With Blood and Rage of Crimson Red, Ripped From A Corpse So Freshly Dead

[Emprexx Plush]

((Ty Yazzie continued From Lay My Purple On The Grass))

His first thought was to search the depot for her. It was the only lead he had, the last place he was sure he'd seen her before charging off. Everything after that was suspect, he just couldn't fucking remember through that red haze, but here? He knew she was here at some point. If he was lucky, she still would be.

Ty didn't get lucky. This place just kept rubbing that in his face every chance he got. There were no signs of her anywhere, near as he could tell, and that anger was building up again. It turned inwards this time, kicking and biting and scratching at every failure it could get its hands on. He'd fucked up. He'd really, really fucked up. He shoulda known she was off the deep end with the way she kept staring at the waves and clamming up, but he'd only thought about himself. If Bee was here, she'd...

But she wasn't. She wasn't, and Harry wasn't, and Clarice wasn't, and now Lizzie wasn't, and he wouldn't be surprised to turn around and find that Keith wasn't either. Everybody, goddamn everybody, that he touched only managed to get driven away or get fucked up. Probably both in the end. There was some small voice in the back of his head urging him to calm down and try to salvage this. There was still time. Somebody could be help.

Ty didn't have an ounce of that kinda charity left in him. He was far out now among the outcroppings and into the soft sand. Against his will he started to sink down to his knees on it. His head lolled up to stare at the sky with that all too familiar feeling of long denied tears welling up inside him.

But Ty didn't cry. Instead he poured everything into a roaring, broken scream.

[MK Kilmarnock]

((Coleen Reagan continued from The Virgin Sea))

She hadn't even left the shore when yet another scream pounded against the roaring ocean. Yet, this one was so different from the one before it. There was less physical pain attached to the cry and more emotional anguish. She figured it must have been somebody who found a body; Coleen recalled spotting one or two of those caught near the ocean spray, but dared not venture closer for identification. She had better things to do.

So she surprised herself when she turned and began clamoring over the rocks once more. What she expected, she wasn't too sure. Maybe she didn't expect anything but even having said that, she was quite surprised to see that the person dropped to his knees on the beach was the very distinguishable Tyler Yazzie, always standing out in a crowd from his haircut or piercings or tattoos. Coleen was more interested in a persistent rumor that he was into flower arrangements, an out-of-left-field for such a tough-looking guy that it might have given something for the two of them to talk about.

Now? What was there to talk about now but the cause for his dismay. She was sure that, whatever it was, she'd be unable to help. Nevertheless, Coleen found herself approaching the boy, one hand on the strap of her daypack to help her as she trudged along and the other held the rifle pointed down at the sand as if its weight threatened to yank it loose from her hold.

"You, um... gon... gonna be okay there?" Coleen asked timidly, making sure to get Ty's attention before getting too close. Didn't want to surprise him, after all.

[Courtography]

(Keith Bauer continued from Lay My Purple on the Grass)

Keith hadn't been able to keep up with Ty and he was pretty damn peeved about it. He knew Ty had every reason to be upset, but fuck, back on the roof he'd looked at Keith like it had all been his own fault. And it hadn't been, not really. That Ty's girlfriend was dead definitely wasn't his fault, and Lizzie, well, he was a teenager, not a prison warden. If Lizzie wanted to run off that was her own decision, even if it was a stupid decision.

That's when he caught up enough to see Ty in his view again and hear the scream.

"Fuck," he muttered.

Ty was still far away, but he spotted a girl, he thought her name started with a C, but he couldn't remember it at that moment. Keith started waving his hands, trying to get her attention. If he was loud Ty would probably hear him, and well, he probably didn't want to know that the reason he was gesturing was to say that approaching Ty was a super bad idea.

Keith didn't feel like having his limbs broken after all.

[Emprexx Plush]

Shoulda jerked his head up to see who was talking. It could have been anybody, up to anything, and he was in the perfect position to get popped off. Honestly though, right at this moment he didn't care. Some part of him would have welcomed it. He was quiet for a moment or two in response, just staring at the sky. "Nah," he finally rasped out, "can't say I am."

Ty had always been protective. First it was a sort of selfish protection, always focused on making sure he didn't get hurt anymore, keeping everybody else away from him. Over time between Atsa and Mom and Bee, hell, even just friends like Asha and Harry, he'd managed to get his shit together. Last year or so of taking care of the family had put this crazy image in this head of himself as a provider. There was this whole life mapped out before him. He'd help Atsa find a job, maybe even get him off to school somewhere close were he could come for help any time things got overwhelming again. He'd watch over mom and the old man if they got any worse, like a good son was supposed to. He'd help Marcus get back on his feet and mend fences to start his life over. He'd ask Bee to marry him and be the happiest goddamn man alive when she said yes.

Gone. Every last scrap of it. If the last few days had made anything crystal clear, it was that Ty wasn't some hero, or protector, or provider. He was just as much of a fuck-up as ever, and damn near everyone that mattered to him here was dead because of it.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Ty's voice made her wince. A reaction as harsh as that one was well-deserved, Coleen supposed; it was a stupid question when she asked it to Lizzie, and it was a stupid question now. All the same, she couldn't think of anything else to say and now... maybe it was just Ty's display of his mood, but there was no helping being the least bit intimidated. His appearance looked less 'alternate' and now struck her as somewhat more thuggish.

Her tongue pushed against the more pliable of her cheeks while she thought of something to say. The unyielding chassis of the gun was her only comfort, abrasive as it may have been as she clutched the angular assembly of parts against her chest lest the ocean breeze miraculously yank it from her. Ty seemed to be in a... delicate position, to put it lightly, and so Coleen wanted to step gingerly around him. Most importantly, she wanted to stay beyond a couple paces of his reach in case he suddenly didn't like something she said.

That was almost a certainty at this point.

Both eyes caught the unfocused blur of somebody in the distance. Coleen pushed her gaze past Tyler to see Keith Bauer, a name with the face that she had neither heard from nor seen all through these past few days... and truly, any new person she saw was just another line in the tragedy. Nobody new should have been on this island, nobody else should have had to be there to add to the pool of the suffering, but here she was on the very same beach where she watched Lizzie pass on, now alone with Ty and Keith. Ty and Keith. In that moment, part of the disjointed speech that heralded Lizzie's final moments rang back through Coleen's ears, addressing both Ty and Keith by name. To whatever extent the three of them hung out together, it seemed that they were companions recently at the very least.

The very thought of having to complete the task assigned to her by a dead girl made it feel like salt water was forcing itself into Coleen's throat, scratching it up and drying it out. Having always treasured her voice and with no better thought to kill the few seconds it would take for Keith to get closer, Coleen timidly fumbled behind her hip for the opening to the day pack that would allow her access to a bottle of water.

"Um..." Coleen murmured, testing her throat. Sounded, and felt, pretty gravelly... nothing a guarded sip of water wouldn't fix. Or, just to be safe, two. "That's Keith over there. I take it he's with you, so he's not going to be... you know, a danger?"

[Courtography]

The girl had ignored his arm-waving, as far as Keith could tell. But she had a rifle in her hands. Maybe with that she didn't need to be afraid of how Ty would react. Ty was strong, way stronger than either Keith or the girl probably, but strength didn't stop bullets.

He moved closer, his eyes focused on the gun in her grip. He was pretty sure it was some kind of AK, although he didn't know enough about the different types to guess which specific kind. He'd seen them in video games before, but that was it. Despite his family's Republican views and general support of the Second Amendment, they weren't gun people. Keith had never touched a gun in his life.

He was about twenty feet away from the pair when he stopped walking. Ty was probably still pissed at him, even if it was stupid. It was probably best to stay back a little bit. He said nothing for a moment, then it occurred to him that it was probably still polite to actually greet people.

"Hey."

[Emprexx Plush]

For some reason, that's what pulled Ty up and made him chuckle. Keith? Dangerous? Maybe to himself. Ty shook his head and looked down from the sky. "Nah. Keith's a pussycat. Guarantee he's more afraid of you than you are of him." He couldn't picture any situation where that wasn't true. Keith just didn't catch him as a fighter.

Ty bent over with his hands to the ground to help him get up. Goddamn the sand digging into his knees stung. At least it could distract him a little. After all that running and screaming some of the raw anger had managed to die down, and he just felt fucking empty. There wasn't much in his tank to start with and he'd just burned a good chunk of it on pissing in the wind. Seemed about right given the circumstances.

He gave his neck a couple of sharp cracks before turning to at the girl he'd been talking to for the first time. If he was still all worked up he might have freaked out over the gun, but given their chat he wasn't too worried. If she wanted to shoot him, she had plenty of chances. Right now it just looked like she was protecting herself, and he couldn't blame her for that. There was even a long shot she might be able to help him.

When Keith wandered over, Ty gave him a nod. "Hey," he said before pausing with his mouth half-open for a couple beats. "Sorry." The apology came out more hesitant than he'd meant it, but that was all he was getting right now. They had something more important to look into than whatever spooked feelings the kid might have. He turned to the girl with the gun. "Any chance you've seen another girl running around her nearby? Name's Lizzie, blonde hair, green eyes, 'bout my height?" He knew that the chances weren't great, but fuck, he'd take anything at this point. Just something to reassure him that she was alive and okay and he hadn't fucked up too bad for once in this place.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Lizzie.

Coleen expected the conversation to turn to her, though she had hoped it wouldn't do that so quickly as it did. So Keith and Ty really were recent companions of hers as she suspected. But then, how did they become separated long enough for...

The wounds inflicted all over Eliza's body haunted Coleen. Now that there was no dying girl to serve as a pillar to, her stomach allowed itself to turn at the brutality of the wounds in Lizzie's stomach and her shoulder, how they must have burned in order to make her sob so. Her own eyes dropped to around the level of Ty's ribs as words flew around, struggling to arrange themselves in an order resembling a sentence.

Part of the difficulty laid in her own inhibitions. To relay the news of somebody's death was a weighted task except for, she imagined, the most hardened and most experienced envoys. Being neither of those things left her at a loss with how to proceed, made only worse by the fragile balance the three of them found themselves in at the beach. Ty was somebody who was suffering a great deal of loss, and she was about to make that sense of loss worse. All the same, it was important to remember that barring some great miracle, at least one of them would be dead within a few days.

"About Lizzie... yeah, I saw her. Pretty close to here," Coleen started. She took a breath and removed one hand from the gun, nervously tracing the bumps and ridges of the bad side of her face. The discomfort this caused distracted her from what she was about to do... a little, at least. "I don't know, um... how to tell you this."

"She, uh, had something to tell you before she... moved on. She's in the water now, on her own terms. I'm sorry, Ty. Keith." She took the time spent swallowing down another bit of spit to keep her throat wet to look at Keith and nod. "It was for both of you."

[Courtography]

"No problem," Keith lied.

Even if he could understand, Ty's behavior was still bugging him tons. But fighting about him wouldn't fix it, even if it would feel great to just let out some of his frustration by telling him not to be a dick about everything. Especially about looking for Lizzie. It would have been a lot easier to search for someone if they had searched together instead of Ty running along and Keith having to follow him. That hadn't gone well before though. Sandra and Alice had just taken off on him, and even if their plan had been stupid, he felt like a bit of a jerk about it now.

Just a bit though.

Keith listened to the girl and he wanted to plug his ears and refuse to listen as she got near the end. He had suspected what she was going to say, but was hoping that she would say anything else so he listened anyway. For a moment as she finished with saying that Lizzie had left a message he just stared down at his shoes. He'd fucked up again. Maybe Ty was right to be pissed at him.

"Shit," he muttered.

He could feel his eyes watering and he was surprised. He didn't think he'd cried in a few years prior to being on the island, and now it felt like it could happen again at any moment. He brought his hand up to his face, and slipped a finger under his glasses to rub his eye. Maybe it would stop it. He wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure about much of anything at the moment.

[Emprexx Plush]

For a few moments, Ty just stared. Breathed real heavy, in and out, his eyes never leaving hers. Even from the outside it'd look pretty clear that he was doing just about everything he could to hold back.

After those tense beats passed, he let out a slow, steadying breath. "I'm gonna need two things from ya." He realized he didn't know her name, and he didn't care right now. "I'm gonna need you to tell me what she said, and I'm gonna need you to tell me what happened."

The way she phrased it made it sound almost like Lizzie had just given in and offed herself. There'd been some sign of that back at the docks, the way she stared at them damn waves. That was too hard for him to accept on coy little hints, though. If he was gonna give into that, he wanted to hear that that was exactly how it went down. If it was true, then his anger had nowhere to go. If there was more to it than that though...well. Simple fact of it was somebody out there was gonna make what he did to Conrad look like mercy. Revenge was the only thing he had left.

[MK Kilmarnock]

He was asking for answers. He was getting angry, but he was asking for answers and Coleen didn't have to worry about angry. She had a gun. She felt for Tyler, though... truly, she did. Everybody had their own way of expressing their grief and though Ty's was different from how she did it, it made it no less valid. She understood that and, as long as he kept his hands off of her, she would keep understanding that.

She supposed there was no point in holding back anymore, not if he asked for the details exactly as they went down with that much conviction.

"Alright," Coleen started. "I found her on the beach not too long ago. Two girls standing over her. She said... Isabel and Lily, but I don't know if she meant Lili W. or Lily C." Coleen gave the statement a moment to breath, trying to get a read on Ty's face before continuing. With Keith... that wasn't as hard. Keith was handling this in a way closer to how she would have, and probably would have done the same exact thing as her if he was there for a first-hand taste. "I started running towards them and the girls left. Probably because... well, this." She gripped the AK a little tighter and held it up an inch before relaxing her arms.

"She told me to tell you to watch out for the two of them. For whatever reason they did it, she was... hurt pretty bad. There wasn't anything I could do for her." Coleen gently chewed the inside of her cheek, piecing together the end of her story. "She wanted me to help her to her feet and then... she walked into the ocean."

That was all she could say. The announcements would confirm her story, so it didn't matter if Ty believed her or not. If he decided he was going to turn onto the two girls who killed Lizzie... it pained Coleen to think it, but that wasn't really her problem either. Since the killer would be identified come the next morning, all this information did was offer Ty a head start and hopefully give him some closure to the situation. Lizzie was dead... that was it.

"Sorry you had to find out like this."

[Courtography]

Keith's finger came away wet. He was crying and he hated that. He turned away slightly so the two of them couldn't see his face. He could feel his face getting hot and red. He wasn't supposed to cry. His brother and dad had told him that. That real men didn't cry and now he had cried when Jasmine threatened him, and he was crying now and he felt like a huge fuckup.

It was just so hard to accept that Lizzie was dead. She wasn't someone he really knew, but shit, they'd spent a few days together. She'd given him weed. She hadn't had to do that. She could have just left him on his own after Alice and Sandra had taken off.

He didn't know what to say about the who's and how's. It didn't really matter. Lizzie was gone, and knowing that Isabel and Lily had done it meant nothing.

He exhaled quickly, then inhaled again, and then exhaled. He could feel his hands shaking.

But he didn't know what to say.

[Emprexx Plush]

The impulse was there. It wasn't even her fucking fault, but it was still there. His anger just wanted to go somewhere, to actually accomplish something for once in this hell hole. He almost took a swing at her right there. There was that same familiar tension right before he made one more shitty decision, but there was a weight on his shoulder. The same one that had been there every time he'd tried to do something stupid these last few months. Even when she wasn't around he could feel Bee's hand on him reminding him that he had a choice. Demanding that he be a better man. He could almost see her when he glanced over his shoulder, those concerned eyes that both told him he was making a mistake and assured him that everything was gonna be okay all at the same time. It was comforting. It was also heartbreaking. As crazy as it was he couldn't help but feel like if Bee was here, this whole damn thing would make a lot more sense.

But she was really gone. He'd never even gotten to see her after they woke up here. All he had was the memory of her and that little blue ring on a chain around his neck. Having that boil up on him now seemed almost felt like having his failures thrown right in his face.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't goddamn fair that good people kept dying while all the fucking monsters like Isabel and Brendan and whoever the fuck else just kept killing. He could feel that weight on him again as his anger hooked into that line of reasoning, but for the first time he resisted it. It was too important to hate them. His eyes locked in on the girl's once he'd gathered himself. "I'm guessin' you don't really use that thing." Ty tried to speak nice and slow to keep himself calm. "So I'm just gonna ask you which way they went."

Keith was in a bad way. Sounded like he was near hyperventilating. Maybe it was the first time he'd really lost someone here. Right now, Ty was having a hard time finding any sympathy for him. There wasn't any time to slow down and coddle the coward. Isabel and Lily probably already had a hell of a lead on him.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Coleen steeled her spine for the potential explosion that threatened to erupt from a ticking time bomb like Tyler. All of his body had tensed up like a coil. She'd seen it all before - he looked like somebody swallowing their stage fright, preparing for a more action-oriented role or one in which they'd have to do a lot of high-energy speech. She recalled some girl who did a one-act that she sadly couldn't remember the name of. In it, the girl portrayed a woman who had just been raped before her husband and was now trying to talk herself through to recovery. That is, of course, until she notices her husband glaring at her, with a slew of implications therein. Coleen didn't remember much more than that, only that it had made her sob once the girl had finished.

Yeah, that was Tyler right now, looking like he was going to scream until he was red in the face and strike whatever was near. She decided, then, she'd not waste too much of his time.

"They ran up that way the moment they saw me coming," Coleen pointed. "Because the bridge is still out, I think, at least that blocks off a lot of the island." She had said too much, not that she had made some fatal mistake that would send Tyler immediate over the edge, but she added more to her statement than he had wanted to know. She didn't want to waste any more of his time. She wanted him to accept what was said and go his separate way, taking Keith with him, so nobody else had to get hurt. Arthur not being over her shoulder only helped to strengthen that feeling of loneliness and nakedness she now faced in every social interaction, where one could never tell if their partner of conversation was planning on drawing a blade or pulling a trigger.

At least, Coleen was happy to let it lay there, until she noticed something:  a small blue ring, hanging on a chain around Ty's neck. She'd seen one like it before.

"Hey..." Coleen asked, quietly. "That ring... is it Bern's?"

[Courtography]

Keith froze up when he heard Ty's question. They were going after them. That was four people that were in the running for them to attempt to kill now. Keith couldn't kill that many people, but, could he tell Ty that?

He turned back towards the two others. The talk sounded important, but not like his business. He stayed silent.

Shit, how were they supposed to to kill the others with no weapons? His eyes locked onto the girl's AK.

He shook his head slightly. It'd be wrong, and he hadn't wanted to try and kill people anyway.