Archive of Our Own ^beta

They fight hard, they don’t give up, surrender isn’t on the cards.

They are breaking. Troy’s cracked ribs can’t heal, fractured again too soon. Noah has severed tendons in his arm and it lies heavy by his side. Emma’s crushed fingers won’t bend, she can’t keep anything in her grip. Jake winces when he moves, pelvis shattered. Orion’s limp is impossible not to notice. With every step Gia feels her knee screaming in pain, the scrape of bone on bone, but like the rest she grits her teeth and pushes away the black clouds that seep into her vision. They are Earth’s last defense. They don’t feel like enough.

Outside the skyline grows dark, humanity beginning to blink out of existence. The death toll ticks higher every day, people run from the cities, from the destruction, unable to do anything but hide. The sand slips between Gia’s toes, cold, clings to her skin. She holds Emma’s shoulder tight in the quiet, says nothing about the tears that silently slip from her eyes, too used to their presence. This is what their nights have become, no sleep, no rest. Regret and the weight of their burden are tendrils of smoke that wrap around their lungs and push the air from their bodies. Emma’s breath comes out ragged when she speaks. They are fighting a war they can’t possibly win.

I wish I knew how to make this stop.

Troy tries to be their rock, he leads as best he can, but the fissures that began on the inside start to break skin, break psyche, leaving holes in their minds. Noah gets quieter by the day, withdrawing from them, turning them away. It fuels Jake’s anger, his importance diminished, helpless. He pushes and pushes until Troy has him by the throat. Emma’s shouting, attempting to pull them off one another, calling for Orion, Noah, anyone to help. Troy’s lip is split, nose broken and bleeding. His hands are so tight around Jake’s neck that his knuckles are turning white.

It’s shock, maybe, or fear, Jake’s eyes rolling back, arms struggling against Troy’s grip. Gia panics. Her hit connects with the hollow of Troy’s eye, sends him sprawling, fingers instantly loose. Emma winces and falls back, running to Jake’s side as he slumps against the wall.

There’s blood on Gia’s still clenched first.

She bends to help Troy up, face already swelling, sunken eyes looking more hollow in his skull. He takes her hand, pulls himself up, shoulders brushing. He whispers in her ear, words echoing around her head. When she’s alone her eyes burn, sobs choking in her chest.

I don’t know how to do this anymore. I can’t help them.

They are pinballs in a machine. Trapped. Surrounded. She will do anything to keep them from falling. They are all the strength she has left. She prays she won’t let them down.

Noah retreats further, always tinkering with something, desperately searching for a way for them to get the upper hand. He lets her in, sometimes, door open but an inch, an implicit invitation for Gia alone. They sit in silence, but for the tapping of Noah’s keys or the clink of metal. There’s a lot of silence, now. When they speak they only dig their holes deeper. There’s not much to talk about, all they do is fight, and it’s slowly becoming clear that their efforts are in vain.

He looks tired, but then again they all do, seemingly endless battles etched on their faces and their skin. She watches him frequently, but he never looks up, and Gia knows she’s only there so he doesn’t feel so alone. A small sigh draws her away from her book, eyes meeting, Noah’s smile sad and slow. She thinks his eyes are shining, wet, but it might be a trick of the light. His question ricochets through her, jarring already fragile bones. Gia snakes her arms around his shoulders, gentle, timid, burying her face in the crook of his neck as he slumps against her.

We’re not going to win, are we?

The tide doesn’t turn slowly. One moment they are the resistance, the next they are quelled. It’s cruel, how one battle decides their fate, decimated in an instant. They’ve been falling apart for so long, the ties that bind too frayed to keep them together.

The Armada takes over. The Power Rangers lose.

Others come, the legacy that they were supposed to uphold stronger in the hands of those who have time on their side, more focused than a bunch of teenagers trying to find their place in the world.

Time escapes her. She struggles to connect events, a zigzag of lines, a maze of corners. Her abdomen aches, and then there are stitches, blood oozing through bandages. She doesn’t remember what happened, how it got there. Her throat is hoarse, raw and prickling when she breathes. She thinks she screams. The burning in her eyes won’t go away, there are ties around her wrists and ankles, and she thrashes against them, rips the needle from her arm.

Eventually she is let from the bed. She sits on the floor, so desperate to feel solid ground. Spending hours awake, seeking a solution to what plagues her mind. Something is wrong, she knows something is wrong, but she can’t find it. Half her consciousness missing, beyond her reach.

There is a man with blonde hair, rough hands and a shy smile. He calls her by name, but Gia doesn’t remember him, doesn’t respond, voice locked in her head. His jacket was silver once. Now it’s black. In the shadows hide monsters. They try to hold her down, gouge holes in her skin. They are strong and she is weak. The light slips away.

She walks through the labyrinth of rooms, dragging her hand on the wall to keep herself stable. Jake smiles at her like he used to, rage gone from his eyes. The bruises around his neck have faded, his knuckles healed. He’s so different, now, but he looks the same.

She finds Emma in a field, camera around her neck, bright and cheerful as she once was. The wildflowers scrape at her ankles, rough under bare feet. They smell artificial, the petals too harsh, but Emma threads them into her hair, her laughter like chimes in the wind.

She daydreams with Troy, dozing in the heat, watching the clouds morph and swirl. His hands are strong, his words warm, but the mass gets denser, blocking out the sun.

Noah still looks sad, even when they’re all together. She can’t figure out why.

The shadows creep slowly, they loom, they swallow her whole. The darkness takes her.

The flowers in the field become ash and twigs under her feet, the trees are gone and the buildings sparse, the sky too dark. She doesn’t understand what’s in her mind. The monsters keep coming.

Time starts to change, she has no control, she sees things she can’t explain.

At night Jake’s fingers are cold and his touch prickles like thorns on feet, barbs in hair. His lips never quite reach her skin, skirting, looming, contactless. His body isn’t right, she’s scared to look too close, to see the hollows of his eyes and smell the blood on his breath. There’s a disconnect, his pulse slowing to nothing, the stutter of his eyelids. Gia’s in his arms, or maybe he’s in hers, light flickering under his skin. There’s a final beat, an inhale that shudders through his chest.

When she threads her fingers into Emma’s they feel too much like her own. She tries to lean into her, met with empty space. Emma coughs and splutters, Gia’s hands are warm and wet and red. Her heart is cracked within her chest, but Emma’s smiling, head lolling back, suddenly limp and foreign.

Her feet pound heavy on the concrete between them, space too wide, distance too far. He stands upright, strong, a leader, waiting for her to come to him. Troy pulls her in, wraps his arms tight around her shoulders but it’s wrong. They are loose by his sides, she wasn’t fast enough, he is already gone. His eyes are glass and his mouth is slack. His knees bend and she catches him. Gia’s falling, unable to take the weight. The hands that ease her down are almost too gentle for her to feel.

Noah’s face shines in the glow of the wreckage. Tear tracks are streaked on his skin. His limbs look unnatural, askew. She runs from the twitch of his fingers, the gasp in his throat. She leaves him broken, where he cannot feel her cold.

Burgundy roses blossom on his shirt, stretching out, swallowing the grey. She feels serene, watching them spread, slowly flowing on to the ground. He had looked hopeful when he saw her, but now he seems worried, his hands reaching behind her, grabbing at something she can’t see. The roses are warm, they grow quicker now, reaching up and rooting themselves on her body. Her skin feels like ice. The light is blinding.

She holds conversations with herself, with no-one, with ghosts that won’t cease to haunt. Mouths the words she thinks they say, touches her own skin in place of theirs. She fights him, struggles from his grip, cries that he is a monster, begs him to leave her alone.

Her eyes are wide, sockets deep, purple, all that remains of colour on her skin. She sobs apologies, curls into him, whispers that she wishes he weren’t dead.

There are moments where her sanity snaps back into place, recognition blooming. Noah holds her as she screams into his chest, as she claws reality from her mind.

He thinks it’s kinder, that her memory comes in fragments and her head tricks her. He remembers each moment, burnt into him with perfect clarity.

The blade shoved through Jake’s abdomen, Gia pressing her hands to the gash, desperately trying to stop the bleeding. Jake tucks her hair behind her ear, whispering broken words as the life fades from his eyes. Her scream rips at her throat, tears clinging to her eyelashes, dripping down her cheeks. Emma has to drag Gia from his body, and she crumples, blonde curls obscuring her face, cries muffled against her knees. Noah lifts her up, she’s lighter than he recalled, small and limp in his arms. Troy slips Jake’s eyelids shut, presses their foreheads together as they whisper their goodbyes. They are splintered.

Emma looks fine, she gets up, walks on stumbling legs. It’s hours before they notice anything is wrong. She sways, steps forward, unsteady, Troy catching her as she drops to her knees. They help move her behind a tree, to relative safety, setting her down gently in the singed grass. Her eyes are unfocused, bloodshot. She coughs, ugly, hacking sounds that rip through her body. Blood drips from her mouth and Gia wipes it away, terrified. It bubbles up in her throat, drowning her lungs, choking her. It seems to go on forever. Gia never lets go of her hands. Emma smiles, kind and soft, peaceful. Then she’s gone.

They lost Troy, somewhere between one wave and the next, Noah’s fighting back to back with Gia and Orion and suddenly she’s gone, running. Troy is pale, his legs are shaking, there’s a dark stain seeping through his shirt, so close to that bright red it’s almost invisible. She reaches him, wraps her arms around his shoulders, but he stays still. Gia shakes at his shoulders and he falls forward, into her, knees bending from the weight. They hold her up as he curls over, spike lodged through his back, the tip jutting out of his stomach. They leave him where he fell. They don’t have time to mourn.

There’s an explosion, flames licking at the air, knocking him back. Noah knows his leg is broken, feels the bone snap and the pain shoot. He looks around frantically, searching for a flash of yellow or silver in the destruction, trying to push himself up. His arm pops from the socket and he sinks back, rubble digging into his spine, body useless.

The clearest is how he found them, metal beam piercing them straight through, collapsed, blood swirling in a dark pool beneath their bodies. His breath catching in his throat, the cry that never made it out. Gia’s weak pulse under his fingers, Orion wincing awake at his touch, Noah’s tears slipping on to his shirt.

They have matching scars, but Gia keeps forgetting them.

He cried, the first time, when she beat her fists on his chest and kicked him away; couldn’t sleep after they had to strap her to the bed to keep her from hurting herself, from ripping the stitches holding her together. He doesn’t cry now. His heart hammers in his chest and there’s a tremor in his hands, but he holds himself together, understands her fear.

Orion deals with it better than Noah ever could- he supposes it’s because he’s now so used to death, destruction has become commonplace to him. Noah knows it’s never going away, the emptiness inside him, the hole they left in his heart. The sling is gone, the cast cut from his arm, the pins removed from his leg. He still feels broken.

There’s some comfort to be found, Orion’s rough hands warm on his skin, a shoulder to lean against when he can’t keep it all in. He feels responsible- like there’s something more he could do, could have done, something that could have helped them, could have helped her. But Orion has been there, he knows how it aches, feels the same way.

Noah tries not to lose track of time, scrapes tally marks on to the wall. He watches his bruises fade from black to red, doesn’t linger on the colours that once meant so much. The days tick by, nights stretching endlessly, longer when she screams- pounding the walls, begging shadows. They take the IV from her arm, unravel the bandages at her waist, but still Gia’s sanity only comes in fits and bursts, never staying too long.

They keep watch outside her door at night, scared more fights will come, worried she won’t be able to discern the real monsters from the ones in her mind. She sleeps on the floor, a tiny, shaking ball. Noah thinks she might be afraid they’ll confine her again.

He hates what they’ve done to her. He hates what the world has made him. He hates the scars that stretch over his limbs, mapping the last days of his life, reminding him what he has lost. But he won’t hate them. He resents their deaths- how they plague his mind, how they couldn’t be saved- but he could never hate them.

There are small markers in the decimated land. Not graves- they have nothing to bury, bodies lost to the flames. They aren’t much, stones laid out with crude names carved into them, but Noah sits by them. He tells them about Orion, how he wishes they’d gotten to know him better, how thankful he is to have someone. He whispers about Gia, lies that she’s getting better, that he has hope. Noah knows it’s stupid, that they can’t hear him, but it makes him feel better. It gives him a sense of being less alone.

He’s sitting cross-legged, recounting the week, apologising for not being around. They’ve been trying to rebuild, to find some semblance of normalcy in the wake of the invasion- Noah thinks it might be working, he knows these things take time, but it feels good, to have some purpose again. He hears Orion come up behind him, feet crunching in the dry earth, the barely noticeable drag of his crooked ankle. Noah doesn’t expect the watery film over his eyes, the breathlessness that means he’s been running.

Orion’s smile doesn’t falter when Noah questions his presence, though maybe there’s a slight movement of concern. Noah’s careful not to stand too fast, his leg’s still not quite right, he doesn’t want to fall and disturb the stones.

His words are fast, stumbling. Noah takes a breath. He tries not to choke. Gia’s been awake almost every day for weeks. It doesn’t mean anything.

But Orion ran here. He came to find him, even knowing that Noah wanted to be alone. He takes another breath, waits for Orion to clarify. He keeps his hope small in his heart.

She’s asking for you.

His legs can’t carry him fast enough.

Gia’s all bone, muscle atrophied and barely eating, but she looks fuller, somehow, more alive. Her eyes are wide and curious, all he can see of her face from how she’s tucked herself into a ball, arms around her knees. She straightens her back when Noah enters the room, cautious and untrusting, and Noah supposes he’s given her good reason to be.

She sounds scared when she says his name, her voice tiny. He walks towards her, slowly, perching himself on the edge of the bed, trying not to startle her.

“Are you real?”

She touches his shoulder, staring more at her fingers than at him. Her lips twitch, wary. Noah can’t help the tears that spring from his eyes, or how he bundles her up in his arms, but mercifully, she lets him. Gia’s fingers grab at his shirt, anchoring him to her, newfound warmth inside his chest.

Orion cards his fingers through her hair as she mumbles into Noah’s chest, lays a hand heavy and reassuring on Noah’s back while he tells her they know, whispers that they’ve always been here. That they always will be.

She traces the scar that went unnoticed on her abdomen, breathes realisation when Orion shows her his. They fill in the blanks that Gia’s head erased, but she knows most of it, she has for a while.

Gia left wildflowers in Emma’s hair, a ragged halo. She pressed a kiss to Jake’s cheek, a final touch, reaching out in the fog. Her mouth stumbled around a broken goodbye to Troy, falling on already deaf ears.

She runs her fingers against the sharp corners of the rocks, keeping her voice low. I miss you. I love you. But they are just stones.

They leave the home that was never theirs, searching for their place in this new world.

Noah sees her eyes cloud at the blooms in spring, knows she hears Emma’s laughter, like birdsong, as the petals shift in the breeze. There are boys who play with balls in the park, and she turns her head away, seeing Jake’s smile in each of their faces. She echoes Troy’s strength and closes her eyes, afraid of the shadows that loom from the trees.

They don’t wear their colours anymore, but they stay together, bound in a way few can understand.

They are halved. They will never be whole again.