ezra galloway (fractures) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-05-12 02:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | # past / backstory, emilie galloway, ezra galloway |
Who: Emilie and Ezra
Where: (not so) safe house
What: loss of the last shreds of naivety
When: year and a half ago
The first thing that registered with Emilie was the pain. It seemed to radiate everywhere, from the top of her scalp to the bottoms of her feet, though the worst of it was concentrated between her thighs. At first, she didn’t even try to open her eyes, because just so much as thinking of doing so made her ache. Finally, tentatively, Emilie peeled her eyes open. More accurately, she opened one eye; the other was too swollen to see from. Groaning, the brunette sat up on the soiled blanket, doing her best to piece things together. It had been a normal night. They had all gone to sleep well enough, all four of them curled up on the mattress they managed to find a week or two before, and she remembered the loud bang of their makeshift door coming in. Then it got blurry. She swallowed, throat burning in protest, and looked down to take stock of herself. Her top was sticky with dried blood, her panties tugged down around her thighs. The cargo pants she had on the night before were nowhere to be seen. And neither were their few bags of supplies. That was when it all clicked. She choked on a sob as her trembling, bruised fingers raised up to gingerly touch her broken nose. There’d been a small group of men — they called themselves raiders — and they had made it abundantly clear that Troy, one of the two friends still around, had let them inside to save his own skin. In the end, it hadn’t mattered, because Troy and Amy, his girlfriend of six years, now laid dead on the concrete, brain matter scattered around their skulls like macabre halos. Troy let them in. Troy, who had been her and Ezra’s friend ever since they started at Austin State, had let those men inside their shelter, and they destroyed their lives. The last thing Emilie remembered before blacking out was the rank breath of the man atop her, his hands burying into her hair while the other men taunted Ezra. Ezra. Emilie was on her hands and knees in an instant, crawling frantically over the mess the raiders made in an attempt to get to Ezra. When she saw him there, unconscious (dead?) and covered in his own blood, Emilie sobbed his name and grabbed him by the shoulders. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be, because if he was, she was here alone, and Emilie couldn’t be alone. “Ezra,” she whimpered, shaking his shoulders harder than she meant to. “Ezra, wake up. Please, wake up.” -- Ezra didn't want to wake up. The world was a terrible place, something evidenced clearly in the way that it seemed like all it was made up of was pain. He heard muffled sounds first, that broke through the hazy, throbbing pounding in his head that he became more and more aware of by the second. It was slowly that his eyes opened, cracking first to let in pale, sickly light, and he smelled something bad, and didn't know what it was. He groaned, and tried to curl away from the hands on him, his name rousing his actual conscious mind later than it should have. His blue eyes tried to focus on the shadow above him, pupils not reacting the same way, one blown out larger than the other from the concussion he'd suffered. But he heard her. Emilie. He reached blindly for her, trying to sit up and put her behind him, even as he looked around for danger that was long gone. He swayed hard, having to catch himself on one arm, and his hand screamed out in pain that shot up his arm nearly to the shoulder. Catching up with current events was not happening fast enough for him, confusion turning everything into a messy horror show. The only functioning instinct was to protect his sister, even if he had failed to do so the night before, when it really counted. -- The second she saw some movement from her brother, she might’ve thanked God if she thought the big man upstairs was still around. “Ezra,” she sobbed again, instant tears of relief mixing with the blood and grime on her cheeks. Even now, even when he was clearly in agonizing pain, he was trying to protect her. They always protected each other, and neither of them had been able to when it really mattered. “Don’t move,” Emilie pleaded, gently maneuvering them both until he was half laying in her lap, his bloodied head cradled against a thigh so she could better look him over while one hand cupped his cheek. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hurt this badly. Their friends were dead, their supplies taken, and it was only by some miracle that the two of them weren’t just as dead. It was clear that the intention had been for them to die. On the edges of her memories, memories she didn’t much want to revisit, she could remember one of the men laughing as he walked away from the two of them, murmuring something about it being a shame that they had to mess up such pretty faces. Right then, she would have killed for just a drink of water to soothe her ragged throat, but the raiders had only left them with the clothes on their backs. Well, maybe. She still didn’t see her pants. -- Ezra really only had bits and pieces from the night before as he cast in his mind for what had happened. He remembered Troy had let people in, even if they'd all agreed no one got in or out, and then... He remembered someone throwing Emilie against the wall. He remembered gunshots. He remembered-- Pulling up his shaking hand, he stared at it. The reason pain had lanced through his arm when he'd tried to use it to help keep him upright was the large wound all the way through it. He'd put his hand up to protect himself from a blow – and a knife had gone straight through. It was between his pinky and ring finger bones, and he squeezed his eyes shut and hugged it to his chest like that would make it better. He curled on his side, head on her thigh and he could smell it. Blood, and sex, and he managed to crawl up to pull her into his arms, just as much clinging to her as he was trying to comfort her. He hadn't been able to do anything. He'd tried. God, he'd tried, but he hadn't done much. But not nothing. He remembered something, right before the lights went out. He'd got one. Not bad enough to kill him outright, but he probably wouldn't make it long term. He'd grabbed a hatchet, and swung, and... -- She cast a wary glance with her one good eye toward Amy’s corpse. The men killed her first; they said she wasn’t the pretty one, that her screaming reminded them of a pig, and they killed her by bashing her skull against the concrete. Emilie could remember the way it sounded that final thud, more wet matter than bone, and her stomach rolled in protest against the memory. His hand was fucked. The wound was open and just begging for infection, and had they still possessed their bags, she could have treated it with the alcohol they picked up along the way. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. “Troy let them in,” she whispered, words hoarse and disbelieving as if she still was unsure of what really happened, even if they knew the truth. “He let them in, Ezra.” When his arms went around her, she clung to him for dear life, face burying against his neck even if it caused a sharp, white-hot pain to radiate from her broken nose. “They took everything. They killed Amy.” Troy, too, but since he was the one that stabbed them in the back, she was having a harder time feeling sorry for him. -- Ezra held tight, like she might disappear if he let go, and he choked on a lump in his throat. Everything was just so goddamned fucked. It was all so bleak, and awful. He'd been holding on by a thread, really trying, and things had started out okay, in a weird way. They'd been surviving, and now? Everyone was gone. And the world was an ugly fucking place, and that wasn't even counting the zombies. He grit his teeth and tried not to cry, to shut it all down. Hard. Because it was just them now and he needed to do better. Way, way better than he had last night. He couldn't let anyone get the jump on him, he couldn't let Emilie get fed to the wolves. Not on his watch, and apparently his watch had just hit full time. So he held her, and started so shove all the screaming inside of him down. To lock it in a box inside his head, and never give it voice again. He needed to quit being a vulnerable kid. He needed to be able to get this done, and not cry about it later, not break down. And if he didn't get his shit together, he was going to break down, and when he did it was going to be a screaming, mind shattering event. He may as well just shoot himself in the head if he was going to let that happen. “I know,” he answered her, fighting to keep his voice even. Shut it down. Shut it all down. -- “He was our friend. He was our friend. He was our friend,” she kept panting, as if she couldn’t quite grasp the concept that someone they trusted literally with their lives would do such a thing to them. They’d been together in this from the beginning, the four of them, and what did their trust earn them? Broken bones, wounds, and shattered psyches. This would never happen again. “I thought they were killing you.” Emilie hadn’t been able to see much at the time, but every now and then the men on top of her would stop what they were doing just long enough to make her watch as someone else rained terrible, bone-crunching blows against her twin brother. They had just mocked her when she begged them to stop hurting him. “I thought you were dead, that you —“ Emilie had to stop talking long enough to drag in a deep, shuddering breath around a sob. “What do we do? What are we gonna do, Ez?” -- He felt broken and he didn't know it then but he'd be finding a whole lot more in the injury department once he was back in full control of his faculties. He held her tighter, opening his eyes to try and get his vision to clear correctly. And of course all he could see was the mess around them. Their dead companions – not the first to fall, but the last. Just them now. He rubbed her back. “Shh,” he murmured to her, finding someplace inside that could be calm for her even while inside he was still fighting off a total shutdown. “I'm not dead,” he assured her. He was only just barely not dead, but still. He didn't know what to answer her so he just started talking. “We're leaving here, and finding another place. Only we're getting high up somewhere, and I'm gonna guard it, while we heal up. I'm gonna go get supplies, and you're gonna look for a place. Just a temporary one, because we're not gonna hole up like this anymore,” he told her. Seemed valid. He didn't want to keep moving, his instincts told him that he needed to find a place to defend, but obviously it had led to a false sense of security. He didn't know what to do, he was making it up as he went. “It'll be okay, Emmy,” he promised, and was shocked by the fact that he sounded convincing. Sure, his voice wasn’t the steadiest, he was off, the concussion making him slur a little, but there was a note of conviction there. -- Emmy. He called her Emmy, and whatever strand of sanity she was still holding to turned to dust in her hands. Was she still Emmy? Was she the same girl who went to sleep last night, thinking that things could maybe turn out okay if they just kept pushing through and trying? No, that girl died the moment those men came in and destroyed what little life they had going for them. Slowly, Emilie pulled back just far enough to look into his dilated eyes. The pupils were blown wide and dark. A concussion, then. “You’re wrong,” she whispered, and someone who knew her as well as Ezra did would catch the shift in her voice. Where it had been panicked and frantic just seconds before, it was now a little slower and steady. Not quite calm, because there was something just not right there. “Nothing is ever going to be okay again.” Her gaze, still damp with tears, almost seemed empty, somehow. Hollow. “Not now, not ever.” -- He knew that. He couldn't argue with her. Instead, he watched her eyes, then reached out, cupping her cheeks in his hands, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. What could he say? Silence seemed the better option, because yeah. It was never going to be okay. He brushed his thumb back and forth against her cheek with his good hand. Her shutting down destroyed the shreds of conviction he'd had. They choked and died. He kept quiet and stayed close, still pushing everything in him down. Repressing, because if he didn't do that, then he wasn't going to get up off of this floor, and they'd both be done right here and now. Part of him wanted to put that option on the table, to tell her that they could just be done now, if they wanted to be. But some part of him couldn't accept that, and besides, who went first? Neither of them would allow a sacrifice of the other, not like that. It was a non starter. “The plan is the same,” he told her, voice quiet. -- Emilie breathed a long sigh of something that sounded a lot like defeat when he took her face in his hands, always so gentle with her despite everything crumbling down around them. “Plan is the same,” she agreed aloud, more to let him know that she could hear him loud and clear, that her inner dialogue wasn’t quite so loud as to drown Ezra out. They would find a new place to rest while they healed, and then they would never, never make this same mistake again. Never again would they put their trust in someone else’s hands. Ezra was the only person she could trust. She made the decision, right then and there, that everyone that wasn’t for them was against them, and no one was for them. They were all alone. Completely. Utterly. “Just us,” Emilie whispered, one good eye still on his. “No one else ever again.” Her sentences might have been jumbled and strange, but he’d likely understand the sentiment. From there on out, they made sure they were alone. “Just. Us.” -- Ezra didn't even notice that they were broken, disjointed statements. He did follow right along like he was privy to her entire thought process. “Just us,” he agreed, knowing that without having to think at all. Everything was broken and any naive notion he'd had was gone now. His faith in humanity had never been all that great to start with, and now any shred of it had evaporated. He kissed her brow, fighting back the last internal vulnerability. He needed to get moving. They couldn't stay here, he had to go get them supplies. He had to go out there, alone, and find things they needed. If he was going to do that, then he needed to shut everything down. Let fear flood him, drown himself in it to the point he didn't really feel it anymore. That process started today. It was going to be just them, and the rest of the world could burn. |