Chapter Text
Aidan dropped down into the cellar. He landed on a pile of rotten leaves, the stench wafting up from the impact. He paid it no mind. All he was focused on was the girl sitting in the middle of the cellar.
Eva’s hair was stringy with grease. It fell across her face as she sat hunched over, arms wrapped tightly around her chest in a protective gesture. Aidan wasted no time crossing the cellar to get to her. He kneeled down, ignoring the dust that now coated his pants, and tilted her face up.
Her eyes were bloodshot, the normal sky blue twisted to a muddied red. For a moment, he confused her for her sister, wondering how he had gotten them mixed up. But no. That was Eva. Her sweater was the faded tan he had dyed it to at her request last year. She had the same scar across her brow that he had watched her sustain from a too-close explosion. It was Eva. She just looked like shit.
“Eva?” he tried. Her eyes focused on him instead of staring into nothingness, but her expression didn’t change from the one of numbed neutrality.
He tensed at the sight of shadow creeping up her face. He hadn’t noticed it before–had been too preoccupied with just finding the kid to think of much else–but it was clear she was infected. His hand jerked back instinctually before slowly returning to the consumed flesh. The risks of his dying to shadow were low, far lower than the chances of Eva. And if something happened to Eva?
He might as well just die, too.
“Ai-dan?” she whispered, the word barely audible even in the silence of the cellar.
“Right here. Right here.”
Her brows furrowed: a crack in the blankness the shadow must have forced onto her. Little hands reached out for him, and he grasped them with none of the hesitance he’d carried just a month ago. She needed him, and he had finally realized just how important it was for him to meet those needs.
“Dark,” she said, and her nose scrunched up, only for a moment. A twitch here, a stretch there–he was pulling her out of it. Surely he was. If he wasn’t–
“I know it’s dark. I know. Just…keep talking to me, ok?”
“O-kay.” She pursed her lips. Her breath caught a little. Good things, but painfully little things. Aidan knew damn well they were running out of time. He wasn’t about to let his kid get claimed by some alien disease, that was for sure.
“Vision clearing at all?”
Her entire face scrunched up before smoothing back out. He squeezed her hand. She didn’t quite squeeze back, but he could tell an attempt was made.
“Ai-dan.”
“Yep.”
“Ai-dan.”
“Right here.”
She shuddered. A whole body ordeal, and then she went completely frozen. And then–
She collapsed like a puppet with its strings severed. Her eyes flashed black as the evil drained from her, and then she was completely limp. He caught her without thinking, cradling her to his chest like one would a newborn.
“I gotcha, I gotcha.”
His voice was quiet and soft, but it echoed across the cold, damp cellar just the same.