in the right amounts for each of their needs: then he explained in a soft, serious murmur that Sineult had gone into the feral stages of the sickness, but had taken the replacement, Change-digestible meal that Jade had prepared for him all right. Afterwards he settled on Beryl and Amber's bed, as disturbed by the news he'd had to deliver as the others who had recieved it were, and began combing tenderly through his sleeping son's mussed black hair with the subtly relieved expression of one performing an old, calming ritual.
"Da," he said after a while, panning an intense look over the older twins as he smoothed the dampened hair from Beryl's forehead and cheeks. "I think they've calmed down."
Jessamine's head snapped up, alert in an instant. Wide-eyed, he considered the bed's occupants, grasping their wrists one by one between his hands, his thumbs seeking out the flow of blood beneath the skin. Their eyes, which had spent most of the day flickering back and forth under their eyelids like those of restless chameleons, had stilled to the occasional languid slide.
"They have," he breathed, the words a tentative hiss of air between his teeth. "And their pulses are nearly normal too. Sedge, Oak, have you seen this?"
The flustered parents leaned in closer to their children, and Sedge's hand, which was clutching the hand of his young cub-bearer like a lifeline, tightened still further.
"Hazel is sleeping, but I don't think Hyssop is. Talk to him," Jessamine urged, and, after pulling a deep, shuddering breath, Sedge obliged him.
"Hyssop?" Sedge's voice quivered and broke: his husband slid both arms around him in a firm hug, prompting the uncertain cub-bearer to clear his throat and start over.
"Hyssop, can you hear me? I'm here-your father and I are both here. I know you're tired... but can you say something to me?"
Hyssop swallowed hard. He whimpered, but nothing else happened. Sedge seemed to deflate.
"Hyssop?" he tried once more, but the words trailed uncertainly off into nothingness. Hyssop whimpered again. Then, with great effort, his eyelids peeled themselves open, and he coughed. There was a feeble movement around his mouth, which on the second try took the form of one weak word.
"Sleepy."
Oak's eyes lit up. "Are you okay? How do you feel?" he questioned in an excited tumble of words that left even Jessamine's highly experienced ears reeling to comprehend. Too relieved himself to scold, the healer waved the questions off with a grin and asked in a calmer fashion.
"Hyssop. sweetie, what your father means to say is, do you feel the same as you did before? You remember what it felt like?"
Hyssop swallowed again. "Mm."
"Do you feel better now, or sicker? Do you just ache, or do you really feel like there's illness still there?"
"'M not... sick... jus' sleepy..." The youngling's eyes slid effortlessly closed again, his throat working one last time before the sleep rolled up and took him to join his brother in peaceful, natural dreams.
Jessamine sat back on his heels and sighed, still grinning helplessly.
"Cubs, I think he'll be okay."
Oak and Sedge seemed to sag into one another, too wearied with relief to share kisses yet wanting to be as close to one another as possible anyway. A bit farther from the bedside Jade and Spruce did exchange kisses, nearly tearful on Jade's part, in celebration of not only their nephews' recovery but of the renewed hope for their own two offspring as well. At last, distracted by the commotion and by his parents' joy, Amber sat up to witness the event for himself. After a moment he snuggled down again, silent and neutral as always, by his own charge's side.
Things weren't over until they were over, and Amber still had work to do.
