XXV: Day Six, Early Morning.
Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10
For how much sleep he's supposedly getting, he doesn't feel very rested.
It's no doubt the stress and the paranoia and the anxiety piled on top of his shoulders, along with the plethora of... other things that he's not sure how to wrap his head around. All of that combined leads to him waking up in a decently terrible mood, his head throbbing and every part of his body inexplicably sore from sleeping on the cold concrete ground.
Soran is half-awake, he's sure, constantly tossing and turning but not doing much real sleeping. He starts drumming his fingers against the metal table leg to his right, unable to stop himself from thinking back to last night's conversation. He hasn't told anyone the details of Estella, not even his parents who seemed to care about her death for all of five minutes until they told him to come home.
And to top it all of Soran is a virtual stranger, someone who can't possibly understand him.
But he does, somehow? It doesn't make a lick of sense.
"You're so twitchy," Soran says lowly a moment later, voice still riddled with sleep. Icarus sighs, bumping his fingers harder against the table leg.
"Sorry to bug you, your royal highness."
He's really not pissed at Soran, not quite, just endlessly confused. His brain is feeling all sorts of things, now, and when that happens everything that comes out is manifested in the ugliest of ways.
He doesn't often admit that he's an ugly person, either.
"I'm sure we both know who the real highness is here," Soran says, sitting up. He rubs at his eyes, a very casual movement, and for some reason it just makes Icarus angrier.
"Fuck you."
"Geez, what crawled up your ass and died in the middle of the night?" Soran asks.
"Nothing. Fuck off."
He whistles, lowly, and the noises echoes off the walls in a way that makes it feel like Icarus could go insane just from that alone. He can feel Soran watching him, examining him in a way that makes him want to dive out of the room and down the hall as quickly as he physically can. Every time people look at him like that they think they know, but they don't.
Ignoring the fact that he just thought about how Soran did know. That's not the important part here.
"Stop staring at me," he insists. "I don't wanna talk like last night, just fuck off."
"I never said we had to talk like last night. Do I look like a therapist to you?"
"Sometimes."
Soran snorts. "Sorry to disappoint you."
It's not disappointing, is the thing. It's nice to have some of that weight off his chest. It's nice to have someone know and to understand why he is the way he is, why he struggles so much with certain things.
Soran is still staring at him, and from the corner of his eye Icarus can see a little smirk playing at his lips. It doesn't disappear even when Icarus rolls over properly to look at him, something accusatory in his eyes. He just wants him to stop, for all of five minutes, until Icarus can sort out whatever it is that's going on in his own head. He just needs time to do that.
"What?" he snaps.
"Nothing." Soran shakes his head, still with that smirk on his face, although it fades somewhat as he turns away, as if he's trying to get rid of it.
It's unsuccessful, as far as Icarus can tell.
"No, what?" he repeats, a little louder. "If you wanna be an asshole, go ahead."
"If you're in the mood to fight, go outside and punch a wall. I'm not fighting with you."
"For once in your life, hey?" he taunts. "You seem pretty willing to do it every other time. What's the difference now?"
"That's what I'm waiting for you to figure out," Soran answers, leaning back against the countertops. He looks satisfied for some odd reason, still with that almost-grin on his face. Icarus can't help it anymore - he climbs to his feet, even though his vision flashes with black spots at the speed of it all, and then kicks the table leg, sending the entire thing skidding.
"What did the table ever do to you?" Soran asks, deadpan. He nearly reaches over and kicks him before he thinks better of it.
He'd never win that fight.
He does want to punch something. Instead he buries his own hands in his hair, pulling just a bit to ease the urge, digging his nails into his own skull.
"I think something's wrong with me," he says mournfully.
"Physically, or mentally?"
"Fuck you," he says again. "Mentally."
"Ditto," Soran says, and the proximity of his voice makes Icarus open his eyes, unaware of when he had closed them in the first place. Soran is standing now, too. Closer than Icarus would like.
He's not sure why it matters how close he is. He just wants to stop wondering.
He can't do that, though, not unless he shuts down completely or he dies. At this point he's not sure which option he's closest to, because at any given time of the day it feels like both are about to happen, one after the other. That would solve a lot of his problems, including the main one standing in front of him right now. He can't tell, but he thinks Soran is shuffling forward ever so carefully, almost not noticeable at all.
Icarus notices, though, because all his nerves are shot. He could notice anything now. The movements, the look in his eyes. He just wishes he could interpret what any of it meant.
"You're really stupid, you know that," Soran says. God, he's really close.
"Fuck you," he says, and Soran leans in to kiss him.
Oh, his brain says, accurately very stupid. Oh.
Soran is kissing him.
Suddenly a lot of things make a lot of sense, and simultaneously nothing at all. Someone cuts something in his brain, a very important wire that's keeping everything running up to date and he can see the error message flashing behind his closed eyes because he's definitely closed them and is just accepting of this like the idiot that he is.
There you go, his brain says, first of all. Problem solved.
And then, secondly - what the fuck are you doing?
He has no idea how long it's been when he wrenches himself back, too long, clearly, because it feels like his heart is about to jump out of his chest and Soran just kissed him and is still standing there, hovering in front of him, hands still slightly outstretched—
"Did that make you feel any better?" Soran asks, something awfully teasing in his voice, so Icarus punches him.
He's never punched anybody in his life.
The worst part is he actually catches him off guard, right across the side of his face. Soran isn't surprised by anything, not really, but he didn't see it coming. He doesn't knock him to the ground, not even close, just makes him stumble a bit, clutching a hand to the side of his face.
Icarus' knuckles are throbbing like his head is.
Soran starts laughing, still looking at the ground. "Thanks for the confirmation."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he asks, voice nearly a shout. "Is there something wrong with your head, too, because I think—"
"Just wanted to test out a theory," Soran breathes, righting himself. His cheek is red, but not obviously so. "I think it worked."
"So I'm an experiment, is that it? Are you getting some sort of sick fucking enjoyment out of all of this?"
"Honestly, yeah," Soran answers. "Sorry for jumping you, but I didn't think asking would've worked out any better. I had to see if there was any sort of reciprocation some way and clearly asking you wasn't going to go anywhere."
He goes still. "Reciprocation."
"Maybe," Soran says. "Possibly. Stranger things have happened."
"Have they?" he asks, voice strained. "I think you've fucked with me enough, don't you?"
"I'm not fucking with you."
He practically chokes on all of the angry, confused things about to come up out of his throat, and when he's finally able to breathe again he has nothing left to form. No angry reply, no witty retort. Absolutely nothing, except for a heart that just won't fucking stop and this stupid, infuriating look on Soran's face that just keeps saying I was right, I was right, I was right.
Soran looks down at his twitching fingers. "Try it again. I dare you."
He swallows and heads for the back door, instead, slamming it open against the outside wall. It's still dark, just verging on dawn, but he doesn't care. He could head for the nearest wall just like Soran suggested, punch it until his knuckles stream blood and until he no longer hates everything about this, but he just keeps on walking. On and on through the dirt, past the car, towards the gently rolling hills in the distance.
Soran is probably watching him go. He has no idea when he plans on stopping.
He has no idea if he's coming back at all.
Soran has to be fucking with him. If he cared he'd come after him, make him stop. If he cared he'd do something.
But he just did, didn't he?
All of the things warring in his brain, the terror, the confusion, the anxiety, all of that has led to this. To Soran kissing him when he didn't even have the frame of mind to understand. Soran kissed him and he didn't immediately pull away, never thought I don't want this.
He didn't think that. Why didn't he think that?
"God, why me," he moans, and nearly trips over a rock. "Why me?"
No one answers. No one's listening, and Soran's too far away to hear him, now.
He's on his own just like he's been at home for the past six months, the same home that Soran's also existed in since he was seven years old. He's always been there. Icarus just didn't know it.
And he's been there since the day Icarus met him, too. He wormed in somewhere, and, and—
He thinks he might throw up.
He really hopes Estella can see him now. He wants her to know what she did, even if it means her having heard everything he said last night. It's the truth she always deserved back when she was alive. She always laughed at him, though, at his misfortunes and his dramatics, never blinking an eye. They're the same in that respect, her and Soran. They both live to torment him, in an oddly endearing way.
God, now he's thinking of it as endearing. How much worse could it get?
Estella is probably off doing the same thing she always did, singing I told you it would be good for you! up in the sky to anyone that can hear her, but certainly not him.
He doesn't want to hear her, hear those words aloud. He doesn't want to confront the reality that they're true.
He can't do that. Not yet.
All he can do now is keep walking. He'll have to make a decision, eventually. Everyone always does.
But right now he's just going to walk.
Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13
She doesn't make it back to her original spot.
In fact, she's not even sure where it is.
She can't walk that far, she's certain of it. In fact she can't really walk well at all, constantly lurching to one side, tripping and almost falling. If she falls she's not going to get up.
She does make it to the long, winding canyon that she's sure her little hideout was in the first place, sliding down layers of rock and scree to the very bottom, as far as she can go while holding her stomach together, the backpack and everything she stole weighing heavier on her than it would normally.
She's not going to die, though... she can't. Not after all of this.
The Sentinels are probably after her, now. They have to know what happened, what she did. They'd be fools not to.
She killed one of their own.
It's that thought alone that keeps her walking even when she wants to collapse and succumb to the spots around the edge of her vision. When she finally does stop she's so deep in the canyon that she's certain it will at least take them a while to get to her. Maybe by then she'll be better, patched up. Have a fighting chance, at least, when they finally try to end her life.
It's a long shot, but it's the only one she has.
She doesn't so much stop as she collapses, finally, sheltering under an outcrop and flopping across the ground, all energy spent. Her stomach and side aren't bleeding but she's soaked in it anyway, her shirt stuck to the torn edges of her skin and dried there.
This isn't going to be pleasant.
There's plenty of things in the backpack - water, food, a sleeping bad and flashlight, more matches and a little tin of kerosene.
She looks around at the rock, and thinks about walking back out to get things for a fire.
Not happening.
Alright, so another course of action then. She pulls out the first aid kit nestled in the bottom of the bag, larger than the one she had originally. She can't help but wonder if anyone in her previous alliance has found use for it yet. She nearly cries when she opens it, at the layers of bandages and gauze and cleansing pads, the full roll of tape. There's a little pair of scissors and tweezers, antiseptic cream.
No gloves, that would probably help. No needle and thread, either.
There is a safety pin, though.
God, this is going to be terrible.
She pulls out all of the clothes she took off of the Sentinels body, too. Leaning back against the wall she takes the discarded jacket and the little pair of scissors, beginning to change it into something usable. That can go across her arm and hold it to her chest once she gets her shirt off.
That's going to be the difficult part.
It takes her several minutes to work up the nerve once she's finished with the jacket. She can put the other shirt on when she's done, and then her own jacket, but it's the pain she's concerned with. There's nothing to stop that in the first aid kid. She begins snipping away at the bottom of her shirt, inch by inch. She pulls the stiff material taut almost over the wound but still feels the cool metal slide against it, biting back a scream.
There are tears welling in her eyes by the time she finishes cutting through it, and there's still her side to deal with. It's peeled away some with the cutting, but it's still stuck to what she's certain is the most painful part.
Just rip the bandaid off - that's what they always say.
She does, though, and isn't sure what comes out of her mouth, a sob or a scream or a combination of the two before she muffles the sound against her forearm.
It's bleeding again, no surprise there. Of course it is.
She's cold now, without her shirt on, and that seems ridiculous. She's in the middle of the desert and she's cold.
That seems like the least of her problems.
The wound in her side is smaller, at least, but the skin has torn outward in a little starburst. She could probably sew that one shut with a little bit of work. The hole in her stomach is the real problem, the definitively larger one. If she dared to look, and she won't, she could probably see all the way through to the other side. She presses a bit of gauze to her side to stem some of the sluggish bleeding when she peers into the wound, a mass of muscle and congealed blood.
She's still alive, so it couldn't have hit anything too important, except whatever's made her bleed so much. That's a given.
She has to drop the pressure on her side to retrieve one of the safety pins and pop it open. She stretches it open as wide as she can and pins the edge of it under her sandal, retrieving one of the knives to hack away at the middle portion of it, until the pin itself is separated from the rest of it, springing free from the clasp. She has a needle, now, albeit a jagged one that's going to leave a bigger hole in her than she'd like, and she already has an idea for the thread.
She grabs the pair of pants and the scissors, wedging the blades underneath one of the seams until she's able to pull the thread free. After that it's just more pulling. Again she pins the pants underneath her foot as she begins tugging at the loose thread, watching as it unravels right before her very eyes.
Who knows if it's enough, but she can always cut more off during if she needs it.
With shaking hands, and half a dozen failures before she completes the knot, she ties the thread to the haggard end of the safety pin, pulling on it a few times for good measure.
There are really no words for how terrible this is going to be.
She folds a layer of gauze over the hole in her stomach and tapes over it for the time being. Even if it's not doing much it feels better to not look, at least. She will later, when she has time to deal with it. Really, it's when she gets an idea. She's not sure if she could stitch it up the way she thinks she can do to her side.
She eyes the package of safety pins in the kit, a dozen of them, at least. She could probably close it with that.
Not a very encouraging thought.
This would be the time when two hands would really be useful, when she could hold her skin together with one, ready with gauze to stop and bloodflow, and stitch with the other.
But no, she has one. She's always had one, and she's learned how to deal with it.
It's not something that's going to kill her.
She presses the tip of the needle against her skin and inhales. It only hurts more when she does that, so she needs to stop.
She can't make things worse than they already are; like she said, it's awful enough without her contributing to the situation in other unnecessary ways.
Someone is probably on her way to kill her, that she knows.
But she's determined. She really, really doesn't want to die.
Hopefully they're in for a surprise when they do find her.
Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4
Someone's following him.
He has no real way to tell that, of course, not unless he stops for confirmation, waiting in dread for someone to finally find him in the darkness of the mines.
But he's hearing things, little noises that could be disguised as the tunnels themselves, but it's too regular. Even someone used to this environment would have trouble navigating in the dark, using only the light from his flashlight to follow along.
He should have turned it off long ago, but he doesn't think he has any chance of getting away if someone really is after them. Dark or not, they'll always know this place better than him.
At this point he's just looking for an exit, for any way out lest he have to dig up through the earth with his bare hands.
There's so many signs of life - the occasional lantern, footprints in the rubble, scraps of old clothing and boxes.
And a dead end, just in front of him.
Until the last second he expects it to open up into another section of tunnel, even it's more difficult to traverse with his injured ankle. He puts a hand against the wall of dirt and rock, cool underneath his palm.
It's so different down here.
There was a branch leading away from the main tunnel a ways back, but it's too late for that now, if someone's after him. They'll intercept him before he gets there.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Or right now, evidently.
His hand finds the knife in his belt, and there's a little, low chuckle behind him. They're so close, closer than he had anticipated. He doesn't dare turn around.
"I asked you a question."
He swallows, throat like sandpaper. If they don't already know who he is, his voice will give it away. He definitely isn't the man he killed, no matter how much he may look like him from a distance.
"It's alright," they add. "No need for the knife."
He peers over his shoulder, and holds back his surprise, once again, at how normal they look. She isn't wearing a mask, and in the dim light from the flashlight's beam she looks quite pale, freckled all over. No way she ever leaves these tunnels, then. She'd go up in flames the second she did.
She's got a bow and arrow too, another primitive, hand-made looking one. He wraps his fingers around the hilt of the knife.
"You're an outsider, correct?" she asks, voice filled with curiosity. "We've seen them, before. They guard the borders. But never this close."
"An outsider," he says weakly, and she blinks a few times at him, almost owlishly. It's an oddly terrifying look on her face, a picture of such innocence from someone who he's certain could kill him. If what the other man tried was any indication, she's probably worse.
"An outsider," she repeats. "You come from outside the borders, and suddenly there are lots of you here. Iras injured one of you, quite a few days ago. I'd assume they're dead by now... nevermind that. Did you know the girl?"
"Who?" he asks. "What girl?"
"The one that was outside. She had a littler one with her. Her hair was so strange, too..."
"Noelani?" he chokes. "Where is she?"
"Noelani," she hums, rolling the name over her tongue. "Down the tunnel that we passed not long ago, hanging in the dark room. I believe that's where Caliban took her."
It's already cool down here, a product of the never-ending darkness, but an icy chill goes all the way down his spine and back up.
"She's... she's dead," he croaks, the question falling off the end of a tongue. It's not a question at all.
"Dead is typically a prerequisite for consumption, yes," she answers. "I take it you outsiders don't often partake?"
He must balk. He knows he goes paler than even she is, all the blood draining from his face at the mere implication, coupled with the fact that Noelani is dead, and Topher is nowhere to be found, unmentioned.
And Jay... what happened to Jay?
The girl laughs, and he nearly stumbles. "That was a joke. I was taught that you people liked jokes."
"Was it?" he asks weakly.
"Almost," she says thoughtfully. "Hunting is hard in the summer. We'll see in a few days; I'm sure Caliban will advocate in that direction the hungrier we get. Now, can I ask you a question?"
He bites down on his own tongue to quell the panic, adamantly refusing to answer. She's drifted a little closer, but he has nowhere to go before his back will be against the dead end.
And then God only knows what she'll do to him. Eat him, probably.
"I'd like to know where Yorick's body went. What you did with it," she adds. "You see, if it comes to that, I'd rather eat him than your green little friend. At least I would know then what I'm consuming."
He can't lie. He's a bad liar anyway, and here he is with the guy's mask and clothing, his weapons. She's already got him figured out down to every minute detail, and that terror has a tight grip on his heart, clawing at it until it feels like it's restricted too much for him to breathe properly.
"Strange how you killed Yorick yet here you are, scared as a little mouse," she observes. "If the others find you, they'll kill you."
"Why aren't you?" he asks shakily.
"I happen to like mice," she says simply. "They're always somewhere, surviving. Tough little bastards. They happen to make good bait, too."
"Bait for what?"
She shrugs. "I haven't yet decided. But our ancestors and us have been out here for hundreds of years, since they left us to rot. Perhaps if I want back in I'll bring you with me in exchange. Does that seem fair for you?"
She could get him out. She could give him back to whoever is patrolling the borders, certainly someone in close ties with the government.
But that would mean helping her, and they killed Noelani. Someone else, too, that he's been made aware of.
There are monsters living down here.
"Will you come after me, if I get out?"
"I haven't decided yet," she says again. She leans forward so abruptly that he can't backpedal fast enough and she tugs the flashlight out of his hand, finger on the button. The tunnel plunges into darkness and he feels back for the wall, heart slamming in his chest.
"Run along now, little mouse," she says. "I won't treat you so kindly the next time I see you."
It's disorienting, her voice so close in the dark. He hugs the wall, feels her shoulder brush his as she stumbles away past her, his limp worse than before.
"There are medical supplies in the dark room, too!" she calls after him, and he flinches. "If you're so inclined."
That's where Noelani is, her body...
He's not so inclined.
Not in a million years.
Percius Marigold, 17
Applicant #2
He lets Verity run off.
He swallows the cut it out, would you? because he's really not sure what he's talking about - her incessant chattering that's picked up once again, or how quickly she moves when her curiosity overtakes everything.
The low building, upon approach, isn't as big as he initially suspected. There's no sign to indicate what it is except for the beyond-ruined parking lot that shows that it was a semi-popular spot at least some time ago. People would take the time to drive all the way out here.
He nearly chokes on the cloud of dust he walks through upon entering, both of the doors creaking so wildly he expects them to disintegrate under his hands.
Verity has disappeared, but the dust is so thick even on the floor that he can see her footprints clear as day and begins to wind after them, covering them with his own. The main lobby, as it appears, has been nothing short of eviscerated. Any remaining furniture practically has disintegrated, a few remaining pieces laying at odd angles cast across the floor.
It doesn't appear to be very big. He can hear Verity rustling around in the next room, occasionally letting out a muffled curse.
"Find anything?" he asks, turning the corner. She's in the middle of a landmine of odds and ends, broken pieces of furniture and other equipment all stacked and balancing precariously in ramshackle piles.
"I think it might have been a museum?" she guesses. "There's all sorts of different things, and there's this little info panel about native minerals and rocks and stuff. I think, it's all faded and hard to read. But there's mining equipment too, see—"
He tunes her out once more the way he has the entire day, every single waking hour, really, since they left Damas behind.
She's trying to fill the void in her that was caring for him. Now that he's gone talking is her only way.
Talking used to be his way, too. Hell, talking was just his thing whether it made him feel one way or another. When he was happy, when he was sad, when he was nervous...
Not anymore. Maybe it's how hungry he is. He doesn't have the energy to talk.
"Didn't find any food, did you?" he asks tiredly, toeing a wooden crate out of the way.
"Negative. I'll let you know, though!"
The level of artificial cheeriness this girl can maintain is off the chance, and it's getting exhausting.
Everything is, really.
He continues forging a path through whatever it even is that he's seeing. Verity appears to be right on the mining equipment, but besides that it's mostly just paper, lots of it. He's practically sinking into the layer of them that's formed on the floor, the wooden floors underneath practically untouched.
He trips, inevitably, and catches himself on a glass case overturned on the floor, one of the only things intact. Upon further inspection the back wall of the case is shattered, no doubt from the impact when it hit the floor, but otherwise it looks almost as untouched as the floor, covered by just as many papers.
"Oh, sweet!" Verity crows.
"Food?" he asks, not looking up from the case.
"No, but better," she insists, so he peers over his shoulder. She's hefted out a pickaxe-looking thing from the pile around her feet, rusted all the way around with one end broken clean off.
It looks too big for her, the way she's swinging it around.
"Can I have it for a second?" he asks, and Verity freezes, clutching it to her chest. For a second something almost like fear fills her eyes, an uncertainty that was there only when she woke him up, before Damas...
"I just want to break this," he explains. "And then I'll give it back."
She picks her way over, eyes widening incrementally as she catches sight of what's in it. She ignores his outstretched hands waiting for the pickaxe and slams it into the glass herself, something like determination in her small frame.
Of course she's not going to give it to him.
The case shatters, something made for display, clearly. He waits for Verity to leap on it, to shove him out of the way, but she takes a pace back.
Waiting.
He reaches in, glass pricking at his fingertips no matter how careful he is, and pulls out what appears to be a tomahawk with hands that are shaking, but only slightly. He turns it over in his hands, ignoring the little cuts on the pads of his fingers. Compared to Verity's pickaxe this thing looks practically pristine, hidden away from the outside air for so long. Just by touching the edge of it he knows the blade could kill someone in half a second, the cord-wrapped handle comfortable nestled in his palm.
"And I thought my find was cool," Verity breathes, but something in her voice is off. "That's way better, I'm not going to lie."
She's scared. Of him. Of the prospect of weapons and fighting. He has no doubt that she would, the little firecracker that she's capable of being, but until now it was easier to ignore. They had Damas to worry about back then, when they didn't even know what got to him or the amount of damage they really did.
He's reminded of how quickly some of the younger kids would die in the Games.
Statistically speaking, Verity probably would have been dead by now, and now he's got the way to do just that. He's thinking only what she did, minutes before him. She was quicker on the uptake.
Clearly the starvation is doing something to his head as well.
Verity lets out a breath, clearly pasting another cheery smile on her face. "Okay! Want to look around the rest of the place, then? Maybe we could find some food."
He nods, slowly, not missing how many steps she takes back in order to allow him room to get back up once again. She's out of the room before he even moves from his spot, not even bothering to search through the rest of it in her haste to get away.
From him. To get away from him. There's no other way to explain it.
He almost calls after her, but refrains. That'll just scare her more. Hell, it scares him more.
Damas' death opened the floodgates, is what both of them failed to realize. Before now it just felt like a mission purely of survival, one distant to all of the others.
Now it feels more centered on the killing, on the death...
So many of them are gone already, in six short days.
He's not sure how much time either of them have left now.
Jupiter Valentine, 18
Applicant #9
"Look!" they cry. "Trees!"
"Yay," Mal deadpans, so they pinch him in the shoulder. He's carrying them, yet again, as he seems to be taking the job of personal chauffeur a tad too seriously.
"Be excited."
"I live in Seven," he responds. "I'm more excited about the big ass building."
"It looks like a castle," they decide, wiggling around a bit until Mal gets the message and deposits them back in the dirt. Now that they're descending the practical mountain they just climbed it's a bit easier to manage on their own, especially with something so promising just ahead.
"It's a castle, then," Mal says. "You're right, though, with the towers it does sort of look like one."
It's pretty, is what it is. Worn from years of abandonment, but still quite easy on the eyes compared to... say, everything else. They can imagine it as a vacation spot, almost, a place where tourists passing through would stop for a few hours to walk around. There's no visible road that they can see, but the two of them made it here, didn't they?
If you're determined enough you can do anything.
"Careful," Mal warns, gesturing to the large rocks that mark the bottom of the hill and the last approach to the outer wall. He grabs their elbow as they make their way across them. They still can't help but marvel at how gentle he can be after what they've seen him do. It's almost as if he forgets that when it's just the two of them, like it's the easier thing to do.
It probably is, if you ignore him carrying them around everywhere. That's really not easy at all.
Mal would never admit it, but he's exhausted. They can tell just by watching him - they could feel it in the way he was walking when they were on his back just a few minutes ago, how his footsteps dragged over the rock and every breath sounded like it was a pain to take.
They feel a little bit better not burdening him now, even better than he may just be able to settle down somewhere with a bit of shade, if nothing else.
"Are you sure you're alright?" they ask.
"Quit worrying about me."
"Yeah, okay," they scoff. "You're doing all the hard work."
"Walking isn't typically considered hard work, you know," he points out.
"When you're dehydrated, exhausted, and carrying another human being it is. I'm going to worry about you, alright? You don't get a choice."
Mal sighs as if they're being purposefully difficult, scuffing his feet in the dirt as they approach what appears to be the main entrance of the building until he nearly trips over his own two feet. They've never seen him be any sort of graceless until now.
Turns out exhaustion can do all sorts of things you never thought you'd see.
They look up at the trees overhead casting very faint, thin shadows across the ground in front of them. There's an oddly-shaped one right outside the front gate, rounded at all ends. They stretch up to touch it, the bark brittle and crumbling underneath their hand.
"Don't kill the trees you were all excited about," Mal warns, toeing at the gate. It's red paint has faded some but it still looks very stark in its obviousness, as the whole building seems to be. It seems like an oasis in the middle of nothing, almost, if it had some water somewhere. They're going to choose to be optimistic about their chances inside.
There are remains of a rusted chain between their feet and one of the gate swings in at the little push of Mal's foot, creaking wildly until it bumps against the sandstone wall of the interior. Mal gestures forward, so they take the first few steps into the courtyard, an otherwise unassuming and bare space save for the set of double doors that must lead inside at the end of the walk.
Mal sets the gate back in place, walking forward to their side. "It is pretty cool."
They nod. With the early morning light beginning to filter in over the mountains it's even prettier than normal, they suspect. Long abandoned places are usually creepy, or so they thought, but this doesn't have the same feeling.
They're almost a little claustrophobic after spending so much time out in the open, surrounded by walls on three sides, a gate at their backs. Even the mountains themselves seem to be closing in on them, enclosing them in a little crater out here in the middle of the desert.
"Alright, let's do this," Mal says, striding forward at a pace he wasn't walked at in literal days. They let out a little squeak, rushing to follow him. By the time they catch up he's pulling at the doors with both hands, brows knitted in concentration. They can hear the doors as if they're fighting back, stuck shut and rusting after so much time spent closed.
Finally the left door comes free, and the handle with it. Mal jerks back, nearly smacking them in the face in the process, holding onto one end of the broken handle.
"Well, that's one way to do it," they say slowly, reaching forward to pry the handle from his grasp. They toss it back into the courtyard over their shoulder.
The door has swung wide open, now, but there's very little light to tell what they're really looking at. It doesn't look like a very big room - those appear to be on either side of them, so this must be a hallway that connects the two.
They step forward onto plush carpet, and the softness is incomparable even against their prosthetics, after so many days of struggling to walk. It just looks old, like the entire building is an antique. The ceilings are high, arched, the tiles that complete the floor almost glowing, softly, in the sun's soft rays. They struggle to see anything beyond the hallway save for a large crystal chandelier on the floor in the room to their right, little shards of glass catching the light and reflecting back at them.
"It really does look like a castle," they breathe.
"Clearly you have no idea what a castle looks like."
"And you do!"
Mal laughs. "Not really. I don't know what else I'd call it, though, so I guess that works if you think it works. If this is a castle, then I guess that mean we're royalty."
"You wanna stay here for a bit?"
"I don't see why we wouldn't. We'll have to take a look around, sweep the place out, but it would be nice to take shelter for a while, hopefully find some food or some water. I'll take anything at this point. You down?"
They find themselves nodding far too quickly to be seen as anything other than excitement, their anticipation brimming over. They've never seen any place like this before. Everything just seems so warm, in the most pleasant of ways. Not overbearing, not sickly like the hospital always seemed to be, either. Just comfortable.
"I'm excited," they announce, as if it wasn't obvious. It feels wrong, after everything, but it's the truth.
Mal cracks a smile. "Couldn't tell. Let's go."
Thank you all so much for 100 reviews, especially to those that have been shooting me one even when they've been woefully sad. Ten words or ten paragraphs, it means more than you'll ever know.
Mal and Jupiter are in a real place in Death Valley called Scotty's Castle (eat it, Mal) and it is quite pretty, honestly. Probably not so much after my creative liberties are taken, but what can you do. To be honest most of these places are at least vaguely real even after my twisting because it's the only aspect of realism that I give a shit about these days.
Everything else that happened, well... don't have answers for that! Don't expect me to, either.
Until next time.