Chapter Text
Helga was falling. She couldn't believe this was how she was going to die. Getting thrown off a hot air balloon by the man she'd done everything for. The man she'd followed to hell and back.
Everyone said that your life would flash before your eyes right before you died.
It wasn't happening for Helga. Her mind was blank. All she could think about was how many people she'd killed. Maybe she deserved this. She'd taken the life from countless others, and now she was getting justice delivered from a monster.
The ground was getting closer. Closer. And closer.
Pain shot through Helga's body. More pain than she'd ever felt in her life. It felt like her insides were being torn apart. Her muscles all tensed to the brink and white heat exploded before her eyes.
Helga shifted ever so slightly and cried out. It hurt to make sound. Her lungs felt shredded and so did her throat. She felt tears well up in her eyes and bile well up in her throat and shoved them both back down.
She made an effort to self assess her injuries. From what she could tell most of her ribs were broken, and so were both her legs and her hip. She was bleeding. A lot. Her ankle was broken as well from when Rourke snapped it. Her head hurt like hell but she didn't know what was wrong with it.
Helga turned her head to the side just in time to vomit. Red splattered onto the ground and the blonde let out a pathetic whimper.
She could feel warmth pooling beneath her. She was bleeding out.
The tears finally spilled over. Helga looked up and saw the blurry outline of the hot air balloon. Rourke.
That fucking bitch. He'd betrayed her, and after everything they'd been through. She'd known him since she was a fucking teenager, she'd trained with him, been blindly loyal to him, and this was how he repayed her?
Fuck that.
Helga fumbled with her holster and lifted her gun with both hands. Her head was pounding and she knew these were her last moments. They were some very painful ones, but at least they wouldn't last forever.
"Nothing...personal," the Lieutenant managed to get out through gritted teeth. She fired her gun and didn't stick around to see if she hit the mark.
Helga lay there for a few minutes, her body too broken to move, listening to the screams and sounds of fighting. She hoped the crew got out. They deserved to. She doubted they'd come for her. But she wished they'd come over and put a bullet through her head already and end this endless suffering.
She turned her head slightly and saw the ground splitting open. Right. This was a fucking volcano.
Despite wishing she'd hurry up and die for as long as she'd been laying bleeding and broken on the rocks and rubble digging insistently into her back, Helga realized at that moment she didn't want to die.
Maybe she'd been cradling the smallest flicker of hope inside her that she'd survive this. But even she couldn't survive a volcano.
She didn't want to die. She hadn't done everything she'd wanted to do. She'd never gotten to be happy, she'd never had a home to call her own. She was only 37, and sure, even though everyone told her she'd regret not having kids earlier and that she'd die alone and that she was past her prime, she was still only 37. She couldn't die.
A tear slipped down Helga's cheek. It held a tiny galaxy full of all the lives she could have lived if she hadn't died in a volcano at 37. Then it hit the ground.
No. No, this was fucking pathetic. She'd be damned if she didn't make some sort of painful last ditch effort at survival.
Helga spotted a crevice in the rocks. Okay, now she just had to move.
Helga forced herself to stand and a sob tore out of her. It hurt so fucking bad. It felt like her bones were actively shattering all over again with every excruciating step she took.
Her vision was white with pain and she could barely see where she was going, but by some miracle she made it over to the crevice.
The next few moments were the worst of her life. One of her arms was broken and the other was badly banged up. She managed to sort of just throw her dying body through the crevice. She got up on a cool ledge of rock and just lay there.
She didn't know how this was supposed to protect her from lava, but whatever. At least she'd tried.
---
Helga woke up and thought she was in hell. Her body was on fire. Grotesque flames licked and gnawed at her insides. Helga didn't have the strength to scream.
Then she opened her eyes and realized it was just hell on earth. The slanted ledge she'd laid on had thankfully saved her torso and head and all those important parts. But her legs were mostly gone. Melted. Helga gagged at the sight as fresh tears burned her eyes. Her left arm had met a similar fate.
Why was she still alive? Why couldn't she have died as well? Why did she have to live with this pain? WHY?
Helga spotted a sliver of light. Daylight. Well, it wasn't like she had anything better to do.
Helga army crawled with one arm towards the light. It took her twenty minutes to get to it. Half dead with almost no functioning limbs, she was at least determined.
The grass beneath her bloody hand was the best feeling on earth. The sun and breeze on her skin. God, it felt amazing. A nice place to die.
Except apparently the universe had decided she wasn't allowed to do that. Helga carried on, slowly dragging herself to the sound of water.
When she finally reached the stream Helga plunged her head underwater and drank. Crisp, cool water hit the back of her torn throat. It felt like heaven.
Helga sat by the stream and took off her bloodstained, dirty clothes. She washed the parts of her body it didn't burn to touch. She looked a little better after washing away all the dirt and dried blood. What remained of her legs and left arm were still disgusting. Bits of burnt flesh hung off them. Helga ignored that for now and used the remnants of her shirt to make a bandaged for the gashes on her lower back.
A few hours later she woke up to the sound of footsteps. She locked eyes with an Atlantean guard and braced herself for what would happen next as she felt his eyes look over her mostly unclothed body.
"Please...don't hurt me," Helga said, her voice gritty from the unused and bits of rock lodged in her throat.
The guard approached her like one would approach a skittish animal.
"I will not harm you. You must escape from this place soon, you are an enemy of Atlantis," he crouched down beside her.
"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly in the best shape of my life right now," Helga snapped back.
"I can help," the man offered, pulling out his crystal necklace. "But it will hurt. Our crystals heal, but at a cost. The worse the injury, the more the recovery hurts."
"Oh..." Helga said, looking at the crystal with a mix of desperation and fear. "Is there a way to make it not hurt as much?"
"Ah, well..." the guard rubbed the back of his neck as he looked away, "You would not enjoy that method either. Your body couldn't take it in this state."
"Fine, just...get it over with."
The guard put his crystal in his hand and pressed it to her chest.
"FUUUUCK!" The blonde screamed as a new wave of pain tore through her.
The guard felt a pang of sympathy as the woman writhed and cried beneath him, begging him to stop.
After what felt like eternity the pain finally subsided. Helga took a deep breath and was surprised when it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. She moved her fingers and breathed deeply and slowly sat up. She dnever appreciated not being in severe pain more.
"I must go now. Leave this island, and don't come back," the guard offered his final warning before disappearing into the trees.
Helga looked down. Her legs had, unfortunately, declined to magically regenerate, but at least they didn't look like something out of a horror novel now. Just useless fucking stumps.
Time to find a way off this godforsaken island.