//Refuge
A got damn au of an au with @immortanfuriosa‘s Rhyas as a warmind
At this point the only thing in Sloane’s ears were the crashing of ships, the sounds of screams, her own exhaustion heavy breaths as she pushed herself further into the underground cave system. The pain, the excruciating agony, clouded her mind to a point that everything else was like being viewed through fog. She squinted, hoping somehow it would clear her vision, but one eye ran red, and the other was too blurry from tears to really tell where she was. A door. There was a door. Her hand slid across it at first, the blood that had pooled in her palm making her fingers too slick to find purchase as she tried to steady herself.
“Buddy,” the name came out in a twisted whine, gravely and thick with a sob.
“Open,” she managed, leaning herself heavily against the cool metal, the feeling moderately calming the throbbing in her skull.
“I do-n’t think I can,” he stuttered, looking the panel beside them up and down.
“Security is—too ti-ght.”
Sloane found the seam where the two sides met, shoving her fingers between them, desperately trying find a way inside. Safety. It’s all she wanted. Shelter from the chaos that plagued her, playing over and over in her mind, making her flinch as she tried to shake them away. As Sloane felt her energy wane there was a loud hissing noise, and suddenly the resistance of the door holding her up wasn’t there, she slid forward onto the floor, barely catching herself with her only intact arm, a heavy breath leaving her lungs as she tried to orient herself again. Her heart thrummed loudly in her ears as she struggled back to her feet, shuffling forward, eyes trained on her steps as the floor seemed to move and shift beneath them. There were flashing lights, bright and repetitive until they seemed to dull, soften to a slower gentler beat. She kept her hand on the wall, pushing herself along until there was no more wall and instead a grand room opened up before her. She could see severs, a collection of unidentifiable clutter amongst them, her mind too hazy to try and discern anything noteworthy. Her knees gave way, without the wall for support she didn’t have the energy to stand. She laid there for a moment, breathing, trying to will her body to work only to find resistance heavy in her muscles and bones. Finally she began to drag herself forward, she could see a corner, secluded, hidden, a good place to die. She shook off the thought, raking herself across the floor, finding traction becoming more difficult the more blood she lost.
When she had finally made it, when she propped herself up in the corner, she pressed her hand to where her other arm had been. She tried to stifle the bleeding, to do anything, but her consciousness was dwindling, she could see the grey snaking in on the edges of her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, let Vera and Shaxx’s faces, their voices, play through her mind. If she was going to die she wanted her last thoughts to be of them. She felt a weight on her shoulder, a shuttering mess of a ghost nestling up into the crook of her neck. She pressed her cheek against him, finally letting a fully formed sob rip free of her chest.
She didn’t hear the footsteps, hell she barely noticed the small figure that stood over her, but then there were hands. They tugged at her, pulled at her armor until it was free of her left side, a loud rip echoed the chamber as she felt the chill of the air sting the wounds across her ribs, where the metal had dug itself when the explosion took her arm. She heard a voice, but the words were too distant, as if spoken underwater, to understand. She remembered pain, shaking her body, twisting in her gut until she emptied what little food she had eaten across the floor. She was sure she screamed. But it was like a dream, a nightmare, details too vague and cloaked in a mist that was near impenetrable. The next thing she knew, the next clear moment she could remember was her head against something soft, her armor was gone but she was surrounded in something warm and she could see a face. They were Exo in nature, that much was for sure, but unlike any she’d met before, half their face was crumpled in, but they watched, stared, with eyes that flickered from a harsh black and green of code to a soft blue. Her eyelids were heavy though, she couldn’t continue, but for some reason as her eyes rolled back in her head she felt safe.