Giles

My skin burns like there’s a furnace inside of me. I cracked the window open, but despite the chill in the room, sweat still pours off me.

It’s dark outside, not even the moon is visible, covered by dark clouds. Shadows move and voices, familiar and taunting, speak to me.

“Come home, Giles,” The woman’s voice calls out. “Don’t fight anymore.”

Caroline. I see her face. Young and innocent, like the last time I saw her alive. She beckons to me to follow her.

I blink hard, knowing it’s my mind playing tricks on me.

Wolves howl somewhere in the distance, or maybe they’re in my room. I can hear the snapping of their teeth, see the glow of their amber eyes peering at me from the bottom of the bed, waiting to pounce.

“Get away,” I yell.

Light. White and blinding floods the room. And more voices.

“What’s wrong?”

“Giles, look at me.”

“He’s burning up.”

“Giles.”

“He can’t hear you.”

“Someone get Banks.”

“Hold him down.”

“He’s fighting me.”

“I need to see his wound.”

Images blur. Emerson and Fallon hold me down as Banks unwraps the bandages on my leg.

“Fuck.”

“How did it get that bad?”

“Antibiotics... septic shock... hospital...”

They talk about me like I’m not there, and maybe I’m not, because I feel like I’m floating, unattached from the chaos going on around me.  

Banks stares down at me, but there’s a fog around him, and his voice feels like it comes from miles away.

“This is going to hurt like a bitch, but I need you to try and stay with us.” He looks over his shoulder and yells at someone. “Get ice. As much as you can. Tia, draw a cold bath. Fallon, help me strip him down.”

Time lapses and I know consciousness comes and goes, but I let out a sharp cry as my body is submerged in an icy hell.

“We need to get your fever down,” Banks says, dark gaze holding mine, and I know what he doesn’t say, that if they don’t I won’t make it.

“You fucking idiot,” Fallon yells from somewhere. “Why the hell didn’t you tell anyone you were this bad?”

I want to fight against the cold, and I do, but large hands keep me pinned down.

“It’s okay.”

“We’re right here.”

Then I let go, give in.  The throbbing overwhelms me, and I can’t stay here anymore. I close my eyes, letting myself forget the pain.

My mind is playing tricks on me again, I feel like I’m swimming back in the lake at the cabin in the summer. It’s hot and the sky is blue, and the air is clean. Caroline's hand is wrapped around mine. Dragging me to the edge of the dock.

“Jump in, Giles,” she laughs. Her bare feet hit the wooden planks as she pulls me toward the water.

“You’re crazy,” I shout as we near the end of the dock.

She turns to me with a smile wide across her face. Freckles and sunshine and innocence wrapping around her like a ring of light. “Crazy for you,” she says.

With hands held, we leap, and the air holds us for a second before we crash into the icy lake water, the glacial mountains above us, glimmeringly white.

Our heads submerge and I pull Caroline toward me, her hair swimming around her face and I kiss her lips.

Time stills and there is no disease, and there is no Lottery, and there is no death.

There is just her and me and summer.

I could drown in it.

“Fuck we need to get him out.”

“I can barely feel his pulse.”

“He’s barely breathing.”

“Do something.”

“Get him out of the fucking bath.”

I grip the edge of the tub, not wanting to go anywhere else.

Only wanting to go back.

Back to a time when life didn’t hurt so damn much.