Work Text:
“Leslie hurry!” Kidman tugged Leslie’s arm, urging the shorter boy to keep up. Shorter man, she corrected herself. He wasn’t a child, and she couldn’t afford to treat him like one if they were going to survive.
“Hurry! Hurry…. Hurry, hurry.” Leslie shuffled quickly after her, bare feet slapping against the cold stone beneath them. Kidman smiled at Leslie’s mimicry before catching herself and schooling her face back into an expression of concentration. Leslie was a target. She couldn’t afford to get attached.
Kidman tried to assess the situation while she ran. She had a gun with four shots left, a flashlight, a defenseless target to protect, and judging from the groans she could hear behind them, a lot of haunted to deal with. Not an ideal situation. Hopefully the church she could see in the distance would offer some protection.
The pair reached the bottom of the stairs climbing to the church and Kidman tugged Leslie’s arm again, urging him to keep up. Leslie squawked and Kidman didn’t have enough time to stop running before she was suddenly dragging Leslie forward across the ground on his knees.
“Shit!” Kidman dropped down and tried to pull Leslie to his feet. Leslie was breathing harshly and there were tears pooling in his eyes. His hands were shaking and his legs wobbled dangerously before he was even halfway to standing.
“Hurts!” Leslie’s voice was watery and Kidman couldn’t help but wince in sympathy. Leslie’s left knee was a mess of blood and loose gravel where his pants leg had torn. The right pants leg was intact but she had no doubt his left knee hurt enough on its own. “Hurt hurt…... Hurts!” Leslie was rocking slightly back and forth as much as he could with Kidman supporting most of his weight.
“Leslie I know it hurts but we’re not safe.” Kidman’s voice was terse, any patience she might have had draining as she watched a haunted wielding an axe round the corner and catch sight of them at the foot of the stairs. “Shit!” Kidman kept one arm around Leslie, supporting him against her side. She grabbed her gun with her free hand and took aim.
Leslie screamed as the gun fired so close to his head and while Kidman’s first shot hit, the second went wide as she struggled to keep Leslie upright while he rocked in her grip, tears falling to dampen Kidman’s sleeve. The third and fourth shots both hit and the haunted exploded in a shower of gore. Kidman let out a breath and holstered her now empty gun.
Making a quick decision, she eased Leslie to the ground and ran for the axe the haunted had dropped. Snatching it up, she could see two more haunted approaching through the grave stones. Her stomach tightened and she tried to remind herself she’d been through worse already. She could get out of this, they just had to get to the church.
Kidman sprinted back to Leslie and tugged him to his feet. Leslie whimpered but stood, albeit shakily. “Leslie, we need to run.” Kidman gripped Leslie’s shoulders firmly, trying to make eye contact with the younger man.
Leslie stared firmly at the ground, refusing to raise his head, but he nodded. “Run. We need to run. Run. We need to-”
“Yes.” Kidman interrupted him. “Let’s go.” She began running again, keeping one hand on the axe and one hand holding Leslie’s. Leslie stumbled after her, barely keeping up. Kidman grit her teeth and debated trying to just carry Leslie, but decided against it. She could certainly hold her own, but she wasn’t strong enough that carrying Leslie would speed things up considerably. Better to be able to fight anything that caught up to them than to have her arms full.
The two of them reached the top of the stairs and Kidman pushed one of the heavy church doors open. Leslie shuffled past her into the church, still making pained sounds. Kidman felt her heart clench. Leslie really did act like a kid, despite being twenty five.
Kidman let the door swing shut and turned to Leslie who had wrapped his arms around himself and was rocking back and forth on his feet. “Leslie?” Kidman approached slowly, not wanting to startle him. “Leslie come sit down. Let me look at your knee.” Logically she knew there wasn’t time for this and that a skinned knee wasn’t important enough to stop moving for, but one look at Leslie’s tear stained face had her resolve crumbling.
Carefully telegraphing what she was going to do, Kidman placed her hand on Leslie’s shoulder and guided him to one of the pews that filled the inside of the church. Leslie sat without being prompted and Kidman knelt slowly in front of him. She reached to touch Leslie’s knee, but the boy shreaked and flinched away.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Kidman tried to reassure him. “Leslie look at me.” Leslie looked up at her face, but his eyes darted around, refusing to make eye contact. Eventually, he seemed to settle on looking at her chin, and Kidman figured that was good enough. “Leslie, I need to look at your knee. I know it hurts, but I can help make it better, okay?”
“Better?” Leslie glanced up at Kidman’s eyes before quickly looking away from her face entirely. “Hurts. It hurts, hurts. Make it better? You can make it better?”
“Yes Leslie. I’m here to help you. I’ll get you through this. I just need you to hold still for me, can you do that?” Kidman hoped her smile was reassuring. This wasn’t exactly something she did a lot.
“Hold still,” Leslie echoed. “Need you to hold still. Still, still.” He kept muttering to himself, but Kidman decided that was the best she was going to get and reached out again to Leslie’s knee. He broke off his muttering to whimper, but to his credit his knee barely moved.
“That’s really good Leslie. I’m going to pull out the gravel, okay? You’re doing great.” Patience was not Kidman’s strong suit, but apparently she had a soft spot for the pale boy in front of her.
“Good, good.” Leslie nodded. “Really good, really good, good goo-” He cut himself off with another high pitched whimper as Kidman began slowly picking the gravel out of his knee. Most of it seemed to just be stuck in the blood and not actually embedded in his skin, but the whole thing must have stung terribly.
Kidman tried to remember what people said to children when they were scared. She recalled a doctor calling her brave once and figured it couldn’t hurt. “You’re being very brave Leslie. I’m very proud of you. We’re almost done.” That was a lie, she still needed to find a way to wash the blood and bandage his knee, but Leslie didn’t need to know that. “Alright, that’s the last of the rocks. You did so good Leslie. I just need you to be brave for a little longer.”
“Little longer,” Leslie nodded again, shifting subtly back and forth on the pew in a rocking motion. “Brave….. A little longer... Brave.”
“That’s right.” Kidman glanced around the church, hoping to maybe find something helpful, but the church offered nothing but wooden pews and a crumbling marble statue. Damn. Technically, Leslie would be fine as he was, but he was being so trusting and Kidman couldn’t help but want to help him. Target or not, he was sweet. Mind made up, Kidman glanced down at her own shirt. Rolling her eyes Kidman tore a strip off the bottom. That had been a really nice shirt. Then again, none of this was real.
“Alright Leslie, just hold still.” Unfortunately there was nothing to use to wash the blood off his knee, but she could at least stop the wound from getting any dirtier. Moving slowly, Kidman pulled up Leslie’s pants leg and wrapped the strip of shirt around his knee. She tied it in a knot behind his leg and rolled his pants leg back down. “Good as new.” She straightened back up and looked down at Leslie.
Leslie looked up at her and forced his eyes to meet hers. He was smiling for the first time since Kidman had found him. “Thank you.” His voice was still shaky but his happiness showed on his face.
“You’re welcome.” Kidman felt herself smiling back at the boy. Man, she corrected herself. Leslie was an adult. “It’s what I’m here for.” She held out a hand to help Leslie stand. “Ready to go?”
Leslie nodded and took her hand. “Go. Ready to go.” Kidman felt warmth bloom in her chest. It was a good thing it was her job to protect Leslie, otherwise she might compromise the mission by choosing to protect him anyway.
“Alright, then let’s get started.”