the kids aren't alright

the worst bit

July 2121

Neither Tom nor Eithne showed up to that stupid fucking rock pile, much to Heidi's dismay. She'd spent an hour pacing back and forth like a caged animal, watching what she could see of the tower through the night, looking for any sign of either of them, but there wasn't anything. It was obvious Tom had been there, sure, but there wasn't any movement at all anymore. Just wasteland. Maybe she was missing something in the darkness, but there wasn't even any sign of Nathan, and he was perhaps the least subtle person she'd ever met.

"I'm going to look for them," she said to Erika and Ade, pushing more finality into her tone this time.

It didn't matter, because Erika immediately shut her down regardless of any building feelings on the matter. "And get caught up in whatever clean-up the adults have going on?" she asked, intending it to be a rhetorical question.

"I'm slippery," Heidi responded anyway. She was slippery!

Erika made an affronted noise, looking at Ade for any sort of back up, but she just shrugged. "She's going to go eventually," she told Erika and there it was. Majority rule.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Heidi said, tugging Erika and Ade into a quick hug, both of them stiff in her arms.

"That wasn't what that was," Ade interjected, which Heidi tactfully chose to ignore.

She let go of her teammates. Telling them she'd be back was the easy bit. She crouched down in front of Simon, where he was sitting on the rocks, hunched inward like he was trying to make himself as small as possible. He wouldn't look at her, but it wasn't like he hadn't heard what they were talking about. "You be good for Erika and Ade, alright?" she said with as soft a smile as she could muster, the fresh scarring on her face stretching painfully. "I'll be right back."

Simon finally looked at her, probably judging the authenticity of her words. "You promise?" he asked, holding out a gloved pinky. His gaze was more critical than she'd anticipated from the eight year old.

"Yeah, I promise," she swore, curling her pinky around his and giving it a definitive shake.

She stood back up, giving her teammates a final wave, before turning to run back toward the tower looming in the distance. She had people to find.

It was more abandoned than she thought it'd be, in the wake of all that mess. Eerily quiet, though she supposed with the big exception of Nathan, Eithne, and Tom, most of the fighting had happened inside. She slowed down to a walk as she navigated the mess, trying to keep an eye out for anything she needed to be worried about. The beam from her flashlight kept bouncing off big rock structures and broken rubble, and she would feel like she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye. There wasn't anything living in her immediate vicinity– she knew that like she knew it wasn't raining– but she still would freeze every time, and then have to take a second to coax herself back into moving.

It was obvious enough where the fighting had taken place, and even more so where Tom had been involved, what with the way the earth was shifted into columns and crevices. Some of them had Tom's own little flair added to them, curling scrolls at the end of the columns, fractals in the cracks in the earth, but the closer she got, the more it was just the bare necessities, just what he needed to win and nothing else. She started jogging.

Eithne was supposed to get Tom and bring him back. But if Nathan decided otherwise, she didn't think that Eithne would exactly be able to stop him, at least not on his own. But he would've still fought back. Tom would've fought with him. He would've fought to be with them again. Because they were friends, and that's what friends did, wasn't it?

There was blood. A lot of it. Smeared on the ground, mixed into upheaved earth, splattered on spikes jutting in every direction. Heidi already had her spear in her hands, but she gripped it harder, reminding herself of its presence.

She felt Tom before she spotted him properly, but she knew it was him. A single, solitary form covered in blood, but alive alive alive, blood pumping through his veins, his heart rate slow and even, even though Heidi really thought it ought to be faster. It had to be Tom, it couldn't be anyone else. If he wasn't here, then she didn't know where he was and with Shima in his head– it had to be him.

She moved around a mound of boulders he'd probably been tossing around at some point, and there he was, just leaning against a wall. He didn't acknowledge her, definitely didn't react when the beam of her flashlight hit him. She hadn't exactly been quiet about her approach, he should've known she was there. He should've felt her footsteps, at the very least. Was he awake? She couldn't see his eyes, his hair was in the way, his face tipped slightly downward.

He was alive. Regardless of whether he was conscious, he was alive. She repeated that to herself like a mantra as she moved closer, unable to shake the uneasy feeling in the air. Where was Eithne? Where was Nathan, for that matter?

"Tom!" she called, scrambling over to him. Again, she hadn't exactly been stealthy at all this whole time. If Nathan or Eithne or anyone else was skulking around, so be it. Tom didn't react.

She skidded to a stop, falling to her knees next to him. "Tom?" she repeated, softer this time. There was blood on his clothes. She didn't know whose it was. "It's Heidi. Can you hear me?"

No response. The wind blew a little though, blowing the hair out of his eyes for a second, and she watched him blink at the sensation. He was conscious, but maybe not responsive. She could work with that.

"You're okay now, you're safe," she said, repeating similar sentiments over and over again as she tried to focus, tried to pinpoint where Tom was bleeding and not just where he was covered in blood. (It was a lot of blood. There was too much blood around. Too much even if he'd bled Nathan and Eithne dry. Although could Nathan even bleed out anymore? God, what a prick.)

He was bleeding from the head (blunt force trauma– probably Eithne, been there done that), and there was a long cut along his jaw (sharp, had to be Nathan). There was another nasty cut on his left arm that she quickly closed up. Bruises blossomed all along his arms and chest, plus some on his shins, like he'd had his legs kicked out from under him. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't the end of the world. He'd be alright.

The worst bit wasn't any dramatic injury. The worst bit was a tiny puncture wound, one she probably would've missed without her Flow, might've missed regardless if she wasn't being thorough. She didn't have to wonder too hard what that was about, because she'd been seeing the same wounds on Eithne all week, when he'd been injecting himself with that healer's blood.

Eithne had fought him for real. She'd sent him to fetch Tom and he'd fought him for real, bad enough he had to heal him after and he was still roughed up. And then he left him.

She felt like she was going to be sick. She felt like crying. She wanted to say something, to tell him it would be okay, that she was sorry, that she would fix this, but her voice was stuck in her throat. Instead of doing any of that, she started cleaning Tom up. Maybe if he wasn't covered in blood, he'd come back around. Maybe he'd tell her she was wrong about the picture her mind was painting of what had happened. Maybe he'd tell her everything would be okay.

Blood was sticky. It liked to stay in things, in bodies, in clothes, in hair. A lot of the time, the effort of coaxing the last bits of blood out of something simply wasn't worth it. But this was Tom, and no matter her reasons, she'd still left him. She'd asked Eithne to get him, instead of doing it herself. She wasn't the one who'd beaten him into a stupor, but she sure as hell wasn't blameless.

She didn't add the blood from Tom's clothes to her spear, that felt wrong. Instead, she balled it all up. Maybe she could get rid of it inside of the tower somewhere, or toss it into a pond or something. Somewhere Tom didn't need to see it. Away from the ground.

It took a while. Too long. Erika and Ade would probably be worried about her. But eventually, she got them both clean of blood, taking the clump she'd collected and shoving it hastily in her backpack, out of both her and Tom's sight.

"Alright, Tombo, good as new," she murmured, settling down beside him. The sky was finally starting to lighten. "I'm here, I'll keep us safe."

Heidi knew Tom wasn't huge on touching. She was a bit thick but she wasn't a complete idiot. So when she hesitantly reached an arm across his shoulders and let it settle, it was purely selfish.

He leaned into her.

She held him a little tighter, a little less hesitantly, blinking back tears as she watched the sunrise.