It was the first time that year Conrad had voluntarily touched someone that wasn't a violent attempt on their life (Adelaide) or an equally violent attempt on their vulgar assumptions (Worth). The fact of the matter was that Conrad preferred not to touch anyone, at all, ever, and struggled with his revulsion in the face of the horror he'd seen that night.
First off, Cherubs were not the rosy-cheeked winged infants of the Renaissance. They were many-headed, and large, and all wrong; a mashup of animal parts and too many wings and three pairs of skinny dark arms with long flashing nails with which they could play harps and fire cupid bows, apparently. Cherub wasn't even the right word; this thing was whatever a cupid was, some long-forgotten slice of lore that had warped over the long years through the march of christianity across the imaginations of the people. Or something.
Hanna wasn't exactly clear in his babbling lecture. He twisted in Conrad's grasp, a sweaty days-starved shell that wanted nothing more than to go to that thing wailing and flapping in the far corner. "You can't!" He sobbed, screamed, writhed in Conrad's reluctant grip.
The arrows flew. Worth fired the shotgun.
Hanna collapsed, grief-stricken, and Conrad dropped him indelicately to the warehouse floor. Kicking aside the sharpie marker, Conrad shuffled in a circle to survey the damage, blood thick and sweet in the air. Hanna had taken a bolt in the thigh days earlier; the wound had been wrapped with dirty bandages the duration of his stay with the Cherub (with which he had, apparently, fallen in love). It was with a twinge that Conrad registered his own wound, a delayed spike of fear when he realized that arrows were really just little wooden stakes that could fly at high speeds. His ribs were pierced through from behind, missing his heart by the grace of panic.
Worth had staggered up by then, unceremoniously yanking the shaft free of Conrad's dead torso with a warning curse. Conrad had winced, but it hadn't hurt nearly as badly as he'd been prepared for. It was all very... odd. Meeting Doc Worth's venomous gaze for a split second; relieved there was no lightning strike of sudden and overwhelming infatuation. Conrad felt a little badly for Cross sobbing dejectedly on the floor there, but that was as far as feelings went for the night. He hoped.
"Kid, it killed people," Worth argued softly, helping Hanna to a shaky stand. "Yer gonna feel like shit about it for a little while, and then yer gonna remember this was all boll-oddness and mumfuckery. Hey?"
Conrad shifted in place, discomfited by the presentation of Worth consoling someone, and haunted by the lingering warmth against the inside of his arms where bony ribs had heaved. "Oh, son of a -" Conrad blurts, staring down at his own arms in sudden dawning alarm. Shit shit shit, he was in fake love with Hanna. He wanted to 'go to' him and maybe do that hugging grapple thing until Hanna stopped crying.
Worth's sharp demand 'wot' and Hanna's babbled rush of denial clashed together. Conrad relented the stage to his own wordless horror and Hanna plowed on; "It was just lost and it ran out of magic ammo so it got new kindsa arrows and it doesn't know what death even is and she - it -" A hiccough. A far-away gaze. "Man. She was so cool."
"She was gonna kill us, Red." Doc Worth lights a cigarette with shaking hands.
"No. No, man. She was... she wanted to understand. She wanted people to be happy." Hanna slumps, exhaustion catching up with his overwrought body. "Why did you have to kill her?" He looks like he's about to cry again, staring up at Worth like maybe he wants to knock one out on his sharp smug fucking chin. But Worth isn't smug right now, and that perhaps was the cherry on top of the entire disturbing sundae.
"Okay, so who the fuck else is ready to get out of here?" Conrad interrupts the weighty moment with forced impatience. "Hanna, I think you really need to -" He pulls in a sharp breath when he registers that he can smell it, that Worth is also bleeding and that means he wasn't the only one who'd gotten hit and fuck, fuck everything, fuck this place, they couldn't both be in fake love with Hanna because that would just be too -
Both watching Conrad's barely restrained meltdown, Hanna glazed by trauma and Worth sharp with his usual agitation whenever the theme for the week was how badly Hanna could manage to fuck himself up (and Conrad's growing investment in giving a fuck was possibly the most disturbing trump, but who knew, the evening was young yet and Conrad was ready to be surprised). Then of course Worth ups the ante by stepping forward, brows pinched up in expressive concern, "Y' all right there yerself, Connie?"
Because Conrad had stopped mid-lecture, mid-rant, and fallen silent and ashen. "...Am I the only one who realizes how fucked we all are right now?"
"Aw princess, yer hardly gonna bleed out -"
"Fuck off, Worth, that's not what I'm talking about!" Conrad marches forward and grasps Hanna's arm, gritting his teeth as he glares down, their glasses nearly colliding. "You can fix this. Tell me you can fix this. I know you can, Hanna, please," and he says Hanna's name as if it were a girl's, a girl who was breaking his heart and he were only begging her not to leave his dysfunctional finicky OCD jerk ass. "It's not real. It's not real and you can get rid of it and we don't all have to be royally fucked, right?"
Hanna blinks, slowly. "I'm sorry, dude." He shrugs Conrad's grip easily free. "You didn't let me save her. You even..." A hard appraisal, head-to-toe, and Conrad never felt so wretched. "As far as I'm concerned, you can both go fuck yourselves." Hanna turns away and strides from the warehouse with more strength than Conrad figured someone trapped in isolation for half a week would have.
Worth snorts around his cigarette, clearly impressed.
Conrad rounds on Doc Worth, fists clenched. "Don't even fucking pretend this doesn't affect you."
"Feh. Why should it? He'll live."
"You aren't - aren't you -" Conrad gestures from Worth's bleeding arm to the empty warehouse door. "In fake magic love with Cross?"
Worth blows smoke right over Conrad's shoulder, leaning close. His bloodshot, sunken eyes trace a slow and deliberate path up Conrad's frame until they meet the incredulity dawning on his face. "Nope."
