“Mister Blinky - you’re the one… you make dish time lots of fuuun. Oh, Mister Blin- What? What’s that Mister Blinky? Aaron fell down a well?!” Ezekiel dropped the dishes to the ground with a loud crash. There was an audible groan from the other room as Victor and Eric heard the tell-tale sound of ‘the time to go to Target.’

“Ezekiel, fuck-ass, man! How many times do we have to go through this? The dinner plates are not alien spaceships!” Victor yelled from the living room without looking away from the video game.

Ezekiel walked into the room, his shirt covered in soap bubbles, a serious look on his face. When he spoke, his voice was different - calm, and lacking the sharp edge of insanity that it had before. “Get Isaac. Something has happened. He needs to leave, now,” his voice rolled out without its usual tremors. Knowing the seriousness of the situation, Victor and Eric shot up from the sofa and tore upstairs, yelling the whole way.

Muse sat curled up in a ball in a chair by Aaron’s bedside as he lay unconscious, hooked up to several beeping machines. Guilt wasn’t a strong enough word for what ran through her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. He had gone through two surgeries and had barely survived the first. The doctors had told her that his recuperative ability was stunning, bordering on the preternatural. He should, by all accounts, be dead. He had a long road ahead of him to recover, but they predicted that he would eventually be fine. Didn’t make her feel any better about having done this to him.

She watched as the big man woke up, although he didn’t seem to happy about it. He let out a small grunt as he started to blink, trying to focus on anything around him.

“Hey there big guy,” Muse said meekly.

“You…” Aaron reached up and touched his hand to his face, running his hand over his skin slowly.

“Yeah, I just… wanted to make sure you were alright. Nobody needs to wake up in a hospital alone. It’s just not cool.” That and it was her fault. Really, really her fault. He looked at her oddly for a long moment, as if debating whether or not he wanted her there.

“Where?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, dry, and sounded like it hurt like hell.

“Some stupid hospital. Looks like every other hospital, has exactly the same people who work in every other hospital… that talk the same way that they do in every other hospital.” Muse hugged her knees to her chest again. She had a habit of doing that when she wanted to be really small and invisible. Ironic for someone who could really be both if she wanted to. “I’m not honestly quite sure where we are. I think we’re in Kane. I never liked Pennsylvania,” she muttered.

“Who are you…?”

“My name’s Muse,” she smiled faintly at him. “You probably don’t remember when I found you.”

“I remember,” he replied quietly. “How did you find me…?”

Muse had practiced this lie for six hours. “I was hiking in the woods with some friends. I was walking to go find the car and I got turned around. I found your place and I heard a bunch of screaming so I came inside. I found you lying there, and, well, you know the rest,” she said it without skipping a beat. Damn, that was good.

He just sat there watching her, and she wished she knew why. He didn’t seem to have any expression on his face. Muse wondered if he had caught her lie. I guess it wasn’t so good… “So-“ she broke the silence. “The wood came dangerously close to slicing up most of your internal organs. They’ve patched you up pretty well, and they said that you’ll be fine, eventually.”

“Great.” He didn’t sound at all excited. Running a hand through his hair, Aaron grimaced as he realized he desperately needed a shower.

“But anyway, I-” she was cut off by a knock at the door. Getting up, she opened the door to be greeted by a wall of wool grey military coat. Lifting her head to meet matching grey eyes, fear rushed her suddenly, and she recoiled reflexively. “Oh. Uh… Hi.”

“Who is it?” Aaron asked weakly from the bed.

Isaac gently pushed Muse aside, his dark figure sweeping into the room. “You left your post without telling me, Muse. You were not supposed to go inside.”

“I - But - He - I -” Muse attempted to start a sentence about half a dozen times before realizing she had no idea what was going on. “Wait, what?!”

“You!” Aaron sat up quickly and obviously regretted it. Gagging in pain, he collapsed back onto the pillows. “Get out! Get out!” Aaron bellowed.

“Now, now, brother, no need to get so riled up.” Isaac calmly pulled the black leather gloves off of his hands, folded them neatly and placed them inside his coat pocket.

“Brother?!” Muse walked up to Isaac and stood in between him and Aaron. “He’s your brother?! You didn’t tell me that!”

“It was not my responsibility to tell you.”

“Leave her alone!” Aaron growled, struggling to sit up again but once again failing.

“I will do no such thing. She belongs to me.”

“Cut the shit, Isaac! You should have told me, and you know it,” Muse snarled.

The only sign that Isaac was at all irritated was a slight narrowing of his eyes. “We will talk. Outside. Now.” Leaving no room for discussion, Isaac grabbed her by the arm again and dragged her out of the room.

Isaac pushed her into the hallway and shut the door behind him.

“Don’t push me, I can walk.” Muse pulled her arm out of his grasp. “You should have told me.”

“You only would have pestered me with more questions.”

“I- Okay, fine,” she snapped. It was true, she would have. Muse flopped down into one of the seats outside the room. She was pissed but knew it wouldn’t do any good to yell at him. “But you should have told me. I had every right to know.”

“What happened?”

“I,” she stopped. Taking a breath to calm herself, she got ready for the inevitable fury she was about to meet at his hands. She screwed up, and she could guess that he didn’t take failure well. “I was doing as you asked. And he ran and he… fell through the railing. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I was an accident. I never thought he’d-”

“Quiet, dear. You were only doing what you were told to.”

What the hell? Just when she thought she could predict him, here he was being almost nice to her. One second he was yelling at her in front of Aaron, the next he was being reasonable. She narrowed one eye at him as the thought occurred to her that he might be playing her. Or playing Aaron. Or both. Isaac only twisted his lips in a thin smile in response. She almost wanted to call him on it before she realized that, again, there would be absolutely no point. She didn’t consider herself stupid, but she knew she’d lose that battle of wits. If he wanted to put on a show for Aaron, best she could do was dance in the chorus and follow his lead.

“You will stay here with him,” he said after her long moment of silence.

“I don’t know if he wants me to.”

“He will. He is a gentle heart and needs the company. He was and still is, your responsibility. Not to mention, he is prone to fits of panic. I will not have my brother further embarrassing us by throwing a tantrum inside yet another hospital. Keep him calm. You will stay with him until I tell you otherwise. Take… Take care of him. He is my brother, after all.” Isaac reached into his coat and handed her an envelope. “And give this to him with my regards and well wishes.” He turned and left without another word, disappearing like a grey shade around the corner.

Muse turned the envelope over a few times in her hand before walking to the door. She really didn’t want to go in there. It was the same feeling she got when she had to walk into her biology class without having done the homework. Finally, she knocked.

“Yeah,” Aaron said.

Muse walked in, shutting the door behind her. Aaron watched her, anger welling up in him. She had already lied to him, and he had only known her for a few minutes. And if she was involved with his brother, she was trouble. “You’re still here,” he said simply.

“He’s gone, though,” Muse said, trying her best to be helpful. She couldn’t look him in the face. She stood, pressed against the door, curled in on herself, waiting for the anger. She seemed almost afraid of him - or his reaction - and he didn’t understand why.

“I figured you would have left.”

“He told me to stay here with you.”

“If you want to leave, then leave,” he clipped.

“I want to stay if you can put up with me.”

“Why?”

“Nobody should have to be in a hospital alone. Let me keep you company for a bit, at least.”

He thought about it for a long moment. He hated hospitals more than anything else in this world, and the constant beeping next to his head was going to give him a headache. He was mad at her for lying to him, but she seemed to care. He had caught the lie easily before, but this seemed sincere. “Fine.”

Finally picking up the nerve to move from next to the door, she walked back to her chair and sat on it, pulling her knees once again to her chest. An awkward silence settled between them.

Aaron was the first to break it. “That’s how you knew my name.” He hated how he sounded. His voice was rough enough without the damage caused by the breathing tube. Muse looked up at him startled, obviously embarrassed. “When I laid there, you came over and you called me by my name. You couldn’t have known it. What were you doing in my home?”

“Isaac told me to spy on you. I was keeping an eye on you.”

“You work for my brother,” he snapped.

“I don’t want to!”

“Right.”

“No! I mean it! First, he drags me off without even so much as an ‘I’m sorry’, then he jerks me around - I’m a freaking coffee table to him. He only talks to me when he needs something - his goons are the only ones who’ve ever been friendly to me. And if he tells me, one more time - just once - that I’m his property, I don’t care what he does - I’ll find a way to hurt him,” she ranted indignantly. Embarrassment registered on her face and she scratched the back of her head as she looked down at the floor. “Sorry… I’ve had that pent up in me for a while.”

Aaron frowned, his heart going out to her. Her emotions registered on her face so quickly - so easily, it was kind of amazing to watch. Her rant certainly had been sincere. He knew what it was like to deal with Isaac, and it wasn’t easy. He suddenly had the urge to protect her. All she seemed to want to do was take care of him, after all. “It’s all right,” Aaron replied as he shifted in the bed, the metal creaking under his large frame. “I hate him too.”

“So at least we agree on that.”

“How does he control you?”

“He has something of mine, something kinda… really... important. He’s good at getting people to do what he wants.”

“I know,” Aaron agreed morbidly. That had to have been the understatement of the year. He scratched gently at the tape covering the IV where it stuck into his arm. It was sore, but that he could put up with. It also itched like mad, and that was the part that really bugged him. Giving up, he grunted in frustration and took up contemplating the existence of the drop ceiling.

“Oh. He also said to give you his-” she mimicked his voice and held up her hand and made it talk. “‘Regards and well wishes.’ It’d probably kill him to get that stick out of his ass.”

Aaron laughed, the laugh ending quickly when he remembered that it hurt. “Probably would.”

She reached a small white envelope out to him. “Enjoy, I suppose.”

Aaron took the envelope and slowly turned it over in his hands. Ripping it open was annoying with an IV in the back of his hand, he discovered. It wasn’t long after starting to read that he crumpled the paper into a small ball and chucked it across the room. He hadn’t bothered to finish it.

“Nothing good I’m assuming?”

“Lies. More lies.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s alright. I’m used to it. Trust me, you grow up with someone like that around, and you get used to a hell of a lot,” he laughed, carefully this time.

His laugh seemed to calm her down a bit, as she shifted in the chair to dangle a foot off of the edge of the seat. She paused for a long moment before finally speaking what was clearly on her mind. “I know you probably don’t want me here. I know you don’t trust me. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t trust me. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. It’s up to you.”

Aaron watched her closely, searching her face for anything that would make him hate her. There was something about her - the sparkle to her eye, her quick wit and her sense of humor that made him like her. There was also a gentleness to her that made him want to protect her. She shouldn’t be subjected to Isaac’s wrath. “No. Stay.” He shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he fell asleep - but it was welcome when it came.