#pulled tooth

She meets Darin’s gaze levelly, and Gavin’s.  Both of them ask her if she’s okay.  She nods.  Darin says he’ll remove the threads once they get back to headquarters.  She nods.  Gavin apologizes for the heavy-handed way they removed the tracker.  She nods.

The stitches have been cut but her mouth still feels like it’s been forced shut.

The ride back is borne in stilted silence.  Several people try to break it, but the conversation lies flat.  Janiya stares at the window and ignores them all.

They reach headquarters what feels like an eternity later, and it’s still too soon.

She enters the house, fighting the urge to run with every step.  She wants to go to her room and slam the door and finally be alone.

But they’ll break her door down and then she’ll have nowhere to go.

She stays in the main hall, not realizing that she’s tracking Darin until the man turns around and looks straight at her.  She flinches, despite herself, and he hesitates for a long moment before making his way to her.

“How about we get those threads out of you now?” he asks, his tone injected with forced lightness.

Janiya nods.  Darin begins to frown.  “Sure,” she rasps out, and sees his expression calm.  The word tastes bitter in her mouth.

She sits, and Ivy and Ash hover near her.  Darin pauses in the midst of taking out his tools and his gaze sharpens on something over her shoulder.  “Janiya, I can give you a sedative if you’d prefer –”

“No,” she says, too-fast and too-loud, her fingers twisting into fists in her lap.  Darin freezes.  “Just get it over with,” she forces the words into a sneer, but they don’t quite stick. 

“If that’s what you want,” Darin says mildly, and arranges his tools on the table.  “You need to be still,” he says neutrally. 

“I know,” Janiya says, and does not move.  Her fingers tighten, nails biting into her palm as he approaches with the tweezers.

The blood around her mouth has dried.  It tugs at her, pulling through tacky blood and skin.

Janiya does not move. She does not breathe.  She stares straight ahead.

Another is pulled out, too slow and too fast.

She does not move. Her breaths are shallow. Something pinches in her palms.

Tug.  Pause. Tug.  Pause. Tug.  It could almost be a song, she thinks half-hysterically, the alternating bands of pressure on her face as Darin moves to and away.

She darts a glance at the paper he’s collecting the threads on.  They gleam in the light, little bristles of darkness that shine a dark red. Her stomach turns.

Darin moves to the bottom row.  Something in her palms is burning and Janiya exhales and digs her fingers in deeper – the pain is grounding and without it –

A malicious laugh. That smile, how she hates that smile, how she wishes she can cut it off.  Hands on her, over her, pushing down hard, so that she struggles and struggles and can’t move an inch.

The needle.  The thread. The disbelief, the ‘this can’t be happening to me’, the rage and fear and the way she refuses to understand.

It presses against her mouth.  She still thinks it’s a joke, a bluff, an empty threat.

And then it pushes.

Janiya only stopped screaming when the last thread pulled her mouth shut.

Someone is saying something. There are no hands touching her – but her face throbs, her jaw aches, her lips are hot and swollen – and there is no light and she’s sitting in a chair.

Someone is saying something. She drags back awareness – her fingers shift, and pain spikes in her palms and it’s enough to drag back her wavering attention.

“–niya?” Darin looks at her, doing a good job of faking concern, “Janiya, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she replies. Her voice sounds…empty.  It’s eerie, even to her own ears.

“I’m done with the threads. I’d like to check to make sure your gums aren’t bleeding too badly,” he says.  It takes a moment for his words to filter into her head.  “Did they do anything else to your teeth?” 

Janiya goes very still. The truth is, she doesn’t know. She was unconscious when she woke up with a stiff jaw and something odd sticking out of one of her back teeth and then she swiftly had more serious problems to worry about.

She shrugs, in lieu of an answer.

“Right,” he says, his smile strained, “Can you open your mouth wide for me, please?”

If she doesn’t, someone will grab her face and do it anyway.  Janiya opens her mouth, reveling in the range of movement she has – her lips sting and the wounds stretch, but she can open her mouth and it feels wondrous.

Darin pokes around, using his phone as a flashlight.  He prods at her gums and she winces, but it doesn’t hurt all that much.  Compared to the rest of her wounds, a pulled tooth is minor.

“Seems to be a wisdom tooth,” Darin says after he withdraws.  As though that made it okay.  Janiya had a tracker in her mouth and her tooth yanked out, but hey, it’s just a wisdom tooth.

“I’ll get you an icepack to help with the swelling,” Darin murmurs, getting up – but he’s halted by Ash clearing his throat.

Both of them turn to Ash, who motions to Janiya’s lap.  “Her hands,” he says curtly.  Darin turns back to her as Janiya uncurls her hands…which seem to be bleeding.

She blinks at them. There are four half-moon circles in each of her palms, the middle ones deeper than the others.  Blood has stained her fingertips and seeped into the lines across her palms.

Darin’s face goes tight. He takes her right palm in his and swipes the blood off gently with an alcohol wipe, before dotting the wounds with the same foul-smelling cream he spread on her lips.  He repeats it for her left palm, and wraps a length of gauze around both hands to cover the injuries.

“There you go,” he says. His voice is quiet, but full of an emotion she doesn’t recognize.  The room is singing with it, the pressure enveloping, suffocating, heavy.

~#~