They walk for hours but manage to find a water source and Ada sets to work getting a fire started. Minho watches her, the focus on her face is a true testament to this girl's inner strength; she had gone through everything he had but came out of it with no one but her brother, who has his own problems and an old lady, who is dead now anyway.
When the fire begins to grow she rocks back on her feet, "get close to it," she says to him, "I'll work on sanitising some water."
Before he can offer help she is off, they'd found a shallow river that could easily be waded through if push came to shove and she stands in it now, her boots sitting on the bank and her skirt hiked up, he could see scars on her thighs but guessed it wasn't something she wanted to talk about.
He watches her, clearly deep in thought, eventually she turns to him, "have you got anything metal? A bucket would be ace but the knife could work if it had to. I left the Devil Troupe's knife in the guy I stabbed."
"I don't. I don't even have my knife, I think I dropped it." He winces at her expression change.
"Right," she says biting her lip, "I can work around that. I can. Pass us your shirt."
He grips his top like a child with a toy, "what?" He has no idea why minds, normally the first thing he'd do was rip his shirt off but she was different, he felt self conscious.
"I need it, to use as a compress for your arm, dick." She adds the last word as an after thought and holds her hand out, "you gave it to me before."
"What?"
"We were in the Maze, I needed to pull Ford along, he'd collapsed. Now give me the shuck shirt!"
"Use your own!"
"Oh for fucks... Fine." She removes her top, tears it into strips and dunks one in the water. It had startled him, her readiness. "I'm doing this for you, best thing you can do is not stare at a girl in her bra okay?"
He nods and looks away, she comes over and removes his bandage. He feels the cool water dripping on his arm and glances at her, all of her attention goes into not hurting him, making him feel bad for forcing her to strip off.
She wraps a strip of top around his bite before walking back to the water, cupping her hands and drinking; then she pulls her boots back on and sits by the fire.
"Go to sleep, I'll stay watch." She orders.
"No."
"Min, if you're going to act like a five year old this isn't going to work." She glares at him through the fire, "we have no resources, no weapons and one top between us. We're going to need to find our friends- your friends and to do that we need to find some resources. There's nowhere to scavenge, there's still going to be Cranks at the colony and two groups of angry people who want me dead are coming after us. So go to fucking bed Minho."
"Ada. You sleep, I'll stand guard."
"You need sleep."
"From what I gather you've had no sleep in the past two days so sleep." She glares at him for a moment but finally she settles down to sleep.
She looks cold, he thinks, I should give her my top but I'm pretty sure she'd get mad if I gave it to her now. The time for chivalry has passed.
He pokes at the fire and watches her sleep.
"Is she that kind of girl?" An amused voice seems to come from all around, Minho gets to his feet. "She'll just strip off for any stranger?"
"Is it you? The guy from earlier?" Minho growls, "where is Brenda?"
The dark figure steps out from the shadows, "with the rest of your friends."
"What?"
"Come with me. I can take you to them, I'll let you all go, all I need is her." He points to Ada.
"No. I'll get them back and keep Ada."
The boy laughs. "Is that what you think? You think everything will turn out fine? The good guys win? Well, it's worked so far right? I mean, near enough all of your friends are dead, that's a good turn out-"
His last words disappear into the floor, he had been pacing as he spoke, gotten too close to the 'sleeping' Ada and she had thrown herself at him, he now lies face down on the floor.
"What gives you the fucking right to come here and talk about my friends?" Ada kneels on his back, pulling his face up so he can talk.
"This is kind of hot you know." He says a smarmy hint to his voice, so she shoves his head into the sand and removes his jacket which she pulls on and zips up.
"He's fucking pathetic, hand me a piece of top and I'll gag him." Minho does as he's told and she ties the material round his mouth, she yanks the boy to his feet.
He starts to make hideous groaning sounds that are clearly meant to resemble sex or something so she punches him.
She takes another piece of shirt and ties his hands together tightly before patting him down for weapons, "good news Min, we've got a knife each." She presents the two blades and he takes one, she tucks the other in her waistband, "that's better."
"What do we do with him? Dump him in the water?" Minho smiles.
"Nah, bring him with us." Minho looks startled so she explains herself, "He's the leader of his little band of cronies, we can use him as a bargaining chip to get the others back."