Roy woke far more slowly than usual, which would have been his first clue that something was wrong, had he needed a clue. The distant ache that dragged him to consciousness had already sent him a full report on wrongness, however, and clues were superfluous.

By the time he pried an eye open he was also fairly sure he was drugged.

Once he blinked the glare away he was presented with a ceiling. It could be a hospital ceiling; it seemed likely. The first question was traditional, though, so he asked. “Where am I?”

Or, at least, he tried to ask. He was surprised to hear it come out as a mumble. The dry mouth might have something to do with that, and he would have preferred not to have noticed because now he really, really wanted a drink.

“Roy?”

The whisper came from his left side, and his left eye seemed to be covered for some reason. He turned his head and winced as the ache in his forehead became much less distant. Now he could see who had said his name, though, and that distracted him. Hawkeye was sitting forward in a chair beside the bed, eyes wide. She looked… different.

Well, she was out of uniform, but he’d seen her out of uniform before. There was something else.

“Taisa?” she asked, voice more urgent this time and less fragile.

That was it! She had sounded… breakable. Something he had never heard her sound before. And she looked the same way. Pale. Taut lines pulled her mouth thin. He’d seen her frown before, seen her worried. But he’d never seen fear in her eyes.

Roy frowned, and then winced again and unfrowned hastily. That really hurt. “Chuui?”

“Yes. Don’t move too much, you were shot,” she added, quickly, pressing a light hand to his right shoulder.

Shot? Bradley had used his sword, though. “Came out of the cellar,” Roy retraced his path out loud. “Had the boy. Made it out the door…” This time the frown was barely a twitch before he caught it and stopped. There had been someone outside the door, yes. “Who?”

“Archer,” Hawkeye supplied, voice flat.

Roy groped, in his mind, after what must have happened. But nothing came. “I don’t remember.”

“I’m amazed you remember the cellar,” Hawkeye snapped. “He shot you in the head! The bullet clipped you, probably while you were turning, and shattered the orbit of you left eye; if you’d been any slower, if you’d turned the other way to dodge, you wouldn’t be alive and the doctors have been saying you might not ever wake up anyway!”

That did explain why it hurt so much whenever he tried to frown. And also why his left eye was covered, now he thought about it. This would probably alarm him when his thoughts were running more straightly. “I suppose the paperwork will accumulate a great deal before I get back to it, then,” he murmured with reflexive sardonicism.

She sagged back in the chair. “You’re all right.” She pressed a hand tight over her mouth and closed her eyes for a long moment, and Roy blinked.

For the space of two long breaths she was not his professional aide. She was a woman, years younger than he was, her normal steel stripped down to iron by exhaustion.

She was beautiful.

On the third breath she straightened again, First Lieutenant Hawkeye again, and reached for the call button. “You still have a lot of morphine in your system, so pay attention and remember not to say what you were really doing that night, while the doctors are checking you over,” she told him briskly.

“Of course,” Roy agreed, and lay back, bemused, as medical personnel flooded the room and Hawkeye stood back against the wall.

He’d accomplished his goal, which was good. Now, what was he going to do about this?

TBC