Callisto

For you (pt. 2)

The dark curtains at the corners of his eyes slowly revealed the world he wished he'd left already. He felt the burning sensation of the sands beneath his feet, ground beneath his skittering paws. As he steadied himself, shaking off residue, he realized that she'd planned it all out, of course. He was completely unharmed from the fall.

And then he remembered all that had transpired since this morning.

"Nicole!" He wailed to only the dead air before him.

"Nicole!"

He scanned the horizon, his eyes still adjusting to the presence of permanent, natural light.

Then they settled on the smoking wreckage of the chopper, the fires of its destruction still burning in the distance.

He ran as fast as he could muster, tripping and falling along the way and gobbling mouthfuls of the dry red grit that surrounded him. When he made it to the rocky precipice covered in flames, he pawed each piece of wreckage in turn, panicking every second, burning his paws on each fragment of heated metal. He didn't care. He called her name. He ran around the perimeter. He tried using his nose, which only took in the flames" vile carbon dioxide. Then he heard what he thought at first was a hallucination.

"Jespar..."

He followed the fading voice through the forest of steel and flame, ignoring the pain as his paws drove themselves through rusted nails and charred pieces of glass.

He found her trapped beneath one of the downed rotors, her face swollen and bloody, barely breathing. Her head was pressed into the sand, and he could only see her left arm poking out from under the rubble. A pool of dark blood ran down its side.

He started digging at the sand beneath the rotor in an attempt to dislodge her as soon as he saw the vacant look in her eyes.

"Jespar..."

"Don't say anything," he said, trying to laugh and crack a smile. "Gonna get you outta here. We're gonna make it - we'll find somewhere safe out there. We're both gonna make it."

The rotor itself wouldn't budge, and he resorted to pulling at the sleeve of her blood-drenched lab coat, straining with all the might his small form could muster.

"Nicole," he groaned through gritted teeth. "You gotta push with me. Come on!"

Her eyes barely tracked him, and he felt her limb's complete lack of life. It was like pulling a crash-test dummy that just refused to move.

"Nicole," he cried as he started to feel the stings of the burning ground on his paws. "Come on!"

She looked at him. Her eyes closed.

"Nicole!"

"Jes-," she panted. "Jes...go"

He let her arm go and licked her face, stroking himself on her forehead, feeling her singed hair drape over him.

"Please don't tell me to," he said. "Please don't."

"Only you..." she whispered into his tiny beady eyes, watering of their own accord. "You can do it."

From somewhere outside the realm of his consciousness, somewhere outside the fleeting sphere of reality that was composed of just him and Nicole, a shot rang out and hit the metal of the rotor.

He felt her grab him tight suddenly, groaning in the effort. She coughed up the blood that she'd held in her lungs.

"Go," she said again with force. And against his own will, he felt his whole body quiver as it was compelled to obey.

"What about us?" he said stupidly, knowing it sounded so ridiculous coming from him. It was the kind of thing she'd mock him for saying relentlessly. He wished she would. He wished she would more than anything. He wanted nothing more than just to wake up again in that grey shithole and feel her stroking his stomach.

"What about seeing the world?" he kept on, knowing it was fruitless. "What about freedom?"

She leaned in close and kissed him once on his long face.

"For you, Jespar," she said. "Not for me."

And as another shot rang out behind him, kicking the sand up by his back, she delivered her last order through the final tears her eyes could shed.

"Run."

His legs moved on their own. He felt them carry him through the fire and flames of the helicopter's graveyard, passed the scarred one who limped forwards through the inferno like a demon rising from the depths of the abyss. He kept running even when he heard a final shot roar through the descending dark of night, and her voice reached his ears again as the desert sands flew passed his feet.

In her final moment, she had called out his name.

...

"Jespar!"

Her voice broke through the dream of the dead and catapulted him back into the increasingly dark world of the living.

Rain-Born was standing over him. Bruised and bloodied, her leg was cut and scorched by flame. She was kneeling over him. He felt her rough hands on his head and back.

"You know," he croaked. "Sometimes, you sound just like she did."

She cradled him close to her and hugged him tight. He felt what may have been tears or the residue from some sewer water splash onto his face. Either way, it felt cold.

His whole body did.

She shook him suddenly, and he realized his eyes had been closing. It was funny, actually. All this meat surrounded him - it was like heaven. But he didn't have an appetite at all.

"Chief," he whispered. "I gotta sleep."

Before his eyes could close, he felt her pull him away from the ground, and the harsh wind of the outside slap his face. He smelled burning in the air.

"Chief- "

"You're coming with me, Jespar," she said, not looking down. Always ahead. The embers that sailed through the air singed her hair, and still, she carried on.

"Is that...an order?" he smirked, coughing up blood.

She smiled at him, her face weary and wounded. Dark rims framed the faded tattoos around her eyelids.

"Hang on for me," she said. "We're going to see Callisto, remember?"

He heard the sickening squelch of the bodies beneath them and knew that she had entered the field of corpses before the damn tower. And from somewhere outside his mind, the dim feeling of The Harvester recognizing one of its own kind touched him. Like an invisible curtain parting before them, it was letting them pass.

"I'll try," he murmured, but he let his eyes close at least for a little while. "For you, I'll try."