She doesn't need to say anything. Lily can read, thank you very much. She's not a baby. 

Lily's angry. She always is.

This time, she's angry because her parents are getting rid of her. They say they're not. She knows they are. Why else send her to some horrible town she can't find on a map, where there isn't even TV service, to stay with a man they've never once mentioned? 

They say he's her grandfather. That she should respect him and do what he says. Mother is tense the entire drive down, and Lily keeps the anger in her chest bottled up until it buzzes under her skin.

She hasn't even gotten to really bring anything. No books (her parents found out one of them was stolen from the library, so Lily lost book privileges), no games (she stole a Game Boy cartridge from a classmate two weeks ago), not even any music (she didn't even actually steal anything there, but her next oldest brother decided to lie; plotting her revenge has been her only source of entertainment that isn't staring out a window, since she's not allowed to talk while mother's driving).

Everything here looks poor and dusty and old, and Lily's skepticism rises. Her perfect rich mother is out of place, here, and her fancy city car is complaining about the pot holes and the dust.

Her friend sits beside her, looking out the window with her. She sees things the little girl doesn't; perhaps that helps the boredom.

It doesn't, when this is happening, but it will, when it happens again. 

But the boredom almost doesn't matter, and she barely remembers it by the time she's trying to fix the broken radio, several weeks into her stay.

It doesn't matter, because when the car finally stops there'll be an old man on his porch, and her mom won't even get out of the car, and Lily won't turn around to say goodbye - 

An old man with wrinkles on his face like mountains, who looks like someone made him out of the dust. An old man who lives alone, joints swollen with arthritis but eyes keen beneath all the wrinkles, with grey coarse hair and threadworn clothes. A house with no AC, no TV – no electricity at all – and water from a well. A house where the only rule is no alcohol is to cross the property line. She hates it, she decides, before she gets out of the car.

She hates everything. 

She doesn't seem to hate her grandfather, though.

She does, but she won't. She's only a little grouchy when now comes around; in a couple of months, when the question of her schooling comes up and her mom doesn't answer the phone even though Lily walks all the way to the postal office, she'll get mad for him. She'll ask why they ignore him. Why they leave him alone out here, poor and fading into dust. Why, when he's spent his whole life fixing things, they won't see him?

And he'll look so, so sad, and he'll say, Not a single one of us should have to say a single word to the people who've broken us, little dustbunny. And I hurt your grandmother more than anyone has.

And she'll look at him, and she won't say anything, but that night she'll make dinner with vegetables brought over by the neighbor Lily is giving up on pretending she isn't getting to know, and she'll take over more and more of the little finicky repair tasks as he ages, and things will be alright, for a time. Her broken places will be fixed, for a time.

But that's then.

This is now. Now it's only weeks into her stay. Now she can't yet put old broken things back together. Now she's still grumpy, still broken. She got bored of stealing a few days ago. She just got teased about it. No one got mad. And all there is to do is stare at this stupid broken thing.

She picks up a piece and turns it over in her hands.

It's a bit later, after her grandfather has chided her into a water break. It's about the time she gave up. It's about the time she asked for help.

"I wish you were here," she says, suddenly. 

"I'm sorry I'm not, little dustbunny," he says, and his voice is as real as ever. Tired, and a little amused. "I'd like to be in your audience."

Turn. Turn. Turn. "I want you to fix it. Lots of stuff's broken here." She doesn't know at seven what's wrong with this stupid thing; she does at twenty, and her fingers travel of their own accord to repair it. "I think including me."

He looks pained. "I know," he says, voice suddenly raw. "I wanted to be there for you a little longer. I'm so sorry I wasn't."

"You have a stroke," she says. "I don't think that's your fault. And even just six years... It'll mean a lot to me."

Her friend leans against her, supportive.

She picks up another broken piece. "Can you tell me what to do?" she asks. "What the catch is, how to fix this?" 

"No," he says. "No one can tell you that, little dustbunny. There's no tricks, here, no glue or thread that'll help, no way to speed up time. There's no shortcuts when something important's broken."

"Then what do I do?" she asks, right hand tightening on something metal until pain shoots up her arm.

He's before her, then, kneeling in the midst of what had been a total mess the last time this happened. Then, the only thing she couldn't fix was a radio. His hands, large and dry and cracked, envelope hers.

"You get up, little dustbunny, and you give her hell," he says, and the metal thing slides out of her hand, leaving behind something – else –

"Hey, wake up, come on – "

It's almost a mantra. She hasn't been able to stop the bleeding. Not really. She doesn't know why, and every moment's turned into an eternity while she's been trying.

"Please wake up – "

She does, as much as she'd rather not.

She feels horrible, and only somewhat because of the blood loss.

There's a vine. A thorny bramble she tried to grab – no. A wire. A wire emerging through the TV, passing through the middle of her idiotically grasping right hand from back to front, sliding between her second and third metacarpals – it's vibrating. Like running machinery. Like a distant rumble of jets overhead.

Like the buzz of a fly's wings.

The vibration echoes through her bones, quivering through her ulna and radius, buzzing up her humerus – it fades through her clavicle, but apparently her teeth are sensitive enough to pick up even a faint hum. They hurt.

It loops back, too, because fuck her apparently, flopping down through her wrist to slither bloodily across the floor. 

(Her left hand hurts, too, but it's not as bad. There's already a bloody wad of cloth tied to it, no wires.)

"Oh thank fuck."

"I can't get the bleeding to stop." She keeps trying anyways – is this girl even capable of helping, with multiple wounds like this – ?

"The wire," she says, groggy. "It won't stop bleeding until the wire's out."

" – What wire?"

Oh. Of course.

"We're seeing different things," she says, awareness coming back a bit with the jolt of adrenaline. That idea shouldn't be as scary as it is, but... Lily relies a lot on her perception of reality functioning like it should. "I'm seeing a wire – no, thicker than that, a cable – through the holes in my arm. It's making everything worse – "

She scowls down at the wounds, like that'll make the mystery cord appear. "Explains why I can't get the bandage in place – but I can't see it. Can you pull it out on your own – ?"