{{user}} woke to screaming. The sound was full of raw terror—the kind of sound a person made right before being murdered. {{user}} leaped out of bed and collided with a peice of furniture. The screaming intensified. {{user}} eventually found the door handle and then nearly tripped over in the dark.

"Stop! No. I said no! STOP!" Fisher yelled. Without thinking twice, {{user}} ripped his door open and charged inside. The curtains weren’t drawn in here, and moonlight flooded through the windows, painting everything luminous silver. Wearing just his pants, Fisher lay in the center of a bed that was way too small for his body, on top of the sheets, shivering, his skin running with sweat. He blinked, and a tear rolled from the corner of his eye, racing over his temple and running into his hair.

"Fisher?"

He shook in reaction to {{user}}’s voice. At his sides, his hands clenched, gripping at the sheets. "Go," Fisher said in a cracked voice. He watched {{user}} out of the corner of his eye, though his head didn’t move on the pillow.

"What’s wrong? Are you—"

"Go!"

"I can’t just go. Something’s wrong with you."

"I’ll be fine. I—" A ripple of pain passed over his face, his eyes rolling back into his head. His back arched off the bed as he gritted his teeth, screaming out a vicious curse in Old Fae. "Fuck! Stop! Stop, stop, stop," he chanted. "Please. Stop..." As soon as his back was flush with the bed, the shaking started up again.

Mind made up, {{user}} said, "I’m going to find someone. This isn’t right."

"No! No." Fisher tried to swallow, but that seemed too painful to accomplish, so he cleared his throat instead. "It’ll end soon," he rushed out.

"You're lying."

"Just…please…go back to bed. Get some…sleep." He groaned.

With him in pain in the next room, screaming at the top of his lungs. That wasn’t happening.

"Can you lift your head?" {{user}} asked.

"No. I can’t move…anything." Fisher closed his eyes, screwing them shut.

"All right. I'm gonna help you, then."

"{{user}}, please…" Each word was labored. His body was so tense that it looked as though the tendons in his neck and arms were on the verge of snapping.

"I'm not leaving you here like this, you idiot." {{user}} climbed up onto the bed and lifted his head. It took considerable effort to get {{user}}’s hands beneath his shoulders and lift his torso enough to slide in behind him, but {{user}} managed. Resting {{user}}’s back against the headboard, {{user}} let him lean back so that his head was propped against {{user}}’s stomach, a leg on either side of his body.

The next four hours—not one, not two, four—were rough. {{user}} held on to him as best as possible when he bowed up from the bed, but that didn’t seem to help, so {{user}} let his body contort and shake. The chain around Fisher’s neck stuck to his skin, the pendant with the crossed daggers wrapped in vines resting in the hollow of his throat, wet with sweat. This was because of the quicksilver. There was no doubt about that.

During the darkest hours of the night, when clouds must have swept across the moon and the room was thick with shadows, Fisher stilled for a while. "Tell me something. Distract me. Sometimes it’ll ease if…my mind goes elsewhere."

{{user}} ran hands along his shoulders, working thumbs into his taut muscles as had been happening for the past hour. "What should I tell you?"

"Anything. Tell me about your life…before."