Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.
AN: Continued thanks to Ryosei Takahashi Hime. I mean, really thank her. I shoved this entire story down her throat in one sitting, and she still graciously edited the entire thing for me.
And yes, short chapter this time. I know. The next one will be longer.
.3.
The air tasted wrong that day. Gritty and metallic and bitter in his mouth, washing over his eyes and suffocating him.
It took him entirely too long to realize what that meant. He knew this taste. This feeling. The color of the sky, the feel of the wind—he knew it. And it was wrong—oh so wrong.
What if he was too late?
Without warning, he abandoned his inks and papers and raced from the throne room, tripping and falling over his clumsy feet and leaving black stains on the ground where he pushed himself up again. She was hurt, she was in pain—how close had the Beast come this time? Had she managed to jump out of the way in time? Had she been distracted? Had she gone left? Right? A hundred thousand variables ran through his mind, all different, all adding up to different outcomes, each more awful than the last.
"Two! Two! Get Two!" he cried as he tore through the halls of the sanctuary. Two could fix her. Two could put her back together. Two could save her before the pain became too much and her eyes closed and wouldn't open and—
"Seven!" his voice broke as he uttered her name. She was outside the sanctuary, not yet within the building's shadow. She was on the ground, shaking, her back torn open and her eyes squeezed shut. A line of disturbed earth snaked behind her—the path she'd crawled, alone, when she'd escaped her attacker. All that way, alone, with nobody to fix her or help her or take her hand and tell her everything was going to be okay.
He'd failed her.
"Seven," he whispered, kneeling beside her. Behind him One had stopped at the Sanctuary's threshold. Two kept running to meet them with Five following close behind. Eight was crouching low, his knife readied to drive off whatever Beast might lurk nearby. Three and Four watched from a window, holding each other tight, not daring to investigate for fear of what they might find. Six had seen it all before, and he'd known it would happen, and he should have done something about it. So why hadn't he?
Why hadn't he stopped her? Why hadn't he saved her?
Together Two and Five picked her up and began carrying her out of harm's way and into their workshop. Six followed them all the way, hovering around them in a mild panic until the two mechanics left to get the proper tools.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, taking her hand in his. She cringed but gripped his fingers tightly. "I'm sorry—so sorry—so so sorry—" Her eyes focused on him, afraid, more afraid than she had been before his panic, asking the question she couldn't verbalize: am I going to die?
"No, no, no, no, no," he said quickly. "No. You're going to be okay. You're going to get better. And you'll be there to see everything—the end of everything and the beginning of everything else, and you're going to be there and be okay and—"
He didn't know how she could smile through her pain, but she did. She didn't understand quite what he'd said or why he'd said it, but it made her feel a little better, even if her ribs were sticking out at odd angles and her canvas was torn and her mangled spine sparked and flared at intervals.
"You're going to get better," he whispered before Five ushered him out of the workshop. "I promise you're going to get better."