Mutants: Normal

8-2: Silence and clanging

Shuigu opened his eyes.

He took in his own disjointed body with a grunt. There were still some limbs missing here and there that he would need in order to move about freely. But he was alive.

Thanks to Hua...

Wasting no time on further expression of gratitude, Shuigu willed himself to regenerate quickly. His whole body continued to reform as he counted the seconds, where each second meant that Hua was in more danger of being lost for good.

Shuigu contemplated his sister's near lifeless form lying beside him. "Why did you push yourself so hard?" Pressing his fingers around her bruised and hardened abdominal area, he deduced that six ribs were puncturing some of her internal organs. To add to that, she seemed to have partial fractures in her legs and arms, the nerves barely keeping control of the muscles in these limbs. There was no doubt Hua was getting weaker by the second. And what wrenched Shuigu's heart the most was her face, scrunched up in pain-physical and emotional pain.

"You're making my job incredibly hard," he whispered quietly. "I can't protect you from yourself, you know. You're such an idiot."

He held one of her hands up to his left, while letting his right hand trail in the seawater. He watched as tiny roots formed in the palm of her hand and extended to latch onto his. They sucked at his skin, taking the altered water in him and transporting it to Hua to help her regenerate. He lay down on the sand in wait for the procedure to finish and save both their lives.

After all, where would I be without her?

"Such an idiot."

* * *

Hua awoke for the second time on a sandy surface. For a moment, she panicked because she couldn't move-some kind of weight was pressing down over most of her body. Finally, she calmed down enough to realize she had been buried under sand with only her head and arms sticking out, probably to keep her warm from the chilly breeze blowing in from the sea. The sun seemed to have already passed its peak in the sky and hovered lower along the horizon. In light of this pretty scenery, she felt much better; there was only a dull ache to remind her that she'd almost died.

"I need to ask Shuigu how he heals me like that," she muttered contentedly to herself. She parted the sand over her quickly and sat up, looking around. "Shuigu? Shuigu?"

"Oh, you're awake." Her brother answered from afar. He looked to be on his way back from the shoreline. "Here, I've got some fish that we can eat. Let me start a fire." Hua could only smile in return. The overwhelming relief flooding through her easily took her words away.

He walked over to her, shirtless and barefoot in soaked military pants, his arms full of fish. He must have gone swimming-his shirt... lay under her head, fluffed like a pillow. It made sense his clothes hadn't been too ruined from the fall. Hua reflected that he had only discarded them in liquid form, so they had probably just been lying around the beach. They were slightly worn, but nowhere near unwearable. This description, to Hua's relief, included his shirt under her head. All the guy's are distractingly well-built, she thought, not without a bit of guilt and a lot of pride.

Arriving back at Hua's side, Shuigu let go of his foraged seafood. Placing his catch on the ground next to a premade pile of firewood, he tried making a spark with some pieces of flint he had probably scavenged. Unlike her, his physical appearance held no hint as to the shape he had been in earlier that day.

"How long have I been out of it?" she asked, hugging her legs to her chest. She debated whether burrowing back into the sand would be a better idea since it was colder than she had predicted. Her military clothes were sandy and in worse shape than Shuigu's, for reasons she could guess at easily.