Author's Note: Well...Um. Hmm. Blame the fourth Amour Sucré manga volume for this one. I was inspired by la airplane scenario and urge to vent and whatnot. So I wrote this bland, dull, disjointed piece of mediocre crap. No intended ships really, but if you see something and wanna take it that way, be my guest.
It probably comes as no surprise that I'm a fan of cannibalism. And now I've finally found a good excuse to use it, so there's cannibalism in this. If that's something that's too out there or alarming for you at all, you probably do not want to read this. Likewise, there is force-feeding. Gore too, but that's probably a given. Shall I mention regurgitation? And...Hm, nope, that's about it e3e
Revolving door POV, kinda. Also, I am aware that it's uncommon for fossa to scavenge. Blame it on my craptastic mediocrity.
It does not happen fast. There is no sudden plummet out of the sky amidst the short-lived ear knife of shredding metal. There is no instantaneous fall wherein she blacks out, no protection from the horror salvaged by unconsciousness.
Melody is jolted awake by turbulence that has her teeth rattling in her skull, her eyes popping and the seatbelt biting into her with burning fangs just to keep her body from rocketing forward. Iris gasps next to her but neither of them have time to process anything.
The oxygen masks shoot out of the compartments, banging into each other as the plane looses power. Melody numbly snatches one and pulls it over her face and processing that it's available to her is enough.
They're going to crash.
She steals rapid, panicked breathes as the aircraft shakes. Her classmates are screaming, shouting, there's chaos on the intercom. There is no pause of stillness and when the plummet comes it is not sudden, it is excruciatingly eternal. Melody's head cracks back against the seat, lungs shriveling as she exhausts the oxygen, the wind razing her skin.
A window breaks, its suction threatening to tear her from seat and she shuts her eyes tight, tight, tight because she can't bear witness to her own demise. Somewhere in the back of her mind where stable sentences can be strung together and rationality can play a role, she prays they'll land in the ocean.
They don't.
Metal screeches, erupting anguish in all listening ears as the airplane plunges nose first. The impact into the island is massive, jarring. Things breaking, people breaking, land upturning and sparks flying.
Melody doesn't dare open her eyes during the entire ordeal. And when it's over she can't; there's a spear of shrapnel impaling her straight through the heart.
Screaming is the immediate response of the survivors. A chorus of pained cries and stupefied 'oh my gods' and shrill screeches of horror, realization exploding in sawtoothed volumes. One scream stands out amongst the dissonant harmony, this sound-barrier breaking, hysteric, wreaked utterance. A sound whipped out of some alien beast with glass for vocal chords.
It's that scream and a hot lance of pain throttling his arm that brings Alexy to consciousness. His eyelids break apart and he blearily scrutinizes the disaster around him. There are a lot of clothes, oddly. It's the clothes he focuses on first. Strewn everywhere along with other luggage. Pieces of metal and bodies of students join the medley.
That barbaric wail is being wrung out of a prone Nathaniel, writhing adjacent to the colossal wreckage that was the upper half of the airplane. His leg is a twisted, deplorable plight of bone splintering stridently through flesh, muscles and raw meat yawning in a big bloody mouth. Lysander rapidly limps over to him, apparently intent on helping although there's no way in hell he can fix that.
Trepidation and terror burst in Alexy's stomach and claw up his throat, leaving his mouth in a pitiful note. His eyes slowly lower to the throbbing bane that resides where his shoulder should. Alexy is by no means a medical professional, but it's clearly dislocated. It's a sunken knoll below the socket, clavicle bulging out where his joint should slope smoothly.
He winces at the sight of it and this incites another whirlpool of pain that dries his mouth and stirs bonfires behind his eyes. He bites his lip and sits up anyway, overestimating how prepared he is for the encore that follows. A strangled whimper pushes forth from his lips before he can swallow it back.
"Hey, Alexy, hey!" Armin's voice teems with as much relief as he feels as the crow-haired teen knees aside a suitcase and breaches the gap between them. He kneels down and puts a hand on Alexy's uninjured shoulder, breathing out through his nose.
"You okay?"
"I don't know...I think. Are you?" Alexy peers at him intently.
"Feels like some broken ribs, which is really okay here, yeah." Armin bobs his head in a nod, pale as powdered sugar and clearly in some kind of shock. Nathaniel pointedly screams again but it's weaker somehow, resigned.
Beyond the haphazard luggage and mangled half of an aircraft are towering palm trees, exotic verdure and tropical flowers. Alexy stands up on trembling legs and draws in air that tastes of blood and fumes. He looks around searchingly, spots a shellshocked Castiel propping himself up against a tree, a ruby-splashed Lynn bawling with her face in her hands. The first remains he sees are Capucine's.
He recognizes her by her shoes, thulian-pink flats. The shoes are all he has to go on to recognize her because from the knees up she is pinned beneath a wedge of debris that once helped make up the winglet. There's no body under there, just a slurry crimson custard.
Violette whimpers softly, a minute mouse sound deafened by all the screams and shouts and sobs. The sky is above her, vast and cloudless and maya blue, so bright she can barely look at it. Around her is the havoc and inside is a snowstorm of instinctual panic. She tries to sit up and there is no pain, but something far, far worse. She cannot feel her legs.
A wail as grating and shrill as fingernails on a chalkboard dislodges itself from her gummy throat. She's snatched by hysteria as she desperately tries again and again to move her numb appendages, chest heaving with hyperventilation.
Initially, Kim feels a sense of separation from all of this. She sits up against a tattered mass of broken aircraft and gazes blankly at the scene immediately before her; Amber shrieking at Peggy's head. Something sharp decapitated her, the rest of her body is strapped in the seat. The seat has capsized and from Kim's angle, Peggy's rigid knees are bent over the bottom of it, one sock up her shin while the other falls around her ankle. If Kim lifts her chin just so, she can see Peggy's underwear.
Past her is the bigger picture, oodles of clothes and debris and classmates in a swivet. She should be too, but she feels remote from it all. Like she's not here, like this isn't even happening. Not even watching a movie, but dreaming about watching a movie. Violette's cries yank her out this stupor, harried and sandwiched between her stertorous gasps.
Kim gets up and scrambles over. Her dread is a slow, steady thing, rising like a hot air balloon. "Violette?"
Violette's face is contorted, eyes wild as they glaze over Kim's features. She frantically gropes for her hand and Kim gives it, squeezing tight.
"Ican'tfeelmylegs!" it all comes out in one word, one rushed puff of horror.
"It's temporary," blurts Kim. She doesn't even know if such a thing is possible, but comforting Violette is her main objective even as the reality of what the smaller teen's just said has her spine going ramrod. "Shh, shh. Breathe, Violette, it's only temporary..."
The commotion fades tentatively, like a it's a phase completed and now it's time to move onto the next step.
Although Lynn has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, she's never been shy of taking leadership either. Leadership is something this situation desperately calls for, so she slowly removes her slick hands from her crying face and chokes back her blubbering sobs.
"We should do something," she declares in a voice that fractures, despair thinly veiled by urgency. "We should find something to signal help with or a first aid kit..."
"If there was a working radio, it was in there." Castiel nods at what stands left of the cockpit, a clusterfuck of machinery and shattered glass. If she looks closely she can see the dismembered hand of the pilot, laying palm flat, slack fingers splayed in a puddle of red. "There might be a flare gun around here somewhere." He gestures vaguely at their surroundings.
"Are you hurt?" Rosalya bleakly asks her, kneeled beside an unresponsive Li, her own gaze alarmingly unfocused.
"N-No," Lynn answers, feeling like she just took a punch to the gut as her heart gets caught in her throat. "This blood is K-Kentin's. He was sitting next to me when— and he—" Tears reemerge, sobs clogging up her words.
Kentin's corpse is just five meters beyond her, eyes staring sightlessly at the coconut-dotted treetops, torso unzipped by a disk of metal. His intestines spill out of him in a cold, slimy rope. Insects are already beginning to flitter inside the cavity to feast.
Alexy's knees hit the ground.
"Who else do we definitively know is gone?" Charlotte, on the other side of Li, lets go of Amber's hand and stands up, lips taut in a grim line. "We should establish this now."
The carcasses in plain view need no mention.
"Melody." Castiel points up. She's still in the seat and the seat is skewered upon a skeletally exotic tree. Blood still drips down the shrapnel in her chest, soundlessly pitter-pattering to the ground below. Iris's seat is still attached but empty.
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They split themselves up into jobs in an effort to maintain a semblance of control and have a distraction from the tragedy. Those who can do so, anyway. Nathaniel's stuck where he is and a saucer-eyed Amber sticks close to him. Alexy's a whimpering ball of grief beside Kentin's lifeless form. Armin sits on Kentin's other side, feet almost touching the fly-speckled pile of intestines. He holds Kentin's hand, but his expression is naught; his eyes are totally checked out and his mind is somewhere else entirely.
Kim won't leave the paralyzed Violette's side and upon closer inspection, both of Li's arms are broken in addition to her tearful catatonia. No skin is broken, but luxated bones create knots beneath plum-purple bruises. She's crying and crying, but it's all silent and she won't snap out of it. Charlotte tries several times to bring her to cognizance, but it doesn't work, so she binds the diagonal slash on her own arm with Rosalya's kindly offered tie and gets to the task of looking for the flare gun that may be a hidden salvation in the disaster.
Rosalya works through the fogginess and nausea that envelop her to help. She's uncoordinated and her stomach swirls invidiously, but like hell she's going to let herself die here. No way. She's going to get back to Leigh and sue the shit out of the airline company. She grits her teeth and bears these goals in mind as she begins digging through a mountain of clothes.
Castiel leaves the site with Lysander and Lynn. They're going to look for a road, or water, or other people, or anything. Anything they can find.
"You sure you're okay for this?" Castiel asks before they set off, carefully eyeing the lurch-and-drag of Lysander's step.
"It's not serious enough to keep me from helping," Lysander assures quietly.
Castiel decides to believe him for now.
"Where do you think we are?" Lynn asks as she pushes back the poster-sized leaf in her path.
It's not possible for Castiel to find Kentin's blood dried on her clothes anything but unnerving. "Bumfuck nowhere, probably."
"I hope we'll find a road soon." She's terrified. Every quivering step forward, every weirdly high syllable that skitters from her lips, every glossy glance over her shoulder speaks of fear. She's probably only talking in a poor attempt to keep herself from succumbing to it.
He's terrified too, but his terror is pinned to the bald face of a bitter outcome. He surmises finding a road is unlikely enough, and finding someone on it to help is twice as unlikely.
Their trek is stiflingly humid. Breathing is taking in pockets of oven heat. Sweat beads their skin and pools in the crevices of their features, fastens their clothes to their flesh like glue. The forest is abound with life, birds cawing foreign calls and large insects fluttering past. After a couple hours that feel like a couple days, they still haven't found anything.
Lysander stumbles. He breaks the fall on his palms, jaw going rigid. He's as silent as a stiff breeze but his arms shake and he doesn't get back up.
"Are you alright?" Lynn looks back, teeth snagging at her lip.
"I think...There's something stuck in me," he says, steady tone crumbling to well hidden vulnerability. He raises his head, face drawn, eyes fraught. "Castiel, would you look?"
"Yeah." Castiel takes his arm, helps him stand.
Lysander is stoic but his grip is an iron coil. There are minute tremors in his fingers and Castiel knows this is not good. Lysander shrugs his tailcoat down and directs his gaze to a dark stain on the side of his thigh. Castiel swallows, pulse adopting a staccato rhythm.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm gonna need you to drop your pants." He tries to perpetuate some levity, feigning a grin as eels gnaw holes in his gut.
"Right," murmurs Lysander. His fingers fumble with the belt though, wan cheeks coloring as his eyes flicker to something over Castiel's shoulder.
Castiel glances back, puzzled. Then he sees it's not a something, it's the someone.
"Lynn, turn around," he demands.
Confusion starts to crinkle her brow, then understanding sparks in her eyes and she obediently wheels. Lysander offers him a grateful look and gets his pants down, a droplet of perspiration falling from the tip of his nose. Something snaps in Castiel's head like the crack of the gunshot before a race, gasp catching in his throat. The wound in Lysander's thigh is about the size of the ring of a jar, a misshapen suction cup, ruby latticing fissures of pink meat that spiderweb a punctured nucleus.
Castiel swipes his tongue over his lips and kneels, pressing his fingers to the surrounding unbroken flesh and tugging outwardly as charily as possible. Lysander shudders and tips forward, clasping Castiel's shoulders for support. A spurt of blood oozes in unison and yes, Castiel can see the glint of a foreign object that it trails around. What, he can't tell. It's in there deep.
He blows a low whistle, brows and chest knitting as he meets Lysander's gaze. "Yeah, there's something stuck in there."
"I thought so." Lysander purses his lips and closes his eyes for a moment. His cheeks dimple where he's biting them on the inside and Castiel knows he's trying to keep himself collected. "Can you get it out?"
"Shit, I don't know. It's deep, Lysander. Real deep. I don't think I should just go digging around in there." He looks again to the wound, narrows his eyes at the open scoop of meat, the hem of blood smears. "You shouldn't be walking like this."
Lysander looks caught between argument and weariness. He dips his head and lets go of Castiel's shoulders, reaching for his belt.
"Hang on, I'm serious." Castiel grabs a swatch of his sleeve. "We have no idea how long we're going to be wandering around until we find something. You should go back."
He shakes his head, reproached almost. "It's fine. I'm fine."
Like hell he's fine. He's as ashen as a winter sky and sweating bullets, but for once Castiel isn't going to try to convince him otherwise. He doesn't want to be apart from Lysander for one second, not out here when their classmates are dead or dying and they're all god knows where. In a selfish, warped way, he's downright relieved Lysander is going to continue to drag himself on.
If worse comes to worst, he'll just have to carry him. He can't be that heavy.
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Armin starts coughing up blood. Alexy doesn't realize it at first. On some level he knows he should be helping Charlotte and Rosalya, but he neglects this in the face of mourning. Sorrow stretches from one side of his ribcage to the other as coarse as steel wool. Grief is a blockage in his throat and bitter on his tongue and there's this childish voice in the back of his head that cries, it isn't fair, this didn't have to happen.
He touches Kentin's face, skims his cheek, brushes his fingers over his forehead. The skin is unpleasantly cool and kind of damp, has a give like an overripe pear. Alexy draws his hand back and clamps it over his mouth, not sure if he's choking back vomit or a sob as heat sears behind his eyeballs. Kentin's eyes are partially open, crescent slivers of clouded emerald fixed on nothing.
It looks like he died squinting and Alexy wonders if maybe he did. In fact the last thing Kentin told Alexy before they took their respective seats was that he took his contacts out, hoping to get some sleep before the flight ended. And Alexy, Alexy doesn't remember for the life of him what his reply was. It was something as mundane and forgettable as parsley on a dinner plate.
If Alexy had known that was going to be the last time, he would've said something meaningful, maybe even confessed that it wasn't only friendship he felt for Kentin. At any rate he would've at least remembered what he said.
An ugly beetle the size of a marble lands on the lip of the slash across Kentin's torso and starts to creep inside. Warbling in disgust, Alexy swats it away. His hand skims the open flesh, clots of lumpy drying blood coming off on his palm. Almost frantically he wipes it off on the ground and that's when Armin coughs. He registers the noise absently and continues scrubbing his hand on the ground, unable to get rid of the emetic moist sensation.
Armin coughs again, a thick, wet sound. Alexy assumes he's throwing up and pointedly keeps his gaze averted because he's already queasy and he knows watching his brother throw up will revolt him the rest of the way there.
Then it happens again and Alexy glances over only to see brilliant crimson seeping out of his twin's pallid fingers. Armin removes his hands from his mouth in a sedated motion and there are glistening plashes in his palms, streaks down his chin. Alexy gasps and leaps to his feet, lightning bolts of pain racking his dislocated shoulder as he scurries over and puts a hand to the small of Armin's back.
Armin slumps into him with another tussive hack and crimson spittle flies from lips. Fear swarms in Alexy like bees about a honeypot and he doesn't even realize he's screeching for help until his voice cracks. Rosalya and Charlotte are there in a flash and even Kim spares her post beside Violette to come see what she can do.
"He was okay!" Alexy exclaims shrilly, cerise depths popping in his skull. "He was okay and now he's coughing blood!"
"M'still okay," Armin gets out, the words butchered by the liquid crimson spilling freely from his mouth. It's the most alert he's been in over an hour, but that's not saying a damn thing. He's as white as milk, brows twisted like he just drank a carton of spoiled milk, eyes home to a faraway varnish.
"We found a bottle of water," Rosalya murmurs gently, as though talking to a kid who's just scraped their knee. "We could give it to him." Because there is nothing she can do; there is nothing any of them can do.
"No," Charlotte says firmly. "We're saving that for someone it will help."
"We have to do something," Kim snaps at her. "He could be dying!"
Alexy squawks out a strangled noise at the word 'dying.'
"And just what exactly do you think we can do to help him?" Charlotte asks icily.
Kim stops, answerless. She abruptly shuts her mouth and drops down beside the twins, gently taking Armin's shoulders and helping Alexy keep him steady. He coughs up another gob of blood that sprays between his fingers and Rosalya picks up a miscellaneous shirt from the ground. He coughs one last time before the fit abates and she uses it to wipe off as much blood as she can.
"Thanks," Armin mumbles fuzzily, dazed and seemingly uncomprehending of how serious what just happened was.
"No problem," Rosalya opens his hand and puts the shirt in his grasp, closing his fingers around it for him. "You keep that in case you need it again."
Alexy is stricken, bottom lip sucked between his teeth and eyes wide enough to house Jupiter. He looks about to either scream his lungs out or burst into tears at any second. If that's indeed the case, he's interrupted by the return of the trio who went out searching.
"Did you find the flare gun?" asks Lynn with bated breath, all her hope hinging on it.
"Not yet," Charlotte answers. She doesn't bothering asking if they found anything, it's apparent from their expressions that they haven't. She simply wheels and returns searching for the flare gun.
"We didn't find shit," Castiel announces anyway. He rakes a hand through his sweat-streaked hair and then notices Armin's state. There is a pregnant pause. "Is he okay?"
"Better than he was," replies Kim. It's a lie (becoming quite the fabulist, isn't she?) but it's preferable to setting off the ticking time bomb that is Alexy or scaring Armin, if such a thing as the latter is possible right now.
"Lys-Baby, are you okay?" Rosalya stands and turns her focus on him despite the ardent spike of pain between her own temples. He's ghastly with exhaustion, leaning on Castiel and a red scrap of fabric ripped from Castiel's shirt is wrapped around his thigh.
"Comparatively, yes," Lysander says bleakly, eyes briefly flickering to Nathaniel.
"There's a piece of metal or somethin' in his leg," Castiel tells her bluntly and Rosalya is immediately displeased.
"That is not fine! Go sit down!"
Lysander doesn't argue. Rosalya isn't someone you can win an argument with and anyhow, fatigue is starting to get the best of him. His wound dully burns, hot wax pulsing with every movement, and his muscles feel like they're shriveling up inside him. He bows his head and peels himself from Castiel's side. Castiel lightly touches his shoulder, a question without words; do you need help?
Not quite, so he spares a rictus that says as much and limps over to ease himself down beside Violette. It's a grueling task that sends igneous lances of pain all through his body, echoing from the object he was unable to extract from his flesh. It's maddening having something in there and though Lysander can't feel it per se, he can feel the intrusion, this weight that doesn't belong pinching his torn meat.
He glances to Violette and for one breathtaking, alarming moment thinks she is dead. Then he sees the subtle rise and fall of her chest. He also sees the sheeny tear tracks dried on her cheeks.
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Hours crawl by and the sunk sinks from view. The gibbous moon casts a silvery glow from its zenith in the blackened sky and it's too dark to continue looking for the flare gun. Another wave of commotion much like the one that followed the crash ripples through the band of them, but it's tired. They're tired too and the panic is almost a setting to be accustomed to.
The temperature has cooled slightly with the disappearance of the sun but it's still uncomfortably humid. But for better or worse, sleep falls upon most of them at some point during the stretch of night. Nathaniel doesn't get a wink of it. The pain in his massacred limb is unrelenting, so strong it's blinding. His open nerves scream in agony and it takes every single grain of self-control he has not to scream with them.
It's fire, pure fire scalding him every moment, sending jolts up his spine. And Nathaniel, well he used to think he knew what pain was. He's never been more wrong about anything in his life. This, this is torture when he's shivering and sweating ice even in this stifling heat, when the pieces of dead classmates are beginning to permeate noxious decay, when he knows he could be dying because he's in the middle of nowhere with exposed bone and muscle and the only thing he can actually think about is how fucking bad this fucking hurts.
Amber sleeps beside him fitfully. She gets up every fifteen minutes or so, reassesses the nightmare they're in, looks between him and the vapid Li before laying down again. He thinks he expected her to blank out too, though she didn't. She's been gnawing a hole in her lip and looking to him with those fearful, pitying eyes she first showed him when he took the fall for breaking their mother's vase back when she was ten and hadn't showed him since.
She's up when the growling starts. It's soft at first, a low rumbling sound. Ignorable like chewed gum on the sidewalk. She can almost pretend it's her imagination acting up. There are little grunts in between the growling, quiet snuffling and an even fainter noise most comparable to the smacking of lips. Amber keeps her eyes shut and hopes for sleep to come back and shield her with its empty black.
The growling changes to hissing, vicious hissing, deep-throated snarls and most striking, a sort of guttural honking. Her eyes snap open without her permission and wildly pinpoint the weasel like animals fighting. For a heartbeat she is somewhat comforted, the moonlight isn't the best lighting but it's enough for her to see that they are not large. Then she realizes that they are fighting over Capucine's legs.
Needle teeth bare silver in the moonlight as the beasts snap at each other, vying to sink them into the meat. Amber's stomach roils. Her eyes sting and her head snaps forward as vomit upsurges in her throat. Its reek assails her nostrils, the acrid burn thick on her tongue. But it's been over twelve hours since they crashed. Twelve hours and Amber knows, she knows she cannot afford to loose this little bit of sustenance.
Weeping, she lowers herself onto her hands and begins to lick the vile puddle back up. She laps at it like a kitten laps at cream, feeling that her veins have turned to wriggling earthworms and like she is violating herself by stooping this low. The constituents are mostly bile but there are a few sloppy chunks that must've been the egg salad she had on the plane. Its odious even as she pinches her nose closed, the foul taste coating the inside of her mouth and sliding down her throat like sick oil.
Alexy is roused from his nonsensical dream of storks and sugary cotton candy melting in his mouth by all the fracas. The dream flees and he's treated to the sight of mongoose like animals devouring Kentin's corpse. He hears an audible crack and thump as something breaks and dies inside him and gelid horror seeps into its vacancy.
There is a part of him that's desperately furious, a part that wants to get up and fight them off of Kentin, but he is fatigued. His eyelids are being stepped on by elephants and white-hot pain detonates in his shoulder upon even the slightest of movement. He prays that Kentin will forgive him and faces away with teeth in his tongue.
Day 1:
Armin is dead in the morning. Rosalya is bestirred by Alexy's shattered pleading for him to 'wake up', to 'please, please, please wake up.' She glances over and watches him cling to his twin's slack hand and she isn't surprised in the least. He'd been coughing blood for fuck's sake, she was moderately amazed that he hadn't dropped dead right then and there. Rosalya was no doctor but she'd heard doing that was a sign of internal damage; far from promising.
Did anyone else die?
Kim's talking to Violette in hushed tones. Amber's got her arm around the shoulders of Li, who Rosalya would assume dead if not for Amber's outward calamity. Nathaniel is still alive by some means, mouth fixed in a taut grimace. Lynn wakes up just as Rosalya's gaze passes over her and she stumbles over to Alexy's side. Charlotte is nowhere in sight.
Lysander shifts next to her, exhaling a taut sigh. Castiel dozes still with his head on his shoulder. They're propped up against the plane's body because it feels safer that way, somehow. The feeling is probably a lie and Rosalya feels certain about this as she hears something rummaging inside. She goes stiff, alarmed until Lysander puts a hand on her shoulder.
"It's just Charlotte," he says. "She's still looking for the flare gun."
"It'd sure be nice if one of you would help me," she tartly cuts in, voice slightly muffled by the cylindric walls.
"I will," snorts Rosalya. She's tempted to grill Charlotte for the attitude, but there's no room for fighting here so she snuffs out the urge. She unkinks her sore limbs and forces herself to a rickety stand. Her headache is almost worse than it was, tinting her periphery vision in gray, her belly sloshing. It doesn't help that the putrid stench of decay is growing thicker in the air as the sweltering heat speeds up the process, suffusing her nose and studding her throat.
"Wait, Rosa..."
"Hm?"
"Would it be alright if I had some of the water you found?"
"Of course, Lys-Baby." Rosalya nods and looks back to the body of the plane. "Charlotte, where's the water?"
A hand appears out of a missing window, the bottle in its grasp. "Be frugal."
"Now would hardly be the time for me to be careless with it." Lysander narrows his eyes and nods gratefully as Rosalya passes him the bottle. She winds her way around to get into the husk of the aircraft and he opens it up. He swills less than a capful, barely enough to moisten his tongue.
After a short mental debate on whether to let Castiel sleep or not, he nudges him awake. It's probably safer to nudge him awake.
Castiel lifts his head and blearily blinks the sleep away. He starts to say something and stops when he registers Alexy's piteous wails.
"Armin's dead," Lysander clarifies quietly.
Castiel's eyes widen and then he slumps back, closing them. "We should get him out of here. Him and the others."
"Out of here? What do—"
"Last night those were otters or something. I dunno, I'm not a freaking zoologist. But they were small. What these bodies attract tonight might not be as small. Anyhow, they're starting to reek." Castiel's eyes open again and he looks to Lysander, stone-faced.
Words die on Lysander's tongue, his insides constricting. 'Tonight.'
Castiel's already in the mindset that they're not getting out of here, that no one will come for them, that tonight will be another night out in the open in a place they don't know where animals they don't know of will gorge upon dead friends. Dead friends they're going to join soon if this is true because there is one water bottle and no food and extreme heat, all the right conditions for this to be a perilous obstacle course with a noose waiting at the finish line.
Lysander is no foolhardy idealist but he doesn't want to believe that. Not yet, not until he has to.
"Do you want some water?" He offers the bottle.
"Not yet."
"Alright. I'll see if Nathaniel wants some." The poor guy could certainly use it and Lysander does not pity others lightly. But as Lysander braces himself for an excruciating stand, Castiel snatches the bottle from him.
"I'll do it. You just stay put." His charcoal orbs lower to the makeshift bandage made of his own shirt and linger there, glinting with worry.
"I'm fine," Lysander assures halfheartedly, knowing he won't be heeded and leaning toward not believing it himself. He would never outright lie though, he's simply utilizing the word 'fine' loosely and mentally reminding himself that he could've been Nathaniel or Violette, or Armin.
Castiel grunts and stands up, rather unwillingly shuffling across the clearing and crouching next to Nathaniel. He looks worse than he did before if that's even possible, eyes unusually liquid, vividly bright, skin flushed, hair matted and greased. It's impossible not to stare at the adversity from shin to knee of bone projecting out in a splintered point, tendons crisscrossing and meat swelling in the valley between intact flesh.
"Here," he mutters gruffly and holds out the bottle.
Nathaniel looks to him, the water, and gives a sigh that sounds more like a pant. This is no olive branch, this is sympathy. His pride sizzles, incensed. He finds himself wishing not for the first time that he would've just been killed. Being dead has to be preferable to the ceaseless anguish that pulsates from his leg to his fingernails, this burgeoning ill sensation in his gut, this itch of uselessness, and the slime blanketed onto his skin from pitying gazes.
He's parched. His tongue is a floppy uselessly hindrance in his mouth and his throat is daubed with salt. However, he still has his pride, so he shakes his head.
"Try to give some to Alexy. He's probably dehydrated himself with crying."
Castiel slides a glance over to the aforementioned blue-haired teen. He's gone quiet and Lynn is rubbing his back. Castiel hesitates...He's never been one to know how to comfort someone and though he doesn't exactly have to do that, there's still an etiquette to approaching a guy who's lost his best friend and his brother within hours of each other and he's not sure he knows that etiquette.
He supposes he'll just have to use Lynn as a buffer and gets up.
Kim feels torn. She hears Rosalya and Charlotte rifling around for the flare gun and she should help, she wants to help, but she also doesn't want to leave Violette. She lies beside her and clasps her hand tight, trying to be her rock even as her own stomach grumbles and aches with hunger.
"It's not temporary is it, Kim?" Violette asks in a whisper, ashen embers quietly crackling and dying out in her eyes.
"It's only been a day," Kim insists with a plastic smile that hurts her teeth. "It probably takes longer for the feeling to come back. Do you want some water?" She's quick as a whip to change the subject. Violette is usually the one who paints pretty pictures for her, but Kim can try even if she doesn't have a brush.
"Mhm..."
"Alright." Kim gives her hand a gentle squeeze and sits up. "Hey, Castiel!"
He glances, gives a nod in understanding. Lynn returns the bottle to him, her opposite hand still rubbing Alexy's back in circles. Castiel then makes his way over and Kim helps Violette sit up. She edges her shoulder behind Violette's as a support and wraps an arm around her waist to keep her steady as her wan fingers grasp the bottle.
"Thanks," she murmurs. "I promise I'll only sip a little." She unscrews the cap and brings it to her lips.
"Don't thank me," Castiel deadpans. "I wasn't the one who found it."
He looks like hell. Not that any of them look or smell particularly good when they've been stranded out here for god knows how long, but he really looks bad. Like a lone wolf that got clipped by a truck.
"You want some, Kim?" Violette turns her head a little to peek at her.
Kim looks at the bottle. It's relatively full, only missing down to the line of the wrapper. But they're going to need to make it last, however long they're going to be out here. Hopefully it won't be much longer because there's an intrinsic fear pocketed behind the knowledge of their situation; it's only a matter of time before they die or go crazy.
"No, that's alright."
Violette frowns like she thinks Kim is being unreasonable but she does not argue. She does give the bottle back to Castiel.
He rolls it in his palms for a moment, restlessly and tentative before his eyes finally settle on Kim's. "Will you help me with something?"
"With what?" She's not leaving Violette if it's something stupid.
"Moving them." He jerks his thumb toward Peggy's corpse, socks still askew.
Kim shudders in disgust, her stomach churning and hunger temporarily erased. "Move them where?"
"As far as we can them get back there." Castiel gestures to the start of the path he'd explored with Lynn and Lysander the day before.
"Okay." Kim helps Violette lay back down, pointedly averting the horrified look she gives her.
Peggy's head is gone, taken by a scavenger of some sort. Her body remains though bitten and they pick her up with the seat. It's easier to grab the seat than it is to grab her clammy limbs. Tiny black insects flourish in the jellylike postmortem bite wounds, nibbling at the dead flesh and burrowing into the clefts of meat. Viscous fluids and insects alike pour from the rotten lesion that caps the ragged stump of her neck.
Threads of muscle and veins overhang the bone and flap persistently as they haul her up and carry her off, a quiet wet sound. The odor is so strong their eyes water and if the taste of tears weren't so salty, Kim would suggest they lick them off each other's faces if only to stave off inevitable dehydration that much longer.
Kentin is next. Unlike with Peggy they have no choice but to grab right onto the body. It's spongey almost. Cold. Anemic. It feels incredibly unnatural even though one could hardly stick that label on death. His infested intestines drag on the ground and his eyes are still open just a crack, sunken and scary and silently judging them.
Day 2:
Before sunrise Nathaniel starts screaming and won't stop. Lynn is curled around Alexy, holding him protectively and careful of his injury, when the screams rip her fourth from her state. She wasn't sleeping, wasn't dozing even really, but she was as relaxed as it was possible to be. She untangles herself from him and bolts upright, eyes zapping to Nathaniel.
She can't see what's wrong but something has to be wrong because he's bleating like a lamb at the slaughter. She scrambles over with the intent to soothe, puts a hand on his back and stops, a scream of her own wrenching its way out of her throat. There are roaches the size of her pinky crawling in his leg, over the bone, literally eating him alive. Their antennae twitch as they go about their way, apparently unbothered by the screaming.
Amber is there in the next second, petrified beyond belief. Lynn wants to slap her across the face and shout at her to help him, he's her brother, damn it, but she can't even move herself. There are at least six roaches and looking at them anywhere could make her shriek and cover her mouth with her hands, looking at them crawl around Nathaniel's gaping wound disturbs her down to the core.
Charlotte appears suddenly and she gingerly pushes Amber aside to evaluate the situation.
"Shut him up, Lynn," she orders.
"S-Shut him up? B-But—"
"Cover his mouth," she spits impatiently, caramel gaze flashing in the pale light of daybreak.
Lynn clamps her hands over Nathaniel's mouth, smothering his screams just as Charlotte's hands slither into the bugs' banquet. Nathaniel bites down reflexively and Lynn doesn't blame him as his teeth painfully catch the inside of her palm.
Charlotte digs the bugs out manually. They writhe in her grasp and make clicking noises and hissing noises that admittedly chill her past the skin. She steels herself to it and chucks them into the black of the undergrowth. Picking them up is sickening and if Amber didn't care so much about Nathaniel, she wouldn't be doing this. It might not amount to anything anyway because the heat of his skin is obscene. Reddened sacs of pus burst and drain onto her fingers as she paws around for the six-legged intruders.
The one at the keen harpoon-point of his broken bone is hissing at her fiercely, probably going to bite so she kills it before it can. She smashes it with her fist which must be beyond agonizing for Nathaniel. It crunches, black and green guts spilling out. She swipes them away and discards its carcass as she did the rest of them and is done. Her hands are slick with the bug guts, suppuration and blood and she wrinkles her nose as she wipes it all off on the ground.
Lynn is probably the stupidest person Charlotte has ever met but she at least has enough sense to release Nathaniel's mouth afterward. His panting is wheezy, his eyes an animalistic wild, the eyes of a mustang when wranglers have it cornered. Charlotte does not expect or receive a thank you.
She takes her shirt off. It's too goddamn hot out here to have it on anyway and they have bigger problems than anyone being offended or flustered by the sight of her bra. She folds the shirt and presses it to Nathaniel's wound. He flinches but he doesn't fight it like she thought he might.
"Make sure nothing else gets in," she's not sure if she's telling him or Amber, but it must be him because he takes the initiative. His fingers skim hers as he takes the shirt and god, they're scalding. She doesn't bring it up. Probably for Amber's sake.
Unbeknownst to them, Iris is still alive.
Iris hears all this screaming like she's heard the other screaming and sobbing for the past two days. It's distant to her ears, but still very much there and it is these sounds she clings to.
She lies half in and half out of a gully, mere meters away from a river she wants to follow but is unable. One of her knees is a nest of stinging nettles whenever she tries to move it and her opposite leg has no obvious damage, but hurts nearly as bad. She's missing her left hand, belt a hasty tourniquet around her wrist.
She would cry out and has cried out, but they're all scarcely audible mewls even to her own ears. She doesn't know how (the pads of her fingers never brush cuts no matter how many times she checks) but her throat is damaged. It feels like she's swallowed a pitcher of rusty nails and the metallic taste of blood lingers at the base of her tongue. She blacks out from time to time so she has no clue how many days it's been and that scares her even more than the isolation.
Rosalya finally finds the flare gun around noon. She thinks she does anyway. She finds this object among the scraps of metal beneath the nose of the plane that looks like a gun, but florescent orange colored. She calls Castiel over to be sure. He strides over with a look like she's wasting his time and when he sees what she's found, he bursts out laughing.
It's rough hoarse laughter that turns into dry coughing and she'd be tempted to offer him some of the remaining water if he wasn't being such a dick about her mistake. Honestly, how is she automatically supposed to know what a flare gun looks like?
With everything that's happened her very last nerve is fried and she's about to rip him a new one when,
"Way to go, Rosa. I can't believe you actually found it."
She stops, brows raising. "This is it? Really?"
"Do you know of anything else that looks like a gun that they would actually let on an airplane?" He scoffs, smirking wryly.
She picks it up and smacks him in the arm, mingled looks of wariness and relief on everyone's faces. Everyone who's aware, anyway. Li's still zoned out on some planet or another. Nathaniel seems like he's slipping, but he still looks over. And Alexy...Alexy just looks dead.
"Now we need someone to signal," breathes Charlotte. She tips her head back, loosened ponytail holder falling the rest of the way out and eyes on the sky like she's waiting for something.
She is. They all are.
This is the first part of the joke, the punchline's on the horizon.
Day 3:
"It's not temporary, Kim," Violette asserts quietly. Smoke swirls in her gaze and gauzes the endlessness that always sweeps Kim away.
"No, it's not," Kim agrees apologetically. Something crushes her heart and she tries to mentally sweep the dust into a pan. "I'm sorry."
"I know." Violette's smile is a fragile thing, more for her own benefit.
"But it'll be okay. When we get back you can decorate your wheelchair however you want and I'll push everywhere you wanna go." She tries to smile to promise her this, this and that they will get back, never mind that they haven't seen any sign of hope since the recovery of the flare gun.
Violette squeezes her hand and nuzzles Kim's shoulder with her nose and Kim can hear the rumble of her hollow stomach.
Lysander lets his head sag on Castiel's shoulder, sapped of every morsel of energy. It's torridly hot. The sun beats down mercilessly and the ceaseless humidity is broiling. The throbbing of his thigh is constant, though it's at least a pain he's grown accustomed to. Thirst is the burden he shares with everyone, his throat sandpaper, his tongue cotton.
The water bottle is halfway gone.
Hunger is also becoming a plague of import. It pangs Lysander with growls and groans, but he counts himself lucky, comparatively. Li still hasn't spoken a word since the crash. Nathaniel's barely conscious, head in Amber's lap, leg infected and fever burning him up like a piece of paper. Alexy's still interacting at least, but he seems scrambled. He's searching through the wreckage for something that he's claimed to be "more water" and "first aid kit" on two different occasions so he's probably just losing it.
"You think there's anything to smoke out here?" Castiel asks, dry voiced and various levels of done.
"You're thinking about that in a time like this?"
"What else is there to think about?"
Fair enough.
"I've got a lighter," continues Castiel. "I was thinking about rolling some of that weird purple plant over there just to see if something happens."
"I wouldn't recommend that," Lysander replies earnestly.
"Eh, we're probably gonna die out here anyway. Might as well try to get stoned."
Lynn finds a piece of debris so sharp that it cuts her right off the bat when she carelessly picks it up. A little gasp leaves her cracked, flaking lips and she drops it instantly. A superficial line of blood wells up in her palm and she licks it away. Her tongue is so desiccated that doing so hurts. She rips the hem of her skirt off and uses it as both a bandage and a means to pick up the debris.
"What's that?" Rosalya asks her from where she sits bonelessly against the trunk of a palm tree, amber eyes half-lidded with exhaustion.
"A piece of the plane. It's as sharp as a knife, so maybe we can use it as one." She's beginning to think of hunting. She's so, so hungry it feels like her stomach is chewing on itself.
Rosalya perks up slightly, genuine interest instead of conversing for the sake of conversing. "We could cut the coconuts..."
The coconuts! Lynn hadn't thought of those! She looks up to the top of the tree above Rosalya, dotted with coconuts but well over five times her own height.
"Only how are we going to get up there?"
"We could try doing it cheerleader style," Rosalya suggests. "We could all stack on top of each other and the person at the top could grab onto the tree and climb the rest of the way up."
It's all they've got, so they give it a go. Lysander offers to help, but neither Rosalya nor Castiel will hear of it, so the formation ends with Castiel and Kim on the bottom, Rosalya and Charlotte above them, then Amber with Lynn on her shoulders. Lynn actually does manage to wrap her limbs around the tree and shimmy up. But malnutrition and thirst have left her weak.
She trembles as she tries, bark scraping her skin and head swimming dizzily. She slips and falls, air knocked out of her lungs as she hits the ground with a pitiful thump. She whines softly as the plan disperses and it's Kim who first asks if she's okay.
"I'm sorry," she whimpers. She doesn't know if she's okay. She hurts, but she's been hurting and this might just be the pain of failure.
"It's alright," replies Kim. "You tried."
"That weapon of yours might be useful for something else later," Charlotte tells her.
Lynn is unused to praise from Charlotte of all people and feels moderately comforted as she curls in on herself and prays she can find the will to get back up later.
Shortly before sunset a reedy Alexy announces that he's going to take a walk. He is swallowed up by the vegetation and does not return by the time night falls.
Day 4:
Nathaniel's probably gonna kick the bucket any minute now. He's practically comatose as is, occasionally mumbles incoherent nonsense at nothing and won't take any drop of the water supply that Charlotte is willing to offer him. If he weren't Amber's brother Rosalya is fairly sure Charlotte wouldn't bother offering him any at all, the scaly bitch.
Though Rosalya can't say she'd exactly be willing to offer up the precious mere centimeters of water they have left to someone who's got one foot in the grave already herself. She's not even sure how keen she is on letting Violette have some, Violette who isn't dying any more than she is, but who can't exactly contribute to any plan of action they may formulate. However, she isn't coldhearted enough to voice this callous thought, nor is she stupid enough to pick a fight with Kim when they all need each other as much as they ever have.
Speaking of that, Alexy hasn't come back. Even if he wasn't much help to begin with she feels a bit betrayed by him and a bit pissed at herself for letting him wander off. She's inclined to think he's dead. Either done in by dehydration, or eaten by a jaguar or something of the like.
Did jaguars eat people in real life?
Were there even jaguars here?
Just where is here, anyway?
Are they on some uncharted island? Lost in the densest part of a forest humankind didn't dare to touch? It would probably explain why they haven't been found yet, or even seen a plane or helicopter to alert with the flare gun. She exhales a sigh at the thoughts and closes her eyes.
"Rosa." Castiel's voice interrupts her restful reverie, but she ignores him. Her insides are caked with sand and she's never been so enervated in her life. She needs a minute, just a minute...
"Rosa!" It's panicky this time, unusually squawky. She relents and opens her eyes, looking over. Gentleness is not in Castiel's nature, but he's practically holding Lysander, arms careful like he's cupping an origami swan. Her heart sinks. Whatever energy she has left is put into scrambling over on her hands and knees.
Lysander is stark white, his chest fluttering like a hummingbird's wings.
"He's got a fever." Never has she ever seen Castiel look so scared. "His heart is going crazy fast too."
"Lys-baby?" She narrows her eyes and worriedly puts a hand to his cheek. It's like touching flame and her own blood runs cold.
"I'm sorry," murmurs Lysander, bleary-eyed and uncomfortable.
"Sorry? Hush, don't be sorry." Rosalya rises on her knees and kisses the top of his head. "I'll get you some water."
Castiel's staring at her pleadingly, pleading for her to help him, to fix this. Rosalya feels like she needs to fix this but she can't. What she can do is retrieve the water bottle. She grits her teeth and stands on legs that feel like frosted gelatin, staggering over to Charlotte and holding out an expectant hand.
"The water."
Charlotte lifts her head, greasy caramel tresses slipping back over her shoulders. Her bra is a moderate, wired scrap of black fabric and Rosalya can see a trickle of sweat roll down the underside of her breast.
"There's barely any left," is her bleak reply, fingers tightening possessively around the plastic bottle.
"Hand it over," Rosalya hisses. "Lysander's in rough shape."
"That's even less of a reason to give it to him then." Charlotte's glare is gunmetal.
"Says the person who tried to give some to Nathaniel! The guy's practically a fucking corpse!"
"Minus the fact he didn't actually take any. I wouldn't have offered it if I'd been under the impression he was able." Her gaze flits because Amber is only a few short lengths away, gaping at her with the expression of one who's just taken a bullet to the chest. "I'm sorry, Amber. Really."
Rosalya attacks her. Her strength is summoned by a surge of self-preservation because her body recognizes already what her mind is starting to. This is it, this is survival time. Selfishness is only natural, something to depend on, because sharing and cooperation haven't saved anybody so far. They're the wild animals now and the water is the slab of meat and there's not nearly enough to go around.
Charlotte kicks out at Rosalya's legs and clutches the bottle for dear life as hands encircle her throat, squeezing mercilessly. She will kill her, of that Charlotte is certain and so she drops the bottle. Rosalya snatches it up and returns to her post. It's like a flip is switched, she's gentle as an ewe's fleece as she guides the rim of the bottle to Lysander's lips.
Either nature is showing mercy or laughing at them, because it rains later in the evening for a full forty minutes straight and the bottle is filled once more.
Day 5:
They're starting to turn on each other like Kim knew they would. She is not exempt from this. She feels no amount of trust for anyone here but Violette and now that yesterday's rainfall has pumped a few ounces of vitality back into her (even if she is starving) she's tempted to pick Violette up and just take off. But she doesn't know if moving her like that would add to the damage that's already done.
Kim also doesn't know what could be out there, what could be waiting for them. Alexy never came back and people don't just disappear for no reason.
"We should eat Nathaniel," suggests Charlotte.
Initially Kim thinks she's joking, but Charlotte has never been the joking type and never will be if she makes it out of this alive.
"He's dying anyway," she continues when all eyes on on her, reactions conflicting form person to person. "And we're all starving."
She's dead serious. Ice freezes between the rungs of Kim's spine. "You're crazy!"
Charlotte's gaze meets her own unperturbed. "No, I'm rational. Do you want to die, Kim? Do you want Violette to die?"
This shuts Kim right up. It's true. They can only go so long without food and it's already been five days. She glances to Nathaniel's prone form, veneered with sweat and breathing shallowly. He's been out for two days straight, his leg is a swollen beet of a limb and gives off a faint, fetid reek not unlike the way the carcasses smelled. He is already dying...
"No!" Amber makes a hurt, frightened noise, aquamarine eyes harrowed as they dart to Charlotte. "Y-You're supposed to be my friend!"
"I am your friend!" exclaims Charlotte. "I want you to live! He clearly isn't going to!"
"But we can't kill him," Lysander breaks in, a sort of mortification twisting his sickly features. "That's barbaric! You're all talking about devouring someone you see every day! I know perfectly well that there are some situations where hard decisions have to be made, but we aren't there yet. There's plenty of vegetation here."
"It could be poisonous," replies Charlotte. "Lynn, you kept that sharp debris didn't you?"
"I d-did," Lynn whispers, pine eyes as round as the moon. She's holding it even now, with a scrap of her ripped beige skirt.
"Alright. We'll use it to cut him." Charlotte seizes the makeshift knife from her grasp with no resistance and Amber simply erupts into tears.
"We're going to eat him raw?" Kim finds herself asking, this alien feeling of morbid finality settling into her bones. Violette's nails bite into the underside of her hand, but she makes no sound.
"Castiel has a lighter," says Rosalya.
"Rosa..." Lysander stares at her like he doesn't recognize her.
"You do?" Charlotte turns to him, brow raised for clarification.
"Yeah," mutters Castiel, tone of lack of sleep and too much dreaming.
"Then I guess he won't be that raw...You should be the one to kill him."
"W-What!? Nah, this was your idea!"
"But you hate him. It'll be easier for you than me or anyone else here," insists Charlotte. "Besides, you're stronger than I am so it'll be easier for you to break his neck. Don't you think we should break his neck? It'll be more humane than cutting his throat."
Castiel swallows, barbs in his throat and claws in his chest. Earlier he'd resigned himself to the knowledge that they were going to die out here. He was pretty pissed, kind of terrified, but he didn't think there was anything he could do to change that. But he didn't think it would take this long either, that malnutrition would be as painful as it is, that it would be this slow and grueling. Now Lysander's sick and probably going to die before he does, and he's going to have to watch and that...That is petrifying.
He looks at Nathaniel. He's heard horror stories before about groups of people in whatever disasters who resorted to cannibalism. Charlotte seems pretty hellbent on turning their disaster into one of those horror stories. If he doesn't break Nathaniel's neck, she'll probably go ahead and slit his throat anyway, right? And even if she doesn't do that, if they all abandon this entire savage idea, he's still going to die, right? In fact, if Castiel killed Nathaniel now it'd just be more like finishing what nature started.
And he's hungry. He's so, so desperately hungry.
"Hold Amber back."
"Castiel? You can't be serious!" Lysander gawks at him
Charlotte yanks Amber away from her brother and Amber screams piercingly, shrill enough to shatter crystal. She fights back, writhing and thrusting and tossing her head back, screams crumbling into sobs as Charlotte pins her to the ground. She never stops struggling and Charlotte barks for Lynn to help, which she does in delayed motions. She sits on her legs.
Castiel gets up and crosses the minute gap, heart hammering against his ribs. Nathaniel's flesh is exceedingly hot. He feels like he's touching a cooked steak and the visual image is all too frighteningly fitting for the reason he's doing this. His grip is unsteady, unsure. Nathaniel's sweat makes it slippery, even. For a hot second Castiel knows he can't do this and then there's a sickening crunch and he's done it anyway.
He rapidly crabs backward, stomach curdling, regret as pungent as the tide of nausea that has him turning to vomit. There's nothing inside to puke up of course, so it's just a series of painful dry retching.
Amber's crying stops suddenly. She goes limp beneath Charlotte and Lynn, lips parted soundlessly.
For a full minute no one does anything at all.
It's naturally Charlotte who takes action. She climbs off of Amber and holds out her hand, eyes on Castiel. "The lighter?"
He shakily fishes it out of his pocket and hands it over to her. Drenched with perspiration, Nathaniel's clothes don't catch. She takes the razored metal and uses it to shear his clothes off, teeth embedded in her lip. She's sorry. She doesn't want to do this really, she just doesn't think they have a choice. They're wasting away and running out of options.
She flicks the tiny flame up and treats it directly to his skin, moist but burning even though it doesn't actually catch fire. Charlotte doesn't expect it to. The smell is acrid, disagreeable, floats into her nose and thickens to a fog inside her lungs. She might choke on it if she doesn't choke on him first. Once a decent strip of meat along his side is cooked to a rusty red she removes the flame. The sharp piece of plane doesn't make the best knife, but it penetrates Nathaniel's dead flesh easily enough.
Charlotte cuts the burned strip out and puts the lighter and blade down. Whoever wants to can go next, she's done for now. The meat singes her tongue and has a texture like undercooked pork but if it actually has a taste, she misses this entirely. For the first time in days something substantial slides down her throat and sits warm in her belly.
Rosalya goes next. Her skin crawls with revolt but survival is important to her. She closes her eyes and pretends she's not chewing on her classmate, the boy she'd teased about a female model's waistline or helped keep up with modern fashion. She thinks about Leigh. She thinks about his scent of lavender and fresh linens. She irresistibly thinks about how broken up he'll be if she lets his brother die.
"Lysander," she breathes as she opens her eyes. "Eat."
"I..." He shakes his head, alabaster cheeks touched with an unhealthy flush and appalled expression still etched in his face. "I can't do that."
Rosalya can't blame him but she can't let him die either. She turns to Castiel. She thinks she can see him trembling and he's staring at his hands, green as the underbelly of a dead fish. Saying his name doesn't get his attention so she slaps him instead.
Castiel raises his head slowly. "What?"
"Hold him down," she says resolutely, nodding to Lysander. "I'm gonna feed him."
Lysander gasps a strained sound and tries to stand. The effort accumulates in a yelp of pain and a clumsy slip back to the ground.
Castiel looks torn. "I can't just—"
"You'll let him die?" She knows this will work because he won't and if he will, then she'll just get Kim to hold Lysander down.
Castiel swallows and uneasily shifts his gaze to Lysander. "Look, you need to get something in you. You're already not doing so hot and Nat's dead anyway."
"It's possible for the average person to survive for three weeks without food, it hasn't been three weeks, I won't..." Lysander just shakes his head again and looks to Nathaniel's remains, now being picked at by Kim and a crying Lynn.
"I'm sorry." It emotionally takes very much effort and physically very little effort for Castiel to hold Lysander down by the shoulders, straddling his waist as Rosalya slices off a nice chunk of Nathaniel's flesh. She scoots around, knees brushing his neck as she forcibly pries his jaws apart and snakes her hand into his mouth. It's pithy on the inside, moist but not as moist as she thinks it should be. His teeth graze her arm as she forces the meat down the back of his throat. She pushes it in and rubs his neck with her opposite hand until he automatically swallows it.
She yanks her hand out and continues the process as she deems necessary and Lysander is a quaking, disturbed mess beneath her but it's preferable to him being a carcass.
Kim cuts off a hot triangle of meat from the flat of Nathaniel's stomach and stares at Violette solemnly. "I don't want to have to do that to you."
Violette bites her lip and bobs her head up and down, eyes squeezed tightly shut. "You won't."
"Good," Kim replies softly. "Be careful now, it's really chewy."
Violette opens her mouth and Kim places the meat on her tongue, keenly aware of the blood that seeps into the swirls of her fingerprints. Thankfully she's too distracted to be disgusted with herself.
Charlotte is positive she's going to have to force feed Amber as well but to her immense surprise she doesn't. Amber sits up, still as silent as a cobweb in the corner, and quietly yanks off a piece of previously cooked skin that's only hanging on by sinewy threads. She pops it in her mouth and starts crying again as she chews, hating herself until she swallows and then despising herself after.
Li is still alive by some means, in this catatonic stupor of hers. Charlotte wonders if maybe that's what's kept her alive. At any rate there's no way around force feeding her if she wants to keep it that way. Charlotte burns and cuts another square just over Nathaniel's navel and spends a few minutes chewing it into a baby-food mash consistency. She firmly opens Li's mouth and puts her own overtop, spitting the meal inside to feed her mama bird style.
Day 6:
A fisherman finds Iris half-dead whilst taking a trip down the river. He subsequently recuses her and finds Alexy not fifteen minutes later. He's naturally in a rush to get them both much needed medical attention but can't ignore the others Alexy tells him of. He leaves them both in the boat and follows Alexy's instructions to the crash site.
What he finds isn't pretty.
I apologize for this lengthy essay of crap. Address my award for being the crappiest person ever to hell e_e'
Oh, and though this is irrelevant and I can't see it mattering in any way shape or form, this is a direct continuation of that other fic with a lot of devouring in it.