Look Alive, Sunshine

Monday, July 3rd.
Sixteen days after.

The sun is kinder the next morning, Tarquin finds.

Wake up call is at eight, or so everyone said. It’s 7:30 now and he’s already showered, dressed, leaving the girls to sleep as he creeps out of the room.

There’s not anything to do around here except place his staff gently back under the seats for the day and wander until everyone else wakes. No use in eating breakfast - they can all do that together and avoid every elephant in the room in the form of how weird everyone feels being here. He could have sat in bed for that last half hour, staring at the clock until the alarm sent them all into a sleep-addled panic.

Everyone needed to sleep after yesterday. Looking back it didn’t even seem like much had happened at all, and yet…

Regardless, it was over now. There was no ridding that gunshot from his head, no use in trying to picture it as anything other than his own hand pulling the trigger when he had done it so many times before.

Tarquin just had to accept it and move on the way he always did. Quickly, efficiently, without remorse.

He does a quick loop around the back of the hotel, first, and it proves to be much the same as it did at night when he looked the first day they got here. Scraggly trees have managed to grow up into something respectable using the shade from the building, and far back into them there’s an abandoned trailer to match the half dozen in the next lot over, balanced precariously on two wheels.

It’s expected from this time of morning, but it’s still jarring, just how empty the place is. No matter how many cars you see it’s as if they don’t belong to anyone. It’s as if whatever mysterious force unlocked the doors yesterday has managed to drive off every other visitor except them.

Tarquin hadn’t seen a single employee either outside of the elderly fellow that manned the front desk, and the slightly younger but equally grizzled man who stared at them from beyond the cafe’s main counter. No housekeepers, though you could catch sight of a cart belonging to one sporadically. No one running the gift shop, though the lights were always on. No one capable, or at least willing, to cut and maintain the pile of wood that remained next to the lobby’s massive brick fireplace.

You could hear voices everywhere you went in this place. It was finding the sources of them that was the tricky part.

The good thing, truly, about this morning, was how quiet it was. Tarquin hadn’t experienced such serenity since arriving here. The worst of the heat had yet to arrive, too, and so for a moment it almost felt like waking up at the crack of dawn in the city, heading out before anyone else had even crawled their way out of bed. It was hard to find such times, especially in a place like San Francisco, but he had spent years searching. As difficult as it was, you could avoid the traffic, the worker bees in their frantic morning pursuits.

And if all else failed, he could always take to the sky.

He tried not to. That was one of the only good things about this place that he couldn’t take back. He was free. Hardly anyone was around to see him if he wanted to go. The sky was always blue, welcoming, the wind carrying him higher and further than ever before with just a simple nudge.

There was hatred in him for this place, but something else too. If only they could get rid of the bad things.

It’s that thought that drives him all the way around the far side of the building and nearly to the road, around the back of the building that’s been tempting him the most - the supposed Opera House. The front doors were chained shut, and clearly whatever access allowed to it was limited, but that had never stopped him before. He eyes the window he saw from the road yesterday. It stucks, sure enough, but after a minute or two he manages to force it open.

Tarquin hauls himself into the room, dark as night. With only the faint sun as his guide he would hazard it to be an old dressing room of sorts. There’s a wide mirror installed on the far wall, a precariously balanced chair, desks and old cases for stage lighting. He carefully steps over it at all, pulling aside the thick curtains that certainly lead into the main room.

It’s even darker, but his fingers fumble around a lightswitch next to the door, and one by one the lights ringing the ceiling buzz to light with electricity, bringing forth an even more golden glow than the hotel’s halls provide.

For a second, the sudden unexpected beauty of it makes his breath stutter to a halt in his chest.

It’s not very big. He didn’t expect it to be. But it’s so beautiful that it doesn’t even matter. He counts a total of sixty seats - ten rows, six on each side of the aisle. It’s the walls around him, though, that felt like a suckerpunch to the gut. Every single inch of them all the way around is painted to resemble an audience of hundreds on two different balcony levels, leaning over excitedly as if watching the performance. Every color of the rainbow, every emotion you could possibly imagine, all expressed on four walls.

The ceiling, too, is painted in shades of blue and gold, little cherubic figures flying alongside birds through the sky above him. He thought he felt free - everything in here seems to embody it more than any one person could ever be capable of feeling.

Tarquin lets the curtains close behind him, taking a few steps to the stage front. It’s just as small as the rest of the room, one lonely red chair in the middle. He avoids it, sitting instead on the very front edge of the stage, letting his feet dangle to the ground below.

It feels like a thousand eyes and none all at once. It feels like he could get up to his feet and actually do something because of how many people are watching.

He can picture the seats filled with people of all ages, sixty of them surrounded by more and more company. He could picture himself sitting in one of them too, letting the ancient red velvet take him back to a time when things were simpler, when he really understood himself. The doors would let him go and he would feel good once again.

If he tries hard enough it feels like he can almost see people sitting in them, now, voices finally pinned to incorporeal bodies. He blinks, and they’re gone.

He feels in a daze, as if having entered another world. Wouldn’t that be the sweetest thing? Tarquin has never been afforded such luxury before and yet he finally found it, out here of all places, the middle of nowhere.

That has to be destiny, right? He was meant to find this place. That has to be the case. For whatever reason someone was looking out for him this morning.

Tarquin ignores his phone in his pocket for a minute, letting the contemplation come and go. He’s not sure he’s ever felt fate in such a way before.

And it feels nice. 

He pulls his phone out only half-seeing, eyes unwilling to tear themselves away from the walls surrounding him.

emmi: where are you?

emmi: breakfast in ten

Tarquin sends back the quickest reply he can think of: meet you there. That’s ten more minutes that he can spend in here with his little secret, hidden away behind locked doors. It doesn’t feel like enough time. This is all he’s ever wanted, to live life wearing a mask, every mask under the sun, and yet still be seen.

It’s all the more terrible, because he can’t. That’s not how his future is written out. He doesn’t need a psychic to tell him that. He may have been meant to find it, but that doesn’t mean Tarquin is destined to stay.

That’s sort of how things go in his life. He’s accepted it.

That doesn’t mean he likes it. And he’s not going to like it one bit when today’s escapades eventually ruin it, either.

Because they’re going to.

He just knows it.

―

He regrets every single second that Soran leaves him alone to check that the others are awake.

Icarus forces himself not to move. He has to get dressed, yes, preferably brush his hair, get ready for the day. But he’s tired.

He’s tired and he just opened his eyes.

He knows he has to get up, but is still unprepared for how quickly he ends up in the bathroom, knees crashing into the tiled floor just as he hunches over the toilets and vomits up… nothing at all, really. Mostly bile. It burns all the way up.

When he woke, he registered nausea like never before. The sickness he had been experiencing the past several days, amplified.

He hears the main door opening and slams the bathroom one shut before Soran can see exactly what he’s doing.

Which is nothing really.

It can’t last very long, unfortunately for him. He has to get up and function. Someone wants to question it. He can see it in Soran’s eyes, the way Emmi stares at him while they’re eating breakfast, the curious looks that even Tarquin and Ria both send his way.

He should offer up the front seat for once, but realizes he doesn’t care, and judging by how quickly everyone else climbs once again into the back-seat, his offer was not something anyone anticipated anyway. The idea of sitting back there makes him nauseous, too, squashed like a sardine, shoulder to shoulder. He just needs some damn room and this is clearly the closest he’s  going to get.

The most contact he’ll allow is Soran, and even that just doesn’t feel right. Icarus has no proper way to describe it outside of a bomb ticking down, constantly hovering on a second before detonation. He feels likened to explode.

The only reason he hasn’t, yet, is because he’s in charge of the GPS today, the phone clutched too-tight in his hand. There aren’t very many directions to give, but he’s responsible for them over the entire journey to today’s destination, a massive crater of some sort in the middle of nowhere, just like yesterday. When he had dared to look it up all he could get through was something volcanic or other before he had given up, deeming the work too tedious. It was just a big hole in the ground. Not much else mattered if whatever they were looking for wasn’t there.

Today everyone was unusually quiet, like yesterday was still managing to rattle them even twenty-four hours later. Icarus hadn’t even heard it, so unless everyone else’s attitude was getting to him, it couldn’t be that. It was worse, though, because that meant he had no explanation for it.

Icarus hated not knowing things, and that was all that had been happening around him as of late. Unexplainable, complicated things that had too many pieces to make sense.

He just wanted to go home. Yes, that was his home now. He didn’t care if it was being invaded, or if they were in danger. He would put his head down and stay there.

He would live. He had to live. There was no way he would allow himself to die again.

It’s easy to notice they’re close even without the GPS, and up until that point hardly anyone had breathed a word. Occasional comments here and there about what was happening around them - that was to say, not much at all. It was either flat desert or rocky and not much in-between. No more signs of civilization than they had seen yesterday, that’s for sure.

The road leading nearest to the top rim of the crater is well-travelled, though. Thankfully upon pulling into the makeshift parking lot there are no other cars to be found. It seems as if the weather isn’t deterring just him.

Icarus really, seriously doesn’t want to get out of the car.

“Alright, split off again, but make it fast,” Soran says, putting the car in park. It feels like it’s been too long since anyone dared to speak. “It probably won’t be long until more people start showing up. There’s another place we can hit on the way back.

“Aye aye, captain,” Emmi says. She’s going to go off alone, and Ria and Tarquin are going to stick together just like yesterday, at least until something inevitably goes to shit again.

There’s no way they’re making this fast, though. That’s all Icarus can think about when he gets out of the car. The crater, from his brief research, is a half mile across and nearly eight hundred feet deep at its center. For them to walk the entire room, check the outer edges, and presumably go into it entirely to check every nook and cranny, it’s going to take a while.

He doesn’t want to do this. They’ve ascended quite a ways already, and as he follows Soran up the rest of the crater all the way to the top the wind only grows stronger, sweeping up dust and dirt into his face.

It feels like it’s getting worse. It would take nothing at all for him to throw up his breakfast right here into the dirt. On top of that he feels just a few moments away from passing out. That would be one way to get out of here quickly.

The others seem to be moving so fast compared to him. Everything is happening in slow-motion. Ahead of him, Soran has stopped moving, or at least he had for a second until he begins the painful process of descending into the crater, one foot after the other.

Icarus has to follow him. Emmi is following the rim at a breakneck pace to their left, like she’s looking to fall off either side, and Ria and Tarquin are headed the other way, angling in slightly.

There’s no way he’s getting out if Soran makes him go all the way to the bottom. He’s light-headed, nauseated, almost too weak to walk in a straight line. How does he get out of this?

He needs to say something. Icarus hasn’t wanted to cave until this moment, but there’s never going to be a better time. Soran will end up carrying him out of here if he doesn’t.

“Soran,” he tries. He stops. Icarus nearly cries out at the sight of him still, turning back to watch as Icarus tries to stumble down the slope after him without falling.

There’s something wrong with him. It’s getting worse. Before it was a steady come and go, a ripple in a pond and nothing more. Now it feels like a tsunami bearing down on him; not something he can avoid. He’s just watching it happen before it comes down on him.

And oh, it’s coming down. He can feel it. All of it, everything, at once.

The bomb is going off.

He feels the sun beating down on his shoulders, too-hot. Burning. It’s the last thing he feels, the last thing he sees.

And then total darkness, but he’s still moving.

―

There’s just a scream, and Emmi can’t even tell who it comes from.

For a moment, the wind sends dust into her eyes once again, rendering her blind for an alarming amount of time. There are more shouts, an entire chorus of them, and she doesn’t even think before she starts stumbling back the way she came, feet slipping in the dirt.

She blinks furiously, willing her vision to come back. It does, finally, though she can hardly make sense of what’s happening on the ground not far away from her. Ria is the only one still standing, a few meters below the crater’s rim. Everyone else is tangled together, by the looks of it, a flailing mass of limbs and an out-of place, too bright glow at the center of them.

It doesn’t make any sense. Soran ended up at the bottom, somehow, and Tarquin is trying to pull Icarus off of him. Emmi is fifteen feet away, ten. One of Icarus’ hands is locked around Soran’s throat - the other looks as if it’s trying to scrabble back to the same hold, but Tarquin is holding onto his arm so tightly he can’t get quite there.

His hand, locked around Soran’s throat. It’s glowing. They both are. White-hot, like a branding iron.

And then she smells it. The acrid, unmistakable tang of burning flesh, charring away…

Once again, she refuses to think. She may not have done it otherwise. She dives for all three of them just as Tarquin finally gets an arm around Icarus’ chest and wrenches them both sideways into the dirt. All at once, the glow from his hands dissipates. His struggling, however, does not. There’s no rhyme or reason to it - he’s just trying to get away.

Luckily, he’s failing. She latches onto his legs, pinning them both into the dirt.

“Fuck,” Tarquin emphasizes. “Stop moving. Emmi, I got him, just deal―”

She hears the rest of it, despite his trail off. She has to deal with something else, and there’s really only one other thing to deal with.

It took her this long to realize that nothing has happened behind her. Ria is still a few feet up the incline, choking, or sobbing. Emmi can’t tell. Soran hasn’t moved.

When she turns, she can’t tell if he’s dead or just unconscious.

It confirms one thing, at least: it’s definitely not good.

What she can make out as she scrabbles back through the dirt towards him is the horrific mess that is his throat. The skin on the right side is almost entirely eaten away, melted, exposing muscle and blackened veins and fucking christ there’s a hole right through directly in the middle. Everywhere else his skin has bubbled and blistered, spilling hardly any blood before everything was instantly cauterized.

From Icarus’ hands. From his fucking hands.

He has a pulse. That's the only thing she's willing to confront. It's weak, but there. That doesn't change the fact that he's unconscious and barely breathing and he's definitely on the fast track to fucking dying right in front of them all in the middle of this shitty, awful desert. In a fucking crater, no less.

She grabs his shoulder, thinks better of it as her fingers come too close to the slew of melted skin, and then the side of his face. "Hey, asshole," she snaps. "You have to wake up. No one's fixing you out here but you."

He doesn't so much as twitch. Stupid suicidal bastard. He probably didn't even fight back. If he had time, that is. She doesn't even know what happened.

Emmi would shake him senseless if she wasn't fearful that his head would tear free from his neck. There's not nearly enough holding it all together.

The crying behind her has increased in volume as he’s been looking the opposite way. It's not just Ria anymore. She can hazard a guess as to who's doing it now.

It still doesn't explain anything.

Emmi turns, keeping two fingers on the pulse at his wrist. Tarquin still has him pinned, but he's no longer fighting. He's just sobbing, trying to get a good look whilst Emmi continues to block his view. 

"What the fuck,"comes Icarus’ frantic voice. "Fuck, no no no, what the fuck did I do, no―"

Slowly, Tarquin starts to let go of him. "Don't you dare," she snaps. "Don't let him come over here. And don't let him touch you either."

"Emmi, he doesn't―"

"I don't care!" she shouts. "Just keep him over there!"

He doesn't remember doing it. How the living fuck does he not remember doing it? Did he black out? Get possessed out of nowhere? Just absolutely fucking lose it?

It doesn't matter, really. He's only sobbing, now.

Soran's still breathing but she has no idea for how long. That's the only thing that matters. Fuck the rest of their stupid, pointless mission.

The smell is starting to get to her, make her stomach roll. Ria, who is clearly protesting coming any closer, must think the same. She's not going to be any help; she'll throw up if Emmi even makes her come over here. 

"Icarus," she says slowly. "Icarus. Listen to me."

He's not even looking at her. Through her, really, eyes fixated on the ground, blank. Tears from both his own making and the stinging wind.

It's making the smell worse, too.

"Icarus," she says again. "You need to go back up the hill and get the car. Bring it up here as close as you can get it."

Finally he looks at her. She's seen a lot of looks before, so many expressions in the depths of people's eyes, but that?

That's something else. It sort of breaks her heart to look at before she regains her senses.

"Go," she tells him.

"I― I can't―"

"Right now," she insists. "Unless you want him to die."

She's got more than one motive. One, get him the hell away. Two…  she just wants to know that he's back. The real version of him, and not whatever version just did this. That will reassure her that they’re no longer in a catastrophic amount of danger.

Just like she was hoping, he takes off. Tears himself away from the futility of Tarquin's fast-fading grip and takes off, stumbling once, twice, and then back into the dirt before he actually gets to his feet.

She waits until he's just out of sight. "Ria, you too. Look at me. Do not look down. Go up there. Not anywhere close to him. Just wait for us at the top."

"But what about―"

"We got it. Just go."

And there's two. She lets out a breath. That leaves her and Tarquin, slowly sidling back up, and what looks like a very dead Soran between them.

"Jesus," he mutters. "This is…"

"A fucking mess," she finishes. "We gotta get outta here. What the hell happened?"

"He looked like he was about to pass out. Soran stopped and waited for him and he just… went right for the throat. And his hands, God…"

It still doesn't work out to anything. He just completely lost himself, unleashed something unexplainable. If Icarus knew anything like this was going to happen, he would have said somethin.

And now everything's been shot straight to hell.

"We have to get him out of here," Tarquin says. "If he doesn't wake up… shit, we'll have to take him somewhere."

"And tell them what?" she bursts out. "Besides, there's no fucking ER anywhere around here, there's probably not even a clinic."

"Well, if he doesn't wake up, or if we don't take him somewhere, he's going to die."

"He's not going to die," she decides. God, she'll feel too bad if he dies. What has happened to her? Emmi wasn't even supposed to be here and yet here she is, actively caring about their lives and making sure they still have them.

"Can you take him?" she continues. His pulse is still the same - it's the one good thing in all of this. Everything else seems worse the longer she looks at it.

Tarquin nods. "It's not far, I'll just pull him back up. You'll need to hold his head, though, Jesus, it looks like it's about to―"

"If you say fall off, I'll end you," she snaps. So what if she already thought about it? She doesn't need the image again. 

Tarquin hoists him up, and it forces her back into action once again. Burnt skin flakes away when she slides her hand round the back of his neck, holding it steady. There's just enough blood, enough God only knows what to make her nauseous. The smell wafts back up into her face, and she commits instantly to holding her breath for the duration of their journey back up the hill.

Ria waits obediently at the top, eyes watering and squinted from the wind, or crying. Icarus stops the car so suddenly at the very top of the crater that it nearly tumbles in. She doesn’t know what she would do if that were to be the case - sink down and cry, too, bits of skin and care stuck to her hand.

The second he gets out she feels about ready to boil over again. Nowhere near an appropriate description for their current situation, but there’s little else to describe it. “Get back in the car,” she orders. “You’re driving.”

“Emmi,” he starts, voice frantic and cracking, sobs still struggling their way free from his chest.

“Don’t,” she says. “Back in. Now.”

He doesn’t, at least not until they pass him with Soran, and it looks like he only does then because he can’t bear to look at it any longer, the evidence of what he did. To Soran, above anyone else. If something that took over him went after Soran, first, what chance do the rest of them have.

“Em, get in,” Tarquin instructs. She fears for the very moment she lets go of him but thankfully, nothing alarming happens. She slides into the back-seat, allowing Tarquin to pass Soran in after her, limp and sprawled out across the back seat. If she didn’t know better, she’d think him dead already.

She better not be carting a dead body through the desert right now.

Icarus glances back in the rear-view mirror, looks away just as quickly. It’s more of a question of who isn’t staring at him at this point. She tries to watch his hands, instead, trembling so viciously that he can hardly keep a grip on the steering wheel.

“What did I,” he manages, voice shaking too. “What did I do?”

“We need to find a hospital,” Tarquin says under his breath, leaning awkwardly into the front seat over Ria’s shoulder. She’s got someone’s phone. Emmi can’t even tell who it belongs to.

Icarus is a few precarious seconds away from a full blown panic attack. His ragged breathing is the loudest sound in the car.

It seems like he’s already there, but Emmi has to hope otherwise. If he’s hitting rock bottom, they get nowhere else.

“Hey,” she says, keeping her voice quiet and even. She stretches forward as far as she can and locks her hand around his shoulder until her knuckles go white. His skin feels like it’s on fire. “Breathe.”

“I can’t,” he says simply.

“You have to,” she instructs. “Or we’re not getting out of here.”

“Where― where am I, fuck, where am I even going?”

Emmi waits patiently, or at least tries to. His shaking gets worse for a moment as he inhales, proving even himself wrong, and then seems to even out into something that’s at least manageable.

“There’s a hospital about a half hour out from the hotel, in Nevada,” Tarquin supplies a moment later, finger still swiping through pages on the phone in Ria’s hand. “Desert View. That’s the closest we’re getting.”

“That’s two fucking hours away,” Icarus chokes out. “He’s not going to―”

“We’re headed back in that direction regardless,” she interrupts. “If he wakes up and he can deal with it, we go back to the hotel. If not, the ER. We don’t have any other option.”

They’re truly fucked out here. There’s no one that can help them, not even anything else they can do except drive and hope that’s enough.

“C’mon,” she prompts. Icarus slams his hand into the steering wheel, just once, but Emmi very nearly flinches away. Ria does it quickly enough for them all. She hangs on for dear life, instead, waiting until Icarus fails three times over to jam the keys into the ignition before finding any amount of success.

So much for the crater.

So much for any of this, really. And here Emmi thought all they had to worry about, really, was finding the stupid thing and then getting out of here. They could go back. She could leave for good.

Now it’s a question of whether they’re even all going to make it that far.

―

The world is never reduced to just one thing.

Whoever says that is a liar. Everyone tries to. It’s easier to only feel one thing, to recognize one thing, to properly absorb just one thing. Everything else tied to it gets simpler as a result.

There’s no blame to be pinned for trying. It’s a noble effort.

It’s just not the truth.

And it’s one thing to learn that lesson for the first time; another entirely to experience it over and over and over.

That’s what’s happening right now.

The first thing is the fire. It’s either all around him or he’s in the thick of it. It’s impossible to tell. The world is burning all around him, certainly, or else he wouldn’t feel this way. The thick, suffocating air, a cloying scent that’s threatening to choke him by the second as he continues to fixate on it.

Something’s moving… it can’t possibly be him. He doesn’t even think he’s capable of moving right now. Hardly discernible, just the faintest rumble. The car? It could be. If that’s not the answer, he has no idea what it is.

Of all things, the numbing sensation is the worst. There is no movement available to him; who knows if he’s even still in one piece. It doesn’t make any sense. Something happened, that’s for sure. If only he could figure out what, begin to remember even the slightest details.. that would give him something, at least.

For a minute it seems okay. He’s not dead, unless this is the world’s sick version of purgatory - a black nothingness, an eventual door that’s going to drop him straight into hell.

He’s pretty sure he’s not, though.

That minute almost seems blissful, in hindsight. It wasn’t good, but there wasn’t much bad, either.

And then the pain hits him.

It’s not a kind, gradual thing. Nothing ever is with him. An onslaught is the only proper way to describe it, a wave that begins in his neck and goes in both directions, all the way down into his shoulders and back up into his jaw. And it doesn’t go away; in fact, the second he allows himself to feel it, it grows worse.

Once again, he goes back to why it’s easier to live in the realm of only one thing. If he had only fixated on the fire, he wouldn’t have felt the pain.

Now that he can feel it, there’s no way to stop it.

He can’t tell if there’s a way to get further from it or if it’s a part of him, now. Not like it matters. He can’t move. He thinks his fingers might twitch, but despite how deep he digs there’s no energy for him to find elsewhere.

Another reward comes with it, however. If you could consider the following a reward. A whole racket starts up, one or two voices at first that grow into something more. He can’t make out a single word. It’s nothing more than a symphony, sound without proper words, echoing all around him. Not nearly beautiful enough to be distracting. Like he said, nothing comes that easy with him.

If he could just move a bit more, open his eyes, maybe he could figure this out.

It’s more to figure out than you know.

Oh. They’re still with him. Some insane, awful thing in his brain had already decided they were gone.

They must be so far away, though. They’re in his head and even then he can barely hear them. He’s underwater, not fortunate enough to be drowning.

He just needs to wake up. Not that he thinks he’s asleep at all, really, just rather trying to emerge from a fog that’s too thick to see through. He can’t open his eyes. Perhaps they are open, and he just can’t see. Blindness would be a tricky thing to deal with right now.

Can’t talk, either, he rapidly discovers. He tries, but nothing happens save for the faint cracking of his dried lips, an exhale that hurts all the way through his entire body. Something touches his face, the barest brush, faint enough to be the wind.

“Soran.”

It’s the first thing that breaks through, and of course it’s his own name. He’s not dead, then. No one would be greeting him so kindly in hell.

The world around him shudders again, nearly stops. His whole body seizes up. Someone starts shouting again. He hears every other word. Something about stopping, or not stopping. Another chorus of words after it. Hospital is something that stands out distinctly when nothing else does. They’re going to a hospital?

He’d rather die. If it’s him they’re taking to the hospital, that is, and it seems pretty likely. When was the last time he willingly stepped through the doors of an emergency room?

They can’t. He won’t go.

You don’t have much of a choice.

There’s always a choice. He could fix this, couldn’t he, or is it too late? He already feels like he’s fading away. Whenever he’s started the healing process in the past it’s been immediate, before blood-loss took him out first, or someone else got to him. Before he was too weak to do it in the first place.

That’s what it feels like now. He’s losing his grip on the realities of the actual world and darkness is replacing every single one of them.

“Soran, c’mon.”

His attention is sought after. Someone wants him, or rather what comes with him. The desirable parts, however few they are. A voice he knows but with no name attached to it, like trying to pick it out of a crowd of thousands. Familiar, but impossible to place with the growing cacophony.

Not even the most intimate things could save you when you were lost in a crowd like that.

"Should we stop?" a voice asks.

"We can't," another answers.

"The hospital―"

Again with the fucking hospital. He doesn't want to go.

You won't make it otherwise, little one. Not on your own.

He's always known that. Detonation, self-destruction… all words synonymous with his name. That's how he was meant to go.

But not like this. This wasn't him.

What happened?

All he can do now is claw his way back out of it, but he's so far under the surface and there's no light to be seen. If he can just heal it doesn't matter what happens after. The pain will fade eventually. He'll figure out what happened.

It felt like they were only getting further. The only thing that could save him and he was losing his grasp on it.

Please, he thinks. There were no more words to properly convey what he needed.

They knew - they always did.

We're trying, little one. You're further away than you think.

They were trying. That meant it was on him. He just had to give them enough of his energy to do so.

He had to wake up. Get out of the fog and the fire and if he could do that, he would be okay. He would make it.

It seemed so simple. It wasn't, but it was his only choice.

He just had to wake up.

Just hold on.

―

There are marks in the middle console from her nails.

Ria had thought, until now, that they were bitten down too low to do any real damage.

A multitude of previously impossible things are suddenly coming to fruition. Things that didn't exist until now are right before her eyes.

It's just her nails. The dramatics she's expressing now aren't necessary for that; they're just the only thing keeping her sanity from splintering apart.

Every few minutes she rolls the window down another inch or two as the smell encroaches into the front seat. There's too much room up here. Her legs can't even stretch far enough and she can feel Tarquin's knees pressed into the back of her seat as she has for two hours now and she can't ask anyone how to fix it, or anything.

And no one could even if she did.

They just keep shouting around her, equally hysterical and angry words that keep spilling over. If it wasn't so childish she'd put her hands over her ears and close her eyes until someone made it better.

Icarus stopped crying at some point, or maybe she had just been unwilling to hear it any longer. The sound was back, though, as Emmi's voice increased in volume, and every time one of his hands left the steering wheel she found herself flinching away. It was a thoughtless reaction stemming from nothing more than pure survival instinct, something Ria didn't even know she had until today.

When it happened everyone else had gone running. Tarquin had been there in seconds, Emmi not long after, and Ria had stood there. She would have been the one to survive had things gone south. Maybe the only one.

There she would have been, alone, four corpses at her feet, because of her newfound survival instinct. What would it have mattered then? A drive to survive amounted to little if there was nothing waiting on the other side of it.

She wanted to run. Ria would rather open the door and risk tumbling into the dusty road than be in here another second.

She needed to be better than this. More. That's what Muelara had repeated to her over and over like a mantra. Ria wasn't able to get it done up there, but down here things could be different.

There's no doing anything now, but she can keep her wits about herself. Breathe in and out, don't inhale too deeply. They passed the hotel ten minutes ago. Nineteen more until they get to the hospital according to the GPS. That's nineteen minutes for something to turn around.

And her, too. She needs to offer something. Her help, for one, or some comforting words  Whatever that even means.

One last inhale of the fresh air streaming in through the window and she peers over her shoulder, eyes squinted halfway and fixated somewhere above Soran's head. The advice that came from Emmi is golden - under no circumstances can she look down.

A valiant effort is made, at least. She tries to look anywhere else, but her plan is quickly thwarted by the fact that Soran's eyes are open.

Ria inhales so fast she goes dizzy, smells it too thoroughly again, and nearly retches. She thinks oh no, he's dead and then he blinks. Not at her but right through her, slow and unseeing.

"Emmi," she says faintly. She looks down.

Big mistake.

She nearly rams her head into the window she spins back around so fast. Someone swears behind her.

"Shit, fuck, you need to stay awake," Emmi snaps. Icarus looks back, too. "Hey, hey, look at me. Can you heal yourself?"

The brakes squeal just before the car skids to a stop in the middle of the road and nearly fishtails into the ditch. The force of the seatbelt as it locks and catches her nearly caves her chest inward.

Ria wants to look back so desperately. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" Emmi shouts. "You can't just―"

"What do you want me to do?" he yells. He's turned around so quickly that he's already half in the back-seat, trying to catch a futile glimpse at what's happening.

"Keep driving!" she snaps back. "We need to― fuck's sake."

They're the last words that should compel her to turn around, and yet they hold enough power over her to force the action anyway.

Icarus is blocking half of her view, or at least he is until Emmi reaches forward and shoves him back and nearly into her. It took a paired effort to keep Soran from tumbling anywhere out of reach - Tarquin's hands on his legs, Emmi's grip on his shoulder. He's conscious, somehow, conscious and bleeding. Burns wouldn't bleed like that, not with how deep the wounds are. Something else just tore open.

"If you can heal yourself, you need to do it now," Emmi says. "That, or the hospital, and they'll do it for you."

He can't be listening. No one is that strong. Even his eyes being open didn't last long. Squeezed shut now, just like hers were a short time ago. She was avoiding it and he's in too much pain to do otherwise.

"What am I doing?" Icarus repeats.

"Drive."

"Where―"

"Just fucking drive!"

He doesn't move. If he doesn't, soon, Emmi won't hesitate to leave him on the side of the road while she takes the wheel herself.

Time is a precious thing and they need every minute of it.

Icarus steadies himself for what looks like the first time in hours. The boldness of the claim is not lost on her. One too-strong gust of wind and he shatters into a thousand pieces, just like that. As if he was never there at all. Her own fragility is, for once, in the very background of her mind.

She cannot allow herself to be fragile right now.

“Soran,” he says slowly, carefully. “Tell me―”

“We don’t have time for this,” Emmi insists.

“Just tell me you can do it,” Icarus says, closing his eyes. “Just tell me, that’s all I need… please.”

The car is as silent as it’s been since they got back in it at the crater. She’s the only one that hers the muffled pleas he continues with under his breath.

He seems to come back to himself with a shudder, wrenching the wheel hard to the side. To the other side of the road, and then back the way they came.

“We can’t go back,” Emmi says evenly.

“He’s fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He’s going to be fine.” Icarus swallows, not looking like he quite believes. “Just trust me.”

Perhaps it’s the words coupled with the situation at hand, but Ria almost laughs. Out-loud, hysterically, mixed with tears, no doubt. She’s not cried out from earlier. There is no trusting any of this.

He looks so certain that Ria doesn’t want to question him. One, she can’t possibly get near enough to try, or raise her voice to ask, but two… he’s right. She has no idea how that’s possible, but he is.

This is Soran they’re talking about. Icarus wouldn’t lie where it concerns him.

If he’s right, that’s one thing. It says nothing for the rest of them.

And where it concerns their future, it means absolutely nothing at all.