She was coughing. They were soul rattling coughs. He wanted to curl up into a ball and put his hands over his ears. He didn't want to see her suffering. He didn't want to see her dying. She groaned and coughed some more. Then he heard his name escape from her lips.
"St-Stuart." She stumbled.
Forgetting his desire to ignore her suffering he rushed to her side. She was barely awake, maybe not even awake at all. Her eyelids were fluttering and her forehead was covered in a light sheen of sweat. He tried to wipe some of it away but it didn't do any good. She was in a bad condition and he knew it. There had to be a First Aid Kit somewhere but even if he found it he wouldn't know what to do with it. He didn't want to admit it but he knew what he had to do.
He had to go back.
"Elle," He whispered to her, not caring if she heard him or not. "Don't worry; you're going to be ok. I promise. We're going to get some help for you."
Her eyelids fluttered and she groaned again. 2D almost couldn't tear himself away from her side. That dream kept floating through his head.
I'm dead without you.
He couldn't lose her, he just couldn't. He had lost her before when he had gone to Beirut, if he lost her again he wouldn't know what to do with himself. He would be dead without her.
He shuddered at his thoughts and finally forced himself to the wheel of the boat.
2D knew that while he couldn't help Elle, Murdoc could no matter how crazy he had become.
Murdoc wasn't surprised when he got onto the beach and saw only Android Noodle sitting in the sand. He didn't bother looking around for half-covered up bodies or pools of blood. He knew he had lost the fight. Android Noodle, mute as always, just looked up at him. He wondered if she felt any guilt about failing his orders when he remembered she was a robot and obviously robots don't have feelings.
"Don't worry about it 'Droid." He muttered, waving her away. He heard her beep and click as she stood up, dusted herself off, and tromped back up to the building.
He stood on the shoreline letting the water wash up onto his toes. He looked out onto the horizon. That brown dome, growing ever closer, was still off in the distance but he knew it was only a matter of weeks, perhaps days, before he would have to confront whatever that thing was.
Murdoc thought about what he had done. He had ordered his creation to murder the one thing that he could possibly ever love. And for awhile he felt no guilt about it. However, after the sounds of bullets died down a thought struck him. Why didn't he just order the Android to kill off that Face-ache? Why didn't he just kidnap Elle and make her love him? God he was such an idiot!
He considered pitching himself into the ocean and just letting his body drift down to the floor. What else did he have to live for? He had just chased away the woman he loved and the man she chose over him. He had rescued the late guitar princess from Hell and then lost her amongst the plans of a new platinum album. He hadn't even tried to reconnect with Russel, who needed a giant drummer with hams for fists? It was just him and that bloody Android.
The horizon stared back at him, not giving anything away. He stared angrily at it before he realized he was seeing something else. It wasn't that brown dome that had become so familiar. No, it was small. It was small and it had…was that a sail?
"Well I'll be damned." Murdoc murmured amused under his breath.
He heard the Android come sprinting back towards him. Obviously she hung around just inside the door. She pointed her gun at it and took aim. Murdoc placed a hand on the barrel.
"Don't. Not yet." He murmured. "Wait."
The android stared at him for a moment, almost questioning his actions. Murdoc wondered if maybe he should be questioning what he was doing himself. There was something about that shape that just seemed so...familiar.
Murdoc's eyes widened. It was his boat. The boat that his Elle was in. She was coming back to him. He placed a hand to his eyes and squinted into the sunlight. He considered wading into the water and meeting her half-way. Isn't that one of the rules of a relationship? Always meet her half-way? He hadn't been one for relationships in all his years and now he wished he had read a book or looked something up on the internet. Something to help him win her over. Something to help her love him like he loved her.
However his feelings changed when the boat pulled up and 2D, not Elle, greeted him. Murdoc turned away scowling. She hadn't come back for him. Though there was something off about the tightness in 2D's mouth and the paleness of his skin.
"What happened?" Murdoc snarled over his shoulder.
2D's breathing was ragged. If Murdoc didn't know any better he would have said 2D was crying.
"What happened?" he repeated panicking. Oh Satan, what had he done to his Elle?
"Sh-she's hurt. Badly." 2D just managed to get out.
"Bloody hell." Murdoc whispered before sprinting toward his boat. She was hurt. He did this. God, he hated himself.
It didn't take long for him to find her. It wasn't a big boat but that didn't keep him from searching for her. She was hurt. She was hurt badly. Murdoc's heart gave a painful throb at the sight of her body, limp on the table. He could see the red stain starting at her shoulder, dripping down her side.
"Elle." He managed to choke out. "Sweet Satan."
She coughed and her eyes fluttered open. He inwardly sighed with relief. She wasn't dead. At least not yet.
"Murdoc?" She whispered. He closed his eyes and soaked in the sound of his name on her lips.
When he opened his eyes again she had scooted as far away from him as she possibly could. There was a hiss on her lips but it wasn't because she was trying to keep him away but because she had jostled her shoulder and it was now seeping more blood onto her already soaked shirt.
"No, no, no," he murmured, "Elle I'm not here to hurt you."
He edged toward her and she shrunk away from him as much as possible, wincing at the pain.
"I promise, Elle, I won't hurt you. I'm here to help." He whispered to her. It surprised him when he felt a wetness roll down his cheeks. He was crying about this woman. It hurt him to see her so afraid of him. "Elle, I promise, I'm only here to help."
Elle closed her eyes and winced once more at the pain. When she looked at him again he saw a helpless look in her eyes. She knew she had two choices: place her life in his hands or die on that table in the boat she couldn't get away on.
"Help me." She whispered, tears matching his own, rolling down her cheeks and into her ears.
"Of course, luv." He sighed, gasping at the rising sadness in his throat.
He crossed the distance between them in seconds, not being able to stand being away from her. He suppressed a moment of maniacal laughter. In a matter of days Elle had managed to completely capture his heart and now that helpless look in her eyes was like a hand had wrapped around his heart and squeezed. Gingerly, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the table. He saw her eyes close in pain and he wished there was something he could do to ease her pain. Her eyes opened and for a moment their eyes locked. He wished things had worked out differently. He wished it had been him she had fallen in love with; it was him she had come to this island to see. Then her eyes fell closed and she went limp in his arms.
For a moment he panicked, had she just died in his arms? But he felt her heart beating against his and he saw the rise and fall of her chest and he knew she had passed out, whether it was from lack of blood or intense pain. He swiftly placed a soft kiss on her forehead, loving the feel of her skin on his lips.
When he made his way out of the boat 2D fluttered around him like a butterfly on crack. Murdoc wanted to shoo him away, lock him in that room drowning in the ocean, but he couldn't blame 2D. He wanted Elle to be ok because without her…well, without her he was nothing. And Murdoc was becoming increasingly aware that he was nothing without her either.
"Will she be ok?" was the question continuously in Murdoc's ears.
Murdoc took one long look into Elle's slumbering face before reluctantly looking up at her…boyfriend, lover, something that Murdoc himself wanted to be.
"I'm sure she'll be fine." He sighed and snuck another glance at Elle. "You did the right thing."
2D opened his mouth, surely to wonder about why the Satanist was being so nice to him, but Elle groaned softly in her sleep and all of a sudden his world was her. Murdoc glared at him. What he would do to be in 2D's shoes.
I was completely disoriented when I woke up. I was mostly positive that the scene where Murdoc told me he wasn't going to hurt me was a dream. There had never been a moment in all the time I had known Murdoc where he had ever been nice to anyone other than himself. But when I opened my eyes there was something wrong. We were on a boat, on the way to land, right? I lay as still as I possibly could feeling the movement beneath me.
But there was none.
I looked around and my heart plummeted. I was in his room. I was in that monster's room. Panicked I shot up, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. I touched my fingers to it expecting to see blood or feel the hole where the bullet went in. Instead there was no blood and my fingers met…bandage?
I heard a cough; terrified I turned toward the sound. There he was, just standing there, beside the bed, staring at me. We locked eyes for one brief moment and then I was racing toward the edge of the bed and toward the door.
"Elle!" I heard him call as I sprinted for the lift. I was just reaching for the button to my escape when his hand wrapped around my wrist.
I fought valiantly against him but my shoulder was still too sore and I was still too weak. After a few minutes of struggling I gave up and glared up at the bassist.
"You have to stay still. You need to get better." He whispered to me.
I realized that we were mere inches away from each other. For a brief moment I wondered where 2D was but then I heard the elevator ding and Murdoc was pushing me as far away from him as possible. He looked at me, a torture I couldn't understand, in his eyes and walked back to his room.
"You need to lie down." He threw over his shoulder. "I suggest using 2D's."
The slam of the door echoed through my body. 2D didn't seem to mind. He gladly wrapped me up in a hug and told me how much he loved me. I just wanted to know what was going through Murdoc's head. And that alone scared me enough.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this chapter. It kind of took on a life of its own. And is it bad that I'm sort of kind of possibly maybe rooting for Eldoc, or...Mudle? haha. Wow that sounds stupid. But I'm considering switching teams. Maybe Murdoc's having a mid-life crisis or something.
So poll: How do you guys want this to end? Should I go the regular way and just have Elle end up with 2D, the guy she's been in love with since she was 15 or should I do a Pocahontas 2 and make 2D kind of like...not the right guy for her. You know, I'm sure you guys have seen Pocahontas 2, where she meets this other guy with brown hair and falls in love with him and then the blonde guy that she would have died for in the first movie? Right, yeah. You probably have no idea what I"m talking about.
Anywhoo, leave a comment, either for the poll or just for the hell of it and as always stay classy.
Oh p.s. school starts tomorrow. Yikes.