010: HOLD MY HAND

"Shit, you bastard, shooting me in the goddamn leg aside, do you even know where the hell we are? And what the hell that means?" There was a strangled note to Satero's voice, which made it all too obvious that only rigid self-control was stopping him from screaming.

It'd been a clean shot straight through Satero's right calf. Exit and entry wounds, so Corosa hadn't worried. Now all he worried about was getting Satero to safety and stopping the bleeding, but more than that, he worried about getting out of the city. He hadn't wasted any time grabbing Satero and dashing off, but now he was lost in a maze of a thousand alleyways. The veins of Prontera. And he didn't like it at all.

The walls were pressing in on him.

Satero had other worries. "You realize that you're gonna get fucking arrested? Opening fire in Prontera of all places, I didn't think you could get any stupider...ah, fuck..."

Satero stumbled and nearly brought Corosa down with him. For the first time, Corosa turned away from his thoughts and realized that Satero wasn't up to this.

He couldn't keep dragging Satero through random alleys in the hope that they'd find a way out. Panic had served him well enough when putting Satero out of commission, but it wasn't doing jack shit for him now. But panic was not a thing he could control and his instincts told him that stopping would mean the death of them both. He kept going, even as Satero swore at him.

The mastersmith was making an admirable effort at walking, but most of his weight was still on Corosa's shoulder. At least the man had dropped his axe. Dragging Satero alone was hard enough, let alone with what looked like a thousand-ton blade. But even so...

With horror, Corosa realized that their pace had slowed down considerably.

"Goddammit, Corosa, you don't even know where we're going," Satero snarled. For the first time, Corosa noticed his teeth. The merchant had said 'wolf grin', but the first animal that came to mind in Corosa's head was 'shark'.

"Do you?" Corosa asked, keeping the desperateness out of his voice.

"Hell no. Can barely see straight. Gods, I'm going to..."

Corosa ignored the rest of whatever Satero had to say, the man's voice fading away to a buzz in the background. He studied the walls. It was bright, and he could see clearly, which only made things worse. Each looked exactly like the last. Round and round in circles...

With a start, Corosa snapped his head around to look behind him, wide-eyed. The presence was still there, like always, but heavier than usual. Like it was sitting on his shoulders and watching his every move. And he wondered what that meant. If he hadn't run fast enough, if he'd been too slow, if he'd been caught.

Round and round and round again. The walls and floors and ceilings, they moved faster than any mortal man. They could fly from one end of the city to the other and back, and no one would ever notice.

And Corosa realized, home wasn't just the building on the other side of Prontera. Home was Prontera.

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Panic meant speed, and speed meant exhaustion, but more than that, it meant less time spent in Prontera's streets and more time spent out in the open, without a building in sight and no sound save for the wind through the leaves and the birdsong in the air. Corosa thought of the susurration of sand and the howling winds of the desert, and more than anything he wished he were back out there under the sun, dying of heat and dying of thirst and dying of everything save for fear.

"I'm likin' the wilderness more and more every time I see it," Satero muttered into Corosa's ear, breathing hard after the sudden dash they'd made. "At least out here ya usually don't shoot me in the leg."

Then Satero let himself collapse, rolling over onto his back and sprawling out in the grass.

Corosa had yanked him out of Prontera as fast as he could, without regard for his injury.

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"Shit. Whaddaya mean, ya can't stop the bleeding?" Satero's face was pale, but Corosa figured that it was because of the blood loss, not because of what Corosa had just said.

"It's...supposed to bleed out, first," Corosa said, floundering for words. He did not know if what he was saying was even correct. Vague memories, pieced together from what little he recalled about gunshot wounds. He was a gunslinger, he should have known more, if not from memory then from experience. But the truth was, before Satero, he'd rarely come into contact with other humans. What little medical knowledge he had dealt with the sort of injuries dealt by Rune-Midgard's various monsters. Not gunshot wounds.

"What, it's supposed to let me bleed to death?" Satero gave Corosa a backhand across the face, slightly harder than he'd probably meant it to be. Corosa had seen the hit coming. But he'd tried to block with his right hand, and Satero's fist landed with a sting.

There were rings on the hand Satero hit him with. One on his pinky and two on his middle finger. They were almost works of art, really; the metal teased into delicate shapes, embedded with gems, engraved with precision, and gifted with unintentionally sharp edges.

Without having to look, Corosa knew the rings had scraped against his skin, and knew there would be blood. He turned away and wiped it off his cheek, saying nothing.

Instead, he chose to correct Satero. "No, so that...so infection doesn't fester inside of it." He wasn't even sure if that was the right explanation, but obviously Satero needed one.

"Fuck." Satero leaned back against Corosa's guncase. He pushed his hair out of the way, grimacing. Corosa saw hints of blood on his rings, but apparently Satero had noticed nothing.

He looked at the sky. "I can't believe you fucking shot me through the leg."

"At least you'll keep it."

There was a sharpness to Corosa's voice that he hadn't meant to leak through. But it did, and Satero's mind was still clear enough to pick up on it. Lazily, Satero lowered his head.

"Hey, I wasn't the one who broke your arm--"

"You were claiming that it was your fault."

"It wasn't my fault you shot me!"

"You didn't listen to me."

"What, was there a 'by the way, I might shoot you' that I missed?"

Corosa nearly backhanded Satero then, anger flaring. His fist was raised, but Satero fixed him with a cold stare and he let it drop, feeling resentment and guilt. It was his fault that Satero could very well end up with a limp now. It had been his finger on the trigger.

"Sorry," he said, after a long silence.

"You sure as hell better be." Satero sat up straighter, wincing as his leg dragged. "Doesn't look like I'll be able to run for a while. Wonderful, two cripples. Now all we need is another secret brother who's deaf and blind."

"I'm not your brother." The answer was almost an automatic reflex, pulled by the strings attached to Corosa's silent anger.

"What, do you hate me that much?" Satero asked. He laughed before Corosa could reply. As he spoke, his fingers had fumbled for the flask at his side. It didn't look like he was in a mood to talk anymore; he opened the flask and immediately took a long drink.

Corosa's mind went to work. "Water?"

"Shit, you think I'd want water at a time like this?" Satero put the flask back down and wiped his mouth off on the back of his hand. "Wine. Got it off one of the merchants on the way to Prontera. She charged a fucking fortune for it, too."

Corosa nodded wordlessly, thinking. He'd seen something used on someone else, so long ago, when there hadn't been a priest around for miles. Boiled alcohol poured over the injury. It hurt like all hell, but supposedly it worked.

"Where're you going?" Satero asked, as Corosa started to get up.

"Firewood. We'll be staying here a while. It's...far away enough." Corosa instinctively looked behind him, and a small wave of apprehension passed over. The city was still there, and always would be. But he could not see it now, and its presence was faint from here. There were too many trees, too much sky, too few people for Prontera to drive him to hysteria now. The forest was not the desert, but for now, it would do.

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A/N: There, it didn't take me too long to update, right?

Hay look, ten chapters! Woah. I guess I oughta do the ten-chapter dance now, right? Actually, no, you don't want to see me dance.

So instead of that: thanks to everyone who's reviewed. You all rock. And if I could, I would buy everyone ice cream.