never realized my asks were off 😭🤚 I forgot to turn those back on after my og account got hacked. not like I was getting many, but still. ask away my loves!
give me fragile ribs bending and breaking under strong hands. give me throats bobbing and cheeks billowing as air is forced into dying lungs. give me blue-tinged lips and greying skin. give my agonal gasps under desperate lips. give my disheveled hospital gowns revealing soft flesh. give my halos of wires and cords and tubes and lines. give me the intrusion of ports and ivs forced into a sickly body, just to keep them alive. give me the tender touches of fixing their hair or wiping the spit from their lips or holding their hand during a rhythm check. give me desperately gentle maneuvers — meticulous jaw thrusts, cradling their whole head in your hands as you attempt to open their airway. apologizing profusely as you swipe fingers into their throat in attempts to clear it. holding them gently as you roll them on their side for recovery position — that convey the love you have for your patient. give me long stretches of PEA, of a tired little heart clinging to life. give me harsh jolts during defibrillation. give me conscious defibrillation, your patient moaning and crying out as you try and shock them back into sinus. give me patients choking on their endotracheal tube. give me restraints to keep them from hurting themselves. give me desperate massage as a patient's heart rate tanks, trying to keep it from stopping altogether.
Been thinking about little resus touches that I like
When the patient has a hand laid limply on their belly and it rocks with every compression, or it’s bent up near their cheek and bounces with the force
That moment just after time is called and the rescuer loses their rhythm, hesitates, then finally stops compressions, but their hand lingers a moment longer on the patient’s chest as if not wanting to let them go
If I’m in a time called mood then there’s also the quiet minute or so where they disconnect leads, gently tending to the body as they unhook the ambu bag from the trach tube and it hangs from between the body’s teeth, tenting the fabric when they pull the sheet over
The patient’s eyes are open and their head is tilted towards their rescuer, silently watching them work to bring them back
When the rescuer lays their head on a patient’s chest to check for a heartbeat, and they readjust and press their ear harder against their sternum in search of a pulse that’s not there
Absolutely love when the rescuer grunts with compressions or growls in frustration when they can’t find a pulse, vocal rescuers are my favorite so lots of “stay with me” “I’m losing him” “come on, come back”
And of course when the patient finally comes back, and they’re panting and disoriented but the rescuer is there to hold their hand, maybe lay their palm on their heart and assure them that everything is alright
resus where the resusee comes around moments after their heart stops. maybe compressions aren't even necessary, the rescuer's impulsive thump of a fist to their sternum is enough to send them wheezing and rolling on their side. there's barely time for reality to set in, much less time to start worrying, before the situation is resolved. the fear, the relief only come later, when they realize how easily things could have taken a turn for the worse.
resus where desperation is creeping in. the rescuer's arms are starting to quiver from acting as the resusee's heartbeat. the breaths they've been forcing into the other's lungs are beginning to seem futile. their confidence is slipping. they were so certain they could bring them back, but... what if they can't? what if they don't fix this? what if, what if, what if? as their thoughts spiral, they begin to put their full weight behind each thrust, no longer afraid of fracturing ribs. just as panic constricts their own chest, the heart beneath their palms convulses without warning. slamming the brakes on their harsh compressions, they pull away, giving the resusee room to draw a shaky breath.
resus where it should be too late. the rescuer has been pounding on the resusee's motionless chest for god knows how many minutes. they're starting to wonder how long it really takes for this to become irreversible. what are they doing wrong, did they miss some critical window or skip a vital step? is this hopeless? they can't give up, they have to bring the resusee back, but they think the figure below them is becoming cold to the touch. hopefully that's their imagination, or perhaps this is just a nightmare... they can't quite tell anymore. their vision is darkening around the edges, blurring with tears. all strength has left them; it would take a miracle for them to perform even one final compression. they failed. collapsing, they fold themselves over the body—and feel a hesitant flutter within battered ribs.
Adam's heart keeps the Pennydurren running-Tav keeps Adam's heart running. Original concept by @emptycalories-splitlip. This part features stething, mild cardiophilia, semi visible hearts. It's a lot of set up for resus and whump down the line.
Lives depend on you.
The little note greeted Gustav every morning, and every morning, he lay in his bunk to stare at it, taped to the ceiling above him. Some days he greeted it with more resentment than others, but most days it was just reiterating what he already felt deep down. The weight of at least a thousand workers, families, and passengers depended on him keeping the Forge going. So he did.
He scrubbed at his hair and slid into his work jumpsuit, his work boots, and slipped a cigarette between his lips as he left his quarters. His bedroom was nearest the engine room, so it was always muggy and damp with heat, the kind that not even sweat could fully cool off. They were in the bowels of the Pennydarren, tucked under the first link of the chain of cabs that, to Gustav, seemed to go on forever. It was impossible to tell really; only fog divers were allowed outside the train. Not unlike saturation divers of old, they had to be acclimated to survive out in the dense fog outside the reinforced steel walls of the Pennydarren in order to patch holes in her hull. Again, he thought of the poor shmucks going crazy in the diving bells, and again he was thankful for the job he had in engineering.
He waved and greeted the others working on the machinery, the walls tens of feet high, some with tall enough components a man had to be hoisted by a pulley to work on the mechanisms. Another job he didn’t envy. They all nodded respectfully back. Another perk of the job compared to others. Folks knew their lives depended on him too. If the engine went dark, they’d be swallowed up in the fog.
Adam was already on the walker as he drew nearer the panel of glass separating them. “Good morning, Tav,” he said, a little out of breath. Tav checked his watch. Adam's skin glistened with sweat, and judging by the time he was nearing the end of his mandatory exercise routine. “What’s so good about it?” he said, stubbing his cigarette out on the wall, scorched black in one spot from this ritual of his. The door slid open between them and he stepped through as Adam flashed him that warm smile. “We could be in the back of the train shoveling shit.” “Fair enough.” He grabbed his tattered wheelie chair and rolled it over to the other man’s side. “Tell me a joke,” Adam said as the walker under his feet slowed and finally stopped, a panel sliding back over it.
He retrieved a small spiral notebook from his breast pocket and a pen, clicking it a few times. “Why was the politician out of breath?” He said as a metal chair, or throne, as it had always seemed to him, shaped out of riveted paneling in the floor underneath the other man and Adam sat as well. “I don’t know,” he said, already smiling. “He was running for office.” said Tav.
Adam laughed, a good natured laugh that wrinkled his eyes to slits and showed off his pearly teeth. “I like that one.” “You always like them.” Tav turned to his equipment laid out nearby. He rolled over behind Adam and began checking the ports protruding from his back. Six of them, three on each side, starting at his shoulder blades and going down in tighter circles to the small of his back. From these, huge ropes of cable hung up into the engine, which hummed with orange and yellow fire from the ever burning fuel within. The fire was mimicked in Adam’s chest, which glowed bright as an xray. His ribs, cartilage, and organs cast shadows, along with the webbing of nerves and veins where the glow turned sort of reddish from the thin tissue. His heart was a flashlight burning from inside his body. It was Tav’s job to keep that heart in good order. Adam, similarly, had only one job: keep his heart beating strongly.
Being that this was entirely an unconscious matter he had no real control over, he did as he was asked. He allowed himself to be poked and prodded. He did his cardio every day without fail, as well as strength exercises to keep his body in peak form, though it had once seemed a waste to have a perfect body when one was relegated to however long the cables reached. He ate the disgusting nutrient slurry they provided which kept his every hormonal and blood level in balance. He read when there was downtime.
Mostly, he watched Tav. He was the only one allowed inside the inner chamber of the Forge, outside of skittish Fetchers who brought him his meals and supplies and the engineer who sometimes worked on the engine. On his birthday, they let his mother visit.
Where Adam was all tone and muscle from a life where his every physical need was met, Tav was scrawny and underfed. His head was shaved on the sides, and tattoos of every shape and color peeked out from the edges of his clothes. He was literally stamped by an existence outside the walls of the chamber which had been most of Adam’s life. He drank. He smoked. He lived beyond the twenty feet of cable tethering Adam to the life of a Forge. He was not stuck with an umbilical cord to an unfeeling mother made of bolts and steel.
He went through his checklist (Shortness of breath? No. Deficiency cravings? No. Muscle cramps or weakness? No. Fatigue? Always, he’d secretly wanted to say. No.) and when he was done, he retrieved his stethoscope. He rolled the chair close enough their knees touched and Adam suppressed a shiver at the minor point of contact. The bell was warm where it had sat between Tav’s palms and he gave the diaphragm one last warm breath before settling the circular piece of metal under his nipple, at the apex of his heart. He pressed two fingers against his throat to feel the pulse at his carotid. This was the part he liked the best, never knowing that Tav liked it too. He lingered always a bit too long when he had the excuse to touch him.
Tav’s eyes flicked up to watch his heart moving, silhouetted by the light behind his ribs. There was a small surgical scar down his sternum, the only mark on his body, from where he had been implanted with the spark that made him a Forge. He’d been a child, picked out of many, to serve as the new heart of the train. Tav had been in that crop of children too, but he was always skinny and too sickly to be of any use. Once, he’d envied that Adam had been made special. After years as his Keeper, he no longer envied him. He situated it over the tricuspid point between the swell of Adam's pectorals. His heart beat steadily against the steth, louder in his ears now that he was closer to a valve as it opened and closed with each pulse of blood. He watched the shadow of his heart as it moved in his chest, contracting and expanding in tandem with the beat he heard swelling in his ears.
"What's new topside?" he asked as Tav lifted the bell to reposition again. He sat the diaphragm against the aortic site near his collarbone, his hand drifting down to touch the pulse at his wrist as well. "Well," sighed Tav, "Nothing, as per the usual. Some weirdo zealots have been tagging the mess hall again. Separatists or whatever." "The radio was talking about them." "It's all the radio is talking about because it's the only thing happening. The people in the lower cars are having a tizzy about it because they're told it's this big uprising, but it's nothing. Couple kids getting a hold of spray paint. Deep breath." Adam obliged. Then he said, "Do they really think we could survive out there? In the fog?" "Who knows what they believe. Kooky shit, mostly. Bet none of them have spoken to any of the divers. Stick any one of them in one of those diving bells for an hour, they'll stop yapping about leaving the trains pretty quickly."
Adam looked around at his chambers and wondered if the diving bells were much smaller, or much more claustrophobic than his own living quarters. It was hard to imagine a place being smaller. He was quiet as the stethoscope was pressed to both sides of his neck and the sequence repeated with the bell of the stethoscope. When Tav made a 'come here' gesture with two fingers at the end of it, he sat up. His head settled in against the smaller man's shoulder as he stethed points around his ribs and his back. He breathed in steadily and deeply, and if he noticed Tav turning his face in towards his neck to soak in his body heat, even in the sweltering humidity of the engine room, neither of them said anything. He didn't want to bring attention to it and break the spell. Tav smelled like whiskey and smoke. He turned in towards him as well. "Deep breath for me." Adam drew it in through his nose, so close now to Tav's skin he was almost touching his cheek.
"It's picking up a bit," said the Keeper, bringing his other hand up to touch Adam's shoulder. "Try to relax." How could he? There was no hiding how the other man affected him. His traitorous heart wanted to bust from his chest and leap into his hands. Do something with me, do anything, I'm yours. Just make me useful to you. He swallowed in a dry throat. Behind them, the engine's cradle glowed a little bit brighter. In the other cars, the lights warmed and brightened, and a few people had to shield their eyes for a moment before the regulators kicked in and diverted the unexpected power surge into other channels. He hated knowing every denizen of the Pennydurren knew when his heart was speeding up. During his exercise sessions, the engineers knew to be on the lookout for surges, but outside of those allotted times, it was a cause of concern. More often than not it ended with his Keeper being sent in, and how was he supposed to explain himself to the man responsible for his racing heart? How could he look at Tav and confess he had been curled on his side in his simple cot, taking himself into his hand, thinking of those inked hands roaming over his body and auscultating his pounding heart?
He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined the bulbs in the third car market glowing hot, imagined that everyone knew his thoughts as soon as they looked at the little suns above their heads, and he took a series of deep breaths. Eventually, his heartrate steadied.
"There we go," Tav said softly, his fingers curling in against Adam's waves of dark brown hair. "Much better." Adam's hands itched to be around him. Instead they hung at his sides. His head laid fully against his Keeper's narrow shoulder. He thought again of all the time Tav spent with him. Not just these checkups, but most times he was the one to bring him meals. The one who doled out his medication. The one who talked him down from panic attacks and nightmares. He'd soothe him and stroke his brow until his heart no longer felt like it was going to pop, and he had never asked for anything from him. Could ask nothing of him, really. What more could Adam give him than a working train? He'd given him his heart; to the Pennydurren, that was all he could give.
"Do you resent me?" he asked suddenly. He felt Tav stiffen a bit under him and the other man shouldered an earpiece out. "Do I what?" Adam squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to swallow those words the moment they'd hit the air. But they couldn't be retrieved now. He took a shaky breath and asked again, "Do you resent me? You... you're always at my beck and call. You have to take care of me more than anyone else. You can't really live your life, you're... leashed to me."
Tav leaned back, taking him by the shoulders. "Adam. The hell are you talking about?" When he opened his mouth to answer, he shook his head, taking him by the chin to make him look up. "No. No, of course I don't resent you. I could never. You think I'm stuck here?" He scoffed. "Buddy, I pop pills in your mouth and listen to your heart once a week. I'm not so irreplaceable I couldn't ask for a different station." "But-" Tav squeezed his cheeks towards his mouth before he could protest. "I like taking care of you. I like talking with you. You're my friend. You're..." He looked down into those twinkling doe eyes and his breath faltered a bit. Adam had the most open, earnest eyes of anyone he had ever met. He didn't know how to lie. He had never been hurt and he had never hurt anyone in turn. And yes, he was more than a friend. But Tav wasn't like him. He hurt people, people he even cared about. He didn't want Adam to be one of those people. So he smoothed his hair away from his forehead and said in a low voice, "You're my best friend. And I'll be pissed if you think otherwise again. So... stop acting like you're some burden on me."
He pressed his forehead against Tav's palm, nodding. "Okay..." He pushed his head back a bit until their eyes met. "Hey," said Tav, "What do you get from a pampered cow?" The corners of the Forge's lips turned up and he shrugged wordlessly. He scrubbed his hand over his hair. "Spoiled milk." Adam scoffed, "That one's stupid." "They're all stupid."
But he liked them anyway.
As their session for the day came to a close, Adam leaned back in his chair, the cables running from his back slotting easily into the grooves cut into the back, and watched his Keeper leave. Tav gave him a little wave over the shoulder. Neither said what was really on their mind. As one went to sulk in his bunk and the other leaned his head back to run every touch over in his mind, neither could imagine the turmoil brewing in the lower cars. They couldn't know how far some people were willing to go to try and escape the confines of the Pennydurren.
They didn't see a boy smuggled into the Fetchers, who ferried the Forge food and any other amenity he would need. Nor could they see the little package of white powder he surreptitiously slipped into Adam's usual medication for that evening.
Original concept by @emptycalories-splitlip Something is slipped into Adam’s medication, Tav races to stabilize him. This part features M resus, M rescuer, EKG, seizures, conscious mouth to mouth, conscious defibrillation.
It was evening when Gustav returned for the daily round of meds. A Fetcher he didn’t recognize followed closely on his heels. He didn’t recognize them most of the time, they aged out into more useful jobs or simply no longer found the work of caring for the Forge all that appealing. This boy was a bit older than the usual lot. Most found more permanent positions on the Pennydurren by the time they were fourteen, and this kid was sixteen at least, with the acne and peach fuzz to prove it. Still, Gustav was hardly one to judge a late bloomer. He hadn’t grown his last few inches or facial hair until he was almost nineteen. He pushed aside his questions as they walked past engineering side by side.
“Enjoy being a Fetch,” he sighed, plumes of soft grey smoke spilling from his nose. “You’ll miss it when they place you somewhere permanent.” “Imagine I will, sir,” said the boy, staring down at the tray of colorless paste, the cup of little pills, and the small vial sat beside it. He hadn’t looked up yet. Tav watched his throat work for the tenth time and arched a brow. “You alright?” “Heat’s just getting to me, sir." "Ah. You're from the lower cars, then. This place is a sauna compared to the cold back there.” He rolled his shoulders, dislodging a bit of sweat on his collar to let it roll down between his shoulder blades.
The kid tried very hard not to shake perceptibly.
As they entered the engine room, Gustav once more snubbed out his cigarette on the wall. “Where do sheep spend their vacations?" he called out, voice echoing on the metal walls of the chamber. Adam grinned, setting down his book and rising to greet him. "I don't know, where?" He slid his hands in his pockets and replied, rolling from his heels to the tips of his toes and back as he inflected, "The Baaaahamas." That won a genuine laugh from the Forge and he crossed to the two of them, taking his place at the angular throne in the center of the room. The cables protruding from his back looped into the divots carved into the back of the chair and Tav rolled a tray table in front of him. The Fetcher placed the tray of food and medication down and took a step back like it was poised to bite him.
Tav gave him a glass of water and gave a cursory look over of the various pills, noting the stamps of authenticity on gel caps and tablets. Satisfied, he handed them off, and Adam chucked back the small cup of pills into the back of his throat. Once he'd washed them down, he tilted his head, opening his mouth for the Keeper to inspect his tongue. He took him by the chin, turning his face from side to side to check his cheeks and said simply, "Up." to get him to lift his tongue. Once he was sure he wasn't cheeking any of it, he patted the Forge on the side of his face.
Adam wasted no time, hunkering over his flavorless meal with a spoon. "You're a new face," he pointed out conversationally, gesturing with his silverware. "Always a new Fetch pattering around the halls," sighed Tav, retrieving his stethoscope for a quick listen, which Adam was kind enough to stop wolfing down his dinner and allow him. His heart pounded, strong as ever, the chambers moving in a shadowplay behind his sternum. The kid watched this all, trying to force his breathing and heart to slow. "He looks a little pale," said Adam. "He's from the lower cars. Probably the first time he's had any kind of heat in his bones, I'd be shivering too," Tav replied.
The Fetcher thought he might be sick. He watched the Forge scoop another shovelful of mush and stuck it in his mouth, smiling at him around the spoon. He knew, staring into that kind face and those warm brown eyes, that he had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake. "I'm sorry," he whispered, shaking. The Keeper perked at that and rounded on him. "What was that?" His knees were shaking wads of gelatin as he turned and fled the chamber.
Tav's stomach turned to lead. "What the-" He took a few hesitant steps towards him, unsure what was happening, only knowing that it filled him with an unknowing dread. His eyes went from the boy's retreating back, shoving at the button to open the glass door and stumbling through, back to Adam. His gaze snagged on the empty cup as terrible realization dawned on him. He seemed to understand at the same moment, staring wide eyed at the cup and back up at Tav. Something had been tampered with.
"Do they not vet these fucking Fetches anymore?" he spat as he turned on his heel and bolted back to Adam's side. He was already barking orders over his comm watch, "Anyone nearby sees a kid booking it for the lower cars, grab him. Gimme an engineer, now. A medic too, if we can spare it." He didn't want to say they might have to switch to auxiliary power, mainly because he didn't want to think of it. An idiot separatist, smuggled into the Forge's quarters. Allowed to touch his food and medication. He was running through the list of dead men in his head when he felt Adam's warm hand on his other wrist.
"Tav," he said shakily, looking up at him with watering eyes. His mind ground to a halt. The urgency was stopped dead by the overwhelming need to comfort, and he knelt in front of the larger man to take his face in his hands. "You're alright," Tav murmured, not believing himself. "We just... we uhm-" His throat dried up. His initial response was to get him to throw up whatever he'd ingested the kid might have tampered with, but he knew the dangers of that. If it did damage going down, it would do damage coming up, and it might not even all come up. Not to mention the risk to his airway depending on the poison. It had to be poison. That was not the reaction of a boy innocently handing off food to the heart of the Pennydurren. "We..." he tried again, and again came up with nothing.
Adam's blood swelled in his ears. The light playing against his ribs and heart flickered with the rabbit quick gait of his pulse. Something acrid, a mild bitterness he hadn't noticed while he was eating, was creeping up from his throat to his tongue. Tav's stricken face wasn't doing anything to bely his fears. Something in the Forge's expression made him move and he shifted to stand, tilting his head up. "Just sit tight, alright? I'm right here, I'm not letting anything happen to you." He immediately went to fetch the EKG machine, leads, and a few other pieces of medical equipment they'd rarely had call to use outside the annual checkups. He deposited his load at Adam's feet as the Forge tried to get air into lungs that felt like wood in his chest.
Tav placed the leads in six spots across his collarbone and sternum, and connected them to the bulky monitor at his feet. It warbled as it flickered to life, mirroring his racing heart. Already it had climbed to 100 beats per minute, his chest rising and falling quicker. His Keeper wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his sinewy upper arm and was halfway through inflating it when one of the engineers stepped through the doorway.
Marsh was a man Tav had only had brief interactions with, and he had hardly got the question out when the Keeper hurriedly informed him, "That Fetcher was some kind of plant. I think he was trying to poison Adam." "Christ," the other man said, already rolling up his sleeves as he made for the engine chassis, "Who'd be so blindingly stupid? We’ll be sitting ducks without a Forge." "I have no idea, I need you to keep the pressure valves from blowing. His heartrate is spiking." Again, a large, soft hand fell over Tav's own. Comforting platitudes rose up until he looked up into the face of his Forge.
Blood leaked steadily down one nostril. "Tav," he ground out, the ancient monitor whirring louder as his heart shot up to 150 bpm and kept ticking up and up. "I can't... can't keep my eyes open." Even as he said it his head drifted back and snapped forward again, his dark lashes fluttering. His hair spilled across his face. It was paling quickly, his normally deep olive skin blanching, first around his cheeks, his hands, his feet, then spreading from the outside in. Blood pulled from his extremities, drawing into his torso to try and keep his vital organs fed as his body rang alarm bells that something wasn’t right. In the other cars, lights brightened and flickered, radios crackled from the sudden interference, and systems began to overheat as his taxed organ pumped too hard for his body and the Pennydurren both.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Tav hurriedly reassured him, cradling the back of his neck with a slightly shaky hand. He glanced once more at the monitors, his stomach bottoming out as the crackling display read 170 bpm. He was fully in tachycardia. Tav’s breath shook as he tried to control his breathing. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone. Not Adam, himself, or the hundreds of people who would be forfeit to the fog outside the Pennydurren if the Forge went dark. The fog, and the things inside of it.
He pumped the pressure cuff until it finally gave him a reading, but it had no good news to share. Adam’s blood pressure was skyrocketing the same as his heart rate. It wouldn’t be able to sustain itself like this. Already Tav could see the the ventricles snapping out as the heart filled a little and recoiling as it squeezed out only half the amount of blood his body needed. If even half. He scrambled for the emergency hatch nearby which stored all manner of antiarrhythmic medications. It had something for every contingency. If his heart beat too fast, if it beat too slow, if it wasn’t beating at all. Tav shivered at the last thought, nearly dropping the vial of amiodarone as his hands shook especially hard. Beside him, Adam’s breathing had turned into noisy, sucking inhalations.
“Try to breathe deep for me,” he told him as he drew up a dose into a syringe. “In through the nose, out through the mouth, try to hold it for a few seconds.” “It hurts,” Adam ground out through a clenched jaw, “T-Tav, it… hurts to breathe…” “You gotta do it anyway, alright? Even if it hurts.” He held his forearm still as he slid the needle into a vein, steadily depressing the plunger. The amiodarone flooded into his system, and Tav rubbed a gentle circle over the injection site with his thumb as he drew away.
Marsh cursed from across the room, struggling to secure a panel of the engine which had begun to bulge and strain against its riveting. It shuddered in tandem with the ventricles in Adam’s chest, like the machinery was a crude model demonstrating what was going wrong with his heart. “Damn thing’s about to pop,” he growled, and then it did, a sharp metal sound popping like a cork as one of the bolts shot off and ricocheted off the floor. “We gotta switch to auxiliary power, he’ll overheat half the train’s systems at this rate.” “Just do whatever you need to do!”
Tav was busy hauling the defib unit up from the emergency hatch. It had sat unused for decades, and he wasn’t even sure if it had any juice left, but the thing came to life when he hit the power button, ready to shock his heart into working order. He could see the shadow of Adam’s heart starting to skip and quiver every few beats, stumbling to keep up with itself. His head was slumped forward against his chest, his eyelids weighed down. He couldn’t even sit upright. Tav thought absently how he could work better with him on the floor or a bed, but knew the ports and cables hung from his back would prevent that. “Adam,” he began, cracking on his name, “C’mon, stay with me. Stay with me, kid.”
He grabbed a tube of conduction gel from the kit and applied a good amount on the metal plane of the defibrillator paddles, rubbing them against one another to spread it evenly. He clicked the 100j mark and watched the bar climb as it charged. Adam’s body shone with sweat, his breathing deteriorated into swallow sips at air. Tav needed only a glance at his chest to confirm he had gone from a dangerously high heart rate to ventricular fibrillation. The shadow of his heart was quivering uselessly. “I’m sorry about this,” he murmured more to himself than to the Forge, who was likely past understanding him by now. He settled the paddles between the EKG leads on his sternum and to the side of his ribs, the gel making them slick against his sweat soaked chest. He jabbed the discharge buttons.
Adam felt the mule kick him in the chest. His muscles spasmed painfully, head jerking back on his neck, the muscles of his chest jumping and his arms flinching inward. He loosed a pathetic sounding groan as the charge dissipated from his muscles, unable to do much more than sit there and whimper. There was another electric whine and he felt the cold metal squish against the spots the gel had made the first time. No, he thought but couldn’t find his voice, Tav, please, you have no idea how bad that hurt. There came another click and another violent current, rippling across his muscles. He managed to find his voice enough to yelp that time, his chest heaving as he struggled to draw in air and he began to moan on every exhalation.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Tav was saying but Adam couldn’t hear him. This was a deeply necessary pain he was inflicting, but it was still pain, and it hurt his own heart to do this to his friend. A spiteful voice called him a coward for even thinking that. Adam was more than a friend, they both knew it, but Adam had been too shy for confessions and Tav too stubborn. Now he was staring into those heavy lidded eyes as they glistened with tears, and he had the horrible sinking sensation of being too late. His chest ached to hear the crackling wheeze of his breaths, and he set the defibrillator down for the moment. His heart was beating too fast still, but it was beating instead of shaking uselessly, which was something at least. Tachycardia was only a little preferable to v-fib.
He rummaged in the emergency kit and cursed when he could find no oxygen mask. Wiping his sweaty palm off on his pant leg, he stood above the Forge and leaned his head back against his shoulders, mindful not to overextend his airway. “I’m gonna give you some air,” he told him, but words had long stopped making sense to Adam. He swiped at the blood under his nose with a thumb. He pinched the Forge’s nostrils closed with one hand, the other resting on the arch of his throat. He blew hot air into his mouth. Adam’s cheeks bulged, his throat flexing with the intrusion of another person’s breath forcing its way down into his lungs.
Delirious with pain, the mouth to mouth felt like one more agony to add to the list. It forcibly expanded his chest, warring with his own breathing patterns, and he moaned out the intrusive air against Tav’s lips. Just kiss me normally. Let me kiss you without all this awfulness. Another breath breached the sanctum of his airway. He felt the warmth of tears sliding down from the corners of his eyes. When the seal made of their mouths broke, he sobbed, and became aware of the hands holding his face. They were the last thing he was aware of before the lights abruptly switched off.
“I promise I’m helping,” Tav was telling him, running a thumb over his sweaty brow. “I know this… this must all hurt like hell, but I’m helping.” “How’s he doing?” Marsh called out, fighting one of the huge switches to activate the backup generators. Tav glanced at the heart monitor and growled, “God damn it- he’s fibrillating again!” He released his hold on his face and went to scoop up the paddled again, until he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.
Adam’s chest bucked unexpectedly. Tav paused, taken slightly aback. His shoulder jerked forward off the back of the chair and he went still. Then it jerked again, and Tav had only a moment to react before Adam locked up in a seizure. The Keeper crashed into a seated position in his Forge’s lap, standing his shaking body up so he could press him against his chest. “Christ,” he sobbed, unable to contain himself a moment more. He was cracking in two. He held tightly to his charge as his body shuddered, shaking violently against him. Adam was bigger than he was, better cared for, and a few times Tav was nearly knocked out of his lap by the surging waves of his seizing. He held tight, hooking his feet under a panel of the chair to keep him there as he cradled his thrashing body. He pressed his cheek against the other man’s and heard his teeth click and grind.
“Please,” Tav whispered in a broken husk of a voice, “God, please…” Adam’s head knocked against his Keeper’s temple until a pair of large hands slid between them and kept his head still. He looked only briefly to see Marsh on the other side of the chair, helping to still his tormented body. Tav squeezed him a little harder and nodded his thanks.
He could feel Adam’s muscles tensing at random intervals under his hands. His throat gurgled as the muscles there were caught in the tide of spasms. His heart, dangerously overtaxed, had fallen out of fibrillation and back into tachycardia. It was pounding hard against Tav’s thin ribcage, where his own heart hammered in fear. It felt like Adam’s would punch out from his sternum and crack Tav’s ribs with the intensity at which it was beating. “It’s okay,” he whispered, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “It’s okay, I’ve got you… I’ve got-“
With Adam in cardiac arrest, Tav scrambles to revive him before the Pennydurren loses power. And before the choice is taken out of his hands.
Original concept by @emptycalories-splitlip . Features M resus, M rescuer, CPR, mouth to mouth, intubation, open heart massage.
In the other cars, the lights had been going haywire. Brightening to terribly hot globes on the walls and ceiling, flickering, going dark and then reigniting with the Forge’s heart struggling to maintain him. The entire Pennydurren knew something was wrong. No one knew more acutely than the seamstress in the upper cars garment manufacturing. There was a great shudder running through the train and the sewing machines went silent for the first time that day.
She stared at the needle buried in cloth and folded her hands over her mouth. She knew better than anyone what that meant. “No,” she whispered, tears springing up before she could even register she was crying. “No, my baby…” The backup generators kicked in and once more the machines came to life and the lights popped back on, but it brought her no relief.
Adam’s heart had stopped. Her son was dying.
—
There was a moment, holding up Adam’s limp head with his shoulder, that Tav couldn’t comprehend what had happened. His brain short circuited. He held him there for- too long. Entirely too long. He couldn’t take a breath. What air remained in his lungs left his mouth in short huffs, his eyes wide and fixed on some inconsequential spot on the floor. He couldn’t look at his charge. He couldn’t begin to understand, or maybe accept the truth, that his Forge’s heart had just stopped.
He was dead weight in his arms. The seizure had faced, replaced with an earth shattering stillness. His hands shook where they had been braced against the larger man’s back. Somewhere beyond the ringing in his ears, Marsh’s deep timbre was shouting. He realized, feeling something warm slip from his eyelash, that the ringing was the EKG. He’d flatlined. And Marsh was grabbing his shoulder hard enough to hurt.
“Gustav!” He bellowed. “Sit him back!” Why? He wondered at those words, He’s dead. I can at least hold him like this, I can feel his warmth until it’s not there anymore. I- Marsh slapped him hard across the face. Now his ear really was ringing, but only on the left side, a high pitched whine where he’d been struck. His cheek stung, reddened and almost immediately beginning to swell with an angry, hand shaped welt. Any harder and he might have knocked him unconscious. It was enough.
Tav was shoved back into his body and he moved, laying Adam back against the metal throne. Immediately the engineer tipped Adam’s head back into one of his large hands, supporting his neck as he forced air into his body. Adam was big, but Marsh had been working his whole life with machinery weighing twice as much as himself, and he looked like it. Even just pinching his nose for artificial respirations, he covered half of the Forge’s face so his slack mouth was the only thing really visible.
Tav scooted back as far as he dared on his charge’s lap, stacking his hands in the middle of his slick chest. He felt the air welling in his lungs once more, then he started compressing his chest. “One and two and three and four, five, six-“
The light was dimming in Adam’s chest. He tried not to turn back into a stunned bystander, forcing himself to focus instead on the rhythm of CPR and the depth. But even that was hard. Focus was impossible. Not when his fingers bent over Adam’s ribs as he pumped his heart manually. Not when his Forge’s arms swung limply off the arm rests of the chair.
He heard the hollow whoosh when he reached thirty and Marsh filled Adam’s lungs. Tav glanced over at the monitor, seeing the flatline making a comet trail over the display. He once more beat his hands against his sternum and the straight line was broken up by sharp, irregular peaks. It was comforting, as much as anything was comforting right now, to watch the line on the monitor. It was picture proof that he was doing something good. He was actually making his heart beat, and not just fracturing his bones needlessly.
A voice crackled over his comm watch, “Gustav? Gustav, what’s going on?” Father Shep. He ran the entire operation, the Pennydurren’s conductor and king and named protector. The one who had tethered Adam to the engine with ropes and cables. Tav swallowed and managed to huff, “Adam is in cardiac arrest. I’m trying to resuscitate him as we speak.”
“Damn it all.” There was movement on the other end before he continued, “We caught your little viper. He confessed to everything. They used some kind of poisonous mushroom powder from the back cars, distilled a cardiotoxin.” Tav nearly collapsed. He reached a count of thirty again and rested his hand over Adam’s heart as Marsh filled his lungs.
“I’m still waiting on the medic,” he ground out as he took up his task again, forcing his sternum inward.
“I had him diverted,” said Shep.
Tav’s stomach bottomed out. “You… what? Why? I need help here, I’m not a-“ “He’s preparing the next Forge candidate for surgery. The auxiliary power will just barely last two hours, the surgery and instillation of a Forge take a little longer. We’ve never had such short notice of replacement.”
Replacement. The strength nearly went out of Tav’s arms. They were going to let him die. Worse, they were asking his Keeper to let him die. “Sir, I can… I can bring him back, he’s only been in arrest a few minutes-“ “This isn’t a stroke or heart attack, or something we can treat. Even if he recovers, his heart will be considerably weakened. He’s of no use.” Tav felt like someone had punched him in the stomach.
Marsh stared down at him, holding Adam’s head up. Both had paused their efforts to revive him. Something clicked nearby and a panel slid open on the wall. An emergency measure he had only been briefed on his first day. Scalpels, bone saws, and other surgical equipment gleamed behind the glass case, upon which read IN CASE OF EMERGENCY in red block letters. “Go ahead and call him, Gustav,” said Father Shep. “Then retrieve his spark so it can be implanted in the replacement Forge. If we do this right, we should have just enough time before the backup generators go out.”
Tav was shaking. His hands trembled on Adam’s pectoral, his skin cooling under his palm. They weren’t just asking him to let him die. They were asking him to cut him open and peel away the thing that made him special. The device affixed to his left ventricle and glowing dimly now behind his sternum, the thing that had made him a Forge in the first place, and made Tav his Keeper. Marsh had stopped giving him breaths and looked on with an expression of pity.
“I can bring him back,” he rasped lamely, “I can save him. Just let me save him…” “You have your orders. It’s already underway, if you hesitate then you are risking the lives of everyone else on this train. We’re already losing power to the diving bells outside. Do as I’ve asked you, Gustav.”
He looked to the silver instruments, pristine in their glass case, and his own heart hammered painfully in his chest. Butchery. They wanted him to cut open the only person who had ever given a damn about him, who smiled when he smiled and laughed at his stupid jokes. He looked up at the engineer, pleading with his eyes without knowing it. Marsh shook his head, gingerly adjusting Adam’s head so it rested against the back of the chair. His throat made a limp arch and his eyes were closed. He looked small and ordinary.
Tav made a decision. “Get him to the floor,” he muttered, as much on his back as you can manage.” “Should we disconnect him?” “Not yet. Just lay him down.” It took them both to lay him in a heap on the floor. He was partially angled as the cables lifted one of his shoulders a bit off the floor, so he couldn’t lay flat. Tav settled back onto his knees beside him. He interlocked his fingers and began forcefully pounding on his chest again.
Marsh looked at him with wide eyes. “Lad? What’re you doing?” But it was obvious. Tav wasn’t giving up. “I can save him,” he said, his eyes never straying from Adam’s face. “Keep breathing for him.” “Lad,” Marsh said low and sympathetically, like he was trying to explain death to a small child, “We have to get the engine running again. We can’t waste time.”
“He is not some piece of machinery you can just replace when it malfunctions,” Tav snapped, “He’s not useless. Or a waste of time. Fucks sake, he’s a human being!” He threw his weight behind each thrust, forcing Adam’s chest to cave and rocking his body. His impassioned plea made it obvious that Adam was more than a human being to him. He had been his one constant since they were children. He’d protected the Pennydurren since he was a teenager, and Tav had protected him. “I’m not just gonna let him go,” he whispered in hoarse, aching defiance.
Marsh watched him for at least two cycles of CPR. Tav rocked against his chest, Adam’s shoulders shrugging inward with each compression. He pulled open his jaw, making a seal against his pale lips, and blew down his throat. The Keeper had started hyperventilating from adrenaline and exertion by the second round of breaths, and spit bubbled up at the corner of his mouth as he blew. Shiny strings of saliva connected their lips as he drew away to plunge once more against his unmoving heart.
The engineer moved to the other side and gingerly shouldered him out of the way. “Focus on giving him air,” he said in a gruff murmur, locking his hands between the Forge’s nipples. He had a lot more muscle to throw behind each pummeling thrust, and Adam’s entire body shook with them. His head danced back against the floor, his hand, angled against the cables, thumped quietly at his side. Tav did as he asked and focusing on giving him air. “…Twenty-eight- twenty-nine, thirty, breathe.” He breathed for him. The cycle began again, “One, two, three, four…”
In between rescue breaths, he sat on his knees, bent over his charge. He kept a hand on his cheek, panting, his forehead pressed against the other man’s. “Come on,” he whispered to him, “Come on, kid… Take a breath, just breathe… Breathe-“
It had been ten minutes since his heart seized and went still. The light between his ribs was nothing but a faint ember now, and his deep skin was waxy and colorless. Tav kissed his temple, clutched his face. “Anything,” he whispered, “Anything, Adam… just give me something. Tell me you’re not gone…” They beat his chest. They shocked him, the current making him jolt like a puppet shaken by its strings. His heart wouldn’t move. It didn’t budge under the efforts of both men to get him back.
“I have a courier headed your way now,” Father Shep suddenly announced over the comm watch, making them both jump. Tav, for one, had forgotten utterly that he was waiting for them to deliver Adam’s life on a platter. “I trust you’ve got it in hand?”
He didn’t say anything. He looked over at the surgical tools on the far wall, his thumb stroking Adam’s cheek. “Gustav? Do you copy? Have you got-“ He clicked it off. Maybe they’d throw him off the nearest platform for this, but none of that mattered half so much as getting the Forge back.
He went and retrieved the surgical equipment. Gloves, laryngoscopes, intubation tubes, rib spreaders, saws. He laid a few implements he might need on the tray and ferried them over. Adam had been without a pulse for nearly twenty minutes. He’d been without artificial pulse for a little over one. Tav knelt beside him. “Hold compressions.” Marsh warily eyed the surgical tools but obliged and leaned back in his heels.
“You know how to intubate someone?” “My brother’s one of the medics, I seen him do it a few times.” “Good,” said Tav, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. He set the ventilation device between them. “Intubate him.”
Marsh huffed, but grabbed the silver laryngoscope blade and slid it over Adam’s tongue. He fed the intubation tube down his throat and kept it in place with a endotracheal tube holder looped around his cheeks and the back of his head. Then he switched on the little portable ventilator Tav had brought over and it hummed as it worked, the accordion like squeezer in the glass tube rising and falling with a seesaw rhythm to his chest now. When it expanded, his chest fell, and when it squeezed down towards the bottom, his chest rose.
Tav liberally slathered iodine over the curve of Adam’s ribs, where they were slightly elevated against the wiring. It dripped in lazy amber rivulets, staining his skin as it went. Then he snatched up a scalpel and slid it over the hollow between two ribs. He kept the incision open with the spreader clamp, wide enough that meat and muscle were visible through the wound.
More importantly, wide enough to slide a gloved hand into Adam’s chest cavity.
His fingers probed blindly through the walls of his organs and ribs until he touched something hard and metal. The spark. Its light was mostly dead by now, but with the open wound, some of its soft orange glow spilled out in weak beams of light. Tav peeked at the outside of his sternum. He could see the shadow of his hand as it closed around the organ in the center of his chest. He felt the rubbery texture of compact muscle even through the gloves he wore, and the disconcerting sensation of his lungs expanding and shuddering with the ventilator, like jellyfish brushing up against his fingers.
He cradled Adam’s heart in his hand. It was bigger than he anticipated, athletic from the years training the cardiac muscle to their peak. Tav swallowed back a sob and a laugh at the same time. He really did have the biggest heart of anyone he knew. He would make it beat again, no matter what it took. He should have felt some kind of nausea or panic at performing a surgery he had little knowledge of, but a cold calm had settled instead.
He worked his thumb in against a ventricle. His fingers made a soft cradle around the organ and he slowly began to massage it, unsure, somewhat timid strokes at first, until finally he worked himself into a steady rhythm. His other hand he braced against Adam’s sternum, watching the shadow play reflected there. He could see the contour of his hand coaxing the silent organ, pumping and squeezing life back into it. And life was going back into it.
The light was beginning to grow hotter, the shapes more distinct in his chest as Tav worked his fingers around the dense muscle. “Come on,” he urged again, “Beat… beat already…” As if hearing his command, there was a brief quiver. The light grew hot for a moment and then dimmed into the dim half light again. Tav resituated himself up on his knees and pat Adam’s chest with his free hand. “I felt that, there we go! Cmon, Adam, gimme another.”
He did. The chambers swelled into his palm and a ripple of movement ran up into his fingertips. The monitor showed a blip, then another, then went still again. He massaged his thumb against it, squeezing it into the space between his thumb and palm. It ballooned and swelled up against him and he loosened his hold, allowing it to fill and empty a few times as he held it. It stuttered and he gingerly soothed it. It beat erratically and he held it still. He could have wept if he had any energy to give to anything but this moment. Adam was trying so hard, even lying there, motionless, looking dead.
Marsh’s attention darted between the grief stricken young man and the moving shadows under Adam’s skin. Tav lowered himself over the unconscious man, wrapping his free arm around his shoulder and half embracing him. He couldn’t hug him fully, but he wanted to so badly. “Come back,” he whispered, lips grazing his arm as he folded himself over the Forge. “Please…”
His heart thumped hard against Tav’s palm. His fingers stilled as he cupped the center of his entire being. It took a moment but it beat again, flexing between his fingers. The ventilator hissing was the only sound in the room, and he felt it expand inside him, again brushing the tips of his fingers. And again his heart moved against him, the chambers sluggishly moving as if remembering how. He brushed his thumb one last time over the left ventricle, as if trying to offer it comfort. You can do it, he told it with touch alone, You can beat again. Then it did.
Tav sat, staring at the strong light cast from the spark in Adam’s sternum. He could see more clearly now the silhouette of his hand, the light shining between his fingers as, for a few moments, he could only marvel at the feeling of his heart coming back to life. Once he was sure it was well and truly beating on its own, he slid his hand from the incision and for a brief second could only sit, stunned, blood up to his forearm. He’d never imagined a world where he failed, yet by the same token he never imagined a world where he’d succeeded either. Torn between a million different reactions, he leaned his forehead down against Adam’s shoulder and wept.
—
The engine room was filled with the quiet hum of machinery when Adam finally started to stir. He suck in a deep breath and his eyes fluttered open. He was in his cot. His limbs felt heavy, they barely obeyed his command as he stretched out his arms and legs, then winced as the motion pulled at something in his ribs. He reached up and pressed blindly at the bandages looped around his chest.
He had no idea how close he’d come to dying, though he had the sense something serious had happened. He remembered air being short in his lungs. The uneven thrum of his heart as it struggled to beat, the air forced in his lungs and the defibrillator on his chest. Then it was all black. In my vague shapes and feelings. He dreamed, and wasn’t entirely sure it was a dream, that Tav had held him and kissed him over and over again. Something had punched him in the chest, then as if in apology, had stroked him there instead. He dreamed of a snake going head first down his throat and constricting his heart.
He became aware in the dark of a warm shape at his side. He looked over and made out a familiar silhouette. His inner spark was the only nightlight he really had, and its light bounced off Tav’s face. He looked exhausted. The cot was barely big enough for Adam’s large frame, and somehow the Keeper had managed to squeeze himself into the space between the Forge and the wall, sleeping there deeply. Deep enough he didn’t stir as Adam touched his cheek.
He would never know the terror he felt. He was unconscious when Father Shep arrived himself and looked for any excuse to declare Adam a lost cause, even when they’d turned the engine back on and his heart had been as strong as ever. Tav would never tell him the full story of those long minutes of death.
But nuzzled against him now, Adam didn’t think of any of that. He slid his arms around the smaller man, ignoring the twinges of pain here and there, and drew him in close. All he knew was that somehow, his Keeper had saved him. Tav hummed in his sleep and nuzzled up against the wall of warm muscle he was dimly aware of. His ear pressed to his Forge’s heart and he sighed, content.
a vampire making a deal with a cardiophile that they can form a partnership. the vampire gets to drink their blood, and in return, they get to use them as a resus doll.... and the deal stops being so formal, they're falling in love. and the vampire is slowly becoming a freak to match their mortal companion, loving it more and more each time. they're spoiled rotten by this deal, in the end. they lose nothing.
With Zulin back, Splitter has to come to terms with all his people has done to him and Cira both. Brief discussions of SA.
The next few hours flew by in a blur. Cira lapsed in and out of consciousness to say only a few words at a time, but refused to leave her mate's side. Agonem had to build a pallet for her to sleep next to him by the fire. He tended to Zulin's injuries as best he could, even going so far as to make a small incision between his ribs and allow blood to pass from his lung through a reed he'd collected from the neaby creek. Once the pressure against his heart abated, the thing beat a little stronger. There was nothing much he could do besides. Most of his injuries were internal, bones he could not mend by himself or bruised organs only time would really heal. He salved what he could and bandaged anything he felt needed it, leaving Zulin swathed around much of his torso, but on the whole he ended the evening feeling fairly useless. The bond pair slept beside each other, weak and nearly silent. For awhile he sat beside them and simply stared down at the two. He lay his hand on Cira's gravid stomach to reassure himself her pup still lived, despite all they'd put the little thing through over the past weeks.
Any other time he would have felt a lonely ache to find himself in this situation. As it was, he only felt tired. And glad. Zulin wasn't far healed, and there was no telling if Cira's fever would break in time for them to move. But they were here, and alive, and he was with them. He ran his thumb over the top of her belly and smiled a bit to himself. He was with them.
His own injuries were easier to tend. It was no work at all to stitch the hole in his side back up and rebandage. It was his strength reserves that really struggled. Sleep sounded so inviting it was almost painful to know he couldn't. He had to keep watch over them all, lest they be caught unawares by more of his kind in the small hours. He dampened a cloth with melted snow and laid it on Cira's brow to ease the heat of her skin. Zulin he kept warm as much as possible.
It was while he was feeding the fire and drawing the fur covers more snugly around the male that he heard the soft moaning exhalation. His heart leapt and he turned to see the other male's eyes open a crack. "Zulin," he said quickly and rushed to touch his face, "Can you hear me?" He moved his lips and made a small noise- the most beautiful noise Agonem had ever heard. Words stuck in his throat so the orc helped him drink a few sips of water. It took a few tries before his voice was intelligible as he croaked, "You came..." Agonem smiled faintly. "Was there ever any doubt?" "And you ... heard me..." Now that had been a curiosity to him. In the chaos it had been driven from his mind. Zulin accepted the pinched expression as his answer and started to speak again. Then he paused, his face scrunching up. His next words passed between them without sound, flung out across the distance between their minds.
"Do you know what this magic is?" His thoughts sounded stronger than his body would have allowed. Agonem flinched from the question, uncomforted by the sensation of another's thoughts touching his own. But it was Zulin, so he relented, carefully replying in his mind, "Something from the dark elves I assume." "It's the mating bond between Cira and I. I'd never gotten it to work before. But when they..." His body took an unsteady breath. "When they had me. I reached out and found her. I think I unlocked something." "If it is a bond between you and Cira, why..." The thought drifted away like dandelion fluff. Zulin's lip curled in a slow smile. "I've never heard of the bond working three ways. But then I've never heard of a mating trio. I was given to understand it could only be forged between two people. Two people who were fated to be together for as long as they both lived." "Surely you're not suggesting I'm... bonded to you two like that."
Zulin inclined his head towards him to stare with his bruised and deep shadowed eyes. "Would it be so terrible if you were?" Agonem flinched physically and reached out to grasp their mental connection. "No! That's not- I only mean-" He felt suddenly flushed. Apparently that was the intended effect. Zulin grinned, but winced as it stretched the fresh scabs on his face and coughed roughly. Agonem helped him drink again. When he'd recovered, he looked more weary than before. Pleased with himself, but tired.
"How could you make light of it?" Agonem asked into the quiet cabin, hands still clasped around the little cup. "Light?" Zulin rasped. "Make light of me being your mate. You don't actually think it could be so. And you... wouldn't want it to be so anyway. Not after everything I've done to you. Let happen to you. You were only hurt because they were looking for me. I raided your village. Took you prisoner. Nearly cost you your mate and your pup both from all the stress I put them through. I would think the idea of being mated to me would make you sick."
For a long while the cabin was quiet, the only real sounds the crackling fire and Cira's deep, rhythmic breathing. He couldn't look at either of them. His gaze stayed fixed to the wooden cup in his hands, the edge of trembling in his fingers. There was more he couldn't say- that every time he closed his eyes, he saw those men, men who looked like him, men who had been his companions, {with Zulin pinned beneath them}. Orc's spilled orc blood for everything, yet this felt somehow like a deeper betrayal of his roots. He had killed his own men to save someone who, by every tradition and law and gospel decree, he should have no loyalty to. Not more than what was owed his clan as their leader. He had run, not entirely by his choice. But he hadn't gone back. He hadn't even tried to. The warlord Splitter had let himself be carried away by two dark elves, and he had ended up failing them just the same as his tribe.
Only when he felt the cool hand on his arm did he look up.
--Zulin--
His throat was too parched for words. Definitely too parched for the ones he wanted to say. They tallied up in his mind until he knew there was no speaking all of them, even if he hadn't been dead only a few hours ago and his body was not a broken wreckage, barely tethered to his soul. At his strongest, Zulin wouldn't have been able to voice all that he felt. So he didn't try. He slid his hand across the orc's knuckles, cupping his huge hand in the palm of his smaller one. Then he quieted his mind and focused on all that words could not convey.
That first night, when Cira had been sprawled between them without a pulse, he had looked up at Splitter from the corner of his eye. His mind had raced, trying to find something in the room he could have used to bludgeon or impale him, something that might win them their freedom. All the time while they worked to bring her back, he'd been planning an escape. Then Splitter had done something odd. When he paused to check for her pulse, his other hand had curved over the top of her rounded stomach. The gesture was so slight, most people wouldn't have even noticed. There was such a gentleness to it, he had been momentarily caught off guard. Zulin looked again into the austere mask of his features, the scowl lining his face that had, at first, seemed like the face of a cruel master. But there was a glint in his eyes. He was worried for Zulin's mate. A woman he had never met, and he was genuinely trying to save her. Whatever duty demanded of him, it did not demand he show such concern for her life and later, for her comfort.
He paused. The moment of shared thoughts hung in blackness. "Zulin?" came Agonem's soft voice. The dark elf took a breath and pushed on, unfurling memories before him like a tapestry. The night after Cira's attack, when Splitter had said little to either of them, but let Zulin lay with her by the fire in his tent until she was well enough to move.
The day he had a man flogged for touching a slave girl against her will, and nearly every orc in the warband scowled at him when his back was turned. The whispers of the crowd. "Hypocrite. As if he doesn't take his fill of those little tarts he keeps all to himself." "Maybe we should pay the pens a visit later." "I bet that brood mare is sweet indeed." The connection grew tenuous and wavered, the memory blurring momentarily like watercolors before he showed them the nights that followed. {Hands on his body. Tusks and canines buried in his skin, drawing blood. Throwing himself in the path of any man who would do to Cira what he invited them to do to him instead.} The heat of Agonem's mounting rage was like the heat the brand had wafted in the moments before it hit his back. That he had tried to hold back, but there was no holding back now that he had opened himself up to Agonem's mind. "Why are you showing me these things?" he whispered, with anger, with sorrow, with regret. "You only prove me right. I'm no better than those men, I've hurt you as much as any of them. I allowed... all of this... Zulin, how can you ever forgive me for what I made of you?"
"Because of this." He took Agonem's consciousness deeper into himself, to the night they had taken of one another's bodies. In the twine of each other's limbs, Zulin had taken great pains not to intrude on Cira and Splitter's intimacy. Inwardly he had winced and his breath had caught whenever one of those hands came near her breasts, or her throat, or skimmed across her vulnerable stomach. Despite knowing in the back of his mind the warlord would not harm her, had not harmed her so far, he kept expecting to see bruises wherever he had touched. Then there came another one of those quiet, innocuous moments. A gesture neither of them even paid mind to. Splitter had pressed his mouth to Cira's cheek, panting against her skin, and moved to the edge of her jaw. One of those long, curved tusks had dug under the bone there, and Zulin's heart had nearly burst with a sudden rush of fear. {He had thought of those orc tusks goring holes where they'd bitten him in the throes of their ecstasy, the scars he bore in hollows he did not allow Cira to see, the bruises that, even then, he kept turned away from them both, the violating, groping claws}- then Splitter became aware of where it rested, and shifted his head away. His lips had brushed the spot in apology.
Some part of Zulin had never given his trust over fully to the warlord. They were his slaves, expendable. He had the power to end their lives. But that moment of tenderness had washed away the last barrier he had between them as if it was made of no more than sand. When his mate and master had both drifted off after their love making, Zulin had instead been awake until nearly dawn, weeping softly into Cira's hair. They were safe with him. He was safe. At last, at long, long last, he was safe.
He let the memory linger on that scene, the three of them bundled in a nest of each other's limbs. "You're not like them," he eventually said across the gulf of their thoughts, "Whatever they made of you, whatever they expected of you. You were not twisted as they were. You are so good, Nem." Slowly he drew them back down to the material plane. Agonem stared down at him, saltwater trails still darkened down his cheeks. He could do no more than breathe for a time.
Zulin struggled for a moment to lift the leaden weights of his arms. Then he opened them in an invitation. That seemed to unknot something in the orc. Tears sprang fresh to his eyes, something like a choked sob escaped his lips. The cup clattered away as he threw himself down to gather Zulin and Cira both into his arms. He buried his face in the hollow of Agonem's throat, fingers weakly grasping the carved muscles of his back.
Once more he found safety in the arms of the warlord.
While racing back to the safehouse where Cira waits, Zulin succumbs to his injuries, and Splitter must get his heart beating again. M resus, M rescuer, F rescuer, mouth to mouth, magical defibrillation.
Everything hurt. Zulin no longer knew what was cold, what was broken, what was merely bruised. There was no cataloging his pains. Agonem moved swiftly through the trees, doing his best not to jostle him. He succeeded, mostly. Every now and then he hit a hard step that shot through his cargo like lightning. Zulin could only manage small groans of protest. "I'm sorry," Agonem would whisper softly. Despite this, he didn't slow down. He knew they couldn't, but that didn't stop him from wanting desperately for a moment's reprieve.
Somehow, even with his own healing injuries, the orc managed to clamber into the saddle of one of the work horses they'd stolen from the camp. It struck him that he'd been looking for Zulin when he didn't return. There was a stirring of gratitude at that, the idea his absence had worried him enough to come looking. Zulin curled his fingers against Agonem's forearm, his back pressed to the orc's chest as the steed took off in a gallop. It lit every nerve ending on fire. The motion was not gentle, the jarring ripple of movement went through his very bone marrow. Agonem clutched him close in an effort to cushion some of his against his own body, but it did little to alleviate the pain. He tucked Zulin's head into the hollow of his throat, cheek to cheek. Warm breath ghosted against his ear as he whispered, "You were very brave, Zulin. You just have to be brave for a little longer, alright? I'm going to get you back to your mate."
Gently, Zulin plucked again at the little thread in his mind. Exhaustion dragged him down, the physical and mental effort of calling on the bond too much to stand. He wanted to thank the orc, to praise him, and yes, even to absolve him of any guilt he might feel if he didn't succeed. He'd tried to save him. That was enough. His lips parted slightly, brushing against Agonem's throat as he held him close. So many things he wanted to say and didn't have the strength for.
"Zulin," Splitter growled. This close, the noise rumbled through his whole body, vibrating in the orc's broad chest as he held him close. There was a pleading edge to his voice as he murmured, "Don't, you don't get to just slip away. You have to stay with me, you hear? Cira is waiting for you, your pup is waiting to meet you." The arm around his torso tightened slightly, squeezing, miraculously, without causing more pain. The embrace chased away the chill, the strength and gentleness of it like a warm bath, all-encompassing. Safe. "I can't-" The words broke in a shuddering breath he felt against his ear. The cool, smooth shape of tusks dragged against his cheek as Splitter nuzzled their faces close. "I can't be the cause of all this. You can't die, not for me."
Zulin wanted to tell him he wasn't dying, of course he wasn't dying. There was so much left to do. Of course he couldn't leave Cira to bring their child into the world and raise it alone. But air wouldn't come. The tiny, involuntary inhalations were more like muscle spasms than breaths. His limbs were too weak to move, too cold to feel. Something throbbed painfully in his chest, once, twice. Then nothing. Everything inside him went still.
--Agonem--
Zulin sighed softly against the edge of his jaw. A little noise passed his lips, a halting sort of groan before he was plunged suddenly into silence. Cold fear washed over him. "Zulin!" he snapped, bringing a hand up to the dark elf's chest. It didn't move. He rubbed his scarred knuckles against his sternum, hard and insistent. All it did was limply jostle the paling corpse in his arms. His cheek came to rest against Agonem's clavicle, his lids laying heavily against his empty eyes.
The mount charged through the snowy forest, deftly weaving through brush for a charger of such size. They weren't so far from the little fisherman's cabin they'd found shelter in, they would be there in just a few minutes. But every moment Zulin went without a pulse was one moment too long. Agonem clutched the horse's mane to lead it, the other spread out against the elf's unmoving chest. "Come on," he whispered and tried shoving the heel of his palm against the smaller man's sternum. He rocked limply against him. It was hard to tell just how effective compressions like this were, if he even could squeeze his heart enough to force a pulse. There was no other option. With his head tucked against his neck to try and keep it still, he began rhythmically pounding against his ribs. Zulin's arm jolted loose from the cloak and hung, swinging at his side. Agonem's only consolation were the tiny puffs of breath he was forcing out of the elf- a sign he at least was pumping his chest fairly hard. He could do no more than pray it was enough.
They crashed through the brush in a stampede. The body in his arms may as well have been a doll for the way it rocked in the saddle with every movement. "You have to wake up," Agonem begged quietly, "You have to breathe. Breathe, breathe!" But he was met with silence. Those scarlet eyes stared through him, flat and empty. To see his face smooth, without emotion, when he had so often had creases around the mouth and at the corners of his eyes with some sly smile. The devilish glint gone out of him. It tore at his heart. His vision blurred as he looked down at the elf. "Please, just... just don't die..."
He allowed himself only a brief moment of weakness to slide his arm around his torso and pull him in close. Heat was slowly creeping away from his skin, what little he had when he'd found him. Agonem pressed his nose against the soft curls of his hair, not allowing the sob he felt building to escape. If he cried, if he let go of that tether, he would lose his courage to keep going. He'd drop from the horse and cling to him and do neither of them any good.
Time blurred into a repetition of hoofbeats and the rough work of compressions. Agonem nearly flew past their shelter in his concentration on the task. He would have, if not for Cira's startled cry from the doorway of the cottage. He brought the horse to a skidding halt as she threw herself out into the snow dressed only in her thin nightgown. He'd hardly gotten down from the saddle by the time she rushed up to meet him. "Zu!" she sobbed, taking his face between her palms. "Gods, no, no please, my love..." She fervently swept his hair from his face, touching him, cradling him, like she could revive him if she just pressed her fingers to every part. "I-Is he-!" Agonem could only shake his head, his throat tight. His words strained as he said, "He was attacked. I was too... I didn't find him in time, they hurt him badly." Tears stood out in her eyes as she looked to him, still holding up her mate's head. Then she was tipping it back against his shoulder and sealing their mouths together. The hot air she breathed down his throat was sent back into the bitter cold in a plume of fog when she broke the seal. She sniffled and gave him another lungful. That too was expelled in a noisy sigh and streamed between them. "Get him inside," she instructed. So they did.
They swiftly piled every fur and cloak they could find on the floor near the hearth, and fueled it with more wood until it was a roaring bonfire. The terrible bruises made themselves more evident by firelight. One side of his chest was a motley of purple and black and green, as well as the side of his face. Thin cuts marred one cheek, stuck still with tiny pebbles. Cira settled her hands in the middle of his chest but Agonem grabbed her wrist. "You're not well," he said gently. "I'm never well," she snapped back, but her face was wet with tears, "But I can't just-" "Cira, please. The baby." Those simple words crumpled her resolve. Her face was paler than usual, only burning with color around the cheeks from the fever she'd suffered the past few days they'd been in this shelter. Whatever fire that had animated her went out and she bowed over her mate's body. "I have to do something," she whispered, her voice thick with grief. "Breathe for him," Agonem said as he laced his hands together over Zulin's ribcage, "And hold his wrist. If his heartbeat returns you can tell me to stop." More quietly he added, "Don't hurt yourself, salim. He would not want his life to cost you your own or that of your child."
As Agonem began pumping his chest, Cira gathered up his limp hand in her own, pressing her lips against his knuckles while she kept track of his pulse. The compressions were no less violent than on the horse. They made his body jerk with each thrust. Shoulders shrugging, head dancing against the floor, chest caving, legs flinching. The only thing still about him were his eyes, staring through them both into something neither could see. For a time Agonem's grunts and Zulin's expelled huffs were the only break in silence.
"He was always good to me," Cira eventually murmured as she smoothed hair from his forehead, "Ever since we were children. The others would run ahead without a thought for me or if I could keep up. But Zulin always hung back. Even if it meant he got left behind too. It never... never felt like pity." The orc glanced up, never slowing his pace, to watch her uncurl his stiff fingers and cup them to her cheek. "I thought I heard him a little while ago... And he... he sounded so scared, even while he was trying to tell me to run. I thought it was a dream." Agonem had heard it too. A voice with no origin. Zulin called out to him as if across a gulf. He sat back on his heels and nodded to her. "Breathe." She did, forcing his chest to rise as her breath filled his lungs. He made a noisy rasp as they emptied, his mouth slack when they parted. Cira pressed her face against his and shivered. Her words were barely audible as she spoke against his cheek, "Take a breath, my darling, please. Please don't go. You can't." She moved his limp hand to press against her belly, round with the child he might never see. She showered the corpse with such gentle affection, kissing the seam of his lips and brushing back his hair with her other hand, that Agonem had to look away. His throat had grown tight. His body had begun to hurt with the exertion. The wound he had sustained from their life saving efforts not long ago had opened up, oozing blood down his side. It clotted against his shirt in a dark spreading stain. He'd have to tend to it later.
Zulin's body gave no resistance to their measures. He couldn't. He just lay there as his ribs were caved in and his heart beaten into a weak cadence. Warmth had all but gone out of him, and the lilac hue to his skin had faded into a sickly grey. Cira held his wrist, feeling the pulse the orc forced with his repetitive thumps. Unaware that he was working harder on this body than he had dared on her for fear of harming her baby. There was no such fear with Zulin, only the fear that he was too late and they had already lost him. There wasn't even the hard edge of his ribcage anymore, his chest had grown soft after Agonem's first few rounds pulverized the obstacle of his sternum. Now it seemed the only color in his body as colorful bruising seeped across his chest. He stared up and past his mate as if silently begging for her air, for her to sustain what little life remained in his body. She'd pressed their brows together as tears silently rolled from her cheek to patter against his like rain. After a few cycles of compressions and breaths, Agonem's eyes flicked up to find her pale as she bowed over him. He hadn't told her to give him air, but she was filling his lungs anyway, what remained of his ribcage bowing up against the orc's palms.
"Cira," he growled. She ignored him. "Come on," she rasped quietly, "Come back, Zu..." Sweat beaded at her temple as she gave him another breath, then another, hardly allowing him to groan out the previous breath before she filled his throat again. When she broke the seal of their mouths she was gulping for her own air, yet still took a great inhalation to give him. "Cira!" he snapped more insistently. He cupped her shoulder just in time to stop her from collapsing atop her unconscious mate. Suddenly she became dead weight in his arms. He cursed under his breath as he drew her to the side of the body and arranged her gently. Her skin was a furnace. She'd been feverish and unwell for days, too sick to even continue the travel, and this momentary burst of adrenaline had cost her dearly. Whatever strength she'd drawn on had fled her as quickly as it came. Agonem settled her head gently on the cabin floor beside Zulin's. A quick check of her pulse told him the sickly thing was beating wildly, far too hard for a healthy pregnant woman, but not so hard he feared she would succumb to another heart attack. "Foolish woman," he whispered. Abruptly he was alone. He'd never felt it more acutely.
Turning again to the task of the dying elf, he pressed his fingers to Zulin's throat. Nothing but his own heart pulsing in his fingertips. He maneuvered to press his ear against the male's chest. Silence. Nothing he'd done so far seemed to have any effect. A glance outside told him he had been at this for some time, if the lengthening shadows were any indication. His fingers tightened against Zulin's poor, broken sternum. The elf's pallid face swam before his eyes. The most terrible part, he decided, would be Cira's forgiveness. And Zulin's. If he gave up now and let him remain a corpse, both the dark elves would forgive him. The knowledge burned him, hotter than any brand. They should hate him. But they didn't. They showed him kindness, sympathy, even love. They loved him. Despite everything in the world telling him not to, he loved them back. He set his hands side by side over Zulin's sunken chest.
The storm slammed into his body and he bucked. His legs kicked out, his chest spasming for a moment before it crashed back against the furs. Lifeless once more. No pulse at his throat, nor his femoral, nor any sound occupying his chest. Normally there was something, some hitch in the heart's rhythm, or the sense of it floundering inside their body that told Agonem when these electrical discharges were most useful. But there was nothing. Nothing but the pressing weight of impending failure and grief driving him now. If Zulin didn't wake up soon, he never would. The orc's chest heaved as he fought back tears and pressed their mouths together, delivering a far less effective breath than Cira could have given him. His clumsy tusks obstructed him, even as he covered his lips as best he could with his own and blew deeply down his throat. Too deeply. He pulled back to see a slight roundness to his once flat belly, and knew he'd pushed the air too hard into his body. In the depths of his feelings he could barely register it. He wiped tears off on his shoulder and set his hands to the small male's chest again. "She needs you," he snarled, more bestial than he'd ever spoken to either of them, "That pup needs you. And I... I need you to come back."
He shocked him. The body writhed and flinched all over.
Again. It jerked in a spasm.
Again.
Again.
When the last shock produced a hint of ozone smell and something cooking, Agonem jerked his hands away. Burn marks in the shapes of his large fingers graced Zulin's chest and ribs, thin red welts raised against nearly white skin. The elf's eyes were finally closed when he looked up in horror at his face. That was what undid him. Suddenly he was transformed from something he could beat life back into, something he could fix, to a quiet man peacefully sleeping. He could do no more violence on his body. Instead he sobbed in the quiet of the far flung cabin and gathered him up in his arms. "I'm sorry," he wheezed, "I never meant to-" He choked on the word 'hurt' and buried his face against Zulin's shoulder to weep. He had never lost someone he truly loved. No one who had loved him back. His mother was gone somewhere he didn't know, that was true, but she was the only person who had ever shown him real affection. He had never developed a bond strong enough to mourn someone's death. Now he had. He had never known such an intolerable ache inside him.
"Agonem," Cira whispered from the floor. "I'm sorry," he said once more, muffled by Zulin's soft, cool shoulder. "I feel it," she went on. "If you had never met me-" "Agonem-" "I have taken so much from you, Cira, how can you ever-" "Dove, his heart is beating." There was such little strength in her voice he nearly didn't hear her. He definitely didn't believe at first. But when he looked down, she lay on her back, her fingers twined around Zulin's wrist. His arm hung limp, shifted loose from the desperate circle of Agonem's embrace. Only when he stepped back from the storm of his emotions did he realize there was a very slight rise and fall to the elf male's chest. When he pressed his ear against his heart, he heard it. Weak, nearly not there, and with far too long pauses between each beat. But a heartbeat all the same. Alive. Barely.
Splitter has left his clan with the help of his former slaves, but the clan isn't quite as amicable, and Zulin ends up paying the price. TW: brief descriptions and discussion of SA, descriptions are marked {like this.} Part 1 is the whump and lead up to resus in part 2, with part 3 being mostly aftermath. Parts 1 and 3 are the only ones with discussion of SA so if you want to skip that aspect and only indulge in the resus you easily can in part 2. Resus is marked in red. This one is more whump heavy so descriptions of gore and violence are present. M victim, M rescuer, F rescuer, chest compressions, mouth to mouth, magical defibrillation depictions of violence, depictions of gore, noncon, near time called.
So this was how it would end. Zulin had to admit, it was definitely worthy of a ballad. He had been clever, or tried to be. He'd managed to get the help of other dark elves in the slave pen to cart Splitter's body away, even securing a few war horses to help pull the load, and they'd been on the road without issue for weeks. Long enough Splitter could even stand on his own. Not entirely recovered. He still swayed and he tired easily, and he had fits of shaking that once or twice had devolved into a seizure neither of them could aid him in. Residual effects of the poison, if he had to guess. Hopefully they would abate. Eventually. He could stand, so at least that much was a mercy.
Travel did nothing to help strengthen Cira. She'd devolved into a feverish, trembling thing, more often than not riding double with one of them to help keep her upright in the saddle. He'd hated leaving them in the little shepherd's cottage at the edge of the forest when he'd set out in search of game. A pregnant woman and an orc still recovering from death. Defenseless. It was odd that he was the one suddenly in charge. He'd never been stuck with that particular duty. Still, he'd done as well as he could. He'd charted their course, covered their tracks, even when the first winter snows had started to make that difficult. Didn't do as good a job as I thought. He stared up at the three orcs surrounding him.
They'd been quiet on the approach. Zulin never would have thought beings as huge as them could move without sound, yet here they stood, two of them brandishing axes while the third pinned him down by the arms. He was the biggest, wide grin broken by the imposing tusks jutting from his bottom teeth. "I can see why Splitter kept this one for himself," he chuckled in a deep, resonant voice, "So what have you done with our Lord's body, little elf? Stolen him away for some dark ritual? We know your kind are fond of those." Zulin bucked and thrashed to no avail. It was like being held down in a vise. The orc's body had absolutely no give, he might as well have fought a boulder crushing him against the snowy forest floor. "You should be more wary of our rituals, you might learn more of them than you wish if you don't get your hands off me," Zulin panted with no real intimidation in his voice. He was too winded for the threat to stick. The others seemed to agree as a chuckle went through them. He was no stranger to an orc's violence. He'd tried to fight when their village was raided, and again once they'd been captured. He'd earned more than a few bruises and broken bones this way, and other scars that did not show from his efforts to protect Cira from these brutes. But for the first time, he felt real dread. They weren't trying to capture him or correct his behavior to their satisfaction. They would have been free to kill him. There was no honor, no oath, that said they could not. He cursed the shaking in his limbs and rattle in his voice as he tried to lie, "We burned him. Then we ran, but we got separated, I don't know where-"
A crack against the side of his head stole his every thought. For a moment his vision went entirely white, and when that receded there were still winking stars in its wake, and the blurry trail of the orc's face as it swam in and out of focus. "Does no good to lie to us, little elf," the orc sighed, his knee pressing between Zulin's legs and forcing them apart. "I'm n-not lying," he stammered out, his tongue felt suddenly too thick in his mouth. Calloused hands drove up the hem of his shirt and pushed it over his belly, exposing his skin to the chill of coming winter.
Panic was starting to creep in. Zulin tried kicking, his efforts to thrash renewed, but to the same effect. Nothing would move the weight on top of him. "Fuck's sake, Grouse," one of the other orcs groaned in exasperation, "You gonna make us stand around while you get yours?" "Shut it," the one pinning him snapped, "When we find the breeded tart you can have your fill. I never got a turn with this one." They would find Cira. They would find Agonem, too weakened to protect her or himself. Zulin's heart raced hard enough he felt his pulse in his fingertips. He clawed and scratched like a feral cat, jabbing his boot against Grouse's back and the soft bend of his knee. One of his wild swipes managed to catch the orc's brow and rake across one of his eyes. He yelped at that, winning a laugh from his companions. It only angered him. Fury twisted his features as blood ran from the thin welts Zulin's nails had made. "Stupid, what you've just done," he panted, his breath clouding in the chilled air.
Suddenly the world tilted as Zulin was roughly hauled by his shirt front, then twisted and slammed down on his stomach, hard enough he coughed and gasped for air that had been knocked out of him. He scrabbled against the dirt to no avail. Both of the orc's knees drove into the meat of his thighs, making the bone of his legs creak under the weight. A hand splayed against his back and shoved him down, forcing his head against the rocky terrain. The orc's palm took up most of his torso, and the force and pressure behind it made taking a full breath nearly impossible. He was trapped, gasping, as Grouse tore open the back of his shirt. "Not a scar on you, huh?" he chuckled, his other hand running across Zulin's straining ribs, "Well, other than the ones we gave you. Always thought you dark elves looked prettier with the Mark." His thumb ran across the raised edges of the brand seared between his shoulder blades. Zulin writhed, trying to lessen the pressure against his lungs. "I feel your heart pounding, little elf. Want to see if I can make it go even faster?" At this, the pressure against his spine increased. He couldn't help it, Zulin cried out as bones shifted and ground against one another. The orc shifted so his heel sat against the back of his ribcage, and with a sharp jabbing motion, two of his ribs gave way with a crack like snapping twigs. Pain stole his every thought. Stole even the strength from his arms so he could not struggle, but just lay there, gasping like a fish under the hand that did not lessen its unrelenting pressure. He couldn't get enough air in. His lungs wouldn't fill.
"Hurry up, Grouse. We still need to find the brood sow," one of the others sighed, bored by the whole affair. His voice sounded like he spoke while Zulin was underwater, his ears ringing fiercely. They were going to find Cira. They would find Agonem. Neither of them would be strong enough to face three orcs, and if they knew their warlord had fled and not sought to return, they would kill him just the same as they would kill Cira for fleeing. And the baby. Gods, the baby. Three lives depended on him getting out, on him finding a way to lose this patrol. But he couldn't move. Tears welled in Zulin's eyes, making little mud puddles against his cheek as his head was shoved against the earth. He clawed at the dirt and kicked, twisting, growling, thrashing like a fish on the hook. But he was trapped. It might as well have been the rubble of a fallen castle sitting on him now. Still he tried. He fought with everything inside him, kicking up dirt clouds and twisting and straining against his broken ribs to claw again at the orc's hand straining his spine. Grouse huffed in agitation, "Oh, just shut it."
Light erupted from the back of his skull and then it was darkness. Later, he'd see the bruises and abrasions in his scalp, and learn the orc had punched him several times, even after he'd gone unconscious. He was aware only dully of his body. Pain radiated from his skull and down his back. Something was wrong with his shoulder blade, a fracture or break of some kind, either from his struggle or the orc pushing down with all his weight against his wiry elven quarry. His back ached, it felt as if his entire body throbbed with his pulse. But that was getting weak. Sensation was slowly ebbing as his heart seemed to thrash much the same as his body had been. It had fought the pressure pinning it between his spine and breastbone, as if it could jump out of the failing body if it just beat hard enough. Laying there now, it was starting to lose rhythm, each pump of blood reaching a little less of his body as numbness began to creep into his fingers. His lungs shuddered, only getting tiny, pathetic sips of air in. He must have moved or done something that angered Grouse again, because he shoved down hard once more, and a thick glob of what Zulin guessed to be blood dislodged from his throat. {Somewhere in all the little agonies of his body there was a splitting sensation, and a fullness in his gut. He could just barely make out Grouse's grunts and huffs of exertion as he thrust against him. But he couldn't really feel it. That was a mercy, at least. }
Zulin's vision drifted in and out. He tasted snow and dirt as his head was continuously pushed down, as if he had any strength left to fight. He didn't. He wanted to, desperately wanted to keep fighting, but his limbs would no longer obey. He could only lay there, limp, as his life was squeezed out by rough hands. Cira was the only thing his mind clung to. Cira, with their baby making her skin glow, her soft eyes beaming when she smiled and spoke of their little one.
A promise of the life they'd always wanted. And he'd failed her. He'd failed the gentle giant too. With his quiet voice and caring hands, always gentle despite what his tribe had made him. For all his plans and scheming, he'd ended up here, with the two of them endangered. He couldn't even call out for them. His throat just creaked dryly when he tried for, "Ci...ra..." But it was hardly even a sound.
Once, he'd heard of mated elf pairs who could hold entire conversations through the strength of their bond to one another. It was old magic, of the sort he was never talented at, and he'd tried it not long after they were married, not expecting they could succeed. They hadn't. None of the mate pairs they knew could do it either, so they felt it wasn't necessary to prove their love for one another in that way. It had never bothered them. Now, he let his consciousness reach out again, his only choice left. He brushed up against something warm in the back of his mind.
"Cira," he tried to shout into the void he was succumbing to, "You have to run. Tell Splitter you both have to run, you have to get away, you have to protect our little one." To his astonishment, he felt something. Like a flash of alarm that was not his own, but it was feverish and muted. If Cira did hear him across their bond, she was too weak to respond, too weak perhaps to even hear him properly. He must have seemed to her like a dream, or a ghostly whisper. He felt the well of tears slide down the corner of his eyes again. He couldn't even rejoice that finally, in the grips of this terror, he had unlocked the magic he'd practiced so long in the dark, quiet hours.
He would never see their child. He would never again lay his hands on her soft stomach and coo and espouse his undying love of the life Cira carried. Never again hold her face in his hands. He clutched at the little ember of her mind and whispered into the dark expanse, "Cira, please... please hear me."
"Zulin?" A voice rang out, clear as day. Deeper, far deeper than Cira's. "S...Splitter?" he asked the void. Like a spark in the darkness, the voice grew louder and more sure, "Where are you? I-I hear you but I can't see-" Zulin sobbed with relief, body and spirit. His physical form was growing more and more distant, but he threw his mind out, grappling for that connection. He didn't know how Splitter could hear him across the bond, and did not have the time to consider why, but he babbled, "Raiders, they found me. I'm not going to make it, you have to get Cira, get her far away. Tell her I love her. Promise me, promise me you'll do this." There was no reply. "Splitter? A-Agonem, no, no, come back! Nem!"
Suddenly the pressure against his back abated. There was a whistle, a choked gurgle, and a thunk, and all at once Zulin could breathe again. He heaved in as much air as he could, which wasn't a lot. His lungs still felt compressed between bones, snagged up in his ribcage. It was more than he'd gotten in several long minutes. Enough that his vision cleared somewhat, and he could make out his surroundings better.
Across the little clearing, Grouse was pinned to a tree by his throat. A javelin speared under his chin, stuck solidly in the oak, as he clawed and spit up great lungfuls of blood. Zulin couldn't move. He couldn't turn his head, but his eyes widened. Behind him, he heard other voices. "M-M'lord? Splitter! It's us-" That one was cut off with a squelch. There was a hot splash of something against his back, and the clearing smelled strongly of blood. One of the orcs crashed to the ground near Zulin, scrambling back with terror written on his face. "Lord Splittah!" He shouted, "Snap out of it, it's us!" His wide eyes rounded on Zulin and he hissed, "Sorcery! What did you do to 'im?!" A huge hand struck out and seized him, fingers wrapping around his face. Splitter sunk into view, driving the last man down. His head connected solidly with the earth. "What. Did. You. Do. To. Him?" he seethed in a dangerous growl. Each word he punctuated by slamming the orc's head down, again, again, and again. When he lifted it the last time, wet, red mud ran in a puddle beneath him. Splitter sat astride the dead orc, breathing hard and heavy. His breath streamed in a cloud around his face. He looked every bit like a rampaging bull. It struck Zulin then that they had not stolen only the kind master Agonem from that war band. They had stolen the warlord Splitter too. He'd never stopped to ask how he might have gotten that name. Burning eyes riveted on him, framed by vibrant slashes of thick red blood splashed across his face, and he experienced a lurch of fear. Only for a moment. Only until those burning pits dulled to hearths, his expression going softly from fury to genuine concern. Splitter dissipated in an instant.
"Zulin," Agonem gasped out and surged forward, gingerly taking him in his hands. No amount of gentleness would spare him the pain of being moved. He couldn't even groan, he had no strength for the scream he wanted to let out, as the orc lifted him carefully off the forest floor. "Gods," he rasped out. So he looked as bad as he felt. There was some comfort in that. Agonem hurried to wrap a cloak around his body, only then alerting Zulin to the fact he was mostly naked, or in what little tatters remained of his clothes. He held Zulin in the palm of one hand and pressed his ear against his chest. On the other side of his breast bone his heart stumbled, beginning to skip as it began to succumb to the blood sitting useless in his chest cavity, suffocating the organ as it struggled to perform its one duty. His lungs too would not obey him. He could hardly wheeze in, pulling at air that seemed to never make it to his lungs. Agonem pulled the cloak tight around him. His face was stricken as he looked down into Zulin's features. "I've got you," he said quietly, "I'm not letting you go. Just stay with me, Zulin, stay with me."
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