The Hijinks War

49. Time-Lapse

What is a life? So frivolously made by two young lovers, sometimes only children themselves with no scope to understand what their fun created. So carelessly existed, with laziness, wasted moments, time slipping through fingers, too stupid to hold on. So easily lost.

To disease.

To age.

To the failings of its own host.

To paid mercenaries wielding weapons.

To the inhospitable surroundings it called home.

To... a teenage girl with a stolen gun. 

-.-

Autopilot. That's what it was. Autopilot set me in motion, covering the bodies with blood slicked leaves, hiding them in a shallow grave. The muffled sound of feet began hitting the underbrush around me. Branches and dirt and anything else that could be, was added to the pile I'd made. I examined the people helping me, noting that aside from the sadness and shock on their faces, they were all physically unscathed. I wish I could say I felt relief.

I didn't. 

It was hard to. Eric was broken. Mark had gone down. I wondered how many others had.

When several other squads came thundering through the woods at us, I stood in the fray, lost and frozen. They all stopped short as they reached us, staring in unsure horror at the blood soaked mound in our midst, at me, with a gun still slung over my shoulder.

I felt a body slam into me, arms crushing me, separating the weapon from me, hands running along my arms. I felt fingers wiping tears from my face, arms pressing my head into the solidness of a chest, the pressure of a head butting against mine. I felt it and I let go, crashing my arms around the lifeline, as my legs gave out.

-.-

Word that the Wardens were gone had reached the Nest before we did. Our arrival didn't feel in the least bit worth the celebration of cheers and joyful songs we trudged and stumbled into camp to. The party ground to halt as they took in our appearances, and just as quickly people rushed to work.

Eric was spirited away to have his wounds dealt with. I let myself be dragged off by Ashley, and Katia who came with her. I winced as my shirt was pulled over my head; my arm dropped back down uselessly, a fuzzy pain emanating from my shoulder. 

But my pain wasn't important—I caught a glimpse of Mark being transported on a stretcher made of jackets. Desperate to see how he was, I escaped Ashley and Katia, and fought my way past the Medics blocking my path to Mark.

"Cole." Kellen's voice scolded me softly, and he caught me as I barreled past him. He looked at me, his breath catching as he took in the bruise that bloomed on my right shoulder and down onto my chest.

Jackson pulled me into a hug, after eyeing my bra-clad torso in surprise. "Damn! Nic, you'll freeze!"

I let Kellen pull his sweater over me gently, and felt someone securing my aching arm in place with a sling. I felt Jackson's hand around mine long after everyone else had left, leaving me to stare helplessly at Mark.

He wasn't dead. But it was apparent that Jess and Emma needed to get to civilization soon, or he would be. He'd been cleaned up, his abdomen had been tightly wrapped, and he'd been draped with several blankets, but he was unnaturally pale. The fact that he was alive at all, was thanks to the quick thinking of a sophomore, Cori, who had jumped down from her tree, pulled him out of the mess, and used her body weight to keep pressure on his bleeding wound. I cried on her for much too long when she'd come to check on him.

"Nic. You've got to get dressed. You're going to get sick." Jackson tried, but soon gave up on getting me to leave Mark and instead brought clothes to bundle me in.

"Cole. Come eat something. He'll be fine for twenty minutes." But Kellen gave up on getting me to leave for food as well, sending Hadley in with some water and a granola bar. I don't remember eating it but I had an empty wrapper clutched in my fingers.

"Nic, Sweetie, let me clean you up." Even Ashley gave up on trying to rid me of the dirt and blood that was caked to my hands and surely the rest of me. She caressed my face and then Mark's before leaving us.

"Nicole. It's Katia. I thought you'd wanna know Brian, Thomas and Eric are doing better."

Who?

"Don't you want to come see them?"

What was wrong with them? Whatever it was, it couldn't be worse than the friend I'd practically adopted as my baby brother, dying on a pallet of sleeping bags.

They tried for hours to get me to leave his side; till the temperature dipped with the setting of the sun. It felt like standing in a time-lapse video, the changing light casting dancing shadows over us, people scurrying in and out, fussing over Mark and me.

There were conversations I imagined, and those that actually happened. Hugs and touches that I imagined, like Eddie's and Jess's. Hugs and touches that actually happened, like Jackson's and Kellen's and even Katia's. I refused imagined and real food, turning my head away as my stomach lurched. I fell asleep standing there twice, swaying dizzily on my feet.

"Cole?"

My eyes closed on their own; what now? But Kellen said nothing else, only pulled me down to sit with him on a stump he'd brought with him.

"You okay, Babe?" He curled a blanket around us. I shook my head, tears jostling out of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks.

"I'm here, Babe." The side of his hand scrubbed the tears off my face. "I'll wait with you."

The fact that he understood I wasn't going to leave Mark was enough, the fact that he was going to stay in the dark with me, to try and keep the hideous nightmares away, was everything. He rested his chin on my head, angling my body so I could lean into him without hurting my arm.

"Night, Hero."