let the bad in | hal & lucky (day 6)

l u c k y
nachtnebel

Lucky tended to his wounds by the water, jeans rolled just beneath his knees to let the beach cool him off as best he could while stripping down. It wasn't terribly hot outside, but the snap change in temperature left him sweating all over and wishing for the weather to go down about ten degrees. The human body was designed to take incremental and gradual changes, not rash ones. He knew that from the transition from summer to fall in District Four and how it always gave him a head cold.

The rips in his jeans from Xov and Ines's blades brought welcome fresh air onto the skin that hadn't been exposed since he slept in the lodge for the first night. None of the cuts and scrapes across his body were beyond caring for, although he was sure Xovvy wanted to make it so. The hate in her eyes as she swung at him for the gazillionth time, surely she wanted him dead. Perhaps more than she wanted herself alive. "Xovvy doesn't know who she's messing with," Lucky whispered to his now-subservient companion who held the boy's roll of bandages atop its head.

"The last person who hated me like that, well." The boy patched the last wound across his hip and slowly descended onto the sand, thinking only of Gunner. The marks he left on the crowns of his teeth coated him with a wave of emotion. Lucky's fingers dug into the warm sand, hands gripping where he hoped Gunner's spirit rested. Was this where he died, where he dragged the boy's dying body to have some peace? Lucky's other hand burrowed too, grabbing onto what he hoped was Rita on the other end. If it weren't for the anthem showing her face, he might have convinced himself that she was still out there.

In the warmth, Lucky found himself daydreaming, tangled and twisted between covered and exposed in the darkness of his cloak. The hood prevented the beating sun from reaching his eye, but his ear raised, searching for any shifting sound in the water or sands that might prove dangerous.