This is a birthday fic for the wonderful Mekaneko on tumblr! There will be one, maybe two more chapters to this little ficlet
Apocalypse Blind: Part One
Ash and rusted blood, rotted flesh smelling of the most disgusting decomposition; the burnt out little town still on fire in places and cracking around the edges in others. Just moving among the rubble was indication enough to tell Ivan just what had transpired in the little town. A rebel must have come and dropped off a little present, one of those new bombs with the virus infused into a gas…
Things obviously got ugly from there on.
Picking his way through the streets proved little difficulty for the seasoned veteran of this pathetic excuse of a war, ears pricked and alert for any out of place noise or movement. Detecting something not far off when he rounded a corner, Ivan fell back against a wall to collect himself, checking his pockets and belts for weapons. Lifting up his pistol and pipe, he checked the surrounding area one more time before slowly shifting around the corner.
The noise was unlike a zombie's, not quite the guttural wailing and agonized moans of mutilated logic… Rather, it held a quieter tone, more like a sniveling child crying for its mother. Ivan hoped his prayer was heard as he steeled himself.
He really, really hated kids.
"W-who's there!" a startled, weak, and undeniably frightened voice cried out from inside one of the buildings, making Ivan pause only slightly to check his surroundings one more time. There was some scuffling, fumbling curses when the person inside scratched against the rubble. "M-Matt? Mom? That you?"
Well, this was interesting.
Ivan ducked behind a doorway as a staggering form tripped and stumbled towards the light, fresh scrapes oozing blood down his legs and arms, his cheeks equally stained with the rusty scarlet liquid. But something was off about his movements… The way he clung and felt along the deteriorating walls, the way he carefully moved one foot in front of the other to feel and touch every rock he passed….
"Th-this isn't funny, c-come out-" the child, for that was truly what he was, whimpered and pleaded to the air, eventually coming to a jerking stop. Ivan watched the thoughts race through his mind, evident in the way his breathing became erratic and his knees trembled and knocked together. "Sh-shit, no, f-fuck-!"
When the teen tried to run back into the safety of the broken down building, Ivan knew he had to act. Damn kid wasn't even watching where he was going!
"Gotcha!" Ivan shouted when the flailing and panicking teen tripped and almost went face first onto the floor, grabbing him up before the poor kid could get even more torn up by the glass and rocks littering the area. Instantly the kid screamed and thrashed even more, fighting valiantly against Ivan until the man brutally shoved him into the wall.
"P-please don't hurt me! I-I swear I'm tainted! You'll get the virus!" the teen sobbed viciously, fat tears streaking down his face and gathering the blood in their tracks, those empty and scarred blue eyes dull and completely missing Ivan's face. It slowly dawned on the man as the child's please became increasingly desperate.
"You're blind…" he wondered aloud, amazed that such a disabled human had managed to live so long in this horrible world. The stark image of a single flower blooming amongst the rubble and destruction pushed its way into Ivan's head, that dream he had had so many times before… Could it be?
"Y-you can tell? O-oh god, please don't hurt me, please, please, the others already- I-I'm soiled, it won't be any good for you, a-and the virus will get you too!" the terrified boy continued rambling, shaking violently when Ivan let go of his shoulders in favor of just staring at him. He smelled disgusting, but not any more than Ivan figured he himself smelled.
It's not like there were any showers in an apocalypse like this one.
"You are alone?" he questioned, looking around when he figured the teen was of no threat to him in this state. That, admittedly, was a small mistake.
The child rushed him suddenly, head butting him to the ground and then scrambling away, going as fast as a blinded person possibly could. Ivan grunted and sat up, only momentarily winded when he was caught off guard. "I have a bomb!" the teenager shrieked, seeming to be able to hear when Ivan picked himself up from the ground. "I'll blow this whole place up and if that doesn't kill you, the virus will!"
"Calm down, I do not wish to hurt you," Ivan informed him with a cool, collected voice, not having time to entertain the violent fantasies of a child. He looked the boy's bloody and scratched up body, realising the blood on his face must have come from an attack somewhere near his eyes…. "I am putting my weapons on the ground. Can you hear them?"
He made sure to rattle the pipe a little on the floor, making enough of a clattering to be a small comfort to his new acquaintance of sorts. The teen froze up, turning his head slightly so his not-quite-as-bloodied ear was facing towards Ivan. "N-no tricks now! I mean it! I'll pop this bomb if you're lying!"
"I am approaching you," Ivan warned him calmly, and then took slow, deliberate steps, watching the boy's rabbit-like instincts twitch and urge for him to escape. But something obviously clicked in the boy's head that he wouldn't be able to no matter what he did. Ivan's smile stretched across his face despite himself. "I am going to touch your shoulders. I promise not to hurt you."
"O-okay," the boy trembled, a conflicted, terrified expression flitting across his face before he steeled himself and waited. Sensing his chance, Ivan carefully laid his hands on the teen's form, gripping him and feeling the starved muscles under his tattered and dirty clothes. The boy shifted uncomfortably.
"You are alone?" Ivan repeated, glancing over his face and noting that it was simply covered in dry blood, without any fresh injuries. The teen hesitated for a good long while, worrying his chapped lips with his not-so-white teeth before eventually caving in.
"M-my family said they'd be back with food and supplies… I haven't seen them in…" the drawn out, torturous silence to follow told Ivan everything he needed to know. He gripped Alfred's shoulders and then carefully ruffled his matted and dirty hair. The comforting action suddenly made the boy resume his earlier bawling and sniffling, until the teen just pressed his face into Ivan's chest and sobbed violently.
[-]
"I-Ivan," the teen, Ivan finding out later that his name was Alfred, whimpered, groping about in the morning light from where he had fallen asleep amongst the rubble. Watching him lazily from his own corner of the broken down building, Ivan wondered if maybe he should just ignore the doomed child and leave. Alfred's head turned and he went deathly still before letting out an anxious little laugh, shifting to crawl on the ground. "I can hear you breathing- come on, where'd you go?"
"Here," Ivan whispered, catching Alfred's hand before the stupid kid could cut it on a shard of glass. Beaming with happiness, Alfred practically flung himself at his companion, the movement incredibly awkward as Alfred's hands mapped out Ivan's features and his body draped over Ivan's lap. It was always amusing to Ivan whenever the ditsy brat wriggled on top of him.
"Yeesh, leavin' me hanging again…" Alfred whined, cupping Ivan's face in his hands and stroking his cheeks gently, as if trying to imagine how it would look if he could see. The Russian let him do as he pleased, not having anything better to do until a gurgling noise bubbled up from Alfred's stomach. With an expression of startled shame and guilty hopefulness, Alfred glanced up at Ivan again, or at least, in his general location. "Do you have any more of that food from yesterday?"
It only took a quick check through Ivan's bag before they discovered just how much his supply had dwindled. "I apologize-" Ivan started before catching Alfred's dejected look. He obviously had heard all of the rustling and gotten hopeful for it, but now knew he wouldn't be getting any more.
"N-nah, man, it's cool," Alfred laughed awkwardly, carefully working himself out of Ivan's lap and back onto the floor, slowly sweeping his hands across it to make sure he wasn't going to hit anything too sharp. Just watching the pitiful child was enough to make Ivan hate himself for coming to this forsaken town in the first place. "I get it. Gotta take care of yourself and no one else, right? Survival of the fittest!"
"Do not be silly," Ivan chastised, breaking one of his last remaining loaves of stale bread in half and passing it over. He held it in the air for a long moment until realizing Alfred couldn't see his offering. Cursing under his breath in his native language, he broke off a smaller piece and caught Alfred's chin in his gloved hands. "Open your mouth."
The teen hesitated on instinct, and then did as ordered, his tongue arched and wiggling slightly as Alfred tried to figure out just what Ivan was doing. "Mph-!" he yelped when Ivan shoved the piece into his mouth, catching him off guard. But when he figured out what happened, he happily suckled on the bread in his mouth, catching Ivan's fingers and working those too.
"Stop that," the man grunted, pulling his hands away when Alfred laughed mockingly at him. The teen chuckled and cautiously felt around the ground once more, working his way between Ivan's invitingly spread legs and leaning against his strong chest.
"What, you don't like it when little ol' me blows on your fingers?" he teased, turning slightly so his eyes stared blankly in Ivan's general direction. Ivan smirked, smacking Alfred's cheek lightly but suddenly enough to startle the teen.
"Not if you will not blow in other places," he threatened with a smirk that was more heard than seen, and Alfred hurriedly got the message, shutting himself up and sitting up a little straighter. Ivan chuckled and the cute reaction, tearing off some more of his bread. "Open your mouth. You are still hungry, da?"
"Yeah… I'm sorry, I shouldn't be eating your food," he mumbled dumbly, eyes watering to the point Ivan had to brush them away before they could spill onto his bread. Alfred snuggled into his chest and groped at his shirt, clenching it in his fist and holding on desperately.
"Just eat," Ivan chuckled, stuffing Alfred's face before the boy could say any other stupid things.
[-]
"Careful," Ivan warned, helping guide Alfred into the light of day, making sure he lifted his feet high enough to climb over some of the larger debris. It was quite a struggle to convince Alfred to wander out with him, but they could both agree that they just couldn't stay here any longer.
"I-Ivan, I don't- I can't do this," Alfred struggled to admit, arms hugging and clutching at Ivan's sleeved arm as he shakily put one foot in front of the other, in unfamiliar territory now and terrified out of his mind. "I'm scared, can we please just go back inside?"
"You know we can not," Ivan murmured comfortingly, but took a break for Alfred's sanity, the two of them just standing in the middle of the abandoned city, having hardly gotten thirty feet from the entrance of Alfred's previous sanctuary. The teen shook violently and worried the material of Ivan's clothes for a long moment, eventually tugging on them back in the direction they came. Ivan sighed. "If I leave you, you will starve. And I will not leave you."
Mustering up courage he honestly didn't have, Alfred turned his face a little more towards Ivan's voice, mapping out the general area he would be in before nodding. "O-okay. I'm so sorry… Do you have any shoes or something? You can't risk watching my feet the whole time, right?" he tried out a useless little laugh, feeling pathetic and horrible for leaching off of someone so kind. Ivan regarded his expression for a short little while and then searched through his pack.
"You live in this town, da?" he asked when his attempt came up fruitless, his pack holding little more than the barest of essentials. Alfred nodded again, shuffling his scraped and dirty feet a little closer to Ivan for whatever extra protection that would provide. "Is there a store that would sell such things?"
"Yeah, actually," Alfred murmured after a long moment, smiling cheerily and swaying into Ivan's body. He just could never get over how comforting it was to stand next to another living, breathing human being without having to worry about self-defense or zombie plagues. "There's a mall off of Sixth Street that had a shoe store, but I don't know if anything is left there since that's where the first bombs blew up."
"Would you be able to lead me there?" Ivan asked before shifting slightly out of Alfred's grip. The teen almost broke down again, until Ivan's hands were fitting around his knees and lifting him up, until the teen draped limply over Ivan's shoulders in a comfortable piggy back ride.
Leave me a rating 1(bad)-5(awesome) if you enjoyed! I'm going to try having the next bit out later this week!