In from the Cold

[Rattlesnake]

((Kelsey Brewer continued from Drifting Down Into Twilight))

"This one's gonna sting a little, too."

Kelsey reached up and dabbed a bit of cotton soaked in something mostly clear at one last abrasion on Evie's brow. Smiling, she tugged her mask briefly down to land yet another peck on her girlfriend's cheek. A little spoonful of sugar to help it go down. She let the mask retract back into place, back where it added a tiny slice of warmth to the endless icy draughts of air she drew in and out, in and out. That endless grind of survival.

And speaking of grinding, she let her head fall to Evie's shoulder, snuggled in a little, grabbed her free arm and coiled it gently around her midsection. It was only fair for her to take a turn at it after that session of cleaning up, which really was more on Evie to endure than herself, but, hey she brought the expertise to pronounce half the things in the medkit, let alone figure out their proper use. They'd worked section by section at it, taking care of a frankly indecent number of scrapes, cuts and contusions, plus a rather horrifying stab wound, exposing part by part to dab and clean and lay fresh bandages over before replacing the thick layers they'd been sequestered under in service of not freezing to death. She'd put it all away properly later, but for now she let things sit closed in their individual containers and scattered over the pew they sat at.

"That stab wound," she ventured, voice low in respect to what the church represented, if not what it contained, "Whose fault was that one, again?"

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown drifts back up, much worse for wear.]

Evie wasn't a regular sight at church. Nominally faithful, her family would typically turn up on the major Christian holidays, but they were far from devout. Even so, Evie had an idea of what the vibe in a church ought to be like, even an abandoned one. The vibes emanating from the chapel on the island were very far from that. Bloody footprints, the smell of gunpowder and decay, half-hearted barricades half-dissasembled, one could be forgiven for thinking it was the scene of a long-passed zombie apocalypse or something.

But it was also shelter from the cold and the glare of the sun, it funnelled potential threats into only a handful of ways in, and it had places to sit. So having judiciously avoided the pew with the short dead boy leaning against it, the battered killer sat down to the awkward task of tending to her own wounds by proxy: lacking a mirror, it was definitely better to direct Kelsey than to attempt to do it blind, even before considering the difficult angles. The experience was mostly businesslike and to-the-point (give or take a couple of kisses), as if neither particularly wanted to discuss exactly how Evie had come by her impressive collection of cuts, scrapes, and miraculous near-misses. She herself sure didn't. All the recent ones were her own fault, her own stupid fault for starting a fight to the death whilst trying to be polite about it, and getting into that explanation would necessarily involve admitting - to herself and to Kelsey - that the only justifications she'd had for two of her five kills had been a desire to get the damn thing over more quickly, both by narrowing down the field faster and by hardening her heart against death so that she could have a better chance when the endgame came around.

Eventually, though, it was as done as it would ever be. Kelsey ensconced herself in Evie's strong embrace, snuggled up into the crook of her shoulder, and for just a moment the young murderess felt at peace. She closed her eyes, and could just about imagine herself somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere where she wouldn't have to get back to the grim labour of killing more of her classmates any time soon. Until the source of that comfort pulled her back in. Evie didn't blame her, she would've been curious too. Her girlfriend wanted to know who'd nearly skewered her kidney, who wouldn't want to know that kind of thing?

"You know Alex? Really into all the SOTF conspiracies, like, weirdly into? I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that he woke up ready, he, uh, comes up to me with a spear, obviously stanced up ready to start sh--" no, she was in a church.

"Start problems. And I guess I got really lucky, I batted it away with my bag just enough that it was mostly just a flesh wound, and Claire was around to help me patch it up after her ran off. I... I mean, I know the announcements misrepresent, so I don't know what it's like for anyone else... in my position, what drove people to it, but Alex, he was so ready, he was eager. Still sorta scares me, thinking about that."

She still had that that she could tell herself, at least. She felt bad about it, she wasn't eager, she was reluctant enough not to be a monster. But also tough enough not to be a coward. That's why she both deserved to live, and actually would. Because she really was better than other people, she knew that now.

[Rattlesnake]

"Fuck," Kelsey said, voice hardly above a whisper, but having no delusions of being able to further unhallow this ground soaked in so much blood already. "I just—"

The faltering of her voice came with the resumption of her working her way in against Evie's shoulder. The only move she knew in a game that had no victory condition. Seeking strength from someone who should rightly be convalescing somewhere sterile among white linens. Rescuing her, after a sort, not that she really seemed to need the help, though that was all the more reason to provide it, and then just laying more burdens on her. Real cool. Definitely not the reason you have a different girlfriend every fucking month. Though, maybe, opening up, being authentic about things...

She distracted herself by opening her mouth again.

"I saw him," she said. "I saw you. Kinda. There was blood on his spear and I grabbed that axe with the weird curved blade—it wasn't mine, but someone had to, and I guess they let me keep it when he panicked and ran and I could have been there. I could have stopped the bleeding myself. I could have prevented... a... lot of things."

Could she have? Childish as it was, she recalled sketches and storyboards of her own, the dark-haired girl with the claymore letting her weepings splash into puddles iridescent with slicks of oil enlivened by the moonlight. Heels clacking over pavement with none left to hear them. Her angst over the one who'd left her and so many more who never got the chance. All because she hadn't gotten her plot-mandated upgrade yet. Hindsight was 20/20. You couldn't save everyone. But you could always try a bit harder, right?

"I saw Kitty, too," she continued. "We...snuggled a bit. I mean, not like that, just she was so lonely and cold and, just... docile at my touch. Like all she needed in the world was my bony anorexic lap to lay her head on, and there was no reason to go killing anyone any more. Then she left to go get the weapon the terrorists gave her and told me to meet her somewhere else, and I just... didn't, and look what happened."

Tears were in her eyes.

"I just fucking didn't."

[Dr Adjective]

As Kelsey lamented how she could've taken different actions, all that occurred to Evie was to think about how things might have been different not if she'd behaved differently, but if her circumstances had been different. One of the last few threads of excuse she had for her actions, for how she was excused-if-not-justified for what she'd done, was that Survival of the Fittest had happened to her. She was the logical result of the circumstances she found herself in, fighting to survive a situation that someone else had put her in on purpose.

How might things have been if Evie and Kelsey had met up sooner? If Alex hadn't been there? If her experience so far hadn't mostly been comprised of short bursts and violence and long stretches of pain?

What if after she'd killed Chloé, Kelsey had been there to comfort her, rather than Lara?

Maybe she wouldn't have killed four more people. Maybe she would've gone along with a plan like Chloé's, trying to all join hands and make peace. Maybe she'd be dead already at the hands of someone who had experienced what Evie really did. Maybe it was better to be Evie the Killer? But there was still a pretty girl in her arms in need of comfort, so...

"It's not your fault, Kelsey," she began, squeezing at tightly as she dared without putting painful pressure on any of the many places she already hurt.

"Or Kitty's. I... I really hated her for a while, when I heard she'd killed Mitch."

In truth, there was still an ember of anger somewhere in Evie. Maybe if she actually saw Kitty, it would flare up again. The thought was ultimately academic in the mean time.

"But they're both someone else's victim, right? It's not like Alex would've tried to murder me if his own life wasn't on the line. Not like I..."

Evie trailed off. What did it really say about her, that she'd only needed a few pushes in the right direction to murder... two people, if not three? She'd always been competitive, always been ambitious, but...

[Rattlesnake]

Kelsey rather did think that Kitty's trajectory had been her own fault, actually. To a greater or lesser degree, yes, but probably leaning toward the latter. Like, she hadn't been there for any but a brief interlude in the nonstop violence. And true, she had seemed... meek. Almost pliable. But Kelsey was more than ready to attribute that to her own touch, to believe that she, by force of personality, had calmed the ravaging beast, if only for a moment. That she at least hadn't fucked one thing up. Granted, the girl hadn't really been in much condition to do elsewise at the time. But point was, one or two was an accident, a coincidence. Once you got to... how many did Evie have, now? More than that, certainly, is what spelled out a problem.

"It's... hard to say," she murmured. "There's no capital-J Justice here. It's just us. I think even if you're a good person, violence still finds you, right? But, you don't have to go looking for it either."

She yawned and settled in. It was so tiring, the whole not freezing to death business. Still, a friendly shoulder was like an oasis in the desert around here. It was some time before she reluctantly sat up.

"We should probably try to stay warm." Well, they kind of were already, and if they wanted to really stay warm that way, it's not like she was going to say no, just... "They don't, uh, blow you up if you make a fire," she elaborated.

---

A corner of the building. Some washbasin or something, not made of wood at any rate, with a pathetic little log crackling away. The place wasn't really in the woods, but there was enough detritus both outside and available from the pews and makeshift barricades that could be pried apart and fed in piece by piece. Even if it wasn't much, huddling together in what softness they could muster up between their coats and the clothes in their bags helped things. As did a nice arm around her waist, which she returned in more than kind. Conversation, reminiscence, things they'd done and thought and hoped for.

---

A piece of cardboard, ripped from the box that inflatable sled had come in. Her makeshift charcoal pencils, dirtying the fingertips she'd used to poke and prod and scrub at the patient now coiled around her in repose. A face, feminine. A gun. Darkness surrounding her. Her expression, heroic? Determined? Hard to say with the ratty low-res lines she was able to produce, but she was certainly something.

---

Her eyes closed, breathing a gentle rhythm, near to warmth as she could ever find in this place. Relaxing, for once, truly letting her brow unfurrow and peace descend over her. Time passing, and no inclination to reach out and arrest its course.

[Dr Adjective]

Violence had certainly found Evie. It had come right to her door from the word go, and left its jagged, painful mark on her. The scar on her flesh would probably last for as long as she lived; on her psyche, undoubtedly so. That was her defence. Luckily, it seemed, Kelsey didn’t seem to need to hear it to stick around.


A font, was that what they called it? They’d made their fire in what Evie took to be a baptismal font, not that she could be at all sure, and huddled around it whilst they held one another and spoke only of pleasant things. Kelsey didn’t need to hear how Chloé had died, nor DeMarcus and Lara, nor Dani or Anthony. Victims of ambition, of self defence, of mercy, of… resolve. She wanted to hear of the art they wouldn’t make, the season ranks they wouldn’t earn, the swim meets Evie wouldn’t win and the raid bosses Kelsey wouldn’t server-first. In a way that was worse. Kelsey seemed to resigned to the notion that her life was over, and in her heart, Evie knew that it had to be of her own was not. So while her beloved spoke of the life behind her, Evie wondered what might lie before her, should the stars align, should she walk out alive and drenched in the blood of her peers.


After a time, the fire died down. With great reluctance, Evie extracted herself from the gentle embrace of her lover, and set out to look for appropriate fuel. It had to be small enough to fit the makeshift pit, hardy enough to last, but not so hardy it wouldn’t catch at all.

For the last few hours, the siren call of Lillian’s rifle had played in the back of Evie’s mind. How stupid she’d been to squander such a weapon, and how fucking irritating that nobody was to know where she’d died presumably still carrying it. But between her and Fitz, and God alone knew how many others by now, Evie was alert to the idea of sharpshooters. Her experience, of course, was digital. But it at least furnished her with the notion to keep her head down and her eyes sharp, to have cover nearby if someone opened fire, not to make unnecessary noise…

It was only later, when she’d returned to stoke the fire, and Kelsey had moved towards the door, that a loud and rather abrupt sound erupted from Evie’s lips.

Her girlfriend’s name, as she ran to catch her, to pull her out of further harm’s way.

[Rattlesnake]

For a time, all was pleasant.

It was cold, yes, but not unbearably so. And there was something about a fire, even a weak one fed with scraps, that kindled something greater in one's chest. Comfort and safety, an almost magical lifting of fatigue. A genetic memory, perhaps, of so many mothers and mothers' mothers and so on finding repose before a flickering flame. The simple smell of woodsmoke was thick and reassuring, an incense to any god worth worshipping.

Having a hot girl to cuddle with helped quite a bit as well.

Time passed. The fire burned down, and Kelsey fond herself dozing in that warm embrace. She came back to reality as Evie extricated herself and stood, wandered out for a bit leaving a yawning absence behind Kelsey. Kelsey yawned and sat up, awaited her return with another few scraps of fuel for their precious little flame.

"You shouldn't have to do that, not with that thing in your side," she said, barely above a lazy mumble, to the girl who'd fought and won and killed despite the efforts of that wound.

And so she stood and made her way out of their little nook, took a little step outside. The entrance was still bore that pool of crusted gore, as it would for longer than any of them could expect to live. Anyway, where to find a better source of fuel? The pickings weren't great, slim enough in fact that she considered simply taking that funky little axe to task on whatever she could reach inside, but there was still enough detritus of the slowly-encroaching wilderness to make do. She cast her eyes about, and—

Pain like she'd never known ripped through her side, followed by a loud buzzing like the largest hornet she'd ever heard and the telltale rolling boom of a gunshot. There was motion of her spinning and falling, of the projectile and its crimson spalling both fore and aft, but there was no artistic spray of blood from the dark-haired girl's mouth, no melding of mmagics to save her now. She simply fell where she stood, collapsed on the threshold, sent her hand down to her side and watched it come back drenched in red.

"Evie!" she cried, feeling the warmth of her own blood pooling around her, "I—fuck!"

[Dr Adjective]

It all seemed to happen at once. A cry of pain, a sharp, distant crack, the sight of Kelsey crumpling, the failed attempt to intercept her before she hit the floor.

Evie’s knees skidded across the carpeted aisle, until her outstretched hands came to cradle her girlfriend’s head before that too could collide with the ground. Realisations came fast: she’d been shot, blood was coming altogether too fast, the shooter had been outside, through the door,

Shit,

Thinking fast, Evie hooked her arms under both of Kelsey’s and pulled her away from the doorway,

“You’re okay,” she insisted. She’d suffered bad injuries herself, she’d had much-less-skilled first aid, and it had come significantly less immediately.
“You’re okay!”

She had to be.

The pair came to rest close to the wall. Evie left her patient lying on her side - recovery position applies to bullets, right? - and gently lifted and already-soaked shirt up away from the damage.

“Just, just stay calm, okay?”

Easy for her to say, not so easy for even Evie herself to comply. It was, in her semi-professional opinion, bad. Tearing herself from Kelsey’s side, the would-be veterinarian rushed to retrieve her first aid kit, two things woefully unprepared for the task of treating a life-threatening gunshot wound.

She started with a clean pad on the entrance wound. No, wait. Two wounds. Fuck. Another sticky mess of cloth moved away, another wellspring of blood to worry about.

“Help me keep pressure on these, okay? I’m gonna, I’m…”

Fuck! What was she even going to do here? Her expertise ended with stopping immediate bleeding, and indeed started one step earlier with calling 911. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, there was also the knowledge that abdominal puncture wounds typically required emergency surgery, that they were especially prone to infection, that they were a slow and painful way to die, that… that…

Evie was hyperventilating. Staring blankly into the metal tin of medicines and dressings, failing to formulate a flowchart from here to Kelsey’s okay. Too many distracting thoughts got in the way: where was the shooter now? Where the fuck was Juanita? What if she couldn’t fix this? What if she had to finish Kelsey off herself? Why now? Why so soon? It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair!

[Rattlesnake]

Fuck, it hurt.

There was no second volley. Flinch and cringe as she did in anticipation of a second shot she might never see coming, there was no sudden extinguishing of her consciousness, no coup de grace shredding through her chest.

She wasn't sure if she was glad for that or not.

Evie arrived, swift as anything. Pulled her out of the line of fire—fuck, that hurt even more—and dumped a medkit out beside her. Bandages, gauze, little bottles of stuff that smelled and stung. If only they'd come with a unit of blood. Or five. Kelsey tried keeping the pressure on, recalled stories as she did of combat medics literally stomping wadded gauze into their patients to hold them until they could get them somewhere safe. In this moment, malnourished and shivering and with a weeping gash from front to back, it was all she could do to keep her hand over the wound. To keep it all contained until...what, exactly?

"I think I'm fucked," she said. Fuck, talking hurt too.

There wasn't any singular moment of realization it was just... how did one survive something like this out here? The answer was, you didn't. Even Evie, tough and cool and wonderful as she was, wouldn't be walking and talking if she'd been drilled through like this. She looked to their little fire, the slender branches burning through an an accelerated rate; looked down at her side, which was gushing like a faucet.

"Just let me be warm for once."

[Dr Adjective]

Her instinct was to snap back, no, no you're not fucked. Evie was smart and talented and a good person and fate or God or luck or something was on her side and she was going to Fix This. She had to, she had the right to, she deserved to. But the retort died in her throat. Yelling at the patient wouldn't help, it could only make things worse. She knew that, she was good at this after all. You were supposed to keep them comfortable and stable.

"It's gonna be okay," she insisted instead, "I can fix it, I can fix it."

Was she insisting to reassure Kelsey, or herself?

Eventually she settled for starting with a bottle of water and painkillers. Evie gently pulled her bleeding lover closer to the fire, then offered her the relief. Warmth and less pain, that was the best she could do. Yes, she could try to wrap the injury up tight, she could clean it and dress it and keep as much blood in as possible, but then what? Would that even be enough? For all Evie knew, even now, Kelsey's guts could be leaking right into her bloodstream, poisoning her from the inside. For all she knew, the kindest option she had might be to give Kelsey the same sendoff she'd given to Lara. The vicious irony of it turned her stomach.

"Just rest, I'm here, okay?"

Not like most of the medical supplies Evie had were going to end up going to much better use anyway, was it? The chances they saved her own life were minimal, and those slim odds were more than worth trading for a guarantee of even a few more minutes together with Kelsey. Another little oasis of halfway-normal life that she hadn't expected to enjoy again after killing Chloé. Undeserved? No, no, she was a victim, just like everyone else on the island, they all deserved something nice before the end. She was still a good person. She had to keep believing that. In any case, Evie set about applying what medical skill she had to cleaning up her girlfriend's twinned wounds, alcohol to disinfect, clean bandages, gauze, everything that she could do with any confidence that it might help, that might buy time or buy comfort, until at last there was nothing else Evie could do. Kelsey was in the hands of... whatever it was that Evie had decided was favouring her to survive. Luck? Fate? Probably not God. Not while the girl who'd smashed a cabin up yelling Fuck God a few days prior, who was by any reasonable count at least a three-time murderer, profaned His house with blood and forbidden love.

Maybe that was it. Maybe the Christian God refused to shelter them on account of their sins. Maybe fuck God was right. So fuck Him, Evie could put her faith in luck and in shooting first from here on in.

"I'm here."

Evie sat herself down by Kelsey's head, cradled the much-diminished other girl in her arms.

"I'm here, Kelsey."

[Rattlesnake]

And so the dark-haired girl was borne off in a bridal carry, her strength spent, to a place of warmth and tenderness.

Kelsey took the aid gratefully, hiding the last of her trademark broad, sad smiles behind her grinning mask and trading choked affirmations of her appreciation for Evie's assurances. It wouldn't help in the end, she knew that. And Evie would accept it, too, sooner than later. That her fate lay beyond their abbreviated grasp. That she wasn't going to be OK. But in the moment, it did help, after a kind. The pain was omnipresent, nearly all-consuming, but the rhythmic fall and rise of Evie's chest, the gentle hands that brought the water to her lips, were all the analgesic she could ask for. Of all the ways to die, cradled in the arms of a cute girl certainly ranked high among them, though she could still do without the viciousness of the pain in her side.

She took her repose, a final rest that would never end, and thought of all the things that would never be. She'd never feel the warmth and safety of her home again. Never spin a pencil or wield a stylus in her spindly fingers. Never get to sketch out another page of short skirts and long socks. Never get to pet her cat, hear the chirps and chitters of comfort and delight, hug her parents, speak with her brother, get the gang together for Pandaemonium Savage. Worst of all, she would never again represent anything but tragedy for her girlfriend, a nexus of ills great and small winding out from her soon-to-be corpse. A scar in the making, a promise of grief, the start of a process—one day perhaps—to remove her from memory enough not to feel the acuteness of the agony this moment represented. A burden, not that Evie would be caught dead calling her one, but something to be borne nonetheless.

She reached up feebly to stroke Evie's cheek, to wipe away a tear—that hurt too, wouldn't you know it, and frankly just made more of a mess—and settled in tight against her as her vision went gradually dimmer, watching the sorrow writ large on her face.

"You're a lot cuter when you smile," she said, and her slender chest heaved with something part laughter, part sob, part peal of agony.

Evie was there for her. It may not have been all she needed, but it was all she could have asked for.

S110 - Deceased

[Gundham]

((Juanita Reid continued from Now the Battle Hymns are Playing))

Blood. She smelled it before she saw it. And when she stepped into the church, she saw it everywhere.

Kelsey was limp, cradled in Evie's arms.

Someone who'd just walked in on the scene might see the two girls huddled by the dim firelight and mistake it for something cozy and intimate. But not Juanita. She'd seen too much not to assume the worst, not to instantly catch the way the light gleamed off a hundred or thousand pools of blood.

"What..."

Juanita's voice was still hoarse from crying her guts out earlier. She took a few steps forward, into the church, lacrosse stick gripped tight.

"What happened?"

[Dr Adjective]

"I'm here... I'm here..."

It was all Evie knew to do. What else was there? She could put Kelsey out of her misery, but even if the other girl didn't seem to prefer lingering together as long as she could, Evie herself couldn't imagine mustering the willpower to do it. Selfish, perhaps, but true. Kelsey reached out to wipe away a tear - Evie hadn't even realised when she'd started to cry, but soon realised just how wet her cheeks had become. The weight on her lap, the faint warmth of blood draining onto her leg, the misery and the impotent anger, had all distracted her from the comparatively minor sensation of her eyes watering.

Impotent anger, of course, because by now she knew there was little chance of catching up to the shooter. Being that they hadn't come to finish the job, she was quite sure they were long gone. Tomorrow, however, she would know. Tomorrow, she'd know who she had to make suffer.

Kelsey interrupted the vengeful train of thought, to tell Evie she was cuter when she smiled. Evie couldn't remember the last time she had smiled, prior to their brief day of reprieve.

She gave it her best attempt, forcing a rise into the corners of her mouth. At best, she produced a pained grimace.

Rather abruptly, Evie chose to hide her expression altogether; she hooked a finger into Kelsey's facemask, pulling it down to make way for a gentle kiss. If an afterlife did exist, at least Kelsey would arrive there with a pleasant last memory.





For a while, Evie found herself envying the girl in her arms. She didn't want to die, no, in fact she very emphatically wanted to live, to win, but there was a certain restfulness about Kelsey's slow departure. Drifting off to an untroubled sleep, no longer to suffer the cold and the misery that Evie survived in. That was why she'd killed Dani, wasn't it? To spare her any more days in a hell she wasn't cut out for? Just a shame then that Evie was cut out for it. That she seemed fated to carry on until the bitter end, as long as that took. So her policy was victory, in spite of terror, no matter how long and hard the road. For without victory, there was no survival. She was pretty sure she'd heard someone say that before. Everything before the island seemed like a distant history now, as distant as whichever politician or general she was quoting. If she thought back, perhaps it would come to mind, but it didn't matter in the end. None of the old men from the black and white photos had been through this, most of them had probably never even been on a normal battlefield.

After a time, Evie's mind returned to the present. Soon enough she'd have to move. She couldn't just sit here cradling a corpse for the rest of her days. Eventually she'd have to move Kelsey out to the graveyard, she should probably do the same for Anthony as well. Had to keep proving that she wasn't a complete monster, even if she was a killer. Had to prove it to the cameras. Had to prove it to herself.

She tried to summon the willpower to stand.

Someone interrupted before Evie could make good on the effort.

Turning her head, she glanced over her shoulder towards the familiar voice. Its owner sounded like she was in about as pleasant a state as she herself was. At least Juanita didn't appear to have picked up any new injuries, though her face spoke of a different sort of hurt. It matched the desolate expression and half-dried tears that Evie likewise wore.

"I..."

She choked on the first attempt to speak. Cleared her throat, tried again.

"I think they were aiming for me, but,"

What else needed saying than that? Only a little more context, perhaps.

"Fitz, maybe. He had a sniper rifle. Or someone took Lillian's. I don't know."

Oh dear. Now she'd started. Kelsey's presence seemed to have a magic way of opening Evie up, even in death.

"I was out there getting firewood, I came back in, Kelsey got up, I heard the bang, saw her drop, I... I don't know who did it, I don't know where they went, and I... I couldn't..."

She stopped herself. Took a breath.

"They might still be out there. Um. After dark, I'd like to put her in a proper grave. Must still be a few of the empty ones out there left. Maybe you could..."

Could do what? Say a few words? Make it like a real funeral? It sounded absurd from the second the thought crossed Evie's mind, and yet she still desired it all the same.

"I... I think I'll go up in the bell tower. Keep watch, you know?"

And not be here. Here where she had to start carefully lifting her love's lifeless body onto the pew, lest she just be dumped on the floor like discarded trash. Left to rot in her own blood, uncared for, unmourned. Evie couldn't allow that. Not for Kelsey.

[Gundham]

The bell tower. Back where it had all begun, what felt like several lifetimes ago.

Juanita nodded absently at Evie's suggestion. The implications was clear enough - Evie wanted to be alone, and retreating up the torturous ladder to the clock tower ensured that Juanita couldn't intrude on her, even if she wanted to. Hard to blame her. What Juanita had gone through with John wasn't the same - Evie hadn't killed Kelsey, and Kelsey hadn't been trying to kill Evie at the time, for one thing - but she understood the complexity of those emotions well enough. It was one thing to know that you and someone you cared about weren't both going to make it out of here. It was another thing all together to actually see it happen.

It sounded like she still wanted Juanita around, at least, which was... good? Probably? Juanita had no idea what the "could" in Evie's last statement was supposed to be appended by. Juanita couldn't dig, she couldn't drag the body anywhere without putting herself out of commission for the rest of the day. She couldn't even offer a prayer, because she and God weren't on speaking terms at the moment. But it meant that Evie, and by extension Evie's guns, wanted Juanita around, at least in the short term.

But in the long term? That was a much bigger question. Evie had broken the ceasefire and killed the boy in the basement. Someone else had broken it and tried to kill her. The fact that Evie wanted to go up into the bell tower when someone with a sniper rifle was lurking in the area was... well, it didn't speak to a good mental state, to put it mildly. Maybe Evie wanted to taunt them. Maybe she wanted an excuse to go hunting. Maybe she planned on ringing the bell and inviting all challengers. Juanita didn't know. And the fact that she didn't know, and couldn't know, was downright terrifying.

"Yeah, sure. I can keep watch down here."

She didn't know what else to say. This was the first time she'd seen the aftermath from this angle. She'd seen death, but she'd seen it white hot and fresh - one of the actors, not one of the audience. The closest she'd come was with Colm after Betty Quinn had died, or with Daniel, and... well, look how that turned out.

"And, um... I ran into Claire, out in the graveyard... She said to call her, or something? I... uh... didn't know what she meant, "

It felt stupid to bring that up, but, like... there weren't any words for something like this. There wasn't any way to make this better or make it hurt any less. Because what Evie wanted, what Juanita wanted, for this not to be happening, for none of this to have ever happened. But it did happen, and it was happening, and it would keep happening, and nothing was good or right about any of it, and it felt hollow and pathetic to even try. She'd never been good at the emotional stuff, the sympathy. So if whatever she said was gonna be the wrong thing anyway, she might as well say something that was marginally useful. For however much that counted.

"Look, I'll be here, so... just... take as long as you need. And then we'll figure out what comes next."

[Dr Adjective]

Evie was already heading for the ladder by the time Juanita spoke. It hadn’t been a question, after all.

A foot and a hand were already upon the rungs in time for Claire’s request. Their owner hesitated a second. Did she really care to speak to her erstwhile partner now? Now that she was in deep, that she’d traded a saviour for a fellow killer and not looked back? No, her saviour. The least she could give in return was a chance to talk. Worst case, she could simply, literally tune out.

“Got it.”

Evie made a show of retrieving the walkie-talkie from her pocket and hooking it into her belt. Couldn’t hurt to let Juanita know that there might be remote communications in the future, if they got the other handset off of Claire one way or another.

In turn, Juanita offered something resembling comforting words. Evie appreciated the attempt. She wouldn’t much know what to say either, were their roles reversed.

“Yeah.”

Beat.

“If I don’t see you before morning, uh… goodnight.”

Within the next few days, the two both hoped to narrow the twenty-something survivors down to just the two of them. Then try to kill one another. And yet, until then, it seemed right to behave like humans to one another.

Evie didn’t want to be this kind of animal any longer than she had to. Nor, after all, did she want to be it any more than she had to.

[Evie McKown continued later that evening. Juanita Reid continued the next day.]