"You don't have to stay, Mareth," said Gregor. "I know they need a lot of help right now. I'm fine."
Mareth seemed to understand that Gregor did not want company just then. "I will check on you by and by," he said, and left.
The water was warm and comforting. Slowly, Gregor loosened his grip. The blood that glued him to the claw dissolved. One by one, his fingers peeled away and he extended his stiff fingers. The claw broke away from his hand and floated beside it in the basin.
Somehow Luxa was beside him with a towel. She solemnly removed the claw and wiped the remaining blood from it. When it was clean, she wrapped it in a white cloth and laid it on the table beside him. Then she sat on the side of the bed, lifted Gregor's hand, and carefully dried it. "It does not seem to be injured. How does it feel?" she asked.
"Empty," said Gregor. Luxa entwined her fingers with his. Her skin was warm, like the water, but alive. "That's better."
There were probably a million things they should be saying to each other, but they just stayed like that for hours, not talking, until his dad woke with a start from a nightmare, and Gregor had to reassure him that everything was going to be okay. "Maybe if we just keep telling each other that, one day it will be true," he thought.
For the next few days there was not much Gregor could do but sleep and let people feed him. He was so weak it was an achievement when he sat up himself, a small miracle when he could walk across the room again. It wasn't until he took his first bath that his condition really hit him. He was so skinny, shaky, and beat up. The wound on his chest was unreal. They had painstakingly stitched closed the stripes left by each individual claw mark. When it healed, Gregor could see there would be five scars to remind him of the Bane's final attack. How would he explain that to someone in the Overland?
His dad kept talking about their new life in the Overland. And Gregor didn't know how to tell him that he didn't want to move to the family farm in Virginia, didn't even want to go back to New York. That the boy who had fallen down the air shaft on a hot summer's day was gone, replaced by someone who could never find a home anywhere. But there was his dad going on about planting extra tomatoes so they would have plenty to fry up green, and going fishing, and how Gregor could join the school band again.
The school band? It took him a minute to even remember what instrument he had played. "Saxophone. I ran track, too. I liked science class. At least, he did. That other kid from that other time," Gregor thought. And what about his sisters? Boots would be fine. She was only three. Eventually she'd stop talking in Crawler and probably forget all of this, which was sad in a way, a blessing in another. But Lizzie ... Lizzie would forget nothing. She would just keep turning it over and over in her mind. She hardly talked since the war had ended. She just sat with her legs tucked up under her in a chair, her face thin and sad. Half the time she didn't even hear people when they spoke to her. Ripred's death had hit her hard.
One night, when their dad and Boots were asleep, Gregor asked her about it. Why Ripred had even brought the code team so close to the battle.
"Because of me. He didn't say it, but I knew he wanted to keep an eye on me. To protect me the way he couldn't —" Lizzie cut herself off.
"The way he couldn't protect Silksharp," Gregor finished for her.
"How did you know about her?" asked Lizzie.
"Heard you guys talking one night," said Gregor.
"It was my fault he died, Gregor," said Lizzie. "If I hadn't been there, he'd still be alive."
And there was nothing Gregor could say to convince her otherwise.
"Oh, yeah, let's move on down to Virginia and plant those tomatoes," Gregor thought. "That's going to fix everything." But he couldn't say something like that to his dad.
By the end of the week, Gregor was taking walks around the hospital. Luxa spent as much time as she could with him, but she was already being consumed by her new responsibilities. With the council members and Solovet dead and Vikus trying to learn to feed himself with his left hand, everyone turned to her for answers. More than a third of the human population had been wiped out, Regalia was a wreck, and the entire nibbler nation was homeless. In public, Luxa was steady and strong, but sometimes when she was alone with Gregor, she would bury her head in her hands, repeating again and again, "I do not know what to do." And he would put his arms around her and hold her, but he had no idea what to tell her. In his mind, Gregor knew how to kill things, not bring them back to life.
At least Luxa had a strong support system: Aurora, Mareth, Perdita, Howard, Hazard, Nerissa, Nike, and several mice helped however they could. York advised her in letters from the Fount. And Gregor had to smile when he saw her in deep conversations with Temp. But ultimately, all of the decisions were landing squarely on her shoulders.
Looming over her was the day of the surrender. Although the Bane's forces had thrown in the towel when they had learned of his death, this was the official acknowledgment of the rats' defeat. But what was to be done with Lapblood and the rats who had sided with the humans in the end? Would they all be lumped together with the enemy rats? That wouldn't be fair, but as some pointed out, Lapblood's armies hadn't fought to save the humans, they had fought to save themselves from the Bane. Besides, there was so much hatred between the species now that anything was possible. Everyone knew the surrender was merely a gesture that would be directly followed by the question "What will happen now?" And Luxa, as the head of Regalia, would be expected to have answers about who would control what lands, and how the living would now pay for the acts of the dead, and if rats could be divided into friends and foes. It was very complicated stuff.
Gregor once walked in on Luxa and Nerissa trying to unravel the last stanza of "The Prophecy of Time" ...
When the monster's blood is spilled,
When the warrior has been killed, you must not ignore the rapping, or the tapping, tapping, tapping.
if the gnawers find you napping, you will rot while they are mapping
Out the law of those who gnaw
In the Code of Claw.
... but they stopped abruptly when they saw him. He wanted to tell them it didn't matter. Couldn't they see that? Wasn't he living proof that the prophecy was wrong? That Sandwich was a fraud? But he didn't know how to convince them to change their minds about Sandwich. They had lived by his words for too long.
The night before the surrender, Luxa was eating dinner with his family in the hospital room, when Gregor's mom walked in. She was way too skinny and unsteady on her feet, but she walked in and opened her arms without a word. They all ran to her and wound up in one big embrace. Boots, who was too little to get in on the main action, began to squawk, "Me! Me! Kiss me!" and his dad scooped her up and everyone covered her in kisses, which only made her giggle and call for more.
After a minute, Gregor noticed Luxa, standing alone by the door, watching his family reunite. He couldn't help thinking of how once she'd had so many people to love her who were no longer here. He reached out a hand for her to join his family, but she just gave him a small smile, shook her head, and slipped out the door. And for the first time in forever, Gregor remembered why he was lucky.
The next morning, Gregor met Luxa before the surrender. She was dressed in a gorgeous gown with a jewel-studded tiara on her head. "Wow, you look so grown-up in that. At least thirteen," he said.