Artemis

It's one thing to bandage a friend's wound with absolutely nothing else but shredded shirt material. It's another thing entirely to have to do that with just one hand while your own broken arm is killing you and he's screaming in your ear and the echoes of the containment crate have a habit of bouncing around for a LOT longer than they should.

I pretend my hands aren't shaking violently as I try to work.

I can't stand the sound of him screaming. Really, I can't stand the sound of ANYONE screaming. It scrambles my brain. In torture movies, it makes my stomach churn. Coming from Wally…

Vaguely, I consider his request to know him out, but eventually admit I can't do that either. Calculating the amount of force it'd take from me to knock him out cold—plus the fact that it would be like throwing out my ticket home—keeps me gritting my teeth through his screaming as I clumsily bandage first his knee, which is worse, then his calf.

"It's okay," I keep saying, over and over under my breath as I try to get a grip on the blood-soaked fabric, just enough to tie the next knot. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay…" I can't think of anything else to say.

While I work on his calf, his eyes rolls back and he passes out cold on his own. Mercifully. I finish that one much faster as a result. Then I sit back, trying to reposition his legs to a more comfortable—comfortable?!—position but they refuse to leave fetal. So I give up and sit back, wiping the blood off on my pants as I look over my very sloppy attempt at playing nurse. As long as the bleeding stops, I tell myself. As long as it stops…

It's getting hotter, I'm not imagining it. They've either turned up the heat or the crate's just warming up to its setting of 'suffocating'. I ditch my jacket and my boots and socks—much harder done than said when one arm's freshly broken and in a sling—and as an afterthought, I painstakingly take off Wally's sneakers and socks too. His pants are too all under his bandages to risk removing and I'm not going anywhere near his bloody undershirt just yet.

There's nothing for me to do now but wait. I sit playing with one of the buttons of his shirt that had popped loose in the ripping and watch the blood on his shirt bandages, willing it to dry and clot. I lose track of time watching over him and finally, when I realize he won't need me for a while, I get up and take up the task of escape again.

First thing I do is check the metal panes near the door for an entry hole from the bullet, hoping for a peephole I can maybe use to see something of the outside. I find it but all I see is dark outside, and I can't get my eye any closer to the metal without branding my face.

I can't check the leverage on the door without touching it and burning myself. It's reaching the point where I'm scared to even get close to any of the walls. They haven't turned red yet from the heat or anything, but I'm starting to get the feeling that they will very very soon.

The heat, the smell of blood, cooking meat almost, is more than my stomach can take all of the sudden and then I can't hold it in. I vomit, just in front of the door. I heave so hard, I have to drop to my knees or fall over. I throw up orange Cheetos.

There's a loud banging knock on the door, only a foot away, and I throw myself away from it, startled, and land painfully on my bad shoulder. "AAAGH!"

"Hope you're toasty warm in there, Ms. Crock," the lead goon's voice calls. "We've send dear Daddy your stellar performance and his instructions on where he needs to drop the money if he wants to know what your address is."

He laughs. I want to vomit again. "Oh, and Lawrence better be a punctual bastard or you and your boyfriend will be Well Done before the night's out!"

There's a heavy thump on the door once and then I can hear his footsteps retreating. That's it then. Our entire survival depends on my father paying a ransom and then coming for us. Which means we're screwed.

Not even, we're royally screwed.

My shoulder burns as I try to sit up. I try to roll it back but that just makes it AND my arm splinter in pain. I think I tear up but then I swear the heat evaporates them off my face. As much as I hate to admit it, these morons actually put together a great trap. I'm weaponless, Wally's powerless, and we're both injured and needing medical attention.

I entertain the thought of actually giving in to the trap, waiting for my father to come save us. Dad was a selfish piece of work. But he was also dad. In the six years I spent alone with him, I always took that to mean that one cancelled out the other. Maybe I misjudged him, I tell myself. Maybe he will come for me after all. Maybe he'd give the men what they wanted if it meant saving me.

…Tch. I kick myself. Yeah, and maybe a pack of unicorns will burst through the door in the next few minutes and ride us off into the sunrise. Who was I kidding? He trained me to take care of myself, to get out of anything. He wasn't going to lift a finger to pay the ransom because he'd know he trained me how to get out of a kidnapping all by myself.

Thanks, dad. That's great to know. Looking out for number ONE I got. But you never really were a duo sort of guy. I know that from mom.

Glancing over at Wally, I narrow my eyes, take a deep breath of too hot air, and decide to dedicate exactly thirty seconds to considering my escape options as a SOLO endeavor.

If I put my boots back on, I might be able to kick the door down if I put enough muscle behind it. The heat may have softened the hinges enough to give me the extra leeway to knock it down. Get out, run for the hills before they have enough time to react to the ruckus I'm sure I'll cause.

Leave Wally.

I could play injured, scream and cry and beg for morphine or painkillers. Tell them I think my other arm or my hip or something else was damaged too. Overpower them the RIGHT way when they come in and make my break for it just the same.

Leave Wally.

Goddamnit.

I slam my fist on the cushiony floor which, expectedly, does absolutely nothing. I'm not giving up. I'm not. The anger's good, I try to convince myself. All previous options are exhausted, fine, make new ones. Just this heat…

My shirt is drenched in sweat now, as are my pants. I'm going to have to find a way to get my hair up in a bun with just one hand too. Soon, I'm not even going to care about Wally West in the room and just strip down to my underwear. That or suffocate.

I try to find a measuring meter for the time, figure out just how long I've been exposed to this type of heat since I realized the threat of heat stroke was a more pressing problem than running out of air. The blood on Wally's legs must be dry by now, I think. That takes about…how long? They were, wait…no, were they dry?

I do my weird tripod crawl over to him. His blood isn't dried. Not entirely. The heat seems to be making it worse, keeping the wounds from clotting completely, just begging for an infection. I touch the knee wound gently just to check exactly how wet it still is.

Wally's leg violently jerks away from my hand and he moans painfully, coming to, I think.

"Sorry!" I whisper urgently, hoping that maybe he'll go back to sleep, unconsciousness—wherever he was before—if I don't talk too loud. "Sorry, Wally, go back to—"

But his eyes tighten in pain and he groans something excruciating through his teeth, ever muscle in his body going taught to bear the pain. He also doesn't seem to have the same problem tearing up like I do. Jesus, if my arm was burning as bad as it was after the painkillers, his legs…

My second plan, about begging for medicine, comes back to me. It may not get me escape, but if they really wanted to keep me alive in relative comfort until my father arrived…

"Is anyone out there?!" I cry at the door, sounding my most anguished. "Please, my arm hurts! If daddy is going to take a long time…" I let the plea hang, hoping it works. Just to make sure they hear me, I grab my boot from nearby and throw it at the wall with a bang. "My arm! Please, please…"

The footsteps approach and I stop, watching the door, frozen, waiting. My survival instincts suddenly think of my original plan, running, overpowering.

Wally groans horribly again. I tighten my good hand into a fist, desperately holding back the impulse to run.

"Come to the entry hole," says a voice. Not the main goon, one of the smaller guys I hit initially. I crawl over slowly to where the tiny bullet hole is.

There's a sound of hollow metal hitting solid metal and a slight echoing sound and two small white pills slide into the container. I snatch them up eagerly, amazed and relieved that I actually got this plan to work.

Then to my surprise the water starts flowing in. I gasp and dive for it. I catch a mouthful, two, and gulp them down desperately before I have the sense to catch myself. I manage one more mouthful and hold it without swallowing before the water cuts off. The liquid on the floor evaporates or sinks in as soon as it touches the black padding on the floor. The man knocks the pipe against the crate, snickering and walks away.

When I'm pretty sure he's out of hearing range, I shuffle quickly over to Wally, a mouthful of water, the pills held loosely in my bad hand. I use my good one to smack him.

He groans long and painfully and forces out a sincere sounding, "Bitch." I can see now that he's been sweating almost as bad as me.

I sit so I don't need the support of my good hand and use it to turn his face to me, glaring at him to show him I mean business since I can't very well talk. His eyes are shut tight from the pain but I force one open. His pupils are going in and out of focus so I have no idea how much is getting through his head. I take the pills from my bad hand and show them to him, then point at my chipmunk cheeks of water.

He stares blearily for a moment, mumbling, "whahuh…?"

As usual, he's hopeless. So I shift around to behind him and prop his head up on my lap so that he's not completely horizontal. I open his mouth, ready to place the two pills on his tongue, but I stop short.

I've got no way to get the water from my mouth to his except…by the obvious route. I consider trying to put it in my hands or in his to have him sip from, but I'm too injured and he's too unconscious to manage it without spilling everything.

Damn it. This isn't how I ever wanted to do this.

I take a deep breath and decide I need to prop him up further if I'm going to get this to work. It takes a bit of finagling, but I finally get his dead wait to lean up against me, back to front. Halfway through, I almost cave in and drink the water in my mouth myself, it's just so hot.

Wally's still grasping on the last threads of consciousness, though not by much. He keeps groaning and moaning and insulting me or the universe or whatever under his breath. And I can't even tell him to shut up.

Somehow I get his head on my good shoulder. It lolls back as he sort of looking at me but mostly doesn't. Hoping against hope he doesn't spit it out or choke on it, I open his mouth gingerly with my good hand and put the two pills on his tongue. Then press my lips to his and slowly let some of the water out into his mouth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch his eyes widen. It's terrible of me under the circumstances—I know—but I'm secretly grateful it's too hot and he's too out of it to see just how badly I must be blushing right now.

I stop after a second, waiting to see if he tries to swallow. He does, once, hard. Immediately I dip back down to give him the rest of the water. He swallows that in two gulps and gives me a half-lidded expectant look.

"That's all I salvaged," I tell him, now that I can talk. I feel a drop of water sliding down the corner of my lip and I grab it, since it's probably the only water I'm going to be getting.

"Ssssssssssss'okay…" he mumble/hisses, closing his eyes tightly again. "Sssswas gooood…"

In the next second, his face lapses into a feigned relaxation and he's out again. I know I'll have to put him back down if I'm going to resume escape planning…but I sit there with him for a while. You know, since it took me so much trouble to get him in that position in the first place and everything. I try not to look at his bloody and twisted legs.

And even though I told myself I wasn't going to give up, that I wasn't going to stop trying to get us out of here, I think of my dad and how he's not coming. I take in the heat again, cooking us both alive. I think of his legs and my arm.

I consider that of all the people I know in the world, I could have MUCH worse company to die with than Wally West.