Chapter Eleven: Separation Anxiety

"Well that hardly seems fair," Richard complained, but his companions did nothing to stop what they were doing. They practically ignored him while they consulted each other on what they should bring on the next leg of their journey through Honoré and what they should leave behind. Considering the fact that Richard Poole had somehow come to belong to that latter category, he was a bit chafed.

"I'll not have the two of you risking it alone," he insisted from his place on the floor.

"What do you want us to do, Richard?" Ronnie asked, unloading some of the gauze and rubber gloves from his pack. "Carry you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll walk," the Detective Inspector straightened his spine, an air of respectability in his delivery.

The others shared a skeptical glance, then, "Whoops!" Camille said, sending her canteen flying out of her hand and skidding across the rooftop floor.

Richard watched the noisy object finally come to a stop some ten feet away from him.

"I can be so clumsy sometimes," Camille said, sticking a hand to her hip and shaking her head. "Richard, would you mind grabbing that for me?"

Richard looked at her condemningly, unimpressed by her little charade. Then he looked over at the canteen. Ten feet suddenly felt more like fifty. Suppressing a gulp, Richard moved to get up, pulling his good foot up underneath himself and negotiating his hand on the floor, trying to figure out the best way of doing this. He rolled onto his hands and knee, his injured leg still straight out behind him. With his back towards the others now, he held his breath and pinched his eyes against the pain, his broken foot screaming curses at him. And that's…as far as he got.

He felt two hands on his shoulder, urging him back into a sitting position. "Oh stop it, you oaf," Camille chastised and Richard released the breath he had been holding. "You are obviously in pain and in no condition to walk."

"That foot needs rest," Ronnie observed, retrieving Camille's canteen and then approaching the two of them. He held out something to Richard. A pill.

"That's for Trevor," Richard noted, cranky.

"No, that's for Trevor," Ronnie nodded back towards the remaining medical supplies. "This is for you."

The detective opened his mouth to present another brilliant argument, but was cut off by the woman crouched at his side. "Just shut up and take it."

Richard pursed his lips together with a little huff and reached up to take the pill, willfully ignoring the way Ronnie was suppressing a laugh.

Richard swallowed the pill dry, refusing the canteen the other man offered him. Ronnie cast one more look at Camille and then went to return to his business with the pack.

"It's not that far to the hardware store from here, and it's all rooftops. He and I should be able to make it there and back again with no trouble," Camille explained more softly, bringing up a finger to trail down the side of Richard's beard, a gesture which instantly worked to relax him. "We almost have completed the list anyway, so we shouldn't be that long…You will be fine here until we get back, yes?"

"I'll be fine; it's not me I'm worried about," Richard stressed, casting her a grumpy side-eye. His foul mood tried to hold on stubbornly, in spite of being slightly assuaged by the way she was twirling her finger in little cyclones along his sideburn.

"We'll be fine," she assured him, smiling now, like she could tell the effect she was having on him. He was slipping into a fog.

"And if it makes you feel any better," Ronnie's voice boomed, unaware of what he was interrupting. (Though truth be told, Richard wasn't altogether aware of what exactly it was himself.) "You won't be without your uses here."

Richard looked up, his brain a little slow to comprehend what Ronnie was telling him.

"After all," he continued. "If Camille and I are about to load up these packs again with things from my shop, then we'll be needing a better way of consolidating all of this for transport back to camp." As he spoke, he indicated the handsome pile of loot at his feet.

"Great idea," Camille said, withdrawing her hand and consequently restoring some of the blood flow to Richard's brain. Her movements continued to withdraw as she stood up beside him, leaving Richard feeling a rather heavy absence hovering by his shoulder.

"You work out how to pack these tighter, and Ronnie and I will just be gone for, what would you say? Two hours?" she asked this to Ronnie, and the man turned to shield his eyes against the beam of the low, morning sun.

"I should guess so," he answered.

"And it's up on the bridge network the whole time?" Richard asked. He already knew this was the case; Camille had established in numerous times already…but he just…needed to hear it again.

"The whole time," she repeated.

"I would say, Richard," Ronnie began, walking over to a certain spot on the roof, looking down at his feet thoughtfully. He glanced up at the sky again and then back down to his shoes. He nudged a broken brick with his foot and positioned it carefully. "I would say that it should take about four…maybe five hours for that shadow to get back to this point." Ronnie pointed at the long shadow cast by the rooftop's edge, then back to his little brick. "What do you reckon?"

Richard sat up a little straighter to get a better look at the distance. "Four or five sounds right," the inspector conceded.

"Right, so. We should be back in two or three hours. So, if the shadow reaches that brick before either of us is back…"

Richard and Camille shared a heavy glance.

"…Then I'd say there was trouble. It would be up to you to get these supplies back to Holden," Ronnie finished, looking to Richard for some kind of assurance.

Though made highly uncomfortable by the idea of either Ronnie or Camille encountering 'trouble' out there, and also while feeling a little skeptical of his own ability at the present, Richard understood the urgency with which these medical supplies were required back at camp. So, after stealing himself a little, Richard eventually nodded curtly. "I can do that," he said.

Without much more conversation, Camille and Ronnie gathered up their now empty packs. They moved the medical supplies closer to Richard to save him from having to move around a lot during his reorganizing, and then it was time to go.

Camille bent and embraced Richard in a warm hug, and the Englishman found himself flashing back. It was like that moment in the cave all over again, when he finally wrapped his arms around her for the first time in months. In his head, all he had been thinking in that moment was "Never again. I can't be without her ever again." And yet here he was, about to be without her.

Camille made to pull away, but Richard held on, so she settled in a little more and let the hug continue.

"You have to be careful," Richard stressed through tense teeth. "Promise me."

"I promise," he heard her say over his shoulder. "Ronnie will have my back."

At that, Richard glanced up at his friend, who was waiting patiently while the pair had their moment. Ronnie gave him a small, confirming nod, which Richard subtly returned.

"And you have his," the inspector replied, finally letting her pull away.

"I will," Camille promised. Before rising to her feet, she kissed the top of his head, and Richard's eyes slipped shut at the feeling. "Be safe," she told him.

"You too," he answered, then louder, "Both of you."

Ronnie replied with a salute, "Yes sir, DI Poole, sir."

Richard watched them unblinkingly as they stepped up onto the rooftop bridge and carefully made their way across. He kept watching them as they went from that roof to the next. And then the one after that. It was probably close to ten minutes before they dipped out of sight and Richard finally let his gaze drop.

He forced himself to think of Trevor, sick and dying on his little mat, tucked away in a dark cave far away from here. The boy was barely 19, and should have his whole life ahead of him.

"Worth it, Richard," the man told himself, trying to believe it. "This was the right choice."

Then Richard did the thing he had been working to perfect for the last three months: he put Camille Bordey from his mind and focused on something else. Or, at least, he tried to. He had to admit, it was much harder to do this time. He tried to focus on the task at hand, namely, consolidating their medical supplies for easy carrying, as well as in anticipation of their incoming acquisitions from Ronnie's hardware store. Whenever he would hear a sound in the distance that would make him look up expectantly, only to be disappointed to find no one there, Richard had a handful of mantras he would rely on in response.

"She'll be fine, she's fully capable."

"Ronnie is with her."

"They are keeping to the bridges."

"She knows this city like the back of her hand."

"They're both fantastic shots."

"She promised she'd be careful."

That last one was always the most questionable in his mind and usually brought with it the least amount of comfort. After serving on the Honoré Police Force with her now for a number of years, Richard knew that his partner was more of a "leap and a net will appear" type of personality, whereas his attitude was more like "Carefully consider all other options, like a rope, or a ladder possibly. And if that fails, erect a net for yourself, calculating an adequate distance off of the ground to absorb the full impact of your body weight times the length of your fall, and triple check the rigging at all four corners. Then, in favorable weather, a carefully angled leap would not be out of the question."

Time wore on, with Richard periodically glancing back at the shadow, and he made good work of the supplies. A lot of the things they had collected from the dermatologist were in boxes or some other form of packaging. Probably, these items were packaged this way for a reason (like sterilization), but in this case, Richard would classify himself and his company as beggars rather than choosers, so he popped the packages open and combined as many of the contents into his pockets as possible. Before this moment, he hadn't really appreciated just how many pockets these cargo pants had, but he now found himself appreciating the design. He was able to get a lot of the small and medium-sized supplies onto his person, and for the larger ones, he cracked open the AED case and was able to squeeze a few more items into it along the edges.

Intellectually, he found the project quite stimulating. It made him feel like he was working on one of his old jigsaws again. It was just the right sort of distraction to keep him from looking over at the shadow every few seconds. Physically, however, it was taking a certain toll on him. Sometime around the start of the second hour, Richard had finally done as much as he could sitting down and was forced to find a way to get himself standing. The only way Richard had found to do this involved a prolonged period of rather undignified crawling until he could reach the edge of the rooftop and use the ledge to hoist himself up, almost like climbing out of a pool. Once standing, he was able to do a sort of half-step/half-hop thing that successfully carried him back to his project where he would continue working.

The throbbing in his foot built the longer he was standing, though he put little pressure on it. Richard tried his best to ignore this, focusing instead on Trevor (who was a hell of a lot worse), and his puzzle (which was a hell of a lot more fun). By the time Richard had to finally admit defeat, that there was nothing else he could do to combine one supply with another, to save even a centimeter more of space, he felt utterly winded and like he needed to sit down before he fell down.

Hobbling back over to the ledge, Richard perched himself onto the edge and gingerly hoisted his leg up to stretch out beside him. Some of the throbbing started to abate the moment he did so, and Richard sighed with relief. He had brought his canteen with him to the ledge and took a conservative sip, trying to replenish the moisture he was now losing through the profuse amount of sweat dripping down his face. Here on the rooftops of Honoré, he was completely unprotected from the hot Caribbean sun, and it was beginning to take its toll. He wished he still had his hanky.

Allowing himself one more, tiny sip, Richard let his gaze slide over to the creeping shadow once again. The line of the shadow was stalking ever closer to the brick, now only about two and a half feet away, and Richard felt something tighten in his gut, a mounting sense of worry he had been eager to suppress while he worked on his puzzle. Now, with the puzzle aside, there was little else to occupy his mind.

Turning to look out at the city, Richard's keen eyes scrutinized the rooftops as far as his vision could reach, searching for any signs of his compatriots. When he discovered nothing, he let his eyes glance downward, taking in the sight of the ghost town below him. Despite himself, he did feel a sense of righteous anger at the loss of this once beautiful city. The same blind outrage that had caused Dwayne to leap in front of a crypto just so he'd have the chance to kill it was now brewing inside of Richard, though to a different level, obviously.

After all, Richard had resisted the tendency to think of this place as home for many years. But in truth, it was home. He hated the heat, he hated the sand, and he hated the general sense of lethargy that seemed to keep the whole island in some psychedelic, lackadaisical haze. But in moments of weakness, Richard still found himself thinking of this place as "his island." It was hard, after all, to be a public servant without coming to care something for the community you were serving. He often still felt like the odd one out, the lone cup of tea on a tray of margaritas, bottles of rum, and strawed coconuts, but over time, he came to care a great deal for the tray as a whole, even growing protective of it. So to see the whole city of Honoré overrun by those creatures really was upsetting. He had told Dwayne that he'd overreacted (which he had, to be sure), but looking out over that once vibrant and whimsical city and seeing only the ghost it left behind, yeah…Richard could see his point of view.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say Honoré was crawling with the beasts. There were several cryptos he could make out from his vantage point that very moment, some stalking the streets, nuzzling through the rubble like a pack of mangy street dogs (except much larger). Others were moving underground, evidence of their journeys sometimes bumping up the city floor like the tunnel of a gopher (except…much larger). And once again, Richard found himself cringing at the wheezy, rumbly sound of their churning breaths. It was easily his second least favorite thing about them, after their disregard for human life. And the fact that they sounded uglier than they looked was quite the feat, by Richard's estimation.

BANG! An explosion rumbled somewhere in the distance, followed by sporadic gunfire, making Richard jump in shock and then yank his eyes back out over the city. He scanned the area where Camille and Ronnie should be right now, and saw nothing. Then, looking a little to the north, Richard saw it, a billow of smoke rising out of the city and into the sky. The explosion had certainly come from there, but it couldn't have been from Camille or Ronnie. It was completely the wrong side of town, and much too far away. But it had to be someone. Some other group of survivors, and they seemed to be fighting back.

The gunfire continued in unregulated furies. As a police officer, Richard's instincts were to run towards gunfire, but that was obviously out of the question. Instead, he simply stood, shielded his eyes against the sun, and watched. Several of the cyptos that had been occupying Richard's general vicinity all seemed to be curious of the noise as well, and they dived down into the earth in speedy chase. For a moment, Richard considered pulling out his weapon and attempting to take a few of them out before they could join the attack against whoever those poor sods were in the distance, but Richard wondered how low his ammunition was getting. He pulled out his weapon and took aim anyway, but that simple moment of hesitation was enough to make the decision for him as the cryptos made their escape.

The firing continued in the distance, and Richard strained his ears to guess how many weapons he was hearing. It was impossible to say precisely, but Richard felt it had to be close to ten.

Bang! Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang! BANG! Bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang! BANG!

Then, after a few minutes, that number seemed to dwindle to half its original size.

Bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang! Bang! Bang!

Until finally…

Bang! ...Bang-bang! ….Bang!...

Richard closed his eyes as the interval drew on, releasing a small sigh. The smoke in the distance wafted further upward into the sky, the only remaining evidence of that short-lived, last hurrah. He wondered how many they had managed to take with them.

Carefully, Richard holstered his weapon and then lowered himself to the ground, sinking against the rooftop ledge and feeling utterly defeated. It hadn't even been his battle, and he felt he had lost. His good knee bent up against his chest, Richard propped one elbow up on it and let his hand fold over his eyes. And it was in that position that he stayed.


Richard wasn't sure how long had passed, he didn't have a good look at the shadow anymore, but he had to hear his name three times before he realized someone was calling him.

He clumsily turned himself over until he could pull himself up by the ledge and peer over. Immediately, his eyes connected with hers.

"Richard!" Camille said, quickening her pace over the last bridge.

He stood upright and held out an urgent hand towards her. "Careful! Careful." But his warning seemed irrelevant, because she was soon coming to the end of the bridge and leaping down onto the rooftop.

"We heard gunshots," she told him, flinging herself into his arms (a sensation he realized would never get old). "And when we couldn't see you on the roof, I started to think-"

"It wasn't me," he answered into the side of her braid. "There was another group, off that way…I don't think they made it." As he spoke, he looked up and noticed Ronnie also stepping down onto the rooftop, apparently none the worse for wear.

Camille pulled away after a little while, lingering only a moment to touch his cheek. "I'm glad you're alright," she finally said.

"I could say the same for you," here, he looked back over to his timepiece. The shadow was very nearly to the brick now. "Bit more than two hours," he observed pointedly, at which Ronnie looked a little guilty.

"Yes, well…I may have got a little distracted," the other man confessed.

"Ronnie has a genius idea," Camille explained excitedly, hanging onto Richard with an arm around his waist.

"Were you able to find the last of the things from Holden's list?" Richard asked, letting his posture mimic Camille's by draping his arm across her shoulders.

"And then some," was Ronnie's reply. Then the man turned his pack over and several tools and miscellaneous metal and plastic pieces came clanging to the ground, followed by the soft thumps of various fabrics.

"What's all this then?" Richard asked, thinking through Dr. Holden's list of desired items and their creative, less-ideal counterparts. He couldn't see how any of the items that just cascaded from Ronnie's bag could meet any of the requirements.

"This is your boot. Or it will be," Ronnie said, bending over to sift through the supplies and organize them.

"My what?"

"Your boot," Camille said. "Ronnie made a good point while we were approaching his shop. He said there was no way you'd be able to make it all the way back to the cave with your foot the way it is."

Richard could hardly argue with that assessment, although it was one he hadn't admitted aloud yet.

"My wife broke her foot two years ago at my boy's baseball game. Said the pain was bloody awful, but the doctors put her in this boot thing, and she said it took a lot of the pressure off. Wasn't her favorite thing to wear cause it was pretty clunky and awkward, and made it where she looked like she stepped in a paint can, she said…but at least she could walk around." Ronnie stood up with a thick piece of metal bent in the shape of an L in his hands. "I lived with that thing lying around my house for three months. It's still in my garage, I think. But anyway," here, he examined the pliability of the metal he was holding, "I reckon I could make one. The design's pretty simple."

The whole time Ronnie had been talking, he had scarcely looked up at Richard even once. And good thing too, because if he had, Richard honestly didn't know what he could have said to the other man. Truth was, he was rather taken aback by the thoughtfulness of the gesture. He felt Camille's hand rise and swipe over his back affectionately, comfortingly, like she could tell he was moved.

He turned his head to look at her. "But, what about Trevor?" he finally asked.

Camille replied by nodding towards Ronnie and saying, "Some of that is for him, and also," she opened her pack and Richard peered inside it, "All of this."

"So that's everything?" Richard asked expectantly.

"Everything," Camille confirmed, right as a loud clang erupted from where Ronnie had started whacking a hammer against the side of a metal piece. She said something else to him, but Richard couldn't hear what it was over the noise. He dipped his face closer and turned his ear towards her.

"I said how did your little project go?" Camille repeated.

"Ahh," Richard said, straightening up again. Then he gestured out with his hand in a manner that said "right this way," and the two of them started making their way across the rooftop, away from the racket.

Camille used her position underneath Richard to support him as he limped along, and a part of him wondered if that was her intention all along. They approached Richard's little work station and he let go of her when she crouched down to see what he had accomplished.

"Nicely done," she said, impressed. "And all of that is what we're leaving behind?" she pointed to the considerable pile of packaging Richard had removed.

"Precisely," he answered.

Camille immediately started unloading her haphazardly-stuffed pack so that she could load up Richard's neatly-arranged pile of consolidated supplies. As she worked, Richard hesitantly began the process of lowering himself to the ground. He hadn't done this from a free-standing position yet, always relying on the ledge of the rooftop for stability. This was considerably more complicated.

Holding his arms straight out in front of himself, like Frankenstein's monster, Richard experimentally tried squatting with his good leg. Nope, Richard realized, popping back up before he blew out his knee. That definitely wasn't going to work. He bent over forward, deciding he might be able to drop himself into a two-hands-one-leg kind of crouch if his arms were strong enough.

Just as Richard had committed to this idea, Camille looked up and seemed to finally realize what he was doing. In a tardy attempt to help him, she reached out with an "oh!" and caught one of his hands. One of his hands he had been relying on to catch himself. As a result, Richard then found himself falling not towards the open space on the ground, but distinctly towards Camille, and the momentum he had already built up was unstoppable now.

Their foreheads smashed together and then their shoulders as Richard solidly tackled her to the floor, feeling her smaller frame crush beneath his dense and boney stature. For a second, they were a mess of limbs and faces, and both let out their preferred rendition of "oomph!" until they stopped toppling and settled into stillness.

Richard blinked hard. His teeth hurt, and his knee. He was pretty sure the latter hit the ground pretty roughly, but he had no idea what exactly his teeth had come into contact with. With a grunt and a shake of the head, he finally opened his eyes to find himself fully and bodily pressed down onto almost every inch of Camille.

"Good lord," he mumbled, trying to roll off of her. "I am so sorry, Camille. Are you okay?"

Her eyes were shut tight and her face was pinched in a grimace. Richard felt terrible, hoping he hadn't done any severe damage. Then, she sucked in a sharp breath, which was quickly returned as a huge guffaw of laughter. Richard's eyes widened in surprise.

Camille brought a hand up to her mouth and continued to laugh deliriously. Richard rolled onto an elbow and just watched her, unsure how to take this response. Camille was laughing so hard now that there was no sound coming out, just a slight jiggle to her body as her eyes remained tightly shut and her hand bridged between her chin and her nose.

Eventually, Richard was left with no other option but to smile. "Are you…Did I hurt you?" he asked with a tiny chuckle.

Camille finally breathed in, with a snort, and started to lift her head, opening her eyes for the first time. "I'm sorry!" she said, "I think that was my fault."

"Oh, it was definitely your fault," Richard said, pleased when it made her laugh again. "But I think I probably did the most damage."

Camille's hand left her mouth and started feeling her face. "You bit my cheek," she informed, and Richard was mortified.

"I did?" He immediately pulled Camille's hand away and tilted her face so he could see the damage. "Good lord," he repeated, seeing the long scrape angled across her cheek. "You look like you've been in a sword fight."

She chuckled again. "I'll tell the others we encountered pirates," she joked.

"Everything else okay?"

"I think so," Camille answered, lifting her head to check over the rest of her body. "What about you?"

"I'm fine. You honestly broke most of my fall."

"And your foot?"

"Is fine," he answered briskly. "You're sure you're okay though? I may have lost some weight on the 'apocalypse survival diet,' but I'm not a light man." As he spoke, a wavering hand skimmed over her body, pressing lightly here and there, settling against her ribs to see if they were tender. He looked up at her to gauge her reaction, planning to search her face for signs of pain, but when he saw the expression on her face, Richard froze.

He had touched all over her body almost without thinking about it, trying to see if she was okay, but his little examination had had a very different sort of effect on Camille. When he looked into her face, he was struck, like taking a rocket to his chest, by the unrestrained look of mounting desire in her eyes.

Camille's mouth hung loosely open, and her breath was in steady pants as she looked at him, fed on him with her gaze. Remarkably, Richard didn't withdraw his hand. Instead, he let it rest on her ribcage, spread wide, rising and falling in union with her breaths. Detecting a sense of permission in her eyes, Richard dropped his gaze to roam her body again, this time, in a way that was decidedly not medical, caught in the wonder of how openly it was displayed for him. Closing his mouth in a quiet gulp, Richard looked back into Camille's eyes. He slid his hand upward, no more than an inch, and closed the spacing between his fingers, feeling his thumb graze over the underside of her breast.

Camille slipped her eyes shut and sighed, a look of simple bliss on her face. A look which Richard could scarcely believe. He moved his hand again, up.

"How big is your foot?" Ronnie called, followed quickly by a "Oh, sorry."

But it was enough.

Richard turned his head towards his friend, pulling his hand away in the same movement, and saw Ronnie looking rather sheepishly towards the floor. Richard had to blink a few times before he felt his face was back to normal, not wanting to know what sort of enraptured expression he had been wearing when he first looked up at Ronnie.

"Umm, ten and a half," Richard answered presently, feeling like his voice sounded odd.

"Here," Camille spoke beside him. She rolled away slightly and reached for Richard's nearby shoe, discarded from the night before. She made an impressive throw and sent the shoe whirling tomahawk style at Ronnie.

He dropped his hammer in time to catch the shoe. "Thank you," he said. Then with a little nod as he got back to his work, he repeated, "Sorry…carry on."

But they obviously wouldn't 'carry on' now. Richard and Camille looked back at one another and both seemed properly embarrassed. Camille cleared her throat and Richard thought he saw her blush. (That was usually difficult for him to tell, given her skin tone. But this time, he was almost certain it was there.) And he was pretty sure his cheeks were matching her effort.

"Em," he said, chewing on the inside of his cheek and trying to think of something to say. "You're definitely alright?"

"I'm great," she answered, casting him a meaningful look accompanied by a tiny smirk.

Richard's face heated even more and he felt a flurry in his stomach. Clearing his throat, he said, "Right, good," and then nodding a moment later, "Right…good."

"So," Camille said, repositioning herself onto her knees. "Most of this can fit in this pack, I believe."

"Right," Richard said, then had to close his eyes and actively hold back from following it up with another doltish 'good.' He moved to her side and helped her by handing each new item to her as Camille methodically stuffed the bag.

The task was just what they needed to defuse whatever tension had been building between them a moment ago. They worked together trying out a few different combinations of pockets and bags to make sure everything had a home. At one point, Camille removed something she had already had in the pocket of her shorts and tucked it away quickly into her shirt pocket before Richard could see what it was. He didn't have time to inquire about it because she quickly got up and retrieved Ronnie's pack to add to their efforts. Between their pockets, the AED case, and all three packs, they were able to get almost everything packed away, just excluding the few things that were still mixed up with the boot supplies over in Ronnie's work space. With a little room remaining in Camille's pack, and the use of Ronnie's pockets, Richard felt fairly confident that they should be able to transport everything back rather comfortably, still leaving room for them to carry their weapons.

Ronnie came over a few times to test the boot on Richard's foot, then he'd take it away to make adjustments, and the inspector became increasingly impressed with Ronnie's skills as a craftsman. What started out ostensibly as a pile of junk was slowly and methodically coming together as a rather well-designed, form-fitting boot. Ronnie ran generous layers of cloth along the inside, wrapped around dismantled air conditioning filters, achieving a rather effective padding that cradled Richard's foot gently inside the boot. He even punctured holes in the side and de-laced Richard's leather boot to thread the shoe lace onto the new metal boot to adjust how snuggly it closed around Richard's ankle and shin. There wasn't much by way of protection over the top of Richard's foot, just more layers of fabric, but the metal frame was there, effectively a sort of external scaffolding for Richard's foot, sparing his own injured bones from having to bear the toll of Richard's body weight.

When Ronnie finally seemed satisfied with his work, he brought it to Richard and gingerly tucked him into it, strapping him in. Camille and Ronnie took a spot on either side of Richard and helped to hoist him into a standing position.

"Okay, slow now," Ronnie cautioned, wiping sweat off his brow.

Tentatively, both Camille and Ronnie released Richard, keeping their arms out as if ready to catch him at any moment. Richard could already tell that the padding was a godsend, but the real test would come when he tried putting weight on it. He started by lifting his good foot, letting it hang an inch or two off the ground and forcing his broken foot to hold him. Amazingly, the boot took most of the weight itself and Richard's injured foot felt mostly fine.

"So far so good," he said, and noticed how Ronnie and Camille smiled at each other excitedly.

Richard dropped himself back down onto two feet and then cautiously took a step forward on his broken foot. The mechanics of walking were suddenly complicated. The sole of the boot was not entirely level and it was also rather slick, lacking any form of traction, so Richard had to hold his arms out for balance. Still, the boot held his weight long enough for Richard to swing his good leg forward into place.

One step.

Never had one step felt like such an achievement. Mentally, he had been trying to prepare himself for the conversation where he would have to tell them to go back to the camp without him. The thought had terrified him, of course, but he just couldn't see a way around it. But now, he had just taken a step, an important step, and it was enough to make him wonder. Was it possible? Richard cast an unbelieving smile at his friend, which Ronnie returned before saying, "Don't stop. Again."

Richard took a few more practice steps. They were slow, and there wasn't much forward give to the boot, so he wasn't able to ever lead with his good foot and let his broken one be the back support. He always had to lead with the boot and could only rock forward to a certain degree before his shin would halt at the front of the boot and restrict any further movement. But it was enough. He could take slow, careful steps, and it was more than he could do that morning.

It would have to do.


Author's Note: There you are! Another long one to reward you for your patience while my schedule goes topsy-turvy. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and the next one should be up on Tuesday! Until then, let me know your thoughts on this!