Look Alive, Sunshine

Friday, July 7th.
Twenty days after.

Waking up to being carried quite unceremoniously is not fun.

Emmi has a lot of practice with it, after all. Her opinion on that front is not something to be questioned or trifled with.

One of them has her by the ankles, the other under her shoulders. Only God knows what the third one is doing - fucking nothing, if she had to bet, other than staring at the spectacle of it all.

To think she had actually managed to get some sleep cramped in the back-seat with one of them. She hadn’t been so certain she would even wake up. Killed in her sleep would be easy - kind, even, but she wanted at least a chance. The gamble had paid off - she hadn’t thought they’d get orders so soon, so she’d risk catching some shut eye while she still could.

Now she feels slightly alert even despite the blindfold, well rested enough to maybe do something. 

She twists her wrist and feels the rock tucked snuggling between her bindings, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief.

There’s a brief moment of light at the bottom of the blindfold before they both drop her suddenly and let her crash to the ground. She quickly bites back any words of protest.

“You’re with her first,” one of them says. “We’ll let you know if we hear anything.” Good. Wherever she is now - presumably an isolated room of some sort, judging by the coolness of the cement floor, they’re only leaving one person with her. Emmi can work with one person. She’s dealt with worse.

She waits until both other sets of footsteps have retreated, and then a few more minutes just to make sure. It gives the remaining man some time to get comfortable.

Emmi sits up, slowly, testing her surroundings. They didn’t even tie her to anything. How stupid they can be?

She smiles slowly, listens to the even breathing of the man slow off for a moment. “Hi,” she says. “Will you take the blindfold off if I ask nicely?”

The approach of footsteps makes her sit up straighter. “Are you going to ask nicely?”

“Please?” she requests. A hand suddenly tangles in her hair and wrenches her head back. She gets the feeling she’s looking at the ceiling, or his face. One of the two.

“If you start biting again, we’re going to have a problem.”

A moment later, the blindfold falls away. Emmi keeps her eyes screwed shut before blinking quickly, trying to get used to the light. “Was it you I bit?” she asks. “Sorry about that.”

There’s a huff. She opens her eyes, properly this time.

He’s not the one she bit. Younger than she expected from the sound of his voice, a few years older than her physically if she had to guess. Looks nice enough. Wouldn’t stand out on the streets, couldn’t possibly offend anyone. Exactly the type they recruit. You’d never see him, or any of them, coming.

And much to her chagrin, she didn’t.

“You don’t happen to have any painkillers, do you?” she asks. “My head’s killing me, you know, and―”

“Don’t push it,” he orders. Emmi forces herself to be quiet, wiggling her wrist once again. It doesn’t so much as budge, and her arm is raw from even the bit of straining she’s already done.

So she can’t get her arm free. That’s a problem.

Emmi leans back against the wall, taking stock of the room. It’s barren and empty, not a single window, only one door leading in or out. Probably a little back room in a warehouse, if she had to guess. Again, she’s seen plenty of those before. At this point they’re growing a little stereotypical. She deserves a higher budget imprisonment than this.

Oddly enough, he reminds her of that young kid she killed way back when, just before one of his friends cut her fucking arm off. Not quite as innocent in the face, but still young enough to molded.

Look where that’s gotten him.

Emmi cocks her head. “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

Ah, a test. She willingly confirms, they kill her.

She allows herself another smile. “Veronica Mars.”

“Good one,” he says, deadpan. “I’m Logan.”

She can’t quite tell if that’s legitimate or a joke based on what she’s already said, and it’s not worth her time. Maybe-Logan doesn’t even look satisfied with himself, so maybe he’s serious. Wouldn’t that be funny?

Emmi makes a sudden, split-second decision as he walks past her yet again, pacing the room from wall to wall. She eases up onto one knee and wedges the rock free, letting it drop to the floor with a clatter.

“Oops,” she says, looking down on it with feigned shock. Logan pauses, quickly turning back to drag it to the front of her with the toe of his boot, bending down to scoop it up. He’s so damn close it’s almost criminal; the stupidity in and of itself is truly astounding.

“A rock?” he asks incredulously. “Now what did you think you were going to do with that?”

Emmi takes stock of him, balancing on the balls of his feet just in front of her. He’ll be unsteady. That’s not good enough.

“A rock,” she echoes, smiling once again. Easy as breathing. “You might want to take a really close look at it if that’s what you believe.”

It’s a rock. Nothing more. Dusty from the ground outside, stained with a bit of blood from being wedged up against the raw, torn skin at her wrist. Logan stays in his crouch, holding the rock up to eye-level, clearly perplexed.

Big fucking mistake, if you ask her.

Just before he opens his mouth to speak Emmi lashes out with a foot and catches him directly in the back of the hand, driving both his fingers and the rock closer to his eyes. There’s a hoarse shout. Blood splatters over both of her shoes as he goes rearing away, the rock slipping free from his fingers. She can’t begin to tell what’s happened to his eye - he’s clutching at it, still shouting obscenities under his breath.

“Oops,” she says again. She doesn’t even bother trying to get to her feet to outrun him to the door - already the other two are coming back, and one slams the door open, face taut with anger.

“He tripped,” Emmi claims. “Clumsy, isn’t he?”

Logan lets out another swear, blood dripping down his face, and kicks her in the gut. “You bitch,” he chokes, still with his hand against his face even as she doubles over, gasping.

“That’s me,” she wheezes, sees the second kick coming and can’t quite avoid it as she sprawls out over the floor.

One of the others finally approaches, the other clearly the blockade at the door if she even tries to get up. A moment later and the biggest one is looming over her. Older, hardened, an ugly scar marring the right side of his face. This one’s been in enough scuffles to actually prove himself, and he’s just so happened to survive all of them.

Definitely worse than Logan. Maybe a bit funny, because they’ll have matching scars, now, but not funny enough.

He leans down over her too, breath exhaling warm over her face. “What’s your name?” she asks, daring to be cheeky for presumably one of the last times.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?” Emmi asks. He pulls a pocketknife from his belt, flicks it open. Emmi tracks the movement carefully as the blade descends steadily towards her face until the point is pressed against the softest part of her cheek, just below the eye.

“You can’t kill me,” she says. The taunt is yet another risky gamble, but she’s full of those right about now.

“We can’t,” he agrees. “But you wanna know what I can do?”

She’s never been properly tortured. People have tried and never succeeded. Emmi only talks when she wants to, anyway. People trying to extract information out of her ought to try someone else. She’s not about to snitch - not on anyone, and definitely not on herself.

More of his weight bears down on the knife until the tip breaks her skin. “I think I can guess,” she says, though there’s an odd tremor in her voice that wasn’t present before. The shake seems to delight him. A smile grows across his face.

“How do you think you’d look without eyes?” he questions. “You wanna match Logan over there?”

“Pretty sure his eyes are still there,” she informs him. She didn’t kick him that hard. Whatever words she had planned on after are lost as he leans in further, digs the knife in deeper. Emmi clamps down on her tongue to keep from screaming at the immediate flow of blood that streams down her cheek, pattering gently over the floor.

“Where’s that blindfold?” he asks, lifting the knife up to scrape over her forehead instead.

“What d’you need it for now?”

“Someone might hear her screaming.”

Alright, fuck these guys. If they don’t all end up dead in the immediate future there’s going to be hell to pay. Logan strides back over, a bloody rag pressed to his eye and her discarded blindfold in his other hand. Just before he shoves the ragged end of it between her forcefully closed lips she sees how the youthful innocence of his face has changed.

Now, well, he just looks particularly enraged.

Should’ve seen that coming.

“Give me that,” Logan requests. The pocketknife is dropped into his waiting palm, and he looks far too delighted about holding it.

Someone’s going to hold onto her, and someone’s going to cut into her, and all the while she's stuck here, waiting only for a third party to tell them to kill her.

Her time is running out, certainly.  The knife presses ever closer on it’s journey.

The time she has left until she starts screaming is even fewer.

―

There are… noises.

Noises?

Different than before. It sounds like something’s actually here, or around him, but the fog in his brain is too thick to pin-point it. All of his senses have been dulled - vision black, ears refusing to make sense of any sound around him, fingers so numb he can hardly feel what’s beneath him. Something rough, like stone.

He's either in purgatory or he blacked out. No other reasoning why everything is so dark. He opens his eyes, or at least he thinks he does. The black shifts to a slightly less dramatic slate gray, vision swimming at the edges.

Still, though, those noises.

Icarus doesn't know much right now, or anything at all, but he knows they can't be good. This isn't just another hallucination.

Problematically, though, Icarus doesn't think he can move. His body is shutting down, refusing to take orders.

Without warning, he is moving. Ground harsh under his back, the sun-warm stone searing everywhere his bare skin touches. He has no idea which way is up or down, what he's looking at or if it's even real. There's an odd amount of pressure around his arms before he's released from it, and then there's something… digging through his pockets?

What the fuck?

There's a flare of panic that comes to life in his brain. Unsure of why he tries to shift away until the pressure comes back down and keeps him still.

His pockets… what's in there that his brain is so worried about? Something is, he's sure of it.

Regardless, he can't do anything about it. Whatever's going on around him, above him, it's going to happen. Icarus is powerless to stop it.

All at once, it's like an unseen force dumps a bucket of ice water over his head. A burst of cool air washes over him and he nearly chokes on it, gasping as it hits him head on before something flattens over his mouth and silences him. When he blinks, some of his vision clears. The sky overhead is dotted with stars, growing lighter. Some of the fog seeps away. It's like his body is coming back to life without ever having fully faded away in the first place.

Abruptly, all around him, the world goes deathly quiet.

"Stay here," a voice instructs. "Don't move."

That voice, those words… they're all things he's heard before.

The pressure hanging over him finally eases off and then disappears altogether. Footsteps. Icarus rolls after the sound, watches a figure retreat around the wall he's safely tucked behind, sword in hand.

Not just any figure.

"Soran," he tries, though apparently his voice isn't back up to par just yet. His pockets are empty. The ring - that's what Soran was after, and now it's gone, and Icarus is suddenly alive again. Whatever he did has brought his body back from the brink of total shut-down.

There's another noise, something guttural and low, like hissing. Something's here.

And so is Soran, almost ridiculously.

If something is here, he can hazard a guess as to what he's doing now.

Icarus pulls himself to his feet and waits until the shaking in his legs subsides, inching towards the end of the wall. How is Soran even here? He tracked Icarus down? Someone's determined.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. Icarus has to get away from him.

The wall next him shakes and disturbs the earth, sending up clouds of dust. A wide crack runs from the bottom and continues up, sending loose stones at the top flying. As he watches it begins to crumble and lean forward, directly towards…

Directly towards where Soran just went.

Shit.

"Soran!" he shouts, and this time it actually echoes. His sudden terror likely has something to do with it.

Icarus can't do anything as the entire wall gives way and collapses like a felled tree, crashing and breaking along the desert floor into a thousand individual pieces. The cloud it kicks up makes it impossible to see, stinging at his eyes.

Once again the earth goes quiet as the last of the wall settles and stills into the dirt.

"Soran!" he yells again. That's apparently all he can fucking say. The heat stroke does a fair job at turning him into a broken record.

He steps forward into the rubble, moving too fast. Most of it seems to have disintegrated around the edges until further in, where there are still intact slabs and chunks of rock. He could be crushed underneath one of them; Icarus wouldn't be able to get him out. He's probably dead - like it matters if Icarus could get him out or not.

He trips, catches himself, re-opens the barely scabbed gashes lining his palms.

And then he runs right into him.

Grabbing onto him is not an intentional move. Soran's hand on his arm stops him from spilling into the dirt. He ends up clutching at the back of his shoulders, fingers frantic and searching even though he's standing upright, clearly unharmed.

It takes him too long to realize the ground around them is clear in a perfect circle at least five feet across. Despite the dust moving around them Soran is clean, not a speck of dust having landed on him through the impact.

It didn't even touch him.

Soran leans forward, examining something just in front of them. Buried beneath the rubble is some sort of grotesque, monstrous creature, the head of a snake and its razor sharp fangs just poking out from one of the biggest slabs.

As he watches Soran reaches forward and pokes it with the sword's end but the skin holds taut, refusing to be pierced.

"You… you brought the wall down," Icarus realizes, voice weak. The ring gleams on his finger once again.

The wall never even had a chance in hell at touching him.

"Sure did," he answers. His voice is normal again. Icarus could cry.

"What is it?" he asks.

"Something that probably would've swallowed you whole."

Icarus breathes out a sigh of relief, allowing himself to drop his forehead onto Soran's shoulder. A heartbeat later he realizes his mistake. He's not supposed to be doing this. He can't touch him.

Icarus flinches back at the mere thought of his hands even starting to glow once again and falls flat on his ass, stumbling out of Soran's little circle of safety.

Slowly, Soran turns to look at him, eyebrows raised. Sheathes the sword. "You know, this whole I keep finding you half-dead shtick is getting old really fast."

"You can't be here." What the hell happened to his face, while he’s at it? They’re not recent injuries; not from this fight, anyway.

"Unfortunate," Soran says. "Considering, you know, I am."

“We can’t― I’m not doing this,” he says in a rush, hurrying to his feet. “You know―”

“What do I know?” Soran asks. “I’m alive. What more do you want?”

“Barely,” he snaps, stepping over yet another piece of rumble, making his way to his bag. Every step he takes and Soran follows, having much less difficulty with it. “You were seconds away from it.”

“You too, just now,” Soran informs him. “If I hadn’t found you―”

“I’d be dead!” he shouts hysterically. “Probably for the best, too, because no one can fix what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“What do you call the fact that I almost killed you, then?”

He can hear Soran getting so much closer and yet can’t make himself move any faster. He grabs the bag, nearly trips through the front archway. There’s a red pickup truck in the leftover ruins of the road. He doesn’t even ask.

“An accident?” Soran tries. If Icarus wasn’t adamantly refusing to touch him, he’d turn around and smack him instead.

Soran finally grabs a hold of his arm and he jolts, trying to tug it away. He finds more resistance than he expected.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Soran repeats, turning him around. “You have an ability. Same as millions of other people in this fucked up world, and thousands more that don’t know how to control it.”

“I could kill you right now.”

Soran has the gall to laugh. “Really? Then go ahead. Be my guest.”

Icarus wrenches away, bringing his arms close to his chest. “It’s not funny.”

“You can’t. You have no idea how to control it. I know you. You’d prove a point right now if you could, but you have no idea how to call on it.”

Icarus wants to hate him. He really, seriously does. He wants to throw his hands out and have them glow but he doesn’t want to even chance hurting him and most of all he wants…

What does he want anymore?

“I just… I need to go,” he says at last.

“Then go,” Soran offers. “But if you leave again, that’s on you. I’ve clearly got enough weighing on my conscience without you being involved in it too.”

“You said―”

“I know what I said,” Soran interrupts. “We’ve also learned I’m not the smartest bunch of this lot, haven’t we?”

Soran said he never should have let him stay, let him go willingly, and yet here he is, saving Icarus’ sorry life yet again. He doesn’t deserve that much and never will. A few days ago he almost killed him. One more accident and he does it for real. His conscience isn’t strong enough to handle that.

He really could go again. This time Soran isn’t going to chase after him. That’s what he’s done here.

He thinks Icarus is worth coming after.

“You didn’t even fight back,” he remembers. How is it possible that it already seems so far away? He knows he didn’t even without a proper memory, and Soran doesn’t open his mouth to argue.

What he does is take a few steps forward. Icarus takes another two back.

“I didn’t fight back,” Soran says carefully. “Because anything I could think of to do in those few seconds would have been fatal. You would have died. I wouldn’t have been able to bring you back. And then what?”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not.”

“So you die and I get to live instead?” he snaps. “That seems fair.”

“I knew you weren’t going to kill me.”

“You didn’t know that!” he yells. “You didn’t know anything because you were fucking dying,” he spits, and on his next steps trips over a hardly-there crack in the road and crashes to his knees. Of fucking course he does.

Icarus considers trying to get up. He also considers laying there and letting Soran run him over in his newly acquired car as if he ever would.

“I don’t want this,” he chokes, tears prickling at his eyes. “I never wanted it, I still don’t, if someone could take it away―”

“Don’t think that’s possible,” Soran cuts in. “So all we can do is learn how to control it.”

We. Jesus Christ, we. How did that suddenly become a thing again? He tried to leave, to sever that tie, unsuccessfully. Icarus did not deserve a we so long as he was like this.

He looks up, struggling to make anything out with the tears pooling in his eyes. There Soran stands above him, arm held down, hand offered. Can he really do this? Can they? It’s not something Icarus should allow himself.

“You can stay here, if you want,” Soran says. “I can’t stop you. Besides, with what we’re getting into we may all die anyway. What I do know, though, is if you stay here neither of us are going to last very long.”

He holds up his hand and his chest aches, the dam bursts. Soran takes it to pull him to his feet and by then he’s properly crying. Icarus wraps his arms around him, as close as he can get, willing some of the painful pressure to release from his chest. Nothing happens. His hands stay as they are clenched into the back of his shirt, trembling viciously. He’s just safely warm, a comfort to how often he’s been burning as of late.

Icarus buries his face in his shoulder, inhaling. He’s alive, breathing, same as Icarus. They got through the other side.

Slowly, carefully, he brings a hand up to the side of his neck. He has to try. He wills his fingers to stop spasming, to hold themselves there and relax. It’s hard when he can feel the evidence of what he did.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice thick.

Soran sighs. “I know,” he responds. “Me too. But don’t get used to me saying that.”

He chokes a little bit, but it sounds like enough of a laugh that it can’t be that concerning. Not that Soran should be the one apologizing here, but he gets it.

He sort of has to.

Icarus has no idea how long he stands there besides the fact that it’s surely an inappropriate length of time. He doesn’t want to move, to leave the one moment in the past while that he’s felt truly safe.

Not from himself. Never from himself, but the rest of it was okay.

Icarus forces himself back eventually, gently turning Soran’s chin to the side. He’s bruised like no tomorrow, complete with a few freshly healing cuts. “Seriously,” he says, swallowing. “What happened?”

Soran shakes his head. “Don’t ask.”

He wants to. Maybe he shouldn’t. Instead he looks down and folds both of their hands over the ring back on Soran’s finger, thumb pressing into the stone.

“Fix your face,” he urges.

“Why?”

“Because I like it better the normal way.”

“What?” Soran asks, a grin playing on his face. “You’re not into this?”

Ah, there it is. That stupid normalcy he had been craving and so convinced he was never getting back. Icarus allows himself an eye roll before he leans in to kiss him, if only for a moment.

“I hate you,” he informs him, pulling back.

“Right back to it, I see,” Soran says. He tugs on his hand, pulling them down the road towards the suspiciously new, yet old truck at the side of it.

Icarus can’t help himself. “Where’d you get that?”

Soran gives him another pull, looking as if he’s about to dutifully ignore him.

Instead he smirks. “Don’t ask.”

―

Less than an hour later, the sun begins to rise properly.

Soran is pretty sure that helped Icarus’ case in the very least. His not so much.

In a twist of fate, he’s exhausted again. Not sleeping well, the general issues of the past few days, his rapidly healing face and dragging Icarus back from the brink from yet another one of his dumb decisions - it was all catching up to him.

All of that and the now-collapsed wall in the middle of the desert, hiding one of its many grotesque creatures.

His only real intent had been to find a town with actual cell service. He couldn’t get a hold of Tarquin, and if Tarquin had found the others he had no way to know that either.

He chances a glance over at Icarus. He’s hardly moved, legs pulled up to his chest so he can rest his chin on them. Twenty minutes ago he reached his hand out, palm up, and Soran hadn’t felt any fear when he had taken it.

Fear never got you anywhere.

He has to be realistic, though. He was not making it much further, and there was no way Icarus should be driving right now either in his condition. Preferably they should both be comatose and far, far away from here.

Oh, well. He could get one of those accomplished at least.

Soran pulls the truck off to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, watching Icarus’ startled, confused blinks as the car rumbles to a stop.

“I need to sleep,” he explains without waiting for the question, gently detaching their joined hands to climb into the backseat. “At least for a bit.”

“I can drive.”

Soran grabs the keys and shoves them into his pocket. “You could,” he agrees, flopping into the backseat. “You could also get back here. Unless you want to stay where you are and stare at me the entire time like you do at home.”

“I do not stare at you.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

He closes his eyes, waiting. A moment later the seat squeaks as Icarus begins to climb after him. It was just another test. The first had been him actually willing to touch him the first time, the second his self-initiated hand-hold. Third time's the charm, right?

“There is not nearly enough room back here,” Icarus mutters, although he settles down by his side as well as he can. He won’t be surprised if they both fall off to the floor in the next five minutes.

“Says you and your gangly ass legs.”

It’s not anywhere near comfortable, and they’re both cramped back here, but he’s too tired to actually care. He thinks Icarus might be too. Soran tries to find an appropriate amount of space for his head wedged up against the door, but there isn’t one. Somehow he got the short end of the stick here. They don’t even have old times yet, hasn’t been nearly long enough, but Icarus constantly using him as a pillow is definitely going to become one at some point.

He looks relaxed enough even though he realistically isn’t, eyes still wide open, staring blankly out the window. “I’m exhausted,” he murmurs. “Have been since we got here.”

Soran had noticed. It was difficult not to. The drag to his feet as if the gravity was trying to take him down, the lack of any quick quips constantly thrown back at him. He had thought it was just the constant piling up of everything that was going on around them, but now he’s not so sure.

“Maybe that’s your consequence,” he says.

“Hm?”

“There’s always something when you take life from death. You could say it was the powers themselves, maybe, but those are arguably a good thing. Instead you’re not using them, and they’re draining you. Physically, mentally…”

“Emotionally,” Icarus finishes, bitterness heavy in his voice. “After I… that was the most awake I’ve felt in a long time.”

“Because you used it.” As much as having an answer helps, it’s not one that Soran is thrilled by. “So you have no choice, now. You have to use it. Unless you want to feel like this forever.”

Icarus stretches his arm out, hand hovering over them both. His fingers flex and twitch as if trying to make something happen.

If only it was that easy.

“It’s not just about the movement,” he explains. “More the intent than anything else. You have to actually want it to happen. Just holding your hand out isn’t going to do anything.”

Icarus drops his hand with a sigh, finally allowing himself to properly hold on, arm around his side. “I don’t want it to happen.”

He’s not doing himself any favors, then. Soran doesn’t even really know what it’s like. He never tried to hide from his own, to quell them. There was no point.

Something like that always came out eventually whether you wanted it to or not.

“Like I said, we’ll figure it out,” he reminds him. It’s a part of him, now. There’s no making it go away. Either he learns to deal with it or it’s going to take care of him as efficiently as an execution, swift but ten times more painful than one.

A fate they can avoid if they deal with it sooner rather than later.

Icarus clutches him a little tighter and finally settles, a few quite exhales escaping to release the rest of the tension from his body. “Go to sleep,” Icarus murmurs, as if he doesn’t sound seconds away from it himself.

That was the end-goal. Soran just needs to close his eyes for a bit, and once they wake up he can properly tell him about the inevitably of what they’re dealing with, and then they can actually move towards it.

For now, though, he’s tired - they both are, and the rest of the world can wait just a bit, selfish as it is.

Don’t they deserve that much?

―

His signal keeps flickering in and out.

Every time he even dials the number it darts back down to nothing, a clear taunt. The bars can grow all they want, but they never stay up long enough for him to do anything.

Tarquin’s starting to get sick of it if he’s being honest.

With the sun bearing down on him, he’s not sure how much longer they can actually stay here. He could fly elsewhere and get a signal, enough of one anyway to tell Soran to come and get them somehow. That would involve leaving Ria, though, and he’s not sure that’s in either of their best interests right about now.

It took him long enough just to get her down the hill and anywhere close to the now useless car. She had been sitting in the same spot for hours now, legs crossed, eyes fixed on whatever bit of dirt or rock or whatever the hell she had been staring at for hours now. 

She no longer even twitches when Tarquin paces by, and he seems to be doing it every thirty seconds or so, his frustration more adamant with every step.

Leaving her here is asking for it. He looks back up the hill. Maybe there is something he can do without leaving her entirely.

Tarquin pauses in front of her. “Hey,” he tries gently, waiting for almost another thirty full seconds until she looks up at him, squinting through the sun. “I’m gonna head back up the hill, try and get a signal. I won’t go too far. Okay?”

It takes a while, but he waits, and eventually Ria nods, eyes returning to the ground once again.

That’s as good of a response as he’s going to get. He’ll make it quick.

Besides, now that the atrocities of the night have passed, along with Ria’s sobbing and garbled, nonsensical explanations, there’s something else he ought to do.

He can’t very well leave the body out in the open like that.

Tarquin hears the flies buzzing before he even sees it, great clouds of them that scatter the second he intrudes on their evident buffet. He hits call before he dares look down. The smell hasn’t gotten too bad, yet, but that’ll come soon. This time the phone doesn’t even begin to ring before it beeps, yet another message about trying again.

There’s only so many times he can try.

He wedges the phone between his shoulder and ear and does anyway. This time it actually rings, and he holds his breath as he reaches for the body’s right arm and starts to drag it further up the hill. It weighs hardly nothing at all, and they’re practically the same size. The wonders of extraterrestrial creatures hard at work.

The phone rings and rings, and then goes to voicemail. He swears.

Now’s not the time to not be answering the phone.

He dials again and again, and keeps pulling again and again until the ground begins to even out despite the body still bumping over rocks at every tug. He's caught sight of a tight space between the hillside and a tumble of rocks - one dump over to the other side and no one should find it so far off the trail. In the very least by the time anyone does it'll be nothing but hollow bones, no real evidence to find. It's not like aliens are suddenly registered with the government. He can't help but wonder what they'll think if someone does find it, no name or address or family ever able to be identified, forensics be damned.

It would be enough to keep you awake at night. Then again, the body is doing that well enough for him. That's why he's getting rid of it.

The ringing is so continous that he doesn't even register it stop. He's halfway up the rock fall with the body when it does, a crackling, irritated voice on the end.

"What?" Soran says, voice heavy. "Don't tell me you found them already?"

"Hold on a second," he huffs, dragging the body up to the very top before he plants a foot against the already sinking abdomen and shoves it off, into the black abyss.

"I found Ria," he clarifies. "Emmi's gone."

"What do you mean?"

"They stopped at another spot to check it out. Emmi told Ria in the car something about the Agency - said they're after her."

"Well, we knew that."

"But now it's legitimate. You're hearing me, right? She told Ria they would meet back up in an hour - that was eighteen hours ago. Someone cut the gas line on the car so whoever was with her couldn't follow?"

He can clearly sense the confusion, imagine the bewilderment on Soran's face. "So they didn't just kill her? That's not very Collection Agency of them."

"Whatever it is, I really don't think they did. For whatever reason. So we need to find her."

It's of the utmost importance. Their search can wait. Something inside him is confident that Emmi is still alive, which means there's nothing else to do.

"What do you want me to do, then?" Soran asks. Finally, some agreement.

"I… don't think it's a good idea to leave Ria alone. If you could get a car―"

"I have a car. Where are you?"

"You― how do you have a car?"

"Where are you?" Soran repeats, clearly unwilling to delve into that conversation. Tarquin isn't the right person to interrogate him on that matter. That would be Emmi, and she's no longer here with them.

They really have to find her.

Tarquin turns back down the hillside. Better not to waste any more time.

"Near Panamint City," he finally offers. "Ghost town up in the mountains, we're at the bottom. You know, next to the car we can't use."

"Got it. Be there in a few hours."

Tarquin waits for something like an abrupt hang up but it's awfully quiet. Not exactly what he expected.

"We can find Icarus after," he says, voice unsure. Should he even bother going there? "Not that I want to leave him out somewhere for any longer, but…"

"I've got him too," Soran says. "We won't be long."

"What do you mean you have him?" Tarquin asks. As if he just got criticized for having found Ria so quickly and now this. "Soran―"

And then, predictably, he hangs up.

Typical.

―

Ria has never felt so removed from a situation in her entire, rather short life.

She keeps hearing the word dissociation over and over again in her head. It's the only thing that feels… right, anymore.

Everything else has faded away.

Tarquin had returned and she didn't have to ask - his palms were a bit dirty and he pocketed his phone with quick assurances that someone was coming. Not Emmi, obviously. But someone. That had to be good enough.

It takes him a long while to find a seat beside her. His pacing has been endless, feet constantly kicking up dirt, muttering nonsense under his breath. Ria felt like she should ask, but couldn't. Her brain cannot handle trying to deal with anything else, no matter how trivial.

When he does sit his breathing is labored and he chugs half a water bottle before he forces the rest on her. She hadn't even remembered the bottles were in the car; her brain had fled so far south before he showed up that she couldn't think of anything else.

Not anything but the body.

"Did you get rid of it?" she asks finally, voice hoarse. It, not him. She can't think of the corpse she left up there as anything more than an it.

Their shoulders touch when he closes the last inch between them. Ria forces herself to keep still.

"I don't think anyone will find it," Tarquin says, each word carefully chosen. He's watching her, waiting for a reaction.

She chooses not to give him one. "That's… that's good."

She doesn't even think Muelara, or anyone for that matter, will look for him. They'll think he ran, same as her. They certainly won't think anyone killed him, least of all her.

Unless it's a happy accident, Kyrenic is stuck up here for good.

Where she put him.

Ria doesn't think she's capable of crying any more than she already has. Thankfully he doesn't ask her if she's okay because she just might manage to.

“What happened to your face?” she forces out, staring at her knees. If he’s in any pain, he’s been loath to show it.

He leans in further to nudge at her, gently. “Don’t worry about me.”

So she doesn’t, as selfish as it is. Ria knows she’s awful.

They sit there for a while, she knows, because the sun only blazers hotter as time goes on, and Tarquin keeps forcing her to drink at regular intervals. If it wasn’t for him showing up she doesn’t know what would have happened to her. Maybe it would have been her corpse out here too, withered along with Kyrenic’s in the scorching sun until some unfortunate hiker stumbled upon them both.

That seems like a kinder fate than she one she’s getting now.

Once again she scratches at the blood flaking between her fingers. Every time she thinks she’s gotten it all off she notices another patch a few minutes later. It’s like it’s never-ending. No matter how much she gets rid of more seems to take her place. Something stereotypical about how it’s not just standing her palms is floating around in her head but refusing to form into actual words.

Tarquin takes her by the wrists and slowly upends the rest of the bottle over her hands, rubbing at the last few flecks of blood he can see until it looks as if they’re all gone. Ria continues to stare at her hands as she hears tires crunching through the gravel and dirt ahead of them, even when Tarquin sets the empty bottle down by her side and gets up.

She stares at her newly clean hands until a door slams shut, glancing up. The car is unfamiliar, but the people are not. It’s definitely them.

“Did you take that from the hotel?” Tarquin asks, voice far too loud. He’s been so quiet with her.

“No, I got it from the goddamn Death Valley Maserati dealership,” Soran answers with a snort. “Where do you think I got it from?”

Ria has no idea what that is, but enough of an image forms in her head that she can put together that the truck in the parking lot now is definitely not whatever Soran just implied it was.

“You can’t just―”

“Don’t lecture me. You’re not Emmi.”

Another reminder. Ria bites down on her lip. They’re going to do something, right? That’s why they’re all here now. They have to do something.

She has to get up and at least try.

Everyone’s footsteps stop so suddenly that she looks at them again. All three have stopped. Tarquin because the others did, and Icarus because it looks as if he bumped into Soran’s back. Tarquin’s alarm left him long ago; now it’s just the other two.

“What the fuck happened to her?” Soran asks incredulously. Icarus’ eyes are very wide. She can only imagine what she looks like to a new set of eyes. Looking down is bad enough.

A miniature shoving match ensues as Tarquin keeps telling him to shut up, paired with the fact that he tries, somewhat successfully, to bundle both of them back behind the end of the truck presumably to explain. He’s just trying to help her out.

Ria lays her head back down on her knees, letting water drip from her hands. The blood may be gone from them, but her heart still feels just as heavy.

A part of her thinks it can’t be right. She’s having a nightmare or hallucinating something she could never dare to imagine before.

If her sweater and pants weren’t equally stained she might just believe it.

“Hey,” someone prompts. She doesn’t bother looking. From the shoes alone, it’s Icarus. She stays that way until he nudges her leg again and again until she squints up at him.

She’s not sure how he’s pulling it off, but he has a slightly less hellish version of what she surely looks like on his own face. His only advantage is that he’s not covered in blood. That doesn’t mean it can’t be as bad as hers, but once again she’s not going to ask. She owes it to her own brain to keep quiet right now.

It’s what’s in his arms that sends her lurching to her unsteady feet, quickly snatching it all from him. To his credit, he doesn’t so much as blink.

It’s clothes. Her clothes. She didn’t even think to grab any over the past few hours. Her legs weren’t working until now.

He hesitates. She can tell. “I wouldn’t want to look like that either,” he supplies. She figured as much. Different reasons, though. If Ria looks down she gets nauseous and all the water in her stomach threatens to come back up. With Icarus she’s just certain he doesn’t like looking anything other than ninety-seven perfect or higher.

He doesn’t right now, though. None of them do.

To put it lightly, they all look like shit.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, and Icarus nods, backing away to the truck. Giving her much-needed space.

Step One: change her clothes. It’ll make her feel better, she knows. It fixes nothing, but it’s a start.

Step Two: find Emmi. She has no idea how, but surely someone has to.

Step Three: she doesn’t know just yet. For once in her life, Ria doesn’t know if she ever will.

It seems like a fitting lesson in her first day as a murderer.