The room smelled of disinfectant and sour, sickly smells. The beeps of machines and her respirator’s agonizing wheeze were the only sounds in the room. Lying on that bed, hooked to so many machines, breathing through a tube, she looked so small and helpless. It was like the angel had beaten her back into that tiny mouse of a girl she was when I first met her.

I hated them even more for that.

There was a chair in her room, so I pulled it over and sat down. My body was still full of aches and stiffness, but it was more of an annoyance than anything else.

“How you doing, Claire?” I asked. Of course, she didn’t answer and I felt stupid talking to her like this, but wasn’t it good for people in comas? I read that somewhere.

“You were pretty badass out there, you know? You made me look like a total wimp.” I smiled. “Of course you can’t keep doing that, you’ll make the rest of us Changed look bad if you keep going all out Captain America and shit.”

I touched her arm. It was cool and felt strange, waxy almost. If it weren’t for the slight tingle the touch of another Changed cause, I might have wondered if she was...still there. My eyes were misty but my other fist was clinched.

“Listen, Claire, I need you to get better. It’s important. We can’t lose you. I crawled out of a coma before, and damn it, I know you can too.” There was no reaction. Of course, there was no reaction, that shit only happens in movies. I continued, “You are the strongest one of us here. You have to pull through this, do you hear me? You have to fight what he did to you and get out of this damn bed.”

Pulling away, both my hands clenched into fists. I was so damn angry: angry at Claire for being hurt, for trying to fight that monster hand-to-hand, at myself for not helping her more when she tried, angry for missing the damn thing when I had the shot. But most of all, I was angry at the damn angels for what they were doing to us: for this war they started with us.

I gripped the rails on the side of her bed, holding on to something so I wouldn’t fall into the depths of my anger. I squeezed till my knuckles were white, till it hurt my hands. The pain was good.

A tap on the window drew me out of my reverie. I jerked back from the rails, realizing I had deformed the metal in my anger. I wiped my tears before turning around to see Rebecca leaning against the doorframe with two vases of flowers. She smiled and held the vases up. I let her into the room.

“Hey you!” she said, giving me a big hug.

“Ow, ow,” I said, pushing back.

Face reddening, she said, “Oh, sorry!” She stuck one of the vases out towards me. “This is for you, I tried to find you in your room, but they said you were over here.”

“Thank you, Becca,” I said, taking the vase. It was a mixture of different color flowers and smelled amazing. I’d never received flowers before, not even the first time I was nearly killed by an angel. My chest felt light.

“Are those for Claire?” I asked, indicating her other vase.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice quiet. “I thought… I thought it might brighten the place up.”

“You’ve been to see her already?” I asked, surprised.

She nodded. “Of course. I came to see you both right after. You were still unconscious though.”

“What’s going on?”

She shrugged. “Lots of stuff. They are thrilled that our premonition was so successful, and they’ve had us cooped up twice as long now in hopes that we’ll have more of them. They don’t get that it doesn’t work that way. We have to wait for the senses to come to us.”

“I see.”

Rebecca placed the vase on Claire’s window sill. “Do you think they look nice there?” she asked without turning. “Do you think anyone will water them?”

“I will,” I said.

She did not turn around; she stood there with her head hung. Her shoulders shivered with quiet sobs. I stepped up behind her and placed my hand on her shoulder. “It’s Ok,” I said because I had no idea what else to say.

Rebecca turned and grabbed me, burying herself in my shoulder. Her sobs turned to full crying. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said, over and over again.

I put my arms around her and patted her back. I did not know what else to do. “Why?” I asked.

“Because I sent you guys in there. I got everyone killed, and you nearly died, and Claire...” Her voice trailed off to choking sobs.

“Listen, Becca,” I said, pushing her back. “You just did your job, and we did ours. There is nothing else to be said about it. People are going to get hurt; people are going to die. But we have to do this.”

“Let it be somebody else, I don’t want any of you to get hurt,” she said, her eyes bright and glistening.

“Oh, Becca, you don’t mean that. Who else is going to do it? We are the only ones who stand any chance against these things. We have to do it.” Wow. Where did this come from? When did I start sounding like Bishop and Castle?

Rebecca did not look pleased with my stance. “I don’t want to send any more of you out there.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t on you. You aren’t ‘sending’ anyone anywhere, the military is. Listen, one day I hope you get a big angel hit, and I hope it’s that bitch from New York, and when you do, you’ll send me after her. And when I kill her, I am going to be so grateful. Do you understand? Claire and I are doing this in part because we need to do it. These things have taken too much from us.”

How often would I need to tell her this, I wondered. I guess it was not easy on her, feeling responsible like this. It was difficult for me to put myself in her shoes though. Spotting the bad guys did not make you guilty for what they did. So, I took another tack.

“How would you feel if you did not tell anyone what you sensed and then lots of people got killed in an incursion? Wouldn’t you feel worse?”

She blanched and looked away from me. Maybe I’d struck too deep a nerve. When she looked back up at me, she nodded. “You’re right, Peri.”

“Of course I am,” I said. “Now, let’s stop having all this negativity out in Claire’s room, and we can go talk in mine.”

We said our goodbyes to Claire and then returned to my room. I squeezed her hand one last time. I wondered what they would do about the handprints I left in the frame. But, whatever, I didn’t really care if they got mad at me.

She asked me about the incursion and I gave her an edited account, mostly focusing on the more heroic aspects of the encounter instead of the horrible ones. Rebecca watched me with rapt attention.

“I wonder what would happen if a Seer was nearby during an incursion?” she asked, seemingly thinking out loud.

“That’s a very good question. Probably not one we want to test though; we can’t afford to lose you guys.”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

After Rebecca left, I spent a lot of time thinking. This was the second time I had come very close to death. Staying in the military would mean more and more chances of that becoming a regular aspect of my life. That thought was not very thrilling. I had to admit though that the battle itself was one hell of a rush. I wanted those powers back.

My emotions were still a roller coaster since the fight as well. I still had strange spikes of emotion, raw and tempestuous. I didn’t know if that came along with nearly dying, if it was PTSD, or if it was a leftover side effect of my encounter. Luckily, most of the roller coaster was while I was alone, so no one had to see me crying myself to sleep or feeling extremely horny.

The horny bit was the most unsettling. Was I turned on by danger? Certainly, during the fight, I had felt an almost overwhelming desire to fuck. I hoped that that was something the angel was doing to me and not just how I reacted to being in a life-threatening situation. There were still aftershocks, even now, days later; waves of horniness unlike anything I’d ever felt. It helped that I had a small amount of privacy, thanks to the injuries, so I could sort myself when it hit, but I did not know if that would be sufficient for long.

Fraternization was frowned on, not that that would be easy. Would I even be able to be with a normal person? Would my strength hurt a partner that wasn’t also Changed if I wasn’t really careful?

The angels just kept finding ways to screw up my life.

The doctors gave me the all-clear a couple of days later. It was good to finally be out of the infirmary. My superficial wounds were healed and even the scars faded to nothing by this point. I still had sundry aches in my back, but I imagined they would be gone in a few days.

Stone was waiting for me when I was discharged. “Hey, Delaney,” he said with a big grin. He was not on the crutch anymore, but he had a walking stick that just looked wrong against someone of his size.

“Stone! It’s good to see you,” I said, going to hug him and stopping myself. I punched him in the arm instead. “What are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d see you once you were released. I wanted to tell you that since we have leave, several of the guys and I are going to go to Charlottesville for a break. Thought I’d see if you were interested in coming with us?”

Since our base was secret, we were not allowed to take our leave in any of the nearby towns. We had to go to cities further away to help avoid suspicion. We sort of rotated where we went and we were under strict orders to limit our craziness to prevent getting noticed. Getting caught being drunk and disorderly was considered violating a direct order, so most of the time people kept their relaxation fairly low-key.

“Charlottesville, really? You’re fucking with me, right?” I asked while we started to head towards my barracks. I walked slowly so he could keep up easily.

“You don’t want to come?” he asked.

“I’m just surprised anyone wants to go there… you know, considering.”

He nodded. “I wasn’t keen on it myself, but the guys had that in the rota and they said the only way to get over something bad is to get back on the saddle. Or something like that.”

I shook my head, not knowing what to think. I felt raw, from the losses and my injuries. Did I want to give anything more to the angels, though? Would I never return to New York? That didn’t seem likely. “I guess they have something of a point.”

“So would you like to come?” he asked.

“Is it an order, Corporal?” I joked.

His face reddened as he replied in a fluster, “No, of course not, do what you want to do, I just thought…”

“Of course I’d like to go,” I said, saving him from further embarrassment. We made a few plans and then he limped away. As I watched his broad shoulders sway out of my view, I thought, hang on a second, was he asking me out?