#…sir
Day 31 of @themerrywhumpofmay
Yay, I completed the challenge!
Sequel to Day 16: You’re Scared, Aren’t You?
Tropes and CWs: Survival situation, winged whumpees, wing whump, military whump.
Number six had given up.
Even back at the river, with dawn splitting the horizon into light, there was no sign of the skimmer coming to pick them up. The intervals between the chirrups in Pennon’s transmitter had only lengthened—finally stretching into silence. All Six could hear was his own pained breaths, and the terrifying rush of the rapids he’d almost drowned in the night before.
Pennon was sitting on a rock next to the river, staring at the water like he wanted to throw himself into the current. Before that, he’d been pacing up and down the riverbank. Six still saw some of that nervous energy work its way into his fidgeting hands.
“What do we do… sir?” Six clung onto the sir like it might get him out of this terrifying nowhere. Sir. Commander. He wondered if Pennon would still have a mind to snap at him if he called him Pennon. Kal, even. He took extra care to bite that one back. Cadets weren’t even supposed to know the first names of their superior officers. “We can’t stay around and…”
“If you have a better idea, speak up.” Pennon’s voice dragged with weariness. He wasn’t even being sarcastic. “They’ll have some idea of where we went down. Moving will only take us away from rescue.”
Six’s broken wing twitched at the memory of plummeting out of the sky, of Pennon’s arms grabbing him seconds before the fall split his skull on the rocks. They were lucky to both be alive. “I don’t have any better ideas, sir,” he admitted in a whisper.
“Thought not. You were hardly top of your class.”
Still enough energy to make a dig, then. The criticism almost gave Six hope. He settled down with his bare feet next to the water and splashed some on his face. He wondered how scratched and bruised the storm had left him. “Could the skimmer even land here?”
“Maybe they can send someone down,” Pennon said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Let me look at your wing.”
Six winced at Pennon’s touch, but there was no yanking or rough handling. Pennon’s fingers felt surprisingly gentle. “Not gonna sugar-coat it, kid. It doesn’t look good. We need to get you some medical support as soon as we can.”
Six closed his eyes. Being so far from friendly civilisation, the thought of a doctor seemed as remote and unobtainable as an airlift back to the mesas. “We’re going to die out here,” he said.
Pennon laid a hand between his shoulder blades, in a reassurance neither of them felt.
