Ana uses her teeth to tear the remaining fabric of Blake's torn jacket hem, turning it into a series of long, thin strips that she lays across her lap. She folds a frayed piece of dull orange lining into a square and presses it against Blake's bloodied temple—he winces.

It doesn't take long for the fabric to start turning red. Ana purses her lips and reconfigures the fold. She presses the fabric back against the wound.

Time passes as she methodically repeats the process one scrap at a time. Fold the fabric. Press it against the head wound. Rearrange the fold when the blood soaks through. Grab a new scrap when the old one is completely used. Start again.

Her fingers tremble as she lifts the fabric away to check the wound. One... two... three... blood finally begins to bead along the opening—she refolds the fabric and presses it back into place. Good. It's finally starting to coagulate. 

She sighs in relief. It's only a matter of time before it stops bleeding altogether. Thank God.

She takes Blake's good hand and pushes it against the bloodied scrap.

"Keep pressure for me, okay?"

"Alright," Blake grunts, holding the makeshift compress in place as Ana pulls her small shoulder bag onto her lap.

Ana ignores the twinge in her wrist as she rummages through her bag to find her travel hand sanitiser. She pulls it out into the light. It's half empty, but has more than enough sanitiser left to clean both her hands and the wound. She squirts a small dollop into her palms and starts rubbing them together.

“You’re shaking.”

Ana pauses, glancing down at her trembling palms. She snorts humourlessly and finishes rubbing the sanitiser into her skin.

"I know," she replies, giving her hands a moment to dry before she picks up the first of the leftover scraps laid across her lap.

She starts tying the long, thin scraps into a line, one knot at a time. She tests each knot with a quick snap of the fabric as she finishes them. They're far from perfect, but when making the world's worst makeshift bandage... they'll have to do.

Ana leans over her boyfriend and carefully lifts his hand off the wound. The orange scrap is almost entirely soaked through. She frowns, placing the daisy-chained scrap bandage back onto her lap and temporarily replacing the scrap. 

She leans forward to tear another small piece of lining from Blake's undercoat. 

"Annie, you're shaking," Blake emphasises, his brows furrowed, "Take a break. Please?"

"And risk you bleeding out? Not a chance," Ana replies, carefully squeezing a small dollop of hand sanitiser onto the freshly torn cloth. She begins to lather it through the fabric.

It's a mile away from an alcohol wipe, but as long as she doesn't let it touch the wound, it's as sanitary a solution as she's going to get.

"Annie..."

Ana gently removes the bloodied fabric from Blake's forehead and begins cleaning the skin around the wound. She's careful to keep her strokes as uniform and gentle as she can. She can't risk irritating the wound, no matter how much her wrist hurts or how shaky her palms become.

"Blake," she mimics, then softens her tone, "We can worry about me when you're okay, okay?"

Blake's lips thin into a long, unimpressed line. The corners of Ana's lips twitch up—she leans forward to wipe the dried blood from his left cheek.

She discards the dirtied cloth in her lap and gently taps the back of his neck; "Head up."

Blake lifts his head, his face muscles visibly straining with the movement. Ana’s fingers hesitate against the sides of his throat. She shakes her head and presses the tail end of the makeshift bandage against his wound—he flinches. 

Ana’s lips twitch—she forces out a breath. She needs to ignore his discomfort. She needs to dress the wound. Ana takes a deep breath and begins firmly wrapping the makeshift bandage around his head.

"You know as well as I do—ah, ow," Blake hisses when she accidentally presses too hard against the wound.

"Ah—sorry."

"It's fine," he grunts—he continues, "I'm not getting any better without a hospital, Annie."

"I'm stopping you from getting worse."

"I know, and I—ow, fu...ar out—appreciate that," Blake says, his face twitching with every movement of Ana's hands, "I would—fucking—shit, sorry—I would also appreciate if you stopped ignoring your own fu—freaking arm in the process. My arm's not getting any less broken—ow!"

Ana accidentally ties off the makeshift bandage a little too tight.

"Seriously?" Blake growls, his eye twitching in irritation.

Her responding smile is as fake as the green polish decorating her fingertips.

"Last I checked, you weren't studying a nursing degree," she replies, her sharp tone a stark contrast to the smile on her face.

She gently lowers his head back to the ground, mindful of the double knot securing the 'bandage' in place.

"I need to splint your arm before we move," she continues, slipping her shoulder bag over her head—she winces at the sudden pain from her upper right arm. She ignores it and offers Blake the bag, "Take this. You'll want to have something to bite onto when we... you know."

Ana gets to her feet and moves over to the toppled log pile. She needs to find a suitable splint—something long enough to cover the length from his wrist to his elbow without being too bulky.

She crouches down and begins rummaging through the pile.

"Annie, come on," Blake says in an exasperated tone, "Wrap your arm at least."

Too thick, too long, too awkward—she begins to divide the sticks into two piles. The sticks that could potentially work, she places to the right of herself, and the sticks that won’t… get tossed to the other side of the room. 

Insofar, it’s been nothing but duds. She resists the urge to smack the only half-decent stick to the other side of the room.

"Ana—"

"My arm's fine, Blake," she snaps—whips around to face the man lying in the rubble behind her with a... concerned look on his face. Her chest instantly feels tight—she sighs and looks away, "Sorry, I didn't mean to..."

He snorts humourlessly, "I know."

"Blake—"

"Annie, seriously, I get it—it's fine," he replies. He turns to face the hole in the ceiling with a sigh, "Say, Annie?”

“Hm?” She finds a longer, thinner log and compares the length of it to her forearm. It just covers the distance between her palm to her elbow—it’s definitely a bit too short for Blake.

She bites her lip in thought. It’s not unusably short, and she can still use it to splint his arm and lock his joint in place… Ana places it in the empty spot to her right. It’s infinitely better than nothing.

“Do you think we're dead right now?"

Ana freezes.

"...What?"

"Think about it," Blake says in a raspy tone, "One minute we're about to die in a cave collapse and the next we're here? Where even is here? We’re supposed to be up the mountains, not in some random forest. What if we really died and—ow, Christ—ended up in purgatory or something?"

Ana adds a second potential splint to the good pile and turns to see Blake currently staring up at the sky. She follows his gaze—the canopy they fell through is almost impossibly high up. How they managed to survive that fall... she shakes her head and returns her attention to the dwindling log pile.

"I thought you were agnostic,” she says, comparing the two good sticks against another—she frowns. One's a bit thicker than the other, and the other's a bit shorter but... she holds them up against her arm. Hm... could be better, but definitely could be worse. They'll have to do.

"I am," Blake replies, turning back to Ana as she returns to his side with the two thin logs, "Dad's Catholic, though. Maybe he rubbed off on us?"

"Sure," Ana scoffs—she holds the longer of the two sticks up against his uninjured forearm, "If that man rubbed off on us, we wouldn't be in purgatory—we'd be in hell."

Blake snorts, "Yeah, probably."

The longer branch covers most of the distance between Blake's knuckles and his elbow, but the smaller one falls just over an inch short. She glances at Blake's twisted arm—she grimaces. The break is roughly in the middle, so the stick should still be long enough to support the wound and secure his wrist in place. Her shoulders slump in relief. Thank God.

Ana takes a random piece of scrap fabric from what used to be the hut roof and uses her teeth to tear it into strips. It tastes of a horrific mix between dirt, grime and something distinctly metallic that she… really doesn’t want to think too hard about right now. 

She tries not to gag. Disgusting.

"You think Jen and Allen are okay?"

Ana pauses—she lowers the scrap, "I don't..."

Her brows pinch. She glances at the half-torn scrap in her hands, at the firewood scattered around the room—at the large hole in the ceiling and the towering trees surrounding them. The corners of her lips twitch downwards.

"I hope so," she says after a long beat.

She resumes tearing at the fabric and laying the scraps across her lap.

"Maybe they're still alive," Blake hums. Ana flicks him on the nose, "Hey—"

"We're not dead," she says, before grabbing the strap of her shoulder bag and shoving it into his mouth, "Now bite the strap. This… isn’t going to be pleasant.”