Chapter 7

Mordecai slowly opened his eyes, wondering where he was. His head was throbbing, his muscles ached and he felt an agonizing pain in his left wing. As his eyes focused, all he could see was the ground and the base of the tress. "Uhhhh"" he groaned, "What the hell happened?" He lifted his head slowly off the ground and yelled out in pain when he tried to put pressure on his wing. Hesitantly, he looked down and saw a long, deep gash along the top that was bleeding profusely. It was likely ripped open on the metal of the cart when he was thrown out. With a lot of effort, he managed to crane his neck to look around and saw the mangled cart crashed into a large tree.

"Oh shit, where's Rigby?" Mordecai murmured as everything started coming back to him. The adrenaline coursing through his body had instantly sobered him. The last thing he remembered was trying to regain control of the cart after it swerved off the path. He looked around for the raccoon, but was unable to see him anywhere.

"RIGBY!" Mordecai shouted, but received no answer. "RIGBY!" He managed to pull himself up on his knees and one good wing. He started slowly crawling through the dead leaves and brush. Every move he made sent another wave of excruciating pain shooting through his injured wing. He knew he was losing blood fast, but he didn't care. All he cared about was finding Rigby.

"RIGBY!" Mordecai yelled again. The blue jay looked around through blurred vision and finally noticed a brown and black object sprawled on the ground about thirty feet from the cart. "No, no, no, no…" he repeated as he forced his body to push forward and made his way over to Rigby. The raccoon was lying at the base of a tree that he had obviously slammed into when he'd been thrown from the cart. His forehead was bleeding badly from several lacerations and his right arm was bent at an unnatural angle.

"Rigby? Wake up! Come on, dude. Wake up!" Mordecai gently shook his friend to no avail. "Oh God, Rigby. What have I done?" He frantically pressed his ear to the raccon's chest, listening for a heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there. The blue jay breathed an uneasy sigh of relief. Rigby was alive, but he was badly injured. He didn't know how serious his friend's wounds were, or how much time he had left without medical intervention. He needed to get help. "Hang on, Rigby."

"FUCK!" Moredcai yelled as he hysterically searched for his cell phone only to realize that it too must have been thrown into the woods by the impact. Rigby's was nowhere to be found either. The phones could be anywhere in the thick underbrush and he was too weak and in too much pain to look for them. Nausea and dizziness were beginning to set in as his blood loss started catching up with him.

"I'm so sorry Rigby. You have no idea. This is totally my fault." Mordecai said, his voice cracking with emotion. He completely blamed himself for all of this. Sure, Rigby was the one that told him to go faster, but if he hadn't been so high he would have been able to handle it - just as he had handled in the past. The drugs caused this, not Rigby. And he was the one to blame for it. He hated himself in this moment for being so stupid and selfish. 'Why did I feel like I had to prove myself with the whole extreme carting idea in the first place when I knew how high I was?' He silently asked himself. 'Why the hell did I even have to shoot up at work to begin with? What the fuck is wrong with me?"

Tears began to trickle down his face as he realized that his best friend may be dying. He himself may be dying if he continued to lose blood. And there was nothing he could do about any of it. It could be hours, even days, before anyone came down the path again and found them. His mind started feeling very clouded so he lied down on the ground beside Rigby. If Rigby died from his irresponsible decision, Mordecai hoped that he died right along with him because he knew that it would haunt him every moment for the rest of his life and he would never forgive himself.

Through the haze, Benson's voice suddenly played in his head from one of their Survival Skills trainings. He and Rigby had ignored most of it and sat in the back cracking jokes, as usual, but his subconscious registered Benson saying something about needing to keep an injured person warm until help arrived. Mordecai mustered enough strength to wrap his good wing around Rigby and pull him close to his chest. Dangling on the edge of consciousness, he rested his head on the ground and started thinking about the course of events that had ultimately led up this moment.

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A/N: Sorry this one is short, but you won't have to wait too long for the next chapter. I have decided to give this story an M in later chapters. Thanks for reading! ~Summer