Survival Of The Fittest

Cool, cool, Axel was giving Abe advice about his whole nose situation, and y’know, it was a nice gesture and all, but, like, Abe had already swallowed more of the blood than he’d wanted to, and he’d wanted to swallow zero blood, so like, too little too late there, bro. And, also, Axel had a bleeding hole in his hand? And? Maybe? That was, like, a bigger priority? He felt like maybe he was bringing up the giant stab wound a bit too much in his inner monologue, maybe it was getting repetitive, but like, it was still there, thanks Lorenzo, so the little rats running around in circles inside his brain were gonna have to deal.

For what it was worth, Abe did take the advice, kinda, in that he made sure his head was angled down, but he would’ve been looking down at the ground anyways, because he needed to find that fucking first aid kit, and when he did find it he had to grope at it one-handed because his left hand was all bloody, from the blood, and he didn’t really wanna get blood all over his stuff, especially the first aid, because, like, that shit wasn’t sanitary, but anyways, it had a handle, so it was all good.

He brought the stuff over to Axel, who was busy being dramatically cradled by Hel, aw, how sweet and also completely fucking useless, jesus christ he hated being the only person who had his shit together, how sad was that, haha?

Maybe he wanted to do a little bit of panicking too, you ever think about that, assholes? Maybe get a lil’ bit misty eyed? Because, like, Axel was gonna die, eventually, that had to happen, but every fucking nanometer of Abe’s conscience (viewable only under a microscope) was screaming ‘not now, he can’t die now, not like this,’ which, was pretty stupid, because it’s not like there’d be a good way for him to die, right? But, like, as deaths went, accidentally stabbing yourself in the hand was a pretty pathetic one, so. Yeah.

“Hey, y’know, there’s a pretty important first step we gotta take to, like, keep Axel around, and that’s cleaning up and bandaging his hand? And I don’t wanna get my blood all mixed up with his blood and give him fucking prions or whatever the hell, so you’re gonna have to fucking help me?”

God, if only they had the fuckin’ battlefield medic that’d sewn Hel up around. Did they mention the name? He couldn’t remember, and also it didn’t matter, because he and Hel were all the help Axel was gonna get, so they better fucking be enough. He got to work.

Stay with you, yeah, where else am I gonna go, Axel thought but didn't say, because it was a shitty joke and also Hel looked like they were about to cry which made it officially not the time for shitty jokes. He'd seen something on their face there, for a second, but maybe he'd imagined it. Not really hard to imagine things at the moment. Everything was like a little bit to the left. Like being drunk but not as fun.

He'd been dribbling blood down his chin and Hel pulling him in was a good excuse for him to spit a mouthful out over their shoulder. He poked the hole where a tooth had been previously with his tongue and it hurt, kinda, but so did his whole head and his hand and his chest anyway, so it wasn't like it mattered. He rested his head on Hel's shoulder and dug up some better words.

"Always, kitten."

He meant it, too. That was the funny part.

Cause it hadn't been more than an hour, probably a lot less, since announcements, since he'd driven his knife into his hand like a high-grade dumbass. Since he'd stared at the wound and the void had stared back and he thought he'd figured something out, some existential truth or whatever, except the existential truth was just "we're all like for realsies seriously gonna die like that's actually happening, for real," which was less of an Existential Truth in the big way those words usually meant and more like looking at the sun and declaring it would set. Like he wasn't setting the world on fire here or anything but maybe he just needed a reminder in some bigger-than-words way. That none of this really mattered. That the last line was already written. All of that.

He'd been super ready to lean into that sweet sweet nihilist energy until Lorenzo beat it out of him. Beat something out of him, anyway. It was hard to really say what. He'd reassess when the world stopped spinning.

"Yuh," Axel called out to Abe, which was like "yeah" but stickier. First aid would be good. He'd lost a lot of blood. His head was... something. Fuzzy. He kept thinking that and not doing anything about it. His whole left arm was stained red by now. He was getting it on Hel which was rude of him but he didn't see a way around that that wasn't pulling back and that would be, like, ruder? Extra rude? Ruder didn't sound like a word but it probably was one.

He was so tired.

"You're warm," he mumbled in Hel's ear, because it was getting kinda cold. "I love you."

"S'okay."

"I just gotta..."


>> He fell silent, his body hanging limply on Hel's.

Hel went along with whatever directions Abe asked. The words registered and they responded physically if not verbally. Not like there was much point in expanding when Abe didn't understand what they'd said in the first place. If Axel had been up with all his insides where they belong instead of dripping all over the place he'd...nah. Sober and attentive they still weren't sure he'd get it on the first pass. He'd hold them tighter. They'd feel his fingers through their hair and down their back before he kissed their forehead. There wouldn't be so much weakness in his voice though maybe it'd be a little less certain, edged with more self-doubt because the moments when they were weakest seemed like the ones he was most inclined to wonder how he was gonna fuck things up. If you were to play the time they'd spent together from end to end, even counting all the time they weren't supposed to be together, you'd probably hear this exact exchange hundreds of times. He still didn't get it. That was okay, though. Hel didn't get it until now either.

Lloyd went to college in 2008, before their family blew up. He wasn't going far, just this college in Columbia. A good thirty to forty-five minute trip from the house. You'd think if you saw all the hate they put on each other growing up that Hel would be ecstatic to see him move out, but that was the thing. You couldn't see it. Nobody could but them. Couple of homeschool kids living way out in the 'burbs surrounded by old people and the occasional meth dealer? Family was all they had in the most literal sense, there was pretty much no other opportunity to socialize. Lloyd had his friends he picked up at work or through JCHE but they didn't see each other every week, let alone every day, and Hel was in the same boat. Back then they had what, a math club a couple hours a week? Maybe a couple hours more of co-op? In the summer when they should have been spending all the time they could with friends all of that went away. There was no one but Lloyd, Bobby, and their parents. They all could have saved each other a lot of misery if they'd learned to get along better earlier. That angle still needed working with Bobby and their folks, Lloyd felt like the only person in their life with a solid connection. When he told them he was leaving the distance didn't matter. For as much control as they had over it, thirty minutes might as well have been thirty thousand miles. Saying they took it hard was a polite understatement, and Lloyd? Lloyd's heart was in the right place. His execution though, that maybe could have used some work.

It was two thousand fucking eight and the Fury family still loved CDs. It was probably a concession to their parents. Dad wouldn't figure out what YouTube was for a few more years and Hel still couldn't tell you for sure if he knew what Spotify was, and Mom used them all the time for her students. That Suzuki method deal, listening to songs over and over and over again instead of relying on sheet music. She still had it in her head that she could turn Hel into some kinda prodigy with enough effort and playing together was one of the few things that they could all do without snapping so they stuck with it. They had stacks of different mixes she'd put together for them to focus on, and the one she'd handed them about a month before Lloyd was due to move out seemed no different. Maybe Lloyd had forgotten which CD he'd helped her with, or she hadn't understood she was supposed to hold it until after they'd dropped him off, because right between Paganini's Theme From Witche's Dance and Dvorák's Humoresque, Lloyd's voice was waiting for them.

"Hey Burby. I know I'm not around anymore, but-"

The rest got swallowed up. It'd be embarrassing but cathartic to spell out how they felt. Lots of fat ugly tears, a stereo hitting the wall, concern from their parents turning into a screaming match, names flying all around. A whole show to live up to the name they'd take a couple years later. Instead what they had to lay out was just embarrassing. They cried, but by now they'd already learned to keep their tears to themselves and their sounds muffled so no one would notice. They didn't stop the CD. The rest passed through them with words that didn't sound like language they understood anymore, but they let it play. There were no accusations or consequences, and when they couldn't cry anymore they moved only to grab their headphones and set the track to repeat.

Two hours later they could near recite it by heart.

"Hey Burby. I know I'm not around anymore, but I dunno how you're feeling about that. If I haven't been by and you don't miss me, I understand. There's a lot I've got to make up to you. That's why I wanted to leave you this, so you know that no matter where I'm at I'm here for you. If I can't see you I wanna talk to you, and if I can't talk to you I'll be thinking of you. Where we're at won't change how much I love you, and how much better I wanna be at showing that. I don't know when I'm gonna see you next, but even when I'm not there I'm not gone. As long as you want me there I won't ever leave you Burby. I promise."

They were cutting out a lot in memory. Pauses, stumbles. The awkward vibe of it all. Lloyd wasn't much of a talker back then, came with their territory maybe. They'd kept it though. In the years when he was really gone after their folks split they'd listen to it now and then and wonder if he still meant it. Like, they dialed him up right there at 3 am would he pick up? When their folks split up he'd gone back to living at home and commuting to help with Bobby, they knew that from all the shouting their parents had done before the divorce, but where was he now? What'd he think of them? If he wanted to talk he'd talk, right? It took a couple years before he reached out and told them he'd been thinking the same questions from the flip side all along. They'd stewed alone for a couple years and it turned out the only time he'd left them was when they pushed him away. He had to go. It'd still be awhile from when he called before they saw each other again. He was waiting to be with him, though. As long as their heart was open he wouldn't leave.

Axel was going to have to go.

He might make it through this. Dude played by Saiyan rules, any ass-kicking he survived he came back from with a power spike. They didn't give up on patching him up or helping Abe encourage him to get moving just in case Lorenzo came back to start blasting up the place, but like they kept repeating to themself that didn't change the long term picture. Axel was going to take more than he could chew someday soon if he hadn't already. It was his nature. He was going to go, and from the way things had shaken out so far he was going to go before Hel. They weren't asking him to beat that. When his time came though, and there was something waiting for him on the other end? If he got the clarity to see them, all their fuck-ups, their flaws, the shitty things they expressed in corners of their head nobody else was supposed to see? They hoped he could find it in his heart to stay, and that they could find it in theirs to be open to him. That the way they loved each other was stronger than the way they hated themselves. When you thought about it, it wasn't so different than what'd they'd been asking each other pretty much the whole time they'd been close.

Axel'd been the one to pull that trigger. It'd taken him years and they only got to enjoy it for a few weeks, but it was more than they'd done.

Maybe he got it all along.

((Hel Fury Continued In cause you're my king and i'm your lionheart))

Abe and Hel managed to patch their dude up as well as you could reasonably expect them to, as in, Axel wasn’t bleeding and you couldn’t see straight through his hand anymore, which was an improvement! Lorenzo had done more of a number on him than Abe’d realized, though, and he could see blood running down from his mouth, and maybe it was just the blood loss (haha just the blood loss, no big deal right) or maybe all those punches had knocked something loose in there, ‘cause Axel was looking pretty faint, and also, limp.

Boy, what a funny prank, what a funny little heart attack Abe just had, but, like, Axel was still alive, right? He was still alive? He was still alive. He had a pulse and air circulating through his lungs and everything, but that didn’t stop him from panic mumbling all like,

“Okay, okay, fine, take a nap, but just keep breathing, you fucking asshole, alright? It’s actually pretty easy, y’know, to breathe, like, we’re all doing it right now, so, what’s your excuse, haha?”

And various other inane things along those lines as he and Hel worked together to gather up their shit and get Axel’s shit together enough for the three of them to get going, because maybe Lorenzo was gonna come back, or maybe some party-crasher was gonna come and investigate what all the fucking commotion had been about, and in either case they didn’t wanna be there anymore.

They left, Axel in the middle, being supported on either shoulder by Abe and Hel. He was fading in and outta consciousness just enough to stumble along, which was good, because Abe really didn’t wanna carry his ass anyway.

((Anyways everything’d probably be fine, haha.))