Royal

I Won't Just Survive

I stand up and brush the grass off of my trousers. Brendon gazes up at me with a concerned look on his face. I sigh and look down at the grass and rub the back of my neck. Brendon gets up off of the ground and rubs my shoulder, I turn my head and look at him I feel tears threaten to fall from my eyes again.

"We will find him," Brendon states squeezing my shoulder. I sigh and sniffle back tears nodding, I don't trust my voice at this moment. My eyes gaze at the bloodstained ground and a feeling of unease fills my stomach but I take a deep breath and walk over to my horse grabbing the lead but not getting on the horse just yet. I instead pull it along by hand and follow the trail of blood on the ground.

If Peter can be found this is the way to do it. I follow the trail out of the clearing Brendon passes by on his horse, "come on get on your horse we can follow the trail faster this way, then we can continue by foot if necessary we don't have much light left."

Brendon has a point, I jump up on the horse, in quite an awkward fashion as I am very short and have nothing to help boost me up. I manage to get on it upright and we ride into the forest. It is slow going as the trail picks up and drops off at random spots, only a few blades of grass stained red giving any clue as to which way he went. The sun is hanging low close to the horizon as we continue to follow the trail, which seems to have no end and I fear that we may be following the trail of something else that perhaps it was not Peter who came this way.

Thoughts of doubt begin to swirl around in my head and it almost causes me to run my horse right into Brendon. I snap out of my own head and look at him he is squinting into the distance and I want to ask him what is wrong but the tension in the air seems to hard to break. I try to look around him but he looks behind him to me and I can see the fear in his eyes.

I gulp and try to see what Brendon is seeing but his form blocks my sight. "Patrick stay here." He says and my eyes snap onto his deep chocolate brown ones. I furrow my brows in confusion.

"Brendon, what is it?" I whisper leaning close to him so he can hear me.

"Just stay here." Brendon snaps and I lean back in shock as he swings off the horse and digs around in one of the bags grabbing things out of them. That is when the pieces in my mind begin to snap together and before Brendon can even mutter a word of protest I surge forward my horse huffs in surprise as we run forward and there on the ground is a human-shaped lump in the grass. I jump off my horse so fast I fear I may have broken something as I run over to the form laying in the grass.

I hesitate a few feet away, I can hear Brendon yelling at me to get away from him and I feel my heartbeat racing in my ears and my palms break out into a cold sweat. It has to be him, but the person on the ground is laying face down, the grass around them stained in a pool of blood. I gulp when I take another step forward my hands are shaking and there are tears in the corners of my eyes. I kneel down and place my hand on their shoulder, they do not move nor do they make a sound.

I do not dare take a breath as I roll them over gently and gasp when I see that it is, in fact, Pete laying on the ground but his face is swollen and caked with dried blood and all different shapes of purple. So distorted I can hardly recognize it at all, the tears flow freely from my eyes now as my eyes scan over his body it is broken and bloody. I reach a shaking hand and grip his hand interlocking our fingers together.

"Pete?" I whisper my tears hit his shirt as I shuffle closer to him squeezing his hand tightly. "Pete it's Patrick, I came back for you," I take in a shaky breath and reach my other hand to his head stroking his hair gently "Please Pete, talk to me." I choke out, I can feel Brendon behind me, I know he is unsure of what to do.

I turn and look at him my face red and puffy from the tears and Brendon rushes forward next to me and falls to his knees. He drops everything in his arms and his fingers find Pete's neck. I shuffle back but grip Pete's hand with both of my own. Brendon hesitates and moves his fingers to different spots and I feel like I can hardly breathe.

Brendon leans in and places his ear to Pete's chest and I don't dare move a muscle, Brendon sits up and sighs looking over at me with a smile. "He's still alive."

I feel relief flood into me like a tidal wave as I look down Pete and I feel a joyful laugh escape me as I continue to cry holding onto Peter's hand. Brendon is quick to get into action but I can't help but just stare at the man on the ground in front of me and thank all of the lucky stars that I managed to find him. Broken and beaten but alive, and that I can work with.

A/N short but this deserved an update dedicated to kelsmusiclover