TEINAR > Wastelands

Nothing Says 'Hello' Like A Fist to the Face [Neph!]

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Lion:
Ibsen meant that threat in every sense of the word. If Kostya went and did something dumb - like getting himself killed - Ibsen would kill him. Be right over him when he woke up again with a knife to stick through his temple for being so goddamn stupid. Ugh! It was even far too late now to go back and head to the Outpost. He was already on the trail, and when he saw the bikes...

Ibsen's stomach lurched, a sickening twist that made his eyes narrow underneath the goggles. Dust caught in his hair, ruffling the hood only slightly. A creeping frigid ache swept into that twisting gut, and it hurt to breathe for the briefest second. The longest second. If Ibsen didn't know any better, he might have assumed the toxic air was the pain that was grating on the inside of his throat, the acidic burn that made it raw.

No, he wasn't going to be too late. If the idiot was going to die, it was going to be by Ibsen's hand. The bike revved and he followed the group. Far too easy, but then again, the only one less subtle than the other nightmares out here were Ruckus and Rampage. The creeping ache dug clawed finger tips deep into his side, gouging into his ribs and he swallowed down rising bile.

They weren't together, but whether it was one or the other to be sure. Granted, the former, inherently worse than the latter. Ibsen didn't even hesitate, no twitch or tension in the muscles save for the ones that relayed the grip on the clutch.  These raiders weren't trying to hide.

Somewhere in that haze, Ibsen wanted to look away. The sour sickness would come and go. But instead he watched, just at the edge of that cliff overhang. Watched everything and that knot grew tighter. He forced himself to watch.

"Hey, Charlie! Come over here! Look. I got the mailman's balls! HAHAHA!"

"Hey! Rampage said to save that cutting for him! I'm gonna take a piss. Don't chop him up all the way. Nice and slow, boss said."

Words that jabbed into his brain, and tendriled down into his brain and ignited it in painful shock waves. Patience was wearing thin and it was all Ibsen could do to keep from raining down whatever bullets were lingering in his gun onto them. Just so they would stop. That would get him killed too, it was stupid, he knew. Maybe if the found him, he'd get lucky, stake his bowie knife right through Rampage's heart.

But just like that they were gone and the storm was over. Ibsen listened for a long set of minutes, until the bikes were gone in the quiet. Just to make sure they weren't coming back. And when he was sure, he went down to the where they left Kostya. Bleeding, trying to move, to feel for something that wasn't there.

"Oh Blue."

"Don't speak. Save your energy. Take deep breaths," Ibsen grumbled loud enough between the two of them. Afraid of being too loud, of summoning more things in the dark that never had enough sense to stay where they belonged.  "Kostya. You fucking idiot."  No malice in that phrase, however, no need for vindication. No 'I told you so's. Instead, Ibsen knelt down beside that stripped down bleeding form and felt the sickness come back.

"Stay with me. It's me. It's Blue." His voice was made soft and with a great deal of effort, he managed to roll Kostya over, and hooked his arms around his neck. Ibsen held strongly to those arms, letting go would mean all that effort wasted, all of it lost. The heat of adrenaline afforded strength enough to pile drive a man into the ground. Kostya was even heavier as limp as he was, but like hell was he going to leave him here.

Ibsen used his own body as a stand, leaning the messenger's against his frontand staggering onto the bike, draping Kostya's legs over his lap. There he could hold him easier in the crook of his arms. Blood would cover everything, nothing that couldn't be cleaned. Nothing that couldn't be repaired. Nothing was broken until it was a skeleton in the ground.

"It's Blue," he whispered periodically, revving the back back to life and guiding it out of that overhang. Out to anywhere that wasn't here. A shack. He remembered that shack that wasn't far from here. Right? God he hoped so. Ibsen waited only a second to navigate, listening for the quiet, and anything else that dared disrupt it and the soft breathing that came through the mask. "It's me. It's Blue."

A small shack in the middle of nothing, that still stood, and only one side was completely charred. Bones littered the ground, and the front wheel of that bike snapped a femur that stuck over the ground. A wide door that had a buckshot holes in it, and nothing but empty shell casings in the ground. What was once a supply dump for people passing through, now fallen into disuse. It used to be where you could take what you needed, then put back what you didn't, to replenish the stock.

Used to be. How long ago was that even? Ibsen didn't know, just that it was squat enough to be obscured from view and the door wide enough to hide the bike.  No one but Kostya it seemed crossed these sands anymore.

The weight of a grown man in his lap made his legs numb and Ibsen fell from the bike the moment they were inside. The topple got the mailman off him, however, and he scrambled to close the door, peeking out through the buckshot holes for any signs of life.

"Why didn't you get mad, Kostya? Any real asshole would have gotten mad for leaving you there like that. Why didn't you make me take you with me?"  Pointless questions given to a dying man. "Hold on.  This will only hurt a second."  No bullets but mother taught Ibsen how to make a kill quick and easy. A slit throat was rarely pleasant, and made them choke on their blood. Already he was bleeding. Ibsen slid himself underneath Kostya's head, and took that bowie knife in the space between the third and fourth ribs, digging deep and waiting until Kostya went still.

There he stayed, dropping the knife to the ground, and holding the revolver, hammer half-cocked, and balanced it over the mailman's chest, barrel pointing to the door. Just in case.

nephero:
This was different.

Normally when Kostya got murdered, he was left at the scene of the crime. Why waste the effort hiding something that no one out here cared about? It wasn't as if there was any law in the Wastes, any roving bands of police officers who would happen upon him and seek justice. It wasn't as if he had family who'd want to collect the body, give it a proper burial, say proper goodbyes.

This was different. Rampage and his fucking goons had finally, mercifully left. Given, it meant he was in for a long, slow, painful death, but it also meant Rampage wasn't making it hurt worse anymore. Something about hunger being the best spice, blissful moments of less-pain being the best sedative. Something.

Either way, Kostya was not used to being picked up after the fact. He'd been scavenged before. Picked apart with the barest sense of it happening. Critters needed to eat, and a dead body was as good a dinner as any out here. A dead or dying body. A dead or dying or otherwise incapable of running body. Being eaten was not fun, never fun, never ever fun.

But this was different. This wasn't a critter, and this wasn't... ungentle. Jarring. But trying to be nice. Kostya didn't remember the last time someone was trying to be nice. Maybe it was the last time he'd gotten buried. Good folks trying to do the right thing, without realizing they'd just damned him to at least another death in the slow horror of suffocation. Especially if the good folks trying to do the right thing put in the extra effort of doing the right thing especially deep. Critter-free deep. Digging-yourself-out-impossible deep.

Kostya hurt. Kostya felt wet and he hurt and nothing was good here. Nothing good except the other body against his, the voice trying to talk to him, but it all just came out warbled and warped and broken like if his music was on the fritz again. His music. His music.

Did they take that too?

Well, sign him up for a hundred more bullets and knives and stabbings and impalings and grenadings and fires and decapitations. His music and his blue. Kostya would kill Rampage's whole camp if that's what it took. The fucker could keep the armor, could keep the clothes, could keep the stupid war declaration, could keep the map and the bag and the socks and the boots, could keep the bat--

He was getting his music and his blue back. Blue, who--

Who was here?

Blue was here?

Blue was here and holding his head and saying something about it only hurting for a second; no, no, Kostya didn't want to hurt anymore, not even for a second, and he tried to speak, to say something, to beg or cry or something because Blue wasn't a devil and maybe he'd have some mercy and maybe--

The knife slid in, quick and quiet and cold. Kostya whimpered, but then things became numb. Fuzzy. Hazy. Dark. Just very dark, the same as before, the same as all the times before. A quick death. A quick death after a long string of hurt, and the last impulse his muscles got from his brain was to smile, before it all inevitably went slack again.

It was a good thing he'd died already not too long before. Normally if he procrastinated it took longer to get back, or at least he thought it took longer to get back. It was hard to say if that was a mercy or not. A long sleep in a way that was almost impossible to do otherwise out here. Too dangerous to keep your eyes closed, unless you were already dead.

It was dark again, by the time Kostya stopped sleeping, and he blinked raw, dusty eyes at the cieling of... somewhere. Hissed at the sting the dust brought, rubbed at his eyes and let the natural tears wash them out again. It sucked, but it was better than opening them beneath the dirt, a small miracle all things considered.

Had that roof always been there? Did Rampage build it after tearing him apart? That was weird. Wait. No. There was something else, something happened after and...

Kostya shifted, hands pressed to the rough floor of the shack, skin protesting every last movement, especially in the places where dried blood stuck him to the floor and wow that was a sensitive area to pull away from the ground like silly putty. Wow, wow, wow.

Except this wasn't all floor. This wasn't all floor at all, part of it was warm and felt like cloth and felt like metal and felt like people and--

And that was a gun. He just couldn't catch a fucking break, could he? Naked and sac stuck to a bloody floor and a gun over his chest and-- and he knew that hand. He knew that hand and he knew the knife on the ground beside him and for a sudden blissful moment he forgot all about dying and losing his stuff and losing his music and how he'd have to die again to get it back.

"I'm gonna have to help you now if you wanna keep square." His throat was raw, his voice even more so, catching in places where lingering dust choked him up, and Kostya had to stop and cough and spit to the side before finishing. "Kinda... rhombus... y."

Lion:
Every now and again the gun would lean tiredly, weakly to the side and Ibsen jerked himself back to attention. The handle of the weapon fit comfortably in his grip. It was custom built after all and he was a crack shot when he had to be. But the hours it took waiting for Kostya to wake up left the scavenger all that much more exhausted. He hadn't slept since those few meager hours he managed to steal in that cave inlet. When Kostya didn't kill him although he had every right to.

Ibsen couldn't let himself sleep anyway. Not until he was sure Kostya would wake up again and so he kept that revolver straightened, balancing it on the dead man's chest and leaning his head back. Five shots remained. With the way his wrist was tilted, it meant five shots to the chest. Hopefully five chests with each bullet.

They were getting harder and harder to come by these days. And outposts were more and more reluctant to trade for them. Ibsen didn't want to have to waste them, but if anyone wanted to get at the mailman, they'd have to get through that door first. The hammer half-cocked, and Ibsen's index finger remained firmly on that trigger.

He grunted and felt his eyelids growing heavy, each breath labored. And each time the gun waxed or waned, Ibsen would straighten his wrist.  Then something fluttered underneath his wrist, the feel of a pulse. Ibsen had been so focused on that door that the sensation barely registered. A deep breath, and he blinked down at the idiot who was still in his lap.

The long lithe legs beneath him had gone somewhat numb in the long hours he'd waited for this idiot to wake up. And when he did, Ibsen didn't know what to do, or what to say. Rhombusy.  What was that? Some kind of shape he guessed. Ibsen felt something solid form in his throat and his guts twisted.

No, no, he didn't like that feeling at all. And certainly not the helplessness that followed. Slowly he set the gun down beside him and without any reservation, slipped a tired arm underneath Kostya's fat head and curled his body over him, wrapping the other arm under Kostya's armpit, into an awkward hug. It was brief and Ibsen tucked Kostya's face in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

The gesture was not so much for Kostya as it was for himself, an affirmation that this fool really was alive. And the delirium of hunger and thirst had not yet taken the scavenger. Food. And Water. He still had those things.

Less focused on the door now, he pulled back and then promptly flicked his index finger against Kostya's forehead. "Next time, you make me take you with me. I don't like to see you bleed," Ibsen sternly, a frown sagging the corners of his mouth and brows drooping into a scowl.

If Kostya was paying attention, maybe, he might get the not so subtle translation of those spoken words: "You're an idiot. And I'm glad you're alive. But also, you're an idiot."

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