***CW: A lot of blood, a lot of gore. Like. A LOT a lot.

Velvety darkness gave way to crimson tides swirling in fast, choppy torrents. They bit at Logan’s hands, ripping him off of any slimy purchase he managed to find. Swallowing him beneath their putrid depths.

Every breath was a struggle. A battle against the suffocating, viscus liquid filling his lungs. Familiar bone-white claws gripped at his hips. Flesh tore in canyoned stripes over his pale skin. Logan tried to fight off the unseen aggressors to no avail. Fear killed off his will power like a virus suffocating cells.

He chanced a look below, those skeletal hands writhing in irritation after every successful evasion. Every wriggle that brought him away from their grasping claws. Keeping them out of reach brought tremendous aches bearing down upon his chest. Lungs wheezing for oxygen they were deprived of. Over time, his body numbed. Muscles grew limp, weighted with the struggle he could only endure for so long. Exhaustion swept over him, pulling him beneath the bloody current.

Iron rode the liquid filling Logan’s nose, his mouth, the insides of his lungs. Slicking over his exposed eyes. He couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t feel anything aside from the thick muck slowly seeping down his throat and up into his nasal cavity. His voice was absent, smoldered to forced silence.

It seemed to last an eternity before smokey scents paired up with the iron. The heat burned Logan’s throat, his nostrils, his eyes—or was it cold that caused such horrendous pain? Gunshots echoed through his ears, growing clearer and more precise as he regained his hearing. Bright dancing flames not far off scored his sensitive eyes. He blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to whatever hellscape he’d just been thrown into.

Without warning, a large hand wrapped around Logan’s bicep. A vice-like grip cutting off his circulation. It dragged him to his feet, forcing him to move as quickly as he could while weighed down by unfamiliar heavy boots and rather high snow drifts.

“Come on, Thomas! If we get too far behind, we’ll be sitting ducks!”

The man’s voice was familiar, urgent. He surged forward, unflinching against the sounds of gunfire and explosions. Passed corpses without a second glance.

Unlike him, Logan was coming undone. Each glassy set of eyes sinking their opaque gazes into his skin like vibrating needles pricking his every nerve. Blood stained the ground in copious splashes, reflecting the full moon ahead. Trees felled by explosives sent splintered shards in every direction. The last ditch attack of the evergreen giants thrown unwillingly into human warfare. Air barely passed through Logan’s swollen windpipes, and what did felt like icy fangs drawing shallow wounds down his throat. Such harsh gasps produced short-lived puffs of gray in front of him that made his vision swim.

“C-Christopher I c-c-can’t! It’s too…it’s t-too cold!” Logan managed to shout despite the soreness of his lungs. Everything hurt.

“I know, I know it’s hard, Thomas. But you have to keep mov—”

Another explosion nearby drowned out Christopher’s words as shrapnel hurtled like deadly blades through the air. An abrupt adjustment had Christopher’s hands thrown firmly around Logan’s—or, well…Thomas’—ears, but not before he heard the deafening screams of their comrades being cut down.

“Fuck,” Christopher hissed under his breath. He unfurled Thomas from his embrace and led the way forward, away from the sounds of battle. “Come on!”

Tripping over feet unwilling to move, Thomas didn’t hesitate to follow the command. Despite his breath remaining that hideous, stuttered wheeze and his body trembling, he kept up with Christopher’s long strides as he continued deeper into the darkness of the forest. A few soldiers—mainly comrades, though dying enemies seemed just as curious—watched them veer away from their objective. It was obvious desertion, yet no one seemed to care enough to enforce any kind of action, instead letting them melt into the still darkness of the trees.

“Christopher,” Thomas managed to wheeze, and Logan wondered how he managed, “where-where are we…” He paused, a wracking cough shaking him to the bones. “The others…they-they—”

Agonized screams punched through the night air as an explosion erupted in the distance. More comrades whose entrails now decorated moonlit snow. Familiar faces twitched as death made its slow decent upon them. Another caught just in time to see him level a pistol between his eyes and fire, his only remaining limb dropping with his gun. Thomas didn’t look away in time—Logan spited him for it.

Nausea sprung from restless snakes that writhed within Thomas’s intestines, but Logan couldn’t be entirely sure he wasn’t guilty of causing it himself. He didn’t know how he knew them all, but why was rather obvious. Thomas never really cared for Robert—he wasn’t exactly the nicest kid on the block—but he never thought the kid from Wisconsin deserved the death he’d been offered. And, whether it was Logan or the vessel he rode within, the sight made Thomas stumble away from Christopher and empty the contents of his stomach.

Christopher noticed the departure immediately and quickly doubled back, frantic hands gathering Thomas into the multiple layers padding Christopher’s embrace. “You listen here, Thomas. I don’t give no flyin’ shits ‘bout the others. You’re all that matters, Thomas. Everythin’ else, just ignore it. Ain’t none of our business, this can all burn to hell, s'far as I’m concerned,” he hissed, rocking Thomas back and forth in his arms while casting a cursory glance over his shoulder. His honeyed brown gaze turned to amber in the tones cast by newly spreading fires. “I’m not lettin’ you die out here. We’re goin’ the fuck home, you hear me, Thomas?”

Thomas nodded eagerly against Christopher’s chest. Getting home sounded good, and the idea gave Thomas the nudge he needed to shuffle forward as quickly as his cold feet would carry him. Despite fire having caught low-hanging branches, the cold, snowy grounds seemed to have halted its scintillating crawl through the dense underbrush. Beyond the light, looming firs covered the stars with their inky shadows and only a few, wavering rays of fractured moonlight cut through their voluminous canopy. The darkness had fully settled around them, the quiet drowning out those far-off sounds.

Thomas let out a relieved sigh a moment too soon.

Loud and bombastic as they always were, the gunshot shattered the calm, an ancient tree at least two feet in diameter responsible for concealing the shooter. Or, it would have been had their assailant been quicker than Christopher was. An echoed round buried itself deep into the man, his body slumping unceremoniously to the ground.

“Thomas,” Christopher said with an eerily soft, concerningly gentle lilt, “we really have to move now. Try to run, okay? Even when it seems like you can’t.”

Thomas knew something was wrong, and Logan trusted the mutual feeling of their shared gut. Something was wrong.

“I-I know it’s hard, and it’s cold-you’re scared. I know. But I need-you gotta try, okay?”

It was the urgency in Christopher’s tone that kept Thomas from asking questions. Logan though…he was recalling this particular nuisance of a dream. But Thomas didn’t ask Christopher to pull back his thick jacket to reveal the wound Logan knew was there. Thomas did exactly what he was asked, starting at a slow, painful walk before slowly evolving into an uneven jog.

It didn’t last long, and Logan knew Christopher had already assumed Thomas wouldn’t have made it very far at the pace. Still, as the sky bloomed with the peachy undertones of sunrise, the man grew increasingly fidgety. His stops started becoming more frequent as he considered their direction, all while Thomas fought to stay the course. His feet screamed in protest, though many of his toes had grown numb from the cold.

Frostbite, maybe?

Little did Thomas know frostbite would be the least of his coming troubles. But Logan held his tongue—not like he could say anything in the first place—as the sun breached the horizon. Thomas was making sure progress in regaining his wind, though he didn’t lend much thought to why that was until he realized Christopher was leaning heavily against a nearby trunk, downing entire handfuls of snow.

Thomas wondered if Christopher was simply growing tired. Logan knew better.

The unmistakable flec of crimson against the stark white of the snow caught Thomas’s eye, and it was joined only a moment later by a second, matching droplet. Sound seemed to cut out entirely, Thomas’s vision swam, and his mouth grew dry. “You’re hurt,” he managed, barely able to keep from choking.

Christopher sighed with a resignation that truly did insinuate he understood his gig was up. Still, he replied, “Just a…a scratch, Thomas. Leave it be.”

Thomas knew it wasn’t just a scratch. “Where? Where did he shoot you, Chris?!” Thomas sobbed, his tears cascading without his permission and freezing in little rivulets down his cheeks.

Christopher’s heavy shoulders drooped in defeat so abrupt it threw Logan despite having experienced this more than often enough in the past. Christopher made a meager attempt at a smile, but it was weak and filled with exhausted torment. Light seen so clearly only hours before had been entirely snuffed out leaving darkening circles around Christopher’s eyes. Then, there it was. Blood blossoming from a fatal wound to the abdomen. He’d been bleeding out this entire time, the heavy, winter-issued militant jacket the only thing really staunching the blood flow. And now, even that had become redundant.

“We have-have to take c-care of it,” Thomas sobbed, lifting his quivering hands to the soaked fabric. “Y-You’re gonna die—” he choked on his words. “I can’t lose you, Christopher. Not now, not-not e-ever,” Thomas whispered, clutching at the dryer sections of Christopher’s clothing as though they’d somehow erase the sections that were blood soaked from his memory.

Logan knew it wouldn’t, he knew the outcome, and he still couldn’t see those dying amber eyes without picturing a more familiar face behind them.

Christopher’s lips tilted up in a sorrowful smile. A smile Thomas couldn’t help but love and return despite the dire situation surrounding him. Logan felt that warmth and a shuddered breath escaped him at how familiar it was and how agonizing it would be to watch die yet again.

Christopher gently pushed Thomas’s hands away with one hand, using the other to brush Thomas’s cheeks with a gloved thumb. “I have to get you t-we halfta find refuge first, you got that? Then…then I promise-I swear we can take care of it.”

Thomas knew in this moment what Logan had known the whole time. Finding refuge would come only after Christopher fell to his wounds. Maybe it had been the steady weakening of his voice as he spoke. Or the flames in his sweet amber eyes smoldering to barely-lit embers.

“Jeez. You’ve always been such a…such a crybaby,” Christopher tacked on with a delicate smile.

“Nngh…” Thomas couldn’t muster anything aside from that hideous sound, much to his own dismay. Sobs caught in his sore throat, choking him as fear devoured his heart.

Together, they trudged through the snow-laden forest as dawn finally broke over the treeline. It was hard to tell the time with so much of the light being blocked out by the monstrous trees of the old growth forest but that was the least of their concerns.

Eventually, the trees thinned out and revealed that star spangled banner along with the familiarity of a friendly camp. Soldiers on look out had spotted the limping duo and already that beautiful red cross that adorned medic uniforms had sprung into motion.

Finally…

Thomas couldn’t stop the grin that split his lips, his relief fueled by the sudden adrenaline of discovery. “It’s right there, Chris, hang in there—”

A yelp escaped Thomas as Christopher fell to the ground, dragging Thomas with him. Slightly dazed from the sudden motion, it took a moment for Thomas to realize what had happened. Logan used that time to try to wake up.

“Let me out!” he shouted to no one in particular. “I’ve seen it enough-I don’t want to! Let me—”

“No…” The syllable came out as a broken whimper as Thomas noticed the thick grove in the snow drawn by the warmth of Christopher’s blood. “NO!” he shrieked, not caring that his pants were growing wet, soaked by the viscus crimson sludge that had formed beneath Christopher’s body as Thomas rolled him on his back. “Hey hey hey hey hey, Chris you gotta-you gotta wake up Chris.”

Logan tried to look away, but no matter where he turned his head, the moving pictures followed, their voices thundering in his head.

This is the pain I bear….

Logan wished he had more will to bark a retort, but the pain in his head skyrocketed. He closed his eyes, but there Thomas was again, now cradling Christopher’s limp head in his lap. What may have made for a sweet photograph was drowned in the scarlet horror bleeding out in the snow. Christopher’s hand twitched upwards, reaching for Thomas. He let out a soft, adoring grunt and his hand fell before it reached its target. And, just as he had so many times before, Logan watched once more as that steely, clouded glaze slicked over familiar amber irises, killing the embers once and for all.

“Chris?” Thomas gently brushed his thumb beneath Christopher’s dull, still eyes as medics swarmed around them. “Hey, come on. Don’t-you can’t do this. You-you promised,” he sobbed, his voice breaking into a sorrowful mewl. “They’re right here, Chris. Right—” A choking wail sliced through his words as Thomas rocked back and forth, cradling Christopher’s head. “Please…no, no, no….Don’t-don’t….” he trailed off, tears raking down his cheeks in fast, grief-stricken torrents. “CHRISTOPHER!!!”

***