Goodness gracious! Great balls of fire!

[sendmyscourge]

Midnight passes with little incident. In fact, most of this day will be rather uneventful to the point where people will have to stop and wonder if the plagues have stopped right in the middle of their stranglehold

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[findaconstant]

Winny's okay, now, for the most part - the fire is unsettling, yes, but Dan left her with a kiss and the promise that he'd be back right away. Don't worry. I just need to get something. She should be okay. The fleas are all gone, he made sure of that, and she should be okay. This is what he tells himself. This is what he almost believes.

She doesn't know his nose is bleeding. He wiped away enough before leaving that it escaped her notice and he left just before it started up again. He's not sure it would've mattered if she'd noticed, anyway; he could've lied, said it was allergies, or that he tripped - anything other than it might be a cerebral hemorrhage. It might be. It also might not be, but he can't be sure of either, and he can only focus on the former possibility.

It takes all the energy he has left to break into a run as soon as he shuts the door to her room behind him, not that he knows where he's going to go - he could go back to his room, but that's too obvious. He doesn't want her to find him like this, if she decides to look for him. He doesn't know if she will or won't, but he's definitely not going to be back right away. He might not be back at all.

(Another broken promise to add to the list, he thinks. He can't possibly hate himself more than he does right now.)

As he rounds the corner of the hallway, he can hear Theresa's voice in his head, taunting, chanting coward, coward, coward. Can't run fast enough, can you?

His mind slips away, again, just as he reaches the stairwell. Back to the Island he goes.

As soon as his consciousness is gone from the present, his body goes limp; he hits the floor with a thump and comes dangerously close to actually breaking his nose on impact. When he returns a few minutes later, there's a small puddle of blood under his face; it's smeared over his eyebrow, in his beard, and he gags. A little voice, way way way in the back of his mind - not Theresa's, or Charlotte's, or his mother's; just a voice, maybe a little too much like his own - tells him, this is karma. This is what you get. This is what happens to people like you.

He scrambles up the next flight of stairs, tripping out into the hallway. A few rooms have been abandoned or already broken into, their doors already open and inviting, and this isn't far enough away, he knows, but it'll have to do. His spirit's so far gone that he doesn't think he'd even care if he just took up some space here in the hallway and waited to die, either by plague or by internally bleeding to death.

Once he's locked in one of the empty rooms and half-curled up on what looks like a hastily deserted bed, he starts to wonder if things would be different if Desmond were here, if that even has anything to do with this at all.

His mother, Theresa, Desmond, Charlotte. Everything always goes back to them, and none of them are even here. His life, every decision he makes... it's all controlled by people who don't even exist in this world, along with that stupid d-word, and that's what's going to kill him. He's going to die because he has to, because it's been in the cards for him since day one.

And Winny's going to die, too, along with a lot of other people he cares about.

And he knows that one day, maybe long after this one, or maybe not so long after, Eloise Hawking is going to give birth to a baby boy. She will name him Daniel, and his life is going to be an unending disaster.

For now, though, he's going to stay here and wait, either until he's calm enough to go back out and face this, or until that damned metaphorical record skips back to the beginning.

(Again.)

[crossindexing]

When he doesn't come back in an hour, two, three--Winny starts to worry. When the staff tells her no one saw him leave the hotel, all that leaves is for her to go floor by floor hunting for him, knocking on doors and breaking down the locked ones where no one answers.

She finds bodies. Mostly suicides. Five of them before she gets to the abandoned rooms on Dan's floor.

When she gets to the locked door, she's not sure she can take breaking down another one and finding a... corpse inside. She's already bruised and tired and wrung out from crying, and hating herself for being relieved every time it's not Dan.

She knocks. "Hello? Please answer. Is anyone there?"

[findaconstant]

By the time Winny reaches the room he's in, he's sound asleep.

He's not dreaming, not mentally flitting here and there - he's just on a bed, in an abandoned room, asleep.

And now he's not, because Winny's outside. An all too familiar pang of guilt kicks him in the gut when he realizes what he probably put her through by running away, but he has the chance to fix it this time. "I'll be right there, Winny," he calls, rolling out of bed to head to the bathroom. He's a mess; his face is half-covered in dried blood, there's some crusted in his hair, in his beard... some on his shirt, near his shoulder.

His stomach twists once he reaches the sink and catches sight of himself in the mirror. He makes quick work of washing most of it away, though, and rushes to the door.

He wants to wrap his arms around her, wants to kiss her, but all he can do is stare at her and say, in a very small and quiet voice, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

[crossindexing]

She hugs him tight. Not as tight as she wants to, but that might hurt him.

"Nononono," she whispers. "Don't say that. It's okay. You're okay, so I'm okay, okay?"

Winny rests her face against his shoulder.

[findaconstant]

"But-" It's hard to protest when Winny's hugging him like that. The words I might not be okay die in his throat and he swallows them with a bit of a flinch.

He's sure he's just overreacting. It's just stress. Stress raises your blood pressure, and he probably just burst a vein or something.

This is what he tells himself as he loosely, tiredly wraps his arms around Winny. "Are you sure?"

[crossindexing]

She nods, clinging. She's okay. She's always okay, she has to be, that's just-- She is. She's fine.

"What're you doing up here?"

[findaconstant]

"Freaking out," he answers honestly, after a moment's pause. He's been doing a good job of holding it all together so far, but now he looks genuinely terrified.

"I didn't mean to leave you like that. I just... I'm scared, and I didn't know what to do. I never know what to do when I'm scared, so... I run. I'm sorry." He pulls back a little, kisses her forehead. "I won't leave you ever again. At all. I promise."

[crossindexing]

She's fretting now. She can't help it.

Winny smooths his hair back, resting one hand against his temple. She wants to think of something to say. She wants to make things better for him, but--

After the way she broke down, after telling him what she did, she's not sure she can. She's not sure she even has the right to try when part of what's upsetting him might be what she said in the first place, even if it's selfish to think that, even if it makes her more important than she really is, maybe--

No. Winny closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she opens them there's a smile on her face. "It'll be okay. It will."

She hugs him, pressing her face against his neck so she won't have to see that look on his face, because she wants to believe that it's true. "I mean, everything gets... Everything that's like this eventually goes away, right? Right. Even. Even if it's hard and even if you're panicking and even if you think nothing... even if you know that there's nothing you can do to change it, it's not about changing the it, is it? It's about the us--being, you know, being... Making it okay. Even if it's not."

[findaconstant]

It's what she said, and what's going on outside, and his nosebleed, and everything. He's an entire universe away from the place he used to call home, and he still can't get away from his past. That's the worst part. If he could just escape all that, just for one second, he might be okay.

"I tried - it's always been about changing things. Back at home, I always said, you know, you can't change the past, but... that's why I built my time machine. You can't change the past, but the future - when you know what's going to happen... now I have this stupid power that I can't control and - and I think it's doing to me what it did to Theresa. I had a nosebleed..."

He trails off, arms dropping to his sides. "I want to forget about all that. I'm here now, right? With you, and you're what makes this all okay. If I didn't have you, I wouldn't - I can't do this by myself." But here he is, doing the same thing he did the last time he thought his world was ending.

Or... almost doing. Almost did. Tried to. Wanted to, and that's what makes him feel like he doesn't deserve Winny at all.

[crossindexing]

"You don't have to," she whispers, clinging a little tighter. "You don't have to, you don't you don't. People... they say things about having to stand alone and be strong for yourself and yes, yes you do but. But. Sometimes there's nothing left of yourself to stand for, and all you have to hold you up are the people around you until you can find your own footing and isn't that what it's about, what people are about, what--what friends and... And... and more-than-friends are about, helping you be yourself and find yourself when you're not sure there's enough left in there to shape into something new?"

She's talking to him, yes, but... Not just. Her shoulders give that little twitch of not-quite-in-tears. "Whoever you were back there, whatever... whatever you wanted to change, you don't have to any more. You're free, Dan, you're out of that lion's den." Winny laughs and it sounds watery.

She wants to ask what happened to Theresa, wants to ask if he's okay, physically okay, but he's not okay in his heart right now and that, that's the most important thing.

Not the most important thing. The most immediate thing. The most--

It's the only thing she can focus on without panicking herself.

[findaconstant]

Dan takes a breath.

She's right about everything, he knows that, but...

But, but, but. But what? He can't - or won't - let go, and that's the problem.

"I'm trying to stop," he sighs, pressing her nose into her hair. "I really am. I want to. And I will, just - I don't know when."

[crossindexing]

She slips back and cups his face in her hands, smoothing the hair away from his face with gentle fingers. Her pinky catches on a tangle and she stops. Just stands there holding his face between cold hands.

"That's okay," she whispers. "I've got... what, like, two thousand years to wait, right? Right."

She kisses the corner of his mouth and tries not to think about that time, all that long long time. "As long as you need. As long as it takes. I'm right here for you. Right here."

[findaconstant]

He tilts his head forward, his forehead pressed against hers, and smiles. "I know. I - thank you, Winny. I won't make you wait that long, I promise." If she stays with him, if they stay like this... it won't be long at all.