#vanmichael

The time after the hospital runs together in Vanessa's mind like syrup or soupy, congealed blood.

It's Michael who checks her out, who listens to the doctor drone on and on about the endless paperwork, who takes her home. It's Michael who half-carries her into her bedroom and lays her down on clean, fresh-smelling sheets. It's Michael who brings her food and medicine as the hours and days twist in on themselves and turn long and short in equal measures. He tells her it's a side effect of the pain medication they gave her and she tells him it's a side effect of the coma their father put her into.

(When she says that, Michael petulantly informs her that he won't feed her anymore, to which she sneers that him letting her starve to death would be the best thing he's ever done for the family. By the evening, Michael has turned contrite and apologetic, curling up next to her and feeding her crackers while they watch old, shitty soap operas from when they were kids.)

When the fever dreams come, Michael is the one who wipes her forehead and forces ibuprofen down her throat until she calms down. She always ends up soaked with sweat and half-convinced that the twitching, bloody rot of Spring Bonnie is waiting just around the doorway, eyes glowing silver as he reminds her that she will always be his favorite and will always be his. Michael distracts her — sometimes with more soap operas, sometimes by asking her to read to him, sometimes by asking her to explain theoretical robotics until she gets too tired to continue. As the weeks drip by in their molten metal flow of pain meds and chicken soup and Vanessa slowly starts to regain her strength, Michael's distractions take other shapes. Tucking his hand between her legs while he grinds against her hip. Slipping under the covers to eat her out until the feverish nightmares are chased away by feverish arousal. She doesn't put up a fight. It's easier that way.

(Vanessa isn't the only one who gets nightmares. Michael has been having bad dreams since they were kids, and Vanessa wonders if they're still the same ones: glowing red eyes and rows upon rows of sharp metal teeth. She doesn't ask, though, and when it's her who wakes up to find Michael shivering and whimpering their father's name, she puts her arm around him, tucks his face into her shoulder, and pretends not to notice the tears.)

Michael's disappointment is somewhat palpable when Vanessa gets enough of her strength back to be regularly up and about her house — doing household chores, sitting at the table and talking on the phone with her doctors and chief and coworkers from the precinct who called to wish her well. Vanessa imagines it brought Michael great joy to have her depend on him and be at his mercy, which is why she takes such fierce glee in getting back on her feet; she tells Michael she doesn't need him anymore and watches him stomp out of the house entirely only to return the next day with two slices of pie from Sparky's and a stack of movies he rented specifically because he thought she'd like them.

Eventually, the last place their father touched her looks closer to a scar than a wound. Michael finds her looking at it in the bathroom mirror one day, her shirt off and her pants unbuttoned to better track the thick, curving line of it where William dug the knife into her, and his fingers are cold and soft when he presses them against it. There's still an ache. A reminder of the wound underneath the healed skin like bloodstains under fresh paint. Michael keeps one hand over the scar the whole time he's fucking her there in the bathroom, Vanessa's arms over his shoulders and his voice in her ear begging her to come home and be his sister again.