Work Text:
Post Fracturing: 3/13/4050
Johnson’s body fell with a heavy thud. Robin scrambled to his feet, his usually sharp eyes were wide and panicked as they landed on her.
“Miss me?” She tried to smile, but it might have looked more like a wince. It took her far too long to drag herself here. Her blood was streaked along the wall behind her. She should have gotten here sooner.
Robin was a wreck. His nose was crooked, probably broken in the struggle, his mouth hung open with a split lip as he tried to catch his breath, and red marks were beginning to bloom around his neck where Johnson’s hands had been.
He moved very suddenly, covering the distance between them like it was never there to begin with. He stood only a foot away, eyes darting around her face, her torn clothes, all of her injuries, the way her hand was clutching at her stomach. She thought he might be angry, that maybe after all he wasn’t there to rescue her. It had been her dagger to kill Lucy, after all.
After a few more seconds of hesitation he pulled her into his arms, clutching tight like he was the only thing keeping her from turning to dust in the wind. In some ways he was. Tears welled up as she realized just how badly she missed him. His hands hovered and didn't fully rest on her back, not at first.
He didn’t say anything about her missing wings, his calloused fingers were enough of a message. After weeks of brutalization, the action of anyone being gentle was something that Zell had forgotten to prepare for. That “anyone” being Robin Spade, being a friend, was something she never let herself imagine to begin with.
She tried to smile again while she lightly pushed him away, bringing a hand up to his face. “Your nose is broken,” she said, too soft for his liking.
He didn’t respond immediately. He resumed studying her. She studied him back. If he thought that he was hiding his anger well, then he was getting good at lying to himself. “You’re bleeding everywhere,” he finally said, a bitter edge in his voice. As if she couldn’t feel it.
While nothing about their predicament was funny, Zell was fighting the urge to laugh. “You’re bleeding from your nose, which is broken,” she snickered, then winced as the movement aggravated her injuries. He shook his head and pulled out a roll of bandages from the pocket of his trench coat, ever so slightly lifting what was left of the tattered lower half of her shirt. Zell shifted to try to make it easier to wrap.
She had to look away while he inspected everything. The sight of her own blood never bothered her before, but now it made her feel sick. She was afraid of whatever he was thinking with his hands so close to her torn skin, the ideas swimming in her head did more damage then the pruning shears ever could.
“You shouldn’t have left that room,” Robin muttered, not looking up at her. “I knew you were there, I was going to come back when I finished with him.”
She turned to the dead man on the floor only a few yards away from them. The knife she’d thrown at him was the same one that was stuck in her side earlier. She hadn’t planned on removing it, but when she turned the corner to find him wailing on her friend she tore it out without thought. Now it sat still lodged in him.
The room she woefully was the one she spent the month getting tortured in. She’d be damned if she was going to wait until he stood in the doorway to leave it.
“Talk to me,” he ordered, turning his head so his eyes followed along he’d bloody real at the wall. He was trying to calculate how much blood she lost. She found that ridiculous.
“Your nose is still broken,” she drawled. She couldn’t smile anymore.
He huffed out a breath and turned back to her, resuming his work. His lips twitched like he was trying to fight off a smile. “Yes, thank you for that observation. I would have never noticed if you hadn’t told me three times in the past two minutes.”
“Would you rather I stop talking, elf?”
“Anything but that, fey.” He sounded far away. Zell couldn’t be sure if that was the blood loss or his own doing. He continued wrapping the bandages tightly around her, pausing every so often to glance up at her. Everything about him now was new, and yet the same. It seemed like something was clawing at him from the inside out. Something was lost.
Lucy.
His Lucy. Her best friend, the holder of her heart. She was what was lost. Killed with Zell’s own dagger, by Johnson’s hand. The betrayal still burned hot in the pit of her stomach.
When he finished wrapping the worst of her wounds he paused and thought for a second, and then he hauled her up into his arms without any real warning. She yelped, caught off guard by the sudden lack of floor beneath her feet. “It’s straight out of here,” he explained, settling into a light jog. He could have ran faster if she wasn’t weighing him down. When she didn’t respond, he picked up the pace. “Zell,” he warned, “don’t stop talking.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she smiled, her grip on his shirt falling loose.
“Insect.” he hissed.
“Bastard.”
“Butcher.”
“Aimless,” she whispered. “Robin, I’m so—”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, leaving no room for argument. “You can say anything but an apology, I won’t let you apologize.”
Again, she was suddenly fighting the urge to laugh. “What if I do a dance with it?”
“What kind of dance is it?” he asked, his voice shaking. He tried to smile down at her.
“Sexy-interpretive.” She hadn’t realized there were tears forming in her eyes until they were falling. The world was growing hard to hold onto. She could hear Lucy’s laugh in the back of her head. In that same breath she saw her body fall as Johnson stood behind them. Zell held back a wretched sob. “It'd be the best dance ever.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get to Tore soon.” He sounded so afraid. “Just stay with me, stay where I am.”
“What if I wanna be where she is?” Zell breathed.
She couldn’t tell if he sounded scared or if he was holding back another smile. “I’m sure she’d send you straight back.”
“You’re stuck with me, Rob.”
One beat. It’s snowing in the woods, her mother is teaching her how to track prey.
“Zell Hart, nothing would make me happier.”
She coughed. He held her tighter, she felt him straining to run faster, his breathing getting heavier. Darkness crowded in her vision.
Another beat. She's soaring above the fire that consumed her people and home.
There was no more sense of fear or her surroundings. A note from a song Delphinium once tried to teach her played in her head.
“We’re almost there, just hold on.” She can hear yelling nearby, and then the unmistakable sound of a knife sinking into flesh. Robin fell with a cutoff gasp. They hit the ground hard, their bodies tumbling against concrete. Her back smacked into a wall. All the air was punched out of her and she couldn’t get it back. She couldn’t keep her eyes open, her consciousness fading in and out.
There was a loud noise, an explosion she thought. She felt a weight, someone’s body on top of hers. She was pretty sure they were bleeding. She was pretty sure it was Robin. Her eyes close for a moment. Or maybe it was minutes.
Light came back, Tory’s horrified face filled her blurred vision view. Zell couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she imagined that it was goodbye.
She faded out again just as the feel of Tory’s healing hands hit her skin.