No Words - Robin, Kira Burke
Robin shouldn’t be doing undercover work. The fact that he volunteered for this one doesn’t change that.
Kira sits in the van outside the sketchy bar, biting her thumbnail and watching Robin on the hacked security feed. Her phone is on the console beside her, Cody promised to text if John woke up, or if there’s any change in his condition, really.
She gets why Robin is doing this, she really does. But nothing is going to change the fact that John is in the infirmary hooked up to a dozen machines keeping him alive. Not even catching the vamp who threw him off the fourth floor of that parking garage.
Robin moves through the bar with an ease and grace that isn’t typical for the lovable klutz Kira is familiar with. There’s something fierce in him now, like watching a big cat on the prowl. Something elementally lethal.
She knows the fae aren’t soft and harmless and full of nothing but love and peace like quintessential hippie flower children. They’re as much a part of the wild side of nature as raptors and floods and wildfire. But somehow, seeing it in her friend is still jarring.
Robin steps up beside their mark at the bar, and Kira can’t catch what he says with his back to the camera, but the vamp stiffens and dives at him. Robin steps out of the way, almost preternaturally fast, and his hand grips the vamp’s arm, pulling it up behind his back. She can see the vamp scream as his skin burns at the fae touch, but Robin doesn’t even hesitate, clasping silver cuffs around the vamp’s wrists, hauling him to his feet, and pulling him out to the waiting tactical team.
No one else in the bar tries to stop him. Kira can’t tell if they just figure a rogue got what’s coming to him, or if they’re afraid of what Robin might do if anyone stands in his way. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
By the time she gets out of the van, Robin is sitting on the van’s back step, shoulders shaking.
“You okay?” Kira asks. She knows all too well what going to a dark place in your head can do to you.
He shakes his head. CAN’T TALK. TOO MUCH.
OK. I GET IT. She sits down beside him.
WHAT I DO? Robin looks at his hands, they’re shaking so hard Kira can only make out the signs because she knows him so well.
She doesn’t know how to reply to that. He won’t want her to tell him he was right, he’s not that kind of person. But he doesn’t want blame either. And she knows better than anyone that sometimes silence is the best comfort.
She rests an arm around him, and he leans into her shoulder. She can feel his shaky breaths evening out, his shuddering subsiding.
And then something shakes her, a different sort of vibration. She reaches into her pocket and fishes out her phone, then taps Robin on the shoulder.
JOHN WAKE-UP, ASKING FOR YOU.
Robin smiles tearily. GO HOME NOW?
YES.
Comments