Ares laughed at Nick’s half-assed attempt at a joke, her panic only dissipating slightly. She knew he was sick, and he was already starting to change, which amplified her fear back up. But, she wasn’t about to leave him there to die, so risking her life was fair game.
“I know you don’t, Suit, trust me. It’s all over your face that you’re not doin’ too hot. But, I ain’t leavin’ you here. Even if I get myself killed. You just gotta keep fightin’ it. I’m tryin’ to figure a cure, I really am.”
Not like there’s much I can do.
She knew there was no cure for the infection. She’d watched countless people die at its indiscretion and violence. But, watching him begin to die because of it, it yanked at her heart. They’d been through some shit together, even if it was things she’d rather not remember.
“Just keep holdin’ on, Nick. The livin’ ain’t done with you yet.”
Muscles locking up, muscles spasming... Fatigue. Headache.
Nick had, by virtue of his specialty in medicine and the rarity of the disease, never seen rabies first hand. It was, by and far, a terrifying prospect-- luckily, it would never have fallen into his lap, if a patient ever even had it in his hospital. But, of course, it was so ubiquitous that the symptoms were fairly well known.
Mental confusion. Seizing. Delirium. Fever. Hallucination. Light sensitivity.
It was even now, to his addled brain, morbidly intriguing how the Green Flu took on so many aspects of rabies. He wondered if it had been engineered with samples of rabies, if it had been engineered, that was; but then, the Flu was too anomalous, too convenient for waging war, to be entirely natural.
Slowly, his eyes, reddened and sallow, flicked back to Ares as she laughed. He had gotten distracted again. That was, perhaps, one of the most infuriating things-- how slow his mind was. He didn’t have the energy to register the flicker of fear and primal panic when he, through blurry, half-squinted eyes, got the hint of sharp, too many teeth folded much too neatly in her mouth; how she seemed bigger, angrier, more monstrous than she really was. He at least had the wherewithal to, for the most part, ignore that part of the delirium. For now.
Oh, but there he went again. Getting off track.
“Don’ know what... what you’re talkin’ about. I feel like a new man, Sparks.” It’s difficult to get his jaw to open, with how the muscles lock and cramp-- he can’t but help but slur through his teeth and the excessive drool that, were he in a better state, would feel horribly disgusting about. “No point in... lying. Ain’t no cure, not in time, anyway.” He croaks, the very edge of his mouth curling into the barest smirk. “Maybe.. maybe beatin’ it, though. A.. possibility, I mean. After all, we’re... immune. Or, I was.” His shoulders bob a slight in a shrug. “Either way, I.... appreciate you. Watchin’ me. Must be... be real annoying, hm? N’... sad.”
He chuckles, then, though it’s weak, raspy, and more the cackle of someone that’s resigned themselves, and lets his head tilt back against where he was laying.
