Literally. They shoved him into a hall and blasted a hose against his skin and got rid of the blood from twenty dead men that drenched him, made him dress in fresh scrubs. As if that would somehow cover up the state he's in, the state they're all in. Like they didn't throw him in a goddamn cage to fight for his life like a game dog. Like he hadn't sat clutching his best friend as he bled out on the ground while the warden finally found a string he could pull.
Now they finally got what they wanted.
What they've been trying to get from him all along. Rodeo's got no doubt that the reason he's been kept alive has nothing to do with a trial, nothing to do with keeping up appearances. At this point Austin has forgotten him. No one is demanding justice for the Dog King. If his name was never uttered on the streets again, no one would wonder why. No one would question it, no one would mourn. No, they kept him kicking because they wanted what he took from them. Now they got it, and it's done for him. He's a dead man walking. Why they're even holding up their end of the bargain is a mystery to him, but for what feels like hours he lies in the exam room and waits.
Reason promised he'd request medical, but he didn't promise someone would come. Rodeo knows how this works. The guys who've been here have told him-- even if you manage to get a request form sent, they're hardly ever answered. The doctors are busy and don't got time to patch up folks who likely ain't got long for this earth anyway. Nobody gets out of here alive and everybody knows it. Who'd waste their time?
Except, maybe she would.
She came when his camp needed her. She came, and he's got no doubt it wasn't for him but for the people who needed help, people who didn't deserve to lose their lives for lack of care. But he ain't like those people. He's here to pay for his sins. Maybe he knows it'd serve him right to die in here, and maybe she does too. But he keeps thinking about the moment he saw that necklace, saw her wearing it still around her neck back in his bedroom. He knew then she must have loved him once and that maybe she really hadn't let it all go, that maybe she knows the same as he does that this ain't something that you let go of when you find it. The dead are rising and the atmosphere is burning up and the stars are falling out of the sky and if they can feel like they did back in that library reading a cheesy sci-fi book in each other's arms in the middle of all of that then it ain't something you tear away and leave in the dirt just 'cause it's broken. He believes that. He thinks she does, too.