Chapter Text
Chris doesn’t have any feeling in his fingers.
He knows that it isn’t a big deal considering everything he’s been through, but he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like each of his friends were a part of his body, and when they died, the nerves that connected him to them severed and left him numb.
He isn’t sure if Mike feels the same way, but the other survivor keeps looking at the place where two of his fingers should be and continually traces the empty space with the index finger on his other hand.
Mike got the visual loss of the trip and Chris shouldn’t complain about the invisible emptiness in his joints.
“Hey, Mike.” Chris’s voice sounds strange – rough and weak at the same time, like a beaten dog that still has some fight in him. It’s the first time he’s spoken since they were rescued three hours earlier.
Mike has answered the entirety of the questions thrown at them by the authorities, stance protective and voice shaky as he always seems to position himself between Chris and any person who approaches them.
“They’re going to ask about everything soon. You know that, right? What should we say?”
Mike doesn’t look up from his missing appendages, and simply shrugs. “The truth.”
“What about…” Chris doesn’t know how to talk about Emily and the fact that she’d be sitting right here if Mike hadn’t sent a bullet through her skull. The police, however, won’t have a problem discussing the intimate details of her death, and Chris doesn’t want to get Mike into any more trouble than necessary. Their stories need to match up for his sake. “What about what happened in the safe room?”
“She was infected. I did what I had to do. That’s what you tell them.”
Chris still hasn’t told Mike that they were wrong about the bite. Maybe it’s fucked up to keep such a big secret, but he knows that telling it will be harder on Mike than keeping it will be on him. The other teen thought he was protecting them. He did what he had to do, just like he said, and that should be all that matters.
“They won’t believe us.”
Mike finally looks up, a simple small glance in Chris’s direction, as he sinks down so that his elbows rest against the tops of his thighs. The expression on his face steals Chris’s breath for a second.
He’s never seen another person so broken.
Mike’s face is dirty – cheeks covering in flecks of dried mud and wounds still bleeding a little. His eyes are sunken in, one painted with the swirling hue of a purple bruise and the other underlined with a black bag. Even his clothes are covered in blood and dirt – his white tank top a discarded canvas of gore and the green jacket that Chris doesn’t remember him wearing is full of holes and singed on the edges.
It’s not the dirt or the blood or the bruised skin that startles Chris so much, however, but the way that Mike’s eyes seem empty as they drown under a teary gloss that refuses to fall below his eyelids. They’re the same eyes that the stranger had after he died - his head resting on the ground like discarded trash.
It’s unsettling to see that kind of emptiness on a living person.
“Of c-course they won’t.” Mike’s lips twitch a little and he shakes his head once before slapping the leather upholstery of the bench he’s currently occupying with a rage that must’ve been just under the surface this whole time. The loud pop echoes through the police station and has a few officers on their toes.
Chris shakes his head at them, letting them know that Mike isn’t a threat - just an angry, broken boy who spent the last ten hours learning that nothing in the world can remain safe. A few officers keep their eyes on the two teens, but the others continue with their work like nothing happened. This bothers Chris more the fact that this all still feels like a nightmare. These people who are supposed to help them are ignoring them like they are criminals waiting in a cell instead of two fragile survivors trying to situate themselves into an environment that’s too bright and too loud.
Chris doesn’t know what to say to Mike when he doesn’t even have the ability to think properly, so he just nods and drops the subject to watch the clock on the far wall of the waiting room tick past 9:00 am.
There is a question he’s been wanting to ask, though, since they sat in the snow watching the lodge burn. He still isn’t sure if Mike has the ability to answer.
He struggles with wanting to know and not wanting to cause more pain. Truthfully, he doesn’t just want to know, he needs to know – it’s eating him up inside. He waits a total of ten minutes, counting each second, before finally opening his mouth to send waves of uncertainty across the room.
“What happened to Josh?” Chris leans forward to meet Mike at eye-level. “Did you ever find him?”
Mike’s silence is deafening - his attention focused on the tip of his boot as he grinds it into the grimy tiles that separate him from Chris.
“Mike, please, man.” Chris places a single hand on Mike’s shoulder, begging him to acknowledge his request. “I need to know.”
“Sam and I found him.” Mike rubs at the front of his face, smearing the blood on his lip - his hands pressed together in an arch. “She took him.”
“Sam took him?”
“No.” Mike looks Chris dead in the eyes - his face hard as stone. “The wendigo.”
“A-and?” Chris blinks in confusion. Wendigo don’t take; they kill like animals.
That’s what the Stranger said, and he knew everything about the Wendigo. He spent his days and nights hunting them.
Why would he lie?
Mike takes to silence again, but it says everything that Chris needs to know. His entire body tenses up as he realizes what that silence means. He thinks back to the last time he saw Josh - the last time they talked. He’d been so cruel.
Chris hit his best friend. He knocked him out with a plank of wood, like he was a monster. That was the last memory they had together.
What did Josh think of him before he..?
It can’t be true! It can’t. Chris can still feel the palm of his hands. That should be Josh.
Josh is his palms.
Josh is still alive.
“Mike!” Chris practically jumps to his feet, voice loud and fierce as he hovers overhead, feeling bigger than he ever has. His chest trembles and his hands are clenched into tight fists at his sides. “You went after him! You didn’t leave him! You wouldn’t do that!”
Mike doesn’t even flinch.
“Fuck… You said you would protect us, man! All of us!” Chris grabs Mike’s collar, pulling him forward so he would at least look at him. He needs answers, and no matter what, Mike was going to give them to him. “That includes Josh! You don’t get to decide who is worth saving and who isn’t!”
The other boy lazily rises to his feet to meet Chris’s pull on him, but he simply hangs from the piece of fabric Chris rips away from him like the meat that hung from those hooks. Chris shakes him back and forth, but Mike no longer has any fight. He’s like a ragdoll, stitched up pieces of discarded material.
Mike doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t let out a single word.
Chris breaks to that silence, tears clinging to his eyelashes as he attempts to hide his face. He’s not supposed to cry. He isn’t a child anymore.
No more innocence or joy or hope finds residence in his heart. Mike looks like a mirror now - they both are shattered.
“I’m sorry.” The words that Mike finally speaks sound hollow as his arms pull Chris into a tight embrace that has no comfort in it. The compassion that Mike tries so desperately to display, despite his own numbness, does nothing to help Chris’s distress. If anything, it makes it worse. “It should’ve been me instead of him, Chris. It should’ve been me.”
The blond is sobbing once the other boy’s arms are around him and his hands grip for Mike like he’s being chased by the Wendigo all over again. A brunet boy is the only one who can save him now, but Mike isn’t that boy.
Chris agrees with him - no matter how sick it makes him feel. It should’ve been him instead.
If Josh had survived, Chris could carry on. He would be able to get over all this - maybe not now, but someday. Someday he could look at Josh and feel content with the ghostly remains of his fingers.
He wishes that Mike was the one left in the mine and he wishes that Josh was with him now. Despite everything Mike has done, he isn’t Josh.
Mike can never be Josh.
“Shit…” Chris pulls away without warning and falls to the bench Mike was sitting on before his outburst. He still can’t control the sounds coming from the back of his throat, but he occupies himself with trying to wipe away the physical proof of his broken soul. “We killed him. Josh was sick… We killed him.”
Mike stands in his spot for a moment, his gaze somewhere off in the distance like the solution to all their problems are on one of the dingy walls of a police station. His Adam’s apple rises and falls as he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No… I killed him, Chris. Not you.”
Finally sitting again, Mike leans against the back of the bench beside Chris, but he doesn’t try to comfort him anymore. He simple starts playing with the sleeve of his jacket.
Chris insists on contact as he leans his head sideways and rests it against Mike’s shoulder. He focuses on controlling his crying. It’s awkward at first, but Chris needs some kind of human contact right now. Even if Mike isn’t the person he wants, he’s here and that has to count for something.
It helps that Mike doesn’t only let him be so close, but he embraces the contact. Pulling Chris under his arm so he can run his hand through Chris’s hair, Mike seems to need this just as much as he does. The awkwardness starts to subside with each gentle pet, and the blond starts to lose himself to exhaustion.
Mike’s hands are rough, but being in another person’s embrace chases away the thoughts about how hollow he feels. He falls asleep, only for a few minutes, and forgets what he’s doing here.
For the first time since they escaped, Chris is glad that he’s numb.
The comfort doesn’t last long, however, because after what feels like only a few minutes, Mike is shaking him awake. Everything is blurry, and a dull pain radiates from the back of his skull, but he somehow retains the ability to make out a police officer standing beside the bench who motions for him to follow her to an interrogation room.
Chris hasn’t had the chance to prepare himself for this and it terrifies him. What if they ask about Ashley? What if they blame him for everything?
He is well aware that he can’t talk about what happened last night and on instinct, he turns to Mike for guidance and protection like a small child needs from a parent.
“It’ll be okay.” The other boy’s expression is a little softer than it was before Chris dozed off, but something insincere forces him to smile as he pats Chris on the back. He keeps looking at the officer with an unsure side-glance and sits up so he appears taller and stronger. “Just tell them the truth. I’ll be here when you get out. Promise.”
Chris hesitates, anxiety still churning his stomach, but he isn’t a child and Mike isn’t his father. He’s nineteen and he needs to tell his story - for Sam and Ashley and most of all, for Josh. He stretches out and gets up to trail after the officer. The heels of his boots clack against the tiles and he counts his steps so that his breathing is in rhythm with them. His arms are heavy and they dangle at his sides as he waddles his way to a big green door.
When he reaches it, the officer makes a gesture for Chris to enter first. She has a motherly air about her which helps put Chris at ease but he still isn’t completely convinced that he can do this, so he glances over his shoulder at Mike. Their eyes meet, and Chris smiles a little despite the pricks of fear all over his skin.
Mike smiles back, and Chris tries to save that image to his brain's memory banks. Mike's spirit harbors enough strength for both of them - Chris just has to answer a few questions.
That’s all. Mike will be there waiting the whole time and Chris can fall back into his friendly embrace once the authorities get the information they want. The two boys might not be compatible as friends, but they’re a team. They’re the last remaining members of their friend group and they wouldn’t abandon each other.
Mike made a promise, and Chris needs to believe him.
But after an hour of being berated by question after question, the welcoming party Chris receives is an empty waiting room. The spot where Mike sat now feels cold to the touch and Chris chooses to lie down on the bench.
He doesn’t sleep like he did so easily in Mike’s arms. Instead he hears Josh, and he hears Ashley. They beg for him to save them.
Chris reminds them that he can’t do that. He has no power anymore, if he ever had any to begin with.
How could he save the dead when he couldn’t even keep the living by his side?