Wow! Thank you so, so much for all of the beautiful feedback! I don't really know how to use ff but believe me, each and every one of your reviews warmed me through! You all bring me smiles. Thinking there'll be about two or three more chapters once all my exams are done :) Thank you again for reading! xx


Lightening images, vivid but ephemeral, flash beneath your eyelids - the breeze through the open car window, the worn leather of your seat, and the dappled sunlight streaming through the forests limbs onto charcoal bitumen. They hurt; they're rude, too hard and too fast. But they keep coming - another car, the keening scream of tires, the deafening crunch of metal bodies, and the sickening liquid crack of human ones.

Blinding pain rips your eyes open, catalogues the fleeting glance of chaos, and then returns you to darkness. The brief glimpse is more than enough. Red crawls in through your nostrils, seeps through your eyelashes, spreads beneath your skin like ink.

The damp throb in your ears is lifting and more and more sound is leaking through the dull haze.

Your mother's mangled body hangs partially severed through the shattered windshield. A metal pole protrudes from your father's gaping and gasping chest. Your older brother's seat is empty, barren of the sticky red substance coating your face. His car door is open and your brain takes a moment to acknowledge this final betrayal.

You blink, choke on a short inhale of blood and metal, then turn. The other car lies upside down a few feet away. The windscreen is cracked and streams of blood ooze like rivers on a map. There is a hissing emanating from beneath you. Gas. You have to move. You're young but strong and gifted with speed. Yours are dead and you cannot linger. The others in the other car may have a chance. You will leave yours till last.

You have to drag your right leg because it won't cooperate. You shift and shuffle and make it to the other car. Mother, father, daughter, and baby lie still. You lie on the glass and metal and press two fingers to the father's neck. Nothing. You stand, wipe sweat from your face only to find it's blood, and repeat. A thready pulse meets your fingertips when they press against the mother's neck. You don't know how to do this gently but you try. You pull her through the smashed window to the ground and drag her far away to the side.

You return and repeat with the baby. Feather-light, the breath of a pulse brushes your fingertips. You cradle him and hobble over to his mother. You return. The daughter is conscious but not lucid. You see she wants to scream but her mouth is flooded with smoke. She unconsciously reaches her arms for you. You pull her through, enfold her into your small frame, and lay her with the others.

You move past their car to your final task. You look at your parent's broken bodies; their life drained drop by drop, their eyes blank. Death is bad enough; you are not going to leave them like that. It's only now that you're closer that you register the hissing. It's louder than before. It's closer. You've run out of time. But you can save them, you have to save them, you can't just leave them. You reach for them just as the car detonates.

He can't breathe. He opens his eyes and the world shudders. He coughs and his heart stumbles. Smoke curls in his chest and fire sears his throat. His lungs splutter like the putt-putt-putt of a dying engine.

Clint manages to make it to the toilet before the contents of his stomach burns its way up his oesophagus. He doesn't know how long it is before small and cool hands press against his scorching forehead. His entire body sags with his sigh.

He allows her to lead him gently, firmly toward the small cubicle of a shower. The water jets pour down his sweat stained skin, cooling the stinging remnants of his nightmare. She fits in behind him, encircling him with her lithe body, and smoothing her hands over his head, lightly over his cheeks, and down his chest.

They stay like that for maybe an eternity.

Tasha turns off the shower and dries him, softly and sweetly. It's only when she reaches up to towel the drips from his hair that he notices her shaking. He stops her and they simply regard each other for a while, grey orbs staring into green. He copies her motions, methodically drying each and every part of her until he too has caught every rogue droplet.

He changes into a white cotton t-shirt and black shorts and she steals one of his grey shirts. He has time to admire her creamy thighs poking from beneath the worn material before she disappears beneath the sheets. Their bodies entwine, naturally, intimately, the only way they know.

They will stay like that, until the morning comes, when the day is done, and when the world stops turning on.


As always, let me know your thoughts! :) xx