I'm Not From Earth - 16. Sixteen

s i x t e e n

Rover was certain he was going to die.

He knew he should have plunged to certain death. He knew his remains would then have lain at the bottom for weeks while the bodyguards looked everywhere, and it would have sat rotting for months while the police organized a hopeless hunt. And when what's left of his body had been found, it would not have been cremated, because there would be not even enough to produce a handful of ashes.

But as he was falling, someone caught him.

It was a sudden blur out of the corner of his vision, and that someone had wrapped his body around Rover's -- right in mid-air -- cradling his head and his torso. He was flipped over. His protector was on the bottom.

And they hit the stones.

The impact was so great, Rover felt the bones of his fingers, which were clutched under him, crunch and shatter against the chest of his saver. His legs flailed. He saw a flash of white, and heard a painful ringing in his ears.

It didn't stop there.

They kept rolling and slamming into rock. His body was locked in a cocoon, but it was not completely shielded. He felt his left leg snap. There was an explosion of warm liquid in his nose when they hit their third shelf. His wrist broke. There wasn't enough time to feel pain.

Rover lost count of how many times they hit something.

And suddenly, it all stopped.

The falling, the hitting, the breaking, the ear filling wind -- everything. His vision trembled out of momentum, and the world went dark.

    *

Rover was cold when he felt the first tendrils of consciousness. Very cold. In the cavity of his chest was a heart of ice, and his limbs were numb and devoid of feeling. He couldn't lift a muscle. He couldn't even hear himself breathe. A single thought raced through his mind.

I must be dead.

The thought was dismissed though, because what felt like a million years later, the first buds of pain sank in. It started in his freezing fingers, then danced its way to his head. His knees slowly thawed and he was on fire.

The aching was blunt, but it was a deep pain; heavy and blinding.

His whole body felt like it had been ripped into many pieces, his bones shattered and every strand of his muscles pulled apart. Wave after wave, the agony grew, until Rover knew he couldn't take it anymore. He tried to scream, but all he managed was a whisper of a groan.

No one could hear him. No one to save him. Not his uncle, not Somerset, not his mother. Was he to die like this?

Then, Rover felt a peculiar sensation. It didn't catch his attention initially, but eventually; finally, it registered.

The pain was going away.

He thought it was his body shutting down, but it was something different. He didn't seem to be numbing, but felt like the pain was trickling out of him. His legs were released, and he was steadily awakening.

When his mind was more focused, he realized, something was actually trickling into his wounds, and relieving the pain. But what? Laying still until he could open his eyes, he blinked until his vision focused, then moved his head to the side gingerly. He looked down to see what was happening to him, but instead found himself looking straight into the side of Slade's face.

Rover could hear him cursing under his breath. He seemed to be examining Rover's injuries. When Slade reached his right arm, he threw his head up and uttered loudly;

"Shit!"

Testing his swollen throat, Rover whispered, "I disagree. I think I have a pretty nice throwing arm."

Slade snapped his head upwards, and his surprised face was comical enough that Rover laughed. He quickly regretted it, as bursts of pain shot through his chest.

"It's definitely just as sexy as this one," Slade noted, looking down again.

Rover followed his line of vision, and nearly passed out again from the sight. His left arm was an angry mess of torn flesh and blood. There was absolutely no sensation in that one.

"Ow," Rover croaked feebly.

"Hold on. I'll get you fixed up in no time."

Rover was about to ask him what he meant by that, but the words died in his throat as he saw what Slade was doing. He had lowered his mouth to the back of his right hand, and with a grunt, bit through his own flesh. Fresh blood streamed from the wound, small but deep.

Completely bewildered, Rover watched as Slade tilted his cut over the mangled arm -- Rover's arm -- and allowed the blood to drip downwards...

Straight into his injured flesh. It started to steam.

Rover's brain took about three seconds to believe what had just happened. Then he screamed in terror.

"What the hell!" He threw a wild punch at Slade with his good arm.

"Hold still!"

"What are you doing to me, you freak? Don't touch me!"

Slade fell back, his expression pained. He looked hurt, but Rover did not care. He was desperately cradling his arm, crawling in the opposite direction as fast as possible, only managing a few feet before the pain in his body forced him to drop back down. They both remained in their positions, Slade stock still, Rover breathing hard.

When he was sure that Slade would not approach him, Rover grimaced and hesitantly looked down to his injured arm to survey the damage. He recoiled in shock.

The wound was moving.

Mesmerized, he watched as his own flesh stitched itself back together; Splintered bone shimmering, muscle fibres weaving. He could see his blood -- or perhaps it was Slade's -- suspended in a coil of brown that quickly grew scarlet, right before new arteries sealed it into tubes. It was a dumbfounding process; something straight from a movie. His sun-kissed skin flowed flawlessly over, leaving his arm as good as new. Done within two minutes.

Rover looked up, meeting Slade's eyes. They were so full of uncertainty, hope and regret. Eyes filled with courage and fear. Eyes that begged to be loved and smiled at.

But eyes that belonged to what?

"Let me help you."

A simple phrase, spoken with a tenderness Rover had never heard before. Never from a friend, not from his father, not even from his uncle.

And so, Rover allowed himself to be fixed. He watched the shattered pieces of himself grow whole and said nothing, but with each mended scrape and fracture, he felt the heart of ice in his chest begin to melt.

When it was done, Slade let himself crash backwards into the grass with a groan. He let his hand heal and within a few seconds, the blood had congealed.

Rover sat up gingerly, testing his stiff but well limbs, and stared at his friend for a long time.

"Slade?"

"Yeah?"

There were so many things to say and ask, but first things were first. He tried to think of a more sufficient way to word it, but couldn't.

"Thank you," Rover said simply.

A smile. "No problem."

Another uncomfortable silence. Air buzzing with unvoiced questions.

"Slade?" Rover asked.

"Yes?"

"What can you do with your piss?"

Slade looked dumbstruck. "Why do you want to know...?"

Rover frowned, and he felt an almost irresistible urge to kick himself in the balls. "I don't know why I even asked that question."

"Maybe you bumped your head a little too. Want me to heal it?"

Rover flushed, whilst Slade grinned.

Refraining from asking about his other more interesting bodily fluids, Rover swiveled his head to get a bearing of his surroundings. They were in a large clearing -- a grassy outcrop chiseled from the side of a climbing forest. He didn't know how high up he was, but the air seemed sharper than it was in the city. Or perhaps that was just because it smelled cleaner. Here, the stars in the sky were brighter than Rover had ever seen. The crickets were chirping and the breeze was just a song on nature's lips.

"Do you remember how you got here?"

Rover frowned. "Uhm, not really." He coughed, feeling a little not like himself, and said, "but they said I came out between my mom's legs. How 'bout you?"

"I fell from the sky."

And when Rover stared at him, Slade explained, "My parent's ship crashed."

"A spaceship!"

Slade paused, the light in his eyes fading to an angry burn. "Look, never mind okay? I'm sorry for what... happened back there in the forest and I know that it freaked you out..."

"Oh, it was mostly the blood thing," Rover reminded him, all sorts of cool.

"Mostly the blood thing," Slade agreed, nodding.

"You could've like, warned me or something."

Slade smiled. "If I warned you, you might've not let me do it. And I couldn't risk losing any more time, since you were bleeding too much. But hey, you're alive, I'm alive, and nothing else matters."

Rover thought about that for a second, then blinked at him.

"But you said that you're like, a... you're an alien. That's like a very important matter."

Slade's expression was hard to read, as though he was fighting with himself and deciding whether or not Rover was mocking him or not. "And you can't really believe that," he said. "You probably just think I'm some kid that was traumatized enough in his childhood that he became brain damaged."

Rover raised an eyebrow. "I kinda just witnessed you mending my arm with your blood. So, like, I'm not really inclined to believe you're..."

"Human?" Slade offered.

"Yeah."

"Maybe you were dreaming," Slade suggested, "Or maybe, you're actually still dreaming now. That's even more logical, ain't it?"

"Uhm. Yeah. It is, actually." Rover thought very hard about it for a few seconds, but scowled when Slade broke into a fit of laughter.

When he had recovered, he said, "You have the best thinking face, Rover. It suits you."

"What? Why?"

"Well, it makes you look a little... a little..."

"What? Dumb?"

At the sight of Rover's irritated expression, Slade raised his hands up in submission.

"I wasn't going to say stupid. I was going to say innocent." He grinned, and it was the first time that it hit his eyes fully, and it lit Rover's heart on fire.

"Innocent? What does that mean? Or like... imply? That I'm dumb?"

"Maybe." Slade's grin grew wider, as Rover's expression grew deadlier. "But it could also imply that you're gullible, and naive, and trusting..."

"That's all basically the same thing."

"As dumb?"

"Yeah."

A pause in Slade's words. "Maybe gullible and naive. But trusting ain't all dumb. Mutual trust between two people can't be dumb... can it?"

Slade was turned towards the heavens, his profile illuminated in the starlight. Although his posture was relaxed, it looked like he was nursing a deep pain. Rover thought it was an appropriate time to hug him, but he grew lightheaded at the thought of initiating such an action.

"Trust between two friends can't be dumb at all," Rover said instead, then added, "unless one of them has like, evil intentions."

"Do you have evil intentions?"

"I can't have evil intentions. I'm innocent."

Slade laughed and Rover allowed himself to smile again. But only for a second, as he remembered the words that were exchanged during their first encounter. He voiced them carefully, stretching the limits of his boldness.

"Do you trust me?" Rover asked, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice.

Silence.

"Well, I trusted you enough to let you like, throw me off a building," Rover muttered, not without venom.

When Slade finally replied, his word was nothing but a delicate syllable on his tongue, trembling like a fledgling about to take its first flap of wings.

"Yes."

    *