ic log | and the walls come tumblin' down, hallelujah

[exorkismos]

Come high noon it's not safe to be out in the heat and the dust. Marcus watches as the sun climbs and races it, guns the bike forward as fast as he can and as smooth as he can, too, because the man slumped behind him only intermittently holds as tight as he should, slips in and out of consciousness. Earlier, when the sun had been about three fingers breadths lower in the sky, Marcus had stopped the bike, grabbed his wrists, pulled them around his own waist and tied them there. Rough, apologising, distant. Even so, if Will — they said his name was Will, they also said he was possessed and they were wrong about that, so who the fuck knows really — if maybe-Will slumps to one side hard and sudden enough, he could yank Marcus down with him. Yank the bike down with him.

So Marcus rides as smooth as he can and tries not to think about that..

The sun climbs higher. Marcus chases it as long as he safely can and then a bit longer, but sweat is pouring down his face, soaking his shirt, and Will is feverish behind him. He stops. Unwraps the sodden, salt-stiff fabric around his mouth, breathes in long and deep, and then starts to untie the knots holding Will's wrists together. Red skin underneath. "Sorry," he murmurs, trying to be careful. "Sorry. Hey. Will?" God, he hopes the bastards in the last place got the name right, if nothing else. "You awake? Can you hear me? My name's Marcus." He's told him before. Will hasn't responded in any particularly lucid way yet, so he doesn't know if he's understood. "I'm a friend. I'm taking you to a doctor, but we — we're resting up for a few hours. I've got some water, got some food, got a tent we can shelter under. Cool off a bit."

Comments

[wontgraham]

The desert heat, frying Will and everything he touched from the inside out, had been reasonable doubt for the first few weeks of his fever. No matter how his neck ached and his head hurt, it had been the hallucinations that had eventually convinced him he wasn't alright. That this wasn't normal.

Asking for help, as it turned out, had been the worst possible idea.

Will recalls the shadow of a tent and hushed voices. He remembers them fighting each other when he was asleep, and him when he was awake. Will remembers being them, each in turn, while he sweat on the bed they'd relegated him to and dreamed away his fever.

This wasn't just a fever, though. Will knew enough to know that. He knows what...what kind of crazy he is, and this isn't that. But this is a new world, a frightening one without a lot of doctors, and so superstitions are easier to believe than the horrible truth that they just can't get him the help he needs.

Will still hates them, though, for deciding it's better to kill a possessed man than to watch a sick one die.

Someone takes him. Possibly. Will recalls a new face and old arguments, and then every time he's blinked away salt from his eyes and seen, he's been upright and usually outside. This can't be the tent he started in. The sun drips out of the sky and collects on his skin in great golden droplets, burning him pink even underneath his long sleeves, and Will passes out again every time.

There's no real sense of the passage of time when you're unconscious. Will opens his eyes the next time and it could be any moment - the very next one, or years in the future. Except... "I'm dying." Will croaks, and he realizes he's sitting up again this time, too. "...Which means it can't have been that long. Or I'd be dead." There's movement in front of him, a great flaking figure full of shadows - it's stooped over Will and blocking out the sun so all he can see is the silhouette. Will blinks and then looks away, unconvinced he should pay attention to this latest hallucination.

His wrists hurt. He rubs at the left one with his right hand, swallowing and tasting sand.

[exorkismos]

They're behind an outcrop of sunbleached rock, not sheltered from the sizzling heat but at least somewhat shaded, somewhat out of view of the main road. Marcus steadies the bike and comes off, grabs a battered saddlebag from its side. His face is dirty, grease and dust-streaked. "You ain't dying," he says, although Will is coming closer to it than Marcus wants. Doesn't mean Marcus has to admit to that. "Not on my watch."

He empties the bag out. Metal frame, taped up a thousand times: tarp, darned to patchwork. He works fast, practised, lashing the fabric to the frame and snapping it open. The resultant shelter is low, only big enough to sit or lie down in. "C'mon." Grabbing at Will's shoulder. "C'mon, out of the sun."

[wontgraham]

Black cloth. White collar. Roses filigreed against the backdrop of a cross - images flicker like mirages while Will stares at the wavering edge of the horizon. This man isn't dressed like any of that, but if the images are meant to convey what Will should know and forgot... "You're not a doctor." Will says, and it might've been more of a petty argument than a protest a few hours ago. Now, he's lucid enough to direct all his free-floating fear.

"You're a priest." Priests have their own agendas. Just like the scavengers crawling across this desert. Will shoves at the hand on his shoulder, as if he's got any real options, as if there's any hope he could steal this motorcycle he's still sitting astride and find water before he passed out from heat stroke. "I r-remember them sending for you." A shiver wracks him even as he blinks sweat out of his eyes. His hair's plastered to his forehead, a coiled mess. His vision warps and burns, images cracking against one another and then bleeding across the rest like spilled egg yolks.

Will's breathing is tightening up. "I'm not possessed."

[exorkismos]

Marcus starts, and then laughs: it's a hard cawing noise but he's genuinely pleased. Good. Anger and fear are absolutely appropriate reactions, and if they give Will something to hang onto Marcus won't protest.

"Yeah. I know. You've got something else entirely. Infection of some kind, if I had to take a guess. If you were possessed, I could be a bit more helpful. As it is — " He's holding a flask, water sloshing within. "This is about what I can do. But I reckon that's something. C'mon. Up and out of the sun."

[wontgraham]

'I know.' Will stops a bit when he hears that, and his listening looks like a tightening. His shoulders hunch, his hands curl into fists - more for the focus of movement than from aggression - and he watches this man as closely as he can, from under fringe that's threatening to spill sweat into his eyes.

Will unfolds all at once, shaky and weak like a newborn giraffe as he tries to step off the motorcycle he's straddling. He's pretty sure that the only reason he doesn't fall is because the sand caves in around his feet, lets his ankle twist and re-settle instead of just taking his stance away from him entirely.

"You don't think I'm possessed." Will repeats it like he doesn't believe it, like it's too good to believe, and stares at that flask.

His throat feels like sandpaper. If this man isn't actually sharing it, if he's just teasing him, Will thinks he's ready to die fighting for this flask.

He's allowed to take it, though, and Will gulps from it with his eyes closed. "You, then--" Will tries to put a stopper back on the flask before he realizes he isn't holding the cap. He holds it back out for the other man. Is his hand really shaking that badly, or is it his eyesight that's wrong? "You know where-- you know a doctor?"