handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

This is Rosita. I'll hit you back when I can.

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[ Following this nonsense. Normally, he'd text. Save time. Avoid extraneous details. Normally, he hasn't had his head smashed repeatedly into the ground and been stabbed multiple times. Only reason he hasn't bled out already is because Grayson's blood and the fact that Felix, inexplicably, tied the wounds off.

Funny, that.

He's alive. Not by much. Managed to drag himself out of the open, at least, but not much further. ]

I could use an assist...

[ He drops a pin. Odds are fairly good she won't respond at all. But he doesn't have a lot of people he can call. ]

[It strikes her immediately that he doesn't text; that's such an uncharacteristic thing from him that she is instantly and deeply suspicious, especially with everything going on in the city. Then there's how he sounds: slow, rough. Slurred. It barely sounds like him at all except she knows it is.

She knows it is. She stares at the pin for a full ten count, not moving, not thinking. Then she answers:] Ten minutes. [And cuts the connection.]

Edited Date: 2022-12-07 03:12 am (UTC)

The fog's gone, probably. His vision's gone funny to compensate. All blurred light and sound. Instinctively, Carver drags himself as clear as he can. His leg's fucked, probably his shoulder too, and he can feel -

Ah. Not much. Too much. All at once. Fun times. But if you don't get clear, the rotters will find you on the ground. Have to get clear.

He drags himself until he finds a wall and slumps against it, the knife grasped loosely in his hand. Bleeding in and out of consciousness. He's not dead, though only just. A good, proper lesson. If he can't get clear, then the others will leave him behind. Can't be weak. Can't slow your people down.

There's someone there. Carver coughs, resting his head against the wall. The world keeps blurring. "Leah...?"

Rosita is cautious, still perplexed by what's going on, still wary because of Tumenalia. She doesn't bring one of the rifles she stole from Veracity guards - she doesn't need that involved in a fight like the one she and Carver got into before - but she does bring a handgun in addition to her knife, circles the area before she comes directly to the pin.

She finds the trail of blood. She's on edge as she follows it and when she sees him her expression hardens and her eyes darken. She does not make the mistake of running directly to him, but instead waits to make sure they're alone.

Then and only then does she come to him, sideways along the wall he's leaned against, dropping down from over the top of it. He asks if she's Leah and she doesn't have space right now to feel anything about that, she just says, "Rosita," and sets her gun down by her knee so she can use both hands to check him over, quick and sure and not as careful as she once was as a civilian. "What happened?" He won't be able to tell her a lot, she suspects, but she needs a gist anyway.

Rosita. Right. He called her, Carver thinks distantly, for an assist. Earlier, they tried to kill each other for no real reason he can think of. Snapping at each other, yeah that might've been them. But getting her on the ground, trying to strangle her -

That was something else. One day they might go at each other again but he always thought there would be a reason. And if there was, he can't remember it now. Must've been one, right?

She checks him. Carver slows his breathing down, tries to focus. Give a status report. It's not the first time he's done this, or been this fucked up when it happened, but it's been a while. Rotters are one thing, but people - oh, people will mess you right up, won't they? Every time, it's always worse because of people and not the dead. One of God's little ironies. "Fight."

Fucking Felix happened.

"He's...gone," Carver mutters. "Mhmmh. Got stabbed. Think he cracked my skull."

Definitely cracked his skull.

Rosita has seen men with cracked skulls before; she still dreams about the sound bone makes when it cracks under muscle and metal and wood, the wet crunch and squelch of grey matter being forced out the spaces in between, the way blood rushes out of all those blood vessels in the scalp and behind the eyes and ears. She vividly remembers the way it smells, and the way the speech garbles when it's too late, when it's a killing blow. The way Abraham had sounded, so intently focused on getting out three last defiant words - the way Glenn had choked on Maggie's name.

Her gut drops but her hands don't falter as she brushes against the blood matted back of his head, as she checks the tourniquets that have been applied, the mess of his shoulder. She's not shy of blood. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. She tucks hair behind her ear and scoops her gun back up, checking around them.

"Okay," she says, stubborn, her voice hard. The rest can wait. He got into a fight, thinks the man is gone, but he's in no condition to know for sure so she checks again that she didn't walk right into someone else's trap and then stands. "Okay. Pull your shit together, we're leaving. I need you to help me help you walk." She's spotted his whip a few feet away and she gathers it up, loops it over her own chest; she might need it. Then she reaches for him.

"Get up. We're going to find a doctor." It won't do any good but they have the option here and she won't do nothing, not again.

Pull your shit together, she says, and it sounds so like Leah that part of Carver just settles. Sometimes, in the field, you have to kill pieces of yourself. Shunt them aside, put them into little boxes, and survive. Felix didn’t put him down, called it a fucking mercy like a taunt. Too weak to kill so now you have to live with that shit.

He might die anyway, Carver realizes distantly, but they’ve got no time for that shit now. Rosita’s voice is hard, booking no bullshit, and that makes it simple.

“Uh huh,” he agrees, bracing a hand against the wall. He’s too heavy for her to carry. Means he has to get his shit together, stop being dead weight. Get them clear. “We’re, uh…we’re gonna do that…”

The world lurches. He sheaths his knife and nearly faceplants when he braces against the wall, trying to haul himself back up, but he doesn’t. He’s got a job to do. He won’t be dead weight.

He's too heavy for her to carry, but thank god - thank god - her arm is healed and she can bring both of them to bear now without hurting herself more. He's not the first wounded camp member she's dragged back through hostile terrain to safety, although she's usually better used scouting ahead for walkers and clearing the way or drawing them off while someone else does this part if they have that option. Doesn't matter. There aren't any walkers here, everyone keeps reminding her, and she definitely doesn't have the option. Not before Carver bleeds out on her right here and now.

Doesn't matter. He's probably going to die. She'll do her absolute best, and when he nearly goes down she's right there leveraging her shoulder under his, fist clenched in his clothes over his opposite hip, bracing under the bulk of his weight trying to go down again.

"Focus," she snaps, less because she thinks he's not, but because she needs him to keep doing it. She feels blood beginning to soak into her clothes from his but that doesn't matter either - that almost feels right to her, certainly feels more real than the designer leather and the silk she has in her closet now, and she'll hate that she feels better for it later.

Doesn't matter. "Let's go." She'll drag him if she has to - even if she knows within the first few yards that they aren't going to make it to a doctor, and angles them instead for the line of buildings nearby.

“Uh huh,” Carver agrees distantly. It’s not the first time he’s gotten so fucked up that he can’t watch his own corners anymore, that he’s bleeding all over the place and feeling the world go strange all around him. He doesn’t know where they’re going and can’t think to ask. He just moves because if he stops, if he slows for even a second, he’s going to fall and it’ll be over. Everything feels fuzzy and soft. It barely even hurts anymore.

That’s not good, really.

Leah got hit this bad once. Sniper got her in the head and her helmet stopped the worst of it but she went down hard and the second shot got her in the vest, dead on. There was so much goddamn blood, soaking into her armor and down his back when he carried her. No extraction team, no backup, no corpsman to save her life or tag her black for the bodybag. There was just the two of them, sole survivors, and no room to think. Carver put her on his back and ran, he ran with her and begged her not to die. Ten miles back to base, under the wire, and she was fine at the end. Just had her bell rung. They laughed about it later.

Nobody’s laughing this time, he thinks distantly.

“‘s not good, Rosita,” he slurs, boots dragging against the ground. It’s hard to focus. His vision keeps blurring. “I’ll…keep my feet.”

Keep going. He’s got a feeling that it’ll be over the moment he stops.

"When is it ever good? Keep going. Take another step."

She's exhausted already, keeping him upright with sheer muscle, moving them forward with more of the same even though she doesn't have much brute strength to spare. She doesn't have none, she's determined and she's survived this long for a reason, but Carver can't help her much at all.

It's not good. "Take another step," she orders, not loud but harsh, twisting her fingers into anything she can keep hold of. She kicks some trash out of their way, almost loses both of their balance for her trouble, but she's never given up. She's not starting now, even if she's already listening for the telltale wet gasping that all walkers seem to make immediately.

If he dies and turns, she's too wrapped around him to make it away in time. She's seen it happen. Best keep him talking so she'll know.

"Who the fuck did you tangle with? Take a step. Take a step, dammit - good. Almost there."

“Some…some fucking jarhead…”

Insult to injury: getting fucked over by a goddamn Marine. If he lives, his pride will never recover. Carver sways, the world blurring yet again, sky gone strange, but nothing hurts—not a single goddamn thing—and the good thing about forward momentum is that it can keep you going for a good long while. If he stays in motion, then he’ll stay upright.

It’d be really goddamn pathetic if he dies like this, Carver thinks. If he kicks it even after Felix, in an oh-so-deliberate twist, spat in his mouth and didn’t slit his throat. Carver took a chunk out of his lip, strangled him hoarse, but it wasn’t enough, was it?

God, he hates this. Being fucked over by a Marine of all goddamn people. He starts to say so, tell Rosita about it because she might not understand the slander, being a civilian and all before the world ended, but the thought blurs: it slips away before he can think to voice it.

He’s in a bad way. Really bad.

One step, then another. So it goes. Don’t falter, don’t slow. Don’t drag her down. Maybe he should’ve found a hole to lie down in, somewhere dark and quiet, the way animals do when they know they’re fucked. Would’ve been cleaner, in the end.

Carver sighs, soft and slow. He doesn’t hurt, at least. It’s not good but it’s something.

“Won’t, uh. Won’t turn if I die,” he manages, voice distant and strange even to him. That part’s important. She won’t have to put him down if he comes to that. He won’t try to bite her.

"I know. I won't let that happen."

Everyone keeps saying there are no walkers here but she doesn't even notice right now, doesn't even remember; she just makes him the promise she's made every single person she cares about, aloud or not, and doesn't so much as blink up from what she's trying to do here. Where she's trying to get them.

She's sweating and panting by the time they reach the cover of the buildings, but he doesn't stop so neither does she, her voice a constant stream of minute physical direction for which foot to move and where, when. It's a herculean effort to get them up the few stairs, and she braces him in the doorway by leaning against him so she can clear the hallway, so she can listen for footsteps and breathing (and gasping and claws and dead weight being dragged tirelessly forward, but it won't be him, that won't ever be him while she's here). The apartment at the bottom of the stairs has been used by other squatters, it might cause some kind of dispute if someone comes in here, but she can close the windows, close the doors, air out the fog. She can put a wall at their back and limit entry points. She can send for help to this address.

It's not much, but she's slept on the floor of worse.

"Okay," she says, "okay. Right here, we're here, let's get you down before you fall down," she pants, sliding her gun away so she can use both hands, both aching arms to help lower him to the floor. She'll barricade the room as best she can, secure it, and then come back to crouch at his side and check the wounds again. "Keep talking to me, just a bit longer, give me just a few minutes to do something with these -" she tells him, pulling the small canteen of water off over her head to offer some before she starts cleaning, shrugging off her bloodstained jacket to give him as a pillow, firing off a few mostly hopeless texts to try and find any kind of help that might get here in time.

The rest is a blur. For the best, probably. He's not coherent enough to help her secure the area, or do a threat assessment. Too fucked up to do anything but slide down to the floor as they finally stop, and she eases him down. Just a little longer, she says, keep talking to me, and that's a familiar line right there. It's one he's used before, for brothers and sisters who got fucked up just like this. Some of them made it through, but a lot of them didn't. No real medical care to offer, no corpsmen or doctors to call. It was just in God's hands.

Turner died like this, he thinks distantly. Skull cracked open. Glass shoved into his eye. They felt broken ribs when they laid his body out. Not an easy way to go.

"Uh huh," he agrees, and he manages to drink some of the canteen. Not much. Now, it's starting to hurt. An ugly throb in his shoulder. Pulsing. "We, uh. Room clear?"

They're inside somewhere. He doesn't recognize it. Wasn't coherent enough to mark the landmarks when they were moving.

She works quickly and by the time she's back at his side, her hands aren't shaking with the effort of moving him anymore, but that's about all that can be said for their situation improving. He's still bleeding sluggishly from the hamburger that is his one shoulder; she still can't do a damn thing for that indent she found in the back of his head out there and doesn't dare touch it again in case something shifts.

She hates when there's nothing she can do, but it's not like she's unpracticed at it.

"We're clear," she answers. "We weren't going to make it to a clinic anywhere, I'm trying to get one to come to us, but Carver -"

It's not good, the dull note in her voice says. She uses a bit of the water to unstick some of his clothes from around the wounds, uses her knife to cut the holes a bit wider, but it doesn't make anything better.

"Carver, it's bad. I'd leave to get someone but I don't think I'd make it back." And she doesn't want him alone, for practical reasons as much as - goddammit - just not wanting to.

The world keeps blurring in and out of focus. Carver blinks slowly, watching shapes form on the ceiling. Clouds and crystals, his brain trying to make sense of his own blurring vision and the inevitable sort of end for this shit. Because it’s familiar, the way that people go still and quiet after catastrophic damage, and sometimes they pull through but a lot of the time they just fade, inch by inch, until there’s nothing left to do except put a blade through their skull and then bury what remains.

They always tried to bury their dead, Carver thinks distantly. Sometimes they couldn’t, but they always tried.

It’s bad, Rosita says, and Carver just sighs.

Yeah. It’s bad.

“‘s okay,” he murmurs, slowing his breathing down. It’s starting to hurt, now. He wonders if that’s worse. “You got me, uh. Got me clear…”

At least now he won’t die in the street. And maybe—maybe—he won’t die alone.

That’s something, at least.

“‘s okay, Rosita,” he repeats softly.

It's not okay, but one thing the end of the world taught those that managed to survive it is that life does not care about what individual people want. It does not matter what they deem okay and what they rail against. It does not care about fair, or right, or when enough is enough. Rosita has learned this lesson over and over and over, so there's no rage rising up in her at the impending loss.

People don't die here, except sometimes they do, and sometimes they come back different, and anyway it's not like she's used to that yet so she can only think of this as a loss. She can only sit here and hold vigil while he dies or doesn't, while someone comes in time or doesn't, until she has to sever his brainstem entirely and then get up and keep going.

She shakes her head. "It's not," she says, but it's calm even if her voice is tight even to her ears. She moves hair off his face, tucking it behind his ear delicately. "But I can't do anything about it." She has no supplies, no knowledge of what to do now. Someone already did everything she would have done, everything she learned to get someone to Siddiq.

She shifts over close enough that she can sit cross legged beside him, lean over so he can see her in his periphery without having to turn his head. She considers letting herself feel something, but not yet, she holds it off for a bit longer yet.

"You said it was a jarhead. Did you know him? Why - or was it the fog?" Details she needs to know because the only thing she can make okay if Carver dies is making sure the man who got him doesn't just keep going like it's nothing.

“These things…happen…”

That’s the sad truth. You accept it or you’ll never get through. Felix didn’t finish him off and called it mercy, however it started, but really it was a lesson. One of those abject brutalities that show you where God stands. A blessing, however it was intended. If he survives, then he’ll be stronger for it. And if he dies—

If he dies, then he’ll deserve it for his weakness. And he’ll come back remembering it.

Rosita’s there, though. Touching his hair, sitting close. And that—

That helps, a little.

Carver blinks slowly, exhaling. Yeah, it’s starting to hurt. A sharp throb in his shoulder. A deeper ache in his skull.

Not good, probably. Means the last of his adrenaline’s dumped.

“Mhmm. Calls himself…” Carver winces, trying to focus. “Felix. Found him in the…in the fog.”

They collided. Tried to kill each other. Carver strangled him for a bit.

“Got him good. He, uh. Got me better…”

There’s some grudging respect in that. One fighter to another, one professional to another.

"Yeah, he did," she agrees, memorizing the name. Felix. A Marine. She'll remember, and if it comes to that, she'll make sure Felix knows that she knows.

But that's for later. She sets that aside for now too, and this is when she has the thought that she's sorry she's not Leah.

"I'm sorry about earlier, Carver. I don't know what happened. I wasn't really angry with you - or, well, I was. But I'm not now, and I wasn't before that, so." She has no idea how much he understands, but she leans over again as she talks, lifting one eyelid and then the other - unequal pupils; fuck, fuck - and leaves her hand resting against his forehead like she might have checked for a fever once.

These things happen. It's not okay but they do.

"'s okay. Was...was a good fight..."

The world's blurring again. Going soft around the edges, a kaleidoscope of light and color blooming behind his eyes. It's hard to focus, to make sure his words come out halfway clear. He spares a thought for brain damage, the toll of blast injuries and TBIs he saw before the fall, but then it slips away.

It hurts now. A deep, throbbing ache in his skull. Radiating out. He shifts his head slightly, pressing into her hand without thinking. It's a rare kindness not to die alone.

"'s okay..."

And then the world just

goes

quiet.

"Carver?" she asks, quietly, but he doesn't answer; his chest is still rising and falling f unevenly, but he doesn't answer, he doesn't even flinch when she strokes her thumb against his temple trying to elicit any kind of reaction, and something about that is what finally knots up in her chest.

She knows people die. She's seen it, and the living bury them or they don't and life goes on regardless. Still, her throat goes tight and her breath hitches and it's stupid because he's still alive but she's watching for that moment when he stops breathing. She sets her fingertips against the pulse point in his neck and waits for his heart to stop beating, her knife at her hip, ready for when it's a done deal either way. She texts Jesus, she texts Rhys, she doesn't know who else to even ask so eventually she sets the phone aside too and picks up Carver's hand instead, her thumb - fingers still on his pulse - stroking over his collar bone so he'll know someone is here anyway. She doesn't talk at first, just swipes the occasional tear off her cheek when one rolls down mostly quietly, unafraid to let herself feel it because she knows she'll do what needs to happen anyway. She waits.

And waits. And waits. His breathing never stops. His heart never stills. She begins to doubt her decision not to try and make the hospital in the Up anyway, but it's a moot point regardless. She's about to switch tactics when she leans over and notices that the leg wound she cleaned up a bit seems... better. Her brow furrows but she's sure of herself, and when she goes to check his shoulder she realizes the stab wound from her not so long ago is gone completely.

She doesn't understand it, but it means she sits back down, and she waits, legs touching his good shoulder, both of her hands on him, expression troubled and voice low as she hums too softly to carry past the few feet around them.

Sometimes, the damage is so heavy in the body that the rest of you just goes away. Up into a little box on a shelf, tucked away, locked down tight. It's human nature. Mind can only take so much. Sometimes, you can't exist inside of yourself, so you go away. It's something Pope taught him and the others how to do, how to master. Endurance, faith, you will fucking survive this, son. Or he'll die, and forever remain a disappointment to his brothers.

He drifts. He doesn't dream. And that's it for a while, until - inch by inch - he starts coming back.

It hurts. That's the first sign.

Second: he can hear someone humming. Feel them sitting close, pressed against him.

Oh, he thinks, and takes a shallow breath. Counts in his head on the exhale. God, his head fucking hurts.

"...Leah?" he manages, very softly. Cracks his eyes, stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

He's not dead. He's hurting, but he's not dead.

Funny, that.

She's still not Leah, and this time she lets herself feel that little bit of - not regret, she doesn't want to be Leah Shaw, but she is sorry she isn't someone who would be a source of comfort for Carver. Sorry that what she has to say is that Leah still isn't here.

"Rosita," she says again, voice even as the tune breaks apart on her name. Her hand shifts up to Carver's jaw to steady him from trying to move before she can say, "Don't move. We're safe for now. Stay still."

He's not dead, but she's still not really sure how, and she waits to see if he'll come further up or go back under before she tries more than the most basic reassurances - before she takes her hand back because he never likes to be touched when he feels cornered.

Oh, he thinks, and closes his eyes again. Not Leah, not his sister. And there's a pang of loss in that, of sorrow. More than anything, he wants to stand by her side again - even just one more time. He'd take another beating just to prove it, stand for drowning, the fires, anything. Just one more time.

But that's a drifting, tangled thought. He lets it go.

Rosita's here, her hand on his jaw. Steadying him. Normally, he'd pull away. Now, it's just happening. Don't move, she says, we're safe for now.

Oh, he thinks. Okay. That's nice.

"Don't think I'm gonna die," he says after a while, eyes still closed. Trying to catalog all the hurts, realizing he misses her hand on him. Something steadying. Usually when he's hurt he tunnels up like an animal. Goes to ground until he's strong enough to protect himself again. But his brothers always protected him, his sisters watched his back. And that's not Rosita, but she's something.

It occurs to Carver then that he trusts her.

"You okay?"

Rosita is oblivious to this revelation beside her, watching from where she's stayed close enough that her thigh is still laid along his good shoulder where she's sitting beside him, but her hands in her lap now. Her gaze alert.

The slur in his speech is gone. Still slow, still cautious, like the first steps out on a previously shattered limb, but clear. She'll wait until he opens his eyes himself to check his pupils but she's beginning to suspect she'll know what she sees there, too.

"Doesn't seem like it," she agrees, confused, but then he asks that and she has to laugh because she didn't do anything except sit here and worry, sit here and wonder. "I'm fine. I called off the reinforcements, you want me to get someone in here, get you to a hospital?"

"Mhmph. No. I'll...."

He lifts his hand, waves it vaguely. It hurts - goddamn, it's starting to hurt now - but that's familiar. It's always worse the day after a hard fight. Hits harder, hits deeper. He's going to feel this for a long time. Probably going to be carrying fresh scars from it, a constant reminder of his fuckups. But then, he took a chunk out of Felix too, didn't he? Got the whip around his throat and squeezed.

Yeah. That motherfucker will be carrying a reminder, too.

Carver exhales. Opens his eyes and rubs at his face. Ow. "I'll be okay, I think. It's just gonna suck for a while."