They walked through the door. Tessa wondered if maybe she had actually died, and this was the doorway to the afterlife, shot to hell, hanging half off its hinges, splattered with blood. Her father's weight leaned heavy on her, his feet dragging, hardly able to move, his breathing labored. Tommy forged ahead, not glancing back to check on his other companions, the sharp cut of his dark hair, exposing the shape of his skull, making him seem as though he blended into the shadows of the night, was being pulled away into the darkness. Tessa took her first, wobbling steps outside of the house, into the chilly air of the overgrown, sloping lands behind it, and she was careful with her father but part of her wanted to drop his arm from around her shoulder and sprint off into the fields and trees and nothingness in the night and never return. The stars were blinking past the clinging wisps of remaining cloud in the sky, the land still shivering and wet from the day's deluge. The moon was still only a hair away from full, shining down so brightly it gleamed off of Tommy's hair, his gun, the shining blood on his arm that she hadn't seen when they were inside.
"Thomas," she called out, and the unintentional formality fell badly on her ears, like they were back to the day they met, like he hadn't been inside her. She didn't want to think about that, what it did or didn't mean to him. She didn't really want to think about what it meant to her, either. He turned around briefly at the sound of his name, like he was more concerned with whether or not they were keeping up with him than whatever it was she had to say. "You're hurt," she said, like maybe he didn't fucking know.
He shrugged with one shoulder, the one that didn't have blood leaking all over his expensive shirt from his bicep. "Bullet went through," he said, as if that negated any concern. Tessa fell silent, and focused on leading her father, whose steps were becoming slower and whose weight around her shoulders was steadily increasing the farther they moved from the farmhouse. Tessa assumed that Thomas knew where he was going, and followed him blindly, her mind completely blank and unfocused, floating through the motions, disconnected from any physical awareness or truely any awareness at all. Her father went completely slack suddenly, pulling Tessa down to her knees on the frigid, slick ground with him, his eyes rolling back in his head. She tapped his face gently, saying, "Dad? Dad!" then harder, but he did not stir for several moments. Thomas paused up ahead, but made no move to return, twenty feet away from Tessa and her prone father. Leonard's eyes flickered open, but he looked like he was seeing past them, past Tessa, until they focused on Tommy's distant silhouette.
He said something under his breath that Tessa couldn't catch, and then, much louder and clearer than she was anticipating, he spoke. "You get away from him. Tessie," he said her name but was still looking at Tommy's dark shape with hazy eyes. Tessa wondered what it was he was seeing, wondered if Tommy could hear him. "I told her. Predator," Leonard said, barely a whisper, muttered something else, before his lids fluttered and his consciousness disappeared again. Tessa gazed down at his familiar, unfamiliar face, cradled in her lap, at a complete loss. His features were covered in dark blood, his face needed a week's worth of shaves. The scruff looked out of place to Tessa on his usually impeccably clean cheeks, making him seem like another person, a stranger she didn't know. She wondered what she had looked like to him, thought she might be better off not knowing. Tommy's soft footsteps approached her, the long grass swishing against his legs. She looked up at him, and for a moment the moon glowed behind his head like a broken halo, and she felt a sudden painful pressure in her chest like the wind had just been knocked out of her, like her ribcage had become concave. She wondered if he could hear the shuddering breath she drew, if he could hear her thoughts, if he could reach into her chest and twist her heart in his hands without her even knowing, if that's why it felt like it was being constricted right then. He held her eyes, their gaze locked, and even through the night it felt like staring into the sun, like he was burning too bright, searing his impression onto her retinas, and still she couldn't look away. They were speaking without words, and he was always, always, unapologetically unpacified, this is who I am, and if you can't handle it, leave, and she wanted to tell him that being with him felt like being chained to the tail of a comet, like telling God to leave you a message, and you would get back to him when you could. But she said,
"Help him. Please," and Thomas looked at her for a moment longer, one hand in his pocket, eyes hard, considering. Then he tucked his gun into his belt, crouched down, and lifted her father up across his shoulders, despite the bullet hole in his right arm. Tessa stood as well, walking by Tommy's side through the field, wondering vaguely where they were headed, whether they were about to get shot by hidden German rifles.
Tessa moved silently beside him, but Tommy's breaths were coming in sharply through his bruised abdomen. He thought he probably had a few cracked ribs, maybe even broken. His nose and mouth were both bleeding from the battering they had taken from the German's ring, but mostly his arm was screaming in pain, and he wondered if it would hurt even more in the bullet was still in, thought he should probably be grateful but couldn't manage it. He could've been shot in the chest, in the head, in the back like Reilly. He was mildly shocked he hadn't been, and that Tessa hadn't, but the look on her face suggested otherwise, like she had been ridden with so many bullets she was trying to hold the blood inside her body with her hands, which she was pressing to the front of her gray dress as she walked, eyes glazed. He couldn't have reached out to her if he wanted to, struggling to keep her father's weight balanced on his sore shoulders, and he didn't want to. He didn't want to taint her with the blood on his hands ever again.
They made it over the crest of a hill, and the farmhouse faded behind it. On the slope of another incline, illuminating the wet dirt and the wild grass under their feet, a fire was burning. On an opposite hill, a crumbling stone wall lined the edge of the farmhouse property, and behind it, Tommy knew, was Johnny Dogs, and Ada, and a tommy gun with 250 rounds of ammunition. Tommy pointed at the spot as best he could while still keeping his grip on Reilly.
"My man is out there, with Ada. He's got a gun, but we have no way home."
Tessa looked at him sharply. "How the fuck did you get here, then?" She asked.
"I took your car. It was the fastest."
There was a spark of realization in her eyes, but she asked anyway. "And where is it now?"
Tommy jerked his head at the hill with a bright dot of fire at it's crest. Tessa was silent.
"You exploded my car," she said, and then, when he nodded, "Fuck." Her beautiful lips turned downwards in a sad little frown, briefly, and he allowed himself a second to contemplate the degree to which she cared about a fucking car when she had spent the past several hours being tied up and shot at and nearly killed more times than he could count. "I liked that car," she said, to herself, and then she sighed.
"We need to get to Johnny. The other Germans could be here, he could have gotten them all, he could have gotten none of them. Fuck knows," Tommy said, wishing for two free hands and a cigarette.
"So do we run?" Tessa asked, cradling her broken hand. Tommy scoffed.
"As much as I appreciate that you think I could run with Reilly Senior, here, we're going to have to settle for walking. Quickly." Tommy wasn't sure how much longer this night could last. He wasn't sure how much longer he could last through it. "Take the gun. There's two rounds. Don't shoot unless you have a clean target, or you absolutely have to." She moved nearer to him with a face full of trepidation, and he wondered at it for a moment. She had never been hesitant around him before, and it was odd to see from her, but he had no time to feel guilt for her fear, would keep moving forever if he had to, to ensure that he never did. Her hand slipped into the waistband of his pants to pull the pistol out, and the brief flash of warmth was enough to make his gut lurch like it had been tugged by a string. She was close to him now, close enough that her breath was tickling across his jaw, and it was fucking ridiculous, because he was literally holding her bleeding father on his back, but he wanted to kiss her, to drown himself in her waves and just let himself go under, and he didn't care about the expression in her eyes, or he told himself he didn't, and he could convince anyone of anything, even and especially himself. Then she blinked, soft lashes brushing her cheek for a split second, and took a step back, the gun in her slim hands, and Tommy felt like he had to peel his feet off where they were rooted to the earth to follow her when she turned around and began walking away.