our doom shall be alike / tw, day 7

The sun dips across the sky. No one else in the woods for miles. Only cannon booms that shake the trees which shake the birds into flight. A black smoke plumes from the direction of the tower, and Lucius only keeps trudging there, pike like a crutch, unrelenting.

But the stone breaks off his leg as he keeps walking. Tediously. Splitting pain. Like fracturing and setting a bone over and over. When the afternoon haze thins, when the flowers finally prune away, he can feel the petals brush around his ankle. Old sensations.

There's a silhouette parting through the grass, soot-stained. Lu runs the last few yards.

He drops the pike, he kneels down in front of him.

Tick grips into his shirt, dark red handprint in the fabric.

“You’re not a rock.” He says.

There's blood underneath the ash. Turns viscid, smear of red through his cheek. A wetness growing from the center of his chest, deepening the stain. Can't tell how much of him is burned. Can't tell how much of the blood is his. He's rambling.

“No.”

Lu takes his wrist, uncurls his fingers loose from the grip. Places Tick's palm against his chest instead, the blood from the new wound half-dried, kept tacky from the dew of the day. “The water. It worked.”

A beat. The pike is lying in the tall grass like a snake. The tower burns in the distance behind him. Blood gushes out of his chest as he takes shallow breaths between the bits of mumbling. And Lucius should put him down. Should kill him. He won't survive if Lu left him anyway. Take the pike. Drive it deeper, break through bone.

Tick shivers. Slowly, Lu touches the back of his head and pulls his weight in, his chin softly bumping against a shoulder. He holds him, at the edge of the flowers.

“I'm not a rock,” he repeats.