Author's Note: I'm not particularly sure where this came from, I already got other shit I'm supposed to be doing...Even so, when it initially came, it was larger and more elaborate and everybody was getting whacked. Now it's just this piece of cryptic, cardboard crap. I mean, it was crap before but at least it was coherent-ish crap. Now it's senseless.

Probably better that way, I guess. I got other shit to be doing.

"Castiel? You there?" There is a deep, searing burn as Kentin climbs up to his hands and knees— well, knee. The other leg won't cooperate, feels like it's full of scorching coals and shoots stars across his sightline whenever he tries to get it to.

"Yup," comes the reply.

It's faint and it's battered, but it's a reply and Kentin rejoices like he's just struck gold because he was fairly sure he wasn't going to get one at all.

"Okay...Well you're gonna have to tell me where there is because I can't see. My glasses broke." He's legally blind without them. Everything is a massive blur unless it's right in front of his face.

"I can't really see either," Castiel grunts back irritably. "There's blood in my eye."

"You hurt?"

"Just some scratches." Which means they're anything but. "You?"

"Just bumps and bruises." Which means broken bones, blood squirting out of him every time he moves.

They've failed.

"This sucks," Castiel echoes what his thoughts amount to.

"Yeah...Keep talking, okay?" Because even if Kentin's vision is shit, his ears are pretty functional.

"About what?"

"Anything." Kentin starts dragging himself on his hands in the direction of Castiel's voice, feeling like he's going through a shredder with every dizzying pull.

"We fucked up."

I know, Kentin thinks but can't reply, pain shriveling up his vocal cords and pulling a thin, nearly inaudible mewl out of him instead. The rubble tears his gloves apart, breaks his nails. Little specks of glass and gravel puncture his skin.

"I wish I had a cigarette."

"I wish I had a cookie." Kentin keeps hauling himself along, his palms rubbed raw and blood leaking faster around the spear of splintery wood that impales him slightly above the hip. His insides are glazed in thorns.

"I'm sorry I ate your last one," Castiel tells him genuinely.

"It's okay." Kentin's arms tremble and give way on him. He hits the debris face first.

"What was that? You alright?"

For a moment, Ken can't answer. He's on fire, he's being stabbed, ground into the dirt by invisible hands. There's blood in his mouth and the futility of it all under his skin, the ashes of the world on his back.

"Ken!?" Something scraps where Castiel is, rustles.

"I'm fine." Kentin shakily picks himself up again. "Just stay where you are...I'm almost over there." The world is blurry, pain makes it even blurrier, but what he can see is drab. Wilted ghosts of gray, washed-out brown, wet newsprint sky. But then there's a blob that stands out, the black and red blob that lets him know he isn't just having auditory hallucinations.

Kentin starts dragging himself again, head swimming and fierce pain flaring hotter as he refuses to let his wobbling limbs buckle. He's running on the fumes of willpower alone. It's not much, but its enough to bring him there, enough to get right up to that blob and confirm that that's,

Too much red. It's not just his hair.

"Here."

"Hey."

And then there's fingers in his own hair, patting and ruffling. He lets himself go limp on the heap of destruction and closes his eyes. He wishes he could pretend Castiel's touch was Alexy's, but he can't. It's too rough, brusque where Alexy was attentive and gentle. He wishes it was Alexy he was stuck with now, or Armin, or Candy.

"But it could be worse," he mumbles aloud without exactly realizing it. "At least you're not Laeti."

"Shut up. You look like crap."

"Yeah? Well you have sticky fingers." He knows it's not sweat and it's not decimated pipes that smell so metallic.

"I guess." Castiel stops petting his hair. He does something, hissing quietly and Kentin's about to pointlessly ask if he's okay when something warm is draped over his torso. Castiel's jacket. "It's been a long day," he breathes heavily. "Take a nap, Ken. I'll wake you up when I feel like moving on."

There's nowhere left to move on to.

"Alright," Kentin murmurs anyway.