Paul is running. He doesn't think he ever has before, not like this, but it feels right now to be sprinting through the trees, gasping for air, clutching at Emma's hand. His heart is barely beating, surely; how can it be, when the whole world is changing beneath his feet? And the moon is out, the moon, which he can't remember ever having seen before, although he must have once.
The heat at his back feels right too, and whilst some part of his mind knows it was Ted's work, there is also a corner of his brain telling him that the fire of hell has finally caught up to that place he has hated so much his whole life.
"Where do we go next?" Bill shouts, to somebody else, Paul hopes. He couldn't manage words right now, even if he did have an answer.
"Find a road." Emma gasps to his right. "If we get in sight of a car, we can hitch a ride, or even just follow the way to the nearest town."
"We have to lose PEIP first." Ted calls out. "I think I saw Schaffer back there, and she doesn't give up in a hurry."
The forest is working to their advantage though - perfect fuel for Ted and a convenient medium for Bill. Paul can barely keep a straight path with his non-existent spatial awareness, but the rest of them are weaving a convoluted trail for their pursuers, and dragging him along with them.
Gunshots ring out, splitting through the buzz of their conversation. They duck collectively, and Paul cries out. He raises the pistol he took from General McNamara and fires it blindly into the amber haze behind them, hoping to at least hold off the attacker, if not to actually shoot them.
"Stop, stop!" Char yells suddenly, hooking her arm around Bill's and yanking him back. A twisted tree branch creaks and crashes to the ground a couple of feet ahead of them, right where Bill would've been; the flames are slowly catching up, and nature is protesting around them.
Emma releases Paul's hand and widens her stance, stationary now with the rest of them but ready to deflect any debris which might come their way. She spots Colonel Schaffer on her second scan of the wilderness - the woman is firing at them again and the noise is no doubt drawing more officers their way. She hacks at branches that Bill sends her way, and rolls out of the way of a falling tree.
There is an opportunity here. Paul and Charlotte are hauling foliage out of the path, clearing the route, and the others are at her side, fending off more soldiers. Smoke is making her eyes water, but she can feel tingling in her fingertips, and she hardly needs to see to do what she does next. She lifts the fallen branch that almost hit Bill, lets it float in mid-air as she tests its 'weight'.
Then she breathes in and out, trying hard not to choke on the thick air and panic, and throws the log at Colonel Schaffer.
...
Paul hears the scream before he sees the cause. His first thought is Emma, but then he sees the branch hurtling through the air, colliding with a figure in the distance, and he realises what has happened. Emma, his Emma, is so strong, and when she turns and catches his eye, grins triumphantly, his heart melts. He opens his mouth to tell her how incredible she is, to beckon her to relative safety and freedom, but then-
Emma is on the floor. Paul can't breathe. Crimson blossoms across her chest as she gasps, writhing on her back, trying to sit up. Everyone is moving in slow motion, like they're wading through water.
"Emma!" Bill cries as Charlotte screams in sympathy, clutching at her own chest. He runs over, trailing ivy behind him, sliding to the ground by her side. "Oh, god." He groans, and everything starts to speed up again as Ted yells "F*ck." through gritted teeth.
Heat flares at Paul's back and he hears bodies dropping to the floor.
"Paul!" Bill shouts. His hands are wet now too, pressing down onto Emma desperately. "Paul Matthews! You get your ass over here!"
Paul moves one foot forward but it's like he's forgotten how to walk. Emma's going to die. She's been shot and she's going to die.
"Calm down now." Char has a hand on Emma's shoulder and she's crying. "It's going to be ok, try and hold still."
Paul stumbles forward another unsteady step. He sucks in a breath in sync with Emma.
"Paul..." She gasps, and he is unstuck, running to her and crouching by her side.
"No." He says. She fixes him with a wild stare, teeth bared in a grimace as her hands scrabble over Bill's holding her chest together. "No. No!" He bats at Bill's hands but he fights back. "Bill get out of my way."
"I can't let go. She'll die."
"She's dying anyway. I can help."
Bill flicks his gaze up to him, sees the grim determination set there. "On three." He says, and Paul gets ready. "One... Two... Three!" They swap places, seamless, and Paul presses down, hard. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth and wills it, with all his being. She has gone limp now, and Char is muttering about her going quiet.
"Please." He whispers. His hands start to tingle, and then, shimmering off the pools of blood on the floor around them, a blue glow arises. He just about has time to smile before he is encompassed by a sharp pain burning into his chest. He can't help but cry out.
"Wait! You'll die, Paul." Bill panics. "It's reflecting, you'll bleed out with her-"
"Don't." Paul growls. If he looks away the spell will break. He sees the young man from over a month ago, shot in the heart. He'd stopped then, because he felt it - the man was dead, and if he carried on he'd be dead too. But Emma isn't, not yet; if he could just hurry up and fix her-
"Sh*t, sh*t sh*t." Ted is muttering. Another burst of flame goes up around them. "We don't have much time!" He cries.
Weeds are growing up around Paul's legs where he is kneeling on the ground. "Bill." He grits out desperately.
"I'm sorry, I can't control it." He gasps. "It's trying to protect you."
A scream rips out of Paul, slices through the air like a machete. Charlotte sobs, feeling Emma's pain doubled. The weeds holding him upright are red now, he notes with his peripheral vision. So are his hands, and his shirt. Oh. Dully, he realises that the wetness all over him correlates with the pain, and Emma's pale face starts to fade. He urges one last wave of blue light, ignoring whatever Bill is shouting and tuning out Ted and Char's frantic exchange. Then the world turns blinding white, and he doesn't even feel himself hit the floor, padded by flowers.
...
He is seventeen and he is twenty-seven. Sitting on the floor beside his bunk, although the walls of his cell seem to be gone. There's only a pearly mist on all sides, which he doesn't remember being here before. Oh, well.
There was a girl here yesterday, but she's gone today. She'd been able to talk to animals, she told him, although he'd never seen her do it. She'd come back to the cell sometimes covered in bites and scratches: "Just because I can talk to them doesn't mean they have to like me." She'd say dejectedly.
Cats had been her favourite. She had liked him. Maybe he'd have liked her in the same way, given time. But they didn't have it. She left one day for the lab, and she didn't come back. He sits in this spot for a week, waiting for her. This is worse than before. Before he'd always been alone, and it hadn't mattered because what was the alternative? But now he knows what it's like, to have someone. And it's unbearable, to have someone and to lose them. Better not to have them in the first place.
But... his friends. He is twenty-seven and he has a family. Bill and Char and Ted. And Emma. He can't lose her. He won't.
"Get up." Someone says.
He is thirty-seven and he has two kids. They run around in the garden as Bill grows flowers to catch them if they fall. Char and Ted hold hands on the porch.
"Paul, come back to us."
He is forty-seven and his oldest is leaving for college. He tries not to cry and Emma, stoic as always, holds him as they wave goodbye.
"Don't leave."
He is fifty-seven and they're seeing the world, things he never even imagined growing up, things he's always been afraid of until now. The world isn't a bad place to be, he decides.
"Paul!"
It's Emma. She is with him, always. And maybe the life he's seeing isn't real, but there's a chance that it could be, and that chance is worth anything. Worth his pain, and his fear, if there is even the slight possibility he makes it there and out of this goddamn room.
He is seventeen again and stuck in a cell that bad people put him in before he was even old enough to realise what that meant. Finally, finally, he lets himself hate it. I don't want to be alone.
I'm coming, he whispers to his future. He wakes up.
