She patted his back and he rushed to the work area, opening glass lockers, all without locks and protections. He even put on a hard hat and kept looking. She sat down properly on a chair, pulling another chair close, Striker sat, pulling in so their knees fit together.
"Are you okay?" He asked.
Only three words but she needed to think about the question before even broaching an answer. Also, he was remarkably close to her.
"No," she said finally, "I'm not okay, I have made a lot of promises to a lot of gods to survive that, don't ask me which ones." She with a chuckle with the emotional value of a stencil outline of a laugh. "I know I'll feel this either tomorrow or later today. But all that matters to me is that those people feel that hell more."
To her utter surprise, she was met with Young Striker holding her hand with so much strength, she started to lose feeling. He rubbed the wet and cold from her hands, she'd been shivering the whole time.
The shakes had run up her fingers to her arm only to pour down her shoulders like a waterfall. His hands were so warm and absorbent. He held her wrist and slid his hand up and down her arm to the elbow. It was like he was painting her in his warmth.
At that moment Griff returned with a bunch of towels large enough to block his view. Young Striker snatched up a bunch immediately. He was rubbing her neck shoulders, back finished with cute little circles around her cheeks.
She smiled despite her rage. And her madness was so juicy and rich, she wanted to bath in it.
Was it a trick? Fight or flight made her body tense up, but it only lasted a second before she eased.
If there was one thing she knew, above anything, it was that he'd saved them.
But Mother had warned them. Not all effective acts were scams but all scams should use effective tools. Always careful but never paranoid.
She'd been careless. Paranoia was always proof of carelessness.
So she'd watch as he rubbed the cold away, and do her best to hold close her rage. And she needed to store as much of it as possible. She stared into his tanned but soft angular face, the deepest brown eyes in the world that bore into her.
He was on her hair which he rubbed backwards, stroking slowly until Griff showed up with a fresh dry towels which he'd wrapped around his body.
Kate sat Griff down between her legs and Young Striker went back to work making her feel like a goddess.
"You know. I had a great Granma," he said.
"Yeah?" Kate asked.
"Yeah, she was super old. We could never afford a nurse who could work full time and any android support was out of our medical packages. So we used use aid tools. It would help me lift her up, get her into a chair and move with it. So on and so on. The whole family would come together in her last months and when she needed something, we'd help. I was in charge of drying her hair. There are different ways to dry her hair and make it look nice. You have, hurt here, right?"
She didn't say anything only wincing because wherever he was touching was beyond raw. He started dabbing… great.
"The wind was so strong it pulled your hair, undid the style."
Was he really pulling and twisting her hair? What was he about to do? Style it? Could he!?
Yes!
"You stopped shivering. You feel better now? More calm?" He asked.
Again, she found herself having to put his words together like a jigsaw. Finally she spoke.
"Have you ever seen footage of a tree struck by lightning burning down?"
He shook his head. The room shuddered, thunder and lightning clapped overhead, Griff stiffened. That was a good sign. Maybe he wouldn't spend the rest of his life jumping at every little thing because of what her disgusting failure.
"No." He said finally.
He'd likely been expecting an answer instead of another question. Good Kate didn't want to hear it.
"The tree burns on the inside. If you manage to see a crack in the wood, you can see the fire still burning inside. Without the crack… you see nothing. Noy even a whisp of smoke. The tree looks so cool, you might even be able to hug it. Easy, problem free, but in reality, the tree's still burning. Lethal enough to kill not only itself but destroy the rest of the forest. It can take as long as a week, sun or rain, even a month before the tree burns down. That's how I am, as a start. And it's how I'll stay until the promises I've made to the gods of revenge stay kept."