This Lullaby ( Kaylor )

( just close your eyes )

I know you all are still angry about that last chapter.  But hopefully this one will repair the damage (but I know, I know, bandaids don't fix bulletholes). 

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Taylor glanced into the rearview mirror.  Karlie's lanky body was pressed into the back seat, wrapped in blankets, head resting on top of a pillow they'd taken from the cabin.  She'd lost a lot of blood.  Taylor knew, because a lot of it had drenched her hands as she'd wrapped them around the wound.  Even now, she thought she could still seen dark crimson stains in the wrinkles on her fingers and in the curves of her palms.  A thin ring of red residue clung to some of her fingernails.

She'd found a first aid kid and, thankfully, a guidebook, beneath the bathroom sink.  It had been with hands shaking like windchimes that she sewed the wound shut, taking advantage of Karlie's unconsciousness.  It was the hardest thing she'd ever done.  She'd spent the whole time gagging and crying as the needle pulled through raw, torn flesh.  But it had to be done, because it was either that or the other girl died.

There'd be a scar shaped like a snake-like canyon on her calf, but the wound would heal.  It had been two days now, and Karlie had been lethargic since, in and out of wakefulnes, sometimes opening her eyes but seeing nothing before falling back asleep.  It was blood loss and shock, mingling into a deliciously horrible cocktail.

But they couldn't stay in one place for long.  So Taylor had loaded Karlie and their things into the car, and they'd started off for the mountains and the coordintes the radio message had given them. But of course nothing could be simple.  They were only a couple of hours away, according to the GPS, but the rolling clouds had finally grown too full.

The flurries started slow and lazy, falling fat and swollen to the ground.  Only some of them stuck.  The others melted into tiny puddles.  But as more fell, smaller and faster, they started to stack up on top of each other.  Before long, the road was covered with powdery layers of white.  Taylor sighed, flipping on the windshield wipers, slowing the spped even though it would use more precious gasoline to crawl along these roads.

Everything was silent, deafened by the quickly-thickening blanket of snow surrounding the car.  The only sound was the steady whipping of the windshield wipers.  So when a voice sounded near her ear, Taylor nearly swerved off the road.

"It's snowing."

Blue eyes flickered over for a moment when Taylor had calmed her pounding hearbeat.  Karlie was sitting up, green eyes lethargic but wide as they stared out the window.  The former singer nodded, "Coming down pretty hard too."

"What all have I missed?" Karlie asked.  Her hands rubbed at her eyelids, almost like a child just after a nap.

This was the most cognitive she had been since she had stumbled home, bleeding and confused.  It melted away the layer of fear that had still been crushing Taylor's heart, "Well, you almost died.  That was kind of traumatic.  And I stitched up your leg so you have a cool scar courtesy of me.  It's like a tattoo, but less fun.  Maybe I should have gone into that instead of greeting cards."

"You're an idiot," Karlie replied, voice teasing.  But Taylor glanced into the rearview mirror, and Karlie was gently probing at the ragged tissue, a strange look on her face.  She glanced up after a moment, meeting Taylor's eyes, "I almost died, huh?"

Taylor looked away, focusing on the road because thinking of a world without Karlie Kloss made her heart shatter in her chest, "Yep.  And you say I'm an idiot."

Karlie slapped her shoulder playfully, and Taylor grinned, more than relieved that her companion was awake and able to hold a proper conversation.  But her happiness was muffled by the snow, which wasn't seeming to fall any slower or lighter.  It was getting hard to see.