TW: head injury, claustrophobia, a few brief mentions of blood, some breathing difficulties
"It's just that he's not usually gone this long."
The spaceman turned to face the scientist, raising his eyebrow as he sighed. "What in the world are you talking about? He's been gone far longer than this before. Honeydew was raised in the mines—he can handle exploring a cave on his own for a few hours. You don't have to be so concerned."
Lalna pushed his goggles back onto the top of his head, frowning. "He usually checks in, though."
"It's hard to get any sort of stable connection on our headsets at this distance, you know that," Xephos replied.
"Yeah, but—"
A loud sigh. "Look, if you're that worried about it, let's just go and find him ourselves."
Lalna opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself. It was obvious that Xephos was annoyed that he'd have to drop everything he was working on to satisfy Lalna's paranoia. The scientist figured that verbally agreeing would add to his partner's annoyance, but he certainly wasn't about to turn down the offer, so he just left wordlessly to gather the torches and a sword, and then waited outside for Xephos.
Lalna had resolved to not bring up the matter further because he was too tired to argue, but as they headed toward the cave entrance, he found himself speaking before thinking. "I wish you didn't let him do whatever he wants all the time."
As the words came out, Lalna cringed at his own lack of tact.
Xephos didn't look back, but Lalna saw his shoulders stiffen. "I'm not his mother. I don't 'let' him do anything—he's a grown dwarf, he can make his own damn decisions. And anyway, there's nothing stopping you from telling him what you think he should or shouldn't do, either."
Rubbing a gloved hand against his left temple to ward off an oncoming headache, Lalna paused before jogging to catch up with Xephos. Sensing that he'd overstepped boundaries, he mumbled a hesitant "sorry."
Xephos glanced back at him with an expression of pity rather than the irritation his voice had betrayed just moments ago. "It's fine. I just don't think you give Honeydew enough credit. I'm not saying he shouldn't be more careful, it's just that everyone makes him out to be this great big idiot—and sometimes I'm one of those people—but he really can handle himself, and I wonder what he'd think if he knew you doubted him so much." The words hurt because Lalna knew them to be true. No one knew Honeydew better than Xephos, and no one knew Xephos better than Honeydew. Lalna was just sort of there, occupying a space with them that had not existed in the first place. They weren't a trio despite what he wanted; they were a pair with an extra person following them around. How could Lalna assume he knew better?
The pair rounded a corner and started down a dark path. Honeydew, unlike Xephos, was known to conserve and reuse his torches and thereby often left tunnels he'd been through unlit and unmarked. Xephos and Lalna both hated this habit, and it was one of the relatively few things they managed to agree on.
The scientist said nothing. He would never wish injury on anyone, but a tiny, dark part of him wanted to find Honeydew just about to be overtaken by monsters so that they could rescue him and prove Lalna's worry to be sound. He hated himself for thinking such things, but he had always had darkness inside of him that the others either couldn't see or willfully ignored. Whichever the case, Lalna was glad they treated him as if he was a good person.
As they reached the end of the corridor they had travelled, Xephos apparently began to regret his lack of understanding of Lalna's feelings. "I think you're just worried because you haven't been sleeping enough lately. Lack of sleep does that, Lalna. It puts you on edge." Xephos placed a torch on the wall in front of him and turned, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder. The alien was always like this; grumpy and easy to anger, then sympathetic and motherly in turns. His quickly changing temperament made things difficult sometimes, but it meant that Xephos nearly always said exactly what he felt. He was a lot of things but, for better or for worse, a liar was not one of them.
Lalna allowed himself to lean his head and touch his cheek to the hand on his shoulder. Normally such displays of affection embarrassed him almost as much as they did Xephos, but he had been stressed lately and losing contact with Honeydew certainly had not made him feel better. Perhaps, he thought, it was sleep deprivation catching up with him. His anxieties did tend to grow when he neglected to take care of himself.
Xephos offered Lalna a small smile and ruffled his hair as he walked past him, back in the direction they had come from. "We'll need to make some more torches before we keep going. Who knows, Honeydew may have already gotten back to base without us."
Lalna halted in his steps. "What, we're just leaving? We still haven't found any sign of Honeydew—what if he needs us right away? It'll be night by the time we get back here. It may even be night now!" He stepped forward quickly and grabbed Xephos's wrist to stop him.
The spaceman spun on his heel with an exasperated look on his face. They had only just stopped arguing, and here the matter was being brought up again! Tugging his arm out of Lalna's grip, Xephos started, "Lalna, you're being—"
Unbeknownst to Xephos, a creeper had spotted them in the darkened tunnel. Lalna saw it far before he was able to react. Xephos had already started to turn, having seen Lalna's eyes catch the beast over his shoulder. The alien caught a single glimpse of the creature as he turned his head before the hiss echoed through the cavern and the creeper exploded.
Xephos barely managed to push Lalna farther back into the dead-end passage as the creeper attacked. The force of the explosion threw them both back, but Xephos's shove had spun Lalna so that he ended up falling to the ground chest-first and getting the wind knocked out of him. His eyes were still tightly closed and his muscles tensed from the shock when he felt the shaking of the cave on all sides of his body, and heard the deafening sounds of boulders falling and walls collapsing. Then, there was silence.
Lalna tried to take a breath, but instead only managed a painful wheeze. The air was filled with dust now, and his desperate gasp only brought the dirt into his lungs. Coughing and trying to catch his breath at the same time, Lalna quickly grew so lightheaded that he could not sit up from his position on the floor. He could barely hear some rumblings in the distance—another part of the cave shifting or collapsing, perhaps—as sounds faded around him and he could only concentrate on inhaling.
The dust had yet to settle when Lalna managed to cough forcefully enough to expel some of the dirt from his lungs. Though his arms wobbled with weakness brought on by the lack of oxygen, he used what little strength he had to push himself into something resembling a sitting position. Air came a little more easily to him now, and he managed to open his eyes as he tried to calm himself and regain control over his wheezing. He stared at the floor and blinked rapidly, trying to get some of the dirt out of his eyes before awkwardly fumbling for the goggles on his head and pulling them down over his eyes. "Xeph—"he tried to speak, but only succeeded in racking his body with more coughing and shallow inhalations. He removed one of his gloves and ran his arm over his goggles furiously to wipe away most of the dirt so he could see his friend.
Beside him on the hard stone floor, Xephos was lying motionless. He was on his side, facing towards Lalna, but his eyes were closed and a small puddle of blue blood was forming under his head. Lalna crawled closer and put his hand on Xephos's shoulder. He coughed harshly again, inhaled as much oxygen as he could, and called out, "Xephos!"
If it weren't for the spaceman's injuries, he might have been alarmed by the weakness of his own voice. His breaths started to normalize and his mind became clearer. Fogginess gave way to panic and he shook Xephos, calling out again. "Xephos. Xeph!"
Xephos's body moved limply with Lalna's shaking, but the spaceman was entirely unresponsive. Lalna could not pull his gaze away from the unconscious man. He slid his gloved hand between Xephos's head and the ground, and touched his bare hand against Xephos's cheek. Lalna smacked Xephos's face, lightly and cautiously at first, then harder and with shaking hands. He flicked the unconscious man's face in the way that he'd seen Honeydew use before to annoy him—just painful enough to be unpleasant, but not so much as to leave a mark.
Still, he did not wake.
Lalna fell back off of his knees and clutched his head. This was his fault. Xephos hadn't wanted to come to the cave and Lalna had made him. He had tried to leave for supplies, and Lalna had turned him around so that he didn't see the creeper coming until it was too late. Leaning back against the cave wall, Lalna pulled off his goggles and started to cry.
He was always doing this—ruining things that otherwise would have gone perfectly fine. He had had a somewhat sheltered childhood whereas Honeydew and Xephos had been trained to fight and take care of themselves since a young age. The culture of humans was different than those of the dwarfs or Xephos's race, but that wasn't it. He wasn't as good with a sword or a pick or an axe, he made stupid decisions, and all of his knowledge was from books instead of experience. He'd managed to look after himself when he was on his own, but since he'd been with Honeydew and Xephos, he'd been messing things up for everyone.
It was the only way to make things right, he decided. When and if they ever got out of there, which wouldn't be for quite some time if at all due to his lack of mining tools—they had only planned to follow Honeydew's path, after all—Lalna would leave. He would offer whatever help he could with Xephos's injury, if anything could be done at all, and then he would apologize profusely and leave them. He would go back to how things were, before he had others to care about. Before he had others to love.
His own hyperventilating and sobbing made his head throb and distracted him so much that he nearly didn't hear the crackling of his headset. "Lalna? Lalna?! Are you there?!"
The scientist froze, then made a failed effort to stabilize his breathing again before hitting the button to enable audio replying. Honeydew's headset must have indicated that someone had responded, because the dwarf suddenly became silent. Hesitantly, Lalna spoke.
"H- Honeydew?"
"Lalna! Fuck, it's good to hear your voice! I came back to base but no one was there, and it looks like there's been some kind of landslide or something at the cave I was in. I can't get a hold of Xephos, where the hell are you two?! What's going on?!"
"There was a—a creeper got us, I think it caused a cave-in and we're trapped."
"You're in there?!" Over the headset's static-filled connection, Lalna heard the sounds of metal tools clanging together and the wind rushing by as Honeydew ran. "The fuck were you doing?!"
"We came looking for you, and I-"
"Is Xephos still with you? Why can I reach you but not him?"
Lalna's blood ran cold as he looked back to the motionless spaceman. "He—He's hurt."
There was a pause as Honeydew was either overcome with worry or waiting for Lalna to continue. When he didn't speak, Honeydew pressed on. "Don't just say he's hurt! What the fuck happened?"
"The creeper—we didn't notice it until it was practically on us. The explosion knocked us backward and I think Xeph hit his head." Lalna spoke so quickly that he wasn't sure Honeydew could understand him. "The side of his head's bleeding and I can't get him to wake up."
Speaking the words aloud forced a greater understanding of the situation into Lalna's brain and he poorly stifled a sob. For a long moment, he could hear only Honeydew's breathing in his headset as the dwarf ran. "Lalna," he began again, "Lalna, just look after him, alright? I'm coming for ya, everything's gonna be fine." Lalna took a shaky breath and closed his eyes, trying to remain levelheaded. "What about you?"
"... What?"
"You, Lalna. Are you hurt?"
"N- No, I'm alright." He had a few scratches and it was possible he could have bruised a rib or two, but he was otherwise fine. He was confused about why Honeydew would ask such a thing when he knew for sure that Xephos was injured and Xephos was always his only concern when things went wrong, as they often did. It had always been like that, and just because Lalna was there now didn't mean he could be a part of that.
Now was as good a time as any for that apology.
"Honeydew, I'm so sorry. This whole thing happened because of me and I just—"
"You said you came looking for me, didn't you? So if it's anyone's fault that Xephos is hurt, it's mine."
"Honeydew ... I know you don't really act mad about stuff but its okay if you to hate me now, you don't have to be nice anymore."
"You're not getting it, Lalna!" Honeydew persisted. "Let's say part of this is your fault, sure. If you hadn't come looking for me, this wouldn't have happened. But if I had come home by the time I was supposed to or checked in, this wouldn't have happened then either." There was a sound of a sword clashing against bones, an arrow embedding itself into rock. "And you know what? You didn't hold a sword to Xephos's neck and force him to come, did you? So it's his fault, too, the stupid bugger."
Lalna stared at Xephos as his mind tried to wrap itself around the words Honeydew was saying.
"People make mistakes and bad decisions and accidents happen, and if you sit and mope around about 'em you're never gonna get on with your life."
His headset crackled again, then went quiet.
In the cavern, very faintly, Lalna heard a hiss.
Eyes wide, the scientist sprang to his feet. How could a creeper have detected them through the thick wall of debris? Had it heard his heated argument with Honeydew? Lalna grabbed Xephos under the arms, awkwardly half-turning him onto his back, and dragged him as fast as he possibly could to the far end of the room, then hurriedly knelt by his side, holding Xephos in a sitting position with the spaceman's head against Lalna's shoulder, and did his best to shield his injured friend in the few seconds before the explosion.
The boom echoed so loudly that it felt like Lalna's brain was vibrating. Bits of ore and smaller rocks hit the back of his lab coat. The boulders blocking them either were demolished or fell elsewhere, creating a large hole where the original entrance to the tunnel had been. Lalna glanced over his shoulder and held his breath, waiting to see the first monster come investigate the sound, find them, and kill them. They had little in the way of tools, and Lalna had no real way to fight back.
A zombie stumbled out of the cloud of dust and Lalna hugged Xephos closer to his body. The creature made it only a few steps into the room, however, before a sharp blade of iron pierced through it's chest. "That'll teach ya, ya bastard!" a familiar voice exclaimed. Appearing from behind the zombie, Honeydew placed his boot on the monster's lower back and forcefully kicked it off of his sword. The dwarf grinned widely in a way he reserved just for killing the undead, then caught Lalna's stare and rushed forward.
As if on cue, the moment Honeydew arrived next to Lalna, Xephos groaned softly. Gasping, Lalna whipped his head back to Xephos's face, and saw the spaceman's eyelids flutter a bit. Honeydew crouched on the opposite side, so that Xephos was between them. "You with us, friend? You starting to come 'round?" The dwarf asked, uneasiness clear in his tone.
Xephos clumsily brought an arm up and pressed a hand to the side of his head. He muttered something neither of his partners could understand, then opened his eyes again and groggily gazed around as if trying to make sense of the situation. "Head hurts," he mumbled finally.
Honeydew and Lalna sat and spoke to him for several minutes until he was coherent enough to sit up on his own. Lalna released him from his grasp so that he could do so, only somewhat embarrassed by his clinging to the other man. Honeydew stepped around Xephos and took a closer look at Lalna, to make sure he was not injured and either lying or unaware of it. The amount of red blood on his lab coat was minor, though he had some bruises that looked slightly worrisome. The trio figured they ought to leave before more monsters decided to show up. As Honeydew and Lalna helped Xephos stand and lean on Lalna for support, Honeydew spoke.
"I don't want to hear any more of that crap you were sayin' earlier, Lalna." Lalna flushed, internally praying that Honeydew wouldn't repeat everything to Xephos. "I saw the way you were shielding him when the creeper broke down the cave-in. Even if you blame yourself for getting into this situation, if you hadn't protected Xephos just then, he might have been killed."
Lalna felt his face go red and he stared at the ground. Honeydew had no way of knowing that the debris from the second explosion was small and only barely reached them at the back of the tunnel, but it occurred to Lalna that if he hadn't moved Xephos farther back, things could have gone very, very badly. He shivered involuntarily, and Honeydew grinned again.
As they slowly made their way out, Lalna helping Xephos walk and Honeydew running ahead to clear the way of monsters, Xephos leaned heavily against him. For a split second, Lalna panicked, thinking that Xephos was going to collapse. Instead, the spaceman craned his neck and planted a kiss on Lalna's temple. It was a small, nonverbal thank-you for looking after him. The lights of their base became visible in the distance, and Lalna realized that there was room for him in their lives and hearts after all.
Credit to moon-device on tumblr.com