It turned out that the crying was nearly as bad as being consumed by the rage, and once it had started it was just as impossible to stop. He'd thought that it would be over once the woman prey had left him. At least then he could die without an intruder in his safest spot, and without the rising frustration of not being able to get his teeth into her grating at him. But somehow, as soon as he'd heard her noisily flee, it had just… built. And built and built until it felt like his body was too small and too tight to hold in all of the hate and the fear and the sick feelings that he didn't know how to name and it exploded.

He'd lashed out with claws and teeth until the soft things he'd surrounded himself with were ripped into pieces. Screamed until his throat was raw like he didn't care how many Others heard or if they found him by it. Thrashed and clawed and wrapped his arms tight around his own aching body as if somehow that would contain it and then when his body was too exhausted for that just swayed, whined, cried. Maybe this was what happened to the Crying Ones. He didn't know and didn't care.

He didn't understand. Didn't understand why this had gone so deep. The rages were near-painful with their intensity and despair wasn't uncommon, but at least that was familiar. His muddled brain tried to make some sense out of the chaos and his thoughts seemed to settle on her again. That woman prey.

She… she'd done this to him. He was infuriated at that. And then she'd just… left? That was good though, right? The shudders started coming back over him.

She'd just left him here to die, slowly and helplessly. Even though all he knew was fighting for his life and always, always thinking that he could die… he still didn't want to die all by himself.

He didn't think that he could even move anymore by the time that he was done. The only thing keeping him still awake was how much this hurt, in every way possible.

Until, that was, he heard the outside entrance opening up. No matter how sure he'd been that he didn't care if the Others found him, he couldn't help tensing and growling, thinking of what they would do to him. But… wait. Slowly he realized that they didn't open entrances that way. So that had to be-

And then, as if on cue, her scent washed in. Her. Her. She'd come back. His claws clenched and blood welled under them into his hands as he listened to the footsteps. His insides boiled. And then… she stopped.

No. No! She wasn't just going to walk away, she didn't get to do this to him and then- then forget about it! It wasn't right, he wasn't going to let her-!

It was the only thing he could do. He screamed. And then, when that didn't get an immediate result, he screamed again, long and ragged, even though by now he felt like his throat was going to tear. She was going to know. She was going to know that he was still in here.

His bloodied, cracked lips bared over his teeth when, finally, he heard the approaching noise. Good. He didn't know if it was the pain, or the heat burning over him, or the prey scent flooding him but he felt dizzied, manic with the tangle of rushed feelings and thoughts driving him all at once. He could feel the rapid, fluttery beat of his own pulse all the way to his fingertips. He had to-!

More screaming. Always more screaming and it hurt so so bad and his senses were buzzing so much that he couldn't tell if it was coming from inside or out and his body wouldn't, couldn't even shift, but it did. He made it. One clawing inch at a time, hot blood down his belly and hot tears down his face.

This prey was going to face him, and see that he was still alive, and still angry. The entrance opened.

"For the love of fuck you have got to be kidding me."

As Skyler had pulled open the door she'd been greeted by the sound of tortured, uneven panting and some scuffling, a pretty clear indicator of some life left in there after all, which might've been a little impressive in its own right. But there was no way. There was no way that, after everything, this kid was still standing. Out of sheer "what in the fuck" she nearly aimed her firearm, and then lowered it again, and then decided to keep it close at hand anyways just in case.

Okay, so. Maybe standing was a little bit of an overstatement. What he was doing was closer to 'bracing himself for dear life against the bedpost', one arm clamped around his middle, and from how utterly stock-still he was other than the shallow rise and fall of his chest she was pretty sure he might have just passed out like that. But after spending a little over a day or so with a couple of serious injuries, that was… well, it was something.

She gave a slow, disbelieving shake of her head and paced just a step closer to get a better look. Was she impressed? Maybe just a little. "Shit, kid. You're as stubborn as. Well. Me." Vaguely she wondered which it was more of, any sort of drive to live within the infected or his body being too stubborn to just let him die.

Skyler rubbed at the bandages on the side of her face. Coming back here had been a stupid idea. Then again at least half of what she did was probably a stupid idea, so she guessed she'd see how this was going to go.

Her feet scuffed the filthy carpet as she made a slow circle around the room, more than definitely not putting off any further action. This whole room smelled like sweat and blood. Maybe that was what was knotting up her stomach. The entire time she watched the Hunter; the tremble in what she knew were powerful limbs, the catch in his breath. There was no obvious reaction on his part. She let out a slow breath.

"You know what I did on the way over here, kid? I flipped a goddamn coin. And honestly? It came up on coming back here and putting you out of your damn misery." Like he understood or cared. "But, you know. There's this thing my sis used to talk about. Like, how while you're waiting on the coin to come down, you realize what it actually was you were hoping it'd come out on. And, as it turns out, for some godforsaken reason, I feel really shitty about that happening."

Nothing from the Hunter. Maybe it was too late after all. Only one way to find out, she guessed. Skyler frowned. Slowly edged in closer, considered that just possibly this wasn't a great plan, and then closer still until she was a little closer than an arm's length. Testing.

"You wanna live, kid?" she asked, "You wanna-"

An awful scream caught her off-guard, and she nearly fell back and busted her ass. Holy shit! Before she could actually get out of striking distance she saw the infected's head shoot up, teeth exposed in a grimace of fury. She could still see the tear tracks cut down what was exposed of his face.

His clawed fingers, the ones that had been holding his stomach wound and were saturated in his own blood, streaked down her face as he growled not a few inches away from her, and lingered there very purposely. She could feel the Hunter's breath as she was briefly rooted out of shock, hot and insistent. And then, after that moment, he sagged back towards the floor, first onto his knees and then into a gasping huddle.

Her heart hammered for a minute more as she stared down at him. She could feel the marks left smeared onto her face, from her good eye down to her cheek. She wiped her cheek with a couple of fingers and looked down at the blood, and then again to him as she waited for her breath to stop coming in short pants.

"...Good."

With that taken care of, she shrugged the pack off of her shoulder and began unwadding the collected medical supplies onto the bed. "Now you're gonna have to bear with me here. I can't say I totally know what I'm doing here. My sister saved people. I kill them." She was sure this was about to be a ton of fun.

This had to be it. He was going to die, and he was not going to be afraid. He wasn't. It wasn't working. No matter how much he told himself that, it wouldn't stop.

Despite the shrieking insistence that he not even flinch, his heart thudded unevenly at the dim awareness of the woman prey lowering herself to the floor beside him. The warring between fight and flee, neither of which he could actually do, and the strange sensation of everything seeming to move in a sickening sort of slow motion made him feel like throwing up. Had there ever even been anything in his stomach? Couldn't remember.

Hands. He could feel hands on him, touching him, dragging him back. No. This was BAD! He'd never been handled this way before, and not by- by prey. Everything about it felt wrong.

He wanted to stop this. He really did. But he'd reached a point where everything was just… shut off. It was like his display had sapped everything out of him, and absolutely everything felt broken-down. There was another feeling, too, unfamiliar enough that he couldn't even name it at first. He felt… cold? That was it. His body felt cold. He'd never thought that the absence of the constant fever burning him up from the inside would be so jarring, so scary.

In panic that he couldn't do anything, his eyes darted, unfocused, unable to rest on any one thing for long. The dark, formless shapes shifting at the edges of his vision, the woman prey… something appealingly shiny dangling from around her neck. It was there that he fixated, maybe just because everything else was terrifying. Soft clinking noises and a nice, soothing back and forth swinging motion. This was… it was good. In those moments he couldn't, didn't want to take his attention off of the objects. Just let him have this one nice thing.

His focus was broken though when he realized that what she was doing was starting to straddle him. She was pinning him. Like he was the prey, and not her. Wrong. He had to show how angry he was, how much he hated this! Instead, the sound that he made was probably the most pathetic attempt at a scream that had ever left him. He was going to kill her. It didn't matter that he couldn't, he just had to.

Blankness.

Alright, Skyler. Just play it cool. It was entirely likely that this creature was still plenty capable of hurting her pretty bad, and she wasn't going to underestimate it. Ah, hell. This was so, so weird. She'd never actually been this close to one of these things before. Like. She'd been grabbed before, sure, but that was a pretty different ballpark from practically going cowgirl. The biggest thing working in her favor was really that his bouts of consciousness seemed brief at best.

In any case though, the first thing she was going to do was make sure those fucking claws were out of the way. Simple enough, at least, given the shredded rags they were more or less surrounded with. There was some harsh, rapid breathing as she made sure the Hunter's arms were bound good and tight behind his back but little else, although she suspected he'd be throwing a fit if he woke up to this.

"Nngh!" she gritted out in a wholehearted effort to yank down the zipper of the kid's nasty-ass sweatshirt. Grossly enough, the teeth were so gummed up with blood and gunk that it was stuck pretty firmly in place. After a few pulls, the last of which practically lifted his limp body off the floor, the zipper broke in her hand. "Ah. Oops," she mumbled and flicked the bit of metal across the room.

By the time that she looked back, that pair of yellow eyes was staring back at her. Shit.

At first, no sound came out of him. He seemed to take a second to test his wrists, and realized that there was something restricting them, and that was when she saw him drawing in breath for another scream.

Maybe it was just because she was thoroughly done with wrestling with him, but Skyler found herself throwing up her hands and pulling back. "No no, hold up-!" Obviously that wasn't going to stop him. Uh. Quickly she thought of how shortly before he'd seemed oddly fascinated by the sway of her dog tags, for whatever reason that might be, and half just to see what would happen, took them off and dangled them forward. Amazingly, he actually did trail off, even if she had a suspicion it was mostly out of bewilderment. "Ha. That's right. I look like an idiot, don't I?"

Regardless, she did watch his eyes follow the path of the chain and, maybe she was imagining things but it seemed almost as if he were very purposely putting his focus there instead of on what was happening. Not that she could say she'd blame him. She inhaled deeply, which proved to be a bad idea given the odor in there, and carefully as she could held the tags to one of the kid's bound hands. It was instantaneous. His fingers closed around them and somehow the look he gave up at her managed to be utterly disbelieving. That sick feeling twinged her gut again.

"Uh… yeah. You hang onto that."

Oh god, he was still looking at her. What was that supposed to mean? This close up, his eyes were freaky as fuck, too. They weren't really yellow, like she'd always thought. More that she could see a washed-out blue or grey iris, with some reflective, yellowish film over them. It reminded her a little of that one game with the underwater city, which just brought up the image of this kid wandering around singing about roses and angels and gave her the heebie-jeebies.

Christ. She should really just get this over with before she stopped to think too hard.

But why? The Hunter was still trying to wrap his head around what had happened. What reason did this woman prey have to give him something? She… she had hurt him. He'd done the same to her, and he did still know that meant she shouldn't be doing this. Had to be a trap. But she already had him prone and helpless, so? It hurt his head just thinking about it.

Even still. Just having something to clutch was easing, to some degree. Weak as he was, there was still a fire burning through his blood making him want to fight as much as the panic did, and this cooled just a little of it. It was… it was nice. Like a pressure being relieved. His thumb rubbed against the smoothness and, despite everything, he started drifting back off. There was some bleary, partially formed thought, though. That somehow maybe if he could just keep still, he might not be hurt any more.

He was torn out of his lull though when his covering was shoved up. Nnno! The urge to cover his wounds was fierce and he did his best to curl in at the waist, fresh alarm spiking through him. But no attack came, leaving him panting and with teeth bared but confused. In fact, the woman prey seemed to be hesitating to go any farther.

And that was what was frustrating. Everything he knew insisted that she should be shrieking and furious and killing him horribly right now. It's what the instinct would have been telling him to do. The irrational urge to stop this by striking out hit him. This felt so wrong. Why wasn't she angry?! His claws twitched, his teeth bared, and- and he could feel his eyes stinging again. He fought it hard, not even knowing what made him feel like crying.

And then he utterly froze up when a single drop of something hit his cheek.

"Ah god, wait! You didn't see anything! Stop looking at me like that, that wasn't-!" It was too late, though. The kid's eyes had gone dinnerplate-wide, even as she blanched and shook her head. "Nope. Nope, you have got this- you have got this entirely wrong. I am the biggest badass, I wasn't doing what you think I was doing-!"

Something shifted gradually in his expression. An easing, or maybe vague comprehension. At the very least, it didn't look quite as panicked or choked with anger. Fuck though. She couldn't believe this had actually made her tear up. Or that he would react to it. That seemed like something that required at least a couple of brain cells.

"Yeah. Well," she finally mumbled. She ripped open the top of one of the pre-packaged sanitary wipes, releasing a sharp alcoholic smell. "Enjoy it while you can. You're about to hate me anyways."

The injuries weren't exactly hard to make out against the pasty wash of his belly and… yeesh, the whole thing sure wasn't pretty. Both of the stab wounds were angrily red and inflamed, incredibly painful-looking and probably infected already. Besides that, this looked to be far from the first injury he'd sustained, and his filthy skin was marred with disfiguring blemishes. His ribs stood out harshly.

Her tongue clicked while she wiped down what was more than definitely a job for more than a few glorified hand wipes. "Shit, kid. You need an entire damn bath. Not that I'm gonna be the one to give it to you."

Seemingly in answer, he hissed, though she was sure it was more at the sting. And well, he was definitely about to find out that wasn't the worst of it. Again his fingers flexed, and after a second she realized that he was clutching her tags again. Oh god, nope. Fuck that lump stuck in her throat. There was a second where she was compelled to pause before starting on the real deal to give him another once-over. He was panting, his entire body quivering with trembles, and she could feel a rapid, thready pulse under her fingers. So, basically, about as ready as he could possibly be. Better get this done before anything got worse.

"Sure hope you're ready, kid. I didn't go through all this trouble to have you decide to die on me."

Skyler dug the needle into the infected's skin.

What was happening- What was happening to him?! At first all he could comprehend was pain, so much that he couldn't even shriek. He couldn't even think to connect this agony with its cause. His overwrought brain scrambled to come up with an explanation from the fragmented bits that he could process. It was at that moment he became fixed with complete certainty: He was being attacked by something with teeth.

Horror overtook him. He could see it. Some shifting, uncertain mass over him that he couldn't describe if he tried, and all that he knew was that it looked like terror; filled with eyes and teeth and sharp things and things he couldn't possibly imagine. Monster.

Maybe he was screaming now. Didn't know. His senses were swallowed up. Thrash, fight, anything. Had to kill it. Had to get away. It was holding him down!

The awareness of something small and smooth in his palm came to him suddenly, despite everything. The Hunter gasped for breath, shook his head in what he was very vaguely aware was denial. This- this wasn't here. This wasn't real. That didn't make it go away, though.

The monster dug into his stomach again. NOT REAL!

Again. He felt whatever was holding his wrists give way. A yell, coming from him or maybe it was the monster. Mindlessly he swiped out, before desperately trying to cover up his wounds from the biting. Blindly he grabbed over his belly, but he didn't understand. Where were- where were his injuries? What had the monster-?

Woman prey? She was there, and…

The exhaustion and the pain were too much for him. His eyes rolled, and the last thing that he was aware of was the smooth thing still clutched in his hand before he lapsed again into unconsciousness.