sacrificial lamb { roadkill day 3 }

N A N E T T E   Ψ   C A R T E R

I tasted blood on my lips. Her blood. Spitting onto the ground I hike Revan's arm higher onto my shoulder. I don't speak as we walk, my eyes down. My armed burned from where the rats teeth had torn into my flesh, ripping open yesterdays clotting wound. I force myself to concentrate on that, on the searing pain, on the way it pulsed, the pain growing in intensity with the pounding of my heart.

Looking up from the ground I notice something in the distance. I drop Revan's arm, clutching the shaft of my spear with tight hands. "There's something ahead, I'm going to go look. Flynn, help Revan, please." I jog ahead of them, slowing when the metallic construction becomes identifiable as an abandoned car. Rust eat away at the metal, webs covered the mirrors. Using my hands to shield from the suns glare I look into one of the windows. The insides looked worn but relatively undamaged. The door opens with a loud painful groan and I hiss a curse, my eyes searching my surrounding. The only movement I can see is that of Flynn and Revan as they come to stand beside me.

I turn my gaze to Revan's, my eyes hard, my lips a thin line. I waited, waited for him to start provoking me with teasing words, digging under my skin. I waited for him to tell me how useless I was. How fucking pathetic I had been. "Call yourself a career?" He would say, looking at me with those eyes that set my blood on fire. "Just say it." I growl at him, putting up my mental shields, preparing myself for another battle. He had every right to call me out on my efforts. He had every right to lay it on me, lashing me with words as sharp as knives.

She had died. And I had done nothing to prevent it. I had seen it in brief glances across the battle field. He thought I was weak, dead weight slowing him down. He stays quiet, eyes locked with my own. Anger burns through me, frustrated tears glistening in my eyes. "Just say it!" I give him a shove, my hands rough against his chest. "Tell me how pathetic I am. Tell me how weak and useless I am." My fist knock into his chest, clenched so tightly that I could feel my nails bite into the skin of my palm. "Tell me how it is my fault that she is dead." My voice breaks, and the tears escaping down my cheeks.

"I killed her. I did nothing to stop them." My hands grab his shirt, twisting into the fabric tightly. I felt like I couldn't breathe. My heart was pounding in my ears, my throat burned from thirst, from fighting off sobs that built within me each second that he looked at me with those silent eyes. He just stood there, taking each pound to his chest, each shove that grew weaker as I felt my knees go weak beneath me. "I shouldn't care," I whisper, my head bent so that my forehead rested on his chest, my hands still twisted in the fabric of his shirt. "I should be grateful that she is dead. One less body to have to worry about." My vision blurs, and tears slide through thin air before colliding with the ground. "But I fucking care. I cared about her and she was butchered, burnt alive and I did nothing."

My hands release his shirt, and I step back, wiping away at the tears and the blood and the dirt that coated my face. "So, please, just say it." I am almost begging him by this point. I needed to hear it, hear how I had let them all down. How I had failed.

Glassy eyes seek out Flynn. There was blood on his face from where the rat at lunged at him, teeth skinning his face as Grubby whacked it away from him. "Your bleeding," I croak, ripping off a piece of my skivvy that had been protected from my cropped jacket. It wasn't sterile, but it was as clean as we were going to get out her. reaching out I gently dab at the laceration, wiping away the blood. "It's only shallow. Might scar, otherwise it should heal fine."