Snippet 3c

"Well we know Jerry," Leonard said, helping Jim with his shirt before moving to help Scottie. "He'll keep him here as long as he can. You ok over there, Spock?"

Spock nodded, finishing up tightening his pants.

"Anyways," Leonard said, giving Scottie's arms some friction. "He'll give you some more time to get better."

"I shouldna' eaten the bread," Scotty said mournfully, giving the other boy a guilty look. "...I knew it smelled funny. I was just so...you know..."

"Hungry," Jim finished grimly. "Nothin' new, Scotty. We all should've been more careful."

It took only a few minutes later, after all the boys were dressed and sitting down in the cell - that they heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Two sets. One belonging to Jerry...and the other to someone smaller.

The boys quickly stood up, looking toward the barred doors of their cell to try and catch a glimpse of who was coming. They couldn't see anything, however, until Jerry's looming form came up to the door, and cranked it open just as loudly as it had been last night.

"Here he is, boys," he said, shoving forward the form of another skinny boy into the cell. He was just about as tall as Leonard, but he held his back straight, just like Spock did. "You go ahead and get acquainted for a while. I'll be back down with some nice bonding work for you guys to do in just a minute."

Jerry's footsteps stomped away down the hallways. The boy was left standing before the rest of them, looking around with dark, soulful eyes that had Spock's calmness in them...but even more of it. He seemed to have some of Leonard's kind of strength in him...but in a kind of quieter way.

"Hello," Scotty ventured out first, raising a hand weakly in greeting. "Whass' your name?"

"Lesh'ar," the boy said in a calm, soothing voice. He sounded older than Spock. He nodded to all of them, just the way Spock did when he was acknowledging them. "Hello."

Leonard gave him a nod. "Welcome to hell."

"You have a nice name." Spock commented, nodding to him. "I'm Spock. This is Leonard, Jim, and Scottie."

Jim glanced over at Spock in slight surprise. Spock was almost never someone who spoke before being spoken to.

"Nice to meet you all," Lesh'ar said, giving them all another nod.

"Oh, yeh donna' have to lie," Scotty said, giving him a grim smile. "Et really is hell here."

"All right, enough greetings, boys," Jerry was back already. He stopped in front of the cell door, and jerked it open again. "Wall work today, boys. I want to see some progress on the road wall today, or so help me, you'll get the teeth whipped out of you. MOVE!"

Leonard grabbed Jim's shirt and moved him forward, looking back to make sure the rest were following. Spock followed behind him, making sure Scottie was there too.

They were all led outside by Jerry, as usual. The day was chilly and foggy, a light drizzle falling from the sky. The boys shivered, but knew better than to make any sort of protest against it. They felt lucky just knowing that winter had finally come and gone.

"Stan'll be watchin' you," Jerry warned, pointing at them as soon as they'd reached the place where the work on the wall had last been stopped. "So I'd keep my ass working if I were you."

There was never any argument to that statement, either. Quickly, the boys moved for shovels, buckets, or anything else that would assist in the process of piling together the rocks, stone, and muddy cement that was used to create the wall that lined the road to the Home.

The first twenty minutes was silence between the boys as they worked. Jim already felt bad, because Spock had been assigned to lifting the un-cut rocks that day. The Vulcan's fingers were so delicate, they were easily cut and bruised by the misshapen rocks that he had to handle. There was nothing he could do, though, so he shouldered his shovel and simply moved on to the next part of the wall.

Another of the boys seemed to have other ideas, though. Glancing over his shoulder to be sure Greg wasn't watching, Lesh'ar stepped through the mud toward Spock, reaching down deftly to tear the hem from the ends of his pants. He took the strips of cloth then, and quickly reached out to take the younger Vulcan's hands and bind them tightly in the protective cloth.

"Stay strong, Spock," he murmured to the smaller Vulcan, before turning and moving back to his section of the wall without another word.

Spock watched him go in surprise, flexing his hand and looking down at the cloth. He snapped out of it after another moment and continued his work, casting a curious glance every now and then in Lesh'ar's direction.

"Lift with your back, Jim," Leonard hissed under his breath as Jim struggled with one of the bricks. "We don't have any more ice."

Jim grunted as he hefted another armload of bricks, trying to do what Leonard said, but his arms were already shaky from the amount he'd been lifting - and he'd only been at it for a short while. Setting the last load down, he reached out just in time to keep Scotty from accidentally kicking over one of the mud buckets, before moving wearily back to the wall.

"This is the last of the cement ones. I'll take it," Lesh'ar said to Leonard, moving in when the other boy had put the last of the cement blocks into the rusty wheelbarrow, before moving to push it himself down the road to the end of the wall. "I'll pick up the other shovel on my way back."

Jim watched the taller boy start down the muddy road, looking back at Leonard afterward. Lesh'ar was exactly the sort of worker Leonard - unafraid of the hardest jobs as long as no one else had to do them. He thought maybe Leonard would notice, but the other boy was continuing to work as though nothing had happened.

During the course of the rest of their work, Jim noticed a few other things about Lesh'ar, too. For one, he was unusually strong - like Spock could be, when he hadn't been recently beaten. He lifted things that he shouldn't have been able to lift, and worked for longer periods of time without having to rest.

Another thing that he noticed was the extra care Lesh'ar took with Spock. He seemed to feel like it was his job to protect the smaller Vulcan, making sure his hands stayed bound in that cloth, and seemed to show up just when Spock had stumbled to help him up. Most of the time, neither of them would say a word to each other. But Jim had a feeling, somehow, that they were talking to each other anyway.

"All right, rat-faces! Lunch time!" a loud, raspy voice called out from the other end of the wall, then - a voice that undeniably belonged to Greg, who was watching over their work for the day. He was holding up a brown paper bag in the drizzling rain, as if to entice them with it. "Last one here gets to lick the mud off my shoes!"

The boys glanced at each other, dropping their tools or the extra bricks they held before trudging toward the end of the wall to get their food. It was never anything worth hurrying for - usually just scraps or something made out of canned mush and stale bread thrown together. Sometimes, if Jerry had been in a bad mood that day, Greg liked to laugh at them and show them that there was nothing in the bag but crumbs that day.

"C'mon, git over here!" Greg snapped, reaching out to cuff Spock over the head before reaching the same hand into the bag. "Catch, mudsuckers!"

He tossed a small, soggy sandwich to each boy, each of them managing to reach out just in time to catch it and keep it from falling in the mud. It turned out to be old spam spread between two mushy pieces of dark bread, but even that looked edible after working all morning.

"You've got five minutes to eat that shit and get back to work," Greg growled. "So stuff it down your gullets."

Jim moved quickly to sit down next to Leonard on a sack of cement gravel, huddling closer to the older boy's gangly form for warmth against the chilly, miserable drizzle while he stuffed his sandwich into his mouth. It tasted like soggy cardboard and meat that was a little too ripe, but it took the edge off the sharp pain in his stomach.

Leonard put an arm around him as he unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite of it, looking over as Spock unwrapped his took a seat next to Lesh'ar. He moved over and motioned Scottie to where he and Jim were sitting. "Over here, Scottie."

"Thanks," Scotty said, gratefully accepting the proximity and seating himself close to the other two boys, hurriedly taking three bites of his sandwich afterward. "We're almost done here, though, eh? Shouldna' be more than a few more hours." He looked over at Jim afterward. "You - uh, you an' Spock Upstairs ta'night, Jim?"

"Um-hm," Jim nodded through a mouthful of bread and mush. "Can't wait."

"Just don't get caught doing something stupid," Leonard said, giving him a serious look as he took another bite of his sandwich. "If you get beat I'll whoop ya."

Jim smiled, resting his head against Leonard's shoulder. "M' not gonna get beat. He'd never catch me."

"Donna start thinkin' like that, or 'e will," Scotty warned him through a mouthful of sandwich. "Confidence'll only getcha' so far."

"I wonder if Lesh'ar can sneak stuff," Jim said, lowering his voice as he glanced over at the place where Lesh'ar and Spock were sitting. "D'you think?"

"You never can tell," Leonard said, focusing on his sandwich. "Spock's pretty good at it."

"We'll jus' have ta find out," Scotty said, licking his fingers after finishing his sandwich. He paused when he noticed Greg starting to walk over to them, and quickly stood to his feet. "Break time's over, lads."

"All right, BACK to work!" Greg hollered at them, cracking the belt in his hand against the concrete gravel as he waved at the boys. "Get back at it, now! That east side'd better be done before tonight, or EVERY one of you's goin' hungry!"

"A moment," Lesh'ar murmured to Spock as the boys turned to go back to the wall, taking the younger Vulcan's hands in his and swiftly re-tying the cloth around Spock's hands, before releasing him. "All right. Go on. And tell me if it starts to hurt."

"Thank you," Spock said quietly, giving him a quick look of gratitude before going over to where his unfinished pile of rocks stood.

Leonard watched him go, shaking his head as Lesh'ar came to join him in the adhesive mixing. "I see you've taken a liking to Spock."

"I was merely concerned for the wellbeing of his hands," Lesh'ar said, sparing him a glance as he delved his long hands into the mud-and-concrete mixture, beginning to mix it manually. "The hands of our kind are very sensitive and easily damaged. He should not be lifting those rocks." He glanced up at the human boy. "...nor should you be working that muscle in your shoulder when it is so close to tearing."

"You see x-rays or somethin'?" Leonard asked sardonically.

"No. The skin is red beside the shoulder muscles, and paler on top," Lesh'ar pointed out, his eyes back on the adhesive he was mixing. "It means the muscle is very strained, and possibly close to tearing. It must be very painful."

Leonard looked up at him with a frown. "Where the hell did you learn that?"

"It's an acquired fact," Lesh'ar said simply, before straightening up with a handful of the mixed material and slopped it into a bucket near the basin. "I will help you bandage it tonight when we are finished."

"Thanks but no thanks," Leonard said, taking his as well and dumping it out. "It's not a good idea to let them know if something's wrong."

"They will know in a much more regrettable way if you don't bandage it," Lesh'ar said, picking up more of the mix. "I understand your concern, though. Even so, there are some injuries that cannot be ignored."

"I got more bricks, Bones," Jim suddenly appeared behind them, clearly out of breath as he rested the wheelbarrow down by the other two boys, straightening his back with a slight grimace. "...is the bucket full?"

"Yeah," Leonard said, reaching down and picking it up. "Here Jimmy, you mix for a while. I'll take the bucket down." He started going down the hill before looking back at him. "And bend with your knees. You're hurting your back."

"Right," Jim said, quickly adjusting his stance to obey the other boy, while getting to work unloading some of the bricks.

Another hour or two slipped by without any of the boys managing to keep track of the time. Finally, though, after what seemed like days, Greg bellowed for all of them to drop what they were doing and come inside to clean up. Evening had approached, and it was time to get ready for that night's guests.

"You two're up tonight for service," He said, shoving shirts at Jim and Spock as they entered the house. Only the boys who were serving that night were allowed to wear shirts. "Clean up and get upstairs in ten minutes. TEN MINUTES. Got it?"

Spock nodded, turning as he slowly slipped the shirt over his head.

Leonard turned to help Jim with his. "Now you be careful tonight, alright?"