Manbearpig

"Yeah, I guess so." He kept his gaze glued to the outside, waiting to hear trampling footsteps draw close after all, but there was only silence. Bigfoot ran right past them, hopefully. "If only we had our medieval weapons on us..." He thought a bit at the rusty bow and claymore they kept on display back at the house. Even that would have been better than nothing.

And maybe there was some murderous twelve year old after them still. Holy fuck. They had almost just fucking died. Again.

He groaned and slid down beside her, slipping his phone out of his pocket. There was still no signal. Of course. He flipped it out if his hand and let it rattle into the dirt, casting his gaze aside towards her. "I still can't believe after all this time... He was out there -"

It'd taken him a minute to regain focus and see how red her ankle had grown. A new wave of guilt washed over him. "I should have carried you," He choked. Jace reached over and brushed his fingers over her wound.

Yeah. Even a sword was better than running around like this. Maybe a claymore wasn't such a ridiculous alternative to being helpless and to just giving all the kids guns... She laughed, but it snagged in her teeth as he reached down, brushing his fingers over the redness. "I'm o-okay..." He should've. But she wasn't gonna say that now. She knew how his mind had to be spinning even worse than hers.

"You're not," Jason muttered back, his voice firm as his hand flinched away from her, not having realized how sensitive her ankle had become. The Autumn bit back a sigh, leaning forward enough to shrug the bag off his shoulders and slide onto his lap. "We gotta find help out of here... Loli's are after us... God, Elodie is who-knows-where in danger..."

He banged his head nimbly on the back of the cave wall. "What do we do?"

Elodie... Would it make him feel better or worse right now if he knew what she knew? Probably worse. Much worse. She bit her tongue, watching him as he slumped down.

God, his golden retriever face broke her heart.

"Um... I'm f-fine staying h-here." That plan was as solid as any.

"But then what if I didn't come back?" He muttered with a small, exhausted smile. Jason could still feel that lurching gravity tugging him down, wires burning above his heels. "I think we should stick together." He chewed away on the inside of his cheek, zipping open his bag and wondering if there was something there to help him. They had time to think this through. He wasn't in a rush to die.

"This kinda feels familiar though, doesn't it?" The blonde mused, surfing through what little things he'd had left. "It did before with just walking around the park and all, but now... Stuck in a cave..."

Her heart skipped a beat. She searched his face, and her mind raced with the same old tormented questions, that if buried in there somewhere, if that time they'd spent together still slept, still intact. Not deleted forever, washed out and faded away by her powers, but still existing as some warm sun-kissed impression. "It... It does." She let the dagger fall out of her fingers to clatter on the sloping stone floor. Evelyn let her gaze drop to her reflection in the metal. "Alaska. D-do you remember wh-when they sent a b-bunch of us up there? C-camping out in th-the snow..."

He paused, staring forward, brows furrowed - before it finally hit him and he snapped up. "When we did that insane air jump?" Jason could remember trying to get the lot of them to try and cooperate with each other, even as they all seemed content to either do their own thing or do nothing until he'd told them what to do himself. It didn't help much when their demons attacked, literally. "I guess we're not too worse off now, are we?" A tiny grin returned to him.

And she'd been there too. Between the fighting and the monsters and debating over who had to get more wood, he could remember hiding out in the tent with her. Jace was hard-pressed to remember all the little details, but... the more he'd thought about it, the more certain he was. "You'd looked miserable, Snowflake."

She shakily twiddled at her fingers, rocking away the consistent throbbing in her ankle. "I w-was... It was so p-pointless." And he remembered. Her face, in the haze of the memory. "Mo-Mongolia... a-a-and the H-Himalayas t-too..." Miserable. Evelyn would let herself be lured by the promise of an exotic vacation, and every single time, come back wishing she'd never left the Midwest. The abominable snowman wasn't so different from their Sasquatch. All they needed was a bow and arrow...

"Or M-Montana?" she added tentatively. "Th-that long tr-train ride... R-remember?"

Even as he couldn't remember anything clearly, he knew that she was with him. It was a gut instinct, and a near overwhelming one at that. A sour stabbing pain needled its way into his temple.

He rubbed away at his forehead with the back of his hand, fighting off a chill. For once, he seemed at a loss for words. "I must have slept most of it away," Jace murmured. He could hardly remember a thing about the supposed train ride. He finally dragged an old, thin top out of the bottom of his bag, along with a strange little foil bag. "... It's retarded but, when I was about to become a pancake, I was thinking I regret so much shit, about my family and my friends, and I'd thought... I don't know, I wanted so badly to go back to Glacier." He let his voice trail off to a low halt, snapping the small packet between his fingers. And it was then as if that tony chill had washed over him, freezing him in his place.

But he hadn't slept, at least in her version. They'd spent the whole time with their face pressed against the glass, watching sun-dappled woods and warm green slopes blur past. She almost receded from the device, but bore it silently, breathing as the cold washed over the sprain. "I th-think about Glacier e-every day."

For a few heartbeats, he had nothing to say, at a total loss for words. Instead, he focusing on balancing the cold pack nimbly on her ankle, head tilted away to hide his face away. "We have go again then, don't we?" His voice was kept low, almost hushed.

bitch shut up. Evelyn couldn't keep it up anymore. She let her gaze drop, a hot flush spreading across her face. For a second, she was almost wishing Bigfoot would come back. "And... F-for right now, what d-do we do?" Her eyes were already beginning to strain through the dimness. And who knew what was out there in the shadows?

He finally flicked his gaze back at her, face flushed with red. "Ah - fuck - good question," Jason took in a deep breath, straightening himself out and clearing out his throat. "I guess I'll have to carry you out of here, when you're ready for it." He groaned, looking back towards the dimly lit entrance. "We just need to reach a car or find a signal, but..." He clenched away at his hair. "It's getting dark fast."

They could go now, but if they were found by Bigfoot, or otherwise, they'd be fucked. But if they waited any longer, then they'd be stuck for the night. He looked through his bag, holding his breath. He only had a spare jacket, water, and a few spare aid supplies with him.

Was he actually serious about picking her up and waltzing out? "Y-you're gonna carry me i-in the d-dark?" That sounded like a recipe for a second sprained ankle, and then who was carrying him? "If y-you run into t-that thing again, y-you... w-we're not getting f-f-far."

He scoffed with a weak smile. "What would the odds of that be?" As if the odds mattered at all for them. It wasn't every day you were almost murdered by both Sasquatch and Magical Yoyo strings. Jason set his backpack aside, nudging the jacket towards her and moving to help pull her own backpack off. Maybe she had something useful.

"I guess we should get comfortable," He mused, ignoring the swarming uncertainty in the pit of his stomach.