Work Text:
“Oh, let the earth a-tumble, love
And humble you withal, keep running
It’s up to you now
Up to you now, love”
Love Run (Intro) by the Amazing Devil
Rusty lands in a heap on the ground, chin banging painfully against a rock. In the back of her mind, a voice screeches at her to get up get up GET UP!
Spitting out a chunk of dirt, ignoring the sting of her palms, she scrambles to her feet and starts running again, only allowing herself a second of remorse as her cloak tears.
(Katie made it for her, back at the start.)
Few trees remain scattered around what was once a sprawling forest, the final witnesses to Sinna’s chaotic destruction. Their branches snag on Rusty’s cloak, like fingers clawing out of the dark, grasping at her from the depths of the shadows.
By now, it’s easy to let herself fall into a steady rhythm. To focus on nothing but the thud of her heart, the pounding of her feet, and just run.
Her breaths echo harshly in her ears, eyes darting around frantically as she claws her way up the hill. At the top, a breeze brushes past her, and she shudders, goosebumps rising against her arms. The wet fabric of her clothes cling miserably to her skin, but there was no time to find a change. Not if she wanted to make it through the next few minutes.
“Rusty!”
Her head snaps up. Who was it — Wade? Sinna? Whichever Shadow was out to get her this time?
“Wait, Rusty!”
She relaxes marginally as the familiar bright green of Jaw’s scarf comes into view, slowing down enough to let him catch up. She glances over her shoulder, relieved when she doesn’t see a hint of pink.
Then Jaw’s hand is around her arm and he’s dragging her away from the scorched forest, a wild look in his eyes.
“Rusty, what are you doing? You have to get back up there — ”
Rusty stumbles over a root. Her heart stutters, vision pulsing black.
Two hands on her back, Nom’s voice in her ear, she’s falling —
“ — it’s like the safest place there is — ”
“Nom pushed me off.”
Jaw doesn’t pause. In fact, he gives no indication that he’s even heard her.
Instead, he begins muttering under his breath while pulling Rusty deeper inland, his hand a vise around her arm.
Her breath quickens.
She didn’t know if Nom had intended for her to die in the fall or if he’d merely wanted to throw her into the line of fire — both were equally terrible — but one thing was for certain.
Nom would kill her if she went back.
“Jaw — ” She plants her heels in the dirt and rips her arm away. “Nominal pushed me off!” Jaw jerks back, surprised, and she’s aware that she’s shouting but can’t bring herself to care. “It’s not safe up there!”
Only one part seems to register in his mind.
“He pushed you off?”
“Yes!”
As if things couldn’t get any worse, a new voice pipes in.
“Oh, is that so?”
Rusty bites back a groan. “Cherri, stay back — ”
But Cherri ignores her with a laugh that borders on manic, purple flashing in her eyes, and Rusty stumbles backwards just in time to dodge the blade that slices through where her head used to be.
Right, time to go.
She ducks under another swing and darts farther up the incline, blood roaring in her ears.
In less time than it takes Rusty to blink, Jaw is at her side, sword materializing in his hand, and shouting at her to run. Rusty glances back long enough to see him block Cherri’s next jab, the high-pitched shriek of metal-on-metal grating against her ears, and aim a harsh kick at her stomach.
Cherri weaves right, ducking under Jaw’s arm and rushing at Rusty once more. She grins, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that there is something intrinsically wrong with it.
“Rusty Courage, Rusty Courage! Did Nom push you off? Did my Goat push you off?”
Pain lances down Rusty’s arm, and Cherri cackles. Jaw’s face contorts in barely restrained fury, and he redoubles his attacks.
Meanwhile, Rusty puts all her focus into moving faster faster faster. Her feet slam against the earth, sending harsh vibrations up her legs that only serve to accentuate the various aches and pains scattered across her body.
Cherri lunges at her again, that deranged smile still plastered across her face. It contorts oddly at the edges, twisted almost beyond the point of recognition.
There is hardly anything left of the girl Rusty used to know.
Cherri brings her sword down in a wide arc; Rusty only barely manages to pull her own out in time to block it, arms trembling from the impact. Grunting, she pushes against Cherri’s blade and uses the precious seconds it gives her to create some distance between them.
Something warm and wet trickles down her arm, a throbbing pain taking over her side.
Smirking, Cherri saunters forward, raising her sword one final time.
But before she can follow through, another figure slams into her, effectively knocking her to the ground. Rusty catches sight of brown hair and a purple jacket before Jaw grabs her hand and they’re running once more.
—
“That was close.”
”That was close,” agrees Rusty.
Jaw scrubs a hand down his face, anxiously runs his fingers through his already messy hair. He’s carved a divot in the earth from his pacing. “I mean, that was way too — ”
“Rusty!”
Katie barrels into her before he can finish, blood splattered across her clothes, dirt coating her face. She’s bleeding from multiple cuts along her arms and legs, though she doesn’t seem to notice.
“What are you doing?” She grabs Rusty’s shoulder and gives her a brief shake. “It’s so dangerous down here — ” A shout, followed by a gleeful laugh. Cherri must have spawned nearby. “We need to get you back up there!”
Rusty and Jaw speak at the same time.
“Nominal pushed me off.”
“Nom pushed her off!”
Katie gapes at them. “He what?”
Jaw begins ushering them towards Wade’s old farm, casting furtive looks over his shoulder. “Yeah, and then he sent Cherri after her.”
“What?”
“Look, Katie — can you get her somewhere safe? I might go after Nom and Shauna.”
“I mean, yeah, but — ”
“Good.” He pulls Rusty into a hug. “Stay safe,” he whispers, and then he’s gone.
The moment he disappears over the hill, Katie turns to her with mild panic.
“I have no idea where to take you, I’m going to be so honest with you.”
Somehow, Rusty finds it in herself to laugh.
***
She jerks upright with a gasp.
The first thing that hits her is the pain in her left arm. A sharp, biting ache that has her wishing for the numbing effects of a golden apple.
The second is the wind.
In the pale oak forest, the air was always several degrees colder than it should be, the chill always a little more pronounced. When Rusty, Nom, and Shauna made their way up to the creeper farm platform that final time, Rusty had been struck, as she had every time she made the journey, by how much the temperature reminded her of her first home.
The only difference was the wind.
Sheltered amid the sprawling pale oak trees, the Cutsey Creeking cottage had been relatively protected from the elements and gave off the illusion of being completely and utterly cut off from the world. They had never known anything stronger than a nice breeze.
But here, there was nothing to protect them from the gales that buffeted the platform, nor the cold eagerly clawing at their bones.
Rusty shudders, wrapping her scarf around her neck and burying her nose in the collar of her sweater, both mercifully dry now.
She can’t say she was particularly thrilled to be back here, but she hadn’t had much of a choice. The platform, at least, was defensible, and provided an uninterrupted view for miles. It was the most logical place to go to lay low for the night, and that wasn’t something she could discard lightly.
Two hands on her back, Nom’s voice in her ear.
Lava flows from the pillar Sinna constructed during the fight, spilling over the edge of the platform but, rather miraculously, not setting anything on fire. Rusty gently eases herself away from Katie — who had practically rolled on top of her in the night — and scootches closer.
A sigh of relief slips past her lips as warmth rushes over her in an instant, and she can’t help leaning forward.
“You do know that can burn you, right?”
She holds her hands over the lava, willing her muscles to relax as Ruby plops down next to her. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Just checking.”
They lapse into silence. Around them, the sun spills over the horizon, the sky painted in soft oranges and yellows. For a moment, the wind stills, as if permitting them this one moment of peace.
Rusty is reminded, bitterly, of when she and Katie raced over the hills to watch the sunrise. They’d arrived just as the sun crested the snowy peaks, breathless and panting, but they’d made it.
She draws her legs to her chest, planting her chin on her knee. Suddenly, the air was too warm, the heat stifling.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Ruby twist to look at her, a curious gleam in her eyes.
Rusty stands before she can do anything. Like ask questions.
“I’m going to go wake up Katie.”
Ruby shrugs and turns back to the sunrise.
It was strange, having her here. Rusty had never been that close with Ruby, even when she was a Soul, and that never really changed after Ruby died. As far as Rusty was aware, she had no real allegiances to either of the two main Shadow factions, nor to any of the remaining Souls.
Rusty had no reason to trust her, but she had no reason to distrust her either.
Kneeling beside Katie, her thoughts drift to the day ahead. How was it going to go, now that she’d been effectively separated from the rest of the Souls? She knew 4C and CC wouldn’t kill her — and Jaw and Katie, of course — but what about the others? How many of them will be trying to hunt her down now?
Trying — and failing — to ignore the apprehension twisting in her gut, she shakes Katie awake and gently nudges her into an upright position, wondering when the final shoe would drop.
It comes not long after.
They were gathered at the ledge, scanning the horizon for any sign of an attack, when a sharp ping cuts through the air.
Heart pounding, Rusty rips out her communicator, blood running cold as she reads the message scrawled across the top. Katie sucks in a breath, and Ruby lets out a soft chuckle.
The message blinks up at them innocently from their individual screens.
Nominalgravy burned to death
Nom was dead.
Nom was a Shadow.
Her hands shake as she tucks the device back in her pocket, though she doesn’t know why.
After all, this was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? Revenge, and one less person to worry about.
So why didn’t she feel happy?
A chorus of pings explode between the three of them once more. She leans over Katie’s shoulder to read the new messages.
Nominalgravy: YOU KNOW WHAT
Nominalgravy: FINE
Nominalgravy: ALL SHADOWS MEET ME AT THE FARM
Nominalgravy: NOW
Two hands on her back, Nom’s voice in her ear.
So it would be like this, then.
Ruby leaves fairly quickly afterwards, presumably to go to the Shadow meeting. Katie refuses to leave Rusty, for which she was grateful. She didn’t think she could handle being alone at the moment.
There were only two of them left.
They make their way down the tower (they had climbed it the night before in a last, desperate move to find somewhere safe to spend the night, for all the good that was doing them now), cutting across the desecrated pale oak forest and hugging the border up the mountain to the remains of their old base.
Despite everything, hope flutters in her chest.
There were only two of them left.
She had a chance.
Katie’s voice cuts through her thoughts.
“Okay, I have three separate people telling me to run — ”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah — ”
“We need to go — ”
She had a chance, but only if she survived long enough.
***
There had been a time, for a while, when Sinna was Rusty’s ally. Naturally, it hadn’t lasted long, but it had given her enough time to discover that there was something fundamentally wrong with her.
Perhaps it was the way Sinna spoke — a little too sharp, a little too fast, like she was constantly racing against an invisible clock. Maybe it was the way she moved as if she were only half in control of her body, or how her eyes never sat in one place for too long.
Or, more likely, perhaps it had something to do with her obsession with fire.
(She was never very good at hiding it. Though, in full honesty, Rusty doubts she tried — within the first week, Sinna destroyed nearly the entire cherry forest. Later, she extended that favor to the rest of the server.)
In the end, it all accumulated in a frenzied energy that never quite felt right.
As such, it was no surprise when Sinna died and immediately snapped. No surprise when her movements became more erratic, or when her voice began tripping over itself to keep up with her words. No surprise when she became one of the most unstable Shadows on the server.
No surprise at all.
However, Rusty wanted to believe there was a part of her that held onto their friendship, however short it had been. It was a hope she’d grasped to fairly uncertainly, especially considering how Katie died, but she would have bet something on a small amount of loyalty remaining.
That faith had been sufficiently crushed when Nom pushed her off the platform. After all, if Rusty couldn’t trust her fellow Souls, then how could she trust someone like Sinna, who had toed the line between enemy and friend for about as long as Rusty had known her?
The answer, she decides early on, is that she can’t.
It was obvious Sinna didn’t understand why.
“I’m trying to help you!” she cries, ducking under Katie’s sword. “Just let me help you!”
In response, Rusty tells her the same thing she told Cherry.
“Sinna, stay back!”
“But I can help — WOAH WOAH WOAH — ”
“I’m sorry,” Katie says, not sounding sorry at all. She looses another arrow at Sinna, which she just about manages to avoid, “but I can’t let you get close to Rusty.”
“But — ”
“Leave.”
A muscle in Sinna’s jaw twitches, and she evidently decides to switch tactics.
“Nom is unhinged.” She ignores Katie’s attempts to drive her back. “He is going to kill you.”
“I — ”
“Rusty, listen to me. I can help you.”
Rusty swallows past the lump in her throat. Sinna seemed sincere, and she would certainly like to believe she was.
But the simple truth was that she didn’t know — couldn’t know — for sure.
And Rusty had misplaced her trust before, she wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
“I — I can’t.” The words taste like ash in her mouth. “I’m sorry, but I can’t trust you.”
Sinna’s face crumples.
Rusty does not give herself time to feel guilty as she turns and runs away.
—
She foolishly thought that would be the end of it, but not twenty minutes later, they run into Wade.
There was something to be said for appearances, because if Sinna seemed crazy, Nom unhinged, then Wade was downright insane.
He spoke in a cheery sing-song that made Rusty’s skin crawl, a deranged smile permanently spread across his face. Like Cherri’s, but worse. And his eyes almost seemed to glow with an eerie purple light, casting a violet-tinted shadow over the floor.
And then there was his sword.
Rusty felt nauseous every time she thought about it.
From the amount of times he’d swung it at her, Rusty had come to learn that Wade had not cleaned his sword once since his death.
Instead, he let the blood and gore of whichever poor creature he killed or maimed dry on along the blade until the entire thing was coated in a sick shade of red. Occasionally, when he flicked his sword she would see disgusting black flecks fly from the hilt.
For whatever reason, he seemed to revel in this gruesome compilation of all his past exploits.
He also really wanted to kill Rusty with it.
Which led her to her current predicament, bark digging painfully into her back, a hand pressed to her mouth to stifle her breaths, legs trembling from a combination of adrenaline and fear. Branches snap as Wade stalks closer, hungrily scanning the forest.
“Where are you Rusty,” he sings, slashing his sword across a tree. She flinched. “Rusty, Rusty, Rusty, where did you go? I’m going to kill you and soon you will be…ah.”
The blood drains from her face.
Wade peers at her through the branches, a curious tilt to his head. He has the joyful look of a child receiving a gift.
”I found you.”
Oh god no —
With a sharp cry, Katie lurches at him from a nearby bush.
It’s different from the skirmishes with Cherry, or even Sinna. This is crude, blunt attacks, elegance traded for cheap efficiency. Blood pours from multiple wounds, intermingling with the dirt until Rusty can no longer tell what belongs to who. Their strokes are quick and brutal, enhanced by savage strength.
Within seconds, they are grappling on the ground, weapons abandoned by the side.
“Wade. Go. AWAY!” Katie growls. He responds by grabbing his bow and shooting an arrow at Rusty. “WADE!” Another flies perilously close past her head. “Go kill Shauna!”
Wade shakes his head, dodging a punch. “You don’t understand,” he insists. “I need to kill Rusty, because Jaw loves Rusty.” Katie swings at him again. Misses. Raises her fists for a third.
His smile turns vicious.
“And I kill anything Jaw loves.”
Rusty stumbles, head snapping back to look at him.
He was —
He was serious.
For all intents and purposes, this was not new information. Wade had been uniformly obsessed with paying Jaw back for his death since the beginning, something that had only grown as more time passed and more Shadows joined their ranks.
Rusty had expected that.
She had not expected this.
His eyes shone with fanatic determination, purple dripping like blood from the corners. He looked an absolute wreck but held himself with the dignity of a king, the steady calm of someone assured of the justice they would bring.
He snaps the heel of his foot on his sword, kicking it into the air. Blood pours from his hand as he catches it — clumsy and fumbling, but catches it — by the blade. He pays the wound no mind.
Rusty didn’t know what to do.
Should she run and risk him catching up? Should she try to hide and risk being found? Or should she fight and hope she was strong enough to take him down?
None of those options seemed particularly good. If she cast her mind forward, she could only see it ending with her body twisted on the ground below Wade’s smiling face.
But it turns out it doesn’t matter, because Katie saves her from having to make a choice altogether by swinging at him again and again and again, anger glowing like fire in her eyes.
They trade a few more vicious, violent blows, each of them scrambling for the upper hand. After a second of hesitation, Rusty joins the fray, and together she and Katie push Wade up the mountain and onto the plateau where Katie at last manages to slide her sword between his ribs.
“You can kill me,” he hisses. Katie twists the sword deeper. Blood bubbles past his lips.
Even so, he grins, a horrid, wretched thing, teeth stained red.
“But I’m coming back!”
With that, he dies, his body vanishing a second later while his parting words hang in the silence left behind. Neither of them move. There was the sense that if they turned away, Wade would pop back into existence, bloody sword in hand, twisted smile in place, and this time he would kill them.
But it is not Wade who comes next.
It’s CC.
He emerges, breathless and panting, over the side of the mountain, a gasp tearing past his lips when he sees them.
He dashes across the plateau, mouth moving, frantically pointing down the hill. It takes a second for the words to register, for the sounds to twist themselves into something she can understand as speech.
“Hide, guys, hide — ”
He reaches her, grabs her arm when she doesn’t move, and pulls her away from the edge. Toward the shattered remains of their home. Past the jagged edges of a dead forest to the shelter of the sprawling dark oak trees beyond.
Katie grabs her sword from where it fell and jogs after them as Rusty is hit with the overwhelming urge to lie down and not get up until this nightmare is over.
She can picture it so easily — the grass bending under the weight of her body, the cool soil that, in all her time on this mountain, never warmed. There would be wind, or maybe not, and she would lie there and she would close her eyes and she would wake up and it would all be fine. Everything would be fine.
But she should have known by now not to wish for such things.
—
A shout flies up the mountainside, followed by a distant clamor. The clanking sound of armor banging against armor and the shrieking rasp of weapons being drawn.
They are still far enough away that Rusty can’t pick apart their individual features. Yet she knows, even before her communicator gives an awful, high-pitched chime, who it is.
Still, she looks, if only to affirm she’s right.
Nominalgravy: RUSTY WHERE ARE YOU
Then again, thrice more.
Nominalgravy: RUSTY WHERE ARE YOU
Nominalgravy: RUSTY WHERE ARE YOU
Nominalgravy: RUSTY WHERE ARE YOU
A horn blares through the air, far too loud.
CC whirls around.
“Go.”
The horn tapers off. CC puts a hand on her shoulder and none-too-gently shoves her back.
“Rusty, go.”
“CC, they’re coming — ”
Katie's shout is cut short, replaced with a wretched cry. It is not one of pain — Shadows do not feel pain — but it pulls on Rusty’s mind all the same, and she can’t help looking back —
Wade is running toward her.
Wade is running toward her.
She stifles a screech.
I’m coming back!
How — how? Katie just killed him, how was he back so soon?
And with Nom, no less.
No time to think, though, because Wade is on her in a blink and it takes all of her focus to dodge him.
Pain lances down her arm, near the cut she got from Cherri, something she’d nearly forgotten about. It had become just another one of the thousand aches and pains scattered across her body.
Now, though, it burned.
Hissing, she jerks away, fumbling in her pockets and wrapping her fingers around an unnaturally smooth object, the surface cool to the touch. Relief shoots through her.
She hadn't lost it.
Quickly, she brings the shimmering enchanted apple to her lips, soft flesh giving way easily under her teeth and coating her tongue in silky sweetness.
She only manages to choke down half of it, but it does the trick. Energy rushes to her limps, skin tingling with renewed warmth. Already, she feels her strength returning as the apple’s magic soothes her weary muscles and banishes the fatigue from her bones.
And just in time, too, as Wade lunges, slashing at her torso.
Rusty is too slow to dodge it.
“No no no no no no — ”
She lurches forward, arm instinctively circling around her abdomen. Iron fills her nose, and her sweater becomes rapidly soaked with her own blood.
“No no NO — ”
“Rusty!”
But the apple is already doing its work. Muting the nerves. Dulling the pain. Stitching her skin together piece by piece.
Within seconds, the gash is gone, as if it had never been there to begin with; it wouldn’t even leave a scar.
That is all the time she gets before Wade resumes his attacks, and from there on, it is pure chaos.
—
CC is shouting, Wade is laughing, Katie is screaming. Blades screech against blades and armor and whatever else they happen to hit, their high-pitched squeal lost under the tumult of desperate feet and sweating bodies —
And then Wade is dead and Rusty is scrambling down the mountain as an ender pearl flies past her face, and she only barely prevents herself from crashing into Nom.
She skids to a stop, already pivoting on one foot, and dashes behind a tree. Nom’s sword hits the bark with a sickening thud. Their eyes lock.
“No matter what,” he bites out, face a grim mask of determination, “the Goats will win.”
She runs, branches slicing at her arms.
They were reaching another stretch of burned forest, a swath of desecrated land with a wide spread of open space. Something clinks in her pocket, and hope flutters in her chest.
There was a way out of this.
“Rusty, you’re dying tonight!”
Nom was so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Could see, out of the corner of her eye, when he slowed to prepare what would most likely be a killing blow.
But she wasn’t dead yet.
So with every ounce of strength she possesses, she rips an ender pearl from her pocket, and she hurls it as hard as she can.
It soars in a graceful line, a dark orb against the deep blue sky, before coming to crash down somewhere beyond the hill. She feels a sharp tug in her gut, the ground swooping underneath her feet, and when she blinks she’s standing next to the lake’s muddy shores.
She slows, gives herself a moment to breathe.
The apple’s effects have started to wear off by now, and every spot on her body is accentuated by some pain, some soreness. She so desperately wants that rest on the cool mountain grass.
But she is not safe yet. Voices carry down the mountain, distant shapes blurred between the trees.
They are still coming, and Rusty intends to be far, far away by the time they get here.
So she turns and picks up her feet once more and does not stop until the moon arcs high above the world and she feels more alone than she ever has before.
***
“Come in here, come in here — yeah. That’s good. That’s good. You should be out of sight there.”
Rusty settles in the corner, legs curled beneath her, head resting against the wall. Jaw moves to stand in the open doorway, switching periodically between scanning the horizon and watching her.
“You don’t — do you need anything?”
She shakes her head.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Her voice comes out in a scratchy whisper. She’s suddenly aware that she’s shaking, and can’t remember when it started.
A crease forms between Jaw’s brow, mouth pulling into a frown, and he looks at Rusty with such blatant concern that she —
She —
God, he reminds her so much of 4C right now. And CC and Sinna and Katie.
She saw their deaths again in the chat.
KatieGoBrr was slain by Nominalgravy
Sinnabuns4 was slain by Nominalgravy
HiImCC was slain by Nominalgravy
Because of her.
“It’s not going to stop, is it?” she whispers before she can think better of it.
A breeze flits through a window above her head. Jaw opens his mouth, closes it. His hand tightens around his sword. “I — ”
She looks up when he doesn’t continue.
“Hm?”
Jaw glances at the field. When no one appears, he lowers himself in front of her, legs crossed, head bowed. His fingers fiddle with the edge of his shield.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “for causing all of — this.” His voice cracks at the end, and she wants to tell him it’s fine, it’s fine. He doesn’t have to explain, doesn’t need to. They’re past this now — he apologized already. She believed him already.
But he scootches backward, cold rushing to fill the new space, shaking his head as if he already knew the words pushing so desperately against her tongue.
“No, listen to me, Rusty.”
He raises his head, locks eyes with her. An emotion she can’t describe lingers within them, something horribly pained mixed with a deep-rooted bitterness that makes her heart ache in sympathy.
His next words are torn from him in a violent rush of air.
“I did this.”
Clouds roll over the sky, adding a dreary sense of finality. Shadows stretch and thicken inside the tower, rough stone cooling, as the grassy fields outside darken in a dismal outward reflection of the weight that settles between them.
Rusty’s breath hitches, unable to stop her mind from replaying the words on a loop.
I did this.
In a sudden burst of motion, Jaw shoots to his feet, moves to stand in the doorway once more. He is not fast enough, and she catches the overwhelming grief that twists across his features. And for a moment she is trapped in two places at once. The past superimposed over the present.
A dying sunrise. The lake swirling lazily below. Standing at the edge of the platform like one push wouldn’t send her tumbling to her death.
“Is this my fault?”
She had said yes, then, but she had also said no.
So much has happened since then. Could she still rid him of the blame, looking at what had become of his very first actions?
Silence descends over the tower. Rusty doesn’t know what to say to him. Perhaps there is nothing.
Jaw lowers his head.
Perhaps he knows it, too.
After some time, the shadows grow too cold, and she finds herself craving a hint of sunlight, a drop of warmth. She pulls herself forward until she’s sitting at the edge of the doorway, light — pale and weak with the rising sun — spilling over her knees. She tries to move farther, but Jaw frowns at her, so she stays where she is.
But the tension eases somewhat. His shoulders slump down, and her heartbeat settles into something resembling a normal pace.
Together, they watch the night fade to dusky grey, hints of blue appearing in patches across the sky.
“Promise me one thing,” Jaw says suddenly as light kisses the mountains and Rusty can officially say she’s made it another day. Battered and bruised and aching from a thousand little hurts, but she’s made it.
She blinks rapidly, struggling to pull her mind into focus. “I — yeah. Sure.”
He remains silent for a while, gaze fixed on the sun. Then —
“Don’t change. Please.”
The sun climbs higher, bathing the clouds in a momentary burst of color. The grass rustles under a light breeze, and somewhere nearby a bird chirps out a melodic string of notes.
Rusty leans forward, chasing the sun’s warmth as the patches of light slide past her, leaving her cold once more.
The minutes tick by.
At last, she says, “I’ll try my best.”
***
They almost don’t hear it, but it is impossible to miss.
A singular, drawn-out note. Loud, as goat horns usually are, signaling to those who sat huddled under the tower that Nom was here.
Katie had arrived sometime in the morning, and now she rushed outside to meet him while Rusty scrambled for the ladder, hauling herself up to the roof as fast as her shaking limbs would allow. Below, Jaw crouched by the entrance, waiting.
Rusty’s heart hammers in her chest. A high-pitched ringing fills her ears.
There were only two of them left.
She had a chance.
She grips the wall, knuckles white, rough stone digging into her palms. The wind whips up a frenzy around her. Whispers, This is it.
A shout goes up. Nom has reached the entrance, Cherri and Wade hot on their heels.
This is it, this is it, this is it.
Her hand drifts to the sword strapped to her side, to the enchanted apples and ender pearls tucked in her pockets.
Nom looks up the same time she looks down. His eyes are nothing more than two coruscating pits of dark, poisonous purple.
She shudders and tears her gaze away.
The next time she looks down, he is gone, and then he is behind her, and this time when she falls she does it with a running start, Nom’s frustrated shout ringing loud in her wake as she flees.
—
Branches snag on Rusty’s cloak, like fingers clawing out of the dark, grasping at her from the depths of the shadows.
She trips, only barely catching herself on a nearby tree. In the back of her mind, a voice screeches at her to go, go, GO.
Finding the rhythm again isn’t hard. She settles into it with an ease born of relentless repetition and focuses on nothing but the thud of her heart, the pounding of her feet, and runs.
It’s always the same. The basics never change.
You just run and run and run and run until something gives and you’ve made it another damn day or you're looking down the end of another Shadow’s sword.
Rusty was so tired of running.
Tired of the constant burn in her limbs. Tired of never being able to draw a full breath. Tired tired tired of losing everything she’s ever known and learning it’s because of someone she called a friend.
Don’t change. Please.
She was trying.
But she was so tired.
An arrow whizzes past her head, landing with a harsh thunk in the dirt beside her feet. Another flies into the bushes.
Behind her, the shouts grow louder, and her legs tremble on her next step, and she knows she’s flagging. Knows that, now, any misstep could very well lead to her death.
And they know it too.
The footsteps behind her draw nearer.
“I’m sorry, Rusty.”
Before she can toss back a retort, pain explodes down the back of her calf, a cry slipping past her lips. Stars burst across her vision as a kick to her injured leg sends her sprawling, the arrow digging deeper, twisting under her skin, tearing through soft flesh like butter.
She nearly throws up.
Rusty is fairly certain she passes out, because the next second Shauna is dragging her forward, shoving an enchanted golden apple in her hands, screaming words Rusty can’t understand.
It doesn’t matter, though. She gets the message well enough.
Eat.
The apple’s sweet flavor makes her stomach roil, nausea climbing up her throat. Each bite is a battle, each swallow managed through pure force of will. By the end, her face is slick with sweat, and she is panting from the effort of forcing the apple down and running — or limping — away from the Shadows.
But it works.
A faint buzz works its way through her system, and she is dimly aware of the skin closing around the arrow. Knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it will hurt the same, if not more, to take it out.
But for now the pain is gone.
And just in time, too, because at that moment Cherri tackles Shauna to the ground and begins dragging her away from the fight while Nom takes the opportunity to charge, unobstructed, at Rusty.
He raises his sword over his head, bringing it down for a killing stroke, which Rusty only barely manages to block in time.
Their blades clash, vibrations rattling down her arms. Rusty fights to hold him back as he presses closer, closer, closer, until they're a hairsbreadth apart and she can see the shadows lurking in the corners of his eyes. The flecks of brown buried underneath that toxic purple.
Nom pushes against their blades. Rusty’s back foot slips.
She didn’t know how long she could last like this.
Perhaps Nom realizes that, because he leans impossibly closer and says, “I didn’t want this to happen.”
Two hands on her back, Nom’s voice in her ear, she’s falling —
She snarls.
“Yes you did.” Her arms tremble from the effort, a steady burn puncturing through the blissful numbness of the enchanted apple. Her knees buckle under the weight. By some miracle, she remains standing. “You pushed me off!”
“I didn’t want this to happen, Rusty.”
She wants to scream, but all her energy has gone into staying upright, and she couldn’t respond to Nom even if she knew what to say.
Where was Katie? CC?
Jaw?
They promised they would protect her, so why weren’t there here —
A force connects with Nom.
(Wild hair, purple eyes, the faintest whiff of smoke.)
He stumbles back, surprised, head snapping up to stare at Sinna.
Rusty doesn’t think — just moves.
Go go go.
When she blinks, her sword is sticking out of Nom’s chest, and she has less than a second to catch the fury in his eyes before his body collapses on itself and disintegrates into ash.
***
While the others were turned away, preoccupied with the sudden influx of Shadows who, for whatever reason, were quite keen on keeping Rusty alive, Wade snuck behind a dense copse of trees, crouching low beside the roots. He was not particularly well hidden, but that did not matter when no one was looking for him.
From here, he had a clear shot of everyone — Shadow and Soul alike.
It was perfect.
What was it Jaw had said, all those weeks ago…
Ah, yes.
It had to be done.
Grinning, he quietly knocks an arrow, raises his bow, and, when the time is right, he fires.
***
Nom is dead, Nom is dead.
It isn’t forever — Rusty knows. But she can’t help the crushing wave of relief that washes over her as the battlefield rearranges itself in her head. And hope — that beautiful, stupid spark of hope — flares to life.
She had a chance.
With Nom out of the picture, she had a chance.
She doesn’t ask herself what for. Doesn’t consider what comes in the days after.
The sun is setting, and in a few hours it will rise again, and she will have made it another day.
Hauling her injured body off to the side, putting as much distance between her and the tangled mess of flesh and steel as possible, she huddles at the edge of a dip, not entirely sure what to do now.
The numbing effect was fading. It had lasted long enough to get her through the fight with Nom, but now the pain returned with a vengeance, and she feared if she tried to run again the arrow would ruin her leg for good.
Or, more accurately, she was terrified of feeling it.
But she couldn’t remain here any more than she could remain at the lake. Every second she spent in the open was another second for someone to kill her, and she’d be damned if she gave up now.
A glance up confirms that Cherri is still preoccupied fighting Sinna, Ruby, and Shauna, though Rusty hasn’t the faintest idea of when the former two arrived, or how Shauna freed herself from Cherri.
Regardless, if Rusty wanted to leave, she had to go now.
Which meant she had to move.
She grimaces.
This will not be pleasant.
Slowly, she inches backward, carefully guiding herself along the dip. Once she’s at the edge, she lowers her shield, using it as a crutch to steer herself down inch by painful inch. At one point, her heel slams against the side, jostling the arrow, and she has to stifle a scream.
Almost there, she thinks. She risks another look up, relieved to find everyone’s attention sufficiently diverted from her.
Her foot is nearly at the bottom now. A clear expanse of land carves its way before her, providing a clear shot for an ender pearl, with a fair amount of hiding places just beyond.
Almost there, almost there.
Her feet have just hit the ground when she notices it. A whistle barely louder than a breath, nearly buried under the sounds of the ongoing fight.
But she hears it.
And she looks up a third time.
And she sees it.
Soaring towards her.
***
Pain ruptures her throat, and she feels herself falling, fingers slipping from their tenuous grasp on the earth.
She hears Jaw’s voice. His pleas for her to stay alive, stay alive, please, just stay alive.
Blood bubbles past her lips, and it tastes like iron and rust and things nearly dead.
She hears CC telling her to go, Katie telling her to run.
Her lungs seize. Black dots blink across her vision. They almost look like stars.
She wants to tell them she tried.
A wave of cold washes over her, nulling the pain, and she feels herself letting go, sinking in.
She really did try.
—
(It wasn't enough.)
—
rusty_courage was slain by WadeBox