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As Melissa crashes into the ground, her brain quickly flicks through all of the mistakes she made.
She shouldn't have taken a box she had to carry with both hands, she shouldn't have put her weapon in his backpack so she could do that, she shouldn't have tried to take the shorter but more dangerous way home. And she shouldn't have tried to keep the box and run, even as she was cornered. She should've dropped the box earlier than she did, once a fight was inevitable. She should've watched where she was going.
But she did the things she shouldn't have, and didn't do the things she should've, and then a swing from a robot sent her flying.
Which wouldn't have been too bad, really. A short distance, probably some bruising, but she has had so much worse. She should be able to get up again, to fight or run or something.
Instead, a sharp pain shoots through her leg and she knows she screwed up.
She looks down to see a sharp, jagged piece of metal, and her leg, and an awful lot of red. She covers her mouth when nausea rises in her throat, but luckily it goes back down. The pain doesn't. She clutches at her leg, screwing her face up at the agony. When she takes her hands away, they are covered in shiny, slick red.
This is bad. She is stuck, the robots are advancing, she is alone. And her leg hurts so much that she can hardly think straight. A barely missed laser doesn't make her start thinking, it just makes her instincts kick in. Her stupid, stupid instincts.
She pulls away from the spikes. A scream is ripped from her throat, pure agony pulsing through her. The jagged edges catch on the edges of the wound and make it even worse; tears are pouring down her face like twin, gushing waterfalls and she can't even think straight enough to be embarrassed by that.
And tears aren't the only liquid that is emulating a waterfall, because a glance down at her leg tells her that she screwed up. Blood is everywhere, her blood. You don't remove an impaled object, she knows that. But she did it anyway, and now...
Now the world around her is darkening, any capacity for thought being quickly replaced with pain and dizziness. She reaches down to try and stem the bleeding from her leg, but with only her hands she knows it isn't working. Her hands are slick and damp and warm, and her face is damp and warm too, from tears. Her leg shrieks with agony, and she dimly notes that her mouth is doing much the same.
"Melissa? Melissa!" Is that Sara? Must be. Melissa doesn't know anyone else who can sound so worried and so sick of you at the same time. Every sentence Sara says to her these days is tinged with anger. She feels something like regret. Or maybe that's just the blood loss.
"Can you two handle the robots? Great. Meet me back at the base." Sara is ordering someone, two someones, maybe Melissa should look up to figure out who. But everything is blurry and weird looking, like she is looking from under the water, and when she tries to move a wave of dizziness knocks her back down. "No Melissa, stay still. Stay still." Sara is saying. She listens.
Sara is doing something to her leg, pressing something down. She tries to squirm away at the pressure on her throbbing leg. "No, this is to help you, stay still." Sara sounds fondly exasperated. "I need to stop the bleeding."
So, Melissa goes still, because when was the last time Sara spoke to her like that? And moving is a lot of effort, and it hurts, and lying still to let Sara do whatever is much easier. Something is wrapped around her leg, still putting pressure on. Her legs are raised, propped up on something.
The pain hasn't gone away. It seems to be getting worse, throbbing up her leg and through her body. She lets her eyes slip shut, enjoying the darkness after the blurriness of the world with her eyes open. Is someone saying her name? She should.. she should...
———
When Melissa wakes up, everything hurts. Her leg is throbbing, her throat hurts, and even her head is pounding. Which doesn't seem fair, really it should be one at a time.
She uses her elbows to prop herself up. She is lying on a bed, with plain white sheets. Even in the dark, she only needs a quick glance to recognise the resistance's medical room. It is small and not the best equipped, but it usually serves them well.
So how did she, no longer in the resistance, end up here?
She thinks back, which doesn't do wonders for her head but needs to be done. She had stolen a massive box of old weapons and parts, out of date and bound for the incinerator but useful to her. And she had been on her way home with them when...
The Normbots. Her fall. The metal.
Ah. She's in here because she got rescued. She curses herself at the amateur error as she struggles into a sitting position. She should go.
"Melissa?"
Sara steps into the room and Melissa sighs. Now it might be a while until she is allowed to leave, if she’s about to get a lecture. "Thanks for the save, Sara." She nods.
"You're welcome." Sara nods back. The tension between them is taut like a string, as it always is these days. "You should be fine. You're going to have a nasty scar, but other than that you're ok."
"Great." Melissa prefers it when their interactions stick to business, rather than spiralling off into their history. Hopefully Sara will keep it that way, because her head feels like someone gave a toddler some drumsticks and set them loose in there, and she is so not in the mood for anything. "I'll be off then."
"Just wait." Sara holds up a hand. She comes around to sit on the little plastic stool next to the hospital bed, and Melissa tenses. "Give it an hour or so, see how you're feeling."
Melissa scowls. "You can't make me stay, Sara."
"I can't, no." Sara agrees, voice tinged with impatience. "But use your brain and choose to stay, you just lost a lot of blood, and your leg must be in agony."
Her leg is in agony, which makes her even shorter than normal. "I'm not in your cell and I'm not your family, so why do you care again?"
"Melissa." That warning tone. Her last chance to stop an argument. Melissa pushes right through at top speed.
"Don't act like you actually care, Clover." Melissa's voice raises. That hurts her throat. She doesn't care, her condition lowering her inhibitions. This is going beyond their usual snipping, they are getting personal. "You told me that pretty clearly when you kicked me out-"
"I did not 'kick you out', you stormed out in a rage-"
"-And you told me that even more clearly when you said that I don't matter because I'm not family." Melissa finishes, hoping the anger is clearer in her voice than the upset. Her voice cracked, and she hopes Sara didn't notice.
If she did notice, she doesn't say anything, fixing Melissa with her toughest Leader Glare. Learnt well off of her mother. "I said that your opinion doesn't matter because you're not in our family." Sara reminds her, and admittedly that is true. "And I shouldn't have said that."
Ok, that's new. Melissa wonders if the blood loss is making her hallucinate. You can have auditory hallucinations, right? Because there is no way Sara actually just said that.
"Whether or not you're blood related to us doesn't matter. It never mattered." Sara continues. "You're my friend and Milo's best friend, and you lived with us for long enough. I'm not gonna try and define our relationship, it's not that simple, but the fact that you aren't my genetic sister didn't matter to that argument."
Shock smacks Melissa right across the face, her eyes burn, and for a moment she considers saying something meaningful or affectionate or even apologetic.
Sara promptly ruins it, however. "What mattered was that you were wrong, you were being reckless and stupid and if we had gone with your plan, you would've gotten us all killed."
Melissa lifts an arm to wiggle it in the air. When Sara gives her a funny look, she explains. "That's the moment. Flying away."
Sara laughs, amused and genuine. And Melissa laughs too, and for a moment they are in another time, another place.
Sara once again brings them back to here and now. "I shouldn't have said it." She repeats. "But, Melissa, you shouldn't have said what you said either."
Melissa looks down.
"Aren't you going to apologise too?" Sara prompts. And she should, she should, she knows she shouldn't have said it, she knows it was wrong and horrible and that she didn't mean it. She knows all of that, because she has thought about it over and over since that stupid argument.
And then she doesn’t. “My head hurts.” She says, and she isn’t lying. The first time in how long she and Sara have talked without snipping at each other, and she can barely think through the pain.
Sara sighs. “I’ll leave you alone. Y- h- the backpack is next to your bed, your stick is next to the door. Tell someone when you leave, Amanda should be around.”
And then she leaves. And Melissa is alone.
Her leg throbs and head pounds and for one tiny, weak moment she considers calling for Sara to come back. She would, she knows that she would. And that’s why she doesn’t call out for her. But she is in pain and so, so very tired of being alone.
She leans over and pulls up his backpack, hugging it close. Imagining she is hugging her best friend. Tears prick at her eyes and for once she doesn’t try to stop them. She misses him, a permanent hole in her heart that hurts constantly, hurts so much worse than the wound on her leg. She would take a hundred of those wounds just to rescue him.
And more selfishly, down in her core, she misses not being alone. She wants a hug, she wants to be comforted, she wants all sorts of things that she can’t have.
She has a mission, an important one. She will get Milo back if it kills her, or kills someone else. But she has been failing at that mission for years now, has driven everyone else away, has driven Sara away, because of her laser focus. Sara calls her reckless and maybe she’s right, but she can’t just give up, can’t stop pushing for even a moment. Even if it leaves her alone.