Jack barely got to the next door in the hallway before the headache attacked him. Claws raked down his brain, and white dots danced before his eyes. He slumped back against a wall and nearly fell all the way down.
“Sir?” Someone touched his arm. Jack opened his eyes. A nurse stood there, frowning. “Are you... Jack Frost?”
Jack nodded wearily, biting his tongue to keep from crying out.
“I’m sorry, but there’s a patient who wants to see you. Another Legendary—“
“It’s Hermes, isn’t it?” Just moving his mouth made spikes drive through his skull. Jack tried not to flinch.
The nurse nodded. “He’s awake and we think he’s stable for now. He’s been calling you ever since he woke up...”
She kept talking, describing some process that they had used to get Hermes’s skin back to normal, but Jack’s mind wandered. His former mentor, also the one to give him up to a thousand-year stay in prison. What kind of friend, what kind of mentor, what kind of adoptive father did that?
Jack saw himself, in his bloody armor, bloody staff in hand, a bloody smile on his face. People all around him lay dead. And he didn’t care.
He closed his eyes. The smart kinds of friends and mentors and fathers do that.
“Mister Frost?”
He looked back at the nurse. “Where’s he staying?” he croaked.
“I’ll take you, sir.”
Jack followed her to an elevator, and the nurse pressed a button for the floor two stories above them. Jack braced himself against the wall, feeling queasy. The nurse tried to get him to take medicine or stay in the hospital another day or so, but Jack just waved her off.
They got to the right floor, and Jack went on with the nurse to a door at the end of the hall. She opened the door a crack, then paused. “I have to warn you, he’s not... not quite...”
“Not quite there?” Jack smirked and pushed the door in all the way. “Don’t worry. I’m used to that.”
“But—“
Jack pulled the door shut behind him.
The dimmers in the window were turned up, leaving the room dark. The only illumination came from a light panel above the head of the bed. A shape tossed back and forth under the blankets.
Jack stepped closer, suddenly apprehensive. “Hermes?” he whispered, feeling for all the world like he was a naïve apprentice again. In trouble for something. Like the time he had accidentally knocked Hermes out of a stake-out tree—
The form stilled. “Jack?” a voice rasped.
Jack winced. Hermes’s throat must have been ruined.
He moved closer. “That’s me.”
“I wondered if...” Hermes trailed off, then sat up slowly, shoving the covers away. In the dim light, Jack could just see the pale pink skin, newly grown to replace the frostbitten.
Hermes rubbed at his eyes, then lowered his hands, focusing on Jack with difficulty. “Intruder messed up my eyes,” he said. Like it was a normal conversation, with two normal, sane people.
Jack swallowed hard. Why couldn’t Hermes just scream at him for ignoring him all those years? “I... I...”
Hermes’s expression softened. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, waiting for Jack to go on.
Just tell me you hate me, Jack thought, the back of his throat tingling suspiciously. Just... tell me.
“I... I’m sorry,” he blurted out, lowering his gaze. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m a fool. You were trying to get me to stop – Bianca was too – but I couldn’t – wouldn’t – it was... was asinine and wrong and I can’t even think straight anymore because of it and—“
“Jack.”
The one gently-spoken syllable shut Jack up. He stared at the ground, trying to keep his mind from the soldiers all clamoring for attention, and then there was that one figure that was starting to vanish – Hermes, his old mentor, standing there in the crowd, very still, shaking his head no, he could never take Jack back after the centuries of bloodshed and pain, all that he had caused and done—
Arms slid around his shoulders, and the strength leeched out of Jack. His knees buckled. Hermes tightened his grip and half dragged Jack to the bed.
Jack sank down to the mattress, shaking his head and clenching his eyes shut so tight that they hurt. “It’s not that easy,” he said breathlessly. “It’s not that easy. Everything I did – th-the killing and—“
“Jack. It’s all right.” Hermes tightened his grip. “It’s all right.”
“No!” Jack shouted, straightening and breaking out of his mentor’s embrace. “It’s not! I don’t have blood on my hands, it’s all over me – the nightmares, th-they brought it all back, but it wasn’t how I thought it was when it happened – I thought they were puppets, going to die soon anyway, but they weren’t, and they told me—“
Jack cut off, his voice strangling in his throat. He pressed the back of his hand over his mouth, trying to get it together, but the tears came anyway. He started to turn away, hide the two cold, damp lines tracking down his cheeks.
Hermes caught his shoulders and looked straight into Jack’s eyes. “It’s okay, Jack,” he whispered. “I know. I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Jack choked, closing his eyes. “You had it together right after you got here... I’ve been a... a mur—I’ve been wrong for so long...”
Hermes said nothing. Just pulled Jack closer, like he had so many times before when the nightmares hit.
Jack shuddered, clenching his eyes shut. He swallowed hard, then whispered, “I... I guess your... your mark worked.”
Hermes still stayed silent, but Jack felt a warm drop of dampness fall into his hair.
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