entrancelogs | so I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned

Who: Maxine Myers + You
Where: Undisclosed 1st floor location, and later the clinic
When: 4/17 onward
Rating: PG-ish? Maybe some cussing.
Summary: Catch-all for the fallout of Maxine's run-in with Dean. She's off her feet for a day or two. Even if she'd rather not be.
The Story:

[April 17th]
Afterwards, it's hard to remember even parts of the attack. Encounter? She remembers shooting first (insert inevitable Star Wars reference by Sam Yao, probably), but in the aftermath of the attack it's hard to think of even that. Even after she comes to (more or less, the waking world a hazy and fearful half-understood thing even before she tries to comprehend the unoccupied room she'd been hidden away in), she just knows that she hurts everywhere, and wants to sleep, and is deeply resentful of anyone who would keep her from that.

[April 18th onward]
She'll admit, after that - in a place without modern hospitals, technology, or surgical options, she's really, really glad that magic is an option. Especially when it comes to head trauma.

That isn't to say she's all better. She hadn't wanted to be all better. She hadn't wanted her brain to tell her one thing even while her eyes were telling her another. She's had enough of that for one lifetime. So she still looks unmistakably roughed-up, smoky-brown skin purpled dark with bruises apread across her neck and one cheekbone. But though her eyes are sleepless and heavy, there's a hardness in them too. By the afternoon of the second day after the attack, she's back in the freshly-warded clinic, shotgun back in its holster in the footwell of her desk.

She's had worse try to scare her into hiding. Even when death was something very permanent, it hadn't worked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After making his announcement, Sam spends most of his time flitting between Maxine and Jo and Simon, making sure they're alright, that they don't need anything. He is probably, if he's honest with himself, bloody annoying, but it's all that he can do so he doesn't care one bit.

It's such a relief when she wakes up and Billy has managed to make her better. She still looks a mess, but she's awake and talking and he just wants to hug her.

There is a lot of hugging.

For awhile, Maxine's more than willing to let it stay at hugging. The one best thing in her world right now, with everything else a nightmare, is that Sam is safe. Terrified and clingy and probably in an awful state, but safe. She hasn't been looking at her phone, and doesn't even know there's been an announcement put out. It's terrible, but she can just . . . tell. She's been with him through enough loss. She knows that look on his face.

"He killed Jo, didn't he," she murmurs, without preamble, breaking the quiet of the darkened room.

Part of him is well aware that before the apocalypse, this type of behaviour would probably have been viewed as unhealthy, codependent, maybe symptomatic of a few other messed up things. But he's lost so many other people. Maxine has been a constant since soon after he got to Abel, and then he'd nearly lost her and... how can he not want to stay close? How can he not want to protect her with his life if he has to? Or with the lives of others.

His breath hitches at the question and he goes tense and taut before he nods. "Yeah. He did. She'll come back but... yeah."

Of course she'll come back. That's how this place works. Everyone comes back. Everyone stands right back up, so they can walk around remembering that someone else here in this place can and will hurt them that monstrously. It's an awful thing to live with, but the confirmation that you'd died - that's the last and most awful part of it.

Maxine tenses, herself, but it's a subtler thing. Her back goes tight, and her breathing levels out too slow and even to be anything but deliberate, and she closes her eyes. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, once she trusts her voice is mostly under her control. "I tried to get to her- I got to her, but-"

"No! Maxine..." He leans close, burrowing against Maxine's side because it's close and comfortable and lets him really believe that she's there. "It's not your fault. Dean is- he's a monster. It's nothing like zombies or- it's not your fault."

"I know. I know it's on him. But I almost got her away." There's turbulence beneath the stillness of her tone, but she holds it in check, smoothing back his hair and holding him close. "Even if she was gone already. I'd have wanted to get her away from him."

"I know," Sam says quietly. "I know you would. But... but you're here and okay, and Jo is... she's alive. She'll be fine. And you did everything you could. You didn't even have to go near him and you did!"

Jo's alive, at least. Or will inevitably be. The line blurs between the two in the back of her mind, and she nods, falling quiet another handful of moments before she speaks again.

"Is he still out there?"

Sam is quiet for a moment after she asks that. He wishes that he could tell her that Dean is gone. That he's trapped or dead and they're safe.

"Yeah, he is."

so I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned

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