**3rd Person Perspective** India rolls his eyes. "Oh, shut it. We both know you'd have done the same thing in my place." Pakistan opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "That is," he starts, with great dignity, "completely beside the point." "Is it?" India's eyes are still closed. There is an insufferable quality to his stillness, the particular smugness of a man who is correct and knows it and is too tired to gloat properly but is managing anyway. "You were faster," Pakistan says, which is not a denial. "That's all. I would have been faster if I had been standing closer." "You were standing closer." A pause. "I was not —" Pakstan stops. Recalibrates. "The angle was wrong." "Pakistan." "The lighting in this room is terrible and I had something in my eye." "Pakistan." "I don't know why we're still talking about this." Sri Lanka has his face buried in his free hand. His shoulders are shaking. It takes a moment to realize he's laughing — quiet, exhausted, helpless laughter, the kind that sneaks up on you after days of crying and has nowhere else to go. It spills out of him like water from a cracked vessel, and once it starts he can't quite stop it. Both of them look at him. Sri Lanka waves a hand vaguely. An apology. Not a very good one. India's fingers squeeze his son's hand once, slow and deliberate. Something in the room shifts. Settles. The monitor beeps. Outside, the hospital continues its indifferent business of keeping people alive. Pakistan pulls his chair closer to the bed — scraping it loudly across the floor, making a production of it, sitting down with immense dignity as though this were entirely his idea — and folds his arms. "Rest," he tells India. The gruffness is back. Comfortable as an old coat. "Both of you." India doesn't argue this time. That, more than anything, is how Sri Lanka knows his father is still in pain. But he is here. He is breathing. His hand is warm. For now, that is everything. India flips him off, but goes to sleep. Pakistan stares at the hand for a long moment. Then he reaches over and folds India's fingers back down, one by one, with the careful deliberateness of a man performing a solemn duty. "Disgraceful," he says. "Thousands of years old." India is already asleep. Pakistan sits back in his chair. Looks at him — really looks, the way he hasn't allowed himself to in three days because there was too much uncertainty attached to it, too much risk of it meaning something final. The scars. The bandages. The slow, even breathing that three days ago was not guaranteed. He looks for a long time. Then he unfolds his arms, leans forward, and pulls the blanket up over India's chest with the same careful hands that had pressed him back against the pillow. Tucks it around the bandages. Gently. Like he isn't doing it. Like it isn't happening. Sri Lanka watches him from across the bed and says absolutely nothing. Pakistan sits back. Refolds his arms. Resumes staring at the middle distance with great intensity. "Not a word," he says. "I didn't say anything," Sri Lanka says. "Good." Silence settles over the room like something soft. Sri Lanka's thumb moves in a slow arc across the back of his father's hand. The monitor beeps. Somewhere outside, the sun is doing whatever the sun does, indifferent to the small, important thing happening in this room. Three people. Two of them awake. All of them, for the first time in three days, somewhere in the neighborhood of okay. It's a couple hours later, and Sri Lanka's head is slumped to the side, sound asleep. India wakes up and gently adjusts his head so he doesn't get neck pains when he wakes up, like the impossible father he is. India wakes slowly. The room is dim. Someone has turned the overhead lights down — he suspects Pakistan, who would never admit to doing something considerate and would in fact deny it under oath. The monitor beside him ticks along quietly. His chest aches, deep and structural, the kind of pain that lives in the bone rather than the skin. He breathes through it. He has breathed through worse. He turns his head. Sri Lanka is asleep in the chair beside him, still holding his hand. His head has dropped to the side at an angle that India recognizes immediately as a future problem — he has seen that exact angle on that exact neck since Sri Lanka was small enough to fall asleep on his shoulder during long journeys and wake up complaining dramatically about the pain for the rest of the day. Some things do not change. India moves slowly. Everything is slow now, deliberate, each motion a small negotiation with his body. He frees his hand from Sri Lanka's careful grip — gently, carefully, a millimeter at a time — and reaches up.
Cups the back of his son's head. Guides it, so slowly, to rest against the bedrail where India has repositioned his own pillow to cushion it. Sri Lanka stirs, makes a small sound, doesn't wake. His breathing evens back out almost immediately. The tension in his long frame loosens by degrees until he is genuinely, deeply asleep in the way he probably hasn't been in three days. India watches him for a moment. This boy. This impossible, devoted, exhausting boy who stood at his bedside for three days and talked to him and didn't leave and is now going to wake up with pillow creases on his face and absolutely no idea that any of this happened. "Makan," India murmurs, to no one. To the room. To the version of his son that is seven years old and breaking pots and blaming the wind. From the other side of the room, Pakistan's voice comes out of the darkness, low and unhurried. "You should be asleep." India doesn't startle. He knew he was there. "So should you," he says. A pause. "I'm not the one with the hole in his chest." "No," India agrees. He settles back against the pillow, carefully, one hand still resting light as anything on top of Sri Lanka's head. "You're just the one who tucked me in." The silence that follows is enormous and deeply offended. India closes his eyes, and sleeps again, and almost smiles. Sri wakes up hours later, when India's still asleep. Sri Lanka wakes up slowly. There's something soft under his cheek. He registers that first — the unexpected comfort of it, the fact that his neck doesn't hurt, which is strange because he fell asleep in a hospital chair and neck pain should be mandatory. He blinks. The room is still dim. The monitor beeps. His father's chest rises and falls. He sits up. Looks at the pillow tucked under his head. Looks at his father's sleeping face. Looks back at the pillow. His father, who three days ago had a spear through his heart and yesterday could not sit up without turning the air blue in four languages, has at some point in the night reached over and adjusted his head so he wouldn't wake up sore. Sri Lanka stares at him for a very long time. "He did it about two hours ago," Pakistan says quietly from across the room. His arms are folded. There are shadows under his eyes that suggest he has not slept at all, and he is looking at India with an expression he will also deny under oath. "Spent about five minutes on it. Very focused." Sri Lanka looks down at his father's hand, resting open on the blanket. The IV line. The scarred knuckles. The impossible, stubborn, infuriating tenderness of the man attached to them. His throat tightens. "He's still —" he starts. "Yes," Pakistan says. "He'll be fine." It's the first time he's said it. In three days, with any certainty. Like he didn't trust the words before now. Like saying it too early might have tempted something. Sri Lanka exhales. Long and slow and shaking slightly at the edges. He takes his father's hand again, carefully. Settles back into the chair. He's not going anywhere. "Thank you," he says quietly. He's not entirely sure if he's talking to Pakistan. He might be talking to the room. To whatever held India here when it could have taken him. To three days of prayers muttered in a dhoti, to monitors that kept beeping, to his father's own sheer refusal to go anywhere without a fight. Pakistan says nothing. Just nods once, jaw tight, eyes forward. Outside, somewhere beyond the hospital window, the sun is coming up. India finally wakes up half an hour later. India surfaces slowly, like something coming up from deep water. The room is lighter than it was. Morning, then. He blinks at the ceiling for a moment, taking inventory the way he has learned to — chest, breathing, hands, head. Everything present. Everything protesting. Sri Lanka is already there. The hug is gentle this time, careful in a way yesterday's wasn't — yesterday was relief without brakes, three days of terror finding the nearest exit all at once. This is different. This is Sri Lanka having had hours to think about the spear, and the bandages, and the pillow, and all the things that could have gone differently. His arms settle around his father like a question. Like he's still not entirely sure India is real. India doesn't move. Partly because moving hurts. Mostly because his son needs this more than he needs his dignity right now, and he knows the difference. So he just — stays. Lets Sri Lanka hold on. His own hand finds its way to his son's back, slow and heavy, and rests there. The monitor beeps. Pakistan, from across the room, is very busy looking out the window at the sunrise and has been for several minutes. "Good morning, makan," India says finally. His voice is rough with sleep, scraped raw at the edges, but it's there. Warm underneath the gravel. Sri Lanka's grip tightens the tiniest amount. "Good morning, Appa." Neither of them moves.
