Chapter 641
KILLIAN
Finished
The laughter in the car had been going for approximately twenty-five minutes and showed no signs of stopping.
Kael had lost the ability to produce sound somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark.
–
This was not metaphorical. He had been laughing — genuinely, fully, the kind of laughing that started in the chest and took over everything else and at some point the laughing had exceeded the capacity of his respiratory system to keep up, and now he was simply shaking. His whole body. Shoulders, chest, the hand that kept coming up to cover his face and then sliding off because the hand was also shaking.
No sound.
Just the shaking.
Ivory was red.
Not the flush of someone who found something funny – the specific red of someone who had been laughed at for longer than they’d consented to and was running out of patience for the dignity of the situation. She was sitting beside me in the back seat and I could feel, through the very faint thread of the bond that the link restoration had made present, the specific quality of her emotional state, which was:
*I am going to stab him.*
Not actually. Probably. But the impulse was real and present and she was managing it with the specific tight management of someone who’d made a decision and was holding to it.
She hit him.
This was a mistake.
Not because hitting Kael was wrong – given everything
given everything – but because Kael’s body, which had been shaking silently for several minutes, responded to being hit by producing a sound. A wheeze. Then a fresh wave of the laughing, louder than before, the specific quality of someone who’d been trying to wind down and had received new stimulus.
“STOP,” Ivory said.
The sound Kael made was not stopping.
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It was the opposite of stopping.
“KAEL,” she said.
The shaking intensified.
“I am going to-” she started.
Nina said something from the front.
I didn’t catch the full sentence because the moment Nina spoke, Kael – who had been at the peak of the laughing – produced a sound that I had never heard an Alpha produce before. It was not dignified. It was not the sound of someone who sent neighboring packs running from his territory in genuine fear. It was the sound of someone who had been pushed past the point of all management and was now purely, completely, helplessly caught in something they couldn’t control.
His whole body was shaking.
No sound again.
Just the shaking.
Ivory hit him.
Not gently.
This sent him into another phase of the silent shaking.
“Kael,” Ivory said, and her voice had arrived at the specific quality it got when she had decided that enough was enough and was implementing the decision. “Stop.”
He could not stop.
The specific impossibility of being told to stop laughing when you were beyond the point where stopping was under conscious control – I’d been watching this for approximately four minutes and I was beginning to understand why Ivory was red.
“KAEL,” she said.
His whole body shook.
“I will get the dagger,” she said.
He made a sound. Not a word. The sound of someone trying to produce a word and having the laugh intercept it at the exit.
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“He’s going to die,” Jordan said, with the specific tone of someone who was also laughing but was maintaining enough composure to provide commentary.
“He has not had air for five minutes,” Elite said, from Jordan’s other side.
“He’s breathing,” Jordan said.
“Not in a way that would satisfy a medical professional,” Elite said.
“Ivory is a medical professional,” Jordan said. “Ivory, is he breathing in a way that would satisfy you.”
“Ivory wants him to stop breathing,” I said.
Ivory hit him again.
Wrong approach.
The fresh wave of laughter from Kael produced no sound but produced enough physical response that the car moved slightly, Nina making a correction from the front with the automatic efficiency of someone who’d been dealing with this specific situation grip of helpless laughter – since they were teenagers.
“You are being ridiculous,” Ivory said, to Kael.
Kael’s mouth was open.
Still no sound.
–
Kael in the
Just the shaking and the tears that had been leaking from the corners of his eyes for approximately the past ten minutes because his body had been under the specific sustained assault of something genuinely funny for longer than it could manage without producing tears.
“I am going to run us off a cliff,” Ivory said.
“That’s the second time you’ve threatened that,” Jordan said.
“I mean it more each time,” she said.
“The first time was fairly emphatic,” Jordan said.
“This one is more emphatic,” she said.
Elite, in the corner of the back seat, was doing the contained version that was Elite laughing, which mostly manifested as a very slight change in the quality of their breathing and something happening in the corners of their eyes that wouldn’t have been visible to someone
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who hadn’t been watching.
I was watching.
Ivory hit Kael again.
This set him off.
Finished
This – the fact that hitting him set him off – was the thing that I was observing with the specific attention of someone who was still learning what this group looked like when they were fully themselves, when the crisis mode was off and the thing underneath it was running. Ivory knew that hitting him set him off. She hit him anyway. Because this was them, the specific dynamic of two people who’d known each other since before either of them had the language for what knowing someone actually meant, and hitting Kael when he was laughing too hard to breathe was the specific intimacy of knowing exactly what was going to happen and doing it anyway because the doing was the point.
“Kael,” Jordan said, from his position beside me in the back, with the expression of someone making a genuine medical assessment, “I need you to breathe.”
No response. Just shaking.
“He’s going to die,” Nina said, from the front.
“He’s not going to die,” Ivory said.
“He’s been without breath for twenty five minutes,” Nina said.
“He’s been without breath for thirty minutes,” Ivory said. “I’ve been timing it. He’s fine.”
“You’ve been timing it,” Nina said.
“For safety,” Ivory said.
“You’ve been timing how long Kael has been unable to breathe from laughing,” Nina said. “For safety.”
“Someone has to,” Ivory said.
Kael made another sound. This one had more of a word in it. The word appeared to be something like *the pigs* but I couldn’t confirm this because it arrived without enough breath behind it to be fully articulated.
“I KNOW ABOUT THE PIGS,” Ivory said.
This was the wrong thing to say.
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“IVORY,” Jordan said, as Kael went into another phase.
“I KNOW THAT’S WHY I SAID IT WRONG,” she said.
“Then why-”
“I DON’T KNOW JORDAN, SOMETIMES I DO THINGS.”
I looked at the ceiling of the car.
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Aria, beside me, had the specific expression of someone who’d found something wonderful and was holding it carefully, the look of a person who understood they were witnessing something that was specific to these people and this history and was not going to be this anywhere else.
I understood that look.
I was doing a version of it.
Because this was – it was them, the thing that existed when the briefings were over and the plans were made and the specific careful competence of the inner circle was in its off mode. Ivory red-faced and genuinely flustered for the first time I’d seen since I’d been here, because Kael had laughed until he couldn’t breathe at something she’d done years ago that was objectively very funny. Kael unable to stop, trying to stop, demonstrably failing. Nina contributing the exact right detail from the front at the exact wrong moment. Jordan at my side making the sound every forty-five seconds on a reliable schedule. Elite doing the contained version that was somehow funnier than if they’d laughed normally.
And me in the middle of it.
In the car.
With the photographs in the door pocket.
Kain said: *This is yours now.*
*I know,* I said.
*Yours too,* he said. *Not just theirs.*
*I know,* I said.
*The photograph,* he said.
I looked at the door pocket.
The photograph I’d found – twelve years ago, the five of them and me at the corner, the version of me that had been at the edge of the group and not quite in it. Looking at the camera
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with the wanting visible on his face to anyone who knew what wanting looked like.
Finished
I looked at the photograph and I looked at the car and I thought about the distance between then and now.
*Not the edge anymore.* Kain said.
*No,” I said.
*The back seat,* Kain said. *Between Aria and Elite. Jordan on the other.side. Nina driving. Kael laughing without breath. Ivory red and furious and trying not to also be laughing.*
*Yes,* I said.
*That’s different from the edge,* Kain said.
*Very different,* I said.
“Ivory,” Nina said, from the front, in the tone of someone who was trying to be helpful and was also trying not to set Kael off again.
“Don’t,” Ivory said.
“I wasn’t-
“You were about to say something,” Ivory said.
“I wasn’t-”
“You had the face,” Ivory said.
“What face,” Nina said.
“The face you get before you say something that is going to make it worse,” Ivory said.
“I don’t have a face,” Nina said.
“You have a very specific face,” Ivory said.
“I-” Nina started.
“DON’T,” Ivory said.
Nina closed her mouth.
Kael was making sounds again..
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Fintched
Small ones, the ones that arrived when the peak of laughter had passed and the body was coming down but hadn’t fully landed, the specific sequence of wheezes and caught breaths and occasional full-volume returns that constituted the descent from the kind of laughing that he’d
been in.
“I was learning,” Ivory said, for the third time. The declaration had lost none of its conviction.
Kael made the sound.
“Ivory,” I said.
She looked at me.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think driving at the pigs was the correct tactical decision.”
A pause.
“Thank you,” she said.
“The pigs were the immediate obstacle,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“The trailer was secondary,” I said.
“It was,” she said.
“The sequencing of your response was-” I started.
“If you laugh,” she said, “I will remind you of the gate wall.”
“I wasn’t going to laugh,” I said.
“Your voice has the quality,” she said.
“It doesn’t,” I said.
“It does,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
She looked at me with the specific expression that was both warning and something underneath the warning that wasn’t quite warmth but was adjacent.
Kael was coming down.
The shaking had reduced to the occasional tremor. The sounds had settled into the specific
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post-laughing quality of someone whose body had been through something significant and was now in the recovery phase. He was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand with the expression of a man who was not going to acknowledge how thoroughly he’d just lost himself in that.
“Not a word,” he said.
“I have not said anything,” Jordan said.
“The expression counts,” Kael said.
“My expression is neutral,” Jordan said.
“Your expression,” Kael said, “is the expression of a man who is going to dine out on this for years and is already composing the story.”
“I’m not-” Jordan started.
“Jordan,” Kael said.
“The detail about the pigs,” Jordan said. “That’s the part that gets me every time. She drove at the pigs.”
“To clear the road,” Ivory said.
“To clear the road,” Jordan confirmed. “And then-”
“Don’t,” Kael said.
“The trailer-”
“Jordan,” Kael said.