AN: I'm garbage and I kinda regret not doing this kind of thing sooner, but since I'm in the mood and the ideas are flowing, lets do this thing! This was inspired by the song Limelight by Boyinaband, so listen to that because it's rad. Depending on feedback I may continue this but for now it's a standalone thing. Enjoy!
Of all the perils that had plagued them on this now two day long mess, Steve Burnside never once thought that freezing to death would be their downfall. They were in the clear...how could this have happened?
They had made it past all the zombies, mutants, even that creep Alfred. They had beaten him, taken the snowmobile and were on their way to...Damnit, Claire knew where they were going. She had the map, she was driving, but something happened...The snowmobile had flipped and had been crushed by...something.
Claire...Where was she? Steve tried to turn to face the drivers side, but he couldn't? There was something pinning him down, keeping him from even craning his head around. What was-...
Oh...
Thats where the wheels went...
The massive wheels and treads were crushing his torso, and he was becoming painfully aware of how hard it was to breath. With the position he was in, he couldn't lift it up. Not alone at least.
"Steve?!"
He knew that voice. It sounded like it was underwater but it was unmistakable. He would have called out to its owner, but all that came out of his mouth as a pained breath. However, that seemed to be enough, seeing as his queen in shining armor was pushing through debris and snowdrifts to get to him.
"Oh Jesus-..." she gasped when she saw him pinned against what had been the ceiling of the snowmobile, "J-..hang on I'm gonna get you out of here, Steve. Okay? Just hang in there..."
There was a chunk of metal, a chunk piece, sticking out from under the machinery. It was perfect to act as leverage. Claire shuffled over as far as she could in the tight space, breathlessly telling him that he was going to make it out of here. Feebly, he tried to push the treads up with what little strength he had. It didn't budge much, but it gave him a bit more room to breath.
"Cl-..." he tried to say.
"S-shush." Claire put a hand over his mouth to shut him up, "S-s-save you're breath..."
She grunted and put all her weight onto the piece of metal. The treads raised up with dangerous sounding creaks and groans, but he was able to take in a huge gulp of frigid air.
"Move, move!" Claire shouted at him, her entire body shuddering.
Steve shimmied out from under the treads, then immediately flipped over to his hands and knees and vomited what little he had eaten on the sea plane into the snow, followed by an intense coughing fit as his body recovered from nearly suffocating. Claire didn't seem to be doing any better, seeing as she was struggling to even stand upright. He only thought that she was just tired from lifting the treads until he saw little red drops on the snow...
"We...we need to move.." She muttered, leaning down to help him up.
Thats when he noticed the blood running down her arm, the dark stains on her red vest, and the huge piece of glass sticking out of her shoulder...
She must have taken not of his horrified expression..., "I'll be fine, but we're going to freeze to death if we don't move."
"Y-you're not fine!" he choked back, "There's-s-s a huge piece of glass in your s-s-s..." He couldn't even finish his sentence with his teeth clacking together.
"The Aus-s-strailian outpost w-will help! We are not dying out here now get up!"
Claire was practically screaming at him over the howling winds, and like the moron he was, he just sat there with his mouth open. He had never seen this kind of desperation in Claire all those times they had faced death on Rockfort and in the Antarctic facility. Then again...there had always been a clear way out. Shoot the zombie, burn the mutants, solve the puzzle. The only way out of this was to walk across the Antarctic tundra in the middle of a snowstorm with no proper clothing. Not to mention Claire was bleeding badly, and he probably had broken ribs or a punctured lung. Or both if he was really unlucky.
Steve reluctantly allowed himself to be supported by Claire, for now at least. As she stated, she could walk much better than he could. Even still, their pace was little more than a shuffle when pitted against snow and wind. They huddled close together, so close that their clouds of pained breaths mingled together. He could feel her shivering violently against him with each step. For Steve though, each breath caused painful tremors to shoot through his body. He definitely had some broken ribs...
They walked in silence for what seemed like hours, and only a faint silhouette could be seen on the horizon. Steve could only hope that it was the outpost that Claire had mentioned...
Claire...
She was dragging her feet pretty badly now. It was only now that it occurred to Steve that she had been loosing a lot of blood. Looking back at their trail it was easy to see just how bad she was doing. Her eyelids drooped, breathing shallow and ragged, and soft pink lips were now blue and quivering with each breath. And even still, she was supporting his weight, forcing herself to move forward. She knew that if they stopped, they would die.
And thats when she collapsed onto the snow a shivering mess. She was having a much harder time breathing now, her face was twisted with pain and silent screams. She had tears in her eyes and frozen trails down her cheeks.
Steve fell to his knees beside her, frantically trying to find a way to help. In the gentlest way possible, he pulled her freezing body close to his, and leaned over her as if to shield her from the winds with his own body.
"I gotcha." he whispered to her, "I'm not going anywhere...I gotcha..."
She tried to form words through clenched teeth, "St-...can't..w-w-...my leg..."
Steve's gaze drifted down to her legs. At first it looked like everything was normal, but he did notice that her left leg looked...off. It was bent in a weird way, definitely broken. And...she had been walking on it, and carrying his sorry ass across the snow. So much for her knight in shining armor...
He pulled off his thin prisoner jacket and tried to drape it around Claire, but she shoved it away with a quivering hand.
"You'll f-freeze..."
"So will you if you keep being stubborn."
He wrapped the thin jacket around her shivering body, and with what little strength he had he lifted her up. His entire torso screamed in pain, sending searing waves of agony though him that sent him back down to his knees. Despite this, he mustered up the strength to push onward, shuffling on his knees at first. Once his body became used to holding Claire, he planted his boot in the snow, and forced himself to stand. Steve refused to fall again, not when they had only two options. Move forward, or die. If he didn't make himself move, Claire would die.
It started slowly, one foot deliberately and carefully placed in front of the other. He moved slower than those zombies they had taken down together, but he was moving. The whole top of his body was bent over top of hers, not just because of the pain. He wanted to at least try to keep her warm. Hopefully, he would loose feeling in his sides before he passed out from the pain. His legs were already lost, and his arms were well on their way.
Steve kept walking, and eventually the faint outline of the outpost formed into a more defined building. They were so close! Safety was right in front of them, they had beaten all the dangers and the struggled and now they were going to make it!
"Claire, look! There's the outpost!" he cheered excitedly.
...Why didn't she answer?
"Claire?.." Steve gave her a small shake.
Oh no...She wasn't moving... Her eyes were closed, jaw slacked, and body limp...
"No no no Claire!"
She was just passed out...right? Yeah..yeah that was it! She had been loosing a lot of blood, and not to mention walking on a broken leg. She probably just passed out from the pain.
..Then why couldn't he see her breath...
"Claire come on...Wake up! We're almost there!" he pleaded with her to no avail.
"Claire please..." His eyes welled up and a thick lump formed in his throat, "Don't do this, please...we're so close..."
Steve sunk to his knees, clutching her limp body close to his in a last desperate attempt to keep her warm.
"You can't die now...Th-this isn't how things end...please..."
Tears spilled down his cheeks onto the limp girl in his arms. He choked out small garbled sobs as he clung to Claire's body. The violent sobs and tremors wracked his body more than any cold induced shivering could. He just sat there in the snow, holding her body as tightly as his frozen limbs would allow.
"Please...No...It doesn't end like this...please...Claire..."
He put his forehead against hers, "I-...Goddamnit I love you!"
A small, faint, warm breeze hit his neck, jolting him out of his grief. There was a pause, and then another one, just the same as before. It was slow, and sparse, but rhythmic and consistent. He looked down at Claire and saw her chapped blue lips quivering slightly. She was breathing. She was alive.
Steve was never a religious man, but he thanked every higher power he could remember off the top of his head that Claire was alive. He laughed and he cried at he same time and he knew that Claire would make fun of the noises he was making if she could hear them. But he didn't care. She was alive.
He rose to his feet again with renewed strength and pushed onward. They were going to live.
They were only a half a mile away from the outpost when that changed to "she" was going to live.
The cold had taken its toll on Steve. He had lost feeling in his entire body, it felt like. His hold on the barely breathing Claire was slipping. His vision blurred and exhaustion threatened to over take him. But he had to keep going.
He had to.
He had to...
He had to rest...
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