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The moment he walked through the door, he realized instantly what a mistake he'd made.

He took a step back, intending to collect Mimsy and the child to bring them in with him, but she was already there. It unnerved him to think that Mimsy had ignored his words, and brought the child through before waiting for him to check if it was safe, but as she carried the baby into the crib, his discomfort began to ebb. Alice was making a safe haven for the child, until they could protect him again. There was nowhere safe out there for the baby - and would there ever be?

Would Deus ever be safe enough for it?

He trusted Alice to keep the child safe. He trusted Mimsy even as she tried to remind him that they did everything together, or not at all. He even took her hand, and squeezed it, but his expression did not look the slightest bit comforted.

He looked scared.

"Why." He whispered, his voice scratchy with emotion. "Why do we have to go back? Why are we even doing any of this? I don't - don't want to be out there anymore. I don't want to see my friends dying. I don't want to be in another fight where all we do is cause more bloodshed. I'm so ********' - sorry baby - sick of this s**t - sorry."

His hands were shaking; he was starting to lose his grip on common sense. If he'd been clear headed, he would have known better. He would have known it wasn't safe within, or without. He usually knew better.

But once, just this once, Robert let his fear cloud his sense. He just wanted to stay with the child, forever. With Alice, and Mimsy, safe and comfortable and free of all the death.

"Deus has been failing us one too many times." He muttered, his eyes clouding with anger. "I'm sick of bailing them out. Sick of losing who I am to this s**t. I was a good man. A good man. Now I'm just a killer."

Chance and Otto were gone. There was nothing but a body slammed into her, throwing her clear off of the two she'd been attacking, until she slammed back on the ground several feet away. She was stunned, barely able to move under him, so instead she stared vacantly up at the wall of a man keeping her pinned to the ground.

Her head turned, just slightly, to the right. Red-rimmed eyes blinked once, twice, three times-

And then the hissing came, gurgling from her throat with a few seconds of warning just before she gripped him by the shoulders. It had taken her a minute to be sure this one had a heart, but he did, and it beat fierce, and hot. She leaned in, brushing her face down until it pressed against his chest, and bit.

SHILOH - BEACH

His cries of frustration quieted to a whimper as Rep passed and in an instant the insatiable hunger, the aggression, it left his body and it left him slumped for a moment against Ian, as he regained his bearings.

It was only then that the situation dawned on him, that he realized what he'd just done and how battered the person he was leaning on was. He gasped, nearly choking on his breath and in his spluttering, it was his turn to grab onto Ian, to hold him up and to hold him close and he wrapped his arms as tightly as he could around his fiance, making a soft anguished sound.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Ian, Ian, I can't... How bad is it, are you okay, god, Ian, I'm just so sorry, I didn't mean for, I just..."

Shiloh didn't deserve to touch him but he selfishly held on tight. He was disgusted at himself, at what he'd done. It hadn't been him but he'd lived it , he'd done it, and the bile rose in the back of his throat. He pushed away then, for Ian's own sake, holding him up at arm's length while he fought the urge to throw up. Physically, he was fine - mentally, he was somehow still reeling.

How could this have happened... How could he have done this? But no, he needed to not think about that now, and he tried to steel his nerves, to look at Ian properly and to assess the situation.

"s**t, I don't have any bandages, or anything, here, take my bandana, is there bleeding, maybe we can wrap it-"

He rattled on, his fingers shaking as he pressed the fabric to a particular nasty gash on Ian's arm.

beach

"What-" Whatever composure he'd been maintaining with great effort down in the sand was shattered pretty much instantly. Lucky made a few grumbling, huffing, stuttering noises at the audacity Gale had to turn this around on him, balling his hands into loose fists. He finally half-opened one eye, first to Gale, then to Quinn gnawing on him (which no amount of weakly prodding him seemed to dislodge), Jason on his right trying to eat sand but slowly moving toward his unprotected arm, then shut it again and rolled his eyes beneath his eyelids. "... Ugh. Yes."

He did not look happy about it though.

In the midst of whatever Quinn was trying to do, he unraveled the runic bandages and just pressed them down haphazardly onto the bloody unrecognizable mess he was below the neck as if sopping up the blood would do any good.

Something smacked him in the face and almost instantly the anger, nausea, dizziness, and pounding headache disappeared. At the same time, someone dropped about a hundred pounds on top of his already fractured frame, eliciting a groan.

"Quinn..." He sounded a lot more soft-spoken now than he'd been in the last hour or so. Lucky was now entirely pinned down. "Hhhey, Quinn. Can you just- oww - get off? Thanks..."

beach

The moment she felt better and saw Quinn lose hostility, she was fumbling for bandages. No time to say thank you, no time to ask how. The questions would have to come later when they weren't all on the verge of dying.

Biting her lip out of frustration, Stormy shakily bandaged one of Gale's arms, breathing audibly. An infected hunter knocked her away before she could finish the job, tearing the bandages to shreds; she kicked them away and coughed, trembling slightly.

"What now?" she asked, kneeling by Lucky and Quinn to help steady and sit them up.

healing gale for: 2 sigh

IAN - BEACH

He could feel it when Shiloh stopped moving; his fiance sagged in his arms, and some of the tension in Ian's shoulders eased. His grip on him slackened, and Ian's legs gave out from beneath him. He would have toppled entirely to the ground, had not Shiloh been propping him up, Ian lifting a hand to pat gingerly onto Shiloh's back; the most he could currently manage, in spite of wanting to do nothing more than wrap his arms back around him and hold him for days.

"It's all right," said Ian, giving a wheezing cough, his throat feeling dry. His chest ached unpleasantly, and his head was spinning almost to the point of nausea, but he still maintained his sanity, at the very least, though it was growing rapidly harder to do even that. He felt himself slipping away, drifting back to darkness.

Ian lifted a bruised hand and pressed it against the side of Shiloh's face.

"Glad to see you're still as beautiful as ever," he said lightly, with a shaky smile. "Don't worry, babe, I'll be fine, really..."

The pull was growing stronger; he should go to the shores, with the rest of them, but Ian just smiled weakly at his fiance and gripped his arms tightly, blood dripping onto the sand.

"I think I need to...sit down a sec..." he mumbled, half leaning over already.

[COURTYARD]

How long did Roland hammer at his door? He wasn't sure. No one seemed to notice he was trapped in the dorm, he wasn't aware of anything going outside of the room. He just kept hammering at the wall till exhaust kicked in causing him to fall back.

A hand moved under his eyes to wipe away the sweat, only to come away soaked with blood, his vision blurring slightly. "Wh-what?" He stood up slowly again stumbling side to side slamming against the door again as the vines slowly pulled away he managed to stumble into the hall panting heavily stumbling like a corpse exhausted and slowly wrecked by the infection.

When he finally made it to the courtyard the blood was smeared all over his face and his shoulders heaving.