[fic: white collar] Hold With All You Have | 3/4
Hold With All You Have | 3/4
Please see part 1 for header information and warnings.
On LJ: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 4 | On DW | On AO3
Neal had heard before that hard work was the best remedy for a broken heart, but that fall he watched Peter take it to a new extreme.
There was an awful lot to be done. George’s uncle, Franz, had lived for years on the land with his wife and several farmhands, and hadn’t allowed it to fall into disrepair since her death eight months previously. But even though the buildings were all in good condition there was nowhere near enough room to comfortably house everyone who had descended on the place.
Also pressing was the issue of food. The main farmhouse boasted an impressively large cellar which at first glance seemed like it contained enough supplies to feed an army - but in reality it wouldn’t have lasted them more than a couple of weeks. Elsa organised everyone into teams, dividing up the vital chores among them.
Neal found himself involved in construction work. Truth to tell, he enjoyed it. He’d worked with wood before and although the aim now was function rather than beauty there was beauty all the same in the firm lines of a split-log house as it took shape under his hands. His skin tanned, and his palms roughened.
Peter joined him near the end of most days, even after spending the preceding hours out scavenging with Diana and some of the others who knew how to handle themselves. Ethical scruples about stealing were a thing of the past, faced with the pressing needs of their adopted small community. They were hitting towns in a slowly widening circle, emptying food stores of non-perishable items and also scavenging fuel, light sources, winter clothing, medical supplies.
No one ever talked very much about those trips. They were well beyond the zone where the government had been futilely trying to stem the spread of the virus by evacuating civilians. Here they had given up, and people had died in their homes instead, the virus appearing to have increased in virulence as it swept across the country. Even so, there must be other small communities around, but they avoided each other.
There was speculation, some evenings, about whether whatever remained of the government was still hanging on, clinging against the West Coast and rebuilding slowly from there. There were strong feelings on either side, but Neal couldn’t really find it important.
It was the information loss which he found strangest to deal with. Neal’s radius had chafed him often enough, but although he had been physically locked in place the rest of the world was still there, only a telephone call or a computer screen away. Now they might as well be on a tiny island, or a raft, for all the connection he felt to the surrounding continent.
And he missed everyone who wasn’t with them - missed them with a gnawing, soul-deep intensity. Elizabeth, Sara, June, Mozzie. Mozzie in particular he had never been able to imagine not being around. Even when not physically present, the idea that he might not return had been unthinkable. Now... it continued to be unthinkable, but that was because whenever his thoughts started edging in that direction his insides twisted and he shied away.
It was much safer to worry about things closer to home. Like Peter. Who didn’t talk much, these days, and who rarely laughed. Diana had confided to Neal that at first Peter had spent their scavenging trips in constant, desperate hope that against all the odds they were going to come across El and Mozzie, or find some sign that they had passed that way. He had left messages, with oblique directions to their farm. (Neal, who had been trying to think of a way to persuade Peter to do just that, had approved.)
But now, a couple of months on, he had given them up for dead. His loss of hope was there in the way he grimly threw himself into working seemingly endless shifts, wearing himself out to the point of exhaustion on construction work, or on the farmland, and doggedly refusing to acknowledge concern. He was far from alone in his way of dealing with grief, but that didn’t make it any less worrying to watch.
Dozens of times, Neal almost went to him to suggest that they take off, just them and Diana, and not give up until they had managed to hunt down El and Mozzie’s trail. He pictured their reunion a thousand times, the incredulous question of, How on earth did you find us? always answered by, We never stopped looking, of course.
After the houses were finished, they would go. After all of the harvest was in. Once there was nothing urgent pressing down on the small community, and they could leave without feeling like they were abandoning their friends.
But winter swept down with a speed that was shocking - even though all their preparations had been against it, it had still seemed like a far-off threat. Suddenly the wind was biting and the air was full of snow and everyone confined themselves indoors for most of the day. The books that Neal and several others had pleaded and begged with the scavengers to collect over the past months suddenly became vital commodities.
And the wolves moved in.
- - -
The beat-up 4x4 struggled against the steepness of the snow-piled road, and Neal could almost feel it being pushed back by the driving wind that was flinging yet more snow against the windshield. The wipers were struggling valiantly, but they were no match for the storm.
Once, Neal would have made some sort of quip about their situation, but that would have been to a Peter who was less grim, and who would have bickered back happily. The person who had been occupying Peter’s body over the past few months felt almost like a stranger. They still sought each others’ company, but they just never seemed to talk much. Something that would be unthinkable before all of this.
Staring out of the car windows with white flakes whirling past, their old life seemed impossibly far away.
The engine stuttered, and Neal winced, glancing sideways at Peter. It did it again a moment later, and then sputtered out. Neal held his breath as Peter wrestled with the ignition, trying over and over, but it didn’t restart.
In the sudden absence of sound from the engine, the wind’s howls were very loud.
"Do you know what’s the matter?" Neal asked.
Peter tried the ignition again, not hopefully. "No. We’ve got plenty of gas, and there’s no warning light anywhere."
That was about as far as Neal’s knowledge of car problems went. If one broke down you either enlisted a mechanic or acquired another one, depending on available funds and how urgently you needed to be somewhere else. "How close are we to the farm, do you think?"
"Three, maybe four miles," Peter said. He looked out of his side window - too much snow had already built up on the windscreen for him to have any hope of seeing anything at all out of it. "Survival recommendations are to stay in your vehicle."
"This blizzard could last for days," Neal pointed out.
"Yeah, I know," Peter said. "And there’s not going to be anyone helpfully driving along the same road to rescue us."
They sat in silence for a moment. Neal thought he was mostly in favour of remaining in the car purely because, even though it was rapidly cooling now that the heating had stopped working, it seemed significantly less uncomfortable than stepping out into the middle of a blizzard. But on the other hand, they hadn’t been scavenging for edibles, and so they had minimal supplies of food and water with them. "You think we should go on foot," he said.
Peter nodded. "I think it’s less of a risk than gambling on waiting this out. It should only take us a couple of hours to get back."
"I’ve been out in worse," Neal said, with a quick grin that was entirely on purpose.
But Peter didn’t take the obvious bait to ask him when, and whether the purpose behind it had been illegal. It stung every time, that Peter didn’t react to things like that anymore. And yet Neal couldn’t stop himself from throwing them out - it was like continually prodding at a bruise. Like if he just managed to find the right thing to say he would succeed in knocking Peter out of his sleepwalk.
Peter reached around into the back seat, pulling out both of their sets of cold-weather gear, and passing Neal his. It was extremely awkward wrestling them on over their normal clothes in the cramped surroundings of the car seats, but Neal was putting less stock in dignity nowadays. And Peter didn’t mock him for his lack of it.
He even missed that.
"Ready?" Peter asked, and Neal nodded and took a deep breath before pulling his hood up and his snow-goggles down, and opening the door.
The wind slammed against him immediately, rocking him backwards on his feet until he found his balance. It was bitingly cold against the exposed skin of his face, and sliced straight through his coat and waterproof trousers. He was already shivering as he shoved the door shut and trudged through the snow to meet up with Peter.
"You good?" Peter called. He was holding a compass, its string wrapped around his wrist, even though they would just be following the line of the road.
"Yeah," Neal called back. "Nice day for a walk."
Trudging through the blizzard was both tiring and disorientating, although at least Neal felt sufficiently warm within only a few minutes. He and Peter kept pace beside each other, even though it would probably have been more sensible for them to take turns leading, and trampling down a path for the other. But Neal didn’t like the idea of walking ahead into the whiteness without the reassurance that Peter was still with him, and he thought that Peter might be feeling the same.
When the first howls came whirling through the air, Neal stopped dead in his tracks, heart instantly pounding. "Peter," he said. "You hear that?"
"I heard," Peter said. He reached under his coat to extract his pistol. Neal did the same, considering whether it would be worth taking off a glove for increased accuracy. But his fingers would freeze quickly, leaving him worse off.
(He had grown used to carrying a gun remarkably quickly. Necessity did that to you.)
The howling came again, from the east. The pack was some distance away, but they were hunting. The wolves had thrived through the fall with the lack of hunters and the easy prey of untended livestock, and expanded their numbers and range. With food supplies falling again now that winter had come, competition was fierce, and deadly.
The snow was falling so heavily that it was opaque, a thick whiteness that was impossible to see through for more than a few yards, no matter how much Neal strained his eyes. But it was silent now.
Then they passed through into the lee of a clump of trees and Neal remembered, wolves are ambush predators, aren’t they. The lithe grey bodies had been shadows in the snow, but all at once they were startlingly clear.
"Don’t run," Peter said, in a low voice. He aimed, but with a snarl the hungry pack leapt to attack, and his first shot went wild.
Neal hadn’t expected them to attack Peter. He was smaller; surely he should have been their target. Or maybe they had sensed Peter’s depression and lack of regard for his own safety, and judged him to be weaker right then. But the jaws of the lead wolf snapped around Peter’s leg and he went down in a spray of snow and blood.
Neal shouted, or screamed, and started firing. Some of his shots obviously missed, but some hit fur, and sinew, and bone. A crack of gunfire came from Peter’s position, and the wolf tearing at him slumped back and went limp.
Another went for Neal, and he could have sworn it took two bullets at point-blank range before it went down as it leapt for his arm, but he was half-blinded by terror. More shots from Peter, to yelping howling shrieks from the wolves, and finally the pack broke up, no longer grouped as one but fleeing raggedly.
"Peter," Neal gasped, and dropped to his knees in the snow, shoving the wolf carcass frantically away. He felt sick.
"Neal!" Peter was struggling to get up, grabbing for the hem of Neal’s coat. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, no, I’m fine, Peter -"
"Your arm!"
Neal glanced down, and found to his confusion that his left glove and part of his sleeve had been ripped away, and his arm was bleeding profusely. But although there was a lot of blood it didn’t look deep and anyway - "Peter, your leg!"
Peter looked down, finally, and his mouth moved silently for a second. He swallowed. "Oh, damn," he said, faintly.
There was too much blood. There was a terrifying amount of blood. Peter’s pulse-beat was visible in it, and it was soaking into the snow all around.
Neal unzipped his coat to get his scarf off faster, and wound it around and around Peter’s calf. Peter’s blood was warm and slick against his bare hand. Peter was trying to get his own scarf off but he was being too slow so Neal all but ripped it off him, tying it as tightly as he could. He had a flash of inspiration and pulled off his snow goggles, fishing a knife from his pocket and opening it to slice off the elastic, which made a more secure knot on top of the bulky bandaging. The elastic from Peter’s goggles added to it further. It was only then that Neal could take a breath, feeling like it was the first one in hours.
"Are you okay?" he asked, desperately, knowing only too well that the answer was no, not at all. "Peter, we need to get to the farm."
Peter was staring straight ahead, his face the same colour as the falling snow around them. Shock. "Peter, come on," Neal demanded, and took matters into his own hands by dragging Peter upwards, slinging an arm over his shoulders.
Peter limped forwards when prompted, and the wind stole most of his pain-filled noises. Neal’s arm had been beginning to ache fiercely, but soon it was aching with cold instead and shortly after that he could barely feel it. He hoped they were still going the right way.
The first glimpse of a distant light through the blizzard brought a gasp of hope to catch in Neal’s throat, and the relief of it stopped his feet for a moment. That was enough time for Peter’s weight to start to slump heavily against him, and suddenly Neal was struggling to stop him from sliding down into the snow. He held out for a few seconds, but then his cold-stiffened knees buckled under the pull and he hit the ground, trying to break Peter’s fall as much as he could.
Peter’s eyes were closed, and his skin was grey and blue-tinged with cold. Neal tapped his face, and then outright slapped his cheek. "Peter!" he shouted.
The combination worked; Peter opened his eyes slowly.
"You need to get up," Neal ordered. "We’re almost there."
Peter looked at first as if he hadn’t heard. He raised his head a couple of inches from the packed snow, and let it fall back. "I’ll stay here," he mumbled. Neal had to lean in to hear him.
"You won’t."
Peter sighed slightly. He looked -- his face didn’t hold much of an expression, except for resignation. He had been waiting for this. Ever since he had lost hope of Elizabeth’s survival, he had been waiting passively for something to take him too.
"Don’t you dare die here," Neal said. His voice was low, and it was only a flicker in Peter’s eyes that let him know he was being heard. "Don’t you dare, or I will never forgive you." He didn’t know how much he meant the words until they were out of his mouth, but they were far more true than he had intended them to be.
"Neal -" Peter half-whispered.
"No!" Neal's face was frozen; it took effort to form words. "You wanted to stay here and help people, and then you just gave up, because you’ve decided Elizabeth must be dead and therefore you don’t need to care about anything anymore. You can’t just go and die now!"
Peter stared at him, a little blankly. "You don’t believe she’s dead?"
"No," Neal said, fiercely. "I don’t. Not her, and not Mozzie." He knew that Peter had never agreed with him in letting one’s wishes dictate one’s belief, but right now he needed to share that hot spark of hope. And then he could feel the other words he wanted to say forcing their way out of him, even though they were raw and painful and ran counter to that determined optimism. "Please, Peter," he said, and they came out sounding broken, "You can’t leave me too. You can’t."
Peter’s eyes widened. "Dammit, Neal," he whispered, and was suddenly attempting to struggle up. Neal grabbed his arm, and pushed himself up painfully.
He could hear the wolves again as they struggled towards the farm buildings, the swirling wind obscuring how far they still had to go. He had his gun in his free hand, and kept glancing back over his shoulder into the sheets of snow. Each shadow could be a wolf, each flicker of movement in the corner of his eye could be the pack circling, ready to strike.
From being only far-off lights, the farmhouse sprang into visibility only metres away with startling abruptness. Neal gasped in mixed shock and relief, and grabbed for the door, slamming his shoulder against the heavy wood to get it to move.
They stumbled past the thick curtain inside and into the main room, snow bursting in around them. Faces looked up, eyes widening in shock, but Neal barely had time to register that because Peter sighed softly and collapsed against him.
There were several people there - it was late afternoon, a sociable time. The noise right then seemed to being made by at least a hundred babbling mouths. Suddenly overwhelmed, Neal let George and Ravi pry Peter away from him and obeyed a hand on his shoulder that pushed him down into a dragged-up chair. He watched numbly as Elsa yelled at someone to find Julie, sweeping everything off the large table with an arm.
Diana had her hand on Neal’s shoulder, fingers digging tight as she practically vibrated in place. "I’m fine," Neal said, through teeth that were beginning to chatter. "Go help Peter."
She squeezed his arm in gratitude and flew over to Peter. There were too many people around him now; he was blocked from view. Neal tried to take a deep breath and found that he couldn’t, not really.
He shut his eyes, trying to get his chest to relax, but he opened them when someone started trying to take his coat off. Diana was staring at him worriedly.
"How’s Peter?" he asked.
"I don’t know, Elsa told me to go away." She bit her lip in concentration as she worked the sleeve carefully down over his injured arm. "That must hurt."
Neal shook his head. "Not really. I’m cold."
"You’re in shock," she said. "It’ll hurt soon enough." Neal found her bluntness strangely reassuring. "Sorry, you don’t get anyone with more than first-aid training right now, but Matt’s getting you blankets."
Finally getting the coat off, Diana worked on Neal’s sweater and then his shirt. If they had been in an ER both of them would have been cut away, but clothing was valuable and Neal didn’t protest as she helped him carefully wriggle out of them instead. Matt had turned up by then with an armful of blankets, which he and Diana began wrapping Neal in, leaving his arm out.
Cleaning it did hurt; the gashes were deep and ragged. Neal clenched his teeth and stared over at where Peter was hidden. Elsa and George were working to Julie’s direction, and Peter’s blood was vivid on all three of them.
"I don’t really want to practice my sewing on your arm," Diana said. "I’m just going to cover and bandage it up for now. Julie can check it later."
"Sure," Neal said, more fixated on the movement across the room. He was good at reading people, and the frantic anxiety was starkly clear. He barely noticed what Diana was doing - in any case, it was getting lost in a blur of general pain from his arm as he thawed out.
"Diana!" Julie called, urgently, half-turning towards them. "What’s Peter's blood type? He’s lost too much. I need to try a transfusion."
"Same as me," Neal said, and pushed himself quickly to his feet. "I can -" The room spun, and kept spinning. He swayed dizzily, vision greying, and hands dragged him with more urgency than gentleness over onto the couch, where he was forced limply down. It was a fight to keep his eyes open.
"Neal, don’t be stupid!" Diana shouted at him. "You’ve lost enough blood already, my god..."
He groaned, unable to form more coherence. He felt woozy and sick, and her face was tight with fury but also terrified, and brittle.
"Neal, open your mouth." Elsa loomed above him, and slipped two pills onto the roof of his tongue, before pressing the rim of a glass against his lips. "Swallow."
No choice. He swallowed, and only then could ask, "What?"
"Vicodin," she said, and he tensed instinctively, because sedating drugs like that had always been things to avoid, and he knew that he still had time to bring them up again before they had dissolved...
"Neal, I’m sorry," Diana said, and squeezed his unhurt arm. "You need this, okay?"
And they needed to focus on Peter, yes, he could understand. He could feel the drugs working already, dragging on his consciousness, and he was still trying to formulate a proper, complete response as they pulled him under altogether.
-
He woke to bright sunshine through the window-panes and a muffled feeling of dread. His arm throbbed with a deep ache, and he had hazy memories of half-waking as Julie unwrapped Diana’s bandaging and did further painful things to it.
When he turned his neck stiffly, the first thing he laid eyes on was the long beech table, now littered around with medical debris. Even from where he was, he could see dark stains on the pale wood.
Peter was nowhere to be seen.
Cold fear gripped tight inside Neal’s chest. He had to find out what had happened.
He was halfway through the slow process of sitting up when Elsa came through from the kitchen, pausing for a second when she saw him and then coming over. She looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed. "Hey," she said. "How’re you feeling?"
"Where’s Peter?" Neal demanded.
"He’s alive," she said, quickly, which was the answer to the main question Neal had been asking. The tight band of fear around his chest eased somewhat, although he knew he wouldn’t truly be able to believe it until he saw Peter for himself. "He’s in George’s room. Diana’s with him; he’s sleeping."
Neal let go a deep breath. "And he’s going to - I mean, he’s not -"
"Julie thinks he’s out of immediate danger," Elsa said. "She’s finally getting some sleep herself, on the floor in there. Which is another reason you can’t go in just yet."
"This was all last night?" Neal asked. "What time is it?"
"A bit before noon, I think," she said. "The storm cleared sometime after dawn. Snow’s lying pretty thick out there - no tracks of you two at all."
They could have waited the blizzard out, Neal thought. They could have waited it out easily.
It wasn’t until several hours later that he was allowed in to see Peter - until Peter was awake himself. Diana had enforced it, telling Neal firmly that he still needed to be resting, not waiting in a chair for Peter to wake up and being a disturbance in the process. She hadn’t slept herself yet. Neal didn’t think she was in a mood where he wanted to risk an argument.
Peter was propped up against a mound of pillows, blankets over him and over an odd blocky shape where his leg should be. Peter saw him looking and smiled wryly. "There’s a tunnel of cardboard boxes keeping my leg separate from the blankets," he said.
"That’s cutting edge medicine for you," Neal agreed, gesturing at his own bulky sling to illustrate the point before looking more closely at Peter. Peter’s face clearly showed that he was in pain, but there was also some... some animation there which at first seemed strangely incongruous.
It had been missing for so long.
"You saved my life," Peter said, seriously.
Neal shrugged, suddenly mildly embarrassed. "No small talk?"
Peter shook his head. "I’m probably going to fall asleep again soon. Thought I’d get it out there." He gave Neal a critical look. "You look like you could use more rest, too."
It was so familiar, the Peter whom Neal had been trying to locate for months. "You seem... better," he said, not knowing quite how to express it.
Peter’s mouth twisted slightly; he didn’t pretend not to know what Neal meant. "I started wanting to be alive after all," he said, quietly. "Thank you."
Neal impulsively reached for Peter’s hand, and Peter gripped back tightly. He was reliving, for a moment, shouting at Peter in the snow. He suspected that Peter was, too, and probably neither of them would talk about that again, but that was okay. They would be okay.
Peter looked down at where his leg was hidden. "Julie told me your arm’s going to be fine," he said.
"Yeah," Neal agreed. "I’ll have some great scars. Not as good as yours, of course."
Peter smiled, but then his expression went sad, and a little distant. "She said my leg probably isn't going to heal up properly. Too much muscle and tendon damage that would have needed surgery to repair."
"What does that mean?" Neal asked, feeling his stomach drop.
Peter sighed. "I’ll be walking again, but with crutches. Maybe a stick, eventually." He rubbed at his eyes tiredly. "I don’t think it’s hit me yet. I can’t really believe it."
Neal couldn’t really believe it, either, but he swallowed back his instinctive urge to argue with the reality that was presented. "Are you... all right?" he asked, uncertainly.
"Ask me again when I’m not on opiates," Peter said. He looked unhappy, and determined, but the depression Neal had feared him sinking back into was not in evidence.
Neal, watching him closely, thought that maybe he understood Peter's reaction. This was a challenge; something he could fight against, something with a clearly-defined goal. "I bet your leg will heal more than Julie told you," he said. "She was probably worrying about getting your hopes up or something."
"Whereas you’re happily free of that worry," Peter suggested, with another familiar and so-welcome half-smile.
"I believe you won’t let an injury beat you," Neal said. "You came back from one before, didn’t you?"
Peter gave him a full smile this time, before his face abruptly went serious. "Neal, what you said before, about - about Mozzie and El -"
"They’re alive," Neal said, simply, but with all the honest conviction he knew how to put into his voice. "I believe that, too."
"Thank you," Peter said, again, and didn’t let go his grip on Neal’s hand.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
- - -
Please see part 1 for header information and warnings.
On LJ: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 4 | On DW | On AO3
Neal had heard before that hard work was the best remedy for a broken heart, but that fall he watched Peter take it to a new extreme.
There was an awful lot to be done. George’s uncle, Franz, had lived for years on the land with his wife and several farmhands, and hadn’t allowed it to fall into disrepair since her death eight months previously. But even though the buildings were all in good condition there was nowhere near enough room to comfortably house everyone who had descended on the place.
Also pressing was the issue of food. The main farmhouse boasted an impressively large cellar which at first glance seemed like it contained enough supplies to feed an army - but in reality it wouldn’t have lasted them more than a couple of weeks. Elsa organised everyone into teams, dividing up the vital chores among them.
Neal found himself involved in construction work. Truth to tell, he enjoyed it. He’d worked with wood before and although the aim now was function rather than beauty there was beauty all the same in the firm lines of a split-log house as it took shape under his hands. His skin tanned, and his palms roughened.
Peter joined him near the end of most days, even after spending the preceding hours out scavenging with Diana and some of the others who knew how to handle themselves. Ethical scruples about stealing were a thing of the past, faced with the pressing needs of their adopted small community. They were hitting towns in a slowly widening circle, emptying food stores of non-perishable items and also scavenging fuel, light sources, winter clothing, medical supplies.
No one ever talked very much about those trips. They were well beyond the zone where the government had been futilely trying to stem the spread of the virus by evacuating civilians. Here they had given up, and people had died in their homes instead, the virus appearing to have increased in virulence as it swept across the country. Even so, there must be other small communities around, but they avoided each other.
There was speculation, some evenings, about whether whatever remained of the government was still hanging on, clinging against the West Coast and rebuilding slowly from there. There were strong feelings on either side, but Neal couldn’t really find it important.
It was the information loss which he found strangest to deal with. Neal’s radius had chafed him often enough, but although he had been physically locked in place the rest of the world was still there, only a telephone call or a computer screen away. Now they might as well be on a tiny island, or a raft, for all the connection he felt to the surrounding continent.
And he missed everyone who wasn’t with them - missed them with a gnawing, soul-deep intensity. Elizabeth, Sara, June, Mozzie. Mozzie in particular he had never been able to imagine not being around. Even when not physically present, the idea that he might not return had been unthinkable. Now... it continued to be unthinkable, but that was because whenever his thoughts started edging in that direction his insides twisted and he shied away.
It was much safer to worry about things closer to home. Like Peter. Who didn’t talk much, these days, and who rarely laughed. Diana had confided to Neal that at first Peter had spent their scavenging trips in constant, desperate hope that against all the odds they were going to come across El and Mozzie, or find some sign that they had passed that way. He had left messages, with oblique directions to their farm. (Neal, who had been trying to think of a way to persuade Peter to do just that, had approved.)
But now, a couple of months on, he had given them up for dead. His loss of hope was there in the way he grimly threw himself into working seemingly endless shifts, wearing himself out to the point of exhaustion on construction work, or on the farmland, and doggedly refusing to acknowledge concern. He was far from alone in his way of dealing with grief, but that didn’t make it any less worrying to watch.
Dozens of times, Neal almost went to him to suggest that they take off, just them and Diana, and not give up until they had managed to hunt down El and Mozzie’s trail. He pictured their reunion a thousand times, the incredulous question of, How on earth did you find us? always answered by, We never stopped looking, of course.
After the houses were finished, they would go. After all of the harvest was in. Once there was nothing urgent pressing down on the small community, and they could leave without feeling like they were abandoning their friends.
But winter swept down with a speed that was shocking - even though all their preparations had been against it, it had still seemed like a far-off threat. Suddenly the wind was biting and the air was full of snow and everyone confined themselves indoors for most of the day. The books that Neal and several others had pleaded and begged with the scavengers to collect over the past months suddenly became vital commodities.
And the wolves moved in.
- - -
The beat-up 4x4 struggled against the steepness of the snow-piled road, and Neal could almost feel it being pushed back by the driving wind that was flinging yet more snow against the windshield. The wipers were struggling valiantly, but they were no match for the storm.
Once, Neal would have made some sort of quip about their situation, but that would have been to a Peter who was less grim, and who would have bickered back happily. The person who had been occupying Peter’s body over the past few months felt almost like a stranger. They still sought each others’ company, but they just never seemed to talk much. Something that would be unthinkable before all of this.
Staring out of the car windows with white flakes whirling past, their old life seemed impossibly far away.
The engine stuttered, and Neal winced, glancing sideways at Peter. It did it again a moment later, and then sputtered out. Neal held his breath as Peter wrestled with the ignition, trying over and over, but it didn’t restart.
In the sudden absence of sound from the engine, the wind’s howls were very loud.
"Do you know what’s the matter?" Neal asked.
Peter tried the ignition again, not hopefully. "No. We’ve got plenty of gas, and there’s no warning light anywhere."
That was about as far as Neal’s knowledge of car problems went. If one broke down you either enlisted a mechanic or acquired another one, depending on available funds and how urgently you needed to be somewhere else. "How close are we to the farm, do you think?"
"Three, maybe four miles," Peter said. He looked out of his side window - too much snow had already built up on the windscreen for him to have any hope of seeing anything at all out of it. "Survival recommendations are to stay in your vehicle."
"This blizzard could last for days," Neal pointed out.
"Yeah, I know," Peter said. "And there’s not going to be anyone helpfully driving along the same road to rescue us."
They sat in silence for a moment. Neal thought he was mostly in favour of remaining in the car purely because, even though it was rapidly cooling now that the heating had stopped working, it seemed significantly less uncomfortable than stepping out into the middle of a blizzard. But on the other hand, they hadn’t been scavenging for edibles, and so they had minimal supplies of food and water with them. "You think we should go on foot," he said.
Peter nodded. "I think it’s less of a risk than gambling on waiting this out. It should only take us a couple of hours to get back."
"I’ve been out in worse," Neal said, with a quick grin that was entirely on purpose.
But Peter didn’t take the obvious bait to ask him when, and whether the purpose behind it had been illegal. It stung every time, that Peter didn’t react to things like that anymore. And yet Neal couldn’t stop himself from throwing them out - it was like continually prodding at a bruise. Like if he just managed to find the right thing to say he would succeed in knocking Peter out of his sleepwalk.
Peter reached around into the back seat, pulling out both of their sets of cold-weather gear, and passing Neal his. It was extremely awkward wrestling them on over their normal clothes in the cramped surroundings of the car seats, but Neal was putting less stock in dignity nowadays. And Peter didn’t mock him for his lack of it.
He even missed that.
"Ready?" Peter asked, and Neal nodded and took a deep breath before pulling his hood up and his snow-goggles down, and opening the door.
The wind slammed against him immediately, rocking him backwards on his feet until he found his balance. It was bitingly cold against the exposed skin of his face, and sliced straight through his coat and waterproof trousers. He was already shivering as he shoved the door shut and trudged through the snow to meet up with Peter.
"You good?" Peter called. He was holding a compass, its string wrapped around his wrist, even though they would just be following the line of the road.
"Yeah," Neal called back. "Nice day for a walk."
Trudging through the blizzard was both tiring and disorientating, although at least Neal felt sufficiently warm within only a few minutes. He and Peter kept pace beside each other, even though it would probably have been more sensible for them to take turns leading, and trampling down a path for the other. But Neal didn’t like the idea of walking ahead into the whiteness without the reassurance that Peter was still with him, and he thought that Peter might be feeling the same.
When the first howls came whirling through the air, Neal stopped dead in his tracks, heart instantly pounding. "Peter," he said. "You hear that?"
"I heard," Peter said. He reached under his coat to extract his pistol. Neal did the same, considering whether it would be worth taking off a glove for increased accuracy. But his fingers would freeze quickly, leaving him worse off.
(He had grown used to carrying a gun remarkably quickly. Necessity did that to you.)
The howling came again, from the east. The pack was some distance away, but they were hunting. The wolves had thrived through the fall with the lack of hunters and the easy prey of untended livestock, and expanded their numbers and range. With food supplies falling again now that winter had come, competition was fierce, and deadly.
The snow was falling so heavily that it was opaque, a thick whiteness that was impossible to see through for more than a few yards, no matter how much Neal strained his eyes. But it was silent now.
Then they passed through into the lee of a clump of trees and Neal remembered, wolves are ambush predators, aren’t they. The lithe grey bodies had been shadows in the snow, but all at once they were startlingly clear.
"Don’t run," Peter said, in a low voice. He aimed, but with a snarl the hungry pack leapt to attack, and his first shot went wild.
Neal hadn’t expected them to attack Peter. He was smaller; surely he should have been their target. Or maybe they had sensed Peter’s depression and lack of regard for his own safety, and judged him to be weaker right then. But the jaws of the lead wolf snapped around Peter’s leg and he went down in a spray of snow and blood.
Neal shouted, or screamed, and started firing. Some of his shots obviously missed, but some hit fur, and sinew, and bone. A crack of gunfire came from Peter’s position, and the wolf tearing at him slumped back and went limp.
Another went for Neal, and he could have sworn it took two bullets at point-blank range before it went down as it leapt for his arm, but he was half-blinded by terror. More shots from Peter, to yelping howling shrieks from the wolves, and finally the pack broke up, no longer grouped as one but fleeing raggedly.
"Peter," Neal gasped, and dropped to his knees in the snow, shoving the wolf carcass frantically away. He felt sick.
"Neal!" Peter was struggling to get up, grabbing for the hem of Neal’s coat. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, no, I’m fine, Peter -"
"Your arm!"
Neal glanced down, and found to his confusion that his left glove and part of his sleeve had been ripped away, and his arm was bleeding profusely. But although there was a lot of blood it didn’t look deep and anyway - "Peter, your leg!"
Peter looked down, finally, and his mouth moved silently for a second. He swallowed. "Oh, damn," he said, faintly.
There was too much blood. There was a terrifying amount of blood. Peter’s pulse-beat was visible in it, and it was soaking into the snow all around.
Neal unzipped his coat to get his scarf off faster, and wound it around and around Peter’s calf. Peter’s blood was warm and slick against his bare hand. Peter was trying to get his own scarf off but he was being too slow so Neal all but ripped it off him, tying it as tightly as he could. He had a flash of inspiration and pulled off his snow goggles, fishing a knife from his pocket and opening it to slice off the elastic, which made a more secure knot on top of the bulky bandaging. The elastic from Peter’s goggles added to it further. It was only then that Neal could take a breath, feeling like it was the first one in hours.
"Are you okay?" he asked, desperately, knowing only too well that the answer was no, not at all. "Peter, we need to get to the farm."
Peter was staring straight ahead, his face the same colour as the falling snow around them. Shock. "Peter, come on," Neal demanded, and took matters into his own hands by dragging Peter upwards, slinging an arm over his shoulders.
Peter limped forwards when prompted, and the wind stole most of his pain-filled noises. Neal’s arm had been beginning to ache fiercely, but soon it was aching with cold instead and shortly after that he could barely feel it. He hoped they were still going the right way.
The first glimpse of a distant light through the blizzard brought a gasp of hope to catch in Neal’s throat, and the relief of it stopped his feet for a moment. That was enough time for Peter’s weight to start to slump heavily against him, and suddenly Neal was struggling to stop him from sliding down into the snow. He held out for a few seconds, but then his cold-stiffened knees buckled under the pull and he hit the ground, trying to break Peter’s fall as much as he could.
Peter’s eyes were closed, and his skin was grey and blue-tinged with cold. Neal tapped his face, and then outright slapped his cheek. "Peter!" he shouted.
The combination worked; Peter opened his eyes slowly.
"You need to get up," Neal ordered. "We’re almost there."
Peter looked at first as if he hadn’t heard. He raised his head a couple of inches from the packed snow, and let it fall back. "I’ll stay here," he mumbled. Neal had to lean in to hear him.
"You won’t."
Peter sighed slightly. He looked -- his face didn’t hold much of an expression, except for resignation. He had been waiting for this. Ever since he had lost hope of Elizabeth’s survival, he had been waiting passively for something to take him too.
"Don’t you dare die here," Neal said. His voice was low, and it was only a flicker in Peter’s eyes that let him know he was being heard. "Don’t you dare, or I will never forgive you." He didn’t know how much he meant the words until they were out of his mouth, but they were far more true than he had intended them to be.
"Neal -" Peter half-whispered.
"No!" Neal's face was frozen; it took effort to form words. "You wanted to stay here and help people, and then you just gave up, because you’ve decided Elizabeth must be dead and therefore you don’t need to care about anything anymore. You can’t just go and die now!"
Peter stared at him, a little blankly. "You don’t believe she’s dead?"
"No," Neal said, fiercely. "I don’t. Not her, and not Mozzie." He knew that Peter had never agreed with him in letting one’s wishes dictate one’s belief, but right now he needed to share that hot spark of hope. And then he could feel the other words he wanted to say forcing their way out of him, even though they were raw and painful and ran counter to that determined optimism. "Please, Peter," he said, and they came out sounding broken, "You can’t leave me too. You can’t."
Peter’s eyes widened. "Dammit, Neal," he whispered, and was suddenly attempting to struggle up. Neal grabbed his arm, and pushed himself up painfully.
He could hear the wolves again as they struggled towards the farm buildings, the swirling wind obscuring how far they still had to go. He had his gun in his free hand, and kept glancing back over his shoulder into the sheets of snow. Each shadow could be a wolf, each flicker of movement in the corner of his eye could be the pack circling, ready to strike.
From being only far-off lights, the farmhouse sprang into visibility only metres away with startling abruptness. Neal gasped in mixed shock and relief, and grabbed for the door, slamming his shoulder against the heavy wood to get it to move.
They stumbled past the thick curtain inside and into the main room, snow bursting in around them. Faces looked up, eyes widening in shock, but Neal barely had time to register that because Peter sighed softly and collapsed against him.
There were several people there - it was late afternoon, a sociable time. The noise right then seemed to being made by at least a hundred babbling mouths. Suddenly overwhelmed, Neal let George and Ravi pry Peter away from him and obeyed a hand on his shoulder that pushed him down into a dragged-up chair. He watched numbly as Elsa yelled at someone to find Julie, sweeping everything off the large table with an arm.
Diana had her hand on Neal’s shoulder, fingers digging tight as she practically vibrated in place. "I’m fine," Neal said, through teeth that were beginning to chatter. "Go help Peter."
She squeezed his arm in gratitude and flew over to Peter. There were too many people around him now; he was blocked from view. Neal tried to take a deep breath and found that he couldn’t, not really.
He shut his eyes, trying to get his chest to relax, but he opened them when someone started trying to take his coat off. Diana was staring at him worriedly.
"How’s Peter?" he asked.
"I don’t know, Elsa told me to go away." She bit her lip in concentration as she worked the sleeve carefully down over his injured arm. "That must hurt."
Neal shook his head. "Not really. I’m cold."
"You’re in shock," she said. "It’ll hurt soon enough." Neal found her bluntness strangely reassuring. "Sorry, you don’t get anyone with more than first-aid training right now, but Matt’s getting you blankets."
Finally getting the coat off, Diana worked on Neal’s sweater and then his shirt. If they had been in an ER both of them would have been cut away, but clothing was valuable and Neal didn’t protest as she helped him carefully wriggle out of them instead. Matt had turned up by then with an armful of blankets, which he and Diana began wrapping Neal in, leaving his arm out.
Cleaning it did hurt; the gashes were deep and ragged. Neal clenched his teeth and stared over at where Peter was hidden. Elsa and George were working to Julie’s direction, and Peter’s blood was vivid on all three of them.
"I don’t really want to practice my sewing on your arm," Diana said. "I’m just going to cover and bandage it up for now. Julie can check it later."
"Sure," Neal said, more fixated on the movement across the room. He was good at reading people, and the frantic anxiety was starkly clear. He barely noticed what Diana was doing - in any case, it was getting lost in a blur of general pain from his arm as he thawed out.
"Diana!" Julie called, urgently, half-turning towards them. "What’s Peter's blood type? He’s lost too much. I need to try a transfusion."
"Same as me," Neal said, and pushed himself quickly to his feet. "I can -" The room spun, and kept spinning. He swayed dizzily, vision greying, and hands dragged him with more urgency than gentleness over onto the couch, where he was forced limply down. It was a fight to keep his eyes open.
"Neal, don’t be stupid!" Diana shouted at him. "You’ve lost enough blood already, my god..."
He groaned, unable to form more coherence. He felt woozy and sick, and her face was tight with fury but also terrified, and brittle.
"Neal, open your mouth." Elsa loomed above him, and slipped two pills onto the roof of his tongue, before pressing the rim of a glass against his lips. "Swallow."
No choice. He swallowed, and only then could ask, "What?"
"Vicodin," she said, and he tensed instinctively, because sedating drugs like that had always been things to avoid, and he knew that he still had time to bring them up again before they had dissolved...
"Neal, I’m sorry," Diana said, and squeezed his unhurt arm. "You need this, okay?"
And they needed to focus on Peter, yes, he could understand. He could feel the drugs working already, dragging on his consciousness, and he was still trying to formulate a proper, complete response as they pulled him under altogether.
-
He woke to bright sunshine through the window-panes and a muffled feeling of dread. His arm throbbed with a deep ache, and he had hazy memories of half-waking as Julie unwrapped Diana’s bandaging and did further painful things to it.
When he turned his neck stiffly, the first thing he laid eyes on was the long beech table, now littered around with medical debris. Even from where he was, he could see dark stains on the pale wood.
Peter was nowhere to be seen.
Cold fear gripped tight inside Neal’s chest. He had to find out what had happened.
He was halfway through the slow process of sitting up when Elsa came through from the kitchen, pausing for a second when she saw him and then coming over. She looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed. "Hey," she said. "How’re you feeling?"
"Where’s Peter?" Neal demanded.
"He’s alive," she said, quickly, which was the answer to the main question Neal had been asking. The tight band of fear around his chest eased somewhat, although he knew he wouldn’t truly be able to believe it until he saw Peter for himself. "He’s in George’s room. Diana’s with him; he’s sleeping."
Neal let go a deep breath. "And he’s going to - I mean, he’s not -"
"Julie thinks he’s out of immediate danger," Elsa said. "She’s finally getting some sleep herself, on the floor in there. Which is another reason you can’t go in just yet."
"This was all last night?" Neal asked. "What time is it?"
"A bit before noon, I think," she said. "The storm cleared sometime after dawn. Snow’s lying pretty thick out there - no tracks of you two at all."
They could have waited the blizzard out, Neal thought. They could have waited it out easily.
It wasn’t until several hours later that he was allowed in to see Peter - until Peter was awake himself. Diana had enforced it, telling Neal firmly that he still needed to be resting, not waiting in a chair for Peter to wake up and being a disturbance in the process. She hadn’t slept herself yet. Neal didn’t think she was in a mood where he wanted to risk an argument.
Peter was propped up against a mound of pillows, blankets over him and over an odd blocky shape where his leg should be. Peter saw him looking and smiled wryly. "There’s a tunnel of cardboard boxes keeping my leg separate from the blankets," he said.
"That’s cutting edge medicine for you," Neal agreed, gesturing at his own bulky sling to illustrate the point before looking more closely at Peter. Peter’s face clearly showed that he was in pain, but there was also some... some animation there which at first seemed strangely incongruous.
It had been missing for so long.
"You saved my life," Peter said, seriously.
Neal shrugged, suddenly mildly embarrassed. "No small talk?"
Peter shook his head. "I’m probably going to fall asleep again soon. Thought I’d get it out there." He gave Neal a critical look. "You look like you could use more rest, too."
It was so familiar, the Peter whom Neal had been trying to locate for months. "You seem... better," he said, not knowing quite how to express it.
Peter’s mouth twisted slightly; he didn’t pretend not to know what Neal meant. "I started wanting to be alive after all," he said, quietly. "Thank you."
Neal impulsively reached for Peter’s hand, and Peter gripped back tightly. He was reliving, for a moment, shouting at Peter in the snow. He suspected that Peter was, too, and probably neither of them would talk about that again, but that was okay. They would be okay.
Peter looked down at where his leg was hidden. "Julie told me your arm’s going to be fine," he said.
"Yeah," Neal agreed. "I’ll have some great scars. Not as good as yours, of course."
Peter smiled, but then his expression went sad, and a little distant. "She said my leg probably isn't going to heal up properly. Too much muscle and tendon damage that would have needed surgery to repair."
"What does that mean?" Neal asked, feeling his stomach drop.
Peter sighed. "I’ll be walking again, but with crutches. Maybe a stick, eventually." He rubbed at his eyes tiredly. "I don’t think it’s hit me yet. I can’t really believe it."
Neal couldn’t really believe it, either, but he swallowed back his instinctive urge to argue with the reality that was presented. "Are you... all right?" he asked, uncertainly.
"Ask me again when I’m not on opiates," Peter said. He looked unhappy, and determined, but the depression Neal had feared him sinking back into was not in evidence.
Neal, watching him closely, thought that maybe he understood Peter's reaction. This was a challenge; something he could fight against, something with a clearly-defined goal. "I bet your leg will heal more than Julie told you," he said. "She was probably worrying about getting your hopes up or something."
"Whereas you’re happily free of that worry," Peter suggested, with another familiar and so-welcome half-smile.
"I believe you won’t let an injury beat you," Neal said. "You came back from one before, didn’t you?"
Peter gave him a full smile this time, before his face abruptly went serious. "Neal, what you said before, about - about Mozzie and El -"
"They’re alive," Neal said, simply, but with all the honest conviction he knew how to put into his voice. "I believe that, too."
"Thank you," Peter said, again, and didn’t let go his grip on Neal’s hand.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
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