Unless you were Maureen O'Hara.

[NotAFlyingToy]

((Hansel Williams, Sudden Life))

He had to get back to a place before the violence, before his downtime involved stitching up wounds and his interactions with others involved threats at minimum and violence when pushed. He had to think back to before he was set on this path - the path that he'd walked voluntarily once his feet had touched earth, but he had been set upon it nonetheless.

Hansel thought back to when things were slightly simpler, when he'd killed someone accidentally and was running from that knowledge. Before pulling a trigger was a rational - sometimes the most rational - response. Before everyone and everything was a threat.

During that time, he'd been more trusting. During that time, he'd been kissed.

It was a memory that seemed titanic, now - larger than life, immense. It had been his first kiss - first ever, and possibly last - and all he could remember about it was that it had been dry. Dryer than expected, over too quickly. Nice.

Nice, even though it had come on the heels of a gruesome murder.

He lay against a tree, quiet, contemplative, as he thought about that moment, laying two fingers on his mouth. Thirteen days ago, he'd killed his first man hours before his first - only - kiss. In the middle of a death game.

And wasn't that an accurate summation of his life? Something that should've been beautiful, magical, something that he'd been looking forward to with someone special had been a throwaway moment sandwiched by terror. A moment of respite in between long stretches of abuse, neglect, rage, pain, and death. A moment that was over too quickly.

He knew that he drifted a little too much in the remembering, and he was also aware, on a basic level, that this wasn't real. But frankly, he was sick of the here and now - he was sick of feeling afraid and alone and desperate.

Her hands curled into his sweater, her eyes wet - tinged with tears in that way that made them not fall, not quite grace her flesh with their moisture, but instead cling stubbornly to her eyelashes, made her eyes look smaller, lighter. He wanted to wipe them away, but his hands were full of her waist, the pain from his left magically gone, the texture of her skirt making his fingers curl slightly.

She let out a little half-sob, and he found himself a little disgusted that even in his fantasy, he couldn't allow a moment to be pure, good, right. He left a trail of dirt as he wiped at her cheek, the maneuver surprising her out of the moment enough to have her lips pecking at his throat, his chest, sliding downwards.

He let it happen, choking back a little half-sigh of his own as familiar sounds - hiss of metal, muffled flapping of denim - filled his ears. Unfamiliar ones - a muffled swallow, moist skin rubbing against skin - surrounded his head. He knew it was wrong, and in the fantasy - this was a fantasy - she did, too. Little droplets dotted his thighs, his stomach, as she did what she felt they both needed.

He didn't reciprocate. He just sat there, against the tree, and let her take his mind off of everything, letting the bile rise from his stomach to his chest to his throat and let it spew out of his mouth, onto the grass beside the tree.

Hansel threw up again, torn from the fantasy as he rolled to his side, letting the dessert and dinner he'd just one splash to the ground, mingling with the imagined sounds of lips around him, throat around him, tears around him.

He was burning up, he knew. Infections ill-treated finally taking their toll, making him shake with weakness even as he fumbled for a bottle of water.

After a long drink, he glanced southward, finding himself still flaccid, unresponsive to the fantasy. His body rejected respite, it seemed.

Hansel rose to wobbily feet, leaning against the tree for support, and wiped sweat from his brow.

He didn't have much time left.

((Hansel Williams, Tears in the Rain))