A big thank you and shout out to elleflies for the extensive information about the Manhattan subway lines! Onward!

The stairwell down to the subway terminal absolutely reeked of urine and stale cigarette smoke. As Loki dragged her down, Max's skin prickled at the strange sense of familiarity: the city may be going to hell, but at least the underground hadn't changed. Her taped feet had almost no traction, but she managed to keep herself upright with Loki in front of her. When they reached the bottom of the stairs—complete with a pile of congealed fast food wrappers in the corner—and carried on, unwilling to stop, Max's ears perked when she heard heavy footsteps and voices trailing after them.

"Keep going straight," she ordered as they hurried into the brightly lit corridor, glancing over her shoulder at the shadows encroaching on the bottom of the stairwell. "We can lose them down here."

"If we are so lucky," Loki said tightly, which made her glare. Her hand was starting to tingle, numbing under his grip, but she knew that even if she wanted to pull free, it would have been stupid to do so: he was the only thing keeping her going. Her legs were jelly and she couldn't even feel her feet anymore—though she was sure if she thought about them, she'd feel the pain.

They raced down the hallway together—by various print advertisements and white-washed walls, garbage cans and discarded bags. She couldn't begin to image what happened down here when the invaders struck: the subway took in hundreds of commuters every hour. Where were they all now? Were they still in the tunnels? Did they escape? Were they captured? Max wanted to hold Loki's hand, to grip it, to worry in it, but he held her wrist as she trailed behind him—and soldiers trailed behind her.

She shrieked when they were shot at again. The bullet made a sizeable hole in a wall at her right, and Loki picked up the pace. When they came to a fork in the hall—each off-shoot leading to different trains—Max insisted he go left. She wasn't sure why, but she simply knew the station to the right was always busier, and even on a good day she tended to avoid it.

The corridor fanned out, one light flickering at the very end, and Loki let go of her long enough to leap over a turnstile. He then whirled back and hauled her over too—definitely not as gently as her battered body deserved. At the sound of pursuers, they carried on without another word, side-by-side on their descent down the final grimy staircase that led to the subway platform. The uniformed soldiers seemed to catch up during the time that Loki took to lift Max over the row of turnstiles, and she started to panic halfway down the stairs. However, as soon as Loki's boot touched the station's southbound platform, gunfire erupted from all around them—no longer solely from behind.

Max screamed. She couldn't help it—she ducked down, arm over her head, and screamed as bullets ricocheted off the railings and columns and nearby garbage bin. Loki dragged her behind him immediately and backed them up until they could cower next to the staircase, using a metal bin for cover. The shots continued once they were gone, and Max's teary eyes flickered up to the stairwell: soldiers were shooting back, and a chorus of new voices erupted from the train tracks. She wanted to look. She wanted to put faces to the new shooters.

Instead, she shut her eyes and cowered behind Loki, one arm thrown over her head while the other hand gripped his shirt—partially because she was terrified, but mostly to keep him from leaving.

The railing above her rattled when something solid slammed against it. Max peeked up. A soldier slumped down, his jaw completely blasted away as black blood poured down the wall beside her.

"Oh—"

Loki rotated back and clamped a hand down over her mouth, his eyes narrowed. Max nodded, pressing herself into the wall while clutching his wrist. They managed to maintain eye contact until the shooting stopped; his gaze was oddly reassuring in the fact that he didn't look as upset by the violence as someone else might. Actually, he almost appeared calm.

The air was still—as it always was—when the shooting ended. Loki removed his hand from her mouth and then placed a finger to his lips. She nodded again, listening to the reverberation in the air: it lingered long after the bullets stopped flying. Although she couldn't see what happened, she could no longer hear their pursuers—no more boots or shouts in foreign languages. Instead, she heard the everyday chatter of an average New Yorker: gruff, slightly accented, and human.

"We should see if they can help us," she whispered. Loki was busy listening, half-turned from her with his finger up between them. "They're people—"

"They shot at us," he said in return, shooting her a skeptical look. "Don't say a word."

"Loki—"

"Not a word," he snapped softly, each syllable overly pronounced as he glared at her.

"Okay, okay…" She stilled when she heard a pair of shoes treading toward them. Loki's eyes darted across the platform, perhaps looking for an exit strategy, but that was foiled when a man stepped around the garbage can with a handgun pointed at her face.

Max flinched as she stared at the barrel, her hands up, and then glanced at the new aggressor. Tall, thin, a gash by his temple, dirt on his hands. He must have been around her age, though the painfully tight jeans left some room for debate there.

"We're not them," Max babbled as the man took a breath. "We're people."

"Get up," he ordered coolly, eyes traveling over both of them. He gestured for her to get moving with his gun, and Loki carefully helped her to her feet. A second shooter jogged over once she was steady, and the first grabbed her by the arm and pushed her along. She stumbled a little, her legs stiff and weary, but she managed to stay upright. Although she wanted to check back with Loki, she didn't dare look over her shoulder at the guy who now had a gun on her back.

There were about nine of them in total. As Max walked toward the edge of the platform, she saw three standing on the tracks, reloading their weapons and discarding used magazine clips. There were a few by the wide staircase, pilfering whatever they could from the dead soldiers. The stairs themselves were covered in black blood; the creatures had been outnumbered and defeated, which meant it was possible.

"We're not with them," she insisted shakily, pointing a sore arm at the fallen enemy. "We're people—"

"Max, enough." Loki's voice was crisp and clear and cut across the distance between them so sharply that it made her cheeks darken. The men were looking at her now—looking at her and him and making assumptions and mental calculations.

"Well, they look like people too, don't they?" The shooter behind Loki spoke up, swinging his gun in her direction. "How do we prove you're not?"

"Make her bleed." The suggestion came from the tracks, and Max's expression dropped. "If she bleeds red, she's like us."

"No, no," she cried, shooting a wide-eyed look at Loki before stepping away from the nearest stranger. "Look, I'm already bleeding…"

She held up a foot for everyone to see: the duct tape may have kept the wounds contained, but she could feel the red seeping through with every step she took. Each member of the small gang took a moment to study her foot—one even had the audacity to rotate her toward better lighting. When they appeared satisfied, she dropped it and glanced at Loki, whose eyes wandered from man to man slowly. They all appeared to be the same age, dressed similarly, and each carried a different handgun. If she wasn't so panicked, she was sure she could identify each weapon with a little time.

"And this guy?"

"He's not one of them," she offered as the attention shifted toward Loki. He raised a dark eyebrow passively when the man nearest to him raised his weapon. The guy stared at him for a moment, and under Loki's gaze he slowly lowered his arm, his gun resting by his side. She swallowed thickly as silence settled over the group; each person seemed to wonder what they ought to do next. Max wanted to befriend them, to make allies.

"We've been running from them all day," she insisted, fudging the timeline a little. "It's so good to see actual people here—"

"Have you got anything on you?"

Max's eyebrows shot up as the man to her immediate right cut her off, his head cocked to the side.

"We don't have any weapons," she told him, shaking her head. "We just—"

"No, like money and stuff."

Her jaw dropped and Loki scoffed noisily at the question.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" She couldn't hold back her anger—not now. "What? Are you trying to rob us or something? Are you kidding me?!"

"Hey, you do whatever you can—"

"We're people and they aren't!" She was almost shrieking now, and she noticed some of the guys exchange looks. "We should be banding together and not fucking trying to rob each other in the—"

The butt of his gun slammed against her jaw before she could finish her rant, and she doubled over, holding her mouth in agony. That was it—that was all her body could take. Max was surprised she didn't collapse right then and there.

She straightened up the best she could, eyes watering and lips trembling, and she flinched back when her attacker stepped toward her again. Everything that happened afterward was a blur, but Max forced herself to watch. Loki disarmed the nearest shooter, grabbing his gun and slamming it so soundly against his skull that the guy went down. As Max's attacker reeled back, his friends raising their guns, Loki was on him. He pushed the gun out of his face, his teeth gritted and eyes wild, and held the man by his wrist and head, forcing him back against the concrete pillar on Max's left.

And then someone shot him. The bullet landed squarely on his shoulder, which made her cry his name in shock. The man in his grasp stopped struggling and his fellow vultures stopped circling—everyone simply stared at Loki, who appeared completely unaffected by the shot. He looked down at his shoulder, and then reached into his shirt—his spare hand still pressing the man's face into the green column. He then retrieved a flattened bullet, which had no blood on it, and tossed it aside. Max's eyes followed it as it bounced twice on the scuffed floor: it looked like it had a run-in with a wall.

"If anyone shoots me again," Loki said softly, his voice the only sound in the abandoned station, "or her, I will slaughter each and every one of you in the worst way imaginable." He paused, turning slowly to look at the man pressed against the pillar. "And I have a very vivid imagination."

Max trembled as she watched a few of the men slowly lower their weapons, though two still kept their guns fixed on Loki.

"Loki," she whispered. Her lower lip was starting to swell a little—she could feel it when she talked. "Let's go."

Her hope for a human coalition in the bowels of the city dissipated quickly, and she just wanted to get out of there before anything else happened. It wasn't that she doubted his ability to handle the guys, but she didn't want to fight anymore. She didn't want to run. She walked to walk away peacefully and find somewhere to hide.

Loki looked over at her, the crazy still in his eyes, and then released the man. However, before her attacker could get too far, Loki grabbed his arm again and snapped it in half, the bones in his forearm protruding out beneath his sweater. He screamed as Loki dropped him on the ground, and his friends seemed unsure of whether they ought to retaliate or not.

No one moved. Loki crouched down and retrieved the gun from the weeping man and then shoved it into Max's hands as he marched by. She turned quickly and scuttled after him, the cool metal bringing some feeling back to her hands. It took an eternity to get to the far end of the platform, but once they were there, Loki hopped down onto the tracks and turned back to her, arms extended.

She placed her hands on his shoulders, the gun now resting in her massive pants pocket, and let him lift her down onto the track.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded, unable to say much more. She could hear the voices of the men they left behind across the platform grow louder with each passing minute, and she gestured toward the ominous black tunnel beside them.

In they went, Loki leading the way and Max struggling to keep up. Her eyes took some time to adjust to the darkness, and she cringed at every foreign noise that clearly did not come from her or Loki. For the most part, she kept her stare fixed on his back, using him as a guide through the subway tunnel. Her nerves were shot. Her feet were thumb. The handgun thumped against her leg with every step she took, and eventually she simply couldn't walk anymore. Even with the light of the next station looming in the distance, Max stopped.

She realized, as she leaned against the grimy wall, that she was starting to hyperventilate.

"Max?"

Fat, heavy tears rolled down her cheeks, and she doubled over in some sad attempt to steady her breathing.

"I'm okay," she managed. He returned to her side and placed a large hand on her back, rubbing it gently. "I'm f-fine."

"We can't stop," he murmured as she stood up, her breathing still uneven and ragged. She ran her fingers under her eyes and across her cheeks, sniffling noisily.

"I know." Her feet were throbbing now, no longer numb to the pain, and she licked her lips. "I can't… I can't walk anymore. My feet are…"

She stopped talking when she felt his hands on her face, smoothing over the skin and into her hair. He was very close, and in the dark she could see his eyes scrutinizing her—maybe checking her other injuries.

"I should have realized."

"It's okay." She took a few more calming breaths, tentatively touching his wrists with her fingertips—warm. "I thought I could go on some more, but I can't."

She definitely didn't want to sit there for much longer, but the thought of putting on foot in front of the other until they reached the next station seemed exhausting. Besides, she was sure they wouldn't be able to stop at the next station. No, they needed to get as far from this place as possible, and it would be easy to lose any pursuers in the vast subway system.

"I will carry you," he decided, dropping his hands and turning. "Climb on my back."

As Max grappled with his shoulders, she realized Loki faced a similar situation that she had been in earlier. Max was a burden now, and if he wanted to, he could leave her there to get by alone. He could turn and walk away—he'd probably get much further without her slowing him down.

Still, she wrapped her stiff limbs around him, his hands holding her up by her knees, and he set out with her on his back. She seemed to be no trouble to him: his steps were smooth and normal, as if she were just a backpack full of nothing. At first, she kept her back straight and her head away from his, but as he stopped at the edge of the tunnel, she ducked down and tightened her grasp around his neck. His hair was longer than she remembered, though its scent was familiar.

She locked her feet together in front of him, freeing his hands temporarily. They both peered around the wall, surveying the vacant station first before stepping back into the light. The first few steps were hesitant and slow, but it seemed that when Loki was sure they were alone, his pace increased dramatically. Like before, it took an age to cross between the tunnel entrances, and Max looked over her shoulder whenever she thought she heard something. However, they passed into darkness undisturbed, and Max finally felt like she could breathe again.

His hands returned to her legs, giving her some reprieve as he held her up.

"The last time I got a piggyback from you," she started wearily, her head resting against his, "was after Garret's party when some asshole drugged me."

He chuckled, the sound vibrating in her ear. "No, I seem to recall another time."

"Oh?"

"You stepped out of the car and into a puddle one night," he told her, readjusting his grip briefly as she locked her arms in place. "I was gallant enough to help you then."

She went through her memories, trying to hark back to such an occasion, and then gave a breathy laugh when she remembered: it was almost Thanksgiving.

"Your memory is awesome," she murmured.

"One of my many attributes."

"Along with being bulletproof, huh?" Her eyes flickered down to his shoulder, and even though she couldn't see the entry wound in the darkness, she knew it was there.

"I wouldn't say I am completely impenetrable," he mused, "but my skin is much thicker than that of a human… A single shot will bruise the skin for some time, but it will be gone tomorrow."

"How nice for you." She didn't want to fathom at how long it would take for her body to recover from the events of the last few days. "Want to share some of that with me?"

"I would if I could."

"Mmm."

Max slipped into daydreams in the silence that followed, imagining what it would be like to be almost indestructible. It must be nice.

They passed through three platforms in a similar manner: pause at the entrance, search for the enemy, make a run across the open space and head for the dark. Max had a tough time keeping her eyes open after a while, and Loki jostled her awake whenever she started to slip down his back. They came to one station and opted to run across it to the other line, which led them down further beneath Manhattan. At that point, Max had lost track of where they were, but they had yet to run into other people.

Occasionally, they heard voices wafting through vents and air ducts, but Loki merely jogged until the voices stopped.

An hour or so into their walk, Max and Loki stumbled across their first train. It was stopped in the middle of the tunnel, all its lights still on. That managed to wake her up a little, and she straightened as Loki climbed on to the back car.

"Breathe through your mouth."

"Why?"

She frowned as she peered through the door's window, and then swallowed thickly. Bodies were everywhere. With the roving gang of idiots they first met, she wasn't sure who was to blame for all the blood, but she placed a hand over her nose as Loki forcefully pushed the door in and stepped inside. It was cooler in the car than in the tunnel, as the air still seemed to be chugging along.

The stench of body odour and urine was rampant in every single car they walked through, and Loki seemed equally put off by the smell. He moved quickly, stepping over and around passengers as Max kept a wary eye out for any that might move.

Thankfully, nobody did.

"We should be more concerned about the cameras," she noted when she spotted one in the top corner of a car near the front. She hadn't even considered them before, and neither of them knew who might be watching.

"Yes."

The door on the front car was a little trickier to get open, and Loki needed to set Max down in order to get it pried apart. However, he was soon successful, and she climbed up on his back to carry on. The air certainly felt staler and warmer outside the car, but the darkness was a nice change from car after car of corpses.

They continued on a downward march, descending deeper and deeper into the subway system, until the ground finally leveled out at the next station. After going through the usual routine, Loki started out into the terminal, but Max nudged him with her legs.

"Vending machines…"

"Max, we cannot stop for pointless—"

"Just quickly?" She tried to add a bit of whine to her tone. "I'm really hungry."

He paused with a huff, and then set her down on the yellow line that marked the unsafe standing area on the platform. He then climbed up and helped her to her feet, and she waddled toward the brightly lit vending machines with relish. All she needed was a little something to take her light-headedness away. Thankfully, each machine was full, and she was able to reach her arm through the bottom slot to grab a few of the candies on the bottom row. Loki ended up smashing the glass to the second machine for her, which made it easier to stuff her pockets with the things she wanted.

Halfway through a Snickers bar, Max paused when she heard something coming from the nearby stairwell. Loki seemed to hear it too, and without another word she hopped up on his back and he hurried toward the tunnel.

She tossed the empty wrapper on the ground—what was one more piece of garbage down here anyway?—and then retrieved a small bag of chips from her pocket. Although she couldn't see his face, she figured he was mildly annoyed with all the rustling around his head, and she offered him a chip. Her hand hovered by his mouth for a moment, and when he took it, his lips grazed her fingers, leaving one a little wet.

Her stomach knotted in unexpected excitement.

Neither said anything, and Max continued to eat as if nothing had happened. However, as the number of chips whittled down in quantity, she offered him two more. Her stomach did the pleasurable clench every time.

Max tossed the bag away too, taking a deep breath and wrapping her arms around him again. No more feeding—not here, not now.

Another hour crawled by, and at that point she was falling asleep on his back shamelessly. He finally stopped and set her down.

"We should rest," he told her. Max wasn't about to argue with that—not one bit. With her eyes accustomed to the dark, she watched him step up onto a cement block and yank a metal grate off the wall. Loki threw it aside, and then beckoned for her to join him.

"What's this?"

"You can sleep in here," he told her. She wrinkled her nose as she stared up at the hole in the wall. "It appears to be nothing more than a vent."

"Yeah, well, don't trust what you see in the subway," she muttered, her feet aching now that she was back on them. "Why can't we just find a bathroom somewhere?"

"I want to stay out of the light," he said, grasping her around the waist suddenly and hoisting her up. "You need to sleep, but I want to look around some more. I'm putting you here for safekeeping."

"Oh." She placed her arms into the hole and tried to pull herself up, but really, Loki did most of the work for her. It was wide enough for her to turn around in once she was inside, though it was damp and smelled awful. "You're not going to leave me here, are you?"

There was a long pause below, and Max poked her head out. He was staring down in the direction from which they came, and when she cleared her throat, he glanced up at her.

"No, I'm not going to leave you here," he assured her, reaching up and placing a hand to her cheek.

"Okay," she said slowly, nodding a few times when she felt his thumb stroke her skin. "Don't go too far."

"I won't."

That was a lie, but she was too tired to argue with him about it. She inched back a little, her body tensing for the sudden drop off in the musty air shaft. However, it seemed that she could stretch out fully and still be supported. She gagged when her bare toe touched something wet.

Suddenly, the metal grating was being put back in place; Max panicked.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, pushing on the cage so that he couldn't lock it in.

"Keeping you safe should someone else wander this way in my absence," he snapped as she poked her head out again.

"No, no, we're not putting that back on." Max pointed at the offending metal and glared. "No, that stays off."

"Max—"

"What if I need to get out?"

"Why would you possibly need to do that?"

"It's not going on."

He sighed, the sound long and exasperated, and then dropped the grate somewhere off to the side. "Fine."

"Good," she muttered.

"Try to sleep," he told her as she settled down onto her side, the candies and snacks and gun in her pocket digging into her leg. "I cannot be sure when you will get another opportunity to do so."

"Okay." She exhaled deeply, and then buried her face in her blouse. It might have stunk of sweat, but it was better to smell her body odour than whatever was stinking up the air vent. Sleep came quickly, though she jumped out of it several times when her subconscious thought it heard something. However, after the initial few times, she finally fell into a lasting slumber, completely dead to the world.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Okay, so you have literally no idea how hard it was for me to not have Loki and Max jump each other's bones with the chip feeding scene. Like. All I wanted to do was to have them get down and dirty, but I showed authorly restraint. RESTRAINT. Now is not the time or place! But I do think it's getting easier for both of them to fall back into an old routine because it's comfortable and safe and reminds them of nicer times. Nobody ever wants to actually deal with anything—nothing's changed, apparently.

So I was working on both this plot and the sequel's plot, and I officially have a title for the sequel: The Long Winter. Not sure if I've mentioned it before… Should I be talking about sequels so early in the story? WHY NOT, AM I RIGHT?

I actually don't have much to talk about in this AN—not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Like I said, elleflies was super helpful in explaining the ridiculousness of the NYC subway system, and I'm still trying to keep up with as much realism as I can.

As much as is allowed in fanfiction, anyway.

I've also got a lot of song lyrics in my titles... Generally that happens when a particular song was useful in inspiring scenes and whatnot. Just like TSiF, I think I will make a youtube playlist with all the songs that influenced me. Sometime. Soon, hopefully.

I think I'll start the next chapter right away. I work a lot next week, but mostly just mornings, so hopefully I can get some stuff done!

Much love to all my lurkers and reviewers alike! LOVE!