The Forest

-21-

"Darius! Darius! Darius!"
He had been smacking and yelling for so long that the sounds had become white noise. He was out of breath, his hair was damp at the back, and his wrists ached. The situation wasn't looking so good.
Lucius hammered his foot against the door, "Dar-i-us!"

Finally there came the clatter of metal in the lock and Lucius fell silent, reactively drawing away from the door. Good thing too— it almost took his nose clean off when it was flung open. The handle buried itself somewhere within the wall upon collision and the mark it left would remain there for years.
"What?!" There stood Darius in the hall, red-faced and clutching the key in his left hand, "What do you want?!"
Lucius rushed forwards, "You gotta help me! You hurt him when you picked him up!"
His brother started to backtrack towards the stairs, lifting the key above their heads thinking that Lucius would try to nab it, "What are you talking about?"
"The boy- the boy what you picked up!" Lucius snatched his brother's elbow and tugged with all his might. Obviously he didn't care about getting the key. It was all the same to him whether he was locked inside his room or loose on the streets; Viridis would still need help no matter where they ran.
Darius resisted the tugging grip.
"Boy?!" He was protesting, "You're telling me that- that horrible little thing is a person?!"

Lucius managed to drag him inside after a great deal of groaning and muddying of the carpet. He slammed the door the second they were both inside to seal off the rest of the house. His brother was horrible, but Lucius didn't know who else was lurking about out there, whether there was someone bigger and meaner than Darius. Someone that shared their last names and still made Lucius nervous when he thought about him.
Darius stood in the centre of the room with his hands splayed at his chest, as if to say you dragged me in here for nothing. He had no intentions of helping, or moving from the spot he had cemented himself in.
Lucius marched over to him and took him by the wrist.
"Lucius really-"
Lucius ignored him. He tugged and tugged until he near yanked Darius' arm right out of his shoulder, and he had no choice but to yield. With an exaggerated sigh Darius allowed himself to be led across the room, over to the head of Lucius' bed. He made his reluctance clear with every lagging step.
"Would you let me go?"

The pillow had been tossed to the floor and was laying in a crumpled heap. In its place, on the smooth and crisply white mattress sheet, were two dots of colour. Most of the resistance in Darius ' walk faded when his eyes settled on the two tiny people. The closer his brother pulled him, the more the details came into focus.

Lucius released him and dropped to his knees.
Viridis was shivering in Brianna's arms, feverish, but he stirred slightly when he felt Lucius was near.
"How is he?" Lucius asked breathlessly.
Bree ruefully raised her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she had scraped all her hair behind her ears, making her grinding teeth all the more prominent. Her twisted expression said all.
The thrashing had stopped mostly, all Vids did was shiver and occasionally twist himself about in her arms. And that was the scary part. He was steadily falling still. The twisting grew weaker and less persistent as his energy drained away, seeping out in the form of bright red blood. It wasn't clear what exactly Darius had done in snatching him off the ground. Maybe the jolt had torn open the scabs and the result was superficial bleeding, scary to look at but surely no worse than when he had initially been injured back in the forest. He had pulled through then, he would pull through again now. Right?
Or maybe his ribs were broken. Fragile structures crushed beneath the vice-like grip. Maybe blood was gushing out from the tiny little clusters that should be beating or twitching or keeping him warm. There was no way to know.

Brianna had constricted her scarf around the area where the blood was flowing thickest, and that had helped. Well, as much as it could. A scarf wasn't a bandage. The bleeding had mostly eased off, but Viridis showed no signs that he was getting any better unless you counted his gradual weakening as a good thing.