Chapter Text
Percy tore blindly through the woods, getting as far away as he could from the place he once called home. The hot rush of shame had ended some time ago, once the pain had returned with consciousness, but the wounds, the lashings, the stabbing, the burns, the needles, they still stung as sharply as when Ripley had brought her weapons down on him.
Tears poured down his cheeks as he tried to keep himself from openly sobbing into the forest. Sobbing meant they’d find him, and he’d go back, alone, past Cassandra, back to Ripley; back to her punishments, and rewards.
He ran faster.
His eyes widened in shock and, maybe, just maybe, the smallest bit of hope entered his heart as he spotted a road, the sound of traffic covering the noise of his panting and his own heartbeat in his ears. He was out, he was really out of there.
And he was alone.
His hysterical smile dropped in the sudden remembrance that even though he’d just got her back an hour or two ago, his sister was probably dead now, with the rest of his family. Not for the first time in the last twenty four hours, Percy let gravity get the best of him as he collapsed to the pavement, sobbing.
He was so wrapped up in his own misery that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps, or the slowly growing red puddle pooling under his side.
“Hey, hey are you okay, dude, holy shit!” He was just barely able to look up and see a head of fiery red hair, and a shocked, concerned expression. In the back of his mind, it was odd, the woman’s tone reminded him of Vesper. At the thought of his sister, he started sobbing again, as the image of bullets in Cassandra’s back resurfaced.
“Please, please, th-they killed her, they killed her, please, I-I, please, please, p-pay, I, all, a-all pay, they’ll pay.” He muttered these words to himself as the woman above him watched in horror.
“Oh god, okay, uh, I-I’m gonna try and stop the bleeding, okay, okay, I’m gonna call 911.” He didn’t hear her as he muttered.
Keyleth hummed anxiously as she made the call, stammering as she gave the details and the address, thankful for the operator’s calmer demeanour. First aid was not enough to deal with whatever the poor guy had gone through. But a large source of the blood was his stomach. She supposed that this was one hoodie going in the garbage.
She balled up the fabric as soon as she hung up, gently pressing it to the man’s stomach. She winced at his pained moan. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, uh, you, you can’t fall asleep, that’s bad, right? Yeah, yeah, uh, that’s bad, uh, uh, I’m Keyleth, A-Ashari, what’s your name?”
The man’s eyes flickered towards her. “Pe-Perciv..Fred-”
“Percy?” Keyleth interrupted. He gave a small nod as he curled in on himself.”Hey, no, uh, no, don’t do that, uh, how old are you, I’m 22.”
Percy blinked up at the girl, trying to figure out for the life of him why she was making small talk when his sister had just been murdered.
‘Manners, Percival, don’t make me say it again’
“Twenty three, oh gods, pl-please, it hurts, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, you, you don’t need to apologize, it’s fine.” Keyleth started to feel her own breathing speed up as she couldn’t think of what else to ask.
Thankfully, just at that moment, the familiar sound of an ambulance siren approached and Keyleth was thankful as her boyfriend and one of her best friends emerged. She didn’t think she could’ve handled this with strangers.
“Kiki!” Vax rushed forward with the stretcher as Pike rushed down towards Percy, getting an overview of her soon-to-be patient. She quickly overtook Keyleth’s position, holding the hoodie against Percy’s stomach, telling him that he was gonna be alright. “C’mon, help me get him up.” Keyleth helped her boyfriend get the stretcher down before gently wrapping her arms around Percy, helping him onto the stretcher.
Well, Vex was going to have a good time with this one, that’s for sure.
Vax was driving as fast as his training allowed him to. This guy was insane amounts of hurt, blood staining his hair pink. At least it looked pink from the rear view mirror, where he could see Pike furiously trying to calm him down.
“Stop! Stop it, please! I don’t know, I don’t know anything!” He thrashed on the stretcher, Keyleth struggling to keep it from moving under him. Vax would never admit it, but he’d nearly crashed when Pike had revealed that Keyleth was the one calling. He’d hate it if anything happened to her. Sometimes he hated his job, and right now was yet to be decided if this was one of those times.
Pike wrapped copious amounts of bandages on the young man’s stomach once she had him on oxygen. She hated breaking out the straps to hold him down, but if he thrashed around for much longer, he’d only injure himself further. It only seemed to distress him more as tears mixed with blood on his cheeks.
“It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay,” she tried to console him as she kept pressure on the wound, reminding herself to let Keyleth know how good she’d done until they got there.
The woman in question was trying her very best not to panic, but Percy was loud, and hurt, and very, very sticky. And not sticky like the way Scanlan was after the pride parade, no this was not a good kind of sticky. The siren wasn’t helping either. But, at least she knew that they were getting close, and Pike and Vax were good at their jobs, and so was Vex, so Percy would be okay.
Percy squinted against the bright lights as the ambulance sped on, his vision blurred by tears and blood. He was dying. He knew it, and he was sure the blonde woman above him knew it too. She looked somewhat angelic, the bright lights giving her a halo as she moved about.
He cried out as she put pressure back on his stomach, clenching and unclenching his fists wildly, trying to do something, anything, to stop this agony.
Vax almost smiled as the familiar view of the hospital came into view, but forced it down for the moment. “Pike, we’re almost there! Kiki, I’m gonna need you to stay on the gurney with him until we get inside. I promise, once the others can take him, you can get off, okay?”
Keyleth gulped nervously and got up on the gurney, relieving Pike from pressure duty. “O-Okay, I-I got this.” She kept her hands on the now red hoodie. It was yellow this morning. She tried to remember that this was her hoodie, that she was helping, she was doing something good right now, and tried not to focus on the cacophony of noise and stimuli around her.
Percy screamed out again as pressure was alleviated, then put on again harder. “I’m sorry, please, please, they killed her, they killed them all!” He struggled against the straps holding him down, unsure if the lights above him were the ones of the ambulance, or Ripley’s lab.
Pike slammed the doors open as soon as Vax pulled into the entrance, bringing down the gurney with her coworker as fast as she could. “COMING THROUGH PEOPLE, GOT A SERIOUSLY INJURED MAN HERE!” She watched as a few doctors rushed up, thankfully including Vex. “Vex, he’s got multiple lacerations, stab wound, Keyleth’s keeping pressure on it until someone else can, she found him near Gilmore’s shop.”
Keyleth chewed nervously on her lip as the gurney rolled into the ER. Good thoughts, good thoughts, drown out the noise. Think about Vex’s feather, or Vax’s beads. She saw Vex in her peripheral, and gave the woman a look, pleading for help.
Vex nodded and motioned for one of her interns to take her friend’s spot on the gurney. Vax quickly helped Keyleth down and held her as Vex and her team wheeled the man off to surgery. Keyleth trembled in his arms, looking down at her bloody hands and skirt. “C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up. I don’t have to be out again until later.” She barely listened as he lead her to the bathrooms.
Vex looked down at the man below her. Not the worst she’d ever seen before, but pretty bad. He was still awake too. How that was possible, she didn’t know, but she had to try and use it. She slipped her fingers into his as they ran to the operating room. “Hey, sir, sir can you hear me?” She got a shaky nod and a face of fear. “I’m Dr. Vessar, you’re going to be okay, everything’s gonna be fine. I just need you to stay awake a little longer, can you do that for me?” She got another nod, a shaky sob escaping the man’s lips once more. “Can you tell me your name?”
“P.. P-Percy.”
“That’s a nice name.” Vex looked up, seeing the doors of the OR approaching. “Almost there, almost there.”
They finally managed to pull the gurney through the doors, and beside the table. Percy looked petrified for a second before he began to thrash once more on the gurney. “No, no, please, please, I don’t know anything, I don’t know!” He didn’t notice the sedative being injected until he stopped thrashing. “I.. I don’t..”
“You can sleep now Percy, you’re gonna be fine. Just rest,” Vex assured him, and for a moment, she could’ve sworn she saw him say ‘thank you.’ His eyes closed, and the patient mask went down. “Alright people, let’s make sure whitey doesn’t die on us.”