Re: Quicklog, Bioshock: Elena M & Cris M
[Another eyeroll, and he gave her a pistol. 9MM. He wasn't trying to disarm her or drug her or in any other way, incapacitate her, whatever her addled mind told her with all the subtlety of a cornered cat. But carrying a crossbow—not a light thing, if you were wondering—over a gunshot wound, one that it would chafe, was a stupid idea. If he'd known she had nothing else to defend herself, he would've given her the 9MM before. But he didn't, because all she told him? Was don't touch me. So, when she followed, empty handed, like he'd just stripped her of something out of nothing but spite and certainly not something like worry, he gave her one of his backups, and then he kept moving, as he had, in fact, acknowledged her gesture. He'd nodded; if there was something more he should have done, he didn't know what it was.
He didn't care that she was quiet. He counted it as a blessing. Better than her spitting at him, hissing at him like he was a predator. And better still than her asking him the sorts of questions she resorted to when her venom didn't work: why? did you ever love me? what about our daughter? etcétera.
The air, stale with salt and burning flesh, and fermented with blood, stank too of cordite, heavy, and Cris pressed his lips together as he jumped over a man crawling for something he didn't want to see. He didn't see the consequences Elena thought about, because he knew they weren't gonna happen. There was a way out and they were gonna find it before anything worse than that bullet through muscle could befall either of them. So, yeah, that lullaby, little girl's voices, crooned in his ear with crackling dust and he deafened it with nothing more than iron-fisted will.
It was only a bit later, after they'd put some distance between themselves and that vending machine, that Cris whispered,] You need to stop?