thearena | throw me in the water

"Someone is here."

He loved the sound of those words, that sweet echo. Like a call and response. It made him smile, and his curled lips carried through to his voice.

"Someone who doesn't mean to hurt you."

He recognized her voice. Ellie, the girl that Wyatt cared for, the friend of Howard. Aunamee kept his torso behind a plastic rock, raising his unarmed hands so that Ellie could see them. You never knew when those people would strike.

The axe lowered slightly as she moved around to get a better look at the voice, her flashlight shining in his direction. Light glinted against the worn plastic edges of the rock.

"... Yeah, well, long as we're both not meaning to hurt each other, then we're clear." She didn't recognize him, but that didn't mean much. There were almost ninety other tributes, after all. She hadn't met most of them. And not running over to attack her instantly already put him a head above most of them.

"Not out for blood, just looking for supplies. Bandages. You have any?" Usually she wouldn't be so barefaced about asking, but normally Joel wasn't here.

And she did have an axe if he tried any funny business.

He was impressed with her forwardness. No mind games. No running. No fear or threats or preemptive attacks. The light from the flashlight swallowed his pupils into pinpricks.

He didn't lose his smile.

"Yes," he said. "I have a first aid kit."

And he did. How nice was that? Aunamee pictured himself helping this young girl when no one else would, stepping in like a perfect savior. He would be the hero -- not Wyatt. The victory would taste delicious on his tongue.

"Are you hurt?"

She looked immediately relieved, whatever fear and wariness she had melting from her as she stepped forward, the flashlight falling slightly to illuminate the rock in front of him.

"No, not me. My -- my friend," She hesitated on that word, but now wasn't the time to explain who Joel was or what he meant to her. "He got caught in that fucking ice rain, the stuff that burns. His hands are all messed up. I - Look, it would mean a lot to me if I could borrow some."

She was about to say that she would owe him a massive favour, but promises of that nature weren't always the safest to give, so she held her tongue.

Friend. Something about that word made his veins clench.

"Who?"

That wasn't the voice of a savior. That was the voice of a bitter child, curious yet dark. He stepped forward from behind the stone, his hands still exposed, his crowbar slung over his shoulder with a makeshift sling. He was like a parent carrying a thin, long, metallic child.

"I will let you borrow my bandages, of course. I only want to know who I'm helping."

The bitterness in his voice was impossible to miss, and Ellie took an involuntary step backwards.

"... You don't know him." She said, carefully. "He only got brought in this arena. He's from back home, and he's been with me this whole time."

The cautiousness had returned to her voice, and she kept his eyes peeled on him.

"But I'm sure he'll be thankful," She added, a careful lie. "I'll tell him who helped him, after all." If the man would give her his name.

He noted that step backwards, that waver of hesitation. At first, he didn't understand why. Hadn't he been sweet to this girl? Didn't he offer his help? Only then did he realize the dark turn his voice took, that anger bubbling in his veins and escaping into the muscles of his face.

(Friend. Something about that word made his veins clench.)

He knew this girl was not on his side. He knew she would be primed to hate him, that her friends hated him. He could change this, of course -- he could make her his -- but deep down in that animal part of his brain, Aunamee knew she would never like him. The person he helped her help might even kill him someday. And he could do nothing to change that.

No wonder his voice was so bitter.

"My name is Aunamee," he said, a magician removing his cloak out of spite. He took another step forward, matching her single step back. "It's a pleasure."

It took a second for the name to register. One hears about monsters, one hears what they do to their friends, of the atrocities they commit. She had even met monsters, in her time, with salivating mouths and growls and all of their humanity gone.

And she wasn't even counting the infected.

Somehow, she still wasn't actually expecting to find him. Not here. Not like this. Not when what she really needed was help.

All the colour drained from her face instantly, and then suddenly returned with an angry roar, the flush filling her skin in dark red blotches, the fury readable in every cell.

"You fucking bastard," She hissed when she found her voice. She raised her axe, pointing it accusingly at him. "You're the mother fucker who fucked with Howard!"

She screamed when he tore the crowbar back out of her gut.

The pain was overwhelming, blinding, like she couldn't even see anything else - so she didn't even notice when he'd left her there. If he'd said anything, done anything, it didn't register. She was consumed with pain, unable to even noticed the wracking, choking sobs that were tearing themselves from her throat.

She was dying, a part of her mind said. Again. And the bastard hadn't even stayed to finish the deed.

She thought about trying to move but even the mere thought seemed to rip her open again and she screamed, or tried to, her lungs too weak to actually follow through on the whole sound.

The sound pierced through her. Oh, she could deal with screams, heard them often enough in dreams, but there was no mistaking whose this was. Mindy had been playing crazy girl ninja, going floor to floor until she couldn't, puzzling whose death she needed to go for next.

Then she heard the scream of her friend. Her best friend.

It was like everything moved in slow motion, but of course that was impossible: Mindy barreled trough anything in her way right now toward the sound, and the knife was no longer concealed: it was in her hand, waiting for someone.

I can't be too late fucking shit no no no. No point in coherent though, just SAVE her.

But then she saw her, with him, and there was no mistaking too late. Every swear word she heard came out of her mouth, her hands trembling.

He was starting to doze. They needed more supplies, more bandages, so Ellie went on her own, as she often did. She was more use to both of them like that, what with his hands so injured. So Joel stayed behind, and started to doze.

The scream, when he heard it, felt like it was half in his dream and half in the real world. But it was her scream. Ellie. And it was enough to get him up like a shot fired from a pistol, his own injuries totally forgotten. Ellie was in pain, Ellie was in trouble.

He ran, not even caring if anyone saw or heard him. "Ellie! Where are you, baby girl?"

She coughed, roughly, the blood dragging up from her throat and smearing across her lips as she tried, uselessly, to get her hands over the wound. Had to- had to stop bleeding - had to stop the bleeding--

She heard the voices, the curses, Joel's call--

"Here--" She gasped weakly, before sobbing. "Oh god, I'm here--"

Mindy lowered herself to the girl. There was no doubt who she was looking for, it was Joel. He'd been there a short time but that was her guardian, her close friend. But she knew what she could do, what she was made to do. Why she was here.

And she knew how to get her hands dirty. Gladly would, FUCKING FINALLY.

"Don't talk much," she murmured. "It's Mindy. Who did this?"

"Ellie."

No. No no nononono. It ran through his head like a litany, like a desperate prayer, and his vision swam at the sight of it - Ellie, lying there, the blood spreading around her, someone crouched over her.

"Get away from her," Joel said, his voice suddenly rough with shock and grief and anger, directed at the person near her, the person who did this. "Get away."

"Auna... Auna..me," She manages to choke out, the blood bubbling at her lips. She hears Joel's rage and she turns her head, her hand - covered in her blood, drenched in it, soaked in it - stumbling out to grasp Mindy's sleeve.

To leave a hand print there, as she grips the fabric as tightly as she can manage.

"I don't-- I don't want to die," She sobs. "Not... not again..."

Fuck. Just...not again. Christ on shit, of all the things she had to deal with, she didn't want to go through this. She should be the rock, the leader, the kid that drives people in cars and makes them strong, not crumbling apart.

She would ignore Joel, because she knew the implication and thinking about that right now would make her want to kill him. Ellie was dying: she didn't need that now.

"We'll do what we can." No bullshitting. It was how she rolled. "But if there's even any chance, we get you attention quick. Because its bad, Ellie, shit. We gotta get you out of here. You said...Auname. Thanks. 'S'all I need."

Failure. That was all Joel could see. It was his job to protect her, to keep her safe and he'd failed. Again. He'd failed so many times, with so many people, and it never, ever got easier. He reached out to push the other person away, only just barely aware of who it was - completely uncaring. They were just an obstacle, as he dropped to his knees, his whole world shrunk down to the few feet of space occupied by Ellie's broken body.

I remember this, he thought to himself through the pain of it, as his hands went to the wound in her abdomen.

"You're not gonna die," he said, trying to convince her, convince them both. "I'm not gonna let you, okay? We're gonna get you help. I'm not losin' you."

Her fingers slip from Mindy's sleeve as Joel shoves the girl away and Ellie gasps with pain, the sudden pressure on the wound breaking through the numb shock and adrenal and lacing fire right through everything she had.

"B-bastard--" She gasps out, but it isn't about Joel - the pain had made Aunamee's face flash through her mind's eye again and she grit her teeth, the tears stinging before they slipped down her cheeks.

"Please--" She doesn't even know what she was begging for. Help? For everything to just, stop?

Edited 2014-02-10 03:17 (UTC)

Pushed away. Right. She just started the damn Arena with her in the car, laughing with her a few weeks ago. This fucker comes in and Ellie is at his side, and she's alone. Well, what did she expect? Friends didn't stay and they sure as fuck didn't meander in this shit stain of a game, because otherwise this happened.

But a part of her mind is gnawing, wanting to blame Joel because he should have been watching, but no one had told her to leave? She could have stayed. She was just too late, again. After all, she lost HER Joel that way, the one time she trusted someone and made a mistake that cost her that night.

She swallowed. Throat was dry, and these tears were fucking useless. Let Joel cry them out, let someone take care of her. Mindy was her friend. She owed her more than that.

"Joel will get you help," she said, evening out her voice. It was not flat even though she felt the futility of it, knowing what good it would do. "That fuck has to have high tailed it. I don't want him in one piece. I'll get him. I'll get him for you, Ellie."

Aunamee. That name rang a bell, for sure, but as long as Ellie was still breathing, as long as she was still looking at him and pleading with him, he couldn't leave her side. He had to save her. He had to save her, like he hadn't been able to save Sarah twenty years ago, another night, another girl in his arms, blood sticky all over his hands and his shirt.

"Don't you leave me," he ordered her, carefully sliding his arms under her - one under her neck, the other under her knees. "I'm gonna fix this."

"G... get him," Ellie said, her head lolling on her shoulder as Joel slipped his arms under him.

"S-sorry, Mindy. No... no death pact... I guess," She murmures, and it's obvious that she's fading, her hands gripping uselessly at Joel's as he lifts her.

"Right," she said. Business. Killing. What she was good at. Not this. Not dying, not seeing someone she cared about lose life because she fucked up AGAIN. Getting into stupid fights, killing someone she didn't know: and here was her punishment. Fuck this place, seriously. She could already feel the lump in her throat.

"No death pact," she said. "So do me a favor and fucking live, will you?"

She did her best to lie.

"She's not gonna die," Joel said, his voice a low growl of - something. Pain, maybe. Danger, violence, death. Not certainty, though. It wasn't certainty he spoke with. Not after so many years, so many losses.

But he stood, Ellie in his arms like she weighed nothing, like the pain in his hands was nonexistent. He wasn't going to let her die without a fight.

Her arm flopped down, dangling at her side as she no longer had the strength to hold it up.

She tried to nod, tried to offer Mindy a reassuring smile, her lips flickering as the tears pricked at her eyes, limp in Joel's arms.

Nothing else to say. No looking back. Ellie had seen the bad ass that was Mindy Mcready, who was she to let her down? She didn't cry. She didn't sob and scream why into the sky. Hate was IN her, she drank and ate and shat it out, and then it threw its best at her. This was revenge.

She could do that. She gave Ellie a gesture to stay tough, then was off, not wasting any time.

The blood was hers.

That was all Joel could think about as he lifted Ellie in his arms, ignoring the pain in his bandaged hands, ignoring the way it started seeping into the cloth, into his clothes, the smell of it in his nostrils.

It wasn't his blood. It was hers. Like his worst nightmare come to life, like that night so long ago, all the blood on his hands and no way to stop it, no way to make it better. His failure.

"Stay with me, kiddo," he heard himself saying to her, picking her up, moving - he didn't know where. Somewhere. Somewhere to find help. Somewhere to make sure he wouldn't fail again. "Stay with me, okay? We're gonna get help."

She nearly blacked out when he lifted her - she was bleeding so badly that even that short movement caused a massive headrush, the black spots crawling into her vision and nearly wiping it out before the light beat it back.

She sobbed, because there was nothing else she could do, sobbing Joel's name as she tried to tell him to put her back. To let her die. To give up on her, because she had absolutely nothing left. But the words wouldn't come, because somewhere, somewhere deep inside of her, she wanted to believe that he could save her, still. Wanted to believe that now that Joel was here, everything was going to be alright.

Nevermind if her fingers and her toes were growing so cold that she couldn't feel them anymore. It didn't matter. She was quickly becoming completely numb to feeling anything anyway.

Ellie was the one telling him there were people here that could be trusted. People that would help when someone needed help, instead of just attacking or leaving for dead. Whoever had done this to her had put the lie to that, but maybe it wasn't so hopeless. Maybe she was right about some of them.

"Just stay awake," he said, over and over again. He wasn't sure where he was going or who he was looking for, but she was so damn confident all the time.

"Help," he heard himself say. "Help." Like twenty years ago, though that help had ended in a hail of bullets. He almost didn't care. He'd rather die than fail again. "Help."

Hawkeye had called Joel a dog time and again. He'd thought of him as a bear a few times later after having finally set eyes on the man, after thinking back at how he had almost died. But stumbling through the exhibits, the bones, the dioramas and the litter that told of Tributes having passed through the path before him, Hawkeye swore he was the one looking like a clumsy animal, every step culminating with him trying to find his step, moving forward because he might be falling, might be just making lousy use of gravity. Finally, the doctor had some bruises. Finally, he had a cut.

Finally, he reached a voice he had thought was only muffled by the echoes of the long hall, of the wide room. He reached who he thought he should scold over being so obvious, but that was before he thought that maybe he should thank him for it.

He wants to scold Joel anyway, for carrying a dead body and for looking like he might think it would revive in his arms. He wants to scream and say nothing, because his girl's torn and the dog didn't shred her. But he's done this before, and so he doesn't. He looks at the body and not at the arms carrying it (because why call her a girl anymore, in that state) and thinks maybe he can fix it. He closes the distance as fast as he can, and he'd tackle the man if it wouldn't agitate the wounds. A glance- her torso- "Set her down, get her shirt off!" A military order and he'd wrangle her out of Joel's grasp if he doesn't move to it by the time he blinks next, but he can't feel for her. Ellie's a patient, and there were plenty of those. And whatever the outcome, they'll get through it.

Her fingers gripped into his shirt, holding as hard as she could manage, the tears pricking at her eyes as she heard Joel call for help. Joel.

"I'm so... I'm so sorry," She sobbed, useless, which only caused her to shudder violently. She barely registered Hawkeye yelling, except as another memory to be sorry for. "... Couldn't... I couldn't stop it, I'm s-- I'm sorry--"

Hawkeye. That incompetent asshole. But Joel didn't care. Ellie had said he was a doctor. Right now? He seemed like a miracle. He laid her out, as gently as he could, on the floor, his vision starting to blur with pain and - and something else, but that wasn't the point.

The point was, here was a doctor. A doctor to save her.

"Don't you say anything, baby girl," he said, tugging her shirt up to reveal the awful hole in her belly, all black blood and he couldn't even see what else.

"Help her," he said to the simpering dumbass. "You gotta help her."

'Couldn't stop'-- did the bastard send her to do some chore in his stead? Hawkeye feels like he could bristle, thinks later that the chill that ran over the top of his skin was just that. But the beard's hands were too slow, and it doesn't take a moment before Hawkeye is trying to shove him away, trying to roll up his sleeves so they stay up above his elbows, trying to wrap it around his head that Ellie is still breathing. Her stomach was a mess. Anybody could see that. Anybody could smell that, or else maybe he'd spent one summer too many sniffing nothing but blood and sweat and punctured colon.

Where was the chaplain to give Last Rites, and wouldn't Joel just- "Move," he snarls, and is sorry he does, but he swears he needs his space and whatever small strips of cloth he had left are around the largest hole, soaking blood, and there's no way to sterilize and he doesn't want to, but he lays a hand easily on Ellie's side, just near enough the center of her chest and hopes she can't feel it.

Casually, he says to her, "Standard procedure, El', tell me the best bad joke you know." Chirping, like that'll help. A bad joke that isn't them, that isn't him, but the Father Figure can't see the intestines bunched to the wrong side, can't see how the artery might just be

well, you know.

So he slides his hand in.

The conflicting messages were too much for her, unable to parse real meaning from anyone's words around the pain, but she latched on to the question - the demand - the weirdest request at the weirdest time and her mind can't make sense of it but she would do her best anyway.

"Did you... did you hear about the..." Her teeth are chattering but she doesn't exactly feel cold, isn't that strange? "... the guy who's left si--" She cuts off in a broken cry of pain as Hawkeye's hand dives into her gut.

There was nothing to do but let Hawkeye shove him away, the way he had Mindy. He moved to crouch near her head, reaching out with his awkwardly-bandaged hands to touch her face, to keep her looking at him.

Her joke was cut off on a cry of pain, and it was like someone was ripping his own heart right out of his chest, whatever was left of it after so many years and so many losses.

"Goddammit!" he yelled at the incompetent fool with his hands in Ellie's guts. "You're just gonna make it worse! Fuckin' do something!"

His hands pass the slime of blood, he has to ignore the smaller holes and torn ends in the fabric of the body to focus on what little his fingers could help. He holds pressure just under liver, he thinks he can slow the-- but this wasn't a matter of thinking, it was of knowing, and Ellie cried out and Hawkeye didn't wince. He shifted, looked better at the wound. All of her was a wound.

All of it.

He skips over her face entirely, she's just meat laid out and that's what years of training he shouldn't have scream about the venom he wants to spit. He skips over her face entirely, and would snarl again at Joel if he wasn't thinking, again and over again, and after thinking about how warm Ellie really was, about how the machine of her kept churning and recoiling and squirming like red and brownish, rotting worms under his touch. It isn't a miracle that his voice is the same tone as before, and though he refuses to look at the living dead he still addresses her: "Joel's going to help me." Because what was the fool thinking, grabbing hold of her like that? He may as well hold her certificate over her still-seeing eyes.

Hawkeye's hand doesn't slip, but the spray of blood can't be helped. It can't.

He motions to the other man with his head alone. He tilts his head a little too far to one side, exposing his neck in an invitation and a challenge. No anesthesia and his hand became two. Put her back in a recognizable state, at least. At least. And to his surprise, he shudders, but to his surprise... He thinks he can make this comfortable. What a thought. What a goal.

"Try again, Major," he urges. "Let's try a pun this time. I need your help here, you know. I've done this a thousand times over. If you don't say something, I'll fall asleep at the wheel."

Edited 2014-02-10 04:34 (UTC)

She shudders, her whole body convulsing as she spits up blood, her eyes hazing slightly before she fights her way back to consciousness.

She had to. For Joel. For them both. Had to stay as long as she could, though she knew better than anyone that it was hopeless.

It was hopeless, and it was absolutely terrifying.

"... It's... it's okay, Joel..." She murmured, gurgling through the blood. "New... new broom came out...." She choked, spluttered. "... Sweeping the... nation..."

The sound Joel made at her words was somewhere between a laugh and a broken sob of pain. His hands framed her face, ever so gently, needing to touch her, to keep her with him. His cheeks were wet, somehow. He didn't even realize.

He had to pull himself together, for her sake. Had to keep his sanity. Had to help pull her through this. She would live.

Please don't leave me, baby girl.

"I'm glad I learned sign language," he said, nearly choking on the words, pulling them from the dregs of his shattered memories. "It's come in handy."

That man had to pull himself together.

He grits his teeth at the sound of Ellie's voice caught in her body, shutting down. He feels devastated that only one name is meant to be reassured by her but that wasn't ever going to see the light of day. Buried under duty, Hawkeye feels himself wince and tells himself it's not at the drama that's removed from the operating room for just this reason (he needed ether, here, at the very least)- it's because something in Ellie lurched, and he couldn't see what. And he wondered if the dead boy's bite from earlier only had him wanting to see more blood and skin torn back, but he removes one hand from inside her and rummages for the knife he had picked out the day Joel first wanted him dead. It wasn't, but for the moment it felt like a nice enough excuse.

'Handy', the guy had said, and Hawkeye finally wanted to laugh. His hands would have to be steady and it's just be one small incision, so again, he can't. A nick at the wall of her worst wound that she might not even feel, if she's still feeling, through the pain Joel was selfishly giving her. Christ, he hated them. A nick and a cut down from the sharpest and thinnest blade Hawkeye could have found, and he can move inside her belly without his wrist bumping or pushing raw skin growing purple. His free hand maneuvers the handle of the knife. Ellie was slipping, and the most he could do was make it comfortable. There was a snare-- not that difficult to undo but for the love of God. For the love of God, can't that man let her be? Hawkeye's shoving the knife handle into whatever part of Joel his outstretched free hand, red at the fingers, reaches. Joel needed to get the hell away, or was he deaf to what Ellie just said?

Emotionally charged- none of them needed this. "Joel. Leave the jokes to Ellie, she tells them better. And in English. We can't all speak Squid in this room." So much bubbling going on, it was like a horrific aquarium where all the keepers drowned.

--Christ, she was dying. And everybody knew, but it seemed like news had struck him just now anyway. One final push on something pulsing and angry about knowing its end is near, and he's careful about not knocking against anything he shouldn't, drawing his hand back from the heat.

"T-thanks Doc," She mumbles after the compliment, her body twitching but she felt strangely apart from it. As if the pain and the death and the despair were happening to someone else, and she was just here to watch. Still, she didn't want "-- to die... don't... not again..."

She shuddered, a final time, before the darkness crawled in, before her raging heart stuttered and stilled.

Then she was gone.

He sees it happen. He's seen it happen so many times, over the years - that moment, when someone is just gone. When they go from being a person to meat.

And suddenly, he's no longer in a dark, cool museum. He's in a ditch off a highway near Austin, Texas, his knees in the dirt, the scrawny, pajama-clad body in his arms blonde instead of red-headed.

No. No. No no nononononono... Some part of his brain realizes that he's babbling, rocking back and forth with her head in his lap - or maybe his arms around her shoulders - he can't figure it out. It's like time has collapsed, and she's both Ellie and Sarah at the same time, and both of them are gone. He's failed both of them.

Not again, he thinks - or says. Please, not again, don't leave me again, baby girl, please. Is it Ellie, or Sarah, or both? He doesn't know, doesn't care, can't separate the two in his mind now even if he wanted to. What matters is she's gone. Gone again, another failure, another time it should've been him but wasn't.

Stained hands, a child gone, the sound of sobbing muffled by a barrage of thoughts- despite the sobbing this time being low, the tortured sounds being a man's instead of a nurse's or his own- this was too familiar to register and it was all the intestines' fault. Hadn't he seen them, Ellie's rattling last breath wouldn't have triggered a thought of a textbook-precise procedure, and might have left Hawkeye as shaken as Joel. Ellie's shirt is rumpled beside them, and his hands go to reach for it and he just says, "Sometimes we can bring them back with an open heart massage, but not in her state. She'd just wake up to-- I'm sorry." over the broken sound that Hawkeye supposes is what B.J. would sound like if he ever got news of Erin having gotten so sick-- and he's sorry he thought that and winced. He tugged at the shirt, thought of wiping his hands on it because the blood was chilling now that his hands had left the cavity, but that wouldn't do.

He's never the tourist, but there's the wall still there that'll crumple when he might trust himself to not scream in his own shrill manner. But for a moment he just sees the man cradle the body, and he's sorry for him, he is. But in his head the first thing they both ought to do is get her dressed again, get her looking like a person instead of an accident, and how the hell was it that she had gotten so hurt and only Joel's hands were bandaged? If he could have gotten through to the man, maybe her voice wouldn't have sounded so panicked, but he had insisted to weep for himself before the time came. And it's gingerly that Hawkeye touches one of Joel's shoulders, his red hand gripping the girl's shirt, so that he can take it from him and so that he can be free to go. Not everyone could break all at once, and still his voice gets caught in a whirlwind that stole his breath and energy. He nudges again. That body would grow stiff in a few hours.

That man would grow breathless long before that.

And oh God, no. Ellie was dead and it was dawning.

"Here."

A hand. A hand on his shoulder, and all Joel can think, all he can see, is a soldier with an assault rifle, saying yessir on his radio, and firing. Firing on a child. A hand on his shoulder and it's Tommy, trying to get him away from his little girl, trying to get him to leave her in some unmarked grave in Travis county, and Joel sees red.

He's up, bandaged, bloody hands grabbing the hapless doctor and slamming him up against a display case with a low howl of rage. "You're supposed to help us," he growled, the pain in his hands ignored in favor of winding up for a punch. "You killed her!"

He's had a North Korean point a rifle to his head. Somehow, he was more frightened now. It was an instant and he dropped the clothes to grab at the man's arms when he's suddenly moving, suddenly feeling his breath cut short, feeling his back hit something rough and cold as stone. His hands were wet and so they slipped, and he didn't want to scratch or claw and so his next resolve was to press back against the case, to try and somehow phase through.

It felt like he'd been awoken, and it was the jolt of surprise that not only made him yelp, but made his eyes water and his voice hoarse, too. Not the accusation. Not the grief in the growl. He'd heard all that before.

"She was dead," he choked out. He squirmed and to hell with dignity, he was squirming. There was a panic. Jesus Christ, he had killed her girl, of course he's going to die. "She was dead when you brought her here!" He tried again, and the image of the girl-- and his eyes go to the body. Jesus Christ, she was dead. His girl, too, didn't he know-- "I tried, I-" what was he going to say, that he made it easier for her to slip away? That he tried? No, no, where were the M.P.s to shove the brute off? His hands go to push again. "That stuff's harder than it looks." She was dead. She was always dead. He just didn't want to die because of it. He was sorry and he'd never sleep again, but he had tried. And maybe he shouldn't have even done that.

"No!" He's confused, and he's punching him again, seeing only a soldier, only a hunter. "Just her leg! It was just her leg, we weren't infected. She's immune..."

His eyes are watering - with pain, maybe, or grief, or both. A fist to Hawkeye's gut, and Joel loses momentum, stumbling away, another gasping sob low in his throat.

The bad thing about holding his hands out, trying to hold the fist back, was that when the fist crashed into his body, even the recoil was weak. It takes a few landed punches, a whole lot of blabbering for Joel to stop, please, wouldn't he listen, for his hands to clutch his stomach with a starved off cry. And a cry it was, tears falling because it wasn't the fear that was holding him hostage anymore, it was the pain. He wasn't built to take this sort of rage and it was the frustration that made his face redden and his tongue taste vile in his mouth. Hawkeye hated to whimper, but when Joel steps back, he's still leaning against the display case and now he's found the space to shuffle away if only his chest didn't hurt, if only he didn't want to double over and wail.

"It was Ellie!" He bit out, his face too hot. "It was her stomach. There was too much bleeding before you even picked her up." And he hates him, because he hadn't meant to let her die- because she was dead and on the floor and just there and why the hell couldn't he just cover her, for God's sake? There were cameras. There were m-- and his legs shook, and he wanted to vomit. And he wasn't used to forcing himself to straighten up and feeling like the movement was a wrong one. Beautiful game for a doctor to play. "Look, I- I'm sorry. You two were close." His little girl died-- his, not the- "I'm sorry, but she's gone." So cart her away. Bring in the next case.

Joel did, in fact, have almost the same idea. Hawkeye wasn't worth it - he went back to the broken body on the floor, more important even in death than anything else he could think of. The top part of the onesie was all soaked through with blood, but it was better than that gaping hole in her abdomen as he pressed it gently over the wound.

"Go to hell," he muttered to the man behind him, not afraid to show him his back. Hawkeye was nothing, no threat to speak of. Joel could snap him in two without a second thought. "You got no fuckin' idea."

Close, he said. Close wasn't a word big enough to describe it, to describe the dependence on each other, for survival, for support, for every basic thing. For humanity. Ellie was his humanity, whatever scraps and shreds were left of it. Maybe it had died with her.

Been there, he wants to say. Done that.

He should be devastated but the best he could come up with was anxious, not quite stepping back all the way he should, wanting nothing more than to get out of Joel's line of sight, but to run away would leave a thorn in his chest. So he hesitates, like a jackal. He acknowledges that there was venom spit in his direction but it rolled off. And he opened his mouth and closed it, and all he got out of that was a fresh gulp of air. Saying anything to a body was insane, but human. But if his jaw still hurt from a punch, and his words still tasted sour when they haven't even been let out, Hawkeye figured there wasn't more to do. And he did feel like a jackal, and there's a lion huddled over what should be his to hold.

Stay out of trouble, he wants to say. You son of bitch, you made it worse, he wants to say. He'd already said he was sorry, and he wanted to say it a thousand times more. He eases away, and back. And soon he's moving slowly, back turned to the spectacle and hunched, because his gut hurt, you know. And nearly every other breath was hitched, and he wanted to tear the red skin off his hands, but that was about it. Ellie was dead, Joel simply couldn't hurt her more, and Hawkeye wasn't going to make a show. And that was it.

throw me in the water

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For Joel and Mindy, Post Attack.

Re: For Joel and Mindy, Post Attack.

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trying again...

Re: trying again...

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Ellie and Hawkeye, the ~death scene~

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