A/N: Part 3 of 5. Events in this chapter will tie into the concluding two. Gah, and I'm terribly sorry for not updating for the past...two weeks? God, that's terrible. Oh, and if any of you can find my line in here that's stolen from The Fray, I congratulate you. :)
Disclaimer: Hilarity.
--Week Three--
When Derek was about nine or ten years old, he'd have oatmeal for breakfast every single day before hoofing it out to the bus stop. During that time, he got very good at perfecting the art of how to turn plain, gray mush into a sugary, early morning snack that'd happily devoured by children of all ages. He'd top it all off with maple syrup, half a box of Domino and those little marshmallow things that nobody ever seems to be rid of, and it'd taste wonderful. However, living in a dirty tunnel dozens of feet below the earth without a confectioner in sight made the prospect of oatmeal very bleak. Hell, it seems as if the only things that John can get his hands on are made of starch or come out of a tin can.
Derek's not exactly complaining, though. He's heard stories of other bunkers that are putting their Donner Party Survival Guide to good use. Happily stuffing a globful of sticky oatmeal into his mouth, he feels it cementing itself to his insides. Over the top of his bowl, he can see Allison raising a brow at him.
"What?" he asks, his spoon midway to its destination. Lately, he's been one of the few to stay with the Runners from when they arrive in the middle of the night to when the leave just before dawn. Over the last couple of runs, they've all congregated together to sit, eat and talk about whatever made the sun shine. Robue, sitting to Derek's left, chuckles. "Something funny?" he says, turning.
"Nope," Allison says, her eyes grinning in a mischievous fashion. She goes back to her bowl and bites her bottom lip to keep from laughing.
He doesn't rightly know if they're honestly amused by the something that he's completely opaque of, or they're trying to mask the deep fear of Fennery puling in and out of his unconsciousness like two people on a broken seesaw. They arrived not an hour ago, barely in the door when the man's eyes rolled up in his skull, and he fainted. Later, Derek had to good reason to believe that it was from blood loss; Fennery's hand was cut off three days ago in the previous bunker due to infection. Clearly, the wound had not clotted properly and he was just bleeding freely, staining all of his clothes a charming shade of vermillion.
Eying the barely breathing human being deep in sleep from his corner, Derek clears his throat. "When's the last time he ate?"
"Fennery?" Robue asks, his forehead molded in a confused line.
Allison gives him a look. "A couple of hours ago."
"He puke it up?" Derek inquires.
"Yup."
"Not surprising."
"Nope."
Robue's face suddenly drains of all color. "I'm not so hungry anymore." He pushes his bowl away.
Before Derek can even get at it, Allison takes Robue's oatmeal portion, stares at it for a bit and heads over to Fennery. Derek watches her as she sits with her legs crossed on the cement floor and leans forward, pulling off the boy's stocking cap. Not too long ago they hooked up a portable construction lamp to a battery-run generator, and it's now giving the older man's eyes enough light to see the scene unfolding before him.
After a minute, he knows something is wrong. It happened quickly; a sort of ugly fog seeping out from underneath a sewer grate, slowly catching Derek's attention, but not yet the other two's. Shaking his head, he repeats to himself that it's not fair, that this is the hell that they'd volunteered themselves into – that fucked up suicide pact.
Two down, two to go.
Looking over at Robue, Derek notices how his face is so white, that it's almost like Saran Wrap. "Shit...shit, Reese." His voice is sort of croaky and his eyes go glassy and shine like they ran out of tears years ago. Now he knows. "Should we...should we..." Robue breaks off into a whisper, "...tell her?"
"No," he says sternly, staring ahead. He hasn't seen a hint of breathing from Fennery for the past few minutes. "Allie can figure it out." At that moment, he wonders if she can hear him, but he knows that she can't.
The kid's face is chalky and the cold sweat that was seeping down from his temple had left behind a pale trail through the caked on dirt. Threadbare clothes lay on his still warm frame, hanging loosely over his ragged form, the gray stocking hat no longer complimentary with his attire for it's held tightly in Allison's hand. Gradually, Derek watches as she realizes what had happened since they last checked to see that he was breathing not ten minutes ago. "Hey," she whispers softly, running her other hand through his matted, black locks, "Fence." That's her nickname for him. Fence. Derek doesn't know why, but he's aware that it doesn't concern him. "I got something for you."
"All-" Derek starts, rising up from the ground and stepping towards her.
She whips around, her expression furious. "I know," she lashes out. "I fucking know. Just...just...w-wait."
Kneeling down next to her, he goes to place a hand on her shoulder but she suddenly stands up, wiping her hands off on her pants as if she was trying to get rid of something. "Look, he didn't really have a chance, Allie. The kid's hand was cut off, for Chrissakes."
"And?"
"And...that's it."
"No," she says. She's so angry that her words are shaking and falling together. "He...I...it wasn't cut off in the back woods, we did it—"
"You?" Derek asks, crossing his arms. "You who?"
"Oh, you know who, Reese. Don't be dumbass."
"'We' as in 'Robue and I'?"
Allison runs her hands through her hair in frustration. "Yes! Yes, Robue and I!"
He now takes note of the fact that Robue is no longer in the room. "Oh."
"Yeah," she spits back at him. "Oh." She failed Brocik, she failed Fennery. Both of those kids' deaths are partially her fault and she knows it. "I just....I don't know what—" Breaking off in mid-sentence, she shakes her head. "We need to get off his bracelet before he goes rigor."
"Wait," Derek says, reaching out his hand to grab her around the wrist.
She stops. "I'm not breaking this one, too."
"We'll burn him, not bury him. It'll be fine."
Allison lets out a breath that's some odd mix between a sigh and a growl. "It's just..."
He waits a while but doesn't get a response. Leading her to a spare, blood-stained, army cot sitting next to the dead kid, he wonders what exactly she's been through over the past three weeks. Derek's just not cut out to be a Runner. Mostly, it's because he can't run like a rat through a maze without blowing his brains out, but also because it's way too much stress on him. He can't take it. Stretching out his legs with her beside him, he simply relaxes and lets everything sort of settle over him; it's a weird outlet he uses to relieve this wonderful stress. Once it overcomes you, it can't get much worse, so you accept it.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he looks at her -- like really looks at her, for the first time, instead of checking her out. Allison is leaning forward, her elbows resting on the worn knees of her pants, her chin lying on knitted fingers. Her expression is painfully difficult to read because she's staring down at the toes her boots, her eyes downcast and hidden form immediate view. Tied up in a loose, haphazard ponytail, her hair has a golden glow emanating from the depths of its brown locks that gives her a sobering sort of feature, and a more than a few loose strands sweep across her forehead, making her thoughts even harder to understand. Apparently, she chews on her bottom lip when she doesn't know what to do or can't take the blur of the society crumbling around her, and Derek kind of likes that. It annoys him more than anything, but it suits her just perfectly.
She so tense, though, that it's scary. He can see the muscles in her hands when she runs them through her hair and then cracks her knuckles, the sound reverberating through the empty, concrete hall. Allison then, finally, leans back.
"Hey," Derek says.
"What?"
"Do you...uh, wanna talk about it?"
"No," she says sternly, her eyes hard.
He crosses his arms. "You just can't sit like that. It's not good for you. You'll take a screwdriver to us all tomorrow." It was a poor attempt at a joke, yet she didn't acknowledge it.
After a stint of silence, she says, "It was terrible."
"Fennery?"
She just nods.
"The whole hand thing...?"
More nodding.
"I'm sorry."
"I didn't know what to do," she whispers, now resorting to look over his shoulder instead of back at him.
"Look at me," Derek says roughly, which was not his intention. "Allie, please—"
"Why do you call me that?"
Oh, God. "Call you what?"
"Allie."
"Because that's your name."
"The last person to call me that was...my dad," she finishes, her face now a whole half shade brighter. Barely.
"Do you purposely wander off topic?"
"I told you that I don't want to talk about it," Allison says darkly, glaring at him from the corner of her peripheral vision.
Now, this is starting to get aggravating. "Why?" he asks, leaning towards her. "Why am I not allowed knowing why I have to tell John that another Runner is dead? Huh?"
"I already told you that his hand was cut off."
"By you."
"Yes, by me," Allison says, finishing their conversation. She pushes herself off the cot and leaves Derek behind to sit there.
For a few seconds, he watches her walk off; Allison's perfect figure, the way her jaw is set in her definitive answer and the ignorant way that her shoulders are squared under a ratty jacket that's at least two sizes too big. He resists the urge to yell out, to tell her that she's just ignoring Fennery's dead body and to at least show a little bit of respect. Then it occurs to him – Fennery's dead.
"Wait!" His voice is hoarse as he says this.
She doesn't.
"Allie!"
She does. Immediately after he starts towards her, he can see that something's wrong. With arms wrapped around her body, she just stands there and keeps her eyes focused ahead. Once Derek approaches her, she glances up at him only to angrily brush a lone tear off her cheek with the heel of her hand.
When he reaches his arms out for her to fall into like a sort of fifties movie star, she steps back and turn right around, brushing him off. "Hey..."
"No," she chokes out, shoving him away and turning her body as she attempts to wipe away any hints of crying with the back of her sleeve.
"Allie, just...c'mon--"
"Fuck off, Reese." It's ridiculous trying to get what she's saying because her words are all slurred together, partially because he sleeve's in the way, yet partially because she's holding everything in and that doesn't normally have healthy side effects within iteself.
He shakes his head and steps back, stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his fatigues. "Fine," he says.
If anything, that's the right thing to do because he's not going to chase after her like a lawyer for an ambulance and she knows it. Goddamn, he's had enough of her attitude. Every time he figures that she might be a little bit into him, she makes some comment that always refers to him reminding her of her father. He's given her opportunities to tell her what's eating at her and she just rejects him. So, he's going to let her be. If Allison wants to go in a corner and stew by herself, then so be it. More power to her.
He goes left and she stays right between the lines of fear and blame.
Fine.
---
Derek doesn't get up to see Robue and Allison off. He can't bring himself rise from the dirty concrete floor where he was trying to sleep in order to say a possible last good-bye a girl he's falling for. Staring up at what he supposes is a ceiling, he strongly decides on staying just where he is.
A few others from the Resistance give him a look, because they know that he's the one in charge of making sure that they're gone at the right time and heading to the right place with the right messages. Yet, he stays there in his bitter ignorance. He knows that it's mean and rude, and that he's being a child, but he wants her to realize how much it sucks to be ignored when that's not really what's wanted at that exact moment.
Some really weird part of him wishes for her to come back to him, to apologize for what she un-knowingly did. Derek's perfectly aware of the fact that he's the one that needs to step in and do that, however.
He takes a deep breath before pushing himself up from the ground and standing up with cricks in his knees. Suddenly, he has the urge to find her. He has to.
---
At the door of the bunker, Derek sees Robue sitting on the ground with his back against the blast door, a ghost of a smile on his face. "Yo," he calls out. "Allie!"
"She here still?" Derek asks, feeling the blood finally circulate back into his fingers from his uncomfortable sleeping position.
"Yeah, she's—"
From around the corner, he sees her for the briefest of all seconds before she collides into him, her arms wrapping themselves around his waist. He couldn't remember who good it felt to have another human being to embrace and hold for all they're worth, but he does now. His own arms hold her tightly and with a heavy, secure feeling.
Allison stands up on tiptoe, leans on his chest and mumbles into his jacket: "I'm sorry..." When she takes a slow step back from him, he takes great note of the fact that her eyes are red-rimmed and that her pallor is ghastly. It doesn't take a lot to figure out that she got no sleep the night before. But somehow, someway, she has a smile on her face.
"I don't care if you're sorry," he says, reaching for the gun rack on the wall. He loads and checks a shotgun and hands it to her. "Just come back."
"You know that I—"
"Come back," he repeats. "Please." He doesn't know what's gotten into him, but he does know that everything's not just going to end like this. His voice doesn't sound like him; it sounds desperate.
Leaving without a response or even a slight glance at him, Allison heads out of the door and in to the inky blackness, Robue in tow.