You're Safe With Me

Damn them. Damn that fucking, cursed, fucked-up, overgrown, scrap of rotted meat that should have withered and died in the darkest corner of the Alpha lab. Prototype winced as she pushed herself further back into the cave, hide scraping against the rough stone walls. She’d been living outside the facility since the cold came - the winter, she corrected herself - but her hide was still not as strong as someone who had been living in the elements for years. She wished, not for the first time, that she had some feathers. They might have cushioned the blow, or let her slip more freely from F-23’s grasp.

Fuck them! She hissed under her breath. She should’ve eaten that pain in the ass when she had the chance. Not that she… had much of a chance to begin with, which was the whole reason that F-23 was still alive.

It was fine. It was fine! She’d gotten herself out of worse situations than this. She could get herself out of this one, too. F-23 already seemed to have given up on her, moving on to hunt something less wriggly and prone to escaping.

Not that Prototype had escaped without injury, unfortunately. It wasn’t just her hide that stung. There were deep, ragged tears in her tail that were slowly oozing blood onto the stone. The scent would be a dead giveaway of where she was, paint a target on her back. She had to hope that the cave was small enough that none of the island’s other carnivores would be able to worm their way in to try to finish her off, because she wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Not while F-23 might still be around. Vindictive, vengeful, hateful creature. Prototype almost couldn’t believe that the acro still held onto a grudge after so long. Kill or be killed was the law of carnivores in the Alpha lab. She had simply been trying to not be killed - by other carnivores, by the dacen, or by hunger.

She sighed and got herself comfortable. With an empty stomach, cramped quarters, and an aching tail - fuck did they have to yank her tail so hard? It almost felt like something was dislocated - it was going to be a long night. It gave her time to come up with a game plan: wait it out, make sure F-23 was gone, find a stream to wash the blood and blood-scent off, wrap her tail with… something, then get back to Doruk and the others.

There had to be something out here to use to pack wounds, she just wasn’t sure what. The realisation that there was a gap in her knowledge only served to piss her off more, and she cursed F-23 again. If she were still in the lab, she could grab gauze or fabric off of one of the beds or something. Instead she had… she didn’t know. Grass or something, probably. She’d figure it out when she managed to get moving again.

She tried to stay awake, to keep an ear out for anything that sounded like trouble coming back, but the night was long and the rush of adrenaline that almost becoming dinner had given her was wearing off, leaving her thoroughly exhausted. Not to mention her fucking tail hurt. The dull, throbbing ache was turning into a sharp, stabbing pain. She tried to put it from her mind.

Her eyes slipped shut.

Only to open again what felt like moments later to the sound of hurried footsteps disturbing crumbling, decaying leaves. The sliver of sky that she could see was… light. Or almost light. Had she slept through the rest of the night?

“Prototype!”

She recognised that voice, despite it being only a whisper-yell. Doruk sounded hoarse and surprisingly out of breath, like he’d been running and shouting for almost as long as she’d been sleeping. He sounded scared. He could… probably smell her blood. It made her feel… bad, she realised.

“In here,” she called in return, though quieter than he was calling for her. She felt a spike of concern - she still wasn’t sure F-23 was really gone. “You gotta go, that acro is fucking crazy-”

Doruk skid to a stop in front of the cave, flanks heaving as he panted. He really was out of breath. Prototype felt something strange, like she’d eaten something funny. He cared. He’d been looking for her. She hadn’t considered that one of the pack might be worried that she didn’t come back in the night, much less actually come out to search for her.

“Prototype,” he said again, relieved this time despite the worry she could see in his eyes. “Are you ok? You didn’t come back after that hunt. I thought you got turned around, and I finally found your trail, and an acro’s scent tangled with yours - the blood,” he panted, the sentences coming out in a near-constant string.

Her stomach made that weird feeling again. He really sounded worried.

“I’m okay,” she sighed. He stepped back to give her the space she needed to wriggle out of her hiding place. She sucked in a sharp breath when her hide scraped against the stone walls yet again.

He stepped forward to nose her, relieved, yet paused when he realised the blood-scent still clung to her. He uttered a curse unfamiliar to her - something to do with eggshells, or shards - when he saw her tail.

The realisation that she’d come so close to being prey almost choked him. He wanted to do it right. He really liked Prototype - her fearlessness, her independence, her sass, her everything - yet he hadn’t been with her when this had happened.

Most of the wounds on her tail had clotted, no longer bleeding, but she was left with ugly and open tears through the muscle. She was missing scales where the stone had ripped them away, leaving her with fresh injuries that beaded blood where they had scraped particularly badly.

Prototype… almost felt embarrassed, the way he was looking at her. Which was ridiculous. She’d survived, hadn’t she? She was a little roughed up, but she could still get around just fine.

“I’m alive, right?” she snorted. She started to walk off, to prove that her injuries looked worse than they were and wouldn’t get in her way, only to stumble on the first step. Pain in her back and hips almost sent her to the ground. She would have hit the ground if Doruk hadn’t caught her.

“Prototype you’re hurt, let me help-”

“I know I’m hurt!” she snapped. Did he think this was the first injury she’d ever sustained? “I don’t need you to tell me that, I can feel it! And I don’t need you to help me. I was perfectly alright without your help while I was stuck in that place!”

Doruk was quiet for a moment, and Prototype regretted a bit of her words. Maybe not her words, but at least the sharpness of them. He… had helped her a lot, with getting used to this new world.

He didn’t pull away, despite what she said, but his next words were more measured and careful. “I know you don’t need my help,” he murmured. His eyes were soft as he glanced at her. “You don’t need any help. You’re the bravest, fiercest, most terrifying force of nature I think I’ve ever met. You could do anything you put your mind to.”

Well. That only made her feel like an asshole. She snapped at him, he complimented her? Not that she didn’t… appreciate the praise.

“I want to help you, though,” he continued. “I know you did everything yourself, while you were in there, but you’re not... “ Doruk paused before he stated the obvious again. You’re not in there anymore. “You’re not alone. You don’t need to do everything yourself. You’re hurt, I want to take care of you.”

They stood there in silence, Prototype leaning against Doruk. His feathers were soft. Except where they were bare, ripped to pieces by scars of battles past. How often did he let others take care of him? How long had he taken care of himself?

But Prototype relented. Doruk walked beside her, offering his support if she felt unstable again as they walked away from the hunting trail left behind by F-23.

Doruk lead them back through the forest to a glade, where she could rest underneath a rocky overhang. Doruk’s offer to help was still there, but she laid down herself, with only a quiet hiss to suggest how much she was really hurting.

Being in pain, being wounded, was a death sentence in the Alpha lab. It was a sign of weakness. It meant that you would soon be prey, or that you were free game to cull. Being smaller than most, she’d had to hide especially carefully if she were injured.

But here, she was… with someone who cared for her. Who had spent the night looking for her, worried that she had been wounded - or worse. He didn’t say exactly how scared he had been for her, or that he had been terrified that he might find pieces of her rather than… her intact, living self. But she could see it in his eyes, the way his feathers were puffed as he scrounged for and harvested a fluffy, soft-looking plant.

Her heart did that thing again. One day she might figure out what it meant.

“What’s that?” she asked, a little apprehensive as he came back with a bundle of the fluffy plant.

“Just moss,” was the simple answer she was given. Or “moth,” since his mouth was full. It bounced off the ground when he dropped it, just a short height.

“It’ll keep the bite from going sour,” he explained gently.

None of her wounds had ever soured, but she had seen the results of ones that had. She’d seen pieces of captive dinosaurs rot off after a bad fight, spreading from wounds until they died, or one especially unfortunate case where a dinosaur had scraped against a piece of rusty metal, and met a slow and painful end as its muscles seized up one by one. It was nothing she ever wanted to experience.

If Doruk thought his moss would help, then…

Again, she relented, if a bit more reluctantly. In the lab, she knew everything. Every nook and cranny, where to find supplies, water, even to find some amount of food. Out here… she was still learning. Out here, he knew more than she did. Even if she still would’ve preferred a bandage.

Doruk tried to be careful as he tended to her. He was slow, gentle, but she still hissed quietly when he nosed at the meat that was tender even near to the injuries.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “It’s… sore, there.”

“Where else?” he prompted gently.

Prototype was reluctant to say, at first. Admitting that she was going to have trouble walking, or even running, was scary. Not scary. Daunting. She wasn’t scared of anything.

“We’ll be safe here for a while,” Doruk said, encouraging her quietly. As though he could read her mind. Perhaps he could. This wasn’t the first time she’d expressed an unwillingness to reveal potential weaknesses to him. He just hoped that by now, she’d understand that she really was safe with him. That he could help look out for her, that they could keep each other safe.

“My… hips,” she mumbled. “Just a bit stiff. I’ll be able to run again soon.”

That felt like a victory to Doruk, and not a small one. Admitting to a greater injury, even if she was quick to make it seem less severe.

“I’ll see if I can find something else to help with that once I’ve got your tail sorted,” he replied. There was almost a pleased hum in his voice. He gently bumped the side of his muzzle to hers, only realising after he’d done it the sort of closeness that he’d suggested. His feathers ruffled, and he cleared his throat with a quick “sorry.”

Her heart did that thing again. She thought he was sweet.

At least, until he pressed some of the moss into one of the wounds on her tail. Then she was teaching him new curses through explicit and graphic examples of them in use.