aut_nihil | (no subject)

The leader finishes first, going still with a grunt and then biting Pope hard on the shoulder before he pulls out. It'll leave a mark. The sort of thing that'll ache until it heals. He watches almost idly as he does his belt up, patting Pope's hip.

"Told you we'd make him cry," he observes, with a cool sort of triumph.

Carver holds tight onto Pope's wrist. Crying almost silently as he's fucked, every nerve overstimulated and hurting. He flinches when the enemy finishes and shoves his head down.

Pope's temper snaps. He launches himself, naked and bleeding and miserable, and tackles the man fucking Carver to the ground. Punches him, grabs his head, jamming his thumbs in the man's eyes, slamming his head against the floor over and over.

The world tilts. It feels like the aftermath of an explosion. Carver pushes himself up, tries to stand, but his legs are like rubber and he stumbles. Has to brace himself against the bed as the leader stalks closer, drawing a knife. Advancing on Pope.

No, Carver thinks, no, no, no.

He's crying when he lashes out. Grabbing the leader's wrist and twisting hard. The fucker's so surprised he drops the blade and it's easy, isn't it, just to open his belly up so his guts spill out.

They're outnumbered but it turns out the element of surprise and raw, visceral hatred can make up a lot of ground. Pope gets off the man and attacks the next closest guard, relying on years of experience. He gets slashed across the chest and it bleeds badly but he gets the knife away and slits the man's throat. He spins, looking for Carver.

The iron tang hangs so heavy in the air. Carver staggers, catching a blow across the face that sends him sprawling into a painful heap. But he twists enough to slash someone's leg open and get them down hard enough to cut their throat, to stab and keep stabbing.

He's crying furiously, silently, blood thick against his hands.

And like that it's just them in the room, the sounds of men gurgling as they die, and the slap of the knife in that last man's torso over and over.

"Carver! We're going!"

He grabs pants, pulls them on. Boots. Get boots, too.

Oh, God. The knife cuts his palm where the blood makes the blade slip. Carver lowers the knife down, staring at the corpse. Feeling nothing, or feeling too much. And he's crying, just like he did his first time in combat.

Slowly, very slowly, he reaches for his pants. Gets them on mechanically. His boots, too. Feeling nothing at all.

Pope raids the bodies for weapons, and he looks at Carver.

"Pull it together," he tells him, but gently. "We're going home."

Carver just stares at him, utterly silent. He takes a gun from one of the dead and a jacket too. Zipping it up to hide the blood. This isn't happening to him, Carver decides then. It's happening to someone else ad he's just floating.

Time to find out if Carver can hack it, he thinks. He gets a gun and it's loaded and he feels so, so much better with it in his hands.

He opens the door and takes point, leading the way down the hallway.

There's pain, he thinks. Someone else feels pain. Someone else checks the clip in his pistol, ensuring its function. Someone else follows Pope out and covers his back. Someone else shoots the guard coming round the bend twice in the chest.

They're so many stories up, Pope knows. He's tried to count but it isn't until they're in the elevator that he realizes it's 14. Or is it 13? This is an old building, a nice one, a classy one that skips the 13th floor out of superstition.

And they've left it with a massacre to clean up. He feels grim pleasure about that.

Down to the lobby.

He shoots the first person he sees, doesn't care if it's a civilian or not.

They move. Step after brutal step. Someone empties the clip, collects another from the fallen. On and on it goes, step after step. Floor after floor until they hit the lobby.

They don't stop. Not even until they're in the sunlight.

"You know how to hotwire a car?" He asks, because none of the bodies had keys and he doesn't know which cars belong to their captors anyway.

There's a question. It takes a moment for the words to shift into something recognizable. Carver doesn't quite look at Pope, but he nods. His grandma taught him how to strip the wires. How to make the connection close when she got drunk and lost the keys to her truck.

He moves, moves, moves from car to car until he finds one that's unlocked. "Get to it," he tells Carver, taking up a position to cover him if anyone comes out of the hotel. No one has yet, but it's only a matter of time. "Fast."

There's pain when he bends. A distant, sharp ache. Pulsing with his heart. Carver ignores it. Takes the knife and yanks the wires down in the driver's seat, stripping them to force the connection. The engine clicks, but it doesn't turn over. He keeps going. Utterly focused even as blood runs hot and thick down his hands; he's torn his hands; he doesn't remember the wounds.

But he gets the car started. He puts his seatbelt on.

Pope gets in the other side. He has to sit crooked; it hurts to sit up straight.

"Get us home," he tells Carver, his voice ragged with pain.

Carver doesn't say a word. He just drives. The gas tank is full. He takes them back home, driving until the blood dries. As his hands ache and he starts to shiver again. To feel cold, and uncertain. Shaky.

He almost gets them back before he has to pull over abruptly, before he crashes them into something and kills them both.

"I'm in shock," he explains distantly.

Pope is shirtless. His chest is still bleeding, and he has nothing to staunch it with, so it just runs and runs and it ruins the upholstery and his pants.

Carver pulls them over and it shakes him out of a daze. "Switch me," he says, and he sees a coat in the backseat. He makes a decision, puts it on Carver instead of using it for his own wounds. "Keep that wrapped on you, we have to get you warm," he says, and he makes sure Carver's seatbelt is on before he starts driving, the heat blasting on full.

The world tilts. Carver curls into himself, his hands shaking. He can't manage the seatbelt so Pope does it for him. Just like Pope wrapped the coat around him and turns the heat on high.

He's shaking. Curling into himself, rocking even though it hurts. His skin doesn't feel like his skin anymore.

"We're going home," he murmurs. "Right?"

"We're going to Shaw." He can't stand for his men to see him like this. But she's safe. She's always been safe, for him and for Carver.

"Recite something for me, Carver." To keep him talking, to try to get him focused.

Shaw. Big sister. Carver shudders hard, closing his eyes. He wants to disappear into himself. Stop existing. He wants to cry. He wants Riley.

He clears his throat. Trying to think. "In a village of La Mancha, the, mhmm, name of which I have no desire to call to mind . . ."

The words trail off. Carver goes quiet. He takes one ragged breath, then another. "There lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing . . ."

Pope reads. Not many classics, though, not in a long, long time. He grunts. "What's a lean hack?"

"An old horse," Carver murmurs. "He calls it Rocinante. Workhorse, in Spanish. He thinks it's grand, but it's just an old horse..."