Little Bighorn

[Cicadan]

Still thumps, still yelling. Still blurs, still shapes. Bridie began to feel the grip and seize of panic, dull, to the throat. She was useless. Helpless.



No. She wasn't going to let that stop her.

Shapes, but distinct. One on top of the other, spindly things like arms melting into the silhouette cast between them.

Her hand shot out, slammed into the metal of a desk with a dull thud and a suddenly funny angle in one finger. She ignored sounds, pains. She found a bag, dug into it, yanked at the first small and hard object she found. Hurled it, with sloppy form in her shoulder, nearly toppling forward clumsily as she shouted.

"Damien!"

She unknowingly threw a compass right at the tangle of their bodies.

[Primrosette]

Damien heard Bridie calling his name at some point.

He turned to look at her....

....and he got hit in the face by a compass.

.....

It actually hurt and he lost his grip on the kama, hearing it clanking to the ground. His balance was more off-guard and he fell to the ground himself with Carson on top of him. The back of Damien's head smacked against the floor and all he could see was a blurred Carson for a few moments.

"N-Nnngh...."

[CondorTalon]

Carson was barely registering his surroundings anymore. As soon as he and Damien fell to the ground, Carson was running on pure adrenaline. He was fighting for his life now; there was no longer time to think of the person in front of him as a person... just as something that needed to die so that he didn't.

His hands fell upon Damien in a messy flurry of blows. Carson had never considered himself a fighter, but at this point, it didn't matter. At some point, Carson noticed that Damien wasn't holding onto the kama anymore.

Carson's hand reached for the kama and, with a guttural howl, he drove it down onto Damien.

[Cicadan]

Bridie didn't register that she'd failed. Couldn't for one, as her vision had yet to approximate anything close to correct. Also, didn't, because all she was at that moment was her combat training. Stay active, stay in the fight. Soldier on, be strong. Make her country proud.

She was charging in, the scene finally coalescing into her mind's eye in jittercam shock and jolts. All she needed to know tumbled into her mind by the adrenaline-slowed second.

Damien down. Someone on top of him, reaching for a weapon. Her battlecry would have been an elongated 'no', a shrill and imperious command, but she at the same time battened down the hatches, swallowed a lungful of air, and leaped with her scant fraction of a second's running start. A soft grunt, as the swinging kama embedded into her shoulder. As her body toppled his over.

Her face in his chest. Cheek skin peeled from raw friction as she shoved herself up, legs scrabbling into position to pin him. Full weight pressing onto his ribs. Blindly she swung down with open palms. Found softness, quickly turned hard and bony as she pressed deep into all the soft spaces with all ten fingers. Everything squirmed. He did, and so did she. She suddenly registered what she was doing. And she continued to choke him.

"D-Damien.. help!" Still breathless.

[Primrosette]

Damien's head was hurting and he felt his vision going in and out of darkness. He could hear Bridie calling him. To help her. What had happened? Oh, right. Carson..... Stupid, stupid!

Damien let out a small groan as he forced himself to sit up and he tried to get himself to move. He couldn't. He touched the back of his head with his hands and it felt a little sticky. His eyes focused on his hands as he put them in front of him. Little bits of his blood. He must have hit his head pretty hard.

"Bridie...?"

He blinked a few times and he suddenly noticed what she was doing. Choking Carson..... Damien couldn't breathe, he couldn't move.

All he could think of was Bianca, his hands around her neck, strangling the life out of her.

[CondorTalon]

Everything went to hell in a handbasket quickly, and Carson couldn't even tell what had changed. One moment, he was on top of Damien, and the next moment he was the one on the floor. The back of his head hurt like a bitch, and he looked up and saw not Damien but Bridie.

He tried to get up but couldn't. He couldn't move his legs. He couldn't even breathe.

He couldn't breathe. The thought hit him like a sack of trucks. He tried to inhale, but only felt the pressure around his neck. He let out a strangled cry as he realized what was happeneing, tried to get into a better position, tried to get out from under her. He swung the kama and furiously, but aimlessly. He couldn't even tell whether he was hitting anything or not.

Carson was exhausted by this point. He already used up all of his energy fighting off Damien. He didn't have the strength for this.

The kama was no longer in his hand. When he'd lost it, he wasn't sure. He tried to think, but nothing was coming. He blinked, and his vision came back slow. Slow and dark. He only vaguely realized what was happening.

He never stopped struggling, though, even with just his bare hands. If he could just get Bridie off of him, if he could just get away, then...

Then...

M44 - Carson Collingwood: DECEASED

[Cicadan]

Where was Damien? What was he doing? She needed to-!

No, no, her thoughts were all moving too fast and she couldn't even focus on any of them but she needed to, because she didn't know what she was doing-...

It wasn't quiet. It wasn't easy. Bridie had been taught that in the training camps, but she'd never expected it to be this loud. Desperate, viscerally disgusting noises. They didn't come from his throat, even, but from his chest, like an air bubble exploding, gas, blood, something wet and mealy sounding.

Bridie continued to press down. She didn't stop and she didn't know why she wasn't stopping.

The kama skidded into her forearm, wickedly cleaving flesh and strip of fat from the raw bloody red of muscle underneath. The sight freaked Bridie out. She hadn't even realized that was what she looked like: under her pretty skin, she was a clump of beef that could so easily fall apart.

She didn't understand.

She didn't get it.

She just acted, and pressed with her hands so hard she could feel the actual indentation of flesh collapsing under her palms, and the struggle, and the sounds of struggle, so real, so vivid, burning into her memories even though she liked her memories pure, whole, patriotic visions of battles won with decisive cleanness, not this monstrosity of a sloppy ending to a person she hadn't even hated, but she couldn't remember any more, why this was happening.

This was just what she was supposed to do.

When her hands fell away, it was done. The skin of Bridie's fingertips peeled slightly, burned and scoured by the sheer friction of her crushing grip. The corpse's throat looked... wrong. His eyes, his mouth, looked wrong. Like James, only James had been separated from her by the veneer of a weighty gun and the honor of a justified death... Justified. James had been Bridie taking on her duty as citizen.

She couldn't, somehow, make that connection here, to this boy whose name she didn't even know. And it sickened her, and she gagged, and could only choke out through the low, bestial retching noise:

"D-Damien, why didn't you.. help me?!"

[Primrosette]

Help...? Oh, right. I was supposed to have Bridie's back.... That's what partners were supposed to do....

"Nnngh...." He could only grunt out a pitiable sound from his throat and he needed more time to register what had happened. It definitely looked like Carson was dead, looks like Bridie had been able to handle that without needing his help.

".....I hesitated." Was all he said as he stared at his own blood on his fingers, his head was buzzing with a major headache filled with pain.

Then he stared at Bridie with a concerned look.

"Are.... are you alright...?"  

[Cicadan]

Damien didn't sound good. Bridie realized that, and she also realized that it was very much true that they'd both made mistakes. He was looking at her with a look that was earnest as any she'd ever known. She found that odd. Even when people lied to her she only saw a gentle truth in their eyes. She couldn't help but trust Damien...

And her hands were still burning, rubbed raw. And she could feel the groggy pile of flesh under her, continuing to steal her body heat away.

And she stared at Damien, suddenly so unsure.

Everyone always said she trusted people too much. But she didn't know how to not trust people. Why would people lie to her, why would they let her down? She was only ever honest to them, only ever nakedly wore her own intentions.

"I'm not alright, no." Like that. That was her telling the truth. "I... I don't think that was a clean kill, I guess." That's why Bridie was nauseous, she guessed. Why it had all seemed so wrong. Because, she'd just not done it right. She'd just been disappointing, insufficient, done her country wrong with the caliber of her murder. And no, she wasn't sure acknowledging that made her feel better? But it was, at least, a reason.

"I feel sick."

She quietly gagged again, and this time, a little dollop of bile slopped out of the corner of her mouth, pale white and stringy, pasting over her top. She ignored it, dizzily.

"I don't want to leave the body... him, I don't want to leave him here. That's disrespectful," she explained, to Damien. To herself.

[Primrosette]

Damien remained quiet as Bridie spoke, the buzzing in his head would not go away and he was finding it to be a bit of a nuisance. She seemed to be really bothered by how she had killed Carson. He couldn't really fault her for that. Using your own hands.... It shows how terrifying someone can be by using their bare hands to take away another person's life. He knew that feeling....

"Oh...." He managed to say as he tried to make himself move from his sitting position and his legs were not responding to him at the moment. He was going to wait for them to stop being in a somewhat sleep mode. "You want to move him...?"

His mind was not taking things in as he had hoped it would, his head was aching and he was not in a agreeable mood with Bridie.

His face turned into a look of disgust. He didn't mean the next words that would come out of his mouth, but he had had enough of pretending to be a good person when really.... He was a lowly murderer. So was Bridie.

"We should just leave him be. I don't want to touch another dead person."

[Cicadan]

Bridie's head rolled, surged, her body tossed through laundry machine or into a ceaseless tide. She slightly pitched forward, violently. Rocked backward.

She wasn't even injured, she didn't understand, how. How she could feel this bad when she was supposed to be just fine, and strong, and channeling her training as a warrior for...

She didn't know the 'what for'.

Bridie glared drunkenly at Damien, not willing and not able to restrain the sudden note of irritation that blossomed into a full melody then a full symphony in her head. Her teeth slightly bared, gritted. Her deep sea-foam eyes narrow as she suddenly grunted with a disgusted apathy. No, she didn't know what she was disgusted at, or why her stomach flipped repeatedly and knotted her innards with it's restless tumbling.

"No,"

And why did he look like that? What was wrong with him? Didn't he get that:

"If we don't do it... it's my corpse, I have to... rrrghhh!" She was suddenly frustrated enough to screech, low and bassy, until her throat felt raw. "What is-? Why-?" She panted for breath. She was forcing her helpless anger until she couldn't breathe. 'Why did she feel like this' was the question she couldn't answer and wouldn't ask.

"Duty, Damien... you're an-... hhrh... American Citizen." That was all she knew, all she'd ever known.

[Primrosette]

My duty....? As an American Citizen...? Bridie really has no idea how I really feel....

Damien opened his mouth to speak, to disagree with her, to fight with her, to make her see how blinded she was. But he couldn't do it. He didn't know why. Maybe he didn't think that she could handle it, maybe he didn't want her to actually know what he really thought, maybe he was more cowardly than he thought he was.

"....Do you want to bury him or something...?" He asked quietly, his face was not a look of disgust now, his face was more set in an exhausted way. "Bridie.... I'm sorry for that just now. My head hurts and I.... wasn't thinking straight."

[Cicadan]

Bridie didn't see Damien's mouth briefly flutter open, no, she was far too busy with her own problems.

Getting up was hard, even with their argument turned into silence. She put one leg up and felt a sickly sort of tremble nearly overwhelming her knee and driving it down hard to the floor... Nearly, but she barely stayed steady as she could manage, which she numbly realized wasn't much. She just had to focus. She felt bad now, like... like nothing she knew how to describe, but they'd talked about this sort of thing in class before. A good soldier didn't let their difficulties stand in the way.

They were difficult though, and Bridie was grinding a tear of pain out of her soft, squishy eyeballs. A hollow hum of a buzz followed her around suddenly. She wanted to get mad at it almost, but she was already too tired to be angry.

"I-it's okay." She tried to be positive. Smile a little, because a girl's smile was probably one of the weapons in her arsenal. She just looked nauseated, with her heavy heaving pant of a breath, her slightly unfocused, bleary eyes.

"I just want to..." She wanted to say something nice, that's what she wanted to do. But she had to think long and hard, and she didn't want to do that anymore. Her next exhale was way louder than her next inhale. ".. Um, .... I'm sorry too.. we both have to keep doing our best. Right?" She knew the answer to that question for once but she just wasn't sure enough. And she didn't like that sliver remaining of uncertainty.

"We should bury him," she insisted. To herself more than any one else, as she tried to turn around and put her hands on the body. It sat there, still so warm and squishy looking. Like someone alive only it just wasn't alive somehow... Bizarre. Frighteningly so, and Bridie had the impulse to run from the room, fast as her legs could carry her, as if she could outrun a feeling or a memory. She didn't know how that worked. She'd never tried.

"But we can just cover him up and put him... next to the other one." Bridie spoke at a distance from herself as she began to hoist up the corpse's legs- his legs, she realized was still accurate- with a carefully leg-loaded stance.

[Primrosette]

Damien didn't say anything. He just nodded his head, although he doubted that Bridie even saw him do that. He managed to get up to his feet slowly, feeling a bit distorted, dizzy and he saw a few black spots in his vision. But for now he had to ignore that, as much as he wanted Bridie to see the truth of what they were really doing, which he knew was not for the duty of their country. He had to help her out with Carson's body.

And so he did just that.

He moved over to her and the corpse and he grabbed onto the arms of the corpse, hoisted it up into the air carefully. Carson was a lot heavier than he thought he would be.

"....Let's put him beside the other body. I don't think we have the time to bury him." He murmured softly.

[Cicadan]

Bridie began to shuffle in silence.

The corpse bugged her. It wasn't as gross looking as the ones by the decrepit looking pool, but it was still eerie-like. Hollow, empty, like a rag coincidentally made of human-shaped, human-faced flesh and eyeballs. Every corpse reminded her of Scott, and Bridie was starting to not like being reminded of him. It made her stomach turn all kinds of weird, squeezed by two brawny hands. Only, obviously, there were no actual brawny hands...

The corpse was in the other room. Out of sight, out of mind. Bridie had already forgotten it.

By the time they were done, Bridie could only hear an echo of herself in her own head. She was silent for a while.

"...



I think we should move on."

She looked at herself and tried to remember how she'd used to love these shoes. She tried not to remember the bodies.

She didn't want to look at them, side by side, because it forced her to confront a thought and an emotion she didn't quite.. She didn't quite know the words, was what. She only knew the wave of nausea and she already rather disliked that. She hated disliking things, rather. She wished she could put things back the way they'd been.

She just didn't know how to do that.