Learning to Dance

somehow older too, shrunken, a ghost of the man he’d been
before. He was losing muscle mass. He struggled just to
walk from his room to the physio centre, let alone fight or
handle a gun. He was barely a man at all.
“Up?”
He could see her in the mirrors, hovering hesitantly in
the centre’s doorway.
“Come in,” he said softly.
She perched herself on the edge of the hot tub. “You’re
not supposed to come down here by yourself.”
She wore a hospital nightgown, white and sleeveless and
far too big for her, like most G.L.E.E.-issued clothing. Her
hair was getting longer - she was letting it grow out to
cover the large patch that had been shaved to fix her skull
fracture. Taz was looking a lot less... Taz-like these days.
Still beautiful, though.
“It helps,” he said, keeping his head down, not wanting
to see the pity in her eyes.
“I brought you something,” she said, and he looked up.
She held out a small, tattered book. He could see a Spanish
title on the cover.
“You still have it,” he said.
“Of course I still have it,” she said, frowning at him.
“But the Cazadora -”
“I always kept it with me,” she said, looking surprised
that he didn’t know this. “In my pocket. They nearly
incinerated it with the rest of my uniform when I got here,
but Rosie saved it for me.”
Up was tremendously touched.
“I thought maybe I could teach you to read it,” she said,
and now it was Taz who was looking at the floor.
“I’d like that,” he said. He drew his knees up in the hot
tub, first the left, smoothly and easily as butter, and then the
right, which took all of his concentration for a minute or so.