Barren Crossroads

Five Go In, Five Come Out

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Kaelie did not look good. They were on the fourth day of treatment. It was warmer now, and she'd taken to sitting outside in the most direct sunlight she could find, for most of the day. When Rick came to sit next to her, he tried not to stare. She was gaunt, like'd she'd suddenly started caving to starvation even though he tried to feed her as much as he could from Jordan's stores. Her read hair was dull, lank, and matted, tendrils sticking to her clammy and sweating skin. She was pale, and her skin stretched too tight over her face, like the bones might tear through any minute.

She had almost no strength anymore. She'd started hallucinating the night before, and he woke up to find her stumbling through the lab waving a shard of broken glass that he had no idea where she'd found it, and screaming at nothing. She quieted down after a while, and instead held the glass in her hands until he noticed the blood running down her fingers from her too tight grip, and muttering to herself.

She had a few moments of lucid clarity, And every time, he begged her to stop, and begged her not to finish the injections and every time she shook her head, and gave him a serene smile and told him to just let it run it's course. She'd tell him that if she felt so weak, it had to be working. Bt when he pointed out she still had all of her heightened senses, her lips tightened into a line, and she'd stop speaking at all.

Kaelie was dying.

Rick could do nothing but watch. He threatened to destroy it, and she laughed. He threatened to just stop giving it to her, and she laughed. "You won't do either of those things," she said softly. Even her voice sounded like it was giving up.

"How do you know?"

"Because I can see it in your face. You're afraid I'd just kill myself anyways."

He sat with her now, and watched her lift her face to the sun. She wasn't muttering, or rocking. She seemed to be more present, and she lifted a violently shaking hand to wipe her face. "Time for another?" she asked. She looked nauseated at the thought and Rick wanted to scream.

He nodded at her and she sighed and held out her arm. In the crook of her elbow was a mass of bruising and three other pin prick marks. He forced his hands stead and placed the needle against her sallow skin. He pushed in and she winced at the sting, but didn't say anything else. When he was done, he put the needle to the side and stayed next to her. He pressed a hand to her forehead.

Her skin was searing hot, and he hissed at the feeling. "You're burning up," he said and she shrugged.

"Dammit, Kaelie, at least fucking try to fight. You said you would. You said you would for me. What about Jace? I know you love him, I know you love him more than anything else, what about him? What about your friends? You told me you would fight!" He was shouting by the end, and his eyes burned as he tried to blink away the salty tears that filled them.

"I'm trying!" she shouted back, or tried to, but it seemed to take too much energy and she started coughing, hunched over. When she pulled her hand away, blood glistened on her palm and she wiped it on her dirty pants.

"Not hard enough! What about me?" he said. He felt like he kept saying it.

"It'll be okay," she whispered, with a hoarse voice. "It'll be okay. One more. If I'm not dead by then, it'll be okay."

The day bled into the night, but she didn't move to go inside, and he didn't move to leave her. He was worried that if he did, she wouldn't be there when he got back. He worried that she'd crawl away some where to die so that he didn't have to watch anymore.

He thought about what she'd told him about Jace. About how he felt safe, about how he always came back for her, he always saved her, even when she saved him, about how he was the only one that tempered her, or got through to her sometimes. Rick still wasn't ready to sort out his jumbled feelings, but he found himself praying to gods he didn't believe in and some that he did, begging them to get Jace here.