#* 2021

Miles is hardly in the room when Adrienne already stands up, straight as an arrow. There’s a wilderness behind her eyes, something akin to an animal trapped in a cage. She’s more anxious than she lets on, the evidence of it piled on the floor in the form of whittled wood right next to the chair she’s been sitting in. She tucks her knife away.

“Did you get it?”

He nods, closing the door after him. They’re holed up in an old hunting cabin, deep in the middle of the woods. The nearby QZ had questionable security at best, and with his old uniform on, Miles had managed to infiltrate the walls two times now. First time was for generic supplies, but the second had a specific purpose. At Adrienne’s expectant look, he reaches to the back of his pants and from under his jacket retrieves a bottle that’d become the topic of many conversations over the past few weeks. An industrial grade chemical, sure to corrode dirt (and everything else) on its way.

She holds out a hand and he hands it to her, the bottle dirty and its label barely legible, but whatever is left in the bottle still just as potent. Adrienne turns the bottle in her hand, brows furrowed, before she moves to push it into her backpack.

“Let’s go.”

The trek is quiet, the plan (months in the making) the only occupant of the silence between them. They already scouted ahead a few days before, right after arriving at the cabin, to make sure the surrounding areas were clear. A kilometer’s distance from the cabin the dense woods made way to a clearing, and in the middle of it, a small pond. The waters were dark and leaves covered its surface, but most importantly, there were no signs of diseased bodies in the water. That was good enough.

Adrienne finds the most suitable spot by the pond and settles down with her backpack, starting to unravel its insides around her. Miles kicks away the biggest branches and then spreads the trashed piece of tarp they carry with them to be able to sit on the ground wherever they go. He puts down the vat and bucket they brought with them, and then leaves to go around the pond to secure the area once more. All he finds is the decomposed body of what once had been a person, but no signs of infected anywhere. He comes back to find Adrienne standing next to the tarp, turning her belt in her hands before starting to loop it back to her waist.

“I need your belt. Mine’s trash.”

Without further prompting Miles undoes his belt and pulls it out, handing it over to her expectant hand. He watches as Adrienne braces herself, breathes in deep before she finally finds her spot on top of the tarp and settles down on it. He watches as she pulls open the laces of her right boot and pulls off her sock. She rolls the leg of her pants up as high as it will go, securing it right underneath her knee.

Watching her is like watching a sacred ritual unfold, and he’s once again reminded by how little sanctity is in him. Higher power holds no place in his world, and thus he’s left with what’s on earth. Loss, sadness, uncertainty, the cruelty of man. And her.

“You have to do it.” Pulled out of his thoughts, Miles lifts his eyes up to her, his brows knitting into a line. She must sense he needs more elaboration, as she continues without missing more than a beat or two. “I can’t do it without messing up the whole foot.”

He lets his eyes scan her. She’s holding his belt in one hand and the bottle in the other, her hair tied back into the all-too-familiar ponytail to keep it out of the way. He draws in a breath.

“You’re sure about this?”

She nods, the way she doesn’t bite back somehow drilling in deeper than any of her words ever could. “Has to be done,” she says under her breath, clearly more to herself than to him, and as Miles settles down at her feet, he can hear her breathe in deep. He takes the bottle from her.

“Don’t stop.”

He lifts his eyes to her, immediately meeting her gaze -- she’s dead-set. This is a conversation they’ve had before. “Don’t stop even if I tell you to” and “don’t stop until it’s done” were familiar to them both, from the dozens of hours spent stitching each other together; and that’s the ending she doesn’t need to elaborate now either. Miles nods, and turns around so he’s sitting in between her legs, his back turned to her. With the vat placed between his thighs, he takes a hold of her right foot and brings it up to hold it firmly on top of the vat they’ve brought with them, her ankle over the opening.

He can hear the clatter of his belt’s buckle as Adrienne lifts the leather to bite it between her teeth. Miles breathes in, holds her foot in one hand and starts pouring the liquid onto the bitemark. He keeps his eyes on her leg, watching as the skin starts to react to the liquid. 

Behind him, he imagines how her face distorts, teeth digging into the leather of his belt. She breathes in sporadic bursts, all of her fighting against pulling her leg out of his grasp; anything to ease the pain he’s causing her. He needs to remind himself it’s what she wants; it’s what she insisted on for months before they came to this. They have an understanding. He still carries a scar on his face from the time they last had an understanding like this, albeit wordless then. He knows she still blames herself for what she did, even though they both know it was the least of what could’ve happened. It needed to be done for them to make it out alive, and in a way, this was exactly the same. Maybe they’re even now. 

The first wail that escapes her lips is shattering, and it makes his skin crawl. Every inch of him wants to put the bottle away and stop the process right there, but he fights against it, just grips her leg tighter and pours until the little left on the bottle has grazed her ankle and poured into the vat underneath it. He can feel Adrienne press her forehead against his back, and just as he sees the scarred flesh of her ankle start to turn, she’s holding on to him, her nails digging into his middle in search of even some steadiness. She’s trembling, but remains just as quiet throughout; only a few desperate, muffled sounds leaving her lips.

It’s the aftermath that’s worse. Miles fills the bucket again and again, pouring water on top of the open wound that’s formed to where the scar of the bitemark used to be. Her skin is raw, fraying at the edges, every bit of it turning an angry red. Her body is desperately trying to fix what was broken, and so far all it’s doing is causing more pain. He rinses the wound until the bright of the day falls into a gloomy afternoon, brief droplets of rain grazing Miles’ skin as he fights against the fatigue. Adrienne’s forehead is glistening, the belt no longer between her teeth but the indents of it still clear on the corners of her mouth, and there’s nothing he’d like more than to ease the pain she’s in.

“We need to get back. It’s getting dark.”

She nods, but the distant look in her eyes gives way to the very real repercussions of what they’ve done. It’s the known price for a life of even little ease, but it doesn’t make it easier to handle. She’ll need to recover, and only time will tell what the wound replacing the bite mark will be like. As she tries to stand up, she falters, and in a flash she’s lurching forward, leaning against her knees with her face hidden from him as she twists her body to get it off the tarp. She throws up, her body desperately heaving even when there’s nothing in her stomach to get rid of.

Miles goes further away from the pond to pour out the liquid in the vat, the chemical seeping deep into the soil as he turns and comes back to Adrienne. He rinses the vat and then watches as she stands up, barely able to keep herself straight. He helps her sit down again.

“Sit. I can do this,” he says, his voice low.

She’s too worn out to argue, and instead pulls her left leg tightly against her body in an effort to keep herself warm and steady. It is his ritual now. He gathers every evidence of the two of them and neatly tucks it all into the safety of their backpacks, gently pulling the tarp from underneath her to be able to pack it away, too. She sits still, and from the corner of his eye Miles can see her watching the undisturbed surface of the pond, focusing on the silent peacefulness of it. Whatever she’s thinking, she’s not letting him know.

Just as the darkness starts to fall, Miles tenderly helps Adrienne up and pulls her to his back. He has both of their backpacks strapped so that they hang on his front, both the bucket and the vat securely tied to their straps. He loops his arms under her thighs and secures her by leaning forward for a moment to help her settle. She hangs on to him with whatever’s left of her strength, her head resting on his shoulder as he starts to make his way back to the cabin. Her fingers grip the front of his shirt, the pads of them stroking the skin right above his collarbone.

The woods around them seem endless, and it’s the sort of endlessness Miles could get used to. He knows their journey is far from over, but for now; here; they have respite. In the middle of the forest they have calm, and even the looming QZ nearby doesn’t feel that heavy of a weight to handle. Miles focuses on keeping his pace slow and steady, making sure every step is calculated and won’t lead them to topple over. She’s silent for the majority of the way, the only sound she makes the breaths that warm his neck and make his skin shiver.

When she finally speaks, her voice is hoarse, and her fingers are still caressing the spot above his collarbone, the touch unexpectedly soothing. He wonders if she knows how little she has to do to help him keep calm.