Lulu's nails cling to the stone of the portal pillar's base. Her fingertips burn from the strength she's putting on it. The forest around is brimming with life, but in her ears rings deafening silence and her own heartbeat, unbridled with distress. It's almost too jarring a mix; her brain, usually soothed by the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the leaves, is overwhelmed by the vastness of it all—the noise of every individual leaf swaying and every single unit of an insect buzzing its wings. It feels like the forest is not nestling her so much as eating her, and she hates it. The forest has always been her only solace.
Five minutes ago, Tristana was holding her tight. Their hands entwined so rough that her left is still lightly sore from the gunner's ferocious grip; her nose still has traces of the gunpowder scent that always clings to her skin. She's all gone, now, and Lulu's been staring at something a thousand dimensions away, digging her nails in the ground like she's being dragged away from the fabric of reality and it's her only anchor to the world.
They'd settled for evacuating her through an Ionian portal after days of deliberation. Ionia, they had concluded, was their safest bet, even factoring the Noxian invasion and war. It was closest to the edge between Bandle's pocket in the spirit realm, and the whole place was just brimming with magical fauna and flora. She would feel right at home so long as Noxus didn't find her, they'd said.
"Demacia's risky. I don't want a mageseeker to arrest her cause she turned some civilian into a cupcake or something."
"They would do so even if she didn't," Teemo observed grimly. "She's a yordle. One of those petricite badges would have her down in a second. I don't even really know how Poppy lives."
Tristana nodded her head in agreement. "Not Noxus, either. They would flay her for amulets and lucky charms made of her skin or something."
They both looked at each other with vague concern, and it made Lulu's stomach churn that they had this discussion in her presence, minimal regard toward her feelings on the matter or physical existence in the room. Truth is, they didn't have to do this extra step of landing her somewhere safe. She was supposed to be grateful the outlawry didn't come with a bonus of being dropped smack in the middle of Noxus and calling it quits.
Grateful. That was how she was supposed to feel about it, but she couldn't bring herself to be grateful. Terrified was more like it.
"I would say Piltover's safe as it comes, but they also just reduce us to cute squirrels..." Tristana sighed.
"They apparently got a bit of an interest down in Zaun on how our mana would affect hextech. I don't want her to get vivisected in the name of science or whatever Zaun wants to pass as such."
"Where'd you get that from?" Tristana asked, visibly cringing.
"Rumble," was the answer, delivered with an uncomfortable shuffle. "Got it from Ziggs, who got it from a really pissy Loose Cannon, who got it from a bunch of shady characters she overheard at the sump discussing using Heimer. They weren't really speaking of his knowledge or administration skills, either." A bitter chuckle followed. "Told me to relay it to you so you didn't accept mission assignments to portal settlements around the area, the dumbass."
"Jeez," had been the gunner's response. Lulu felt like dinner would make it out her mouth any second.
"Yeah. Bunch of rocks and hard places. The whole point of outlawry kinda is that people aren't really fond of us out there. Or they are, but for the worst dang reasons. I really can't estimate a truly safe place to drop her at..."
And here she is. A portal near a Kinkou settlement that Kennen uses whenever he needs to travel back to Bandle City. It's not like he is truly allowed to intercede for her, but he can intercede for Teemo, and Teemo can subtly nudge him in that direction. Outlawry does come with civilians not defending her as a direct kinswoman. Tristana had held her hand so tight, had said, Please understand we can't keep you here. The whole town will lynch us, and they will lynch you while at it.
She feels like her nails will pop out her fingertips any second. Pix has been trying to snap her out of it; failed. She kind of wants to swat Pix dead right now. Smack, and he's gone, twitching like a cockroach, wings crumpled miserably.
She shakes her head. It won't work, of course. He's a fae spirit. He's also all she has left. Pix, and a camping bag with her belongings. There's nothing else. Her hands and the stone blur into blobs and only then does she realize she's crying. Her whole face burns, her throat feels like she's just shoved a balloon down her chew hole and it's inflated bigger and is about to tear her larynx open.
The stone stains darker in a droplet next to her hand. Tristana held so stubbornly Teemo had to gently coax her into releasing; even he looked reluctant. They aren't supposed to be protective of owtlaws. Outlaws are supposed to be yordle scum. Yet he's packed a couple maps in her bag, ordering her sharply to never tell anyone the truth about how she got them; he's said to her, as he steps away, Take care of yourself; those words packing so much power. So many more untold words.
It is with the strength of a behemoth that she pulls herself up on her feet. Pix flies up to her face and nuzzles her, as if that, as if his attempts at comforting her in Fae, are going inside her brain to give her any sense of reassurance. She wriggles her hand around her face, asking him to leave; she can't do so with her mouth, not now. Nails dig in her scalp to scratch and pull at her purple mane; she bounces on her knees, sobbing. Where do we go now? What do we do? Who do we talk to?
Pix is flying in her face so she'll stop raking her head. She doesn't want to listen. She wants to shut her eyes tight and wake up in her room at the house of the soldiers. It was no fun, but it was better than this. What do we do?!
She looks up at the sky, at the gods, questioning them. The sun hat she's supposed to be wearing rubs against her calf, rustled by the wind. It's fallen off at some point. The sun burns her eyes. Where do we go?
She looks in front of herself, lifting the hem of her dress to wipe her face clean off snot and tears. It feels damp and sticky and itchy from tear salt and it's disgusting.
Around her lays no more than trees. Green. The monumental echoes of the forest.
"You know, Lulu, I know you're not exactly renowned for your good taste," Tristana spits. The words still slur, and she's been exhausted beyond any more practice to try and sound imposing. "But I really need to tell you about your shit taste in men."
There's no actual dining table in the household. Tristana's sinking in a pile of cushions of colors and shapes everywhere in the spectrum, slumping her face in a hand for extra support, in front of a coffee table that rests only half a yordle's height above the floor. She's been staring at the scene unfolding in the kitchen with amusement that she doesn't show, but relishes in regardless. Teemo and Lulu are having what is transparently a culinary war; they shuffle around the kitchen, working together with what she can only call hostile synergy. It makes no sense, but is fun anyway. Her mouth is already watering from the smell of pancakes and toast and scrambled eggs. She had awoken at a good time for the foursome to have brunch.
The sorceress chuckles and nods, her stirring of the pancake batter picking up in vigor as she turns to Tristana. "I'm gonna teach you an important rule of verbal banter," she sneers. "You don't attack the opponent on things that you are just as faulty of. That leaves a clear opening." She lands the metallic bowl on the kitchen counter with such energy the batter actually bounces lightly, spraying droplets on the bowl's walls.
"Look at this man, standing here next to me in my kitchen," she nearly screams, accompanying it with a flamboyant swing of her arms to show Teemo off. "Shorter than you. Pot belly. The most boring cream and brown fur from the vastness of the yordle fur spectrum. Uses a blowgun and fungi, like an absolute savage. Probably has a few war crimes under his belt. This is what you picked. Analyze this first before you call me out on my choices, Commander."
The scout seems unfazed by the hardcore roast just dropped on him. Something about his stoic concentration on the pan where the pancakes sit tells Tristana he's been waging these battles so frequently for three days and two nights that he's grown dulled to anything the mages stab him with. Good thing you got backup now, she thinks, realizing she's baring her fangs at the sorceress.
"Big talk for someone who picked the Tiny Master of Evil from all the possible male yordle pool across Runeterra. You're seriously dissing me on banging someone who did war crimes? Even if that was true, you're seriously telling me that while you're in love with this abomination?" It is her who's gesturing to Veigar now, who idly browses a tome from the generous library of the house. He looks exactly as vacant as the scout—the two must have been going at it even harder.
"At least I don't fool myself into thinking he's some kind of hero," Lulu growls, stabbing the bowl with the wooden spoon she held in her right. "I am firm in knowing I am mates with someone who has an atrocious rep. I picked him partially because of it. What does that say about both of you?" She spins dramatically to open a shelf and pull a big round plate out of it.
Teemo seamlessly lifts the pancakes off the pan with a spatula and places them atop in a neat column, and as if on cue, she grabs them and gracefully lands them on the small table, following soon after with a second plate of scrambled eggs and a final one of fresh toast. It makes Tristana's stomach groan with craving. The captain is the one to bring over four mugs of coffee; one has an overwhelming ratio of milk over coffee, one is an even fifty-fifty, and two are pure black.
Lulu smugly gets ahold of the tiny ceramic sugar holder sitting amidst the table, and pours entirely too much brown sugar on her already diluted coffee. That must sparsely taste like coffee anymore. Gross. Teemo follows suit, pouring what can barely be a teaspoon, and hands it over to herself—teaspoon and a half. Teemo remembered to pour her exact preferred amount of milk, and she wants to kiss him for it.
Veigar just coils his claws around his mug and sips, no shits given, no sugar given either. Well if that doesn't speak of the void in his soul. The mage doesn't pull his eerie yellow irises off the book, not even when he tugs the sorceress in by the collar of her t-shirt to peck her cheek with a deadpan "thanks".
"We've got a bit of batter left for tomorrow morning," she says to him in a voice that is probably unnecessarily low for such a trivial matter. "I'll cool it after we eat." His response is just a caress of her cheek and a nod of approval.
Tristana is about to assault the scrambled eggs when the sorceress slaps her hand away, prompting an immediate jump from Teemo to push her off and a corresponding one from Veigar, who growls a threat at him. The air turns hostile so fast it makes Tristana want to laugh and scream simultaneously.
"No fighting or eating until we thank Nature," Lulu interrupts, sharp, and both men simmer down, shuffling uncomfortably in their cushions.
Tristana's thrown for a loop until the little enchantress addresses her. "Hands on the table facing up," she orders, and she raises her eyebrows in understanding and obeys promptly, lowering her head and closing her eyes. It hurts just to hold the position.
"Nature, giver of soil, water, sky and sun. We are humbled you give us the chance to experience one of your vast cycles. Thank you for giving life to every being that has then transmuted to give us this food. This meal nourishes us with your life, and we appreciate your gift to us."
"Enjoy the food," she calls, folding a pancake with a pinch of her right's fingers and lifting it to her mouth. It signals the end of the brief prayer, and Tristana digs in the eggs eagerly, stuffing her mouth.
She's stuck in a limbo of half-sleep, lost in thought; as soon as her body had food, fatigue came crashing down on her, curb stomping her into lying with heavy eyelids in a couch, unaware of what the other three are up to. She has only taken true notice of her surroundings now, after the brunch, while she fights to keep her ears sharp and her eyes open. Teemo dropped her there, telling her to catch a break, and left to who knows where.
She doesn't really want to nap, though. Neither Veigar nor Lulu have made advances of actual physical violence, but just having them around is enough to make her feel on edge. She actually wonders why Teemo hasn't been gutted yet; how they made it this far alive. A consciousness limbo feels just right.
The ceiling is made of olive fabric wherever she sits in the house; the decor itself brims with color, shelves with all sorts of objects fill up the walls of a living room. Books, jars with various spices, a whole segment of wall in the back that is just lined with clocks of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and inner mechanics; a big magic circle painted to the right of clock heaven that holds what appears to be a blueprint of the home inside its perimeter—probably the spell that holds all this together. Posters. Paintings. Flower jars. A telescope in a corner, a constellation map comfortably pinned on a wall and lined with notes from Veigar; it's almost too much to take in. The kitchen sits as an open annex and a single door leads to what must be Veigar and Lulu's quarters.
A spiral staircase connects this place with the cozy, plain guest bedroom where she and Teemo were set to sleep. It goes up further beyond their bedroom, but she doesn't know where its actual end leads. Said room floats, quite literally, over this communal area; a box uncannily existing annex to the stairs and above this section, almost magicked there as an afterthought. It probably didn't exist before they arrived, she deduces.
It has to be Lulu who fashioned this, and it must be some pocket dimensional space, probably made with polymorph magic; creation of domestic spaces is not a thing darker magic is inclined to do. The fabric above looks like the entire household is surrounded by a massive tent, and it feeds her speculation; it probably is some kind of spatial distortion safely hidden under something a lot more nondescript. She couldn't imagine Lulu structuring something like this, much as the evidence screams otherwise. She and Veigar must have been smashing for a while now. It's the only way Tristana can fathom her sudden beef in both magic and verbal assassination.
It's precisely the woman she's mulling over that appears in her field of view and breaks her trance. "Hey, sunshine," she calls, and Tristana's eyes focus on her face and the curtain of purple curls, rather than her own mindscape. She can read the acknowledgement, and so, continues:
"You should bathe, and I need to clean your wounds."
Tristana nods dryly, not quite understanding what she is supposed to do; her eyes follow Lulu as she crouches next to her and grabs the hand holding the IV canal. "I'm gonna take this out. You're awake, so I don't think we should exploit it any further."
Lost in the whirlwind of adrenaline and pain, Tristana's not noticed the sorceress has lilac healer tape on the back of her left hand, much like her. The dotted edges of what appears to be a rather grisly bruise peek from beneath. It makes her brows furrow. Lulu delicately coaxes the needle out of her vein; it still makes her shudder—It always will, the rough-and-tumble soldier exterior never quite stifling it. Tristana has to humbly accept she is gentler about it than every nurse who has IV'd her after an awry mission in Bandle. Lulu has always been so uncannily soft to touch, her hands on Tristana's feel like they are velvet. It's rather envious; it awakes a side of her she doesn't want to rouse. Veigar must deeply enjoy just touching her. He better. She wishes she could give Teemo this delight with her own skin.
Unlike she did on herself, Lulu actually peels the remaining tape off her. It makes her lightly tremble once more; the peach fuzz of females is always tugged uncomfortably by the adhesive. Her professionalism as she wipes the wound with cotton doused in alcohol makes her feel something she can't describe but is definitely strange. Like she's watching someone else entirely that just so happens to be identical to Lulu. Or maybe, she's watching a Lulu that comes from far along in the future.
"What's up with your hand?" She mumbles right as the other's about to stand up and leave.
"I gave you mana. We mages are just brimming with it, supplying it constantly since we need it to cast. Constant casting makes you produce more of it to keep up with the bodily demand. You were lucky you two were found by two walking bags of mana, so to speak. Did it with a specially enchanted canal to filter mana from blood real-time and give you the raw thing. You also lucked out being found by a fellow female yordle. I would be hesitant the transfusion would have worked if you weren't receiving it from someone of the same sex and species. Bodies can react wacky to foreign things like that."
She's gone before Tristana can even muster the strength to yell at her to wait and come back. That little monologue has implanted a barrage of questions in her head, some of which revolve around how nonchalantly she's delivered that information. She assumes the chance to question Lulu further has just slipped away—much to her frustration—but then the little witch is back to her side, mixing a creamy green paste on a stone bowl resting on her thighs with a small spoon.
She's answering the question before Tristana can even ask it. "Antiseptic. I have to change your compresses daily. I had to bring buckets of water from the river outside and boil it to wash the surrounding skin since you couldn't move. It was better that you rested. I didn't bathe you out of respect for your intimacy, and Teemo doesn't know how to properly manhandle a patient that's so delicate so he could do it. But I can help you climb outside today so he can and I renew the ones you have. Still got some of the purified water left. Would be good for you to be out in the sun, too. That's good for almost anyone."
She sighs, dabs the tips of her index and middle fingers of the right hand with alcohol on a new cotton ball, and dips them in the mixture. Purple spirals burst from her hand and trace patterns around the paste. It's brief, but looks raw as hell to Tristana. She doesn't dare ask about how she's enchanted it, or why.
Lulu stands up to offer her hand, holding the bowl with the other. "It was a bit rough. You lost a lot of mana. I'm relieved you even woke up. I don't like losing patients. I gave you from my own until my nose bled. Vei was pretty angry at that," she drones as the commander gets ahold of her forearm and slowly sits up, wraps around her shoulders, and carefully balances her way on her feet. It's pretty tough with just one leg.
Lulu helps her clumsily hop her way to the base of the staircase. She is nowhere as firm as Teemo. It's rather entertaining. They land a foot together, and the handrail and Lulu is enough for her to start tumbling the way up.
"Why are you doing this?" Tristana asks. There is a lot more she wishes she could elaborate, but her head's stirred.
"Spite," is the answer. "I pondered just leaving you to die when we first saw you. Veigar joked about how the Demacians did the dirty job for us, and we should just leave. But you know what I realized then?" She turns to look at Tristana, eyes narrowed into slits. "That's what you two did. And I didn't want to stoop to that level. It made me want to barf. I decided it would be much more more fun if you two lived forever knowing you abandoned a girl to die in an Ionia portal, and what she did in return was save the lives of both of you. Hope the thought snack is tasty."
Tristana doesn't answer; suddenly everything's spinning and her heart drums so hard inside her it rings in her ears.
It feels like she's skipped in time when the staircase ends and they crouch into a tunnel of more fabric. She struggles to make her way through—her leg is hard to drag while she's bent forward, and nothing feels real. The mid-summer sun outside is so bright it makes her wince as her pupils adjust; the view of the Demacian wilderness is swallowed by heat and light for an instant. She looks back to check where they exited from—a rather dumpy looking tent made of ragged olive fabric.
Teemo has just finished scrubbing himself thoroughly in the river beach for the first time in the last two days when Lulu arrives to deliver his mate to him. He's shredded a few pieces of soap bark with bare claws and disposed them in a stone near the water's edge, used part to clean himself, and left another part intact, at Lulu's behest, for her. He receives her off the enchantress' frail arms and gingerly lands her on a smooth, rounded rock that's just about the right size to serve as a stool for her to sit comfortably. Her feet rest in the shallow water; he picked this one rock knowing it would facilitate him the process of bathing her.
The gunner's visibly shaken, and he doesn't want to give any of the other two the luxury of seeing him concerned for her—still, he sits cross-legged before her, straight on the sand. Lulu's forbidden him from keeping her baggy pants on; after Tristana herself is cleaned, the two of them are to wash the blood off. She didn't want dry blood anywhere near the wound, and she's consistently shown to be so knowledgeable on healing that he can't help but follow her direction. As such, what sits in front of him is his baggy-eyed, weakened beloved, wearing nothing but her uniform crop top and tomboy boxers. She looks positively miserable.
"She tell you why she saved our asses yet?" Is the first thing she says. Her voice is but a thread.
Teemo closes his eyes and takes a deep sigh. She did. In a rather hostile way, to boot. Mocking him. Spitting it in his face so he can't help but feel alienated. Veigar's really built her up on psychological defense; seeing this wide-eyed spirit of flowers and innocence hold herself with such imposing grace and subduing him so proficiently throws him off.
"Yeah," he answers, forlorn. "Not very gently." He shifts to lift himself on his knees. "You're still a tad too weak to scrub yourself. She asked me to go take a bath and then clean you while you were astral projecting on the couch."
"I feel like shit," is the plain answer.
"Don't blame yourself. Veigar's a master manipulator. He's just rubbed off on her. They're trying to make us feel bad." He leans into her and gently manhandles her arm off the crop top's sleeve, trying to spare her any energy expense. "I've been called all you can imagine while you were unconscious. We barely talked anything other than two-ways bullying. The rest was just Lulu having me assist her with waking you up. It's been pretty garbage, too."
"I'm sorry," Tristana whines, and he feels like someone's straight up stabbing him in the chest repeatedly.
"Nay," he cuts her off, sliding the neck of the crop top over her head. "Don't say that stuff. If I were the knocked out one, you would have endured this... situation." He grabs for a few tiny shreds of soap bark, rubs them in his palms vigorously, making them foam. "And you would also give me some choice words if I apologized for it. It was forty-eight Demacians. Could've been either of us. So don't blame yourself for any of this."
"Let's just get outta here," she groans, drawing another sigh out of him. "I got patched up, innit?"
He holds her with a forearm, supporting her belly; splits her hair from the back of her neck, lathers the soap gently there, beginning the thorough scrub. She's so sticky. "We can't, babe."
Tristana has relaxed to his touch; he can feel her muscles soften as he rubs his hand through in tight circles. "We've lost a number of portals. Jarvan's people haven't torn them down cause they don't even bother understanding how they work. So they just set camp around them and are ready to kill anything that wants to use 'em. We're far from anything we can go back in without someone skinning us..." He's moved to her middle and lower back; her entire back side is bubbly.
"That, and... well, I've gotten some intel outta Lu while she was trying to not let you cross the rainbow bridge. Petricite's pretty messy when you're such a naturally magic-infused... thing, turns out. Mana helps a bunch of body functions. It's like you were having your life sucked outta you," he explains. He doesn't really want to drop this bomb on her now; knowing how tough she can be barely means anything when he has to support her weight to ease her pain.
He pulls her up an inch to lift the boxers off her hip and drag them down; lets her fall back on the rock, tugging them all the way to her feet after making his way around her body, trying to not lose his grip. He lets go for just the needed time to rub more bark for soap, and resumes the deep cleaning, now kneeled in front of her, starting on the sides of her face and down her neck. She's saying nothing; they've both just focused on the brief, quiet moment of intimacy. Her eyes look so loving and grateful and sad and apologetic and he stares back trying to tell her that it's alright, that this is no burden on him.
"Bummer," she says with a bitter chuckle; clearly at a loss for words. She lets herself slump just enough to let her forehead touch his.
"Yeah, bummer," he answers, smiling at her attempt to lighten the situation. "Mana helps with healing. You're stuck in this hellish loop of not having enough mana so the wounds heal slowly. It feels kind of sadistic for Demacia's usual approach to war to use weapons like these. Like they just showed their true colors." He slides his head along the connecting point so Tristana can lean against the crown and he can deep scrub her lower belly and thighs.
He feels her sighing; it ruffles the thicker fur atop his head. "So just drop it on me, then," she says. "How long?"
He laughs. "You're such a smart cookie. About a month, at least. Lulu knows about mana restoration, just cause so many mages have been stabbed with these things and she's healed them. A month is what she guesses you need to get this bad girl back to proper business." He gives a hearty smack to her right thigh, near the butt; she's so stunning, even when fighting to keep herself together. It warms him when the slap gets a giggle out of her, even if he knows she didn't actually feel it. "A month is also more or less what it will take us to trek lesser-traveled paths to a settlement Garen and Luxanna Crownguard have to shelter mages. There's a portal nearby that Poppy has kept in business. Veigar and Lulu will lead us there and let us use it to go home, so long as we don't backstab them." He quickly rinses the soap off her body with a series of adept handfuls of water poured all over her.
"Woah," the gunner says while he cups some more in his palms and pours it on her head, rubbing a final ration of foam and thoroughly massaging her scalp. He can feel her simmer down, her eyes close peacefully as she continues talking. "That's one hell of an info dump. Wasn't Garen one of Jarvan's star men or something?..."
He cuts her off. "I got a lot of fresh gossip when I wasn't doing word battles, it turns out," he says, laughing. "Garen was Jarvan's good boy until it leaked out that Luxanna's a mage. He fled himself. He knew Jarvan wouldn't be happy with just firing him from the guard. Then after he was gone it also leaked out he had a star-crossed lovers type of deal with the daughter of a big Noxian name, who also works as an assassin for Noxus, may I add. Can you imagine?"
Tristana lets out a cackle and coughs right after, wincing. "Fuckin' hell," she says as Teemo tilts her head back and rinses the foam off her hair. "It would make a sick novel, not gonna lie." He can't help but laugh with her. "I'm glad Poppy's still, like, a thing that's alive. She just sorta went MIA after all this garbage went down. It's good she's still bashing people's heads in."
"Yeah... They didn't tell me a lot about her. I wanted to ask, but it's hard to get either of them to talk. It's the worst. I'm glad you woke up, honestly... Daily life gets boring without your fireworks." He seizes the chance of finishing his rinse to cup her face; rub one of her cheeks with his hands. I'm so relieved I don't even know how to tell you.
"A month, huh..." she says, leaning into the touch.
She finally opens her eyes; he helps her back on her feet so they can work together to re-dress her. "Wild. We're gonna have hell of a ride."
"We just gotta be strong, and you're already pretty good at that." He finishes slipping her crop top on after they're done with the undies, shifts to holding her weight so they can go search for Lulu. "Think of it as a really weird holiday. The people at the base know what's up, but they probably think we're dead... Radio's gone since a while ago. We can just hope they sent a search party when they heard my message. I did think we were gonna get dragged by Kindred, so it wasn't really encouraging, though..." he shrugs, helping her uphill to the grassy clearing where the tent is.
"I'm gonna have fun trying to bully Lu into telling me how in the name of Nature she ended hooking up with this dude, at least," Tristana jokes, fully assuming the near future with humble resilience. He admires how quick she is to simply resign and adapt to new circumstances. Very scout-y, he would say, if someone asked him.
He giggles back at her. "Yeah, we're gonna learn new ways to diss people, at the very least." Gradually, the skeevy tent, a mat for wiping feet and shoes before it, and a rope to hang clothes from come into view, and once more he braces for duty. "We're gonna go over a map to plan our trail once you've got fresh bandages. Trip starts tomorrow if possible. I'll carry you when I have to. All of us just want this to end ASAP."
She nods; lands a quick peck on the corner of his lips with determination as he helps her hop back inside the villain's lair.