ezra galloway (fractures) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-11-26 21:44:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | # 2018 [11] november, emilie galloway, ezra galloway |
Who: Ezra and Emilie
Where: his temporary shelter
What: mood swings and violence
When: 11/7
She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually slept. Sleep was an elusive creature when one was constantly being watched by a monster in the corner, and she’d known that as soon as she fell asleep, it would envelope her in its terrible, bony arms and she would get torn to pieces. So she didn’t sleep. Not for days now. Yet, nearly as soon as Ezra curled up behind her, their hands tangled together, Emilie drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. Had it not been for the not-so-steady rise and fall of her chest, one would have thought she was a corpse.
It was eight, maybe nine hours later when Emilie awoke with a choked sound that was as much of a cry as it was a wretched half-cough, half-gag. She drug in a violent breath as she did her best to orient herself. This wasn’t the train car. This wasn’t her kingdom of tunnels and welcome addiction.
And everything hurt.
Emilie wiped away the sweat-slick strands of hair from her forehead and instinctively reached for the crack in the train car that hid her wash. Except, once again, she remembered that this wasn’t the car, and the last bit of wash she possessed had been crushed under Ezra’s heel. When she realized that, for the first time in a long time, she didn’t have a stash to fall back on, her panic was so thick that it very nearly strangled the life out of her.
She felt sick. Her stomach was cramping, her muscles stiff, and when she reached out for her brother, it was only an empty space that she came in contact with. “Hurts,” she whined to the empty space, and she crawled to the door so that she could open it and get out. She needed to get to The Cats. She needed more wash, no matter how big her tab already was.
When she tried to move the handle, it didn’t give. She tried again, harder this time, but nothing happened. “No,” she murmured, momentarily too shocked to put the pieces together. “Nononono.” Ezra had this all planned out, and suddenly she felt more like an animal in a cage than she ever had before.
“Ezra?” she called softly, still on her knees before the door. This was the pattern, wasn’t it? She’d always try to be sweet at first, then if she didn’t get what she wanted? Well, things went to shit. “Ezra, are you out there?”
--
He'd rested fitfully after trying to get into contact with people, and now it was a waiting game. He listened as she stirred, and he stood up, walking closer to the closet door. He glanced back to be sure that the heavy bed had been moved against the only exit out of the room entirely, the one to the master bathroom open.
“I'm here,” he told her. And he could hear it too. The first pinch of sugar to sweeten it all, but he knew what was coming. He was braced for it. “You can have water, you can have something to eat, you can use the bathroom,” he said, through the door. “Do you understand?”
She'd say yes, he figured. But then again, he knew she was farther gone than she'd ever been, so maybe she wouldn't even have that much rationality.
--
Emilie pressed her cheek to the door. She already felt feverish, soaked to the bone in sweat and yet she couldn’t decide if she was cold or hot. “Not what I need,” she murmured, running her hand against the wood of the closet door. “Don’t need water. Don’t need food. Don’t need a bathroom.”
She needed wash, and if she didn’t get some and soon, her world was going to be a blur of pain, anguish, violence, and vomit. The last time she went through withdrawals, it very nearly killed her. Maybe this would be the one that did her in.
“You know what I need.” Her voice was so soft, so gentle. “Let me get some. Already hurts.”
--
“The pain is you not giving yourself what you actually need. You do need food and water, at the very least, Em. You're malnourished and dehydrated.” He knew that wasn't everything, but he did have to imagine that there was a good dose of that in there too. The rest was just the nerve endings in her system finally telling her how fucking damaged they were.
He leaned his forehead against his side of the door, and brushed his fingers down the surface. “I'm not letting you go until you've detoxed,” he told her, voice quiet. “If you leave, I'll never see you again.”
--
Emilie was quiet for a long, long time. An entire minute, maybe even two, passed before there was any sign of life on the other side of the door. She pressed her forehead against the cool door, her fingers splayed out on the wood.
“I need it,” she said, softly at first. Then, as quick and vicious as a viper strike, she slammed her palm against the door. “I need it,” Emilie said again, more forcefully this time. Another strike, and then another, and before long her soft voice was not so soft; it was a raw cry.
“I need it, Ezra!”
--
He turned to lean his back against the door. He scrubbed his hands over his face, and tried to cut emotion out of this. Emotion wasn't necessary. Resolve was. “You need food, water, and I need to take care of those fingers,” he said. He didn't know what to do yet with things, but thought he was going to have to take them off himself. Snip. Snip.
“Here's how this is going to go, Emilie,” he said. “You've got a nest in there, and that's where you're going to sleep. It's where you're going to recover. You're going to detox. You're going to start eating again, and drinking water, and I'm going to take care of those fingers. You're going to heal up. And after you're through the worst of it. After that, we'll discuss our next steps. But right now, there's just this.”
--
There was a resolve in Ezra’s voice that Emilie wasn’t sure she’d ever heard quite so intensely. All the other times she tried to detox, something always kept her from actually following through with it, but this time … well, this time it didn’t sound like Ezra was going to give her a choice, and the thought of being without Prax for a single moment was enough to make her tremble violently.
“Can’t make me eat or drink,” she half-hissed, half-laughed. It was the sound of a mad woman, a woman whose nerves were all on fire and whose synapses were misfiring left and right. “Let me out, Ezra. Just let me out. I’ll tell you a story.”
Even if he didn’t know better, the edge to her voice would’ve been a red flag. She slipped into predator mode so easily, a cornered animal trying to lure its captor into its jaws. “Let me out.”
All of a sudden, there was a heavy thud on the other side of the door. Instead of just using her hand, she slammed her entire weight against the door with her shoulder. Admittedly, it wasn’t much weight, but it was enough to make the walls around the door shake. “Let me out, god damn it! Can’t do this. You can’t.”
--
Ezra kept leaning his full weight against his side of the door, and wished he was surprised, but he wasn't. He shut his eyes, and braced the door, feeling like hell, but knowing that he needed to shut it down. This was happening, end of story, and he wasn't going to waver.
“If you don't eat and drink, then you'll just feel worse and get weaker,” Ezra told her. “If you want to threaten that like a child, go ahead. Survival instinct will kick in eventually.” She didn't even have the will to keep herself together for ten minutes, let alone go on a hunger strike, or let herself die of thirst.
“Tell me a story through the door.”
--
“I’ll die,” she threatened, teeth bared even though he couldn’t see her. “You’re going to kill me.” Even if she did die, even if the detoxing killed her, it wouldn’t be Ezra’s fault, and yet she was pulling out every single stop to try and make him let her go.
“Why are you doing this? You’re killing me, Ez. Don’t you see?” Emilie slammed against the door again, harder this time, but each blow was draining her of precious energy, and after the last one she fell back to her knees and rested her face against the door once more.
“You left me, and now you’re killing me.”
--
Instead of twisting the knife in him, it sparked up bright anger. “No, Emilie, I'm not killing you, you're fucking killing you so shut the fuck up,” he snapped. “And if you die here at least you die with me, and not down in those tunnels with a needle in your arm,” he said.
He gave it a second before he continued. “I'm done, Em. I'm done with everything. This is my chance to save you, and I'm taking it. So save your manipulative bullshit. I'm not listening.”
--
When Ezra snapped at her, Emilie barked a hard, cold laugh on the other side of the door. “Shut the fuck up,” she mocked, the words dissolving into a fit of laughter that was neither humorous nor light. It was dark and deep and hardly even human, but even more disturbing was the fact that each laugh was laced with the beginning of a sob.
“If you cared so much, you wouldn’t have left.” She slid further down the door, her stomach beginning the tell-tale cramp that, soon enough, would lead to full-blown heaving and retching. Emilie was already shaking, chilled to the bone yet soaked with sweat.
“I’ll eat,” Emilie finally said, though she had no real intention of eating. Her only plan was to get out of the closet and make a mad dash for the door, though she hadn’t the slightest clue he had it blocked with the bed.
--
“yeah, and if you cared, you wouldn't have picked that shit over me,” Ezra shot back. He was silent for almost a full minute after she claimed she'd eat. He didn't believe her for a second – but that was why he'd blocked the door, now wasn't it. And why he had restraints in the room. He was serious about doing this, and he knew perfectly well that it was going to be one hell of an ugly affair.
He had to give her the chance, though, didn't he. He just didn't do it blind. He pushed off the door, and grabbed the handcuffs he'd found in one of the other houses. They had pink fuzz lining them, which, in this case, was probably a good thing. He opened both cuffs, and kept them in one hand. He still had food near the bed, in a plastic tub.
He opened the door, and braced himself for the inevitable escape attempt.
--
Emilie half snorted, half sobbed when he said what he did. “Guess neither of us care as much as we like to think, huh?” At this point, she was just saying things to try and hurt him. It was always how it went, wasn’t it? When the sugar didn’t get her what she wanted, she tried the vinegar.
She heard him shift on the other side of the door, and she climbed weakly to her feet. Even in her current state, she knew she wouldn’t be a match for Ezra in terms of strength, but if she could just get past him, maybe she would be faster. She was light on her feet and lightning-quick, and that’s what she’d have to rely on.
So, as soon as the door unlatched, she slammed herself into it with a terrible cry and moved to go scrambling past him. Emilie lunged toward the door, only realizing at the last second that it was blocked by the bed. Rather than attempt to pull at it, she rounded on Ezra, her teeth showing like some cornered animal.
--
And this was her. This was who she really was, since she'd dove head first down the rabbit hole, and he knew it. It wouldn't be the first time he'd faced off against this version of her, this vicious creature. This time he wasn't on the defensive, though. This time, he was on a mission and that meant he was going to do what he had to, up to and including hurting her if it came to that.
He didn't wait for her to spring at him, instead using his own skills as a fighter to his advantage. He stepped in close and shoved his shoulder into her, to knock her onto the bed, already trying to grab her arm so he could get a cuff snapped onto one wrist.
--
Emilie wasn’t planning on Ezra being on the offensive, if only because she was so used to him being the one who had to defend himself against her wild blows and raging storms. So, when he rushed her, the last thing she was expecting was the shoulder that slammed into her, and it sent her tumbling hard onto the bed in a flurry of wild, black hair and gnashing teeth.
Like a switch being flipped, she’d been sent into hurt mode, and the mere fact that she was willing to hurt Ezra was a testament to the sheer power of destruction that lied within the drug. Before she became addicted to prax, the thought of hurting Ezra was unthinkable. Now it was instinct.
The first cuff was snapped on, but not before Emilie managed to slam her elbow into Ezra’s jaw, and since her opposite hand was still free, she brought her nails up to his cheek and ripped downward as hard and fast as she could. The sounds that came out of her weren’t even human; they were monstrous.
--
His jaw snapped shut hard, biting into his own tongue, his molars closing on it, and a second later, the bite of her nails into his cheek barely registered as more than pressure, but he knew that would change, already feeling blood seeping from the wounds.
He hauled back and punched her, not his full force, just enough to stun, hopefully, as he reached for her hair, pulling her back by a thick fistful of it. He yanked on the cuffed wrist too, starting to drag her to the bathroom.
--
Physical violence was nothing new to Emilie. It was a constant in the tunnels. If you weren’t hurting someone else, you were being hurt, and as many bones as she had broken on other people, they’d broken a fair share of her own. But Ezra had never hit her. He had shoved her, pushed her in an attempt to keep her off of him, but not once had he punched her.
The blow landed true at the side of her cheek, momentarily stunning her just enough to give him time to gather up a fistful of tangled hair. “Off!” she howled, nails of her free hand tearing viciously at the hand and arm that drug her along the floor. When that didn’t seem to help, she resorted to kicking and thrashing.
--
He kept dragging, just far enough into the bathroom that he could snap the other end of the cuffs around the thick pipe beneath the sink. Then he jumped over her thrashing form, to get out of kicking distance. He was bleeding from the back of his hand now too, and he stared at Emilie, hearing those animal sounds, and he hated every moment of this. He opened up the window and spit blood out it, tongue throbbing.
He swiped his arm along his ragged cheek, and watched her. “Struggling is only going to hurt worse later,” he said, voice raw.
--
Emilie didn’t settle down right away; she shrieked and cried and yanked mercilessly at the cuffs. Normally, prax made people stronger, if only because it buried their pain receptors beneath layers of ecstasy, but Emilie was barely more than a paper doll at this point, so malnourished and sick that she was constantly teetering on the edge of crumbling to pieces.
The cuffs didn’t budge and neither did the pipe, so after long moments of fruitless struggles, she simply laid there, her cheek pressed against the cool tile of the bathroom. Emilie was crying, but that was also nothing new. Her emotions were fickle at best. It was a wonder it didn’t give Ezra whiplash.
“Can’t keep me here forever,” she whispered, bloodshot eyes looking upward to her twin. “That your plan? Keep me here like some dog?”
--
He dropped onto the end of the bed, exhausted already. But he didn't let that crumble his resolve. He looked at the deep gouges in the back of his hand. “Make no mistake. If I wanted to? I could keep you here forever, Em. That's something I want you to understand. Right now, your fate is up to me.”
He reached up to wipe at his cheek again, feeling the blood starting to drip down from his jaw onto his shirt. “I already told you my plan. You're detoxing. After that...I don't know. I'll figure that out when we get there.”
--
Emilie laughed, but the sound was strange and distorted, and she leaned her feverish cheek against the arm that was hooked onto the pipe. Everything was beginning to hurt, but she knew it would get so, so much worse. If she didn’t get a fix, it would only be another hour or so before she was in the throes of agony so intense there would be no describing it.
“My fate’s in your hands, Ez?” she whispered, her almost otherworldly eyes shutting behind thick lashes. She was already paler than normal, not an easy feat, and the shakes were setting in fast. “Guess it’s a good thing you’ve always been a pussy then, huh?”
Emilie barked a laugh and yanked hard at the pipe just as suddenly, eyes flashing open as she snarled at him. Had he been close enough instead of being on the bed, she would have kicked at him or clawed. Instead, she just watched him.
--
He watched her right back, saying nothing. He just let her struggle, knowing that there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it. She wasn't going to stop. She was going to scream and cry, and if he got in range she'd attack him. And some time in the next day or so, she'd try being sweet again, and then she'd turn, it would cycle. He didn't know how fast it would cycle, or how violently, he just knew it was coming.
That didn't make it easier to take. It just made it predictable. It was probably sad that her irrational, erratic behavior had become that to him. Predictable, in a terrible way. He didn't know the details, but the broad strokes were clear.
--
When he didn’t respond, a flash of white-hot anger exploded deep in her gut, and it only made her yank harder at the cuffs. Somewhere between the struggle with Ezra and the vicious yanks at the handcuffs, her already destroyed fingers had begun to bleed and weep, and for the first time in a long time, she could actually feel the beginnings of actual pain.
“Why do you care?” Emilie hissed, her struggles momentarily ceasing as she studied a man who, once upon a time, had been her mirror image. “Don’t even love me. Said it yourself. You love her, not me, remember? Love me, love me not, lovemelovemenot.”
--
“I'm looking for her,” Ezra said. “Guess we'll both see if she's buried beneath you.” He saw her in those moments like a demon. Like some foreign entity that had taken over his sister. Some thing. He knew that wasn't the case, but seeing her like this? I made it so much easier to believe. She looked possessed. She looked like a horror movie come to life in front of him.
He finally got up and did his best to disinfect his wounds, knowing that if they got infected from whatever shit was under her fingernails he'd be screwed. He needed to not deal with that sort of risk while this was going on. So, he did his best, bandaging himself up. He spit more blood out the window, and did an okay job of not flinching every time he heard her pull on the cuffs.
--
“Cut her out,” she whispered, and without even realizing she was doing it, she brought her free hand up to her mouth and began to chew on the fingers, leaving behind a vibrant smear of blood and other across her lips. “Cut her out because she didn’t fit. She couldn’t survive down there, but someone had to, didn’t we? Eat or be eaten. I cut her out and she’s not coming back.”
No, Emilie knew the terrible truth. She knew that, beneath all her hardened layers and madness, that same frightened girl was tucked away somewhere, and she fought so very hard to keep her that way. This world wasn’t meant for the soft or the weak. Only the vicious could survive such a cold reality.
It was maybe an hour — or maybe it was less — when Emilie had finally seemed to calm down. She had drifted off into a feverish haze of unconsciousness, but it only lasted a few blessed minutes. All at once, the quiet parted into the storm, and Emilie’s vocal chords erupted in a scream so loud that it even hurt her own ears.
She hadn’t been prepared for this sort of pain. It started in her belly, in the twisting of her insides, and radiated outward. Her muscles clenched in agony, the nightgown that had been clean just hours before was soaked with sweat, and she was shaking so violently that her teeth were chattering. “Ezra,” she cried out, pulling weakly at the pipe. “Can’t do this. Don’t make me, please, don’t make me.”
--
He flinched hard when she screamed. He'd been out earlier, getting what he needed to cut her fingers off, but he'd been dozing lightly on and off since, not wanting to disturb her just yet. The scream, though, that had him up in a shot, and he stupidly dropped to his knees before her, reaching for her.
He didn't know what to do, besides ride this out, but his protective instincts hated every moment of this. It made him twitch and all he wanted to do was make it all better. He understood that this was just part of it all, and that if she got through it, it would be better than it was before but that didn't help the knee jerk reaction he had to wanting to take her pain away. “Em,” he started, gripping her upper arm. “I'm here...”
--
Oh, it was stupid for him to get within arm’s reach of her but, for the moment, she made no move to hurt him or strike at him. Instead, she desperately tried to curl into him, to leech some of his warmth, but the awkward grip of the metal cuff made it impossible to do much of anything. “Please,” she begged, huge tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please, I can’t. Can’t do it.”
And this was only the beginning.
“You don’t know. You don’t understand.” Then, as if something had driven a blow into her belly, Emilie doubled over best as she could and rolled into a ball just in time for the first wave of nausea to hit. She didn’t have any food in her stomach, so her retching didn’t lead to anything significant, but what was there happened to almost be the same color of prax.
--
He winced again, and he tried to rub her back as well as he could, ignoring the sick on the floor for right now. There'd be more where that came from. He knew that. “I know....” he said. He knew he didn't understand what she was going through, that he couldn't. That it was an experience that he'd never know.
It didn't waver his resolve, though. He shouldn't have wavered the first time around. He should have pushed through, when it wouldn't have been this awful for her. Before it had eaten so much of Emilie. But he couldn't rewrite history. He could only deal with what was happening right now. He didn't try to comfort her with words because what could he say?
--
“Rather die,” she whimpered, and even the gentle trace of his hand on her back was too much stimulus for her overactive nerves. She cried out and arched away, her muscles clenched and her eyes screwed shut in pain. “Hurts, Ezra.”
Emilie wasn’t exaggerating. She would have taken death over withdrawal any day of the week. In truth, she’d been wanting to die for some time now, and it would be far kinder and give her far more dignity than days, maybe weeks spent in a bathroom in a puddle of her own vomit.
When she finally opened her huge, bloodshot eyes, she grabbed his hand with her free one, the one whose fingers were all still salvageable, and she squeezed hard. “Don’t leave me,” she begged. “Don’t leave.”
--
Hearing her say that was like a knife to the heart, but he didn't try and contradict her. Right now? She probably did wish that. After all she'd been seeking out death in the most hardcore manner possible without actually using a direct method. He snatched his hand back when she moved away from him, and he felt helpless.
It was the same hollow, encompassing feeling that had him leaving in the first place. But he wasn't going to this time. He was going through with this no matter what. When she grabbed his hand, at first he imagined that she was going to bite his fingers off like she had her own. But instead she just gripped painfully hard, and he nodded. “I'm not going anywhere, Emmy,” he promised, voice soft.
--
She wasn’t going to make it. Of that, she was certain. She was going to die here in this bathroom in the worst way possible, but at least Ezra would be there. At least she wasn’t going to die alone in the tunnels, a forgotten corpse picked over by fellow tunnel dwellers.
“I’m dying,” she whimpered, trembling as she continued to hold Ezra’s hand. “Make it stop. You can make it stop.” All he would have to do was get her a hit. Hell, at that point, she would’ve been happy with a quick death.
“You can.” She touched the side of his face and tried to focus on his eyes, anything to give herself an anchor, but she ended up doubling over once again, her face buried into his stomach as she screamed hard enough to nearly tear her own vocal chords.
--
He tried to hold her, awkward as it was, and he tried to swallow past the hollow sickness he felt over seeing her like this. He put his arms around her shoulders as much as he could, squeezing his eyes shut at the screams, the tension in his cheek making the wounds there sting bad, scabs pulling.
“It'll pass...” he told her, though he had no earthly idea how quickly it would. And how often it would come back. He just didn't know what to expect. All he did know was that hard drug withdrawal sucked for everyone. That even the shit still lingering in the system took a while to purge, and that wasn't even counting the psychological addiction factors. This was all going to be such a long, hard road, and they were just getting started.
--
“It won’t,” she cried, words so distorted behind her sobs and mewls of pain that they were hardly words at all. “Never will.” There was only one thing that could make it pass, and it was the same thing that Ezra had crushed under his heel. Only a dose of wash would help her now. That, or a swift death, and she very much doubted that Ezra would be willing to give her either of those things.
Emilie tried to listen to his breathing, to focus on the warmth of his arms that enveloped her the best they could, but it was impossible to get past the pain. “Kill me,” Emilie begged, looking up from where she had her face buried into him. “Kill me, please. Justdoit. If you won’t make it stop, make me stop.”
--
She might as well have stabbed him, with the pain that hit him with her begging him to end it all for her. He didn't answer verbally, just violently shook his head, holding her tight. He couldn't do that. Ever. He was capable of a lot of things, and he had learned the hard way that he was capable of one hell of a lot more than he'd ever imagined.
Just not that. Not ever. They needed to ride this out, and it was going to be fucking awful. He just knew he was going to hate himself a lot more than he already did by the time they got through it all. ...if she made it at all.
--
He didn’t answer her in a way that she could hear, but she more than felt the hard shake of his head, and it brought a long, hard sob to the surface of her screams. “Do it,” she plead, louder this time, her free hand burying desperately into his shirt. “Don’t make me do this. I can’t. Ezra, I can’t. You can end it. One slash, bright red.”
He wasn’t going to do it. He couldn’t, and Emilie knew it. Without even comprehending the shift or the reasoning behind it, Emilie was swinging at him with the nails of her hand, her teeth bared in a scream, and with some wrangling and struggling, she somehow managed to straddle his felled form on the bathroom tile, one hand still attached to the pipe.
--
The change caught him off guard, somehow. It shouldn't have. He'd thought he was prepared for anything, and he had known she'd get violent again, that it was all a cycle with her. It was inevitable. And yet, when she turned on him, there was some part of him that was shocked.
So she got the drop on him and then it was all he could do to defend himself, pulling his arms up to shield his face and eyes, against the onslaught of violence. He had no way of knowing how long it would last, and he needed to wait for a pause to even try to get the upper hand back.
--
“You told me!” she screeched, her tears hot and quick on her cheeks as she slammed her fist down into her brother’s chest. She didn’t weigh much, certainly not nearly as much as she should have, but she was wily and fast and ruthless. “You said you wouldn’t leave! That you’d never leave me andyoudid!”
Another blow to his chest, but not before she raked her nails down the arms that shielded his face. “Liar! You’re a liar! You left me in the dark, with that thing. It watched me every night, do you know that? It’s still there. It gets closer every time I close my eyes.”
There was so much force behind her words that there was a constant spray of saliva. “You were mine and then you weren’t.”
--
He was going to look like he'd been in a fight with a cat and lost, with all the scratches she was giving him. His face, his arms, his hand... He rocked his hips up and to the right, in the hopes to knock her not only off balance, but to knock her head against the sink basin.
He risked reaching to grab at her wrist, needing to get control there, but it was hard to manage with her flailing wildly like she was. “Stop!” he screamed right back at her, though his own shout was drowned out by the force behind hers.
--
The sudden rock of his hips to the side was just enough to knock her off of him and to the left, and he had calculated it just right; her head knocked hard against the basin. Not enough to actually cause any lasting damage, but hard enough to earn a sharp yelp of pain. That didn’t keep her from trying to reach out and grab him again.
“You said! You promised! But it was a lie like all of your stories.” Since her feet were free, she did her very best to kick at him too, one blow after another. There was no rhythm, nothing but the furious flailing of a mad woman who had long since lost any real rhyme or reason.
--
Ezra did his best to get away, but he didn't manage it as fast as he needed to. He was hurt. It didn't matter that Emilie was sick and weak, she was hopped up on Crazy. He wound up having to kick back, landing a hard one to her stomach. He kept moving, having to elbow her across the cheek too, as she was coming at him again. It was an ugly scrabble.
Neither was going to walk away without injury here, and he understood that on some level even in the middle of it.
--
Neither the blow to her stomach nor the elbow across her already bruised cheek even so much as registered as real pain, not when her entire body was a mess of exposed nerves and open wounds. She might have been sick. She might have been starving to death, but the prax still in her system gave her an advantage over the general population.
“Ezra,” she sobbed, her eyes flooded with tears even as she reached out to bury her good hand into his hair to wrench him back toward her. It was as if she didn’t have any control, like she was possessed - able to see what was happening but not able to stop it.
--
His head was yanked back and he felt some rip out, his scalp tearing a little as she pulled. He fought, but she was strong, and he still didn't have the leverage he needed to get away completely. There was a moment there where he truly wondered, in some terribly calm part of his mind, if she was going to kill him. He didn't for a second think she was incapable of that.
He wouldn't kill her, but she would absolutely kill him, depending on what damaged neurons were firing at the moment in her head. He didn't realize he was speaking, a mantra of 'stop, stop, stop' over and over.
--
There was no telling what actually happened to make her stop. Maybe it was a misfiring of neurons, or maybe it was the mantra of pleas that tumbled from Ezra’s lips, but she was suddenly scrambling back away from him as far as she could manage, all but curling herself up under the sink.
“Sorry,” she sobbed, burying her face into the hand that wasn’t cuffed to the pipe. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” Emilie shook her head violently and pressed the side of her face against the wall, too ashamed to even look at her brother.
“I can’t.”
--
The second he was able to, he scrambled away from her, not stopping til his back hit the bed and he had to gasp for breath, hurting all over. He didn't say anything for a few long moments, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to calm down, tried to block out pain both physical and emotional.
He tried to draw in a breath slow, and let it out slow, but it hurt to do either. Finally, he managed to still himself, and gave it a few long minutes. He heard her in there but it was as if he was hearing it from far away.
Eventually, he got up, and started to tend to his wounds, disinfecting the scratches first.
--
Emilie was sobbing too hard for the moment to say anything else, and every time she stopped to suck in a desperate breath, it was accented by the awful sounds of retching. It was only minutes later that she was able to compose herself enough to speak.
“It’s in me,” she said, not sure if he’d be able to hear her in the bedroom or not. “Crawled its way in and now it’s not gonna come out, Ezra. It won’t. It can’t. Never gonna take its claws out.” Absently, Emilie reached up to massage her jaw, briefly glancing at the hand in the cuff. It was still bleeding, her fingers barely even recognizable any more.
--
He squeezed his eyes shut, count to ten, then got up. He grabbed a bottle of bacardi he'd found along the way, and he set it in her reach. “Here.” He then got well out of her reach, not wanting to even chance a repeat of what had just happened.
He sat back down, eyes on what he could see of her in the bathroom, but he said nothing more, waiting to see what she would do. He hoped she drank. If she did, pain would be dulled, and maybe she’d pass out. Once she was out, he’d take care of her fingers as well as he could. He knew she wouldn’t allow it if she was awake, though.
--
Alcohol. It was precious these days, a rarity in itself, but even then it didn’t even begin to come close to the magnitude of prax. Even still, Emilie knew if she could just drink herself into a stupor, the pain would lessen, even temporarily. Maybe it would make her nausea worse, but she didn’t care. She only cared about stopping the pain.
Emilie clumsily unscrewed the bottle of Bacardi and instantly began taking deep, long gulps, not caring how it burned or how it made her stomach roll and spin in protest. Before long, she had easily half the bottle down, and her nerves slowly but surely began to quiet in response.
“Better,” she practically whispered, setting the bottle back down but keeping it in reach.
--
Ezra didn't want her giving herself alcohol poisoning, so he retrieved the bottle. Now it was just a waiting game. He put everything away again, and sat where he'd been, out of reach, but in view if she chose to look at him.
“Why did you bother?” he asked, voice distant. “Coming to see me. Why'd you bother?”
--
Emilie didn’t answer right away. Instead, she chewed idly at her fingers. It wasn’t until maybe a minute later, maybe two, that she finally looked up from her fingers and at her brother, where he sat against the bed.
“Because I miss you,” she said softly, as though she hadn’t just been trying to scratch his face from his skull. “Because you’re mine. I’m yours. Right? That’s what we always said. Two halves, no one else.” She wiped at her running nose with the back of her hand and rested her aching head against the sink.
“Because I miss you.” It was an echo, but it was true.
--
He didn't answer right away. And when he did speak, it wasn't directly addressing anything she said. “What are you thinking about when you attack me?” he asked. “Were you going to kill me? Because I think you would. I think you'd lose it, and you'd not stop til I was done and gone.”
He watched her, and didn't know what sort of answer he'd get. He didn't know if he wanted an answer at all. He didn't even sound angry, really, he just sounded exhausted and distant. Like he had a series of questions he had to ask, but he wasn't especially concerned with her answers.
--
At least that was an easy answer for Emilie. “Not thinking,” she said, eyes closing behind her eyelashes. Even her breathing was slowing, thanks to the Bacardi. It wouldn’t hold her over long, but it would at least give her some rest, no matter how brief. “I do what it tells me to. We all do.” It, of course, being prax. And the “we” part? Well, that was every user.
There were no such thing as prax users who weren’t hopefully and uselessly addicted to the drug. It wasn’t recreational. It was all-consuming.
“I go away.” Would she have killed him? The thought was horrifying to Emilie, and her first instinct was to say that, no, of course she wouldn’t, but hadn’t she just said she was just a slave to the prax? To her broken neurons.
--
He actually understood that answer in some ways. It wasn't perfect, of course. But it fit in with his own feelings on the matter. That the girl in there wasn't his sister. That Prax had eaten her up and spit out her bones. So the idea that she felt like she 'went away' made sense.
He closed his eyes and left them shut. He listened to her breathing. “How much do you hate me?” he asked. Because he knew she had to. He'd left, and there wasn't any taking that back. He stood by his decision, even if he wondered how different things would have been if he'd opted for this solution before. He'd always carry guilt about that in his heart, he knew.
--
Hate and Ezra had never really fit together in the same breath for Emilie, so when he asked how much she hated him, she opened her eyes and peered at him where he sat, his eyes closed, and Emilie knew him well enough to know that he’d likely been listening to her breathe. She’d done that countless times when she couldn’t sleep; she’d count his breaths and listen to the rhythm.
“I don’t hate you,” she said, her words somewhat slurred. The drunkenness was nothing less than a miracle for the both of them, right now. At least it kept her from acting like some sort of wild, caged animal. “I missed you, didn’t hate you. Wanted to but I couldn’t.”
Then, in a surprisingly lucid-sounding way, she said, “You’re the only good part of me left.”
--
That had his eyes opening, and he slid them back to her. Ezra almost went to her then. He wanted to. He even went so far as to lean in that direction, about to crawl across the floor to...what? He didn't know. Comfort her, perhaps? Insist that that wasn't true, even if he thought maybe it was? He honestly didn't know.
But he understood too well – especially since he was still hurting – that she could turn again on a dime. It would do them no good if he got too hurt to take care of her. “You sound like you hate me a lot. I left.” Damn if he didn't desperately want to cling to the idea that she didn't hate him, though. Even hearing the words soothed something deep inside, but he didn't dare take it at face value.
--
“You left,” she agreed, because there was no point in denying that much. “I tried to pretend I wasn’t afraid of the dark but then you left, and the dark was all there was and I got lost.” Emilie squeezed her eyes shut just as a new trail of tears pushed themselves down her flushed, sweaty cheeks.
“But I don’t hate you. You’re my Ezra. Don’t even know how to hate you.” Maybe if she did, she could have made herself loathe him down there in the tunnels during the nights when she’d wake up alone and reach for him, only to remember that he was gone. But she never did hate him.
She wondered if Ezra could say the same about her.
“My hand hurts,” she half-whimpered.
--
His heart gave a hard pull at the last part. “I know,” he told her. “It'll be okay. I'll fix it,” he told her. He didn't clarify what that meant, though. “You should lie down, Emmy. Rest.” He wondered just how quickly he could get this done, with no experience. He'd just have to try and plow through.
He was nervous about it of course. Though he knew for a fact that taking them off was going to improve her chances at making it through this. They were disgusting and dying and infected. They were only making her sicker. They weren't salvageable, not with the self cannibalization she was doing to them. No, they just needed to come off. He just prayed that he could do it fast and that she didn't wake up during the procedure.
--
The thought of lying down did sound more and more appealing by the moment as the alcohol worked itself further and deeper into her system, and she nodded weakly. “Okay,” she agreed. “Blanket?” Emilie knew she didn’t deserve one, not after the way she treated Ezra just moments before, but she was so fucking cold that it actually hurt, and yet she was still covered head to toe in sweat.
“Please? So cold.” She briefly thought about asking if he’d let her go back to the closet rather than being cuffed to the sink, but she doubted he would be keen on the idea of letting her go even for a second right then.
--
Ezra pushed himself to his feet and got one of the blankets out of the closet, bringing it over to her. He still remained outside of her reach, gently tossing it to her. Then he went back and got a throw pillow that had been on the bed. It was small enough that it would fit more comfortably in the bathroom there with her.
“Want anything else?” he asked, crouching down to watch her curl up with the bedding. “And lay on this side,” he said. “So I can keep an eye on you.” His real reason was the less he had to move her to cut her fingers off, the better, so he didn't want her laying with that arm curled under her.
--
It wasn’t easy getting comfortable, not between the only slightly numbed withdrawals and the awkward position of being cuffed to the pipe, but the alcohol was making her sleepier by the moment. When Ezra gave her the blanket and the pillow, she thanked him with a little nod and pulled the blanket up to her chin, doing her best to maneuver the pillow so it was cradled beneath her head.
“Can I have some water?” In reality, she just wanted to keep Ezra close. She wasn’t thirsty, wasn’t even sure she could keep water down, but she wasn’t ready for him to go back into the bedroom.
Emilie positioned herself onto the side he asked her to best she could, and watched him intently with those huge, owlish eyes.
--
He nodded, then got up to go get her some water. It wasn't the freshest, but it was technically drinkable. So, he got her a glass and brought it back, setting it within her reach again. He still was cautious, though, not wanting to give her a free shot, even if he thought the storm was over. The real problem was he never knew when it would kick back up again.
He sat where she could see him without having to move, though, and instead of staying well outside her range, he stayed just outside it. “You'll feel better after some rest,” he promised her.
--
Emilie took the water but didn’t even bother with taking a drink. Instead, she sat it beside her and laid her head back down, not once taking her eyes off of Ezra. “Don’t think I’ll ever feel better,” she admitted gently, her eyes getting heavier. She wanted to sleep, to rest, maybe even to fall so heavily into unconsciousness that she wouldn’t hurt for a little while, but she didn’t want to take her eyes from her brother.
What if he disappeared?
“You won’t leave me, will you? When I open my eyes, you’ll still be here? You’ll keep the monster away? Won’t let it eat me?”
--
He shook his head. “No, Em,” he promised, and while his voice was soft, there was conviction in his tone. “I won't leave you, and I won't let anything eat you.” He said the last part just as seriously as he'd made the promise to stay. To her, the monster was real, after all. To her, she was being stalked by some otherworldly creature. So he needed to set her mind at ease.
He rubbed at the scratches on the back of his hand. He hated this part. He'd hated it back when he'd been in the middle of things, too. She'd be so fragile and vulnerable, right after she'd fucked him up. He still sometimes felt twinges in the scar along his side, the one he'd not told her until recently was only there because of her.
--
Emilie smiled a little at that. It was barely there, just a twinge of her pale lips, but it was the first time she had smiled in weeks. “Prince came back for the princess. Found in the woods.” She instinctively went to reach out for him but came up short, since he was just out of arm’s length. That brought the smile to an end, and instead she curled in on herself.
Within minutes, she managed to drift off, her breaths deep and semi-even, and were it not for the rise and fall of her chest, she would’ve looked like just another strung out corpse you could come across in the tunnels.
--
He watched her sleep for a little while, waiting until he was sure she was under deeply. It broke his heart, seeing her like this. He wanted to let her go, but he knew he couldn't yet. He had to be strong, here, and he knew he had it in him – that just didn't make it suck less.
Then he went to get the mini bolt cutters he'd gotten, and the medical supplies he'd scrounged. Crawling in beside her, he put her hand on a clean towel, and looked at the awful mess that was her fingers. He didn't let himself look long. Being close here just brought that rotting smell back to the front of his senses and he knew they needed to be gone, and now.
His hand was shaking as he held her hand in one, and he brought the cutters to the base of her finger with the other. He swallowed hard, then squeezed the cutters shut. There was a sick cracking sound, but it was honestly so much easier than he'd thought. So much so that it turned his stomach. But there wasn't much left to them, so there was simply less to cut through, and what was there was grotesquely mooshy.
He snipped the second finger faster, and he was dismayed at the fact that it didn't even seem to bleed that much. He looked at the stub of her hand, and with a scalpel, he dug out the ends of the finger bones still attached, and cut away dead looking tissue. He cut until he couldn't see anything colored wrong, and, after bringing her hand to his face, he couldn't smell anything off. He stitched up the fresh holes as quickly as he could, only realizing he was tearing up when he had to reach up to swipe the back of his wrist across his eyes.
When he was done, he quickly gathered everything up and brought it back into the main room. Her fingers and the towel, all the bloody, gross material, it got tossed out the window. The bolt cutters he had to keep, so he washed them off as well as he could, then put them back where he'd found them. He got painkillers out for Em, and set them in her reach whenever she woke up. Getting a blanket for himself, he laid down facing her, just beyond her reach, and watched her sleep until exhaustion took him.