Well. Hopefully, the locals would appreciate this one, if not Nicole and Company. Skyler felt less than stellar about purposely propping the outside door open and inviting the buffet in on what was now a couple of people's final resting place, but if it would keep the heat off of her and Adrian for a bit, then she wasn't above it. Frankly, she wasn't the most morally-bankrupt one in this situation. That earned her the right to leave it the hell alone and bury the whole disaster under the heap of other, more important shit to deal with, like getting out of Connecticut. With Adrian. Goddamn it.

The first couple miles out of the center of town were alright. Skyler became very interested in street signs and holes in the pavement, and eventually Adrian stopped looking back over his shoulder in the same specific direction. She would have been happy if that could have been the end of it.

Court. Ferry.

By the time the schools and suburbs made headway breaking up the scenery, it was becoming increasingly difficult to let that be the end of it. Intermittently Adrian would spend a while staring at Skyler's back in a way that made her bristle but held no particular hostility. His quiet chuffs and undirected hums, and occasional outstretch of one hand as if to gain her attention, gave her the impression that he had something to say; which was tough luck for a dude who couldn't speak.

"It's cool," she clarified yet again following a more obvious approach, tersely drumming fingers on the stock of her rifle. "We are cool, and we are moving on." Did she have to keep saying this? Forward, was all they should be worried about now.

Liberty. Green.

They were coming back up on the river and somewhere along the way, as a few wispy snowflakes drifted down, the air between them had morphed into something more charged than that initial restless discomfort. Skyler was most definitely not sidestepping Adrian's attempts to head her off, nope, or acting like she didn't hear his rumbles of aggravation at the avoidance. She'd been right about him being as goddamn stubborn as she was, that was for fucking sure, and unfortunately also as put-off by non-answers.

St. John. Portland. Some local coffee place that the signage named Perkatory wasn't that so clever and cheeky and this fucking Hunter, this fucking infected man in all of the ways that had twisted him squared himself before her and enunciated a growl in a way she'd never heard before, impassible and unmoving and refusing to be brushed off and so fine, she wouldn't, and her voice came out in an unrestrained shout,

"What?!"

The word resounded in the space between silent family houses the owners were never coming back to, muffled only by the blanket of snow. "What do you want me to do?!" she barked, knowing full and well he didn't know any better than she did.

Predictably, she could see him roil in poorly-contained anger in response, and part of her was surprised that he only kicked the pavement and yelled wordlessly back at her instead of knocking her teeth out, not that it stopped her temper.

"Do you want me to get mad? Ha, well shit, I guess I am, like that's real fucking hard to do!"

He screamed again, this time straightening his back as fully as he presumably could to be up closer with her face.

Skyler's face heated so much her ears burned; a pricking at the corner of her eye forced her to blink, rare for her type of angry. "Or- or..." The old man's words in the absence of his companion drifted towards the forefront of her brain, but that was rejected even while she was running hot. Quickly though it was spilling out again, "What, do you want me to tell you why it makes you kill people or something? Not that you understand any of this!" She had to catch herself from very nearly throwing her rifle at the ground, "In case you haven't noticed, when it doesn't come down to brawling and killing people, I'm pretty fucking useless! I can't-"

Anything further was drowned out by the longest, rawest howl she'd heard from Adrian outside of (hopefully outside of) an attack. Admittedly she flinched but the sheer, now-tearful frustration said everything needed that the outburst had to do with a lot more than her getting snappy. The clincher came with his disintegration into an unintelligible half-echo of her rises and drops in pitch. She was right that he seemed to have at most the barest understanding, but he was demanding to be listened to, and she did. What else could she do?

Fixated as the two of them were, they both got the shit scared out of them by the intrusion of a responding squall shattering that bubble of focus.

"Shit-"

From inside one of the houses came a thud against the front door, frail at first but picking up enough strength by the time she caught her fumble on her gun to break the hinges and send it slamming open within another couple of bashes. The creature that came crashing out was only recognizable as one of the skittish, hyena-sounding ones by the morbid hunch of their back and the manic insistency of their huffs though even those resembled bursts of frantic cries more so than the cackling that usually gave them away. Most everything left alive in these parts was famished and beat to hell enough to make it difficult to identify the less swollen ones at a glance and this one was no exception.

Weakened or not, it didn't pay to sneeze at the specials, which she had an eye out to prove. Her reaction time was still with her, and long before the Jockey reached her, she was ready on the trigger. That was where the fucked-up thoughts reared their head as she came to the realization that instead of making the shot she was checking Adrian for his response toward the situation.

On Adrian's end, he stood himself up tall as he could and menaced the other infected with a "don't fuck with me" yowl. Whether it was because of him having all of a couple of inches on Skyler at most if he didn't have messed-up posture or because he was up against unbridled willingness to risk death for a shot at uninfected meat, the warning failed, and he crouched instead into that classic Hunter attack stance. The intimidation gesture cost him the opportunity to strike first, but he did intercept the moment the other infected's miserably scrawny legs pushed them off the street. From that collision, they rolled into a hissing, writhing ball like fighting cats, too entangled for her to get a shot off at. Unsurprisingly with a couple of weeks of semi-regular food and his major injury seemingly not much more than a twinge, Adrian took the upper hand, though that didn't stop the creature under him from hellaciously using all of their remaining energy towards making the Hunter regret getting between them and Skyler.

Like many times before, Skyler could see the switch being thrown, physical violence triggering a visible thrill while he got in a good swipe among the shallow ones even if it wasn't quite as unhinged as with a healthy victim. Yeah. That wasn't exactly what she wanted to see right then. Like a car crash, though, it was hard to look away, and before she had the chance she witnessed something snap him into place, one arm still raised with claws splayed. The freeze didn't last long, but while it did was unsettlingly reminiscent of his pause just before he had slashed her face and eye.

What followed wasn't the same gristly conclusion, but a grunt that took on the startled tone of only realizing halfway through a fuck-up that it was too late to back out. Clumsily, he shoved hard as if to put distance between himself and the other infected. His straddling didn't exactly allow for this, the only place to go being the ground, which the Jockey collided with roughly. Carried by the same whirl driving her Hunter, they had no hesitation in resuming the fight, even if they never seemed to quite recover from that teeth-clattering impact. Adrian's sudden and panicky disengagement was prevented by the bony arms snagging at his clothing, his arms, his face.

Finally, Skyler could see it occur to him to make an effort at clenching his fist and punching rather than shredding. The repeated attempts were clumsy and confused, lacking effectiveness and clearly more aimed at dislodging than causing major injury. His panting was drowned out by the frenetic shrieks to start, only becoming perceptible once the gradual weakening in the intensity of the other infected's energy took a much steeper curve. Unsurprising that he'd quickly worn them down.

"Come on," she called when he was given the chance to roll off by the cessation of the Jockey's assault. Poor bastard. There were few enough other infected around that they weren't likely to be picked off while they caught their wind. Good luck to them, but she planned for the two of them to be long gone before-

No, that wasn't what was happening. Skyler's internal "something isn't right" slipped into an "oh" as the shrill gasp she'd last heard and the spastic raking of skeletal fingers from the pitiful wraith failed to be followed up by any further sound or movement. Had Adrian gotten them that bad in just the few gashes he'd inflicted? More probable that in their condition, their body simply hadn't been able to handle the stress.

She saw the pin drop for Adrian with the grip slipping off of him. He uttered a breathless, "Hnnh?" while already partly stood. His mouth was parted as he flickered from the dead Jockey to his own shaking hands, still loosely curled, and back again before turning the question towards her. And still, what was there for her to say? Would he understand or want a, 'No, that wasn't your fault,' if she offered it? But it had to be something. She knew it had to be something.

In a lull of the wind, steam rose straight up into the air from their exhalation, the only two people left alive for god knew how far around now. He watched her. She gestured inward, then nodded in the direction of a different front door that had been left hanging open.

"Come on. We're going to work on your hook."

The whys were coming again. They clustered no less thick or gnawing than when they were walking before the Skittish Other had drawn their last breath. Too many and too headache-inducing to grasp any one in particular. Back there, though. He could comprehend what she'd done, to a sharper degree than with the sounds directed at him alone. She'd stopped and listened, and that was something. Still, beside the sickly pit of worry there was the low roil of frustration and all of the anger and agitation that came bound to it as surely as flesh to bone-

"Watch out."

With remarkable timing to disrupt the grimace that Adrian had been working up, her fist came to a stop a hair below his chin. His reaction time was wicked, fast enough to have let him survive in competition with the Others; but his lack of presence would have had his jaw smashing into her knuckles, giving himself a nasty bite to the tongue if she hadn't purposely been pulling back. He snorted, but it was due to the mock-blow rather than the negative swirl. She continued to watch as he rolled from the duck into a recovery back to his feet.

Focus. Focus, something nebulously scolded, which he mistook for her voice and started to snap back because he knew that, until it trailed off into a repetitive background chant that faded between nothing more than the concept and those oddly-segmented sounds to match. He knew. How was he ever supposed to?

What kept it all from spilling over again was the draw of their step taking the edge away from the mess in his head, which seemed suspiciously purposeful and he was thankful for. Was that a familiar feeling to her, too? There was a different tone than the last time that they'd play-fought; far more measured, and lacking in much of her boisterousness.

Once she seemed satisfied that he was grounded and on his defense again, she nodded her approval, affirming this with a, "Good. That was good."

Good. Oh. He knew that one. Yes? Adrian found himself tripping over a little spark of surprise and excitement, not enough to tune everything else out but certainly enough to perk further into attentiveness and call forth a questioning trill. He caught the quirk of a brief smile as she beckoned him back towards her.

"Understand that?" she asked as she managed to simply lean away from yet another of his uncoordinated punches, though he was only able to respond in a vague, "hnn". "Try again."

And he did understand, in parts, but those parts were growing the longer that he listened to her, which felt like so many other things right and wrong at the same time. It had been a while now, yes. And he was very much, terrifyingly aware that his memory was so faltering that he struggled to call to mind even how they'd gotten here from the... the place where he'd killed...

But the feelings tended to stick better, and if he tried to recall them, it felt like there'd always been that space in his brain that recognized that somewhere in the voices of the Clean Ones were patterns that it should be able to grasp in some way long since broken. And why should that be?

He didn't shake the thought so much as put it into a quiet growl and a swing that actually connected with the center of her chest. Satisfying, even if most of the force was lost to his hand partially unclenching against his will before it got there. Her body tensed to brace.

"Okay," she nodded and repeated, "Again."

Those patterns were even leaking into the sounds he heard inside of his head, from the shades that followed drifting in and out surrounding him, in voices within his chaotic tangle of dreams; where previously, they'd only ever spoken in vague feelings and concepts.

"Again."

However fragmented and difficult, that form shouldn't be there. Didn't make sense for it to be. Because that belonged to...

"Again."

This blow to the shoulder actually elicited a huff and staggering step backward from her, and a semi-delirious grunt-laugh from himself.

But it was there, wasn't it? Her outburst, the one that had set off his own. It resonated, filled him with the same need to scream it if only his thoughts would crystallize and burst out into something cohesive, at- at her and the voices and the urges, what do you want me to do?! What do you want me to do?! What do you want me to do?!

Adrian's lilt into another of those harsh speech approximations coincided with the natural flow that the spar took Skyler, and she used it as a pivot to both lean into coming back at him with a few well-placed punches and respond with some of the questions of her own. He was better at dodging, so long as he wasn't zeroed in on attacking, which wasn't making it easy to get an in.

"You're getting this, huh?" followed her confident half-step forwards and a jab at the center of his body mass which he jumped back from with an agility so natural and unthinking that it was telling more of built-in wiring than purposeful training. The interruption didn't even keep him from nodding, more evidence that he was in fact getting it, and not just in a fistfight.

And he'd been doing that for a while now, hadn't he? Actually replying when spoken to, even if not always so direct as that and practically every time there was an obvious struggle to comprehend that there were words happening. His... parroting or however much coherent thought went into it sounded suspiciously like her high school drinking buddy's dad post-stroke, which maybe was another kernel to keep in mind; but increasingly more often he did clearly get that the rhythm of a conversation was taking place.

"Like, you're learning. I know that much. Ever since I shacked up with you."

The second it looked like he may have been paying more attention to her musing and pacing in front of him than their spar, she abruptly dropped the fake-out to lunge in from his side. A dirty trick, but she was full of those, and he could stand to learn a thing or two about them. Okay, so maybe her ego was just a little bit bruised from not landing another hit on him, too.

That very nearly got him, and Skyler watched the playout in real time of his deadly reflexes catching up to his confusion to save him at the last second from being love tapped in the jaw. He huffed at her. Skyler smirked. Better luck next try.

Her taunting didn't hold up long, though, as she stuck close from there. Really the intermittent jabs were more of a locus to her own thoughts than anything. She'd been studying him through this, in one of the few ways she knew how. Not finding any better way to say what needed saying and not confident in her ability to make it understandable, she came right out with it, words slow and pronounced and motioning both of her subjects in turn,

"You want to hurt me."

Adrian's slightly entranced return to loosely boxing and swatting at her fell off into a tilt of his head, likely wary of another distraction which was wise of him. Once the words hit, he came to an immediate standstill, before stumbling a couple feet back with some indiscernible noise. He twitched and shook himself out, as if physically trying to rid himself of the energy, all while not looking at her. Whether he hadn't thought she'd seen, or hadn't been conscious himself, or was just honest-to-god shamed, she couldn't know.

Shit. That got her in her chest.

"Hey. No. Look- Over here. At me," Skyler headed him off. He would only stare in her general direction, to which she very purposefully moved so that she was in direct eye contact. "That's okay."

Whatever he'd been expecting, that wasn't it. He was still standing soundlessly when she took a couple of experimental steps closer to see if they'd be allowed. Since he didn't stop her, she went right ahead and continued,

"Alright, hold still for a minute."

It was only his Sister-Not-Sister taking hold of Adrian's arms that roused him from the tremble that had been building in his hands and the choked feeling rising in his throat; not unexpected, but jarring. Oh. He'd- he'd been about to cry again, hadn't he? Was that why she was doing this? He didn't know how to respond, other than to allow her to handle him.

Her guidance repositioned him so that his stance was more like the one she took while trading blows and she was right, she knew that at the same time as she had her hands on him he wanted to rip her open just like he had the others like her so why, why should she-

She pulled back only to brace and motion in towards herself,

"Try again."

Hesitation weighed him down, but an expectant twist in her expression goaded him to channel some of that into willfully forcing his fingers to stay curled and then venting that ball of tension into the momentum of a forward swing ,accompanied by another questioning yell. Her wince that resulted suggested that blow had landed well, though it only caught her shoulder.

Why? As desperate as he'd been for the things inside of him to be recognized, it didn't make sense that she'd even be near him if she did. Why was she doing this? Why was she here?

"It's still hard? To not do that?" she asked after sucking a hiss through her teeth, pacing to the opposite side.

Adrian's comprehension was sluggish to pick those patterns out from each other, and some of them he hadn't discerned already, but after a repetition and a pause, he thought he knew what she was asking. The tendrils of anxiety and a low, nauseating sensation-emotion he was starting to be able to better recognize crept a little further into his chest. He ducked his head, nodded; couldn't hide it even if he knew how. So hard.

There was strain he could see in her, but not flinching other than when she'd been physically hit. Not... repulsed, or angry, or any of the things the paranoia told him would be thrown at him. As her brows knit and she shuffled in place, awareness dawned that for all of her assumed ability to think clearly, she was just as lost for where to go as he was.

She exhaled. Approached once again, calling for his attention. "Watch," she instructed, coming down hard on one foot and stepping back with the other to lean into the flow of motion. "Down here..." With careful slowness, her fist angled in from under his chin, stopping barely short, "And up like this."

Okay. Okay. Don't get swept away. Stay focused on what was in front of him. Try to follow her lead. The dizzied circles his head was churning made that considerably more difficult, and even he had an idea of how loose and erratic his efforts were, but each was met with affirmation that he vaguely processed.

"But you are trying."

Trying? Trying. Yes, he was doing his best. He hummed lowly, raising his hands where she could see them.

"The not hurting me," she added.

Oh. Of course. He had to be, wasn't that obvious? Otherwise he would have killed her over and over, like he had in the sizzling rain and the confining dark and the- No, no. Not killed; just thought about it so vividly that the visions were there. Their sharp and sudden return made him gasp and retract from his latest motion in panicked haziness of whether he'd actually done that.

Undeterred, she acted out a strange gesture similar to spreading claws in front of her own face, "And that means something! That means something."

What?! What did it mean?! He didn't know! He didn't know anything!

Adrian lost sight of if he was anywhere close to doing as he'd been instructed, just that he couldn't stop or he was going to shatter into pieces like the sheets over the big water-

"You're... FUCK! I didn't know, alright?! How wuzzi suh-postahno?! You werrs'postahlready be dead!"

Was her eye watering again? Her voice cracked and she did nothing to escape his swats and shoves while the air was stolen from his chest, why was any of this happening why should he not want something that felt so perfectly good and core and like he existed to do why was he like this why-

"And this whole fuh-king time. You are. Just. Si-"

STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!

In one instant he was hyperventilating and tethering his entire self to the solidness of the charm in his pocket pressing deeply into his palm; the next he was straddling her on the floor, knees dug in on either side, hands clamped roughly over her mouth, with no memory of the transition. The automatic reflex to silence her was so guttural it had overpowered the instinct to bite or shred. His shoulders heaved. His ears rang with the echo of a splitting scream.

And then the walls began to crumble around them. Condensing inward to trap him inside a suffocating ball of debris before falling apart piece by piece to reveal that no, the world had disintegrated. The enveloping pressure of the void rolled, crushed, and in it burned a singular wish that this time it wouldn't spit him back out onto the ground coughing and vomiting before he could drown.

But whether he wanted it to or not, it did.

Slowly the veil of nothingness receded a little from the center out. Sister-Not-Sister. Still staring back at him, perhaps too stunned to have fought back yet.

There was an admission in it. How staggeringly and immediately he'd been compelled to force her to stop. That he knew what had been going to come next, the thought that her sounds were putting into his head.

He was scared. He was so, so, so scared for that to be the truth. It was already there, though, and despite the harm he could do and that they'd already inflicted on each other, she met him with uncertainty but no malice. Waiting for him. He could hardly will any of his petrified muscles to budge. In that meeting he was sure that all the terror he'd railed against that even the idea of comprehending this, this thing would be what broke him beyond return was right, too.

And that it had to happen anyways. There wasn't actually a choice and never had been, but at least it seemed he was being given the chance to do that. To break.

Painstakingly, heart pounding in expectancy of the monster he could be letting out, Adrian withdrew one hand up and off of her face. The other. She began to work her way out from under him, maybe an opportunity to let it stay buried for a while longer. A soft noise he managed to summon up with all of his nerve halted her. Finally she finished,

"...You're just sick."

They held that in the space between them, brazen and aching as it was, until Adrian just... fell. Directly on top of her.

And for a long time, they were still.

A/N: Long A/N ahead alert!

Well, sure seems it's been... somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 months between updates again. Oops. I'm working on not apologizing for these delays in what is a free fan work I post for enjoyment, especially as an adult struggling with disability and outside life, but do want to thank everyone that's stuck with me so far and assure you that I absolutely want to see this through to the end!
To keep things short, the wild ride my life seems to always be taking me on and health struggles for non-plague-related reasons did a lot to kill my focus and drive to write. I can't guarantee that's behind me, but even if at times it's slow going, I do still love this fic and working on it. Aaand I'll try not to let it be another half-year lol.

First order of business, some of you might have noticed that Ch1 in the time between my last chapter and this one has sneakily gotten a near-complete rewrite! Events are mostly the same, but feels much more in line with my growth as a writer. I'd appreciate it if people could check it out! This will be done for quite a few of those earlier chapters as well, but should hopefully if anything make the plot line more clear and engaging.

When I was getting close to the end of this one, I joked that hey, I might have an update out for Pride month after all, and it feels fitting that it panned out this way. I just want to take a moment to give some special consideration to any other queer folks and say thanks for being here. Not like here here on this fic, but on this planet. I'm not typically someone who wants to over-explain the themes I incorporate into my work, in favor of giving readers the credit of making what they will. I will say that I know that at the same time as there's grit in continued existence in a world that sees your basic personhood as a radical statement, it's also utterly fatiguing.

All of us are living through a tough moment in history, so keep that in mind if you feel tired, you know? Love you all, and keep on surviving.