it's future rust and it's future dust

[Fenris]

Mistake number 1 was leaving his knife at camp.

Axel didn't like sleeping with it in his pocket, he was still stuck forever with the mental image of the thing flicking open if he turned over the wrong way and dying of the world's stupidest thigh wound, so he left it in his bag. Which was also stupid cause if someone jumped them in the middle of the night they probably weren't gonna give him a minute to get his weapon out before they snapped his neck or whatever, but also: it was a shitty-ass knife and probably wouldn't make a difference. Might make him feel a little better, wandering alone, but he wasn't sure he could do much with it if he had it right now, anyway.

Mistake number 2 was skipping breakfast. And not bringing a water bottle. And maybe also some aspirin.

Flashbacks to all-nighters grinding ranked when Hel had to remind him to eat something. Then he stood up and the headrush practically knocked him back over.

He felt... weak. He'd say he felt like he was dying if that wouldn't sound so literal. What he actually felt like was warmed-over garbage and that was mostly his own fault for taking shitty care of himself, for letting himself get to that weird point where he was starving but the thought of food made him feel sicker. Water was less excusable. He just wasn't thinking. Wanted to get away faster. Could he drink, like, rainwater? Look up and open his mouth or whatever? Like, he'd done that as a kid and it hadn't killed him, but also if he did get horribly sick from it it'd kill him out here, so maybe not worth it.

Was the lake safe to drink from? Maybe it was before it ended up full of bodies. He hadn't actually seen any bodies, maybe there weren't, but it seemed like the kinda thing that would happen. Dead Marshes style. Wasn't like it mattered, since he'd lost track of where the fuck the lake actually was a long time ago.

Mistake number 3. How fucking hard was it to just keep walking on the shoreline? But that wouldn't have gotten him away from the others, and that was what he'd wanted, and visibility sucked in the rain and the haze and the dim light of early morning and he had no idea what direction he'd come from or how he was going to get back. The rain was overwhelming. He'd kill for an umbrella, or a poncho or something, haha it was funny because people had killed each other for way less? He wondered if someone else was gonna win an award for murder. He wondered if they'd get a fucking poncho. His clothes felt like they were fusing into his skin. The flannel and the denim combined to make him smell like a wet dog. People got infections from that shit. He remembered pictures of trench foot from when they studied WWI.

Mistake number 4 was probably a lot of things.

Leaving in the first place, maybe, now that he didn't know how or if he'd find his way back. He'd been lucky, stupid lucky, running into Andy in the first place, finding Abe, too. They'd been wearing on him and like, why? Because they were autonomous human beings with their own feelings and shit? Wow how fucking dare they. Good thing he'd wandered off to the middle of nowhere where he didn't have to worry about human companionship.

He'd wanted to be alone, he thought, because his whole fucking self was just filled to the brim with whatever and it was going to tear him and everyone else apart but he didn't have the energy now to throw a tantrum now anyway, everything coalesced into a boulder he was currently pitying himself for pushing uphill. Sisyphean except he'd signed himself up. He could let it roll down the hill, right? If he wanted.

He was losing track of the metaphor.

Maybe mistake number 4 was coming on this stupid trip at all, not that it wouldn't have killed him, anyway. Maybe it was ending up in Tennessee to begin with. Maybe it was how his parents died. He'd have grown up in Seattle, if they hadn't. It happened in Seattle, too. But he would have been too young, at least, right? It's not like it mattered if it wasn't happening to him. Right?

The shadow of something on his back his whole life.

Mistake number 5 was thinking so much.

Thinking sucked.

---

When the announcements started playing, Axel'd found the shore.

A shore. The wrong shore. He couldn't see much, wind blowing rain back in his face, but this sure as fuck wasn't the lake he'd come from. Too small. He tried to remember the map he'd half-looked at a few times over the last couple of days, tried to remember. There was the big-ass lake you couldn't miss on the west side of the map, probably what he'd walked away from, and then... he thought he remembered a small lake, somewhere nearby. Couldn't remember where it was exactly, not that he had a compass or the sun or anything to tell him what direction he'd have to walk back in. But he hadn't gone too far.

How long had it been? Kinda hard to say. Wasn't much light to shift. He'd gone from feeling like shit to feeling like shit but wetter, which showed a time progression of like thirty seconds spent in this fucking rain.

He wasn't prepared when the voice rang out, not really. He knew it was coming on like, an intellectual level, a "this is what is gonna happen every morning" level, a "people are dead and dying and killing everywhere and you're gonna have to fucking deal with that" level, but that wasn't the same as being prepared. Probably no one was prepared. Probably he wasn't alone, except literally, physically, right now, sitting down because he was rapidly running out of energy to stand. Staring at the sky.

Bring it on, motherfucker, he thought, and then wished he had the strength to laugh at himself.

God, he was stupid.

Mistake number 6 was believing, even for a moment, that he'd already hit rock bottom.

Mikki. His ex, his friend, his best friend's girl who he'd still made eyes at every once and a while when he wasn't around and he swore she shot them back sometimes but hey, he didn't actually do anything, he wouldn't do that to Andy, just cause his eyes followed his dick instead of his brain every once and a while—she was dead. Not breathing. Not existing. Gone. Her body left somewhere to rot and he could remember her perfectly, he knew her too well, she laughed in his mind and she never would out loud again because she couldn't because she was dead.

She killed two people on her way out. One of them killed her.

No revenge for anyone.

Andy would be—

He couldn't, didn't have the right to speculate. He'd left Andy alone. He should be there, right now, swallowing his own feelings again because this wasn't about him, but he was here instead breathing so hard he strained to pick up the rest, maybe he didn't want to know. Maybe he could block it out. Maybe it would be better if he just

Lorenzo. Of course. Sapphire, he'd seen her, them, they'd gotten out of there in time. That felt like forever ago. Had they fought again, later? Had he attacked her and she'd held on overnight? Could he have stopped him if he'd stuck around? Lorenzo. Lorenzo and Tyrell. The worst he'd seen was how fucked up Morgan had been when they first found him and they'd killed people and they'd been his closest friends and he never wanted to see them again and what was he, how was he better, he never was, was he?

Maybe it was only a matter of time.

Erika. Tyrell's girlfriend. He didn't know her well, he knew Ty'd be devastated, what the fuck did he care what Tyrell thought anymore.

Nick. Abe said Beryl was mercy, not murder, she had already been dying, maybe he had some other excuse but twice sounded like a pattern. They'd had a complicated relationship, him and Nick, mostly because Tristan existed and Tristan usually made things complicated which sounded like he was being a dick but he really wasn't, it was the kinda complicated that was worth it but he'd turned against Nick when Nick had turned against Tristan cause he knew where he stood in that fight and in retrospect it had all been pretty dumb and they could have just talked or something.

That was kinda how everything felt in retrospect. It was dumb. Stupid high school bullshit.

Now they were dead.

There were other names too and he knew some of them as faces and some of them as voices and some of them as nothing and it didn't really matter, it slid off him like the rain except it also soaked into his hair and clothes and skin and added weight to his body he was running out of energy to carry.

The voice shuddered to a halt, and when Axel screamed it wasn't as much of a relief as it should have been. The wind and rain swallowed the sound.

The muddy ground made gross wet noises and stuck to his hands.

He'd wanted this, right? It's why he left in the first place, right?

He wanted his fucking tantrum.

He screamed again.




God, it would get so much worse. So, so much worse.

He thought if he screamed loud enough he'd feel better but it turned out nothing had ever worked that way and also he was a dumb piece of shit lost in the rain by himself and he was probably gonna stay that way for the rest of his life.






>> By the time he stood up again, his throat was numb.