No Way Out - Chapter 4
Marian closes her eyes, gives her head a little shake and then opens them again to stare down at Fen's arm, breathing out a little relieved sigh when she sees that it still looks to be a perfectly normal, if damp, limb. For a second she had thought she'd seen... but no. No that would be ridiculous, even for this circus sideshow of a reality. She bites down gently on her lower lip, piercing catching between her teeth while she brushes her thumb against one of the swirls of his tattoos. The white ink is brilliant, but flat, and most definitely not glowing like she could have sworn it had just seconds ago. Not that she'd expected them to. It had just been a trick of the light against the peroxide. Or her mind, maybe. She'd be lying to herself if she said the walkers outside didn't have her on edge, after all. Right, that was probably it. Just her head trying to scare the crap out of her by making her think his tattoos had lit up with the same creepy light as their markings. The traitor.
She pushes any other thoughts of the hallucination away, attention turned back to the now-clean gash on Fen's arm. "See?" she says happily while she reaches blindly towards the first aid kit at her right, fingers poking at the supplies until they close around a thick, fluffy roll of gauze. "That wasn't so God-awful now, was it?"
He grumbles as he turns back, but when he speaks she doesn't miss the way some of his earlier tension has ebbed away. "I've certainly lived through worse." His eyes flick to where she's started wrapping his arm, and then his brows pinch, head cocking to one side when he takes notice of her arms. "Those are... interesting."
"What are?" She pauses long enough to glance down to where his gaze has gone, and laughs. "Ah. Yeah, I guess you didn't know I had these, did you?" Her hand lifts away from his wrist to hover in the space between them, her own collection of tattoos a mass of bright colors that cover both her arms from wrist to where her shirt sleeves end. "If you can't tell, I have a bit of a thing for monster movies."
"Clearly," he says, not unkindly, his focus trained on the picture of The Wolfman sitting just below her elbow, half of his face cut off by the red plaid of her shirt.
Marian smiles, turning her hand palm-up to show the underside of her arm, letting go of him long enough to point at a ghoulish-looking girl's face. "This one here was always my favorite, and yes I get the irony, but I've always had a soft spot for George Romero. Especially his earlier stuff. Real ground breaker, no one had ever done anything like he did before he started making his movies."
"Uh... who?"
"Oh come on!" she says incredulously, her eyes widening. "You can't tell me you've never heard of Romero! Night of the Living Dead? Dawn of the Dead? Director of almost every zombie flick ever made that's worth seeing? Any of this ringing a bell?"
"I, uh," Fen says, his lip twitching as he tries and fails not to smirk. "No, I can't say I have."
"This is just insulting." She turns back to the gauze hanging off of his arm with a frown, her head still shaking once she's finished and pinned it in place with a finger. "I don't know where you've been for the last forty-seven years—"
"Not alive yet, for a large portion of it."
"—but if by some miracle we ever come across a working TV and have the spare juice in the generator to run it, we're putting an end to this blasphemy ASAP."
He gives another one of his short little chuckles, the sound rumbling out of his chest. "I'll look forward to it, then."
"Good. Glad to hear I won't have to worry about hog tying you to a chair like I had to with Bethany. Oh don't worry," she says hurriedly at the thrown look he gives her while she dives back into the first aid kit, "she thanked me eventually." Her mouth tilts, head turning to look into the box of supplies, and she curses. "Oh for the love of - damn it, Carver."
"What is it?"
"Stupid git used up the last of the bandage wrap on that nick he got from his ax and didn't refill the kit like he damn well knows he's supposed to," Marian grumbled, then sighed, mouth pursing as she flicks her eyes through the rest of the room. "You didn't happen to grab any when we were stocking up, did you?"
"No. But I did see them."
"Where?"
"Currently? Pressed against the door and buried behind three sets of shelves."
"... Well that isn't very helpful at the moment, is it?" She gives a frustrated huff, blowing her bangs out of her eyes while she lifts her free hand to the nape of her neck. "Guess we get to improvise, then."
"What are you—" Fen starts to ask, then stops when her fingers finish fumbling with the knot holding her bandana in place, the red fabric slipping free in her grip. "Hawke, that isn't necessary."
"It is if you want this gauze to stay where it ought to," she says as she starts to fold the cloth in her lap with one hand, the other tightening its grip around his arm ever so slightly when he tries to pull away. "I don't know about you, but my gut has never been wrong and it's screaming 'leave those shelves the fuck alone if you don't want to die a horrible, painful death' and I'm not inclined to test it for something petty as a more orthodox bandage."
The tug against her fingers stops and his arm relaxes, followed by a long, surrendering sigh through his nose. "I suppose you make a valid point."
"Excellent. Good to see you're not opposed to common sense." The bandana is wrapped around his arm in a flash, tied off in a neat little knot just below the base of his wrist before he has a chance to change his mind. "And would you look at that?" Marian says, eyes lifting from the makeshift bandage up to his face while her hands fall to either of her hips. "It doesn't look half bad on you either if I do say so myself. Red really is your color, you should think about wearing it more often."
He looks up from scrutinizing his new accessory, one corner of his mouth curling. "I'll take it under advisement," he says, and then, gaze turning serious: "Thank you, Hawke. I... appreciate the gesture."
She returns the smile but shrugs off the thanks, busying herself with closing up the kit and shoving it back into the bottom of her pack. "Don't mention it. If a friend can't help you patch up an arm while you're hiding out from a horde of walkers what good are they, right?"
"Friend." His nose wrinkles, brows pulled tight like the word is in some foreign language he's still learning the basics of and isn't quite sure of its translation in English. The effect is, she thinks in amusement as she continues putting away her supplies, ridiculously adorable. "Yes, I... suppose you have a point."
"Besides, I owed you one," she says, tossing him a grin while she zips up the flap of her bag and moves it out of the way of her feet. "You're the one who dragged my ass away from the window, remember?"
"Only after you took care of that walker in the street. It would have killed me if you hadn't shot it."
"What was I going to do, sit there and let it bite your nose off?" Her shoulders fall against more boxes as she leans back. "Would have been a waste of a perfectly handsome face if you ask me."
Fen laughs at that, but it's awkward, halting, and he scrambles to cover it up with a painfully fake cough. He even tries to sell it by turning away and lifting a balled hand in front of his mouth, and she's just barely able to catch a snort in her throat when she notices that he's blushing again, his ears turned a deep shade of cherry red. So he is the shy type. Looks like Bethany was right after all.
"So, any preference for conversation topics?" she asks casually, offering him an easy out but still tucking the tidbit of information away for potential later use. "We probably still have a little while to go before Aveline and the others can launch their daring rescue mission."
"If we're lucky," he says, embarrassment slipping away and turning suddenly serious. Marian is relieved, however, to see he seems about as keen to dwell on their predicament as she is, one corner of his mouth pulling down in thought as his eyes flick back to the tattoos on her arms. "Care to talk about those?"
Her eyes go wide as her grin spreads farther across her face, stretching from one ear to the other. "An excellent topic of choice if I do say so myself. What do you want to know?"
"The obvious, I would think."
"Why cover myself in B-rated movie monsters, right?" she asks, and when he nods she shrugs. "Call me a terrible film buff, but I always liked those sorts of movies – the campier the better. Not sure why, exactly. Maybe I just like watching a guy in a polystyrene mask and eight pounds of makeup chase people through cardboard cutout sets."
Fen smirks, his posture relaxing enough for him to lean back into the boxes as well. "Call me presumptuous, but that doesn't sound like a good enough reason for you to have them permanently drawn onto your arms."
"What, a girl can't deck herself out in Bela Lugosi on a whim?" she asks, jaw dropping dramatically in fake insult that makes him roll his eyes. "But no, you're right. I guess I... I don't know, I really appreciate how they came up with this stuff, I guess? Like, the process and effort that goes into creating all these mutants and ghouls and other things that go bump in the night has always been really interesting to me. How sometimes it goes really well and you get your Draculas and Freddy Kruegers that scare the pants off of you and keep you up at night, annnnd then sometimes it doesn't, and you just end up laughing your ass off at giant killer tomatoes from space."
"Giant killer tomatoes?"
"I know. Trust me, you're not missing much with that one."
"It sounds like they were quite the hobby for you."
"Damn right they were," she says sincerely, her focus dropping to her hands in her lap, fingers picking at a crack in her thumbnail. "Was trying to make them more than that too. You know, before the whole world decided to launch itself off the deep end and landed on its head."
"What do you mean?" Fen asks curiously, and she hears him shift his weight on his box.
She gives a small laugh and looks up, only to realize he's angled himself towards her, watching with a focus she's surprised to see looks like genuine interest. Her brow cocks as she leans forward to rest her elbows against her knees while she says: "You know, normally when I talk to people about this they lose interest after we get to the killer tomatoes part. You sure you want to keep listening to me ramble?"
It's his turn to shrug, his head tilting while his shoulder lifts and falls. "I'm enjoying it well enough."
"All right then," she says incredulously. "I warned you though. Not my fault if you end up bored to tears, and if you start calling me a dork for this I'm taking back that drink I owe you."
His mouth twitches, eyes crinkling at the corners with the grin. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"I like to draw," she says simply, "or at least I did. I'm sure I still would if all my sketchbooks weren't already full to bursting and I could get my hands on some new ones. When things were still, well, normal, I was trying to get myself a job as a concept artist. You know, for like a production company or video game developer? Pretty much any free time I had went into working on different character designs. Monsters mostly, obviously, but I did some other things too. Aliens, different takes on types of elves – pretty much anything related to all that fantasy, sci-fi, horror crap."
"Elves?"
"Eh, what can I say? I have a thing for people with pointy ears." Her teeth are at her piercing again, giving it a quick tug. "But yeah. Anyway. I had my portfolio out at a few companies – even had an interview all set to go with one place that seemed really interested in my stuff... And then everything went to shit," she says with a sigh, and while it may not be intentional she catches herself slipping a bit of residual bitterness into her words.
Fen, observant bastard that he apparently is, catches on to it easily, and his voice is softer when he says: "I'm... sorry to hear that. I imagine it was quite the disappointment."
"I mean yeah, of course it was." Marian quickly forces the frown that had crept across her face without her notice into something less melancholy while she leans back against the boxes again. "But it isn't like I have any real room to complain. I'm still alive, for one. And so are Bethy, Carver and Mom. Christ, even my dog has made it through so far. There are a lot of people out there who lost a hell of a lot more than a job opportunity, and that's putting it mildly."
He makes a low humming noise in his throat and copies her, his head thudding quietly against the box behind him as he tilts it back. "Perspective is always a beneficial quality to have."
"Right? At least we haven't been turned into mindless, cannibalistic nightlights. Not yet, anyway," she says, and then quickly, to distract herself from the flicker of dread that shoots through her stomach at the thought: "So what about you, huh?"
"Me?" Fen asks, sounding puzzled while his forehead wrinkles.
"No, the other tattooed guy with anime hair in here with us." Marian rolls her eyes, gesturing towards him with her chin. "Of course I meant you. Come on, there's got to be a good story behind all of those."
"I..." He looks down to stare critically at his arms, the crease in his forehead deepening as he flexes his fingers, tendons and muscles moving beneath his skin and making the inked lines shift. "I don't remember."
"What do you mean you don't remember?" Her brows furrow, then relax when her eyes widen at a thought. "Oh God... Please tell me you didn't get drunk off your ass and decide covering yourself in white squiggly lines would be 'so cool'."
"What? No, I—"
"Because that would be both ridiculously stupid of you and the biggest let down of a story I've ever heard."
"No, Hawke," he says shortly, and as exasperated as he may sound his expression has turned more thoughtful than annoyed. "I... honestly don't remember why I have them. ... Or much of anything else, for that matter."
