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It's been about 3 days since your hands got wrecked in that stupid experiment, but it felt like 3 months. Under your friends’ watchful eyes, especially Jet’s, you couldn’t do anything besides resting, healing, and the occasional chores of the diner - and it made you feel so useless. It was even more frustrating that they were right - you literally couldn’t do most things you usually do, no driving, no cooking, and worst of all, no shooting. Your hands were getting better with each day, but still hurt and had a new slight tremor, making sure you couldn’t be of any use to your friends besides patching up big wounds or cleaning. You couldn’t sit in the goddamn diner anymore, you wanted so bad to be helpful.
Luckily, the siblings were just about to go on a supply run. You decided tagging along to a simple run could finally make you somewhat useful, needing desperately to go out and do something. Besides, you missed the siblings. Going on runs with them was so much fun, with Party driving like a maniac and Kobra picking the best music, small raids on abandoned stores and ambushing BLI trucks were just so good.
Unfortunately, your friends had some reservations about this. They were worried about you, asking you’d maybe sit this one out and just let time do its thing, wait until you’d at least had the initial scarring - and it was very sweet of them, but you wanted to help so bad. Being injured is one thing, everyone gets in a clap or an accident, but the need to help your friends and being denied that was eating you from the inside.
“It’s a simple run, what could even go wrong? besides, i’ll be going with Party and Kobra, they can cover me if anything goes wrong” you told them, trying your best to sound nonchalant and cool. This seems to please Party and Ghoul, Kobra’s signature poker face unmoving, but Jet still wasn’t sure. Yes, she knew you were capable and smart, but as a medic they knew what your condition was - and he was not thrilled to let you jump blaster first into this run.
“I trust you all, but I’m not quiet about this run, I have a weird feeling about all this. Take the medkit with you please, and you-” she turns to you, putting on their best stern face, “no shooting, under any circumstances. you and i both know you can’t, and that it’ll only hurt you”
He turns to face the sibling. “have fun and come back in one piece” they add with a smile, earning him a smile and an eye roll from Party. Having gotten the approval of everyone now, you go and grab your stuff to get ready. A small bag of supplies, the medkit, your blaster and some bad luck beads should do the job.
Before you go out, you stop to hug Ghoul and Jet (to the best of your ability). They both hug you back enthusiastically, Ghoul squishing you slightly (not that you care, it’s the best feeling in the world), and when they let go they make you promise again not to do anything stupid. “And if you do try anything stupid, I’m letting Ghoulie drive all your next raids” Jet adds with a smile, as you watch the shit-eating grin spread on Ghoul’s face. You’re quick to promise them you’ll behave, the flashbacks to the last time you rode with Ghoul in the trans am still haunting you.
The drive to the abandoned convenience store isn’t long, but you couldn’t care less. It’s fun and you finally feel free and of use, screaming along to the song with the siblings, while party drives like a goddamn insane person through zone 6, scouting for your destination.
“here!”
Party parks the Am in an old gas station, long abandoned and out of use, but still sporting a nice convenience store to loot. They turn it off, grab their blaster and usher you and Kobra out. The store’s doors are locked, and after a bit of trying and failing to knock them open with kicks, Party sighs in frustration and lets you blow the doors away with a new prototype (you’ve learned your lesson and made sure this one won’t melt your skin off beforehand). It works, blasting the doors clean off the hinges, and you giggle happily and note to tell Ghoulie that not only did it work, it slayed. maybe even give him a kiss on his adorable nose if you’re already there.
Kobra offers that you guys split and take what you need, and Party and you agree. Rummaging through the aisles for not-expired food, you’d found the jackpot - about a kilo of boxes of your and Jet’s favourite cereal, still sealed and not expired (well, only for about 2 more weeks). You squeal of happiness and run over to Kobra to show him what you’d found, and he shows you all the bandages and band-aids he found for the medkit, even some near ancient pain killer pills that weren't BLI products. You prayed to the witch they work and packed them in the kit.
Party comes out of their aisle with snacks, and Kobra smiles wide when they show him that they’d found a pile of one of his favourite snacks. You look at the siblings struggling to hold all the prizes they’ve looted, struggling to do so yourself, and everything feels right again. This is how it should be - going on runs and driving at max speed and looting snacks with your best friends, late night talks in the diner, stargazing out near route guano-
The plasma blast that almost hits Kobra interrupts your thought.
In this one second of shock, Kobra drops you to the ground to protect you while he and Party look for cover for you three. Party signals to him that he found a spot, and he helps you get up silently and sneak there while the squad of dracs inches their way into the store. You count about 10 of them, all armed with their own blasters and looking for you. For Party. For Kobra.
You’ve had claps before, sure, but now you felt so helpless, so useless. The anxiety was beginning to take hold and making your already aching arms lose their grip. You curse to yourself, trying to salvage this but your arms and chest are so heavy. You lost the battle with your arms, as you felt yourself dropping the medkit, watching it slip from your bandaged hands like in slow motion. The sound alerts the dracs to your location, and you curse loudly, picking the kit back up and fumbling for your blaster. You duck and hide behind a display as the siblings do their best to protect you and each other.
They are amazing in action. You knew that already, you’ve seen them during claps before, but it never fails to amaze you how good they truly are - shooting and ducking with so much ease and grace. You want to help so bad, just cover them once, let them reach the Am easier - but the pain and Jet’s warnings flood your brain. You shouldn’t. Just hide and stay where you are.
Party can’t see the drac that’s coming towards them. You figure it out before they can spot it, and you know that by the time they do, they’ll meet the witch. The drac takes out its blaster and aims for Party, and you know you should do something, anything. You push all better judgement from your brain, focused solely on your friend’s life, and take out your blaster.
The pain sears through your hands like hot iron, waves of hurt flooding you as you reach for the trigger and try your best to hold it right and make the delicate moves, realising just how hard it was going to be. You push through, aim at the drac and pull the trigger, but the recoil hits you like a bomb - you can feel the barely healed wounds in your arm bursting open, the blood on your fingers starting to seep. The pain makes you shift your arms and changes the direction of the plasma, and while you did hit the drac, the blast also hit Party’s arm. They yell in pain and do their best to keep shooting, getting two more dracs with their good arm, but you can already see it’s taking a toll on them.
“Kobes, cover me! I’m so so sorry…” you yell at the taller sibling, and he nods, protecting you while you run to patch his sibling up. There are only 2 or 3 dracs left at this point, and you still attempt to get one on your way to Party, but your arms are useless and bleeding. No way you could help Kobra now.
“Fuck, Party, I’m so fucking sorry, let me patch your arm” You say in a choked voice, doing your best to blink the tears away while attempting to sit party down. They resist and try to stay standing, getting one more drac before collapsing to the floor from exhaustion and blood loss. You take the opportunity and open the kit, quickly taking off their dead pegasus jacket and inspecting their arms and chest.
You first turn your attention to their arm and the wound you caused, inspecting it while the guilt and shame bubble in your chest and threaten to let the tears flow. They aren't doing that bad, the heat of the plasma mostly cauterising the wound, but they still need some patching. Once you’ve finished addressing that, you inspect them for more blasts and wounds. You find several cuts to their side from the fall, some bruises and red marks forming as well. Ignoring their incessant “im okay, i don’t need help” pleas, you bandage them and put some band-aids on the cuts, making sure to clean the wounds up well.
Kobra is leaning above the two of you, noting your shaky arms and the bandages that started to get stained with blood, but saying nothing. Once you’re finished with their sibling, Kobra lets you give him a thorough cheek as well, ending in only a couple band-aids on the various scratches he sported. He lends you a hand so you can stand up, and you two start hauling the supplies to the trans am. On your second trip, Party is slowly standing up and asks to help, and by the third they’re helping too. After about 4 trips from the shop to the Am you seem satisfied, making sure you have enough supplies for the next little while, but also some space for Party to sit in the back.
Kobra insists on driving, as he pretty much is the only one in the group fit for it. You and Party protest a little bit, but in truth you’re grateful, as the pain from the re-opened wounds in your arms begins to take over. Party complains about Kobra’s “slow ass driving” all the way back to the diner, though they do it with a smile on their face.
Back in the diner, Jet is pacing around anxiously. “I don't know Ghoulie, something about that whole thing doesn't sit right with me. I have this terrible gut feeling, and they should’ve been back by now…” Ghoul rarely saw Jet like that, she was the most caring person he knew, and he knew the worry for you already ate them from the inside - now that you and the siblings were away, possibly in a clap, they were only getting worse. It was driving him insane, seeing Jet so stressed out, and honestly the pacing was making him jumpy as all fuck.
“They’ll be back soon Jet, you and I both know runs can take a long time sometimes. Also stop fucking pacing like that, you know what it does to me” Ghoul says, trying his best to stay seated and calm while he brings Jet down from this spiral he’s plummeting head first into. He won’t tell Jet that, but he’s super worried as well - he wasn’t quite sure about your motives for going out for this run, and hoped beyond all hope you didn’t do anything stupid (even if it meant losing the right to torment you with his driving).
“Fuck, sorry, i know… its just-” she sits in a booth with a groan and rubs her eyes, “i trust my gut, and right now it’s telling me something happened. Besides, I know they promised me not to try shooting, but I noticed they packed the blaster anyway. And if they had to try shooting… well that means Party and Kobra are in danger too, and i just hope so much that my gut is lying to me”. They lay flat on the couch of the booth, his curls sprawled around like a crown, as Ghoul turns to them from his spot on the table and cards through their hair.
Kobra pulls up to the diner not long after. Jet and Ghoul open the doors to see you and Kobra pulling Party out of the backseat, alive but injured. Their jacket has a hole in one arm, and under it they can see slightly bloodied bandages on the arm and some parts of their chest. Jet and Ghoul notice the blood on Party’s jacket and your bandages, but with a small nod Kobra signs them to leave it for later - right now the biggest problem is the cranky redhead in Ghoul’s arms. Party keeps claiming they’re totally alright, so Ghoul shuts them up and carries them like a bride inside the diner, Kobra and Jet keeping the doors open so he can carry them all the way to their bed.
“And don’t even think about coming out here until you’ve rested and taken time to yourself!” Jet yells at them from the threshold of their bedroom’s door. Ghoul backs him up with a “what she said!”, and Kobra nods to approve the message. Party sighs in defeat and curls up into their sheets with a small huff of “fucking hell”, groaning when they turn on their bad side and turn back to lay on their back. You chuckle to yourself as you exit their room, only to find yourself as the next victim of your friends’ relentless care and love.
It was so annoying.
“Are you going to tell me what happened or should we assume your bandages changed colour on their own?” Jet asks in his most mum-esq tone, while Ghoul runs back to the Am to retrieve the medkit, giving you his shit eating grin. Oh fuck, you can already envision what the next ride in the Am would be like, and Ghoul knows it.
Kobra places one hand on Jet’s shoulder, steps forward and tells him about the whole ordeal. And boy does he talk in detail, and especially rats you out in detail - he tells Jet about everything you guys managed to snag from that old store (mentioning in passing the kilo of cereals for you and her, and Jet’s eyes light up), the lock bomb prototype that worked, and the clap. Kobra details everything from his perspective, and you realise that maybe tagging along with your most observant friend wasn’t that great of an idea - He saw everything, the tremor in your hands that made you drop the kit, the pain in your expression as you pulled the blaster, and the slowly seeping blood from inside your covered wounds.
Kobra tells Jet about the accident, revealing that the hole in Party’s arm is your fault as Ghoul walks back in with the medkit. You feel the tears of guilt welling in your eyes but blink them away, as your friends lead you to a booth where Jet can rebandage you. Kobra continues to detail what happened, and as Jet opens the new bandages and starts preparing to wrap you, you add the details about the drac’s position and your fear for Party’s life. To your surprise, Kobra doesn’t blame you for putting a hole in his sibling’s blaster arm. He does think you were stupid to try and shoot with effectively decommissioned hands, but notes that if not for you, this would be a conversation on y’all’s way to a mailbox.
Jet unwraps your old bandages, now soaked with blood and pretty much useless. They plop down on the table with a slightly wet sound, and when you have the chance to look at your arms you understand where all that damn pain came from - the wounds that had just begun to close reopened completely, bleeding relentlessly and letting you see way more inside your body than they should.
“Oh this… are you ok? This is really bad…” Ghoul says, evidently as shocked as you are, lifting your head with his warm hands to reveal the soft stream of tears down your face. You apologise and quickly rub them off, but they keep streaming, now accompanied by the blood you smeared all over your face and encouraged by the extra pain.
Jet takes your hands in hers again, planting them firmly on the table while she works on them. As he cleans out the now-fresh wounds, Ghoul takes his hands and cups your face, letting you sob and melt into his touch. “Let it all out, ok? We know you’ve been holding it in for days” Jet tells you softly as she starts the wrapping process, and Ghoul adds “yea it’s been pretty depressing, fucker. Just tell us what’s wrong, because it’s definitely not just the pain”.
“I just… I was going crazy in here from being so useless, and I know I can't help because I'm healing, I know it, but I just - I needed out. And when the siblings said they were going on a run, I figured I could finally be useful and stop dragging y’all down with me, literally just help out once. And it went so well at the beginning, it was everything I needed and I felt so happy and- and-” the sobs were beginning to overwhelm you. Kobra put his hand on your shoulder, quietly massaging it in support, signalling you to take your time.
Slowly, your breathing evens out again. “The run was going so well. We literally found a jackpot, and had so much fun, but then the dracs came. And i-it’s not like i didn’t want to listen to you, Jet, I really did, but I was so scared - I knew Party wouldn’t see it in time, and I just… I had to do something. But i fucked it up again, and now Party is decommissioned too… this is literally all my fault. I’m so sorry guys” you sigh in defeat, Ghoul’s thumbs still swiping away at your streaming tears.
Jet puts your arms down, fresh white bandages adorn them, wrapped carefully and lovingly around the now closing wounds. She holds your hands in his, their thumbs swiping over your palms slowly and gently before he speaks. “This is not your fault. I mean, the hole in Party kinda is, but they still have like 20 less holes in them because you got that drac behind them. We literally would’ve had this conversation near a mailbox if you hadn't done what you did. You are just as much as a valuable killjoy, and our friend, as you were before this and as you’ll be after this - just, please, talk about what you're feeling with us”.
“We’re your friends, dummy. We’ll be here for you even if you had shot Party on purpose!” Ghoul adds, “and if i’m honest, someone should’ve shot them one of these days. They were getting on my last nerve” he giggles like a broken motor engine, and it’s so contagious you can’t help but laugh with him.
“And I really needed a nice scar on that arm. It was lopsided as all fuck” Party says, leaning on their brother’s head with their good arm. You yelp in surprise, not noticing they’ve come in the room, and they laugh like the little rat they are. “Really, you’re good. My arm looks almost as sick as yours now” Party adds with a smile, leading Kobra to promise them he’ll get their other arm next time if they keep leaning on him like that.
All is right in zone 6 again.