With closed eyes, Aiden could feel his energy leaving him, and soon he was losing feeling, partly because he wanted to. The constant burning and throbbing which was mercilessly demanding attention to his hand, now subsiding to a mere and distant, annoying hum, as he allowed himself to slip away. He wasn’t dying; no, he just wanted to sleep…
The overly familiar sound of the strike of a match caught his attention, knocking Aiden out of his daze. Warily he opened one eye, and found himself making eye contact with his enemy, a second before the match died. Aiden quietly ground his teeth in fury. He despised the man with a passion, and that wasn’t because Aiden hated everyone but because it was Halim’s fucking fault Aiden was in this cave. That could also be traced back to the fact that this man funded the expedition to Antarctica, ergo hiring the incompetent idiot who got them trapped in Agartha, and vis-à-vis the cave. So it wasn’t hard to figure out why he wasn’t particularly a fan.
He hadn’t always hated Halim, in Antartica he respected him, ironically because he was the man funding the expedition. They hardly exchanged words, and so Aiden never had a reason to dislike him, although from the few sentences they exchanged in the forest, Aiden quickly found reason to. The man was even more obnoxious then Aiden himself.
Halim grunted a word, and Aiden snapped back a sarcastic, “Gee, I wonder why that may be?” as Halim tossed over a hard plastic case. It landed by Aiden’s side, in the dim and ever fleeting light, where he could scarcely make out the Agarthian medical symbol, one he had become all too acquainted with during his short stay in their hospital. He almost didn’t want to accept the man’s help, and besides Halim had no reason to assist Aiden. Perhaps the other man had suddenly grown a conscious, or perhaps he realised they needed to work together to get out of their current situation. A realisation Aiden was also slowly and regrettably coming to the conclusion to.
Either way he still wanted to kick the plastic case far away. But Aiden wasn’t an idiot. If his hand wasn’t tended to soon, it ran the risk of becoming infected, and lighting cigarettes would take twice as long if he only had one hand. Aiden shivered at the thought of losing his hand, and kicked off the lid, before leaning over a rummaging through the case’s contents.
His free hand came across a bottle of cream; he tore off the lid squeezing a small amount of the substance on the tip of his finger. It was cold, extremely cold, and taking a desperate guess as to what the cream was supposed to do, wasted no time in pouring the substance all over his shot hand. He felt an instant wave of relief, the cream instantly working to tame the fire in his hand, and Aiden leaned back against the wall with a happy sigh. He held the cream up into the light, but the inscription was written in Agarthian, so he threw it back into the kit. He knew not what it was, but by the miracle it was working, had a strong feeling his original inference was correct. Aiden found it ironic that the Agarthians could create such advance weaponry but at the same time, with such advanced technology in the medical field, could also create the remedy. Supposedly the enemy of Agartha would not hold such creams, although he still gave a weak smirk at the irony. After a few seconds Aiden reached back into the research kit and finding a roll of bandages, slowly and gently began to wrap his injured hand to save the cream.
While he heard Aiden shifting around, likely dressing his injuries, Halim moved to try and shift some more of the rock blocking the cave's opening, and not achieving very much success through his attempts. Many of the rocks were much too large to move, or simply held in place by other rocks, and some, he was simply afraid to touch, fearing that if he moved them, the other rocks would shift, causing another mini-avalanche, and crushing him.
He grunted, managing to push several smaller rocks away from the hole, hearing them clattering down the rest of the pile after he shoved them out of the way. The small hole widened to an approximately one or two foot circle, before there didn't appear to be anything else he could do, and he was reluctantly forced to conclude that he wouldn't be able to shift enough rock to create a big enough opening to crawl through. He stuck his arm through, wondering if he could fit his head also, before remembering Aiden in the cave too, and he spun around quickly, almost afraid the other man would attack him while his back was turned.
"Couldn't clear much of the rock", he grunted, wiping sweat off his brow. The sunlight filtering through the hole was growing weaker and weaker, and he could swear the cave was already several degrees cooler. Finding his emergency flashlight in his militia pack, he flicked it on, scanning it around the cave quickly to make sure there wasn't any sort of entrance he'd missed, and he shone it at Aiden, just to make sure he was still there and not planning some sort of attack or anything.
Pulling up a few roots from the cave floor, Halim clicked off the flashlight, wanting to conserve battery. He assembled the few roots on the ground, and rooted through his bag to try and find any extraneous materials that he could use to make a fire. "We should make a fire", he said, looking in Aiden's general direction through the darkness. "Do you have anything flammable, or that could be used as kindling?". He was definitely not happy to have to be talking to Aiden, but frankly, his dislike of the idea of dying was far greater at that point than his dislike of Aiden.
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