Before:

     Trevor regained consciousness to find himself restrained.

     He looked down at himself without moving his head because it throbbed so fucking much.

     He saw that knotted cloth had him tied to a bed.

     His right leg throbbed like fucking hell.

     "Hey!" he yelled. "Where am I? Can anybody hear me? I gotta' pee!"

     He got a look around as much as he could without moving his head. Some sort of cave. Stone walls, or were they? They looked solid as stone, certainly, and yet...Soft illumination emanated from bulbs attached to the walls. He saw an opening that led to some sort of hallway.

     "Hey!"

     Someone rushed into the room to hover over Trevor. Draped in rags of all different colors, shapes and sizes, she removed what passed for a hood from her head to reveal...

     a young woman who did not look much older than Trevor himself.

     And then he remembered something.

     He'd been in battle, and, as hard as both he and his partner, Niki, fought, just too many came at them, and in the end, Trevor was just about beaten into the ground...

     and then this woman appeared.

     It was like she rose out of the very Earth itself.

     She'd saved him, somehow.

     And this woman he looked at and who looked to be just about his age, she looked very much like the woman who'd rescued him.

     "I wonder if you could free me?" he asked. "I really do have to urinate."

     She looked at him in a manner that suggested she didn't understand a word he said.

     Trevor lifted his head in the direction of the restraints, thinking that might help him indicate what he wanted.

     And, yep, he'd been right before. Tilting his head like that caused spears of pain to lance through his skull.

     That made him slightly sick to his stomach, and he broke out in a sweat.

     Yeow!

     The woman scolded him with her eyes for moving his head like that.

     And then she examined him.

     Trevor used his eyes only to watch her survey his wounds, and what he saw of himself hardly looked like a body at all but like some sort of black

and blue thing.

     He longed for an Azure healer.

     "I've been here for more than a day, I know that," Trevor said in his calmest tone. He wanted to communicate to her that he was no threat, that he meant no one any harm. "You must have handled my body wastes somehow, right?"

     She smiled. Trevor saw curiosity and compassion in her eyes, but no understanding.

     From a bucket next to the bed, she removed a washcloth that she rinsed out, then used to dab the perspiration from his skin. 

     Soothing.

     She studied him even as he studied her, through eyes too sad and knowing for her young face, as if she'd already seen too much in a troubled life to ever truly be happy.

     He went to say, "I want to thank you and your mother and whoever else is here for saving me."

     Never got close.

     Couldn't get the words from his brain to his mouth.

     But, no! he really did have to pee. He didn't want to have an accident the second he...

     Out he went. 

CONTINUE