the damn hippocratic oath was getting on his nerves. he felt more at ease around the nurse raggedy ann and doctor visine than this loathsome straggler. not that he trusted the former with amicable feelings, but they made sense. the entity’s realm was chaos, but even chaos needed equilibrium. violence begat violence. if he wronged them he could expect a severed artery in return.
but the look on this survivor’s face was a painful reminder that humans were sanctimonious creatures.
ghostface flinched as the weight of her jacket dropped on his shoulders. he’d seen a handful just like it photographed in his grandfather’s wartime mementos. the memories burned through his battered leathers and stamped his skin with a molten cold.
he cursed her, cursed her damn oath or whatever specious bullshit she told herself as she eyed his mangled form, and cursed the entity for crossing their paths as his body visibly spasmed. with a maddened chuckle, ghostface caved in on himself, betrayed by the body he swore he had absolute control over.
the ghost didn’t take kindly to acts of kindness. they were an invitation to slip up and ruin all he’d achieved. too many memories wriggled past the mountain of bodies he’d buried them under. the faces of the fools who wanted better for him, the ones who mistook his youthful acts of altruism as something more.
faces stained with veins of gore pursued him through the haze of blood loss. he struggled to keep his head up as he tried to shake away the visions of sightless eyes staring at him from the mantel of his knife. he was trapped. caught like a gutted rat between the hope he betrayed and too friendly of a face.
❝ don’t waste your time playing doctor with me, nurse. death doesn’t last. It’s just a feature. ❞ if he faded, the entity would just stitch his consciousness back into his lifeless limbs. he’d wake up, cold and limb, like a nap in the snow. it’d take a second for his lungs to breathe warm air again and he’d be grateful for his garment’s heat retention.
❝ you’ve seen enough guts and glory. take your jacket before i bleed all over it. there’s no dry cleaning in hell. ❞
NO PITY COLORED her mild gaze as she searched his slumped form for more wounds, hands clasped over her upwards pointed knee. even if he’d been the rare person to desire it, he far from deserved it. she knew too exactly who he was to ever feel that emotion for him, though their paths had never crossed in a trial. the stories of his brutality, his morbid fascination with recording his terrors were often a source of disgusted conversation around the campfire.
but none of that made him beyond her care, clearly to his displeasure.
dark brows arched at his sodden words, awash in what seemed like a thin veil of apathy over depths of almost self loathing. but what she thought and what might be reality could be two entirely different things. still. ❝ you went awfully fast from ‘i might kill you’ to ‘i’m not worth the effort’. ❞ the slightest tinge of amusement colored her tone as she met the shadowed holes that masked his eyes, unable to keep from poking at what she might’ve correctly surmised. no, perhaps he wasn’t worth her time and effort, but never once had that of any sort determined her choices in the field. lips that likely almost matched the life spilling out of him twitched into a smile to match her voice. ❝ but luckily for you, in this condition, playing doctor is absolutely out of the question. ❞ the same soft half flirtation came too easily to her; he was hardly cursing and swinging, and so she slipped into old routine.
those now warm eyes glanced down to where his blood began to tinge the collar’s edge, dampness soaking her knee pressed to the dirt. ❝ too late for that. ❞ but for all her ease, it was still only a facade, a tense nurse too used to caring for the enemy beneath. but that false tranquility was as much her natural state before the wounded as an easy and gentle tone. ❝ but knowing how to get it out is kinda a side effect of my job, no dry cleaners necessary. ❞ there are the evenings sat beside the fire with blood soaked fabric swishing in an icy helmet, rinsing rinsing rinsing until the water than numbed her fingers ran clear as the girls not on duty passed around some bottle of spirits lifted with fluttering lashes from some gi.
yes, she’d seen more than enough guts, both before and here, but would that really stop her from helping him? though it was only a phrase he’d lobbed at her, she still flashed a grimace at his addition of ‘glory’. nothing about war, about this, was ever glorious. ❝ but do you really want to die right now? ❞ now, as if attempting to warm him to her presence by degrees, she risked setting a light hand on the shoulder closest for a heartbeat, hoping even if he reacted with violence, it might... briefly bring some comfort. ❝ ‘cause you don’t have to... even if yes, you’re gonna wake up all black eyed and bushy strapped. ❞ she ached to help him, put the taunting medical kit the entity supplied her with to some good use. to save someone from slipping into the dark and lose something more in the process.
without intending it, her entire expression crumpled, the torment of being near useless to relieve any of the agony circulating here bleeding into grieved eyes. no one, not the survivors, not the killers, not the worst of any of them, deserved this. a quick death, permanent and final, yes, but this endless cycle of pain and brutality? ❝ if you really want to die, i can sit with you, if you want. ❞ there was a glimpse of a past self, the new nurse struggling to hold it together in the face of so much anguish, uncertain. ❝ no one... no one deserves to die alone. ❞
