paradisalogs | And if you close your eyes

Who: Joel Angrypants, Lucrezia Borgiapants, and Cassandra Cainpants
What: Saving lives, losing lives
When: Tuesday morningish
Where: the castle
Rating: R for violence

Typically, Cass isn't in the castle when the sun comes up, but she is today. It takes a long time to get her out of bed and it's only Lucrezia's voice over the journal that does it, pulls her away from warmth and affection and back to her own disused room for a quick shower, wishing up fresh clothes, and then she's off to search out her friend.

Come and meet me, Cassandra. I'll be waiting. That was really all it took and now here she is, on her way to find Lucrezia to find out what she'd needed. There's something odd to the castle today though, it's not quite noon and she hasn't seen many people, but she doesn't think they keep the same odd hours as her.

Doesn't really matter though. Today is going to be a good day, strange mood of the castle or not, and when she spots Lucrezia she has to grin. It's easy to sneak up on her and grab her around the waist from behind, spinning her in a circle and kissing her cheek before setting her down.

"Found you," she says, smiling as she goes to stand in front of the other girl. "What are we doing?"

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He's done this so many times, he doesn't understand how he's misjudged it.

One thing that can always be counted on with infected is their predictability, and here Joel is watching that rule fly out the window. Clickers aren't slow, but they aren't that fast either. They don't see -- so how the fuck did it make its way over just before he fired the first shot?

How the fuck does it know how to yank guns out of his hand, away from his person? There's no time to work it out. Panic overwhelms him when the shotgun shell does nothing except rip a hole through its chest and he's suddenly on the ground. Fear, adrenaline, that specific type of fear he thought he'd left behind after half a year without it. He'll probably die this time.

Terrified, but his movements are deft and precise through it all -- he pulls a shiv from his pocket and aims to jam it deep into the infected's jugular.

He's always got something on him.

Lucrezia knows she would make the worst wingman in any kind of fight that involves less repartee and more brute force and agility, both of which Cass has in plenty. She should feel grateful then, when she watches her friend launch into motion, moving like something more than mere human. A guardian angel. To her untrained eye, her friend seems just as fast as Joshua. Only Joshua would easily dodge that blade in Joel's palm now aimed for her friend's neck. Right? Perhaps Cass could be just as fast.

Still, the helplessness she feels is all too familiar. It feels as if the world is a tempest and she is trapped in the eye of the storm, resigned to watching everyone else fight against her, for her, die for her. Fools, the lot of them. There are many more worth protecting than her. Cass herself, for one.

She knows too that her rushing forward now to pick up the smaller gun thrown to the floor would hinder rather than help her friend. But that never stopped her before. The weapon nearly slips out of her hand when she aims it at the both of them, and she finds she can't remember how to turn the safety off. Damn Spiegel and his half-hearted lessons. Damn her mind for failing her when she needs it most.

"Sto--" her throat clenches shut and she has to force out a scream to make another sound. "Stop!"

With a knife sticking out of her neck, this has to end now. And the blade has to stay there or she'll only have seconds to finish this, so her hand wraps around Joel's, holds it against her neck and squeezes until she feels his fingers breaking under her grip. She doesn't stop until every finger is crushed and his hand falls away limply, that shiv still embedded deep in her throat. She'll have minutes now, and minutes is enough.

She reaches for Joel's other wrist and pins it to the floor, drives her fist into his hand and listens to those bones break too. He won't be hurting anyone else today, Lucrezia is safe from him, the rest of the castle will be fine. They're the ones that matter, one life for hundreds is a very good trade.

Cassandra, though, can taste her own blood on the back of her throat and her head is doing that fuzzy thing that happens right before you die. She's very tired now, she realizes, and maybe going to sleep for a little while would be fine. The hallway floor is no warm, soft bed, but it might do.

This gets stranger.

It's strange that his face hurts from what feels like a punch, that his guns were taken, that the other clicker hasn't come over yet (he hears it screaming and chances looking, only to be completely baffled by the sight: it picked up his gun?), that the one on him hasn't killed him yet. That shiv ought to do the job, except it doesn't.

The infected lives only to break his fingers. Joel grunts almost more out of confusion than pain, although the pain is intense and doubles up in intensity when it breaks his other hand. Another deep groan, sucking air in through his teeth.

He doesn't understand. With his hands disabled, useless and broken, he brings his knee up and shoves the weirdest clicker he's ever encountered off of him. Something's wrong, something's very wrong. This isn't--

He scrambles to his feet and runs for his life.

Edited 2014-02-26 21:13 (UTC)

It feels like forever passed as Lucrezia fumbles with the trigger and the gun, trying to make it fire while also trying to aim away from her friend but why, why, why the fuck won't it fire? Her mind goes at the speed of a mile a minute but she finds her hands moving much too slow.

It all comes to a halt when she sees that knife plunging into Cass's neck, because that's it. It's all over. They have lost and Lucrezia has failed yet again at keeping those she cares for alive. It's a curse, she thinks, and that somehow this too was also her doing by some convoluted chain of events. Something she said once to Joel, perhaps, the looks she gave him. Whatever she did to Spike. Being born a Borgia. There's a reason for this and her self-centered mind figures it probably goes right back to her.

She chokes out a sob as she drops the gun to run toward her friend, barely managing to catch her before her head hits the ground. It should be Cass, with that jarring blade in her neck, who should be sputtering, barely able to make out words, though she comes close to saying no, no, no, you cannot leave me, you would not dare, you promised between her sobs. But there is so much blood. How can anyone bleed so much?

Lucrezia brushes away any hair from Cass's face, leaning in to press her lips to her forehead as if that alone would make everything better, because she won't die. She promised. Dropping one hand to the knife's handle, she reaches to hold her friend's hand with her other to ease with the pain. All she has to do is take out the blade and Cass will heal and everything will be fine. She won't die.

Everything might have been salvaged, if that knife had stayed in. Lucrezia could have called for help, the blood loss could be reversed, doctors could have fixed her neck and that gaping bullet wound on her chest. She even manages a weak smile as she looks up at Lucrezia, golden hair blurry but still pretty as ever.

There's so much red on her though, and Cass raises a hand to try to brush some of it off just as Lucrezia pulls the blade from her throat. Her eyes widen, lips barely forming the word no but now it really is too late. That little bit of hope gone because Lucrezia was just trying to help.

She was so tired before but now she has nothing left, all of her strength floods out of her with each beat of her heart. Lucrezia still looks like an angel as she fades away, pretty blonde hair.

It's always pretty blonde hair and arms wrapped around her when she dies, Cass thinks to herself as she lets her eyes close, finally goes still. Pretty blonde hair and she winds up in the arms of someone she loves, to take her to the other side. There are worse ways to go, really.

The blood spatters her face and that pretty blonde hair slips out of their braids, the tips tinged dark red. She pulls out the knife and lets it fall to the floor.

To Lucrezia's mind, there is no more hope. As sheltered as she might be when it comes to other matters, death dwells close to her, her family. She knows a mortal wound when she sees one. There are no miracles here, even in a magical castle or the arms of the Pope's daughter. Even the Vicar of Rome can't pray for miracles to save his favored son, so where does that leave the rest of them?

She cradles her friend by the base of her head, as she would hold her own child, her other arm wrapped about her body to keep her warm. They say it is coldest before the end. Perhaps it's true. There are some here who have returned to tell the tale.

"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine," she finds she can recall the entire passage: Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem exaudi orationem meam ad te omnis caro veniet. But the words feel distant. They are cold and meaningless and she wonders how much comfort it would give Cass if she doesn't even understand the words. She holds Cass tighter to compensate, kissing her forehead again and again. She can think of little else to say (not I'm sorry, never that).

"Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna." She hopes her prayers prove unnecessary.

And if you close your eyes

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