Worse Ways

Silena runs with a ferocity she didn’t think she’d ever need again. Her feet thump, thump, thump on the ground and her eyes search the dirty rooftop desperately for a familiar May. She knows she’s taking too long. She can feel the time slipping through her fingers like grave dirt.

She bursts out onto her 4th rooftop, a quick scan providing nothing. She turns around. Her ears catch onto the quietest sound. A scuff, a wherper. She runs over to the other corner of the building and checks behind a wall. 

There she is. May lays on the floor, cloudy eyes staring uselessly up at the sky and her entire hand missing, blood leaking out of her at an alarming pace. Her gut is cut open and barely holding together, her leg bent the wrong way. Blood coats her entirely, her mouth, her neck, her chest.

Silena's hand lands on his shoulder. May jumps, opening his mouth in surprise as she turns her head towards her. “Silena…?” Her voice croaks out painfully, laced with a brittle sort of hope. “Yeah, it’s me May. Hold on, help is on the way.” She’d called the ambulance as soon as she heard the news, hoping they’d be fast enough to get to her, find her, hoping she would be too. Silena carefully shifts May into her arms, getting her away from the dirty concrete and trying desperately to stifle the blood spilling forth easily from her stomach.

“ Silena. ” May says again, desperately. She says it like Silena is an angel about to bring her to salvation, as if Silena was what she needed, wanted, instead of some random punk from New York that kills people in his spare time. Instead of someone who shot a bullet at her skull. “ I-I’m sorry. ” May grits out, blood leaking from her lips and coating his mouth. She feels useless, hopeless as blood continues to gush and May is the one apologizing, instead of her. The self-sacrificial dumbass she is. “No no, May, you don’t get to say that. You stay with me, you hear? You stay right here with me.” Her voice shakes and she feels untethered, like everything is slipping away from her again. She runs her hands over May's unbroken arm, trying to ground the dying girl, trying to bring her back to the world of the living. Please, not again . 

May opens her mouth and breaks into loud shattering coughs, blood dribbling down his chin even more. She shakes her, rougher than she probably should, trying to make her come back, make her stop drifting away even when held beneath the calluses of her palms. May whines in pain. “Come on May, you can’t go yet. You’ve got people to save, you’ve got friends who need you.” Silena needs her and yet May is leaving. She thinks of Jason, and of her brother Leo, they need her too, need her like the air in their lungs, like the blood in their veins. Blood that May is covered in.

“May, please. Hold on a bit longer, you can’t leave me yet, who else is going to knock the gun out of my hand? You promised... May we would live happily once this war is over. I haven’t heard enough moral preaching yet, come on.” She's pleading, begging, praying to a god she no longer believes in. It's too sudden, too soon. She can’t lose someone again. She can’t. She’d listen to a thousand hours of bullcrap if it meant May would just live. If it meant May would continue to lecture her and annoy her and be beside her side breathing and smiling. May's shaking hand reaches up to his shirt and latches on, staining it with her blood. She can hear the sirens getting louder, closer. “Si...Silena- ” May's voice is scratchy, pained, weak. “Shut up May, don’t talk, just stay awake for me.” They’re so close, just a little longer. She just needs to hold on a little longer “ Silena. ” No, no, May can’t do this to her. She can’t say goodbye. She hears the weight of her name, the finality to it. The hand on her shirt slackens, her body starts to go limp and she can feel it, feel the way death grips her like it did her brother, like it did her dad. “I will…miss you.” 

Silena feels her chest shutter with a sob, the tears slip freely from her cheeks. The hand reaches up again and it’s so cold against her cheeks, so cold as it wipes away her tears. She grabs it, holds onto it like it’s the last anchor she has, pressing it to her cheek in the reminder that Silena is here, that May can’t leave her here all alone. May should be yelling at her, screaming at her like she always does.

She doesn’t respond even as she shakes her, doesn’t move or breathe or smile or yell at her. “I’m sorry, May. ” She whispers to the sirens and the air and the quiet body before her. “I’m sorry, May. ” May is held in her arms and yet she is alone, she is alone. She yells at the sky, at herself, at the world. She yells and she yells and then she cries. Her lips press softly to the cold fingers of the girl she was only just learning to care for. She gently sweeps her bloody hands through dark hair for the first and last time. Slowly smooths her thumbs over those open empty eyes and closes them against the harsh wind of the city. The paramedics storm the rooftop and she’s dragged away from the body. She doesn’t stay to watch them load the body into the ambulance, doesn’t stay to watch the ambulance drive off slowly, in no rush to save a dead person. She walks away to a panicked shouting, she lays down in his bed soaked in another person's blood, she stares at the ceiling with an emptiness clawing at her heart until it drags her down into darkness. 

~~~

She wakes up 5 minutes before her alarm. She wakes without any sleepiness, suddenly thrust into a world where she remembers the feeling of bloody hands against her cheek and the weight of a dead person in her lap. It takes her a second, for the feelings to rush back, for the bone deep exhaustion to settle familiarly in her chest and the accompanying rage to guide her sights. She stands up as the alarm rings, a standard beep, beep, beep before she shuts it off. She looks at her hands. This gives her pause. She knows she didn’t wash her hands last night, remembers the feeling of blood coating each and every finger and staining every surface she touched.

Silena looks at the pristine white bed then down at her spotless, white top and clean jeans.

Something is wrong.

Her hand reaches for her phone, and she stares down at the date with a sinking sense of insanity. That can’t be right. That’s impossible. The numbers don’t change. 

“November 7th” it says, clearly, as if that makes any goddamn sense. Yesterday was November 7th, yesterday she fell asleep covered in blood. And yet.

With a sudden ferocity she finds her hands navigating the device, pulling up her contacts and pressing firmly on a familiar name. The phone rings, and rings, and rings. Someone picks up. “ Hello? ” May says over the phone, her voice scratchy from sleep with an edge of worry. Her chest rattles with her next breath, his legs wobble and she collapses onto her bed. “Hello??” May says louder, more alert, worried at the lack of response. “Hey.” Silena says quietly. It’s all she can say right now. What should one say to a dead woman not dead? How does one cope when the woman you held till her dying breath is breathing again? “Are you ok? Do you need help?” May asks. 

There’s shuffling over the other side of the phone, a creak, more shuffling. As if May was suiting up. “I‘m fine. It’s nothing.” She grits out. Her chest hurts, her eyes ache, her head is swimming with confusion. “It doesn’t sound like nothing. Where are you? I’m coming over.” May declares like the soldier she is, always ready to help, to fight.

“Mis-click.” She grits out before she hangs up the phone. She resists the temptation to throw it, she resists the urge to scream. She knows nightmares, she has them, every night, but never has one been that real. Maybe she really is going crazy. Tremors shake her body, and she can’t just forget holding someone while they die.

Can’t forget those sightless eyes or those cold hands or the putrid smell of blood so strong she was swimming in it. She can’t forget the sticky warmth on her hands and her chest and her cheek, on her lips. It’s like Todd all over again, except this time she can’t trust herself, can’t trust what she saw and felt and heard and smelled and tasted. She tasted death. May was dead when she fell asleep. May was alive when she woke up. May is alive.

Memories of the same past experience hit her like a full speed bullet train. She’s still alive. They are stuck in a time loop.

And this is going to repeat.