applesaucedream | [closed] When all turns out to be unjust, then I'll turn back and help you out

Current Music: July 24th/25th

Entry tags:

[closed] When all turns out to be unjust, then I'll turn back and help you out

Seth is having a familiar dream. He's sitting in an underground interrogation room, cuffed hands resting on the cold metal table. Head bowed, eyes fixed on the table. Waiting. He's alone, but who knows who's on the other side of a one-way mirror next to him.

Elsewhere, as Daniel enters the dream, Seth casts him as someone being shown around the rebel base, perhaps as some sort of inspector, or someone who's just gotten their security clearance upped. The man showing him around is some sort of doctor, or a supervisor, probably both.

"Our next prisoner, J-19, has been working with us for three and a half months now. Doing good work, mostly compliant these days, though he can get a bit unruly sometimes," the man says, leading the way down one of the many underground corridors.

[Warning: ...I don't even know what all to warn for. Imprisonment, abuse, torture, temporary paralysis, NPC death, guns, a lot of emotions, sensory overload, suicide mentions... It's heavy.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Seth lets out a breath when Daniel mentions forgiveness, his shoulders slumping a little. Good. Okay.

He frowns a little at Daniel's next words, not entirely sure how it applies from the rebels' point of view. Which must mean Daniel's trying to inject meaning into that as well. Seth is practically sitting here memorising every word.

"Sounds good," he answers quietly.

"I'm working to change your accommodations," he says a shade too quickly in an effort to not make everything he says sound suspicious and multilayered. And that's not strictly speaking a lie - Daniel is working to change Seth's accommodations, just not to a nicer cell so much as someplace far away from the base and everyone in it.

"You'll only get a transfer if you continue to be agreeable." In other words, sit tight and don't draw negative attention, but that much is fairly obvious, so it all just sounds redundant at this point. Daniel's reluctant to leave as he has no idea when they'll be able to communicate again.

Seth nods silently. Keep his head down, he knows.

He doesn't want Daniel to leave, but he also can't really do or say any of the things he wants to, so he bites his lip. He's been doing this for months, he knows how to keep out of trouble when he wants to. And while the hope gives him strength, it also makes every minute feel like an eternity.

He closes off with a brusque nod, then turns and knocks for the guard to let him out before he can change his mind.

Stare at the door. Stare at the door. Stare at the door.

Stare at the door and don't turn around.

Stare at the door until it opens and walk out again, shaking hands buried in pockets to muffle the anxiety, and Daniel can't stop wetting his lips nervously as the door clangs shut behind him, terrified that someone will call attention to him, convinced that someone's suspected something.

But everything remains dismal and gray and silent, and no one accuses him.

Daniel hopes Seth can arrange a way to respond and that he can get back to him quicker than before and that the thousands of things that could go wrong don't, and he should not have redirected his worry to Murphy's Law because now it's in full effect, it's been invoked, he's certain of it.

Breathe. Everything's been going fine - as fine as things can go anyway, their circumstances considered. Seth will respond. The message is simple, a patchwork of underlined letters that spell out quite clearly:

"escape attempt

what went wrong?

I'll fix it"

Seth watches Daniel leave out of the corner of his eye. Then he swallows and takes a deep breath to steady himself, to pretend like nothing is wrong - or at least nothing related to Daniel.

He forces himself to open the first book calmly, gently flipping through as if merely checking it out. The message is surprisingly easy to find, which makes him worried - what if they had taken the book? It would've been no effort at all to notice the hidden message.

Seth picks up his pencil - thank god they let him have one. And he values it enough that he hasn't tried to use it as a weapon, though perhaps that's mostly because the few times he was stupid enough to attack someone, he wasn't really in his right mind.

He underlines letters at random, obscuring the original message, in case someone decides to check it. At least him scribbling in books isn't unusual behavior for him.

Then he has to wonder what to answer. He's not sure any of his escape attempts went remotely far enough that he could pinpoint just a few things that went wrong, things that could be fixed. But... he's got all the time in the world, and one of the books was pretty thick, a lot of room to plant code into. Might as well tell as much as he can.

And since he's got all this time, he's also able to come up with a better way to hide the message. Same basic principle, just underlined letters, except if you tried to read it regularly, it'd be nothing but gibberish. He writes down instructions for decryption at the front of the book, but anyone who tries will still need the password to know how exactly to decode it. Something no one but Daniel will know, and that he hopefully won't have forgotten.

And as the hint for the pass phrase, he writes; "How to summarise Gödel's ontological proof in Arabic."

It takes him a while to write down what he can about possible escape attempts, probable obstacles, secrets and paths that Daniel might not be aware of. He knows there's a way to get to the subway tracks one level up, that's what he'd been aiming for, but there's a lot standing between him and that.

And then when he can't think what else to write, and Daniel still hasn't come by, he starts treating the book almost as a diary. It becomes simple to write without even having to think much about which letters correspond to which as he slowly marks everything down. Having a one-sided conversation with Daniel.

How he took someone else's power, what it was, and who he had to give it to. How he wonders what the weather's like, what month it is, because it seems to be getting warmer, and is it spring already? How there's a hole in his sock and it's annoying him. How he had a dream where he knew he could fly, except instead he was weighted down with chains and sunk to the bottom of the lake. How much he wishes Daniel would come back soon.

It's only three days this time before he can return to Seth's cell, but it feels like it's been a month. And once he does he barely has enough time to swap out the encoded book for another, let alone have any kind of extended, stilted conversation. Daniel doesn't bother trying to be discreet about it, just treats the whole thing like an exchange between friends. That's what he's been telling them - that he's been making significant progress in establishing a more personable bond.

It's not entirely a lie, and they've believed him.

Daniel gets no sleep the night he shuffles through the book and starts picking apart the code. It takes longer than it should, but not as long as he thought it would; Seth picked a good pass phrase that might have elicited a smile were Daniel not so frenetic in deciphering whatever message he might have left.

He finds...a lot of unrelated information. It might have been three agonizing days for Daniel, but for Seth it well could have been weeks upon weeks, with no way to mark the passage of time. It's no wonder he filled the book with whatever he could. It must have been the only way he could occupy himself.

The stuff in there that is applicable to their current situation, however, gets put to good use. Daniel already has a half-formed map with the best routes to the surface on paper (still working on transposing that into his head, a slightly more difficult task), and has done his best to commit guard shifts and the more active hours to memory, but Seth's additional details flesh it all out considerably. He's not sure when he'll be ready to do anything about it, but the slow-burning progress he's been making doesn't feel like enough. It's killing him to have to bide his time like this.

No, scratch that.

It's killing Seth. Slowly and horribly.

Less than two days later, it turns out that none of it matters anyhow.

Less than two days later, Daniel hurtles down hallway after hallway, subterfuge out the window, cover about to be well and truly fucked, because he heard the noises from a distance and he recognizes the timbre of that scream and there's nothing that will convince him that his silence and cooperation is worth this, because nothing is.

Seth hates waiting. He hates not knowing what he's waiting for or when it's going to happen. He hates not being able to talk to Daniel. He resists writing more messages. He reads the books instead. They're dull, but they're better than nothing.

It's almost a relief when they actually ask him to do something. Just almost. He's taken to the interrogation room as usual, sits there quietly awaiting whatever poor soul Seth's going to rob this time.

It's a young man, but he looks more like a zombie. Not rotting flesh or anything like that, but the dead, unfocused eyes. When they lead him in, he's completely compliant, but he also looks like the only reason he's even putting one foot in front of the other is pure muscle memory. He doesn't look like he's able to object, or even has the will or reasoning to do so. The guards have to put his hand forward for him.

Seth doesn't like this at all. He doesn't know what sort of power this person has, they never tell him. And while he knows that powers aren't any use to him, that they can't affect him, he doesn't want anything from this person inside him. The idea fills him with dread.

Yet it only presents as hesitation, because Seth is being good, he's cooperating, he's keeping his head down.

From the moment the transfer begins, panic floods through him, paralysing him with pure, primal fear, his grip only tightening as a result. He can feel the power coming into him, like poison being pumped into his veins, acid eating him up from the inside, tearing away at everything that makes him who he is.

The instant the light goes out, he jerks back, getting violently to his feet, the chair thrown back with a clatter, and he topples backwards, crashing down onto the floor, only he's forgotten where he is or what he's done, all he knows is pain. Horrible, gut-wrenching, suffocating terror and pain, and he's drowning, and he's going to die, and he's not even aware he's screaming, writhing and twitching in agony.

The door isn't all the way closed and Daniel barges in without difficulty, taking in the civilian huddled to one side, the twin armed guards with their weapons trained on - on -

He can't see what's happened to Seth, the table legs obscure the view, but he can hear the spasmodic jerk of limbs hitting walls and the screams rebounding from the corners, and whatever it is it's bad, Daniel's never heard Seth scream before and he never wants to again, this is really really disproportionately terrible.

So fuck the plan and fuck the playing along and fuck all of it. He clings to the adrenaline-saturated breath of decompartmentalization that floods before the panic sinks in, and takes full advantage of the guards' drawn focus. Namely by slamming his elbow into the first one's neck, knocking the guy against the wall and seizing his weapon in one sharp motion, then twisting the gun from his slack fingers and employing the momentum of his initial strike to slam the guard's head into the table. He makes short work of the second one, who has time to turn and gape and point his weapon before Daniel discharges two quick rounds into his chest.

The civilian scrambles away from the bodies and has soon skittered out the open door into the hallway, to freedom or more captivity depending on who he runs into, but Daniel doesn't care about that, he dodges around the table and crouches in front of Seth. He won't stop screaming and thrashing and Daniel struggles to hold him still but doesn't know if he's at all cognizant of his surroundings and shoots worried looks at the open door, because if his cover wasn't blown before it most certainly is by now and it's only a matter of time before -

- he can't think about that.

"Seth," he says desperately, trying to make himself heard over Seth's own screams, what the hell was done to him? "Seth! Seth, can you hear me?"

Distantly Daniel's brain is still whirring, flinging all the scraps of context together - the civilian in captivity, the guards, a routine power transferal - and it becomes horribly, starkly clear.

"Seth!" he bellows, grabbing at his friend's shoulders in an effort to stabilize him. "Seth, put it in me! Put the power in me!"

Edited 2014-10-20 08:42 (UTC)

Seth is distantly aware of what's going around him, like he's watching it all from above, but none of it really registers or makes a difference, until Daniel is next to him.

The pain is ebbing away, but it only seems to leave void in its place, and Seth's screaming suddenly dies away into a pained whimper.

He can still feel the power pulsing through him, and he feels like he's withering away, and he tries to grab at Daniel's shirt, but even now that he's stopped flailing, his hands won't seem to work properly.

And he slowly realises what Daniel is saying, and they eventually what he means by it, and no way in hell Seth is doing that to him, no matter how scared he is.

And then he doesn't think he has much of a choice anyway, because his limbs slowly stop working, he's just slumped on the floor now, and all will and conscious movement seems to have been sapped out of him, and he can feel himself breathing, he can feel his heart pumping, he can see Daniel, but he can't do anything.

He's just trapped, lost inside himself.

"Seth? Seth!"

He shakes him lightly by the shoulders but it makes no difference. The screaming fades into horrible, empty silence, and that somehow terrifies Daniel even more. His hands flutter frantically as he tries to think, work out a plan of action, anything, but Seth is deathly still and not responding to anything, and Daniel is scared.

Some distant part of himself manages to pour some rational thought in the midst of his own panic. He needs to figure out what's wrong. He needs to evaluate what's happened. And then he needs to get them both out of here.

Daniel breathes. Forces down the next wave of terror.

Pulse. Check for the pulse. Seth has a pulse. It's thready and it's erratic, but it's there. Present.

And breathing. Check his breathing.

Seth is breathing and his eyes are still open. So. So he's alive but unresponsive. The power he took from the civilian must have done this, though what purpose a power like that could serve Daniel can't imagine. Or care. He's ascertained that Seth is alive, if incapacitated, and that means he has to move on to step two of his improvised plan. Step two, which is. Is.

Right. To get them out.

Daniel checks his pulse one more time, then drops his hand onto Seth's shoulder and squeezes briefly before getting to his feet and checking the guards he took out before. They're both dead; Daniel cracked the first one's temple on the metal table and two gunshot wounds to the chest cavity took care of the other. He relieves the second of his weapon and a few spare clips and a keycard, all of which he pockets, and immediately returns to Seth's side, ignoring the steadily widening pools of red sprayed on the ground.

"C'mon," he grunts, pulling one of Seth's limp arms over his shoulder and, straining, pulling him upright, "we're getting outta here."

Moving is not fast and it's not easy, especially since Seth is a dead weight hung around one side, but Daniel can't think of a better way to carry him without sacrificing the use of the free hand that's carrying the gun. So they make slow and painful process and Daniel is feverishly trying to remember the quickest way to the door to the subway station to the outside to relative safety, all the while praying that no one comes their way.

Despite feeling a little like he's been hollowed out, Seth is suddenly a lot more aware of what's going on around him. Like the lack of mobility has just sharpened all his senses.

He wants to urge Daniel to hurry, to stop fretting over Seth, who might be trapped and terrified, but the other guy seemed in fine health, didn't he? Not mentally perhaps, but he was alive. He was walking. Seth wishes he could figure out how to walk.

As Daniel lifts him up, he can better see what's happened to the guards, and it makes him feel sick. It's not the first time he's seen dead bodies, and he's seen them in lots worse state than this, and he doesn't give much of a fuck about who they are, but the thought of Daniel having to do that to someone eats at him. Seth never wanted anyone hurt on account of him, and he certainly didn't want Daniel to do the hurting.

Seth tries to walk, and he thinks he might be able to move his legs a little, but it's too little to pull his feet under him, and he tries to grip on to Daniel's shoulder, but he's not managing that either.

And then they come to a stop outside a door, and somehow, miraculously, Seth manages to pull his legs up so his feet are planted on the ground, and he's so relieved when they're actually supporting him. And then after that, his body seems to do what the other man's did, just muscle memory, putting on foot in front of the other, not fast, and barely lifting his feet at all, no real ability to steer anywhere, but it takes some of the weight off Daniel.

By the time they reach one of the doors, Seth has begun to exhibit some movement. Daniel adjusts his grip on the other man's shoulders and glances at him, surprised, but there's no time to stop and question it. He just swipes his keycard and waits impatiently for the door to unlock and swing open and hopes that it means Seth's condition, whatever it is, is improving. They move forward again and he's comforted that it's not just his imagination - Seth is helping as best as he can, no longer a dead weight.

"Come on, come on, come on," Daniel mutters under his breath, taking a left, then a right - or should it have been a right, then a left? No, there isn't any time to backtrack now. He can already hear the not-terribly-distant shouts of someone having found the dead bodies in the interrogation room, or maybe even from catching the de-powered civilian - whichever it is, it doesn't matter. Daniel tries to pick up the pace, however fractionally.

They reach the stretch of corridors that should lead to the subway station, but the crescendo of running footsteps behind them announces that they might not make it. Daniel rounds a corner and gently pulls Seth's arm off to let him lean back against the wall, then ducks back out to check if they're being pursued.

They are. Three more guards pelt into view, and in a panic Daniel brings up the gun and fires at random. The shot misses but communicates a clear warning and they immediately dive back around their corner to take cover. One of them ducks back out to fire at him.

Daniel drops him with one to the head, but the other two don't seem to care and step out to lay down fire on him in return. He fires once, twice -

Click.

Fuck.

It's Daniel's turn to take cover as the guards advance, and he scrambles to locate the extra clips. He finds the second gun first, flips the safety off, dodges back out to fire twice and hit one of them square in the thigh, flooring them, but has to leap back behind the corner again.

Shit. Shit.

"Sorry, Seth," he says tightly, wishing Seth could at least run while Daniel holds the last guard back, but instead he's gone and fucked it up and Seth will be stuck here again, worse than before, without the hope of escape or comfort from a familiar face. The thought is worse than the immediate threat of dying. Daniel swallows to alleviate some of the pressure on his chest and prepares to break cover one last time.

Edited 2014-10-21 03:29 (UTC)

Seth pulse picks up as he can hear the footsteps and Daniel deposits him against the wall, and guns go off, and Daniel is risking his life and there's nothing Seth can do, he feels so utterly useless.

He can hear the sounds, he somehow knows how many there are, he can almost feel it when the first one goes down, and then the second one.

And then he notices another one, coming around the corner they're heading towards and oh god.

Fuck.

Seth wants to warn Daniel, grab him, call out, something, but he can only watch.

The guard notices Seth seeing him, and they dodge behind the corner, and they seem to be ready to shoot, well, if not Seth than at least Daniel, who still hasn't noticed.

But they don't, they only seem perplexed that Seth has done nothing to stop this, and as Daniel breaks cover to shoot at the pursuing guard and puts them down too, the guard that Seth can see dodges forward and grabs him, using him as a shield, training their gun on Daniel.

"Drop your weapon," they say, and Seth is panicking, because he knows Daniel won't risk hurting Seth. If he could just.. give Daniel a chance somehow. So he does the only thing he can do, and he lets himself drop.

Daniel brings the last guard down but the clip is empty by the time he's disposed of them. He turns back around, breathing a small sigh of relief, and instantly halts.

Damnit. Damnit.

The guard holds Seth in front of him, an impromptu meatshield, and demands that Daniel drop his weapon, empty and useless as it is. Daniel slowly sinks to the ground to slide it over, stomach knotting. It's over. They're finished.

But Seth abruptly drops, dragging the guard who must not have expected the sudden increase in weight, and they let out a strangled yelp.

Daniel bursts from his half-crouch, swerving to avoid Seth, bull-rushes the guard in what is probably a terrible course of action but is the first plan his panicked, adrenaline-fueled brain could come up with, and cracks the butt of the gun against the side of their head just as their own weapon goes off.

The bullet rips through Daniel's shoulder. Pain, exquisite, blossoms from that point in space as the guard slumps over sideways, still conscious but thoroughly out of commission for the time being.

"Seth -" Daniel pants, gyrating halfway to make sure his friend is all right, but his shoulder is starting to leak, a darkened patch of warm red starting to soak through his jacket. The gun clatters to the ground so his hand can clap over the injury - he can't tell if it's superficial but the shoulder is full of important veins and things but it's possible, it doesn't hurt as much as it could, at least not yet - and Daniel drops to his knees in front of Seth.

"Seth, you okay?" he asks, a little ragged around the edges but still able to articulate reasonably well.

No.

No, no, no, Seth thinks it might've just worked, Daniel rushed forward but then there was a sharp sound that hurts his ears and rips through him. Metaphorically only, but he realises pretty quickly that it did rip through Daniel, and no.

And the stupid guy is just worried about Seth, who can't even manage to answer, can't focus his eyes on Daniel, almost can't do anything, and he is so useless and helpless like this.

And then he realises the guard has dropped right next to him, and they're not dead, they're still conscious, so if Seth can just... reach.. over...

It's barely a few inches but it feels like a mile, but Seth manages to close his hand against the guard's wrist, and he gasps as the power floods out, and he seems to feel up with everything he lost.

Including all the terror and the adrenaline and worry, which seems to hit him viscerally now, but somehow it launches him into action. He can move again, he can help, he can do something.

He pushes himself up, glancing at Daniel's injury - oh god, look at the blood, but he's conscious, he's still upright, it's okay, they can still get out. The guard isn't screaming, perhaps to out of it to do so, but they've gone all rigid, thrashing and twitching, making choking noises, but Seth doesn't spare them a second thought.

"C'mon," he says, grabbing the guard's dropped gun - not that Seth can really be trusted to hit a target with it - and goes to help Daniel up.

To his supreme relief, Seth seems fine, or as fine as he can be in the condition he's in, and he's actually able to shift enough to change that and transfer the power to the poor bastard Daniel just brained. The power hits them and it looks like they're seizing, but Seth just gets to his feet without so much as a glance their way. At least he's recovered from whatever the hell that power was remarkably quickly, looking about ready to be out of here.

Daniel can't agree with that sentiment more. He rises as well, grunting in discomfort but with one hand still pressed firmly over the injury to stem the bloodflow, so he's not lightheaded yet. He checks his back for any signs that the bullet went straight through. There's no blood so he concludes that it's lodged itself in there somewhere, which has its pros and cons. The current pro being that at least he's not bleeding out two ways instead of one.

"Hey," he breathes to Seth, grinning faintly, relieved. There isn't time for a proper reunion, not yet - they'll have to get out first - but all the same. They're about to be free. They're about to be out, finally.

And, hey, they can both still walk. Daniel quickly starts doing so before he can decide if the pain in his shoulder has gotten worse, which it probably hasn't, he's just becoming more aware of it now that the danger's passed.

Seth is currently running on nothing but adrenaline and desperation to get out, he has no time to not feel fine nor terrible, no time to examine how he feels at all, he just needs to make sure they both get out.

They're quicker now, despite Daniel's injury, and Seth keeps his eyes and ears open, keeping the gun ready, following Daniel's directions, opening doors for them so Daniel can focus on keep his wound as closed as possible.

At last they reach the subway tracks, coming out a door in the near darkness, and Seth makes sure they keep to the wall, so they won't by hit by any trains or accidentally get electrocuted on the third rail.

"Where are we going?" he asks urgently, making sure Daniel is alright, and he puts away the gun for now.

He didn't see any cameras after a certain point, and there were probably several exits they could've headed for that the rebels will need to check. This buys them a little time, but only a little. They need to put some good distance between themselves and a base, and they need to see to Daniel's shoulder. Not a hospital, that's too risky once the rebels realise one of them has been injured. The rifties clinic? Still too risky, but maybe Seth can get one of the doctors to come to them. It's that or figure out how to perform surgery, and he doesn't think that's a great idea.

Yep, things are starting to get a bit on the fuzzy side by the time they get to the subway tracks, but Daniel's more concerned for Seth at the moment - he's been in rough condition for a lot longer than Daniel has. Daniel's been shot before. He'll live. And if not, it's not like that'll be much of a deviation from the pattern.

The air here already feels better, probably a psychosomatic reaction, but it just feels good to breathe someplace that isn't in captivity, even if sucking in a deep lungful of non-base air makes Daniel feel a tad dizzy.

"Don't know," he answers, the words a little more slurred than usual but the consonants still clear. Then Daniel chuckles, vaguely, morbidly amused. "Didn't think that far ahead."

The pain in his shoulder hasn't gotten better but it hasn't gotten worse either, so Daniel's just assuming the bullet didn't hit anything important. Not a safe assumption by any means, but they have a priority. The plan is still to get Seth to safety, first and foremost.

"We get to someplace safe," he mutters, frowning ferociously. "Somewhere we can stay. We can deal with this," he indicates his shoulder with a tip of his head, "later, after we find one. Maybe a hotel. We lie low."

Seth nods a little frantically, and it hasn't actually hit him yet that he's outside, he's out of the base. After so long, he finds it impossible to wrap his head around, especially when he's so focused on Daniel and getting them both to safety.

Seth wants to take his hoodie off to wrap it around Daniel's wound, but it's already cold and neither of them are really dressed for... What is it, March? Not quite snow weather, probably, but still definitely cold.

"We.. We can take the train up north, find something there. Um. Do you have money?" he asks, trying to think. He's spent so much time thinking of what he would need if he escaped, but it's hard to conjure up all the thoughts and go through it rationally.

"Yup." Wince. Daniel grimaces at his shoulder and eases off the pressure a little to check the blood flow. It's less than it was before, but between the state of his jacket and the hand that might as well be gloved in crimson, he doesn't think he could pass as your everyday passenger. "Not sure how we're gonna sneak this past, though."

But he does have money, thankfully. Hopefully enough hard cash to get them elsewhere.

"Right pocket," he says, nodding at it, and looks back up at Seth with an apologetic partial smile. "Could you? Don't, ah, don't really have hands at the moment."

"You'd be surprised how few shits the average New Yorkian gives," Seth answers in reply to Daniel's bloodied shoulder.

He nods and reaches into Daniel's pocket, realising his hands are trembling a little. He checks the wallet, and yeah, there should be enough for at least one night's hotel, but Seth is definitely going to withdraw much more as soon as he can. Just in case the rebels are capable of blocking Daniel's cards.

"Alright," he answers, pocketing the wallet, nodding nervously. He takes off his hoodie after all, draping it over Daniel's shoulder, hiding the worst of it. "If anyone asks, um, I'll just say you've cut yourself and we're heading to the hospital, and that it's not as bad as it looks. Just keep it covered. Ready to keep going?"

Daniel nods again and lets Seth take the lead with this one, as navigating out of the rebel base used up all of his directional abilities at the moment.

"You gonna be all right?" he murmurs. "Not exactly room temperature out here. And you were in there, um," his shoulders jerk a little, and he stares at the ground a little too intently, "a long time."

"Yeah," he answers, leading the way towards the station. "It'll be better near the station, and the subway cars are heated..." He won't deny that it's uncomfortably cold, but it's not like he'll have time to freeze to death or get frostbite or something.

It does get better near the station, all the people in there warming it up decently enough. Still cold, but not freezing. He helps Daniel up the steps, but he doesn't head out onto the platform, keeping out of sight, in the dark until a train comes. It makes him nervous to have to wait, but at least he can check on Daniel.

"How's your shoulder? Do you know how bad it is?" he asks quietly, resisting the urge to push back the hoodie to check on him. Not like he can actually see anything.

"Didn't go all the way through," Daniel assures him, voice equally low. "The joint isn't damaged and the bleeding's slowing down already." He exhales a little. He's been - for once - really, exceptionally lucky. He's been shot at enough to know that a bullet in the shoulder has the potential to be fatal if it smashes the ball-and-socket joint or any of the major blood vessels. But if this were the case, he'd be aware of it by now.

"What about you?" he asks again, fresh concern leaking into the words despite himself. "I don't know everything they did...in there and that power, whatever it was, it -"

Daniel breaks himself off. The moment he'd first seen Seth is replaying itself in his head, over and over, and out here it's at least dark enough that his rough treatment isn't starkly visible like it was under the glare of a fluorescent bulb. He just needs reassurance that they made it, miraculously, and that they'll be fine. Which they will.

Seth is finally out of that place, and that's the most important thing right now.

Seth smiles weakly, starts to reach out, hesitates for a moment, then gives Daniel's undamaged shoulder a reassuring squeeze. It feels good to be able to touch him. To touch anyone.

He ducks his head when Daniel asks the same of him, even if they can't properly see each other well.

"It was pretty horrible, yeah..." he admits, even more quiet. "But it didn't actually hurt me. I'll be fine," he reassures. He desperately doesn't want to focus on any of that right now. The worst of what's happened to him is in his head, and he doesn't want to dig through that. And exhaustion is starting to creep through him, far too easily, but then he's vaguely aware in not in great physical condition. But he just needs to stave it off long enough to get somewhere safe.

Then he hears the train coming, and he puts his hand on Daniel's back, leading them onto the platform before the driver can see them standing there. One person sees them coming out from there, but doesn't seem to care.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject