𝙒here am I?
What happened ...?
Blaine strained his neck to remind himself of the answer to those questions as a cough of dust escaped his lungs, knocking him down several pegs. Running away being the last thing he remembered did not atone for the weakness he felt in his system—how much it was displayed physically.
Slowly cracking his eyes open, blinking multiple times to produce enough water to set them back to their normal homeostatic vision, he took in the room surrounding him. Large chunks of rock scattered around him almost like someone had picked them up like leaves and tossed them into the air. Debris fluttered around his eyelashes, catching on as he looked above and took note of the silence and stillness of the barely structured building he didn't quite recognize.
Using the little strength remaining in his system, he twitched the fingers on his left hand, letting himself know that somehow, luckily, this one had not been injured throughout the disarray showing of what happened to this place. Placing it on the back of his neck, he ignored the searing pain that crossed the front of his skull from moving too fast and moved up and down the vertebrae, counting and touching each one to see if there was any displacement.
Am I still at the enemy warehouse?
Blaine, not realizing the stones before him were off-put and sitting without any sort of stability, placed his good hand on it in an attempt to move forward. Consequentially slipping, a yelp of anguish formed in the back of his throat as the careless action had his chin slamming into the ground, scratching the skin of it. That alone would have been a secondary act of annoyance if it weren't for the loud, hot, and unidentified pain climbing up his backside.
While he'd done his best with what he had to work with in terms of checking his back, the way he was positioned did all but nothing for him. The middle and lumbar areas of his back that seemed to require the most attention were, unsurprisingly, the places that were the most out of reach.
The realization smacked him across the face.
I ... I can't feel my legs.
Letting that thought slide off his shoulders for the time being, mainly out of fear, he turned to the place around him. Now that his brain was back on his neck, and he was coherent enough, he directed his vision to his right arm—hoping for the same outcome as his left.
Sadly, it was not granted. Wide-eyed, he took in the spilled blood that was still collecting underneath his pinned arm. From this alone, he knew that the likelihood of it being broken was high, however, if there was pain there to alert him, he felt none of it—the adrenaline and blaring shock in his system were eating away at his nervous system.
Shifting closer, he managed to hook his left hand around the thickness of the rock in a way to shove it up and off him. The moment it was released, an agitated and agony-inducing groan pushed out of his lips; he cuddled his destroyed hand in his chest, thankful that at least his bone had not breached the skin, but hopeless every time he tried to move his fingers with no avail.
Dammit—ignore it, Blaine.
You need to get yourself out of this.
Despite the most inward cries of desperation, Blaine moved both of his hands, using them each to establish a couple of rocks that were foundational enough to rest his body weight on top of. With the feeling of vibrations on his side and the sound of racketeering, two were found fairly quickly.
To prepare himself, he tipped his jaw down and hooked his bottom teeth on his t-shirt, pulling it up a few times to give it a bundled feeling—he needed something stuffed between his teeth as a makeshift gag, and even though it was thin and useless, it was better than nothing.
Blaine shut his mouth tightly and pressed against the ground; his screams muffled ever-so-slightly as he did his best to pull his lower back and injured legs out from the rubble that was not only killing him slowly, but trapping him—leaving him left for dead if he didn't try.
Halfway out and feeling optimistic, a sudden fright passed his cheeks as the sound of falling and shoved rocks off to his side brought him out of his self-made world of pain and back into the reality of the real one.
"Who's there!?" he called out without thinking.
His voice echoing off the grey concrete was the only response granted to him. And for some reason, after all he just went through, the goal of why he was here in the first place finally manifested in his frontal lobe, reminding him that he had shared this journey with more than just himself.
Raising his head once more, he stared at the now blocked-off escape door he had been sprinting toward with Eden when the bombs went off. The thought process of it all had him turning around quickly, only to swear at himself for acting stupid, before realizing the revelation behind him was worth every ounce of pain.
A wall of stones, probably about as tall as the former ceiling had completely blinded him to the other side of the room—the same one where two of his teammates had unintentionally been tethered to when everything fell apart.
My sister—fuck, my sister!
Where the hell is my sister!?
"Franki!" he yelled, once again, not thinking.
The grasp of real life and the situation had finally broken dawn in his head. He stopped caring about the logistics of it all—nor did he adequately think about the potential harm he could be pressing onto his person as a result of his ricocheting, screaming voice.
"Frank, where are you!?"
Pulling and dragging his body out more and more, Blaine hardly had space to realize that he had completely withdrawn himself from under the rock and had now been moving without an anchor. It wasn't until he was sitting with his legs on either side of him, head above the plateau of rocks, did he truly understand he was the only one left.
Or not.
Whipping his head to the side—that idea flushed from his mind.
Rising up from underneath a bed of shrapnel metal and a cage of stone that had no match for her talents, a small pair of hands flung into the air, shoving away a rock, revealing another warm body from the depths of her unwanted, hidden dungeon.
"Fr—"
At the last second, he stopped himself, drawing his head back just a tad. He understood well enough that the moment blood touches oxygen, it becomes oxidized—turning the coloring of it from a bright red to a muddy brown. Letting his mind slide over that fact, it took a second for the face of the woman in front of him paired with dark hair to be explained.
He had been ecstatic and relieved that it looked to be black hair in the lighting because then it meant his sister was really okay, but it wasn't Franki—it was Eden.
Drenched in blood, just as she had been earlier only now it was her own, her young face turned toward him. Those beautiful blue eyes that normally would have captured him under their desire, enamored him—drowned him in debt he didn't owe—felt dull and empty, reminding him that there was nothing normal about these circumstances.
"B-Blaine," she whispered, painfully.
"Baby—"
He lifted his hand and moved it in the direction of her, fully intending to get his ass up and close this stupid distance between them, but as he went to stand up, or even use his legs at all, the weight of his body caused them to cave, and he ended up on the floor once more. In a fit of slight anger, his hands slammed into the stones, punching them without so much force that he hurt himself more, but enough to give him an outlet for his emotions.
Work!
Why won't you work!?
Blaine's fingers curled into themselves; amongst the physical pain and emotional sorrow in his head, he stopped paying attention to everything, including the woman in front of him. His mind raced a million miles too fast as he thought about his sister and Jase—as he wondered where the hell they ended up. His desperation came in bouts of small cries as he tried again and again to at least wiggle his damn toes—and even if that was a tangible feat, it wasn't near enough to help anyone.
You idiot.
Why'd you have to go and get hurt?
He was supposed to be the leader—the team doctor—the one that the others could always rely on to lead them and nurse them back to health in moments just like this. Rather, here he sat, with what he thought was less than fifty percent muscle function in his lower half, doing every uncharacteristic thing a person like himself could accomplish.
"Blaine!" Eden shrieked.
The pure terror that laced the edges of her voice took him right out of his pity-party for one. The sudden increase in volume numbed his core, forcing him to go back to the room in which his girlfriend was hurting and he was dying. There wasn't a single misstep or stutter when pronouncing her b's, freezing his veins, and seizing his heart as his eyes focused on what he knew was happening to her.
Though nothing truly could have prepared him.
Almost like lightning struck him down in the spot he sat, thoughts of his sister, Jase, and everyone else that mattered left his body. The immovable wall that separated the likes of them materialized in his brain, creating a lump between what he could save and what he couldn't.
He watched with stunned eyes as Eden consumed every part of his mind—he stared at her fragile body—coughing, and wheezing as blood poured out of the corners of her mouth—did its absolute best to hold back the knife the enemy was pointing at the center of her abdomen.
For some reason, the thought of a bad guy surviving the implosion of the building had been the last thing on his mind. Sure, he knew that screaming out loud wasn't the best idea, but not once did he think that follow-up karma would lead them to this. For some reason, he couldn't fathom that those as uneducated and untrained as the ones they fought against could live through this.
That was because he forgot a key fact—there is no skill in surviving.
Either they live or die.
It was as simple as that.
"S-stop!" Eden whimpered.
He could see the sweat on her palms percolating underneath the handle of the blade, mixing with the man's above her. The sight of her injuries was lost on him, but he knew that they had to be bad. Blood was someone in her system where it shouldn't be, causing it to travel up her esophagus.
That alone was weakening her.
Get up.
"B-Blaine ... h-help!" she whispered.
Move.
"H-he's gonna k-kill me!"
GET UP!
"I-I can't—"
MOVE! NOW!
The sound of Eden's hands falling to her sides, knuckles smacking the rocks, was now a sound that he was never going to get out of his brain. It would haunt him for the rest of his life. He sat there, in a puddle of his own self-defeat and utter wastefulness of his humanity watching as the knife plunged into her skin, ripping her to shreds, robbing her of her blood.
Again.
And again.
With each flail of the man's arm, each deposit of metal into flesh, he flinched. A chain-reaction of anger and pain mixed in his system. As the droplet flew through the air and splattered to the ground, decorating, and erecting this building in Eden's name—in Eden's blood—a new type of heat bubbled under the surface of his skin.
Somewhere, lost in his eerie transfixion, he managed to move closer. Somehow, during the mix of it all—during the transition from feeling like the most worthless boy on the planet to the most powerful one in dire need of vengeance, he rose to his feet.
He moved.
He ran.
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Blaine's hands wrapped around the fat neck of the perpetrator at the same time he used his weight and the force at which he was running to knock him off his ass. The two of them rolled across the ground together, tugging, and pushing, punching, and hitting—each movement creating a whirlwind of energy that kept tossing them around and around.
He swallowed a scream of pain as his back landed harshly on a flat rock, knocking some of the wind from his lungs. The man on top of him slammed his fist down, aiming for his face; luckily, he read him quicker than he could react and moved out of the way at the last second.
Red was still streaming across his vision like an angry second personality as he looked at the blood of his lover caked on the face of the motherfucker above him. Every cell in his body regenerated itself, every muscle tied together like a knot—the wounds he had before became imaginary in his mind as adrenaline pumped itself through every atom in his body.
Blaine, using his new-found spiritualism, kicked his legs off the ground and snuck them in between the man's, putting the toes of his shoes on the insides of his thighs. Planting both hands on the ground beside either ear, he drove against gravity and exerted forward-motion to complete a backward somersault, sending the enemy flying and crashing through the window behind them.
Spinning around, he jumped from the small ledge of the first floor and landed just above the man. He barely had time to react to the rain that was showering down on them, or the pain he was in before one fist was digging into the grass, leveling him, and the other was implanted permanently into the enemy's face, punching and punching.
"Die! Die! Die! Die! DIE!"
It wasn't until the pain emitting from his broken hand sprang into action, did he stop what he was doing. And yet, even then, it still felt dull and ever-disappearing. The bite back didn't faze him enough to stop him from pulling out the gun belonging to the enemy and loading it with one of the spare bullets left in his back pocket from firing and switching guns earlier.
Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger five times with his bad hand, not grimacing or reacting to the clap back, and continued even though the single bullet had fired and killed him the first time.
"For my girl," he whispered.
Blaine's eyes rolled to the back of his head at the same time his body tipped over and fell to the ground with a thud, having spent all his energy fighting this pathetic excuse of a battle. The rain flitted onto his cheeks, rolling down them like they were fictitious versions of tears he could not create on his own.
"Franki. Jase," he mourned.
Tiredly, he kept blinking his eyes. He could feel his consciousness slipping from underneath him like a carpet being sneakily yanked out from under his feet, and yet, he desperately clung to whatever crumb he had left to make sure those barren eyes of his—those ugly black saucers—remained open, obeying his commands.
The mind always gives up before the body does.
Ever-so-slowly, he reached up and pushed his finger into the small of his ear, silently thanking whichever magical being was watching over them, that his earpiece was still inside. Double tapping it, realizing he should have done this ages ago, he heard the beep that indicated a wired link.
"Hello?" he barely managed, "Is anyone there?"
No response.
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, hating that he already acted so defeated earlier, he put one hand in front of the other, one knee in front of the next, and crawled back inside the building, crumpling in a pile on the ground next to his girlfriend.
Eden's eyes were closed, but her mouth looked to have stopped spouting blood; he couldn't tell whether or not he was happy about that. But not wanting to waste too much time on it, he placed his hand on the side of her body and moved it, finding the root of the original problem.
A rock in the shape of a cylinder, not much wider than a small pipe, was jammed through the left side of her body, skewering god-knows which organs inside of her. Still clutching the gun from earlier, he pounded the butt into it, feeling satisfied as the crumbling rock decimated in his fingers, slipping out of them like a handful of sand.
"If someone is there," he wheezed, feeling lightheaded, "—please answer."
Another few smashes later, the two sides of the rock parted from one another, granting Eden her freedom from the place in which she had been shunned to.
"It's Blaine. I'm with Eden—SOS."
He, admittedly so, was too scared to check whether or not she still had a heartbeat. So, rather than dawdling, he wrapped both of his arms under her body and scooped her up, pressing her to his chest. He wished with everything that the warmth seeping off her and the redness in her cheeks were enough to tell him that she was still fighting the Grim Reaper.
As his foot passed the broken window once more, his prayers were finally answered.
"Blaine? Blaine!—are you there!?"
"I'm here," he breathed, recognizing Maverick's voice.
"What do you mean you're with Eden!?"
"S-she came. Es-escaped rehab t-to fight."
"What the fuck!?—where is she now?"
"Dying in my a-arms."
Blaine could feel his strength evaporating more and more with each step into the wilderness that he took. Based on the blueprints and maps they were given during previous scouring of the neighborhood, he knew there was supposed to be a lot of cars behind the warehouse—all he had to do was pass one more corner.
However, with Maverick screaming in his ear about Eden's wellbeing, and his back, leg, and arm injuries coming into play at the worst time, he found it hard to even breathe. Each inhale was like a stab to his lungs, crinkling and burning his insides as if he was smoking his favorite nicotine stick.
"Where the fuck are you? I'll come to you!"
"N-no time," he disagreed, "Give me directions t-to the nearest hospital."
He managed to reach the first car in the lot. Yanking the passenger's door open, happy to see it was left unlocked, he ducked inside. The moment he leaned down, all of his blood rushed to his head, spilling out of his head wound and stunning him into a moment of temporary, conscious comatose.
Clutching her in his arms, tears slid down his face as his breaths ravaged his chest.
I'm going to die here.
I need to help her.
"BLAINE! HELLO!?"
His mind switched back into a semi-functioning mode as his friend's shrill voice took over his thoughts once again. Standing back up, he carefully placed Eden in the passenger's seat before closing it and heading to the driver's side.
The burden of his pain was not easily escapable—they took over his ability to walk, forcing him to the ground in front of the car. It was like everything he had been ignoring since he woke up under the rocks was now attacking him.
"Directions?" he whispered.
"Why'd you stop talking?!"
"N-no r-r-r-reason," he shoved out.
Having managed to crawl over, he grabbed the driver's side handle and popped open the door, grabbing the steering wheel, and using the anchor it had to the car as a whole to steady and lift him to his feet. Once thrown into the seat, he opened the sunblind above him and clutched the keys, slipping them into the engine.
"I got it," Blaine nodded to no one.
"It should take you less than ten minutes."
"I got it," he repeated.
Turning the car over, he flipped the shift into reverse and backed out of the space, spinning the wheel at the same time to face it in the direction he wanted to go. In the process of it all, his sight landed upon the sleeping (or dead) face of his girlfriend and thrill entered his bloodstream again.
I love you.
I'm so sorry.
"Please take care of my cousin, Blaine," Maverick pleaded.
"I g-got it," he whispered.
With his eyes still dopily attached to her, he switched into drive, no longer paying attention. The cloudiness in the sky mimicked the front of his vision as his eyelids drooped down, encasing him in his own demise all while trying to help Eden escape hers.
I'll ... I'll ... protect you.
Blood from his forehead streamed down the bridge of his nose, covering his eyes across the corners enough to make him automatically shut them to clear them. The only problem with that reasoning was his inability to open them again.
By some miracle, Blaine piloted the car just enough to make it out onto the main street.
But luck was not on his side.
His head hit the wheel as he passed out, and when his hand slipped down it with the last bit of grip he had before sleep took control of him, it spun the car out of control—
—before crashing into oncoming traffic.