#Casting notes: I'm definitely imagining Jensen Ackles as Ethan

[coffeeangelinabox]

Snippet answering 3

"Is there any plan in your brilliant head that doesn't involve one of us as a sacrifice?"

He gives her a cocky grin. "You think I'm brilliant?"

"Ethan," her voice sharpens, not in the mood for his jokes at all, but using the anger to replace, or at least feign, some of her depleted energy "Ethan. You can't-"

The sounds on the other side of their homemade barrier are becoming louder. There are more of them gathering. Humans, one can fight, but these unholy creatures...bullets and blades do little good. Even if not for...but there's no point in dwelling. The situation is hopeless for a whole collection of reasons.

She starts at the feeling of his thumb brushing a tear that she hadn't realised she had let roll down her cheek. "Becky-"

There's no levity in his voice now and his green eyes cut sharply to one side, before his voice lowers still further. Impossibly, that raises part of a smile. How typical of Ethan Miller to be more afraid of a few seconds of emotional intimacy that the twisted monsters mere seconds from ripping them apart.

"I won't leave you," she says, a flat statement.

His touch turns from tender to harsh and his eyes flash dangerously. "You will."

After all this time, he still thinks he can *force* her to bow to demands, thinks he can order away like some frightened pitiful girl to cower behind him. She sneers up at him and it pulls at the skin on her cheek and she's aware again of the darkening bruises she sustained earlier. "Make me."

"Would you really make me die knowing I couldn't even save you?"

Some of the fight goes out of her, though the tension doesn't. His thumb is still pressing a bruise under her eye, but she leans a little into the pain, grounding herself in it and the coolness of his touch. She rests her own hands on his chest and, shockingly, he doesn't say a word, allowing her to brace herself, to take the comfort that she knows will soon be gone. "It was your idea. It's one of us, or both of us."

The first of their adversaries peers over the barrier. It is nothing but a twisted lump of rotting flesh, appendages and tissue drawn from numerous victims and crudely stitched together. It looks horrifying and stinks worse. Somehow, even without eyes, it peers from the top of the over turned table down on them, the mishapen and broken hand jerking out of the top of it claws towards them.

In unison, Ethan and Becky draw talismans from their back pockets, holding them up. The thing sizzles. Blisters popping up on flesh which first reddens then blackens until it splits like over cooked meat. Becky feels the familiar tingle in her palm that's her power readying itself for the battle ahead and she knows it isn't enough. She's too tired and hurts too much. There are just too many.

"One of us has to get back," and she forces her voice to be cold and hard, not to allow the affection burning in her chest, the only thing warming her, to show. He's seen her tears once. Not again. "We know what's coming. We're the only ones who know. We can't allow the others to be taken by surprise. We need-" she cuts herself off with a hoarse cough and he jerks forward.

"Becky?"

She grabs his shoulder and pushes harder against him, keeping him from leaning too close into her space, refusing to take more from him, and stays her course. "You have to-"

For a moment, his fire comes back to him, but it's muted, already quenched with pain and she knows she's won. "Why?" He asks bitterly. "I know...after everything...after Declan...but won't you at least take this from me?"

And she cannot allow him to imagine she'd rather die than rely on him, that is a cruelty too far. She peels a her hand off his shoulder and he braces her as she wobbles, but his eyes follow her fingers as she reaches down, as she lifts the hem of her ragged once-pink t-shirt.

Pulling the cotton away from the vicious rent in her flesh makes her hiss. He whitens. "How? When?" and she knows he is looking not just at the depth of the wound, blood so thick it is almost black and the way you can see the moving sides of white fat and near purple muscle, quivering with each of her shaking inhalations. He is taking note of the yellowish green slime bubbling from it, connecting her bright eyes and flushed skin to the unhealthy pallor and tightened swelling of the wound.

She doesn't actually know. They've been fighting for so long, barely a second of rest since escaping the White Tower. "I can't go any further," she says instead, calm and steady and each word dropping into his ears like a stone. "I can't move fast enough. It has to be you."

"But-" he looks agonised and then says in a rush, "but they'll use you. They'll...cut you up and..." He looks sick.

She feels the same and she looks down to hide it from him. He'll never leave her if he knows how afraid she is. He'll damn the world before he leaves her to suffer this alone. She hopes he thinks it's illness and weakness causing the fine tremour she can feel running through her. She doesn't want him to know that at the last all she could do was tremble against him. A frightened pitiful girl after all.

"You can't save me," she says and she watches him take those words like a wound that goes at least as deep - and poisons him just as surely - as hers does. It will be her words she hears in his nightmares and she knows it, but if it works...She would hurt him worse to get him out of here. "You can't. Do this for me instead."

His eyes lock onto hers and she forces herself to think of nothing but those she is protecting: her sisters, her mother, even Declan (that bastard), forces herself to think of them so he will see nothing but truth shining in her eyes.

"You're my hero," he whispers, low and quick like the words are being dragged from him under torture (they are). She hands him her talisman and waterbottle. The map she has been using.

There are so many last minute whispers she wishes she had time for.

Tell my family-

I've always-

It's ok.

But in the end if she opens her mouth all that will come out is "don't leave me" so she dares not say anything and turns herself painfully to face the direction of assault and masks everything she is feeling with a low sound of pain instead.

Ethan brushes a hand once quickly through her hair. There is something on the other side of the barrier once more. It sounds bigger than the other once was and she wonders if her strength will hold.

Ethan reaches around her, an awkward hug from behind and digs a finger through her shirt and into the cut in her side. She *screams* back bowing with it and he braces her through the agony. The things on the far side, those with mouths and voices, chitter appreciatively and she feels him flinch almost as hard as her at the sadistic tone. Any hope that she had that they would just kill her drains into the dusty floor beneath her knees.

There's a metallic rattle and her talisman, along with his, lands on the ground beside her. Through the black spots still dancing in front of her vision, she sees they are smeared with thick, clotted red.

"Quick and dirty blood magic," he says by way of quick explanation and the hand against her side flattens over the wound this time. It's just as agonising, but she doesn't move away. It's the last comforting touch she can expect.

"Give me as much time as you can," and Ethan's voice is steady, calmer than hers would be. Her heart rattles against her ribs like a rabbit cornered by a fox.

And then she's alone.

Something else is scrambling up the barrier. Becky's hand fumbles for one of the talismans at her side.

Sacrificing Dialogue

Characters sacrificing themselves for... the plot.

"I won't be able to buy you that ring, but I can buy you enough time to get out of there."

"You can't hold them off alone!" "Not forever. But for now."

"Is there any plan in your brilliant head that doesn't involve one of us as a sacrifice?"

"We can't kill them! You will also die with them!" "Dying a hero would suit me well, I think."

"It's ok. I will be fine. You need to go now."

"Everyone or no one! None of us will just be left behind."

"I don't want to hear another word from you. You will not sacrifice yourself for this!"

"It's me or you. And in this case, we need you more than me."

"Don't even think about it!" "I need to do this!"

"We won't make it both. We got to choose."

"I guess one of us has to die a heroic death." "Don't be so dramatic."

"So this is probably the end for me. One kiss for a selfless man?"

"No sacrificing bullshit! It's you and I together, remember?"

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