Notes: Alright so this is ALL Fin's POV and it's going to jump from dreams about the incident in the woods to reality linespaces differentiate these jumps
...just incase anyone is going 'wft?!' The stuff in ITALICS is dream/memory, well except for the usual italic sentences that denote Fin's thoughts. Okay, now that that's clear as mud and I'm confused too. Crap. : /
Poor Seraphim, I promise to be nicer to her in a bit...
Chapter Forty-Two
(Fin's POV)
"Run Mika, Go!"
Screaming my warning to her sends another hot slice of pain through my chest, it's radiating out from below my clavicle to my shoulder…shooting down my arm till my fingers go numb with it.
I'm trying to get up…
Can't seem to get my muscles to cooperate,
Can't catch my breath…
Come on!
Walkers lurch towards us, not drawn by the fresh body; attracted to the frantic movements of our struggle in the dark.
"Shoot her!" Lizzie is screaming to Mika, her gun raised wavering between the approaching Walkers in the dark…and my spot on the ground with her sister screaming at her.
"Shoot her or I'll kill you!"
Mika bolts away through the darkness instead…
It's daylight when I open my eyes again.
I don't immediately recognize the room I'm lying in…disorientation making me dizzy.
My mouth is horribly dry…drawing in a breath leaves me wheezing in agony; my chest seizing with pain, sharp stabbing jolts and dull throbs alternate through my shoulder.
Bone deep pain radiating down my right arm…which someone must have secured to my ribs with a strip of fabric seeing as I can't move that arm at all…I can't be certain; I can't lift my head enough to see anything but the blurry impression of sunlight on the off-white ceiling.
Someone says something in the room…but I'm at a loss to identify the actual words…or who said them.
I let my eyes slip shut against the pain and drift for a while longer.
"I'm going to kill you!"
Mika bolts into the darkness.
Lizzie tackles her screaming enraged.
An explosion of sound hits my ears,
Rings in them…Echoes off the trees in the darkness.
Lizzie is screaming blindly stabbing at her sister's smaller form pinned to the ground.
Mika screams and screams…high pitched terrible wails of terror and pain that slice through my head, twist in my chest.
Mika's shrieking cries claw at my ears; wrench my insides overwhelming the agony of moving.
I drive Lizzie to the ground with my shoulder, searing white hot pain blinding me from my back…my chest…
Lizzie kicks at me; tries to stab me again…I slap her hand away with a sharp jerk; her fingers and the handle now so slick with blood she can't keep her grip anymore…
Mika is sobbing somewhere in the darkness a few feet away.
"I'm sorry….I'm sorry!"
I have to lurch off of Lizzie when the Walker almost falls on Mika's huddled form snarling…
Lizzie tries to grab my leg.
I kick back getting her wounded stomach with my heel; sending her crumpling back to the ground, clutching at her blood soaked shirt…winding her hopefully for long enough that I can stop the Dead we've attracted with the commotion and a fresh body….
I've got to keep them from killing Mika at least; she might have a chance if the others can find us fast enough…I stagger to my feet.
Hand outstretched toward the ambling dead closing in on their helpless target my own ragged aching breathes seem to echo in my own ears as I try to focus…without my bow I only know one way to make sure they don't hurt anyone else…
I'm going to die out here anyways…
I sweep the legs out from under the first one, lean over its form in the dark…then take down the second one the same way…
They stay on the ground, seizing and convulsing a few seconds later.
The sudden silence of the woods reaches my ears without their snarling gurgling cries.
Everything freezes, runs too slow as I turn…
…The silence overwhelms my ears,
roars in them agonizingly loud…
I fully expecting Lizzie's next attack before I'm ready to defend myself again
…but she's just standing there…
Eyes wide…shocked.
Her pale face turned to me in obvious confusion...
Then down at the black spreading out across her shirt…
I open them again to find I'm in the same room…
It still doesn't look familiar…
It's darker now
I should probably figure out why…
Knowing where I am…how much time has passed might be important.
…but then the pain is back and I lay still and drift again for a while, try to wait it out 'til it leaves me enough to concentrate…
I end up floating back into quiet darkness again…
Lizzie doesn't move…just stands there staring back at me; Eyes wide...glassy almost…
Her pale face almost glows in the moonlight.
Her eyes drift down to the black stain spreading out across her shirt…expanding faster down her chest towards the dark stain over her abdomen already visible in the pale light.
I realize that another gunshot has gone off…it's not silence that's deafened me…but the crack of gunfire.
I turn to see Mika's hands tremble and shake around its heavy weight…it drops from her suddenly open fingers to thud against the dirt while she dissolves into gasping sobs.
I collapse next to her the second Lizzie goes down, try to press my hands to the open holes on her belly.
She stares up at me with wide eyes.
"How did you do that?"
Oh...she saw that…
I press my hands tighter over her abdomen, feel blood well up under my palms anyway.
it hardly matters for either of us now…
"I….I…I just can, I don't know."
My breath rushes out in a painful breath that burns across my whole chest.
"Seraphim? Can you hear me? Come on babe…I need you to wake up."
I know that voice…
it's….it's on the tip of my tongue…
Then it slides away again to inky blackness.
She's staring up at me in the darkness; eyes catching the moonlight…shiny and bright with tears.
I don't know how I do it…it just works…
"It's okay…Lizzie had lots of secrets too. I'm good at keeping secrets."
Her whisper is so quiet I have to lean my ear over her lips to hear it.
"Don't tell Carol I did it, she'll never forgive me…"
I nod, at a complete loss for words; chest burning with searing pain from Lizzie's wicked knife skills. I don't think we're going to have that problem…
Another Walker stumbles out behind us not twenty feet away.
I don't think I have the concentration left to get rid of it not with the scent of fresh blood heavy in the air…and I lost my bow somewhere in the dark…no knife, no gun…so much pain I can barely breathe past it.
I think we might both be taking these secrets to the grave.
End Notes:
Did I just confuse the ebber-loving-bejeebus out of you?
Thanks for coming this far with me, you guys rock!