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His hands weren’t steady. They never had been, but some stupid, pathetic part of him had hoped this would be the moment they finally stopped shaking. Instead the tremors tearing through him over the last few weeks had only gotten worse, violent little spasms running from elbow to fingertip, and now his uncalloused coward’s hands were painted wrist-deep in something thick and terrifyingly bright.
The cellar smelled like damp earth and copper. Acrid, wet and bizarrely sweet. Every breath coated the back of his throat until nausea climbed higher and higher into his mouth.
He didn’t have time to be sick.
Wifies had disappeared into room a far above them few minutes ago, leaving them alone while machinery clicked and groaned somewhere beyond the wall. Maybe he was searching for something or maybe he just didn’t want his hostages bleeding all over the floor. Either option sounded equally likely.
Fifteen minutes or so.
That was what Wifies had said.
He kept turning the words over in his head, trying to measure time against the uneven dripping somewhere deep underground. Fifteen minutes. How much of it had already passed? How much time had he wasted standing here frozen like an idiot?
His hands were slick from fingertip to wrist. He wiped them against his trousers again and again, but the fabric was already soaked through, leaving only tacky red smears across his thighs. It made him think, horribly, of being a boy again, trying to wrap screaming flesh in dirty bandages with cracked mirror balanced against a sink to guide him.
He looked at Spidey.
Her eyes were glassy and distant, fixed on a dark patch of mold crawling on the vent overhead. Her foot tapped weakly against the grate beneath her boots in an uneven rhythm while she chewed violently at the inside of her cheek. Every time he tried helping her, some awful breathless little sound escaped her throat—not quite a laugh but not quite a sob—and her whole body spasmed afterward from the pain.
Fifteen minutes or so.
“Spidey,” he said quietly, though his voice still came out rough enough to sound like stones grinding together. “Hey, look at me, okay? Please. And-and try to stay still.”
Christ. He sounded ridiculous.
Like some fucking Boy Scout instructor repeating half-remembered handbook lines from forty years ago when a kid sliced open his knee.
She didn’t look at him.
Her head lolled faintly to one side, exposing the angry red cut stretching across her throat. Wifies had done that right in front of him while a gun was aimed at his face. The wound looked shallow, shallow enough that she wasn’t choking on blood, but it still wept steadily down into the collar of her sweater.
His gaze dropped lower. Two dark blotches stained the wool across her torso. One near her ribs. Another even lower. Both still bled, even more profusely than the slash on her neck.
His stomach twisted violently as he carefully pulled at the fabric, only to discover strands of soft white wool stuck inside the wound itself.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Very comforting. Very useful.
He reached toward her, but his hands were shaking so badly he had to grab one wrist with the other just to steady himself. He wasn’t built for this. He knew how to patch roofs, gut rats, forage mushrooms. He didn’t know how to stop a human being from bleeding out on a dirty floor.
Think.
The word hammered through his skull in frantic pulses.
Think. Boy Scouts. First aid. Pressure. Keep them awake. Keep them warm.
He didn’t have a medical kit, he had lukewarm water, an undershirt, and whatever fabric he could tear apart.
He jerked into motion suddenly, shrugging off his coat before tearing at the hem of his linen shirt. The rip of fabric sounded deafening in the cramped cellar.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “Okay, okay... direct pressure first. That’s-that’s the first thing, right?”
He pressed a strip of cloth firmly against the wound in her side.
Spidey gasped sharply, her entire body flinching away from him.
“No, no, I know,” he said immediately, panic spiking through him at the sound. “Sorry. Sorry, Spidey, I know. I have to, okay? Please don’t move.”
Heat soaked through the cloth almost instantly. Her blood was unbelievably warm.
The feeling of it all hit him like a kick to the stomach, so heavy and awful and real and inescapable. Suffocating responsibility settled over him all at once. He wasn’t a father. He wasn’t even close. The stupid little fantasies he’d let himself entertain, the ones where they somehow survived this rotten world together, where Paradise City became something temporary in their lives, a memory, collapsed inward under the weight of this reality. This was the real world. And the real world was full of men like Wifies.
Self-loathing came naturally to him. It fit easier than hope ever could have. If he’d been faster. If he hadn’t stumbled in the corridor. If he’d spent his life learning how to fight instead of hide. If he’d just fucking pulled the trigger.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely, blinking hard against the sting burning in his eyes. “God, I’m so sorry. I know I'm not—I’m not who you needed, okay? I know that.”
Some distant part of him wondered if her real father would’ve handled this better. Probably.
Spidey’s hand suddenly clamped around his forearm, her fingers were freezing cold.
“How do you know he’s not gonna come back?” she asked quietly, words rushing together unevenly. “He said he was just gonna—”
“Focus on me,” he interrupted quickly. “Hey. Look at me. Don’t think about him right now.”
He soaked another strip of cloth with water and leaned closer to clean the cut on her throat. His breath caught halfway through when he saw how fragile the skin there looked.
Pressure. Keep warm. Prevent infection.
All he could remember were scraps of instructions, not whether or not any of them could actually save her.
He shifted closer anyway, pressing his body against hers to share what little warmth he could.
“You’re okay,” he lied.
Spidey let out another weak, breathless laugh that immediately broke into a grimace.
“He’s gonna come back,” she whispered again.
“Don’t talk. Please. Just... don’t waste energy, alright?”
Fear sat thick and oily inside his stomach. He looked down at his own hands: the tremors, the dirt beneath his nails, the age spots standing stark against smeared blood and disgust curled through him all over again.
You weren't even man enough to pull the trigger.
He looked back at her to steady himself.
She looked impossibly small sitting there against the wall, pale beneath the grime and blood, eyes rimmed red and sunken with pain. Too young and too fragile for any of this. `
Carefully, tentatively, he brushed damp hair away from her forehead.
I’m not gonna let him touch you again.
The promise rose instantly in his chest. And just as quickly died there, because they both knew he couldn’t guarantee that.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said instead.
Spidey finally looked at him properly then, the distant glaze in her eyes clearing just enough to focus.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered.
A tired little smile twitched briefly at the corner of his mouth.
“I know,” he admitted. “I’m fucking terrified, okay? You scared the shit out of me.”
Her mouth pulled into a weak pout at that.
He hadn’t been lying. Seeing Wifies’ arm locked around her throat had terrified him in a way he hadn’t felt since outbreak day. Something primal in his ribcage, a trapped bird, wings flapping faster and faster in his heart.
He adjusted the pressure against her wound carefully. The bleeding had slowed a little. He knew it wasn't enough.
Still, as he sat there in the dark cellar listening for footsteps, he realized his hands had steadied somewhat, enough to function now. To function and keep trying.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured quietly. “Okay? I’ve got you.”
The words felt weak the second they left his mouth.
Because bandaging her wasn’t fixing her. Slowing the bleeding wasn’t saving her. Saving her would’ve meant stitches, antibiotics, a hospital, somebody who knew what the hell they were doing instead of an old coward desperately fumbling through his own childhood memories of outstanding post-apocalyptic healthcare.
He stared at the blood-soaked cloth pressed to her side and tried not to imagine what might be happening underneath it. A torn muscle, internal bleeding, an infection already settling in.
The cellar hummed softly around them while pipes groaned somewhere deep underground.
Spidey shifted suddenly.
“Easy,” he said immediately.
“I’m itchy.”
“That’s... probably a good sign.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he admitted quietly. “No, I don’t.”
She swallowed hard afterward, and his eyes locked onto the movement in her throat instantly, terrified the cut there might split wider.
“Were you really gonna shoot him?” she asked after a while.
His gaze dropped toward his hands again as Jawhn's words echoed faintly around his skull.
“I tried.”
“I’m sorry.”
A short breath escaped him, almost a laugh, hollow and disbelieving. The idea that she thought any of this was her fault felt absurd. Wifies was still alive because he hadn’t been brave enough to pull the trigger point blank. That was on him. It was because she was to close, he told himself.
“It’s not your fault,” he said firmly.
Spidey leaned her head back against the wall.
“I’m the reason we’re here,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t been stupid... if I hadn’t just believed him...”
“No. No, don’t do that.” His voice sharpened immediately. “He was gonna do this anyway, alright? If you didn’t trust him, we’d still end up here. Just sooner.”
She stared at him for a long moment, exhausted and hollow-eyed. Usually she would’ve argued by now, pushed back harder than that.
“Hear anything?” he asked after a while, mostly to keep her talking. “Is he coming back?”
“No,” she murmured. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s taking his time.”
The second she finished speaking, pain crossed her face hard enough that she shut her eyes.
Her hand drifted instinctively toward her side.
He caught her wrist gently.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She made a weak face at him but let her hand fall away.
Silence stretched again.
Every distant clang made his shoulders tense violently. Every groan of machinery sent adrenaline surging fresh through his bloodstream. He kept expecting Wifies’ calm voice to appear behind him at any second.
Nothing came.
“What do you think he’s doing?” Spidey asked quietly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It might,” she insisted weakly. “If he can’t find whatever he wants... or if something goes wrong... he might get upset.”
Wifies had moods. Sometimes he was loud. Sometimes he was eerily calm. Sometimes he was so damn conversational. And that was the worst one.
“Do you have any idea what we’re gonna do?” she asked finally, voice shrinking smaller with every word. “Like... right now?”
He didn’t. He didn’t have a single fucking clue.
“No,” he admitted, because making promises and making lies hadn't worked for him yet.
She looked at him for a long moment after that.
He remembered what she’d told him once about her father, that he always knew what to do, that he always had a plan.
Was she looking for that now?
“Maybe his ego catches up to him,” he said finally. “Maybe he gets what he wants and lets us go. We’re useful alive.”
Spidey didn’t look convinced.Truthfully, neither was he.
Without warning, another memory crashed into him: 4C limp and bloodied in the snow while Spidey sobbed somewhere behind him. Not man enough to comfort her. Not man enough to pull the trigger. Only useful for burying bodies afterward.
This helplessness felt so sickly similar.
“Hey.”
Her voice pulled him back instantly as he realized he'd gone distant again.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
His attention snapped back toward her fully. He needed to stay here, needed to keep her awake. He was all she had left now.
“I’m trying to think,” he said quietly.
“About what?”
About how badly this could still end. About whether he could kill Wifies if it came down to it. About whether he’d freeze up all over again.
Instead he said, “Getting us out.”
Spidey’s eyes drifted toward the stairs too, unfocused at first before they finally settled there.
“You think anybody knows where we are?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he answered after a second. “I made sure of it. I sprinted past all the idiots in that hostel, and Meagon and the rest of them, just to get down here.”
“Why?” Her brow pinched faintly. “I mean... they could probably help, right? What’s Wifies gonna do against all of them? Mr. Flux has a gun. Magic told me.”
He let out a tired breath through his nose.
“You think they’d believe me over you?” he asked. “Didn’t you tell them Wifies wasn’t hurting you?”
Spidey visibly deflated.
“...Yeah.”
Immediately, guilt twisted through him for saying it like that.
“No, no, look, you’re right,” he corrected quickly. “They know we’re down here with somebody, at least. But how would they even find this place? They don’t have his access thing.”
“Mhm.”
“Keep talking.”
“You literally just told me not to.”
“Well, I don’t know, just...” He rubbed a shaking hand over his mouth. “Stay lucid, okay? Please.”
Her breathing hitched unevenly for a few seconds after that, shallow little stutters that made his stomach tighten. He adjusted the pressure bandage again as carefully as he could. The bleeding had slowed more now. Not stopped, still definitely not stopped, but at least it was slower.
The room had grown colder over time, shifting from suffocating heat into something merely a little unbearable. Or maybe shock was finally settling into his own body too. His scraped knuckles burned constantly now, and every breath pulled sharply against bruised ribs from where Wifies had kicked him earlier. Dried blood tugged unpleasantly at the skin near his temple.
None of it mattered much compared to Spidey slumped against the wall trying not to pass out in front of him.
“When did you leave the hostel?” he asked.
The question came out too casually. He didn’t actually want the answer. He just needed her awake.
“The morning after you,” she muttered. “I realized you weren’t coming back.”
She swallowed.
“And-and I didn’t wanna stay around all those people,” she continued weakly. “They were all so close already, and I barely knew them. Felt like if things got bad enough they’d just shove me into that machine or throw me at infected to save one of their own. I mean...”
She looked over at him properly then and noticed the expression on his face. For a second he thought she’d stop digging.
Instead she quietly asked, “Why’d you burn down the church?”
His stomach dropped.
Shit.
“You saw that?”
“On my way back in,” she said. “With him.”
He opened his mouth automatically to lie, but nothing came out.
“I...” He swallowed hard. “I didn’t want you going there looking for me.”
She blinked at him in disbelief.
“That was your home, though,” she said softly. “For, like, however old you are. Did you seriously not want me there that badly?”
The question made him feel a little physically ill.
“No, Spidey, that’s not—” He stopped himself hard, dragging a trembling hand down his face. “I wanted the cure. I wanted you safe, okay? What happened to 4C couldn’t happen to you and I thought—fuck, I thought if I stayed away long enough maybe you’d survive me.”
His voice cracked slightly on the last word.
“But I was wrong. There is no cure. I left you alone for nothing, and it’s my fault we’re here now. All of it.” He stared down at his blood-covered hands. “You’re my family. I shouldn’t have left you.”
Spidey went quiet for a moment.
Then, very softly:
“...You’re my family too.”
An unfamiliar ache rose in his chest at that, an overwhelming and dreadful instinct to pull her close and hold onto her until the world stopped trying to kill them. The urge terrified him almost as much as losing her did.
It wasn’t possible anyway. She was one bad movement away from reopening half her wounds, and he hadn’t held another person like that in decades. Not since...
He remembered the first time she’d collapsed against him sobbing after 4C died, fingers digging crescent moons into his shoulders hard enough to hurt. The parking garage where they’d found that final goodbye and she’d folded silently into his arms. Every terrified little moment she’d chosen him despite everything. Because of everything.
Back then he’d only felt panic and exposure. Thinking with certainty that he was failing her somehow.
Silence settled between them again, heavy and exhausted rather than comfortable.
Then, quietly, Spidey reached over and threaded her fingers through his. The small trusting weight of her hand nearly made him sick with fear.
Wifies had terrified him. But this terrified him more.
“You know,” Spidey mumbled after a while, eyes half-lidded now, “I think you’re brave.”
A rough little snort escaped him.
“That’s because you’re bleeding out.”
“I’m serious,” she insisted weakly. “Jawhn was wrong.”
“He was trying to scare me. He literally had a gun on me, remember? I also missed Wifies twice from not that far away.”
That actually pulled a laugh out of her, breathless and sharp. She immediately winced afterward when pain shot visibly through her side.
“I forgot about that.”
He rolled his eyes tiredly. Eye.
“Well, your standards are clearly terrible.”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “Your aim just sucks. That doesn’t make you a coward. And fuck Jawhn anyway.”
“He’s not that bad.”
Spidey looked genuinely a little surprised.
“What do you mean he’s not that bad?”
“He and I talked,” he admitted reluctantly. “He’s half the reason I came back down here.”
“Well.” She squeezed his hand faintly. “That’s brave too. You could’ve just left.”
He rubbed at his face wearily.
“You should stay awake.”
“I am awake.”
“Not for long.”
“I’m bored.”
“You were stabbed.”
The second the words left his mouth, another realization crawled unpleasantly through him. That wound had already been there while Wifies held the katana at her throat. It had probably already been there the first time he’d tried shooting him too.
Had Wifies stabbed her while she still trusted him?
“And yet,” Spidey murmured weakly, “still awake.”
Then her expression twisted hard.
He straightened instantly.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“My side.”
“What kind of pain?”
“I don’t know what that means!”
“Sharp? Dull? Burning? Uh—pressure?”
“All of the above?” She swallowed tightly. “Feels wet again.”
His stomach dropped clean through the floor.
Carefully, carefully, he lifted the edge of the cloth.
Fresh blood welled sluggishly through the bandage.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Okay.
Okay, okay.
More pressure.
That was right. Right?
His hands moved automatically now, panic turning mechanical as he reinforced the bandage with another strip torn from his ruined shirt and pressed down harder.
Spidey hissed sharply through her teeth, her whole body trembling from it.
“I know,” he said immediately. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
He focused entirely on keeping his hands steady while warm blood seeped between his fingers again.
Not as fast as before but still too fast.
His thoughts kept spiraling into impossible calculations. How much blood a person could lose before they died. Whether moving her later would kill her faster. Whether they were even going to get a chance to run.
If.
That word poisoned every thought he had.
Spidey’s head lolled weakly toward him again. Her lips looked pale now. Her eyes looked heavy. Fear clawed instantly up his spine.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Talk to me.”
“You’re bossy.”
“And?”
“Why do you still have that accent if you’ve lived in Paradise City forever?”
“Good,” he muttered quickly. “Keep talking.”
“You seriously need a haircut.”
“You’re right.”
“How’d you even get those scars anyway?”
Her voice was softer now. A fresh wave of panic hit him.
“What was your dad’s name?” he asked suddenly before he could stop himself.
Spidey went still. For a second he thought she wouldn’t answer at all.
Then: “Why?”
“Because I asked.”
“That’s not a reason.”
He adjusted the bandage again, gentler this time.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Silence stretched.
Then, after nearly a full minute, she muttered the name so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.
He repeated it softly just to make sure.
Immediately she looked embarrassed.
“I don’t know why I told you that.”
“It’s okay.”
“You’re doing an old person voice again.”
“I always sound like this.”
“I know.”
Against all logic, he smiled.
The smile vanished the instant he heard movement overhead.
Both of them froze.
A muffled thump echoed somewhere overhead. Then another.
His entire body locked instantly. Beside him, Spidey’s fingers dug hard into the sleeve of his coat. Silence followed, stretched so long he almost convinced himself he’d imagined the noise entirely. Then came the slow scrape of something heavy dragging across the floor above them.
It moved in uneven cycles. Drag. Pause. Drag again. But the cellar itself never truly fell silent. Pipes ticked softly somewhere behind the walls, water dripped deep underground at irregular intervals, and whatever machinery kept this place unbearably hot let out occasional metallic groans as it struggled to cool itself down. But the movement upstairs had stopped now, and the absence of it only made him realize how violently his heart was pounding.
Spidey stared upward too, eyes narrowed despite the way exhaustion kept dragging them half-shut.
“You think he’s coming back now?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer immediately. Because yes. Probably.
Another sound drifted down through the ceiling before he could force out a lie. Footsteps this time. Slow. Measured. Unhurried as they crossed from one side of the room above them to the other.
His jaw tightened hard enough to ache.
Spidey shifted weakly against the wall beside him.
“I’m scared, Jonathan.”
The confession came out small. Childishly honest in a way that made panic squeeze painfully around his ribs.
Then came three calm knocks against the floorboards overhead. Measured and polite, like someone announcing themselves before entering a dinner party.
He tried to brace himself anyway, tightening muscles that already felt weak and shaky from exhaustion and blood loss. It was pointless. If Wifies came down those stairs again, there wasn’t much either of them could realistically do.
The latch upstairs clicked. A thin rectangle of warm yellow light split through the darkness as the cellar door slowly opened overhead. Light spilled down the stairs first. Then him.
Wifies descended without hurry, one hand gliding lazily along the railing as he stepped downward. He wore different clothes now. Fresh ones. Probably scavenged from the moon base above them. The jacket was dark gray instead of black, though the crescent moon stitched over his chest remained exactly the same. His sleeves were rolled neatly to his forearms like he’d merely interrupted some ordinary household chore to come check on them. There was dried blood along one cuff.
His eyes drifted calmly over both of them before a faint smile touched his face.
“Well,” he said pleasantly, “there you are.”
He felt Spidey tense instantly beside him, the reaction so immediate it was almost reflexive. Her breath caught high in her chest. Her fingers tightened harder around his sleeve. Fear moved through him just as quickly.
“You don’t look much better,” Wifies observed conversationally as he reached the bottom step. “That’s unfortunate.”
He sighed softly through his nose before crouching a few feet away from them, carefully maintaining distance like he didn’t want to spook a pair of injured animals.
“How’s the pain?”
Spidey’s brow furrowed faintly, but she didn’t answer. A quiet wince escaped her anyway when she tried straightening her back.
“That bad, huh?” Wifies tilted his head slightly. “Well. It’s good you finally got a bandage on it, right?”
He almost wished the man would start yelling. Threaten them. Rant. Foam at the mouth. Anything obvious. Anything outwardly human. Instead, Wifies spoke in the same calm tone someone might use discussing weather over a meal.
“I meant what I said,” he continued mildly. “Can’t have you bleeding out yet. I’m still not where I need to be.” His eyes flicked briefly toward the bandage pressed against her side. “Good placement too.”
He had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, so he said nothing.
Wifies seemed perfectly comfortable with the silence. He rested his forearms loosely against his knees while his gaze moved clinically across both their injuries, cataloguing them piece by piece.
“You two have a nice conversation while I was gone?” he asked.
Neither of them answered.
“I heard laughing earlier.”
Spidey looked visibly horrified.
“You were listening?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“I thought you were—”
“I was,” he interrupted calmly. “You were very loud.”
How the hell did this guy even move around so quietly?
His eyes kept dragging unwillingly toward Wifies’ hands. His clean fingernails and steady fingers. Completely rid of twitching or shaking, nothing without perfect precision lived inside of him. He operated direct and intentional as a surgeon.
Eventually Wifies’ attention lifted back toward his face.
“Spidey told me you said there was no cure.”
“There isn’t.”
“Well then, what exactly do you think this place is?” Wifies asked mildly. “What is the Atropos machine if not salvation?”
“Someone still dies if you use that thing.”
Wifies gave a small shrug.
“Not anyone that matters.”
Disgust twisted visibly across his face.
“So what?” he asked. “You wanna drag that thing back to M.O.O.N. so you can just pick and choose who deserves to live?”
“Yes.”
The answer came instantly and entirely untroubled.
Spidey shrank slightly beside him at the sound of it. He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again immediately.
The slash along his own side—the one he’d been trying very hard to hide from Spidey—throbbed sharply when he moved too much, and the last thing he needed right now was another wound added to the pile. Beside him, Spidey looked faintly sick staring at the blood soaking through his shirt.
A distant, ugly thought crossed his mind then. Did Wifies actually enjoy hurting people?
“You’re a good survivor, N—Jonathan.”
He flinched visibly at the correction.
There was absolutely no fucking way.
His head snapped up before he could stop himself, pulse spiking hard enough to make his ribs ache. For a second he almost asked how the hell he knew that name, but the answer lodged dead in his throat because there was no answer that wouldn’t make this somehow worse.
“Being selfish,” Wifies continued calmly, eyes drifting toward Spidey now, “is usually the correct choice.”
Something clicked unpleasantly into place.
Wifies had someone. The realization spread slowly and sickeningly through him. Someone important enough that he’d built an entire moral framework around keeping them alive. Pick and choose. Sacrifice whoever mattered less. His stomach turned. No. No, don’t start doing that.
Spidey’s breathing rattled wetly beside him, dragging his attention back where it belonged.
Wifies was still a fucking monster of a man.
“Don’t rise if you aren’t going to do anything.”
He blinked and realized too late he’d started lifting off the ground without noticing, muscles tensed like he meant to throw himself forward despite knowing perfectly well how badly that would end.
Slowly, he settled back again. For a moment none of them moved.
Then Wifies stepped past them toward an old metal shelving unit against the far wall. He crouched beside a crate underneath it, rummaged briefly, and pulled out a large plastic gallon jug.
Water.
Wifies unscrewed the cap.
Spidey stared openly now, exhausted enough that surprise had loosened her expression completely.
Wifies took a sip first.
Then he walked back over and held the jug out toward her.
Of course she didn’t take it.
“Not poisoned,” Wifies said mildly.
“What an honor,” he muttered.
“You’re welcome.”
Before Spidey could try reaching for it herself, he snatched the jug from Wifies’ hand. Wifies let go immediately, unbothered. He passed it carefully toward her instead.
Her hands shook violently trying to hold it steady. Water spilled down her chin and onto the front of her sweater while she drank. Wifies watched in silence for a while.
“You’re losing too much blood,” he told her finally.
“Then help her.”
The words left his mouth before he could stop them. Wifies’ attention shifted toward him instantly.
“There it is,” he said softly.
Shit. He realized too late what he’d done. Asked him for something.
Wifies crouched again, slower this time, studying him with unsettling calm.
“You hate needing things from me,” he observed quietly.
He didn’t answer.
“And yet...” Wifies was practically purring now.
“Can you help her or not?” he snapped.
“Yes,” Wifies replied calmly. “They do teach us things at M.O.O.N.”
Spidey shrank tighter against the wall immediately. Wifies ignored her reaction entirely.
“She needs stitches,” he continued matter-of-factly. “Antibiotics eventually, assuming she survives the next day or two. Fluids. Rest. Though the last two seem somewhat unlikely at the moment.”
“Then do it.”
“I can.”
Relief flickered through him before he could suppress it.
Tiny and involuntary
Wifies looked almost pleased as he took the water jug gently back from Spidey’s shaking hands. Wifies stared at him hard.
“What do you want for it?” he said, analyzing the look on Wifies' face.
“Compliance would be nice.”
“What the fuck else do you want from us?”
“This arrangement can remain temporary if you both listen to me,” Wifies said evenly. “When we return to M.O.O.N., I may even reward you if you stop slowing me down.” His eyes flicked briefly between them. “And if I don’t have to hurt either of you again.”
“Okay,” he said immediately.
Spidey looked over at him sharply, frightened confusion flashing across her face.
Wifies smiled almost jovially at the answer. Then his attention drifted toward the far side of the cellar.
“I do unfortunately need to move you.”
Every muscle in his body tightened instantly.
“Don’t.”
“You can barely stand,” Wifies replied calmly. “And this section floods when the pipes back up.”
“What?”
“It’s an old cellar.”
“How do you even know that?”
Wifies shrugged lightly.
“You’re going to stand up now,” he said. “Preferably before I die of old age, or before I have to hurt you again, because you already know how that ends.”
Then, finally, he extended a hand toward Spidey.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Up.”
She didn’t take it immediately.
He looked from her, to Wifies’ hand, then back again.
Every instinct in his body screamed not to trust him.
But Spidey was barely staying conscious now. Her breathing had gone thinner, uneven enough that panic kept surging fresh through his chest every time she paused too long between breaths.
Slowly, weakly, she reached out. Wifies caught her forearm carefully. Actually carefully. His grip adjusted automatically when pain nearly made her collapse outright.
“Easy,” he murmured.
He forced himself upright a second later, bruised ribs screaming hard enough to blacken the edges of his vision for a moment. Wifies glanced over at him briefly.
“Told you,” he said mildly. “You look terrible too.”
Then he guided them both toward the deeper end of the cellar, toward a narrow corridor disappearing into darkness somewhere beyond the furnace room.
“Remember,” Wifies said conversationally as they walked, “Spidey stays in the back.”