Survival Of The Fittest

"What?" He said as Amos was saying something, whispering. He leaned his head down to listen, but his voice was weak, and he struggled to make the words.

Fix. It was the one word he managed to make out.

"Fix? Yeah, we'll fix this, just..." His head turned to look at Daniel, he was futzing about with the bandages on his head, but there was so much blood. He turned to look back at Aion and saw his eyes.

They were closing more and more.

"Aion? Hey!"

There was that look to them.

"Don't leave me..."

Amos had been lucky. He hadn't seen many corpses, or murderers around for that matter. But that made the shock when he saw those eyes even greater.

"Aion..." Amos sobbed out as Aion's half-close eyes looked into nothing. His left hand clenched around Aion's hand. The way his hand felt around Aion's told him everything that his eyes didn't.

He was dead. He really was dead.

Amos' entire body trembled, his knees planted in the snow, his hands out in the cold, blood etching down his right hand as it cradled his face, and through all these events, the snow kept falling.

"Why." He said, Amos' voice shook and trembled before it exploded:

"Fuckin', why'd you do that for?!" There was a harshness to his voice that he was not used to; Amos hadn't had to yell in days.

"Fucking why!"

The blood that leaked on Daniel's fingertips were for nothing. He held the extra bandages in his hands, trembling. His eyes were wide and yet it felt like he could see nothing. He breathed, but the air didn't reach his lungs no matter how hard he tried. If he screamed, he might just throw up again, but dear god he wanted to scream. But no, he didn't deserve that - Amos did. If only screams could kill. If only screams could make things right.

(There was one thing that could, just maybe, make things right. Maybe it wouldn't make Amos feel better, and it certainly couldn't bring Aion back. But, it could prevent anything like this from happening again. Daniel knew all along that he had this in him, so he really should have done this sooner. Looking death and murder in the half-lidded eye... surely, it created a deeper pit in Daniel's stomach to think about, but once you've seen it, you have to accept it.)

He rose to his feet, despite his shaking knees. He left the first aid kit in the snow, with all the extra bandages leftover from his kit and from Karin's trade, next to Amos. He took his bag, and his gun.

"Wendy," he wheezed as he passed by her, hobbling into the snowfield. "Don't follow me. Please, don't..."

Daniel wasn't sure where he was going, but he didn't intend to return.

[Daniel Ozanne enters This Artificially Separated Half]

"Daniel...," Wendy said, reaching out with her arm to try and stop him. Her eyes welled up with tears. How could things go this horribly wrong?

Wendy turned back to look at Amos. The body formally known as Aion laid in the snow, unmoving. Amos sat on his knees next to it. Wendy couldn't think of what to say. Nothing she said could have made this situation any better.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, before turning around and walking away. She took off in a different direction from Daniel. She wasn't sure where to go. But she had to get out of the snow.

(Wendy Kennedy, continued elsewhere...)

Amos did not get the answer that he was hoping for, whatever that was. He did not get anything from him. Daniel said something to Wendy, and then Daniel ran. A kit left behind was all that he got out of the ordeal.

"You killed him, and that's it?! Where are you going?!" He screamed after him. But both Daniel and Wendy were soon gone, leaving Amos alone with what was left of Aion.

"Bastard!"

He needed more time!

"I... he... we just got together..."

He needed... more time...

"We didn't... we didn't get to..."

More time...

"Oh, Aion..." And Amos' voice broke, and he leaned his head down to Aion's chest; his right hand had let go of Aion's face and latched onto his shirt.

The snowfall continued its descent upon them.

There was nothing he could do here. All he could do was find Chester and hopefully get out of here.