@that-kid-from-vault-101 @fightfcr
Days of agonizing rest blurred together, each one filled with surprisingly not-terrible food, battered old comics, and the slow crawl of healing. Every morning started with motor function tests that made her grit her teeth and curse under her breath, but finally, after what felt like a lifetime, the word came: They could leave.
Getting around on crutches wasn’t what she’d call graceful. Every move had to be planned—shift weight here, lift crutch there, don’t let the bad leg touch anything. Pain was a constant, a dull burn that flared whenever she slipped up. But after enough miserable laps around the room, she could hobble from one wall to the other without stopping. A victory, in her book.
While Aaron packed their gear, she crashed hard into sleep, her body too exhausted to fight for consciousness anymore. It felt like she’d barely closed her eyes before the world tugged her awake again, groggy and sore, but buzzing with something sharper underneath. Hope.
They set out once the last bag was thrown over a shoulder.
The outside world didn’t give a shit about her leg. The road was worse than she remembered, a gauntlet of shattered concrete, hidden rocks, twisted metal that seemed determined to trip her at every step. She had to be careful, had to watch the ground with laser focus. Even then, her crutches scraped and bumped and caught on things she couldn’t always avoid.
“Fuck, can the road hate me any more?” she muttered after her foot banged into a jagged chunk of rebar hidden under dust. She bit down a growl of frustration. “If I hit one more rock with my leg, I’m gonna start throwing rocks at buildings.”
The words came out sharper than she meant, but she didn’t really care. Her breath steamed in the cooler air, her body burning with the effort of staying upright. Still, some stubborn fire inside her refused to let the pain win.
She pushed herself harder, determined to keep up, determined not to slow them down. The first couple hours weren’t so bad. She even managed to joke around, tossing half-baked stories and random facts into the space between them. It felt good, normal—like breathing after holding her head underwater.
But as the day wore on, that spark began to flicker.
Her voice got quieter without her meaning it to. Each sentence took a little more air. Her arms were starting to shake from the constant effort, her palms stinging where the crutches rubbed them raw. Every time she lifted her injured leg, it was like dragging a cinderblock behind her.
She barely noticed when she stopped talking altogether.
The sun sagged toward the horizon, staining the ruined cityscape in bruised purples and bloody reds. Shadows stretched long over the rubble, turning harmless rocks into hidden traps. She blinked against the glare, her whole body heavy, her focus slipping.
One second she was moving forward, willing herself to just keep going, just one more step—
And then the ground wasn’t under her anymore.
Her crutch snagged on something she couldn’t see, yanking sideways. She gasped, arms flailing, but there was nothing to catch her. Her bad leg crumpled uselessly under her, and gravity did the rest.
