Her whole body arched, back bowing right off the ground and bruised ribs be damned. Her eyes flew wide in shock, her hands clenching so hard that her nails gouged into the sun-baked, almost entirely unyeilding surface of the road.
Her shoulder – oh God, her shoulder! Distantly she registered that someone, somewhere, was screaming on and on – screaming as if the world were ending.
Oh, wait. That was her.
She tried to rein it in, but for the longest moment she couldn't, she just literally… could not… stop screaming.
Then Gunther's hands were on her face, both of them, framing it, holding it, and he brought his own face down until they were nearly forehead to forehead.
"Jane! Jane! Jane stop, come back, come back, I know you can, I need you with me now, Jane!"
She bit down, hard, on her already bruised and swollen lower lip; managed to choke off her cries. And lay there panting up at him in a swirling daze of pain. It took her a moment to register what he was saying now.
" – one? Jane, which one, which one!?"
Which shoulder, he meant. Based on her reaction to him grabbing her a moment ago, he finally understood where she was hurt. Not how, or why, or when, but he had sure-God figured out where.
"Luh… left," she gasped.
And then he pulled away and she was left blinking at the sky. She felt him fumbling with her jerkin, trying to unlace it, peel it back, but his fingers didn't seem to be working properly; they were clumsy, wooden, entirely graceless – seemed barely to be attached to him at all. He was making no progress.
Another shudder wracked her and he swore again, then grabbed for his dagger and simply went to work cutting the garment away. She dragged in a shallow, hitching breath as he peeled back the stiff leather, finally revealing the wound.
For a long moment he simply stared at her shoulder. Her eyes were trying to glaze over but she forced them, with great difficulty, to focus on his face again. And what she saw there stunned her.
He'd been flushed just a second ago, hectic splotches of color lying across his cheeks, but that was all gone now. The color had fallen out of him in a heartbeat's worth of time, in the time it took him to draw in a ragged breath of his own.
He had gone instantaneously ashen. Jane had never seen it happen so fast. She'd had no idea it could happen so fast.
He was positively grey.
And then the explosion came.
"Oh my… GOD, what… is this what it looks…" he was barely coherent. "Jane, what – when did this – sweet merciful God, shot!? SHOT, Jane, you were shot!? When – wha – when did… and you – you never – are you insane, what – what in God's name were you –"
"Sorry," she whispered wretchedly. It seemed to be all she could think of to say. It did nothing but spur Gunther to fresh heights of fury.
"You think 'sorry' fixes something like this!? You – I – I cannot – even – of all the irresponsible – do you actually have a death wish!? What were –" He reached for her shoulders again as if wanting to grab and shake her, wounded or not, deathly ill or not, barely managing to stop himself in time. He was seething. He was beyond reason.
"I told you! I TOLD you that night how I – what it would do to me if – How could you DO this!? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!?"
She had no answer, but that was all right; she was spared having to even attempt to respond because that was when the laughter began.
OOOOO
Gunther's head whipped toward the sound, eyes narrowing, lips unconsciously drawing back from his teeth in a feral snarl. He didn't understand this, this wholly unexpected and grossly incongruous sound, but he instinctively grasped this much about it: it was not good.
No, not good at all.
It was one of the prisoners – one of the outlaws. And he was laughing fit to burst.
Despite being put instantly on guard, though, nothing – nothing – could have prepared Gunther for what the man said… once he was able to master himself to the point where he could say anything, that was.
"Do this… do this to you!" the man gasped, still positively wheezing with mirth, his words intersperced with uncontrollable little titters.
"Do this to YOU, boy!? You stupid… blind… ungrateful fool!"
Gunther actually growled, rising to his feet. He had just started to move toward the prisoner when the man's next words stopped him cold. Sent him reeling. Plunged him into a depth of sheer, panicked, guilt-shot horror that he'd never even imagined existed.
"To you. Did it to you, you say! Hah! That girl took the arrow for you – I saw the whole thing! Dove in front of it – saved your life – lost her own. Because she is dying – make no mistake about that."