Once back in my room, I couldn't keep still from worrying about Fire, which was strange considering I'd only met the girl that previous day. I would go from sitting on the bed to looking at my injury in the mirror to sitting in one of the chairs then back to the bed again. After what felt like hours but was only around thirty minutes, the door finally opened and Fire stumbled through.

She turned towards the door as it closed and screamed at it, "Screw you!" Before trying to make her way towards the bed, only for her legs to give way underneath her. I quickly grabbed her before she could fall and realised that she was sobbing heavily and her eyes were heavily bloodshot from excessive crying. I wrapped one arm around her ribs to try and support her a little better, which caused her to cry out in pain. I immediately moved my arm again and said to her, "What'd they do to you?"

The pyrokinetic didn't reply, but instead looked up at me with tears rolling down her cheeks and another sob about to escape from her. I instead put my arm around her waist and led the girl over to the bed so she could get some rest. She sat down heavily and said quietly, "Thank you."

She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes to try and get rid of some of the tears as I sat down next to her and asked in a concerned way, "They didn't hurt you too badly, did they?"

The girl shook her head. "Nothing that won't heal. But Maz..." She covered her mouth with her hands and started sobbing again.

I pulled her instinctively into a hug and asked, "What'd they do to Maz?" She shook her head again and buried her head into my chest. "Jesus..."

Fire looked up at me then noticed my eye and said suddenly, "You're hurt," and started to reach up towards it.

I grabbed her wrist gently and said, "It's nothing, Fire."

"Like hell it isn't." She pulled her hand out of my grip and touched my blackeye as gently as she could, but it still stung. I grimaced from the pain and, seeing my face, Fire said, "Sorry," then got up from the bed and walked over to the sink whilst unwrapping one of the bandages from her arm. She soaked it in some water then made her way back to me, and I noticed that the skin underneath the bandage she had just taken off was completely without any wound or damage of any kind.

I asked, "Why do you wear those bandages?"

Fire looked down at her arm and replied shyly, "It's just a habit from when I was younger. Whenever I hurt myself from using my powers, I would put a bandage on it to let it heal. For some reason, psychics heal quicker than normal people, so I wouldn't need them on long, but I would keep them on anyway. Reminds of why I need to keep practising with my powers." She then sat down next to me and started to wipe away the blood gently, taking care not to cause any more pain, but even then I winced when she first pressed the bandage to the cut.

I smiled as I realised something from earlier. "Fire," I asked, as she tried to clean the blood away from my eye, "do you remember earlier? When you asked about what it's like to have a family?"

"Yeah. You have an answer for it?"

After thinking for a second longer to get the wording right for what I was about say, I said, "Well, it's, uuh... It's like what happened in the Range. You know, Maz was in trouble, you stepped in to help her, you got in trouble and I stepped in to help you. Neither of us thought about the consequences, we just... Acted. That's what a family is. A group of people helping each other and not really caring for what might happen to them." I smiled. "The amount of times I've gotten into trouble after helping my little sister on an impulse is quite high." I looked at Fire and saw that, although she was smiling, she had tears in her eyes. "Are you all right?" I asked concernedly.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She replied as she rubbed at her eyes to try and get rid of the tears. "But you did get one thing wrong."

"Hmm?"

"I did think about the consequences," the girl said. "A lot, in fact. But no matter what I could think of, I still felt like I should help her."

"Now that." I smiled at her reassuringly. "That is called being human." I then realised that, as she was trying to treat my cut, the pyrokinetic had wrapped her free arm around my shoulders.

I pointed it out to her and she simply said, "I don't hear you complaining about it, though." After one last wipe with the damp bandage, Fire said, "There. The cut's scabbed over and most of the blood is gone. Wish I could do something about that nasty black-eye, though."

"Don't worry about it. I guess we're even now."

"No, I still owe you. What you did can't be repaid by me just wiping away some blood."

Before either of us could continue, though, the door to our room opened and revealed a guard standing in its threshold. He said to me gruffly, "Get up. You're going to the infirmary." Both me and Fire started to get up, but the man suddenly said, "But not her."

"If she doesn't go," I said, "I don't go."

The guard shrugged. "Fine then." The door closed.

"Crap."

Fire laughed and said, "Well, that went well."

I smiled at her. "I tried, though."

"Yeah, I'll give you that."

I looked around the room, trying to think of something we might be able to do now, but the options were fairly limited, given how barren the room was. Eventually, I simply suggested, "How about we catch some sleep. Feel like I haven't had a decent night's rest in a while."

The girl looked at me quizzically. "Oh yeah? Why would that be?"

"Just... Restless nights. I've had them before but they started to get more and more frequent before I came here."

She gave me a concerned look. "Doesn't sound fun." The girl looked towards the bed then said, "You can get some sleep if you need it. I'll stay up and see if we're going get any food."

I looked at her with a tired smile. "Have you done something like that before, then?"

Fire nodded. "Once, yeah. They didn't give me food for the entire day afterwards then the one after that."

"Great, so we might not get food for two days."

"There isn't a 'might' to it, John. We're definitely not getting food."

"Brilliant."