Siete Diablos

#1

((Santiago Ibarra continued))
((Maya Spooner continued))

Ever since the house, neither Santiago nor Maya had spoken a word. Their entire language had devolved into points and touches. Maya would point where they were going, Santiago would touch her shoulder if he needed to stop, and it was reaching the point where he was needing to stop a lot. The first one was to wrap his foot, leg, and stomach, but the rest were only so he could catch his breath. Every time he stopped he seemed to have less breath than before.

Eventually, Maya stopped. This was just as much for her as it was for him, he could see it in here eyes. He could also see something else in her eyes, as she looked around at the large white gazeebo, but for the life of him he had no idea what it was.

This was the promised stopping point, where he said she could fix his wounds if she was able to. Good thing to, Santiago was finding it very hard to keep conscious.

If he'd been in a better state of mind, as Maya lay him down, he might have placed some blame on her feet for having accidentally shot him. For the fact that it was her bullets that hit his gut and were now making him bleed in places he wasn't sure could be fixed. But at this point, there was no time to assign blame. No energy, no effort, nothing that wasn't a waste. They needed to stay alive, and Santiago was not going to fight over the semantics of it all.

Which was strange, because if this exact same thing had happened only seconds after Maya had told him their breakup was a relief, then he might have done something he would not live to regret. He hated her in that moment. So much hate for someone just trying to survive, someone who had no time or way to convey the fact that the only reason he had to discontinue whatever they had going was because of his stupid, idiotic friends and every stupid idiotic expectation they had for him. But to hear that she didn't want to keep it going just as much as he'd said, then Santiago wasn't sure what to feel. All he could feel was pain, and the fact that the pain was a result of multiple life-threatening injuries did nothing to deter the point.

"I need you to get the bullets out, Maya."

She nodded, and opened up her bag, taking out pieces of first aid. Funny how things always wrapped around.

Santiago closed his eyes - not for a rest, but just for a moment. He'd never had tweezers in his gut before, so he wanted to prepare. However, the moment he closed his eyes he felt a slapping on his cheek and they shot open, finding Maya already set up and constantly in the mood to abuse him, apparently.

"Wake up."

"Iwas awaaae..."

"You passed out for a full minute."

Santiago blinked. He wasn't sure he wanted to try that out again.

Maya removed the bullet in his leg without much fanfare, but the one in his gut would prove to be much harder. For one it wasn't as readily visible as his leg, so the chances of an easy extraction were slim. For another, it just hurt more. Of course at this point, he wasn't sure he cared about the pain, constant as it was. Maybe he just needed to get it over and done with.

His eyes were beginning to blur, so Santiago shook his head again. He must have shaken it too hard, though, because now he was hearing a constant motoring noise. In fact, he was keeping his head stable, yet the sound wasn't leaving. Was he beginning to go delirious? Was it all the blood he'd lost? It might have been, because he could have sworn he saw Maya whip her head up towards the church nearby. Santiago followed her gaze, and for all the time they were supposed to be concerned with the boy's rapidly deteroiating condition, they were instead trying to work out what was going on.

He could see figures in the distance. A helicopter. In fact, Santiago could only recognize it was a helicopter because of the barest of giveaways, because it looked nothing like any helicopter in any of the films or army propaganda he'd ever seen. Still trying to process what was going on, Santiago looked back down at his stomach. It wasn't doing any better.

"Maya?"

The girl in front of him whipped her head around, an expression only of amazement on her face.

"Is...that a chopper?"

Still frozen in time, Maya could do nothing but slacken her jaw to the point a golfball could fit inside.

"Are we being rescued?"

She seemed to be thinking the exact same thing he was, and after a few moments, she nodded her head.

"Can we make it?"

It was like Maya was waiting for Santiago to ask all along. She shoved all the medical equipment to the side and snaked her arm under Santiago's pit, before trying to pull him into a standing position. However, he could not stand for more than a second without the dizziness catching up to him and dragging him back to earth, taking Maya with him. She gasped - her knee had been cut open on the wooden floor.

"Okay...can you make it?"

Her eyes shot open, and before she could utter a word of protest he held up his hand, for only a few moments.

"If...if you can make it, maybe you can get someone to come back for me."

"No."

"I'm not asking, Maya."

"I'm not leaving you here."

"Yes."

Santiago's word was final and he knew it, because while she had been trying to help him up as he protested his own evacuation, he'd gotten his hand into the pocket of her skirt and taken her gun, and was now pointing it into her ribs. She gasped in shock before accidentally dropping Santiago back to the ground.

"Get them here. If they won't, whatever. Just go."

His eyes drooped before he resisted the urge to fall back into another sleep, and he kept his hand as steady as he could.

"Just...before you go. I want to know."

Maya didn't move.

"I want to know what you meant by it being a relief."

She still didn't move, her face like marble. But she eventually gave something resembling an answer.

"My dad died."

"Oh."

Santiago wasn't sure what this had to do with anything, but he didn't interrupt her any more than he already had.

"I lost him."

She wasn't looking at him anymore.

"I didn't want to lose anyone else."

That was it? Really? That's all Maya had to say about everything? Santiago could hardly believe it.

"Okay."

The grip tightened on the gun as much as he could muster.

"Well, get help anyway, okay?"

Maya gave him a look that seemed to be teetering on the edge of something important, like she was going to speak and emote and say something after all this time. She looked back over her shoulder at the miniature soldiers standing at the entrance to the church, before looking back at her gravely wounded companion holding a gun to her and demanding that she leave.

"If you can't come back for me, or I don't make it, or whatever, just..."

How to finish that sentence? An apology for the bullshit he was forced into by his very position in life? A message for his family, whom relied on him for care and could never see him again? Something to her, the girl who accidentally killed him after daring to have ever given him so much secret hope for a normal life away from the bullshit permeating everything they would ever do?

No, none of that.

"..."

He couldn't even get the words out. Instead, he aimed slightly to the right of Maya, and pulled the trigger. The sudden explosion of sound knocked her back, and she began scrambling out of the gazeebo towards the church in the distance. Santiago, fatigued by the effort needed to keep the gun steady and in the air, collapsed his hand.

((Maya Spooner continued elsewhere))

Santiago knew he was most likely condemning himself to death, but at the end of the day, he was tired.

It was a strange thing, fate. Fate decreed that Santiago would have what he saw as shit life, with all the responsibilities in the world heaped on top of him and forced to pretend to hate the very thing he wanted to protect in order to survive in a world that no longer wanted him. Fate decreed that everything he was good at turned out to be completely useless here, even if he'd wanted to fight his way out and earn his life back. And above everything, fate decreed that, in spite of the ruptures of pain in nearly every part of his body below the navel, he got to die on his own terms, even if he didn't earn it in any capacity.

The drowsiness came again. Santiago shifted himself back up to the side of the gazeebo, unaware of what exactly had happened in the space above him the previous day. The gun lay long since forgotten by his feet.

Before the urge to sleep overcame him, he thought of that weekend in the backyard studio. Talking with a girl who was passionate about something, talking about what he loved to do himself and what he'd do if he didn't have to serve a country that hated him like the moon hated the sun, and just being completely free of everything that had such a grip on his life. No making sure his twin sisters kept out of trouble, no keeping Lisette under control, no wondering when his parents were coming home so he could finally rest. He didn't resent having responsibilities - he just wanted something different. Just to try it. He wanted choice.

He probably wouldn't have forgone his family for a lifetime of peace and not having to worry about anything. But it was nice to dream. Dream of peace, dream of a country where he could be amongst his own people, dream of a world where he and Maya could have worked. Maybe there was a different universe where he was genuinely happy for more than a weekend.

Considering everything he'd done to get to where he was, it was probably more than he deserved.

But at least he could get some rest.

Male Student #05 Santiago Ibarra - ELIMINATED