World-Weary - Robin

Angus knows better than to ask if he can sleep in the back of the van. If he does he’ll draw attention to himself and that will make dozing off unseen harder. Better to be caught and punished for falling asleep than getting too tired in the middle of a hunt to dodge a vamp’s claws, though.
He tucks himself in behind the gear the best he can and hopes no one takes any turns too fast. At best it’ll buy him a half-hour nap, but it’s something.
He can’t keep going like this. He can’t sleep in his room at Silver Blade, the cold cinderblock walls are more of a cell than a dorm room and the iron cot frame leaches all the warmth from his body whenever he lays down. He’d finally given up and tried sleeping on the floor, but that leaves him stiff and sore and sometimes in so much pain he can barely fight, if he sleeps wrong on a healing injury. There’s no good solution.
And then there are days like today when that room seems like a luxury and a haven.
He didn’t get any sleep at all today, after Michaels handed him over to whatever informant was willing to strike a deal this time, and he hurts so badly he knows the floor will be a terrible idea when this patrol finally ends. He just wants to go home, back to the Rowan, and let the branches rock him to sleep and not wake up for days.
But he left that life behind.
And for what? A cruel little voice whispers in his ear. So the humans could make you a slave, a bargaining chip?
So I can get some closure on what happened to my dad.
It’s not killing him the way it killed his mother, but the not knowing is torture.
Fae can accept death, but this…this neither one nor the other, he feels like he’s trapped as that eight year old boy watching his world collapse as his mom opened the door.
And if something doesn’t change soon, this job might kill him anyway.
It feels like seconds later that the van doors are slamming open and they’re piling out after the vamp. Angus feels like he’s watching himself, hovering somewhere over his own body as he stands up and jumps out of the back of the van.
His ears are ringing and the world seems like it’s swaying, and it’s just so much work to put one foot in front of the other. Michaels kicks in the door of the building they’re hitting, and they start up the stairs, and Angus grabs the handrail as a fit of vertigo sweeps over him.
The next thing he knows, someone slams into his shoulder from behind him and he’s falling over the railing to the floor below.
He wakes up three hours later in the Silver Blade infirmary, with a concussion, a broken collarbone two deep gashes stitched up at the top of his left arm, from broken glass he hit on the floor, someone says, and a cracked shoulder blade.
The only thing he can think of, as he surrenders to the pull of the pain medication, is that he’s finally going to get to sleep.