There was nothing quite like dragging your own body around.
Contrary to what an outside viewer might have thought, I wasn't the one that was really injured. The one who was actually injured was the guy I was possessing, thanks to a run-in with a certain someone who was still a little salty about Nathaniel foiling his evil plans.
So Nathaniel was unconscious, I was still very much alive, and Asmira had been teleported to who knows where. I had found shelter in the first place I could find - an old, abandoned building on the outskirts of the next town over from the one we had been in - and tried to figure out just how long it'd be until Nathaniel finally woke up.
In the meantime, I was wandering the halls, looking for some place to set up our base for the night. I kept telling myself that Asmira would find us soon, but I wasn't really convinced. I didn't know where that random grunt's power could have sent her, and I had no idea if she'd decide to come to this decrepit building, too.
I already had enough on my mind, but the universe decided to throw me a curve ball and add in the eerie cries of a little kid down the hallway. Which was just great. No kid in their right mind would come to a place like this, which could only mean one thing: they were probably a ghost.
Just great.
I groaned.
Heaving my body up more onto my shoulders - legs dragging across the ground - I headed towards the source of the noise. It was a terrible idea, but I had to know what I was up against.
I stopped in the doorway of the room the crying was coming from.
Meggie was gone. Meggie was gone and he was alone. He was alone and there was nothing he could do.
Meggie promised he wouldn't get hurt but he had. The long knife had hurt. And then it was black. There was black and black and black and no Meggie.
He sniffed and curled up tighter in his corner.
The house looked like where Meggie told him to go if he was in trouble. Go where the people aren't, she'd say. The people weren't here, but she wasn't either. She was in trouble. He sobbed.
The kid was very, very real, and he was crying alone in the room. I let out another groan, readjusted myself, and dove headfirst into the emotional trauma of the kid who had to be ten at most - I wasn't good at telling ages.
"Hey," I said. After a moment of hesitation, I crouched down in front of him with my body still on my back. "Are you lost, kid?"
"Are you lost, kid?" I repeated. I already knew the answer.
Or, at least, I thought I did.
Then I saw the stab wound.
It wasn't the wound itself. This place fixed that. But I could see the hole in his shirt and the blood surrounding it, and it wasn't hard to put the pieces together.
Who would kill a little kid like that?
I dropped my body, scooting over to the kid's side. He might not be giving me answers, and would probably protest with some speech about stranger danger, but I didn't really care. I pulled the kid tight against my side, hoping that the comfort of another person would stop him from crying more.
I was more than a little creeped out by the kid's lack of self preservation when he clearly noticed the blood on Nathaniel's shirt, but the reaction to the blood was quickly explained when I heard the name he uttered.
It could have been a coincidence.
But when had anything in my life ever been a coincidence?
He hiccuped and choked back a sob, looing up at the man, "You know-" he hiccuped again, "-Meg-rah-rah?" Did this man want to find her and hurt her? Eddie withdrew his arms and crossed them over his body, "I won't let you find her!" he firmly insisted.
"I'm not going to hurt her," I said - trying to ignore how cute it sounded when he tried saying her name. "I'm...acquaintances with her. We've met a couple of times. I was just trying to figure out if we know the same person."
I looked him over.
"I'm assuming we do," I safely guessed. "Or else you wouldn't get so defensive of her, seeing that she tends to get into a lot of trouble."
"She's not in trouble!" Eddie insisted, "She's gonna be right back and she's gonna take me home!" If he was a bad guy he'd be scared of Meggie. All of the bad guys were scared of Meggie. She made them be dead instead of alive.
I'd have to take the Nikko route. Nikko could handle death better this kid would be able to, but I had lifted her spirits up by telling her that I'd get her back - even when I hadn't been able to get myself back to my world. And I wasn't even sure I could do that for this kid; the way I had gotten Nikko back had been a one-time thing.
Still, it was the only way I could break it to him.
I took a deep breath.
"She's not going to take you home," I said. "You're dead."
I didn't give him a chance to butt in.
"But I can make sure you get back home," I said. "I'll take you there myself. It just is going to take some time for me to find a way to, but you can definitely get back."
Eddie shook his head stubbornly, "No! No, the bad guys die. I'm not the bad guy!" He started crying again, wet, sloppy tears that would soon be accompanied by sobs.
Meggie made sure the bad guys died and that he didn't die. Meggie made sure of it. She never, ever didn't.
"I'm not a bad guy," I said, pointing at myself. I wasn't sure if I should be pointing at my body or at Natty boy's, but Nathaniel's seemed like the best bet right now - especially when pointing out that I wasn't really who I looked like would only complicate things. "And I'm dead, too. And, hey! Maybe the reason we all end up here is because we're good guys."
That was a total lie, considering that Nathaniel had almost gotten killed by a dead "good guy" from his world a little while ago, but I had to try comforting the kid I still didn't know the name of.
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