Look Alive, Sunshine

Saturday, July 8th.
Twenty-one days after.

Icarus has never wanted to do something less in his life.

He’s sure he’s the only one in the car right vehemently against the idea, for good reason. To him it doesn’t matter how certain Ria is - he doesn’t want to go regardless.

Especially after what happened last time.

Too little, too late. Any concerns he expressed fell on deaf ears. In the diner, in the parking lot outside, when someone finally forced him in the car. Rationally speaking Icarus knows they have to go, especially if this thing really is there, but that doesn’t mean his opinion on the matter is going to change.

Their refusal to leave him where he is cannot be a good move for anyone. What if he loses it again? What if this time someone is a second too late in stopping it?

The first one nearly destroyed him. The possibility of a second, or a third, even a fourth - those could take him out for good.

At least now everyone seems focused on themselves. Emmi snuck half of their picked through food out of the restaurant in a bag and is sharing it with Soran, who adamantly refused to let anyone drive even though he only slept for a half hour, tops. On a table-top, no less. The night-time has made him difficult to read, each plane and shadowy dip of his face blending into one, but you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the exhaustion in it.

Behind Icarus’ chair he can hear Tarquin tapping away on his phone, looking into possible mine tunnels in the area. Icarus has yet to really recognize anything around him; he could blame it on the darkness, but he knows the truth. The first time he was out here he was just frankly too out of his mind. Every part of the landscape around him had been a blur, a desert mirage.

He can see it in the distance, the crater’s edge rising up into the sky. Just a few more minutes.

He doesn’t think he can do this.

“I can’t do this,” he says aloud. Emmi reaches around his seat and tries to shove a cold fry into his mouth, successfully.

At least it seems like she’s feeling a bit better.

“Don’t have a choice,” Soran reminds him. God, even his voice sounds off. How he wishes that they could just all go to sleep and pretend this wasn’t happening.

“Just drop me here,” he pleads. “I won’t move. I’ll wait until you guys come back.”

If anything, in response it seems like Soran presses down harder on the gas. Of course he does.

“Please?” he tries again.

“You’re not staying here.”

“Why not?”

Emmi leans forward between their seats. “Just so we’re clear, I’m even less in the mood to deal with your lover’s quarrels than I usually am.”

“We’re not,” Soran clarifies. It certainly seems like that’s what they’re doing, or in the very least they’re headed in that direction. If it would make Soran leave him here, he might just have to. Arguing with Soran has never gotten him anywhere before, but it’s worth trying. Better than nearly ending his life again.

“You know―”

“What do I know?” Soran asks.

“Let me finish,” he insists. “If something happens to you again, or anyone for that matter, you’re not strong enough to fix it. Don’t argue with me. You know you’re not.”

There are a whole chorus of sighs from the back-seat. The hilly approach to the parking lot at the crater’s very top edge grows ever closer.

“So don’t hurt anyone, then,” Soran says simply, as if that’s all there is to it. That is reserved for people with control over themselves, and Icarus is decidedly not one of those people. Oh, how he wishes he was. Wouldn’t their whole journey here have been better if he was?

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How do you know? It took control over you once, that doesn’t mean you can’t fight back. It’s your power. It’s up to you to decide how it goes.”

“Can I even do that?” he asks, but the responses end there. When it comes down to it, him controlling… whatever this even is falls on his shoulders and no one else.

The stony, silent expression on Soran’s face is enough. His preoccupation on the road is the only thing at the forefront of his mind.

Icarus lowers his head onto his knees and draws as much breath in as he possibly can. Already he’s feeling nauseous. It could be that feeling coming back again, so similar to the first time. It could also be that he’s just making it worse simply through speculation. The anxiety behind the possibility of it all coming to fruition again is enough to make him sick.

There’s discussion in the back-seat about where to look and what they could find but Icarus tunes it all out and listens to his heart thunder in his chest. It feels like heat-stroke, coming back all over again. Sweat gathers at the base of his neck and in his palms when he clenches them together. Again. It’s happening again.

He really wishes it wouldn’t.

The car comes to an abrupt stop. They’ve arrived. Icarus wedges his head down between his knees, finally, breath whistling on the exhale. No wonder he lost it last time.

Everyone shuffles over and out. Maybe they’ll leave him. If they’re smart, they will.

Not a moment later his door swings open, and he winces at the sudden heat, trying to chase the chill of air conditioning from his arms.

“I’ll drag you if you don’t get up,” Soran says.

“You won’t.”

“You wanna bet?”

“Why are you so eager to bring me with you after what happened last time?” he wheezes, turning his head to the side. Much to his surprise Soran is crouched next to him. His eyes aren’t nervous, or wary, or hesitant.

He looks more resolute than Icarus knows he himself will be ever in his life.

“I’m more eager to prove you wrong,” Soran says, shifting on his feet.

“What makes you think you can?”

He shrugs. “Call it intuition. You don’t want me dead.”

“I didn’t want you dead last time, either.” They seem to keep ending up in these life or death situations, struggling to control the outcome like an unbalanced game of tug-of-war.

Soran inches forward and wraps his hand around his arm, but doesn’t pull him forward just yet. “Remember what I said about the intent?” he asks. “Your hands can do whatever they want but your mind is still yours. You lost it one time. Almost everyone does. That doesn’t mean you’ll do it again.”

His attempt at comfort is alien in the truest sense of the word, almost more than Ria ever has been. Somehow it’s working. The person who took the brunt of it, the one who came after him in the end, and he’s trying to make sure Icarus is okay.

As if he didn’t nearly die for it once already.

“Your death wish gets more and more unnerving to me by the day,” he informs him, letting his feet shift out of the car. 

“Not so much a death wish as a desire to be right,” Soran reminds him. “And I think the odds are in my favor with that one.”

So much confidence lies behind that statement. His grip tightens around Icarus’ elbows as he pulls him out and up. For now, just this second, Icarus feels comfortable enough to wrap his arms around him. It’s going to be the last time for a little bit here; no matter how much discomfort he feels in their current journey, he can’t reach out like this.

He’s too much of a risk. A walking, talking, sort-of breathing hazard.

“We’ll be fine,” Soran says. Not something he could have imagined coming out of his mouth until day, but stranger things have happened.

He’s witnessed them. Been side by side of them. Had the misfortune to cause them.

Icarus pulls back, or at least tries to, but Soran keeps a firm hold on him for another moment longer and then finally takes his hand when they separate. The others, not so far in the distance, have left them.

He feels sick, but nothing has yet happened. Even as Soran pulls him off after them, he doesn’t let go of his hand.

And if that’s not trust, he doesn’t know what it is.

―

“Do you feel anything?” Tarquin asks, chancing his first glance of many down at Ria beside him.

Her eyes are wide and searching, almost comically so. It gives her a healthy dose of that innocence she had been missing for the past day. Already it seems like it’s been months, and just last night he stumbled across her, blood all over her hands.

That memory for them both has been erased in the possibility of something great, the answer to a question Tarquin thought they may never get.

Well, maybe. Better not to jinx it.

“I feel a lot of things.” Ria hesitates, fingers fiddling with the end of her sweater. At least this one doesn’t have any great spray of blood all over the front of it.

Tarquin really ought to burn that one when he has a spare minute.

“Tell me,” he urges, taking a look around. “But first - in or out?”

The internet was no great help, for once. Tarquin did his damnedest to find anything about such suspicious holes in the ground that could lead them to their prize. Mentions, sure, but concrete information is about as rare as the thing itself,and almost as hard to find in the first place.

The crater looks even more imposing in the dark. The bottom is nothing more than a black out, the outer rims shadowed to appear as nothing more than a harsh plunge.

“In,” Ria decides. “I think.”

“Don’t doubt yourself. I’m following you.”

Even when they find it, Tarquin has no idea what he’ll feel. He can’t even pinpoint that exact emotion right now. Is he happy? Confused? Worried.

Ria looks up at him, chin dipping in a slight nod. Her first few steps down into the crater are careful and pre-planned.

Tarquin lets her go while Emmi steps to her side after lagging behind the entire day. Icarus is still dragging on behind them, though he suspects that’s more general anxiety than real exhaustion. Emmi looks like she could sit down at his feet and go to sleep.

“You can go sit in the car,” he offers. Shoulders bowed, cuts likened to thin, dark marks, she looks like a statue hit one too many times, seconds away from shattering under one last, powerful hit.

“I’d rather go underground with you idiots than sit up there alone.” She swallows. His stupid suggestion overwhelms him immediately. Of course she wouldn’t want to be alone. The last time she was people took her away and cut into her, would have likely killed her within a day or two if Tarquin hadn’t gotten collected.

He offers an arm up and Emmi slips under it silently, tucked under his shoulder.

Some of the tension deflates from them both.

“Are we just letting her go?” Soran asks, struggling his way up to the top next to them. The exhaustion is clearly getting to him, as well as pulling Icarus along despite his willingness to be pulled.

“I was letting her pick,” he tells them. It looks like it’s working, too. Ria is choosing a haphazard, chaotic path down into the crater, zig-zagging this way and that with no purpose in mind. She’s just looking ahead, though, feet letting her carry wherever her brain wants her to go.

He watches her go for a moment before he steps after her, taking Emmi down with him. All they can do now is follow and hope.

Which is what he’s already been doing, to be honest.

Hope and him had a complicated, undefined relationship. He hardly knew the definition of the world. It was too fragile to hold onto, too fleeting to ever stay. If anything it was a dream, something he could hope to obtain but never properly grab onto. With all of this happening around him it felt further than ever… but what if they could get rid of it?

He could go home to stay. Never have to run again. Actually be able to forge a real life, one he hasn’t had in centuries.

It all sounds too good to be true, but God does he want it.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Emmi asks, startling him out of his thoughts. She’s still up against his side, enough for him to feel her unsteadiness in the silky hand.

Tarquin tightens his arm, just a bit. “Too much.”

“Do enlighten me. I need something else to think about.”

He glances over his shoulder. Soran and Icarus are lagging behind once again, but they’re talking in the very least, and no one has died yet. What a vast improvement from last time.

He keeps one ear open in their direction regardless. “Once this is all over…”

“You think this is going to be over one day?” she asks.

“Idealism is a virtue.”

She scoffs. “It is not. An actual virtue, for your information? Prudence. You know, listening to a voice of reason instead of your delusions or dim-witted brain?”

“Did you just call me stupid?” she asks. Emmi gives him a sunny stupid, oddly bright for this time of night, and even weirder plastered on her battered face. He appreciates it, though. Smiling is good for her.

It would be good for all of them if they could manage to.

He tries to hold that thought close as Ria finally eclipses the very bottom of the crater, spinning in a wide circle. It’s difficult to tell what she’s thinking when he’s not very close.

Her actions, though, speak much louder words. She ends up in one direction, facing away from them and slightly to the left before she takes off. Not quite a run but so much faster than before. His feet hit the rocky bottom as hers finish carrying her all the way to the other side, where the rocky sides are too jagged to properly climb either up or down.

“She’s got something,” Soran says, just as Tarquin thinks it, and he drags Icarus around them and after her just as quickly.

It’s actually happening.

He tries to slow himself for Emmi’s sake but even she’s quick to hurry after them, eventually tearing free from his grasp. He’s the last one there. Ria has practically disappeared, a large jut-out of red-brown rock and dirt hiding her from view, but she’s finally visible as he meets the rest of them. Scrambled another ten or fifteen up she’s flat on her belly, looking at something he can’t see.

No one else fights him to get close. Ria looks up at him yet again.

There’s a long crevice in the span between where two rocks join, hardly visible. Barely wide enough to fit through even if he brings everything in.

He crouches down next to her, hand brushing over it. It doesn’t even look like anything. There’s no drop-off, no steep slope to climb down into it.

Just inky black nothingness.

“Oh, fuck no,” Emmi says flatly, unimpressed. “I am not going down there. I am not some dumb white person in a horror movie asking for it, thank you very much. That’s his job.” She jabs a figure at Icarus, who sticks his tongue out at her.

He’s glad they’re holding onto some semblance of normalcy.

Ria is still looking at him though, something desperate in her eyes. He wished to know what she feels.

And this must be it.

“I’ll go,” he offers. He takes the staff off his back and places it into her arms, shuffling to the edge of the hole. His feet swing into the darkness, into nothing. There’s no ground. Who knows how long of a drop it is.

He could break his legs, or snap his neck. Die, even.

He doesn’t want to do it anymore than the rest of them.

Inch by inch he wedges himself through the gap until he’s half through. Tarquin turns onto his stomach and lets himself drop through the rest of the way in until only his fingers are stopping him from a precarious fall.

The ground still isn’t there.

Ria looks nervous. “Maybe you should…”

Tarquin lets himself go.

There’s a very alarmed noise, someone’s shocked voice. About ten feet later, if that, he slams into the ground, the shock reverberating all the way up his legs and into his back as he sprawls out onto the ground.

“Tarquin!”

“Ow,” he manages, sitting up. He can see a sliver of Ria’s worried face peeking in. “I’m good!” he calls, waving a hand wildly, though he doesn’t think they can see him. “It’s not far!”

There’s hesitation, clearly. No one immediately drops after him.

It’s easy to see, or not, why.

Tarquin stands up, brushing his hands off. It’s impossible to see; the moonlight is doing nothing beyond a foot in front of his face. It certainly appears to be the ruins of a mine-shaft; ancient rails embedded into the dusty floor that disappear beyond his range of vision, wooden beams jutting out of the ceiling. A project abruptly stopped when they realized they hit the crater’s edge, abandoned when they turned back to look for brighter prospects.

After that, he has no idea.

Something else hits him though, like a tidal wave.

The dread.

His body instantly recoils from going any further - his brain tells him to climb back up. There are enough handholds in the rocky wall to do so. Everything in him gives an odd, inaptly timed shake.

It’s almost enough to knock him flat. He feels sick looking into this unknown when he’s done it a hundred of times, but this....

This is so much worse.

There’s a thud behind him, and a few muffled swears from Soran’s end as he becomes rapidly acquainted with the ground. A moment later he feels the staff tap him in-between the shoulders before Soran too falls still.

“You feel it too,” he whispers. He didn’t think anything could feel so wrong. “We shouldn’t be down here.

Even Soran right beside him is almost entirely lost to the darkness. “Which means we’re in the right place.”

That’s exactly what he didn’t want to hear. Soran’s right. Ria was right.

He backs up out of the tunnel for as long as he damn well can, looking up at Ria’s face still peering at him. “Come on!”

No matter how wrong it feels, they’re right, which means his hope is closer than ever.

Tarquin will get through it for that alone.

―

The strangest feeling overcomes Ria’s entire body.

All of the heaviness and uneasiness she had felt over the course of the previous days floats away on the breeze, even though the air in the mineshaft is almost painfully still.

Her stomach had been a rolling knot of nerves when she descended into the darkness, but now, standing here…

Something had changed.

Particles of moonlight hung above her head, suspended, and she felt lost in them, light as a feather. It almost felt as if they were enough to carry her to wherever this thing was so that she could get out as quickly as possible.

Almost.

“So we’re just supposed to… walk aimlessly until we find it?” Emmi asks, skepticism obvious.

“I think so,”she responds in a murmur, laying her hand against the tunnel wall. It’s cool to the touch, flecks of dirt staining her palm.

Better than blood.

When no one moves, she realizes they’re all looking her way. Waiting, it seems, for her to go. Some of the trepidation returns when she’s staring into the yawning black mouth of the tunnel with no one in front of her to lead the way.

This is her job, the reason they all came out here. Her words led them here.

The bravery inside her gathers, small as the pool is. She can do this. She has to.

Here goes nothing.

In the very least everyone shuffles after her. She takes careful, precise steps over the first few tracks in the ground, glimmering with the moonlight, but soon that is gone as well and she’s relying on instinct alone, feet and hands bumping out before she moves to make sure she’s still steady.

Ria has no idea who’s behind her, what’s in front of her, where she’s going. All there is to rely on is the feeling, the same one that had her making her way across the crater’s floor in the first place. It’s still there in the pit of her stomach, as harsh as it feels. As long as it’s worth following she’ll continue to do so.

The wall she’s following curves left and then opens into a slightly wider cavern with three different totals. Ria allows no room to doubt herself, choosing the first one her instincts point her down. This one is smaller and more cramped - the ceiling is only a few inches above Ria’s head, so she can’t imagine how the others are faring. With the reduction in size comes further darkness. Suddenly she can no longer see her own hand, the stretch of her arm, not even her feet below her.

Emmi starts humming. Ria doesn’t exactly blame her.

“Of all the ways to die…”

Soran’s trail off echoes far down the tunnel in front of her. In terms of the worst of them it’s probably not the most painful - definitely up there with most disturbing though. Lost in the dark, unable to see it coming. You’d be dead before you even knew it was happening.

That thought is still bouncing around in her brain when the floor gives away under her next step.

Ria goes down with an undignified shriek. A beam cracks and then another quickly follows suit, and then there’s nothing below her but air.

She slams into the ground with enough force to drive the breath from her body, instinctively curling up to lessen the shock. Up above someone is shouting her name over and over. Her head is ringing a fair but, but when she stretches out everything feels intact.

“Ria!”

She raises a shaky hands up before she realizes they can’t see her, or her them. Dirt is showering down on her from their tramping feet.

It’s black. She feels hard-packed dirt walls and more beams but nothing of any sustenance. They’re not far, but Ria is alone down here.

For the first time, a miracle really, she feels actual panic claw its way up her throat.

“Ria!”

Breathe. She needs to breathe. She’s okay. Sore, but alive, and fell no further than Tarquin did in the first palace. She grabs the first beam her fingers lock around and begins to pull herself to her feet.

It’s over more quickly than she even could have thought.

A sudden eruption of light makes her shriek again and she stumbles back to the floor, landing hard once again. This time she isn’t the only one. There’s an entire symphony of shrieks and shouts alive from up above her and she winces, back driving up against the wall.

She stills herself, squints her eyes. The entirety of the cavern is bathed in brilliant white light, and the hole that she tumbled through above her head is suddenly visible, but so is Icarus, and his hands…

Oh God, his hands. Again.

They’re glowing the same as before, as bright as twin stars. It’s different, though. They’re held out in front of him, trembling, but his position besides that is almost statuesque. His eyes look clear.

The voices above her are ringing loud and clear. The alarm most of all.

Ria gets to her feet once again. He’s taking up most of the space to look down on her, a beacon in the darkness that floats through both the cavern she fell into and the tunnel above in every direction.

She can see.

“I panicked,” he manages weakly. They all did, by the looks of it, but his panic turned into actual reaction and did something. He’s still with them, too.

Finally a win.

“Don’t you dare touch anything,” she hears Emmi snap. “If you burn this place down around us―”

“Got it.”

She looks up at him. Gives him a thumbs-up that for once someone can actually see. A shaky smile is her response.

Good enough for her.

Soran skirts carefully around him, trying to look down at her without stumbling in himself. “You good?” he asks. His look is mostly unsuccessful. Ria nods before turning around, spinning in a low circle. The cavern isn’t even that big. There’s only one tunnel leading away from it and it’s partially collapsed, impassable even to the smallest person.

Something else is there though, too. The faintest pin-prick of light, something she would have attributed to the spinning of her head or the stars dancing behind her eyes

Someone calls after her when she takes a few steps out of view towards the tunnel, picking her way carefully over the rubble. The dot grows a bit bigger. That unknown, sickening feeling in her stomach pulls harder.

She steps over the first beam into the tunnel, ducks under a second. The dot becomes a streak. It’s blue.

Blue as her eyes.

“Ria?” Someone asks behind her. They may have even dropped down into the cavern. She only has eyes for whatever she’s headed towards as she pulls herself through the last of the broken beams.

It’s embedded in the last wall, covered by years of dirt and rock. She draws her sleeve over her hand and brushes over it; more dirt showers over her feet, but it’s hard to look away from it. Her prize.

Around the edges it looks like a jagged piece of rock and metal about the size of her palm, almost the size of a lightning bolt. The center is what gets her. It’s that blue that she’s come to know so intimately, what’s always looked back at her, but a thousand different shades of it in the same beat. All of them shimmer together like the deepest blue of the galaxy, faint symbols overlaid together and criss-crossing the entire object.

It’s so small it could fit in one hand, a mere fragment of something so much bigger. So much nothing for such an important thing.

Ria doesn’t realize she’s not breathing until Soran’s feet finish scraping up behind her, or as he slams into one of the beams he fails to properly duck under. “Um,” he says flatly, eyes landing on the wall. “I think that might be it.”

Yeah. Just maybe.

Ria reaches forward and carves around the shard until it shifts free from the wall and lands in her covered palms. Even not totally connected to it she feels the surge of energy throughout her body. It begins to pulsate like a heartbeat, buzzing almost as if it’s alive.

It doesn’t feel real.

“Fuck me,” Soran says. He actually sounds mildly impressed. “I was really beginning to think―”

“I know,” she whispers. She was losing hope. Not having much of it to begin with hadn’t helped either.

But it was here, she had found it, and it was in her hands.

It was hers.

“Guess what!” Soran shouts back. “We can go now!”

Many confused mutters follow. A second later the light from Icarus’ hands go out, almost predictably, and she can hear him swearing. At least he sounds like himself.

This little fragment in her hands is still alive, though, emanating a soft blue glow that more than lights the way for her. Soran offers his backpack, the sharp noise of the zipper shaking her senses and jolting her back to reality.

“You can take it, if you want,” he offers. “But… put it away, maybe.”

Ria doesn’t want to, but she nods anyway, gently lowering both her hands and the shard into the bag for safe-keeping, nestling it all the way at the bottom. It’s better this way. For now, at least until they figure something out, this thing is better hidden.

But it’s her. She found it, she has the future.

And she can do right by it.

―

They’re back in the car for all of five minutes when Icarus starts laughing.

Emmi’s talking full-blown, sheer hysteria. She stretches forward between the two front seats to give him a look that only causes him to laugh harder.

“What the fuck,” he wheezes eventually. “Did all of that actually happen? We just went wandering around there and I didn’t kill anyone and you just, you just found your stupid thing!” 

He turns around so fast he nearly smashes their heads together. Soran is smiling faintly, she realizes, some of the exhaustion dissipating, and once Icarus turns around and stares at her, Ria starts to smile too.

He left out one important thing. They’re going home. They’re going to be home by the morning.

Emmi swallows away the lump in her throat, leaning back into the seat. Being stuck between them is not ideal, but Tarquin looks bemused to her right and Ria is hugging the backpack to her chest to the left, that same happy smile still plastered on her face.

“We’re going home,” she whispers. Tarquin squeezes her arm.

Home, where Winnie is almost certainly going to try and kill her anyway, but at least it will be worth it. She’s never leaving again.

They’ll figure it out.

Emmi lets her eyes close, trying to settle. Everything still aches, but most of the immediate pain has faded. Her face itching non-stop seems to be her biggest problem now but she keeps still, letting her brain wander elsewhere.

It’s difficult, though. Soran snickers not a minute later - she’s not even sure what about, but the noise alone sends Icarus into a fit again, more uncontrolled laughter bubbling out from his laps.

That should be it, she thinks, but that sets Tarquin off into incredulous, confused laughter, and then even Ria starts chuckling, oh my God―

“You guys are all insane,” she says flatly.

More laughter. Emmi presses her lips together.

“She’s going to crack soon,” Tarquin says, laughing further at Emmi’s sudden assault against his side, jabbing fingers into his ribs.

“Insane,” she repeats. Ria shoves her face forward into the backpack to muffle her own peels of laughter.

Well, she was trying to think of nothing, and these escapades are accomplishing that pretty well. She absolutely isn’t going to laugh though. For her, right now isn’t the time. While it may be nice it’s not something that fits in well with the rest of her current attitude.

A part of her is still stuck in that trunk. Another is in the warehouse with the knife tracing the sharp line of her cheek, gouging in deeper and deeper. The looks in all of their eyes as they hovered over her shifts into one macabre image. That was what evil looked like, hatred in its purest form. She wasn’t a person to them; meant for the slaughterhouse and no more.

When they had shoved her in that trunk she had been afraid that was her last glimpse of daylight ever. They were taking her to her death.

Instead they had driven to theirs.

The last thing any of them had said to her was lost. She thinks it might have been Logan, words uttered in the space between the last few inches of the trunk closing.

More awfulness, she's sure, and words she's thankfully forgotten. They'd be the type to keep her awake at night. When Emmi returns to her bed, to Arwen, she wants to be able to close her eyes and not feel afraid.

Those three are gone as well as the group in the park. The rest can try.

Emmi will be far more vigilant now.

The radio volume suddenly grows in such intensity that Emmi can no longer ignore it. The last of the snickers fade off. It's an odd, out of place tune that takes a moment for her to recognize.

Soran's fingers pause on the dial and then he turns around to look at her. She glowers.

"Really?"

"You were the one that wanted your 70's jam session…"

"Yeah, before," she emphasizes. "What makes you think I want it now?"

Whatever he thinks it seems evident that he doesn't care. He relaxes back behind the wheel, smacks Icarus' hand down when he reaches for one of the dials, and ultimately looks quite pleased with himself through the shadows under his eyes.

"I hate you." Better that he knows, though she's sure it's obvious.

Someone around her is humming along with the tune. She can't tell who and fixes her eyes out the front windshield to try and ignore it.

The song continues. Grows louder.

Alarmingly, Emmi feels her eyes begin to water.

"Fuck me," she whispers. With her eyes closed it's difficult to tell if anyone hears her or looks her way.

There is something inside her that's broken. Especially broken, she knows, if some tune from the seventies, an unemotional one at that, is almost reducing her to tears.

She's so excited to be anywhere but here.

"Alright, ease up," Tarquin says. His hand curls around her arm. Well, someone's noticed. Apparently Emmi isn't so good as to hide her 'about to break down in tears' face.

"I'm good," she manages. Opening her eyes is a mistake - a few tears instantly spill down her cheeks unbidden. 

She can't see much through her swimming vision, but the volume is quickly turned down to a more appropriate level as well as everyone's plentiful humming or quiet singing.

Tarquin rubs a hand down her arm. The tune is still audible in the background, and something about the stupidity of it all threatens to tug her stubborn mouth up into a smile.

She's crying, and smiling now too, and each word of the song is gradually breaking through the unrelenting siren that is her brain.

All she wanted initially and now she's finally getting it.

"Turn it back up," she instructs.

There's nothing better to do.

Soran pauses before he obeys, a sudden sigh escaping him as the truck bumps over a pothole in the road and rattles all over.

"Fuck," he says. "That rental car company is going to kill me."

And Emmi can't help herself - she starts laughing.

―

The kid at the rental car company in the morning is beyond young, beyond tired, and most of all, beyond caring.

Much of Soran’s fabricated story falls on deaf ears. That’s if the kid is even properly awake. He looks as dead as Soran feels, only he has the pleasure to be sitting down while Soran leans over the counter and contemplates falling asleep on it.

Not a good look even though the kid couldn’t care less - about the state of Soran’s sleep schedule, or lack thereof, and definitely not about the car. He gives him a collection of forms to fill out and garbled explanations on numbers to call and where to send said papers once he’s completed them.

And well, Soran will consider it, but really, who cares. It’s just one car.

When he returns to the car everyone else is in varying states of asleep. Enviable, truly. Everyone except Ria had offered to drive for him at some point, though that only worked if he allowed it to happen.

Protests had come adamantly for a long while. He was going to black out eventually whether he wanted to or not - that seemed to be the main argument.

Soran had made it back to San Jose unscathed, though. He could make it another forty-five minutes back home.

Besides, judging by the fact that anyone hardly even stirs when he slams the car door shut and re-starts the ancient thing, he’s not going to be receiving much dissent on that front, if any at all.

Icarus is the only one who’s eyes even open, and it’s long enough to blunder a hand over to grab unsuccessfully at Soran’s arms a few times over before he manages to drag it closer.

What progress that is.

Just a little bit longer, he thinks, and then home will be there, and his bed too. He never knew he could miss a thing so much, but anywhere is better than that nightmarish hotel and the things that live down its abandoned hallways.

He won’t lie, the curiosity is still eating away at him. A fruitless wonder, now. He’s gone, the hotel is far behind him and the only way he ever goes back is under extreme duress, likely dragged by two or more people.

Not even the type of people who would be dragging him would dare set foot in such a place, though, so he’s probably safe.

And that’s good enough for him.

Already being back in a city, even if it’s not his, has eased the unfamiliarity he had been growing accustomed to. The moment San Jose passes and turns into the numerous other smaller towns and cities dotted around the highway he begins to recognize more.

To be able to feel that once again is relieving. More for him than most people. Considering he was almost dead and came close to never seeing this again, well…

It’s a lot.

He didn’t think this place meant much of anything to him. It was just another city, another building, another apartment. A place to lay his head for a while until he got bored of it, or until he bled enough over it that it grew hard to stay in.

Regardless, it was starting to mean something. So long as they could protect it, anyway, they could make it worth fighting for too.

As he soon came to discover, though, easier said than done.

Admittedly, it took him too long to realize how empty the highway was leading into San Francisco. Even emptier than it had been when the city had closed off in the first place. The few cars he does see pull off long before he even comes in sight of the shield encircling the city, and when he finally does he understands.

He makes no conscious decision to let up off the gas, but suddenly the car is stopping right there in the middle of the highway, no interference whatsoever.

There’s no sense in getting out of the car, either, but something in him mistakenly believes the scene will change if he does.

The city tucked away behind its shield appears to be in ruins.

Active fires blaze across even the tallest of buildings, red-orange flames painting the sky even before the dawn does. Smoking buildings nearly hide some of the smaller infernos. Even more of the smoke is billowing up into the sky in great plumes, unable to disperse as they hit the top of the shield and begin to suffocate the little bit of sky there even further.

Soran’s much too far still to make out the little details, but they’re in the back of his mind regardless. Certain bloodshed, the pile-up of bodies, deserted streets and homes alike.

And his home, right in the middle of it.

The air shifts behind him as the scrape of more footsteps becomes audible. “What the fuck?” Icarus breathes, sounding decidedly more awake than he did just a few short minutes ago.

It’s not just him either. His sudden stop on the highway has brought the others out of their rapid-fire hibernation, and every one of them has matching faces. Varying degrees of shock, horror, a sick sense of awe. All of this was happening while they were out gallivanting in the desert, preparing to stop it.

It seems they should have been checking the news. Why was no one doing that, exactly?

“Is this what you meant?” Soran asks. Ria’s face is by far the worst. It’s almost touching when you realize her lack of connection to the place, how easily she could abandon both it and them in one fell swoop.

It would be touching, you know, if the city wasn’t in fucking ruins.

He knows before she even shakes her head what the answer is. The look on her face is enough.  Her mouth is agape, jaw practically touching the road beneath her. His backpack is still clutched against her chest but tighter than ever before, as if she fears someone ripping it from her hands in the next few minutes. The worst part is her eyes. Her eyes betray the fear the rest of her body is refusing to display, raw and unadulterated.

This is fear he’s never seen on her face before, and if he’s never seen it, it’s likely no one has.

There’s a first time for everything. Ideally, he was hoping none of those were going to come now.

“So what now?” Tarquin asks. The golden question, one that’s certainly floating through all of their minds. Soran can come up with an answer for almost everything; doesn’t matter if it’s smart or not. He can think of something.

Right now, though…. right now he’s got nothing.

None of them do.

All he can do is stare at the city. There’s enough left of it that something is worth saving. They had a plan, an idea to take the fight first, turn it to their advantage.

They’ve already lost that. So what now?

Nothing’s there no matter how hard he tries, and he damn well tries. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe it’s the shock.

Whatever it is, it’s certainly something.

Apparently they’ve got work to do.