#edensflower

he doesn't know what he's still doing here. why he had come, to begin with. the music from the bar rumbles lightly at his back, drifts into the cool night air. nea was still inside, hadn't seemed to have given a shit when he'd slipped through of the crowd and out the door. what else was new; she didn't want him to babysit her.

he's so intent on his task — lighter failing to cooperate with the unlit cigarette in his hand — that he doesn't register the origin of the voice. familiar, strange, and out of context. jake looks up, and suddenly he feels like he tastes iron — like he needs to clear his throat of something cracked and sharp. shoulder to shoulder, he still feels like something insignificant, like some prey animal in the crosshairs. just how many times had this been the last face you'd seen before the dark crept in? how many times had his knife found your throat?

❝ … there are worse things, ❞ he offers, flatly. lighter clicks and fizzles again. clicks, clicks, clicks. motion becomes quietly agitated, while he tries to turn his eyes anywhere else. ❝ — like you, ❞ jake sniffs, raising a brow. it's that old twist of fear, the muted alarm bells — things that feel like forgotten instinct. at some point, he had stopped being afraid that he might run into one of them on the street. he had accepted, mostly, that it didn't matter. no one was ever going to pay for it — any of it — and he'd become tired of asking.

❝ babe, ❞ he hums, a kiss pressed to saki's shoulder. and then lilts his head to look at him better. saki would be hard to ignore, even if he wasn't perched all pretty on the kitchen counter, this close, and this distracting. leland huffs a soft laugh, ❝ you are, ❞ he insists. he settles a hand at saki's hip, thumb making light circles against his skin, beneath the fabric of a borrowed shirt. he grins, leans to chase a kiss that saki tries to tease him for; ❝ — i'm paying attention. i am. ❞ but, yeah, okay — he's a little distracted. couldn't stop re-running that conversation from before; what ana had said, and what it meant.

( i want to find her. i need to find her. i need to know what happened. )

he blinks out of the thought, gives saki a gently apologetic look; ❝ i'm sorry, ❞ he offers, ❝ i was just thinking, about earlier. ❞ leland drops his gaze, lets hands settle on either side of saki on the counter, instead. ❝ that girl, you know. that was maria's little sister. she came by today, looking for help. ❞ brows furrow down in thought, or hesitation; ❝ … she said she's going out there, to try and find maria herself, if the cops won't do it. ❞

she has never particularly been of the glass half full mindset—even prior to their teammates getting early access to a lobotomy from gooseberry, which surely sets her pessimism in stone. navigating these twisting corridors is difficult enough with all four persons still alive... but no amount of foresight or information from x-ray goggles could stop stupidity.

she's crouched in the corner of dark room that they had slipped into, her arms hugging her knees in a self-soothing motion as she catches her breath. needs a moment to think about how the hell they’re ever going to get out of here; murkoff sure as shit wouldn’t be taking any pity.

green eyes lift to squint through the shadows when her company speaks, offering very little to make their situation better. ’ well... without lying, i think our chances feel like shit. ’ wren admits, but he doesn't need her to tell him that. frankly, with only a small bottle of medicine pocketed away, she isn't entirely prepared to be helpful either. brows knit, and she has to wonder how far he's willing to shove her under the bus to guarantee his own out. certainly, it would be naïve to trust that he has any interest in seeing her preservation as much as his own.

’ but—i guess it's only zero if we sit here like a couple of assholes. ’ still, it doesn't sound too reassuring, and tastes bitter on her tongue. ’ i'm good, i swear. i can finish what we've got left in a heartbeat if you can keep that bitch distracted. ’

In a way, it's as if no time has passed. If Emrys closed his eyes, they could still be in college, in the year before everything went to shit.

Instead, they're in the bar Emrys works in, tucked away into a corner. He should have gone home by now. His shift ended twenty minutes ago. What is he still doing here? Him and Saki were never even together. "You still talk to Leland?" Emrys asks. Saki's response is hardly surprising; You know, you were always an asshole.

He's not wrong. Emrys was worse in college, away from home for the first time and spinning his wheels uselessly. "Yeah. I know I am." Emrys takes a sip of his beer and rubs at the stubble on his cheek. Saki looks good. He can spot the edge of a scar peeking out from under Saki's sleeve. How does he explain them away to people who don't know what really happened?

Nikolai really should have expected that something like this would happen. It just rather seems like the kind of thing that would happen to him: grossly unfair, completely terrible, and extremely likely to ruin his outfit. He dusts a stray bit of entrails off his jacket, then scowls. Ugh. What a nightmare all of this is.

He checks his gun, reloads, then continues walking. He's been on his own for some time, separated from the meager group he'd been traveling with, and as loathe as he is to admit it, he's lost. This forest could go on for miles, and he has no handle on which way is most likely to lead him to a chance at survival.

He's listening for zombies, of course, but he's admittedly not watching the ground right in front of him, which is how he nearly runs right into Zoya. His hand goes for his gun, but as soon as he recognizes her he feels himself smile, open and genuine and honest for the first time in god knows how long.

Emrys is drunk. Not horrendously so, but -- well. Who can blame him, after the year he's had? He still feels the phantom pain of a hook in his breastbone, still wakes up from nightmares streaked with blood. Right now, though, he's pleasantly in the moment, as if he's never been anywhere other than at a barstool with Saki perched on his lap.

"I used to work at a bar, you know," he tells Saki, slipping his arms around Saki's waist and toying with the hem of his shirt. "Do you ever think about what it would've been like if we met back then?"

He'll blame his domesticity on the alcohol later, but for now it feels easy to kiss the back of Saki's neck and tighten his arms around him. Saki will surely throw a fit about it, but it's nice for a moment, to pretend that they're someone they're not. Besides, he's tired, and they've been living together since the Fog, and it seems silly to pretend they're not together.