Don't Fight It

[Pippi]

((Bethan Gayle continued from Don't Talk))

At some point, she had started running.

It had been somewhere, somewhen after she’d left the corridor outside the Captain’s Quarters, but she couldn’t tell you when exactly. Her perception of time had turned to mush, matting together and congealing and churning around inside of her along with everything else that she was supposed to, that she needed to, that she had to understand.

That she couldn’t, wouldn’t, refused to understand.

Her lungs burned, each breath igniting them and sending fire coursing through her airways. Sweat streamed down her brow, mingling with the tears on her cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time she had willingly run anywhere, nor, for that matter, the last time she’d tried to exercise. It was always a workout at every rave she went to, but that was entirely different, a whole other world to this. That was pumping music and blinding lights and people losing themselves in the throng and the drugs and the energy, senses pushed to their limits and overwhelmed in the best way possible.

The only thing that remained the same was the overwhelming sensation, taking control over her body, only now it stemmed from inside of her and terrified her.

She ran even as her body screamed at her to stop, as though she could outrun the contents of her mind and leave it all behind. She ran along identical corridors, her feet pounding against the soft carpet, numbered doors rushing past her in a blur. Had she passed this way already? She was sure she had seen that number before but from the opposite direction, but maybe she was just imagining it, maybe she was on the right track to escape, as if there was an escape from these walls and theses corridors and these ships, as though she wasn’t pelting full tilt deeper and deeper into the centre of this labyrinth until it swallowed her whole and

There was escape, there could be escape, it wasn’t even far away, she could swim, she wasn’t a bad swimmer, she could jump off the side of the boat, mutiny this entire awful game, swim fast and swim hard, outswim the sound of her collar, just so long as she could make it out of these corridors, if she kept turning left then she could make it, she was on that side of the ship she was certain, she could find an emergency exit, she could find a lifeboat even, she wouldn’t need to swim, she could row, she could figure out how to row, she could row and she could escape and she could

Her body faltered. Just for a moment, the exertion of sprinting headfirst into uncertainty finally catching up with her, but it was enough. The toe of one boot caught the heel of another. With a sharp intake of breath, and a short cry of fear, Bethan careened forwards, slamming hard into the ground. Her arms cried out in pain immediately; they had stopped her head from colliding with the floor but had taken the full brunt instead. Her wrists felt like broken glass. Her arms throbbed with the bruises that would soon appear upon them.

“Ah… s-shit… ow…”

There was another sting of pain, buried underneath the dull throbbing in her eyes, lying in wait, patient until everything seemed like it was going to be all right before making itself known, sharp and loud. With a groan, Bethan pushed herself up into a sitting position, shuffling backwards so her back was pressed against the wall. She looked down at this new source of pain. Her eyes widened. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Oh… ow, oh, shit, oh no, no no no…”

A dark red mark was sliced across the right hand side of her stomach, thin and perfectly straight. Her pike lay a few feet away, the tip stained in the exact same crimson. She was still for a moment, body not even able to tremble as she looked down, before she touched the wound, instinct guiding her. She yelped and whimpered, doubling over, her fingers feeling like a dagger being plunged into the cut.

Her hand trembled. A single drop of blood welled up on her fingertip, as another formed into a shiny red pearl at one corner of her cut, trickling down to her waist. They hung there for a moment, before detaching and splashing onto the floor, one after the other, leaving neat little splotches of blood behind.

Instinct took over once again, in the form of harried breathing and frantic movements. She threw her bag off of her shoulders and ripped it open, searching for the first-aid kit, flinging clothes and food and navigation equipment out onto the ground as she did so. She didn’t know how deep the cut was, she didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt, but her guts weren’t spilling out so it couldn’t have been life threatening, or, or immediately life threatening at least, so she didn’t need to try and, oh God, sew it back up or anything horrible like that, but she could still get infected, so she needed, she needed, God, what did she need, she needed antiseptic wipes that was it, and-

“Shit!”

She bit her lip hard until she could taste blood, forcing herself not to freak out as a packet of pills fell out of her hand and scattered all across the floor. She didn’t need them. It was okay. It was fine. She had to work quick, but she couldn’t freak out. It was fine. It was fine. She had the wipes in her hand, she just needed to-

“Ow, ow, oh jesus, ow-”

There we go, there we go. The wipes stung even worse than the actual slash had, but she knew how important they were. She put them down, quickly grabbing an assortment of bandages and dressings, pressing some to the cut, quickly and hastily and messily wrapping them around her stomach once, twice, three times. It was inelegant and any medic worth their salt would have balked at the sight of it, and she was certain that it would fall apart if she tried to run again.

But it was done. She could feel the slice in her side gently throbbing beneath the bandages, but it was dull, a phantom sensation. She sighed, and closed her eyes, and leaned back against the wall of the corridor.

This really, really and truly, was it, wasn’t it? This was her reality now, right?

It struck her in a way that her words and her frantic running and desperate repetition hadn’t managed to. Now that she had actually felt firsthand what these weapons could do, even just by pure accident, it felt like the spear had cut open the layer of protective cotton wool that had been enveloping her until now, preventing her from fully accepting the truth. This was not a game. This was not make-believe. These weapons were real. People, her friends were dead, and more of them would die in the next few days. It was that simple.

“This isn’t… this isn’t fair…”

That had been what Seo-yun had said, pretty much, hadn’t it? Now that she was sitting here, breathing slowly, eyes closed, faced with the inevitable reality of it all, the fog and the tangled mess inside her brain felt like it was seeping out of her and disappearing. It was leaving a hollow area carved out of her heart, the loss of her friends and her classmates eating away at her insides, but it came with a sense of clarity. It was the coldest of comforts, she knew that, but it was something. Something was more than nothing.

Bethan moved slowly now, carefully, returning her medical supplies to their kit, and her strewn belongings back into her bag, closing it back up. She stood on shaking legs, pressing her hand flat against the wall to support her, slowly returning her bag to her shoulder.

She looked down at the pike for several long, long seconds, before she wrapped her hand around it once more. The pink fabric tied around it fluttered as she raised it, before it became still again.

She needed to think things over, to specifically think over what Seo-yun had said to her, now that she was actually able to without every thought that entered her head scrambling up and cluttering her brain. She would do it elsewhere, though. Somewhere that didn’t have these lingering bad memories clinging to the walls and ceiling.

She would find some conclusion, some form of solution, and then she would find Kaya again.

And this time, everything would truly be all sorted out.

((Bethan Gayle continued in Don't Shake))