trans_9 | Survivalist Plot: We Wear Out All Our Prayers

Outside the radio tower, visible from the big window, the monsters have found them. About fifty of the beasts have followed the scent and are lounging outside the sun, waiting.

[OOC: Sorry I'm moving fast, want this whole plot wrapped before I leave for Africa. Any tagging order.]

Howard pushes Karis' arm away. "I'm fine." Really, he's just too nauseated to drink. He gets up out of the chair to see close through the big window. "Let's hope that shuttle comes through for us. We aren't out of the woods yet."

He turns to take a seat in the chair again and one knee gives out from under him - not out of pain, but simply because that part of his body has decided to stop working entirely. He collapses facefirst to the floor with a weak groan. His breaths come in a desperate hiss, unnaturally fast and keening.

Edited 2012-04-12 01:38 (UTC)

Cedric's seen the monsters out the window. He knows he'll have to fight his way out, and there's not much chance of survival, but it's the only shot they have. He's reciting spells in his head, trying to work out what to do when it's time to move.

That's when he hears the thump.

"Howard!" Cedric drops to his knees, gently turning him over. It looks bad, awful, and there's no hiding the horror on Cedric's face---there isn't much time. Every second, he curses himself for opting out of preliminary mediwizard training. "Can we call them any faster?"

"Howie!" There's actually alarm in Karis' voice as she practically shoves Cedric out of the way and leans over Howard, looking for all the world like some carrion bird. She watches him for a moment, feeling a dim sense of hopelessness. So she wraps an arm around him and tries to prop him up.

"Talk to me, Howie-" Her voice has an undertone of seriousness that's usually not that there unless she's threatening to hurt someone. She knows first aid, but this isn't quite like anything she's seen. "What hurts?"

The way he's breathing isn't good. She glances at Cedric, then Diana, glaring, "What the Hell happened to him?"

She glared back. "Don't ask me. I was with you after the fire, remember? And I've been on my own since we got separated, I only found these two about ten minutes ago." She gestures to Cedric. "Talk to him."

Diana doesn't rush to Howard's side, but she does slowly walk over and crouch beside him. "I don't think I need to tell you that you look like crap, you probably feel it too."

She's suddenly reminded of the time she crouched over Drake's writhing body so many months ago. She'd made a bad call then. She wouldn't again.

"So drop the front and explain, what's happened to you?" Still, hard to resist a jibe, plus if he jibbed back that might mean he wasn't totally done for. "Don't tell me you fell down a flight of stairs."

Howard tries to respond to Karis, he really does, but the words die buried under those futile attempts to inhale. His body spasms in her arms. His vision's blurring out, and it takes him a few seconds to realize it's because he's crying. Tears drip from the corners of his eyes and in a sick parallel, saliva and foam trace down from the edges of his mouth.

And that's when he knows. It's time to pay back on that borrowed time. There's nothing he can do. It's not a danger he can outwit or an enemy he can plead with. For all the good any of his protests do, this is so certain that it might as well have already happened.

He didn't know it would hurt this much. He expected physical pain, but it's the fear that hurts the most, that and the sense of some unbelievable injustice having been committed in the universe. God, he's not even sixteen yet. He's not old enough to drink or vote or choose where to live and he's going to die without ever having seen New York City or been kissed or finished school. Here on the floor. So many miles away from home.

He's never going to know what happened to his mom and dad. Who's going to tell them? Who's going to tell them that they're very sorry, but Mr. and Mrs. Bassem, your son died of sepsis on some alien planet, scared and sick and in pain? Who's going to take care of Orc, who's going to feed the cats, who's going to remember where all the keys to the doors at his house are hidden?

His arm reaches out for Cedric, or for Karis, or even for Diana or for anyone, anything to hold on to. Someone to ground him here in this world. His head rests against Karis' arm and it feels warm, but that's only because he feels so cold. He shivers and convulses, lips turning blue, eyes wide and glassy and staring up at Karis. The edge of the world starts to creep in, the sounds getting dull and muddy, Diana's mocking and Cedric's concern fading into a blurry thumb of syllables in his ears.

He hopes it's warm and dark on the other side. He hopes it's quiet. He hopes that it's safe, that fear is like riding a coaster and that this is the peak and the rest is just the darker side of the biggest ride he's ever been on. But mostly he just hopes not to really die here.

It's the tears that do it for her. The way he convulses and scrabbles and tries to fight that make her realize what's going on. It's too uncomfortably familiar. Howie is going to die here on this stupid planet and there's nothing she can really do to stop it. It's not some monster she can kill, it's not something she can shred. It's just stupid, terrible luck. And she can't fight that. She's seen a lot of death over the years and this is just another aspect of it.

"He's going," she announces quietly, voice a hiss.

Her arms tighten around him, even if she can't offer all the much comfort to the dying boy in her arms (he's just a kid). They've only known each other for a short time and now he's getting ripped away, just like everything else in her life and she finds that she hates that (she still feels hate). It's a burning, gnawing hatred, but she can't bring herself to get righteously angry. Because what good is it going to do anyone?

So Karis holds onto him, claws digging in as if she can anchor him in this life through sheer force of will.

“Howie, Howie-”

What the fuck is she supposed to say? That it's going to be alright? That there's something on the other side, waiting for him? Neither of those lies are true and she doesn't want the last thing he hears to be false truths coming from (paradoxically) one of the few people he trusts. And she doesn't want to tell him it, in any case. She never liked sugar-coating things.

“Don't be afraid. Don't. You're not alone, Howie, you're not-”

Shadow, she doesn't like to think about her death, but it's the closest parallel she has. Dying alone and cold and scared was horrible.

“...Shit. Shit. I can't-”

Fuck this. Fuck everything. Her voice is small and she hates that she has to use these words and hates that she means them and hates that it has to happen to Howie, who isn't a bad kid, he's like her. He doesn't deserve this. He never wanted to be here. He just wanted to have his stupid stash of shit and lots of food and somewhere safe to live and now he's going to end up dead. And she gets to keep shambling along, watching the world change around her while she stays locked in her corpse of a body.

“...I'm sorry.”

All that's left is that empty, hollow feeling of helpessness and despair that she can't remember feeling in a long time.

Diana sees him fading. Going. Soon he’ll be just like the others. Those bodies. A corpse with no one even remembering his name.

It’s only just hitting her. He’s going and there’s nothing to stop it. No snide comments to make because there won’t be a chance for him to look back on them and get angry at her.

They weren’t even friends. That was the hardest thing. How could she be getting upset over someone she wasn’t even friends with? Back in that cruel bubble they barely acknowledged each other’s existence, but on the ship they’d become… Something. They’d taunted and teased each other, made inside jokes, understood each other.

Some sick part of her brain told her that for all intents and purposes that did make them friends.

She puts her palm across his forehead, shielding his eyes. He’s freezing. Her hold is strong and solid.

She doesn’t know what to say. She’d always detached herself so much from the deaths in FAYZ, ignoring them, mocking them, not getting locked in the destructive thoughts about familiar faces suddenly becoming lost names. About those who hadn’t stood a chance having their future ripped away from them.

But Howard had had a chance. They’d both beaten the FAYZ and gotten a new chance, and Howard had lived. Made friends. Gotten hobbies. A job. A home. He’d gotten pets for God’s sake.

And now some infection on some middle-of-nowhere planet was going to do in 24 hours what the FAYZ couldn’t do for a year.

It made her… Mad. What was the point? What was the point in doing all that if--

Diana leans in, her eyelashes are clumped from holding back tears and she’s suddenly very glad her long hair can hide her face from everyone else.

Her mouth feels dry and she’s worried some of the salty water from her eyes might drip onto him and he’ll figure out she’s nearly crying, but she manages to hold herself together and whisper into his ear. Her voice soft but clear, she wants him to hear.

“You beat it, Howard. The FAYZ didn’t get you.” She wants him to hear its name. The name of that terrible place. The place he conquered and named. “The Fallout Alley Youth Zone couldn’t even touch you. You beat it, and Sam, and Caine, and Drake and that stupid Darkness and there’s not a thing it can do about it.”

She pulls back and her face is void of emotion. Once again, Diana is calm and collected, her only movement the periodic stroking of her thumb against the dying boys temple.

“If there’s a God, do me a favor, okay? Ask him not to put me in the same part of Hell as Drake?”

Cedric sits with his fist tightly wound around his wand for some time, praying to it, pleading with it. He wills any spark of magic out of himself that will save Howard, desperately wishing to get them more time. Hell---if he'd just had that Apparition training like he should have, they'd be in Med Bay right now.

But they're not. Finally, reality sets in. Howard---Cedric's opponent in battles of wits, his teacher, his realist, his...friend, if Howard would've ever allowed him to use the word, is dying.

The person he relies on most to get through the days is dying and it's all Cedric's fault. Here he sits, alone in a room with one dying Howard and two others he fears. They'll kill Cedric for this when they find out. He knows.

That knowledge draws forth a sob. Then another. He hates showing weakness around these two, knowing how dangerous that is, but what does that matter? Cedric's going to die soon anyway. They'll kill him.

Before he goes, though---Howard still seems to forgive him enough to want a goodbye. Numbly, weakly, Cedric crawls back to his position and slips his hand under Howard's chilled hand tentatively. His tears sink into the cold skin.

"Wanted you to be free---but not like this. Should've been me."

It's all too much. Too much fear, too much pain, too much regret. The world is a mass of missed opportunities now, of things he'll never do, of the innumerable things and people and places he'll never be able to say goodbye to, and unanswered questions about what's going to happen next, to him and to the people he's leaving behind. The world around him, the people around him, Karis' sad little words, they all bleach out as if to make way for the sheer amount of missing he's doing now, in these last few seconds.

"You beat the FAYZ," Diana says to him. And she's right. He did. At least he isn't going back there. Maybe it's safe on the other side. Maybe this is the end of fear, along with everything else, but that's a fleeting thought, one that can't even compete with the avalanche of the life he'll never get to live.

Here he is, surrounded by people and still so alone knowing that he's dying and they are still so enviably, wonderfully alive. Even Karis. Even Karis isn't at the end yet. And Cedric's just been spared from it by Howard's own blood and life. It isn't fair.

There's too much, just too much, and then there's nothing at all. His body seizes a few more times as the nerves shut down and then is still.

Karis wishes she was capable of crying. Of good, old-fashioned human sorrow. Because right now all she feels is numb and helpless and she hates it. There's just another feeling of loss and despair layered on everything else and there's no catharsis, no way of getting around it. It's just one more thing on her mind that's going to lurk there, gnawing at her psyche until the day she finally snaps (if she hasn't already). She holds Howard until the light is out of his eyes and his body is starting to cool. Then she eases him down and stands, staring at nothing in particular.

"...to Hell with everything."

For once, there's no strut or arrogance about her. Just twisted bitterness and sadness and an odd sense of vulnerability. At least until she squares her shoulders and stands up straight again.

"...Bye. Howie."

He's beyond hearing, but it helps. Just a little.

It was like ripping off a blindfold after days spent in pitch darkness. Clef's mind hurt, and there was little he could do to shield his sixth sense from the sudden inpouring of information. It made him feel a little bit crazy - all of the sudden he felt things that weren't even remotely physically perceptible, things his brain would have filtered out if it weren't all suddenly so new. He could taste the approach of monsters, hear a single death. The products of centuries of training and discipline came back to him all at once, and there was no possible way he could have prepared for it.

So it hurts, just a bit.

On the positive side, his starved body now has magical energy to feed off of. The pain and hunger are still there, but it's as though extra energy has just appeared out of nowhere. Movement takes less effort, his thoughts feel more clear. There's a little more than just adrenaline and sheer force of will powering him now.

All that energy seems to leave him as soon as he enters the control room.

"No..."

Howard was just a child. No matter what happened, he was just starting out in life. Even if he had no sense of morality, he was redeemable. The last thing Clef should have done was condemn him to death, like Howard had done to Bridge. But that's exactly what he did, isn't it? He ran away because he just couldn't handle the situation like a responsible adult - just like with Zagato and Emeraude. And now Howard is dead, too.

It's too much. He sinks to his knees, shaking, gasping for breath. A few tears clear pathways through the dirt on his cheeks - undeniable proof that he's not as strong, nor as wise, nor as sensible as he pretends to be.

"Not again..."

Closing Howard’s eyes with her palm, Diana looked over the body with a straight face. It wasn’t Howard anymore. It was just another corpse.

Another corpse with resources. Which is why, without any regard to those around her, she first released the flare gun from his tight hold, pocketing in with her own, then she began digging through his pockets.

A swiss army knife, a lighter, a pocketknife, a flashlight, some string and some small surgical scissors. A good haul. She should have known.

Standing up, she looked at the rest of them. “Any more news about our ride out of here?” She gestures to the window. “Because powers or no powers, we’re starting to look like a buffet.”

Cedric is...beaten. Done. What's the point in going on? He's gone and gotten his closest friend killed. If he'd only been faster, tackled the monster, forced it to eat him instead...Howard would be here, making his way toward his new life like he's supposed to be.

But he's not, and Cedric's here, because Cedric didn't move in time.

He kneels next to Clef, openly sobbing. In his head, he can almost hear Howard complaining about how much water he's wasting on this.

But that doesn't matter. He clings to his friend's body one last time, whispering a goodbye that definitely sounds lifeless. It takes him some time to register the other voices and the other questions. Everything sounds so far away, so meaningless compared to the great loss.

"I'll fight them," Cedric whispers, his voice almost unintelligible through the sobs.

When Maxine arrives, just behind Clef, she doesn't know how to react at first-- it's a mixture of fear and hurt. And maybe a little bit of that guilt, too. She doesn't know that there's anything she could have possibly done, but she's a hero, so it comes anyway. Even after what happened to Bridge. No one deserves to die, after all.

"Oh..." the red head is stunned into silence, covering her mouth with one hand. When she finally does manage to speak, it's quiet and meek. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, to try to compose herself. All she manages to say is "I'm sorry."

She knows they're right though-- they don't have a lot of time. She just wishes it weren't like this.

((ooc: sorry for the slow/fail tag sob))

Survivalist Plot: We Wear Out All Our Prayers

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