The Rules of Love & War [Sanguiniae & Pinky]

[Pink.]

”Keep your head down,” she hissed to Delphine as they approached the scene. Flames shot through the air, screams ricocheting off the surrounding trees as the men battled each other somewhere in the depths of Norway. Serafina could hardly be sure of where they were, and was certain if they didn’t find supplies, shelter, orient themselves soon she would fail in her promise to keep Delphine safe.

The younger girl huddled close, heavy wool blanket wrapped and fastened with rope around her form to keep her as protected from the cold as possible while Serafima began to peel the layers off of her. The winters she grew up in were harsh and had given her an ability beyond the training she’d received otherwise to endure the cold for hours at a time. She was trained. She was lethal. And she would protect Delphine at all costs.

”Stay here until I call for you. Do you understand?” Serafima’s French was something that could be measured less than conversational, but it was enough for Delphine and herself to communicate. Still, she pantomimed lowering beneath the snow bank, taking her own blanket and laying it over Delphine’s legs to keep her from freezing.

Delphine looked up in concern, reaching a thinly gloved hand to grasp Serafima’s arm before the Russian soldier could depart.

”Be safe, sestra” she whispered, her blue eyes impossibly wide as she stared up at Serafima in a manner she had only seen once before in her life. True worry, true caring, about her well-being. She took Delphine’s hand in her own and squeezed before slipping away.

”Head down.”

It was the last thing she whispered to Delphine before Serafima disappeared into the trees.

Nearly platinum blonde hair blended into the snowy landscape as well as any camouflage, and she remained close to trees as she inched closer for both their physical cover and likeness to the brown and beige pants and shirt she wore. Pale arms were exposed to the elements, one single 9mm Browning High-Power firearm in her hand, liberated from an german soldier not even three days ago. She’d counted the rounds meticulously every morning and every evening. Six shots left. Four a lingering thought buzzed at the back of her mind, just in case…. Serafima would never allow axis soldiers or raiders to take Delphine alive. The horrors that a captive as innocent as she would endure…

As she approached, she could detect no movement from any of the figures slumped around the perimeter, the sickly smell of human flesh burning invading her nostrils as she crept ever closer. Serafima moved quickly, but carefully, and kept her weapon at the ready. At least two bodies still burned, several others smoking in the cold early-evening air, and one lay slumped against a tree with his hand pressed limply over a gunshot wound to his abdomen, flame thrower next to his body. Head lulled. Chest unmoving. Serafima kept her eyes on the body for several heartbeats, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling, before she saw the glint of light reflecting off the tin in a satchel nearby. Food. She heard her stomach grumble. Felt her mouth water. She moved cautiously over to the prize and knelt, gun lowering as she rifled through the bag to take stock of the haul.

”Delphine,” she called, looking up in time to see the brown-haired shadow popping up over the bank and making her way over with their entire haul in her arms.

Delphine was frowning as she came closer, clear tears in her eyes as she looked over the dead. She had grown up in this war. She knew it’s horrors, but it never ceased to surprise and upset her.

”Are they all dead?” she asked in broken Russian, following the protocol that Serafima had set up when they first escaped the German raids.

”Da,” Serafina confirmed, glancing around them, continuing to speak in Russian ”We must still be quick. Who knows what company this commotion has attracted.”

The girl, however, had her eyes pinned on the slumped body. She knelt beside Serafina, handing her the spare blanket to use as a cloak once again, though her eyes wavered over the German man slumped against the tree. Serafima hissed for Delphine’s attention, grabbing for the satchel full of food when Delphine gasped and grasped Sera’s arm.

”He’s alive! I saw him move!”
“Stand back, Delphine!”
“Sera, no! We have to help him!”

Their argument was quick, blurred in the Norwegian winter evening as Sera aimed the pistol at the soldier and Delphine moving quickly to the soldier’s side. Serafima cursed the girl as she moved quickly over and kicked the flame thrower away from his reach, pressing the barrel of the gun to his temple as she snarled.

”If he moves against you I will shoot him.”

Delphine seemed not to hear Sera, her hands cradling the man’s face as he came to, lifting him up to look at her as she started to speak in French - a more common tongue than Russian, and in hopes that he would understand and speak the same.

”I’m here to help you. What is your name?”

 

[Sanguiniae]

The cold, a rending maw - and he's prey to its cruel hunting habits.
Is, or was. Such semantics become hard to distinguish once blood begins to pool into your hands at a rapid face and obscures everything else, its stench drowning out even the acrid odor of burning bodies and synthetic fiber scorched till it melted right into their flesh - it's a vibrant sensation that claims the other senses for its own purposes, usurping the sight, smell and taste all alike. And it was not the first time he'd been shot, either. The sensation of lead stripping down his soft tissues is simply one that a man never gets used to, neither that nor the eruption of pain that first floors him, then slowly begins to fade out and let a callous cold take its place.
It could've struck him in liver or kidney, or perhaps the intestine. Hopefully it wasn't the intestine, there was a high risk of death associated with abdominal wounds without appropriate surgery and postoperative care, all food you try to swallow will simply leak into your abdominal cavity if bleeding won't do you in before that; he could still recall the medical officer's lecturing and now, strangely, it floated to the surface of his memories... Morbidly. And that would've been a huge pity after he'd gotten shot trying to protect his hard-won sack of supplies. After all, aluminum was the new gold.

He needed to patch the gunshots and get moving. It wouldn't be an easy ordeal with a bullet in the thigh, but he was a marked target lying in the snow, open to the wolves or more raiders eager to chuck some more cans of lunch meat and instant meals into their stolen panzer. Scarlet in the snow, and his fatigues and coat underneath a motley mosaic of brown, green and grey, he was visible and vulnerable, and the fuel of his flamethrower all spent, too...
Ah, but it is warm where he lies. And when he lies there in the snow, he can almost forget how exhausted he is, how much the wounds hurt.
Truly, it would be easier to lie there, and after a couple deep breaths simply lose his consciousness. Hand on his Luger, and the other one cupping the gunshot as though it'd stop the blood, warm and vivid, from trickling through his fingers together with what little life remained in his tired body.

Then, there were voices.
Footsteps, and a language he could not recognize. A woman's words.
His shallow breaths barely scratched the surface necessary to take him all the way back, and the sensation of a cap stolen from a dead Russian officer warming his cheeks also falls short, only-- there is movement, too, and someone attempts to yank the bag of tins and neatly packaged food out of his hand, and that he will not suffer till death. He'd gotten shot for a couple weeks' worth of food, something that in peace times would've cost him barely a fraction of his father's wages - condensed milk, crackers and tins of military rations dug out from whichever shithole had escaped the notion of those thieving sons of bitches, he'd lugged it down from an abandoned bunker in the mountains and he'd be damned to the deepest circle of hell if he'd gotten shot just to have someone steal it right from his grip! A jerky breath made his chest twitch, then the fingers followed. On the trigger, instinctively.
There's nothing but death waiting on the old continent.
And the air is so terribly cold against his face and in his lungs as the man opens his eyes, black in the lowlight (though in reality they are a bottomless, deep blue) and a cloud of steam parts with his bloodless lips.
"Fucking thieves," The bavarian accent audibly bleeds through his words in that brief groan as the gun is lifted, though his hand shakes something terrible. Blood loss, of course.
A woman's handling the sack and he feels a sudden surge of heat, no doubt adrenaline.
"Put the fucking food back, you russian whore, or I'll shoot the girl." he slurs, this time a little louder, though there's the frigid quiver present in his voice still -- and the effort makes him cough, spitting saliva tinged red with blood. Right, the gunshot.

Belatedly, he realizes that they wouldn't understand German anyway - and the hand with the gun sinks a little lower under the combined weight of the weapon and his own exhaustion. Thus, the soldier swaddled in a ratty coat takes another shallow breath and struggles to focus his eyes and mind alike on the woman that towers over his slumped body, trying his damned best to suppress the urge to puke. Perhaps... French, perhaps they would understand French.
"Put the fucking food back down."

His suspicion is confirmed, by a stroke of luck or through God or whatever other divine providence there is, guiding him through the wastes for more than two years now - she says something that he realizes he understands, yes, the response is in French, though her voice comes as though from deep underwater. No, it is him who is drowning and she is a mirage above the shimmering surface.
When he was a child, his brother once took him to a swimming pool, and there was a divers' spring-board - of course, childish foolishness bode him to race up the ladder and cast himself into the cold blue depths below without a care. All of a sudden, there's water in his airways, burning his eyes and lungs with chlorine. A brief pang of panic like a needle through the dark, he thrashes in vain. And then it's dark...
...That's what it feels like.
Except, she has warm hands. Her fingers cup his bony jaw, thinned down to rigid angles and covered with a sparse grow of a few days' old beard barely darker than white, angling his head to face her while another breath escapes him. His sight's a little too blurred to recognize the features, but something about her voice is a reassurance, the way a sliver of candlelight dancing afar reassures you in a starless, moonless midwinter night. She's not a raider. He hopes she's not a raider.
The hand that grips the Luger can no longer remain primed to fire, he simply lacks the strength.
And, fuck it all... He has nothing but those cursed tins to lose, either.

"My name's Leon."

 

[Pink.]

Serafina snarled at the german in Russian, jerking the Browning harder against his temple, willing it to hurt. She earned a suggestion of empathy from Delphine, and a side long glimpse as the girl held the weight of his bobbing head in her hands. Moving closer to him, Delphine shifted around the curve of his arm until she was directly beside his elbow, his face turned to her so that Serafina couldn’t fire without the risk of the bullet passing through his skull and into her.

”Leon,” Delphine repeated with a gentle smile, finding relief in his knowledge of her language, ”My name is Delphine.”

”This isn’t worth the time wasted, look at him, he’s dead already. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
‘I can help him.’
“You’ll put us both in danger from the time spent, and look at his clothing! His weapons! He’s German! His people started this!”

Azure eyes held Leon’s the entire time, speaking softly where Serafina spoke harshly. Like two sides of the same coin.

”That does not make his life any less than ours,” Delphine whispered, shifting her gaze to Serafina’s for the first time since re-positioning herself in the soldier’s defense.

Serafina watched with an anguished scowl, jerking the satchel out of his weakened grip and slinging the bag over her shoulder, keeping her firearm aimed with finger relaxed off of the trigger. ”Fine, but tell him we’re taking his food in exchange for help, and we’re doing this on the move. Every second we’re here increases our danger tenfold.”

Delphine didn’t respond to her demand, but spoke gently to Leon in French.

”Leon, look at me.” And he would find that he could. ”I need to lean into me, okay?”

One hand was already moving to the back of his neck to guide him closer to her, wincing with sympathy as the strain undoubtedly caused him pain. She could only hope that the cold had helped numb him.

”Do you see an exit wound?” she asked Serafina in French, not realizing her blunder until she looked up at Sera to find her glaring sharply. Delphine cradled his head against her shoulder, frowning at her before she asked again in Russian. Sera nodded, gesturing toward his lower back, and Delphine whispered softly in Leon’s ear. ”I’m going to wrap your wounds, and then we will need to stand. We will help you. Serafina is going to take your arm and lift.”

The Russian had a cold expression on her face, but obliged. She waited while Delphine tore strips of fabric from her skirt and tied them tightly around his waist to help stem the blood flow of his wound. From the lack of spurting, arteries had been spared, but she would need to get a closer look to determine any organ damage. She repeated herself with his leg, and only once she was satisfied that the bandages were as good as she could do under the circumstances did she look up at Serafina for her help.

There was no use arguing with Delphine, or trying to strong-arm her out of here. She was as stubborn as a mule. Perhaps more so than Serafina herself. Holstering her gun, Sera crouched down and hooked her arms under the soldiers and lifted with a grunt. Despite the cold, his nearly dead weight, and the fact that the two women were days without a nutritious meal, they managed to get the soldier to his feet. Delphine winced from his sounds of discomfort, her voice a soft cadence as she apologized for the agony she was certain he must be in.

”Do you have shelter nearby?”
”There are caves in those mountains,” Serafina gestured toward the mountains nearly a mile away. Delphine strained with Leon’s weight on her shoulders, dividing his body between the two of them to share the burden as she spoke in Russian back to Sera.
”I don’t know if he can make it that far.”
“He will have to.”

The trio moved slowly, but steadily. Delphine reminded Serafina of patience while Serafina reminded them all of the danger. The supplies left behind were noted, but there was no physical way the girls could have carried the rest, and Leon was in no shape to do anything other than lean on them and stumble along. It took nearly an hour, the moon and stars reigned in the sky above them, by the time they reached the mouth of a cavern. Thunder crashed, the smell of rain on the air, and Delphine could feel Leon’s faint strength waning even more.

”I need light,” she grunted as they half-crumpled to the ground, cradling his head to make sure he didn’t hit it on the ground while she half-straddled him to keep her balance, willing him to open his eyes and look at her as she spoke directly to him, hoping… ”Do you have a lighter with you?”

 

[Sanguiniae]

There had been a Delphine in a book by Honoré de Balzac, he recalled now -- how absurd to be thinking of literature among all things, but the memories are not picking and choosing anymore. A gun against his temple (nearly burrowing into it; she spared him no mercy, the Russian one, likely happier to shoot him than to stall and wait, and he would not begrudge her that), blood all over his fatigues, yes, it is quite certainly the kind of situation where a mind lingering on the precipice simply regurgitates whatever in a mad bid to remain conscious. Falling asleep is a death sentence. The women exchanged a couple more words in Russian... He supposed it was Russian, before Delphine moved over, then more talking. He wasn't shivering from the cold any longer, exhaustion taking its toll and turning him simply limp.
At last, something he understood was said, and he took a moment -- to come back to reality and understand the words on the edge of his conscious mind, offering aid in exchange of supplies. He would've refused any other time, fought for the damned tins with tooth and nail. Now, though? Nothing is guaranteed, life or trust or faith, and God is a bastard.
He nodded in confirmation, a barely visible motion, a couple blinks and an interrupted breath his attempt to anchor himself in the real world and look into the woman's face with at least a minuscule amount of clarity. His weight, a burden too heavy for his own legs to carry, leaned against her instead. Another couple of breaths, shallow -- the gunshot right under his ribs hurts with the strain regardless of how tight he grits his teeth, but he has to keep on going and remain conscious.

His senses went for a second, dissipating at the shift in blood pressure - sight first, then his touch and the taste of blood and icy air, and the hearing, too, barely able to recognize what words she was speaking. A weak nod; it took another couple of moments measured by the rapid pace of his heart to regain his faculties, blinking into the darkening landscape.
"Alright," he murmurs.
The bullet had cleared through his flank and out of the coat, leaving the blossoms of wet bloody stains behind; a stroke of luck that neither that, nor the one that had passed right above the knee hadn't hit an artery, else he would've been long since dead of exsanguination, and it didn't matter how perfectly still he sat to minimize the bleeding. Few things seemed to matter at all, in fact, even while a crude field bandage was applied over his fatigues to keep him in one piece on the way -- shifting his weight produced a groan from the man, but he obliged, holding onto the cloth over Delphine's shoulder for dear life. The pain burned him from the inside out like venom, but it might've been his salvation after all, keeping him awake where death came in the most peaceful of slumbers as snow covers you... Buries you.
No graves for him yet.
To let himself be lead, now... Or carried, rather, for his feet gave badly to walking after the ordeal of the fight, far too numb to feel the terrain and far too sore from the gunshot to move properly. But drag him they did, at least as far as he could recall.

Somewhere close to the end of the way, he must've passed out; the smell of rain and its autumnal coldness slipping down his cheek he could recall, but the landscape itself became one big grey blur to his glassy eyes, and then he could not remember anything at all. No caves, no crawling. No being dragged for a few inches in the darkness of a cavern, rather more alike to a deep overhang carved into the mountainside than a long underground tunnel weaving through underground halls and lakes. All the while, the pitter-patter of rain outside grows heavier and heavier, pummeling the landscape peppered with pines and a dense underbrush.

It'd been cold during the war, too. Endlessly cold.
But... There is a warm hand again, and he can hear a voice that he now recognizes, French words (it takes him a fair while to decipher the meaning, for his brain initially refuses to process anything that isn't base and instinctual, forcing him to keep his eyes open without looking at faces and his ears primed while words are merely lilting background noise. A couple blinks, then he recognized the silhouette painted against her features - albeit dimly.
Lighter. A flame.
The soldier gestures towards his breast pocket.
It's torn, the button's nearly missing, and the threads that keep it tied to the chest frayed and numerous - terrible and extortionate, the kind of parchment smeared with ink he the season wants of him. Still, he tapped it with a quivering hand, his gloved fingers struggling to stay still and do as she says.
"Pocket, under the Bible. Why're you doing this?"

 

[Pink.]

Sera pulled the pack from her shoulders, short of breath from the cold and taking the brunt of Leon’s weight, and crouched down next to the soldier and Delphine as the girl asked him for a lighter. Her head lifted up, looking over the brunette’s bent features to look out over the dark nightscape beyond. She exhaled, seeing her breath billow away in a cloud as Delphine’s hands cradled the man’s face in her peripherals.

”We need more supplies. Those soldiers are too valuable to leave behind.” Her sharp gaze dropped down to slice through the man on his back, held upright by his backpack on the rocky ground. Delphine was listening, she could tell by the tension in her shoulders, but the young woman was focused on the struggle of life in front of her. ”I will gather wood for a fire, and then I am returning to where we found him. Will you be okay on your own?”

Delphine’s hand slipped around his over his pocket, her fingers curling into his own as she nodded.

”I will be perfectly fine,” the frenchwoman insisted in Russian, turning her eyes to look up at her pleadingly. ”Trust me, sestra, I am safe.”

She finished the last in French so Sera wouldn’t question her seriousness. Delphine watched as Serafina’s eyes narrowed, annoyed by the manner in which she had been trapped, dropping her gaze down to the pale, nearly blue man beneath her ward. Standing, she adjusted the blanket-cloak around her shoulders and moved to the mouth of the cave. Rain was coming, which meant she needed to gather the wood quickly or else it’d be too wet to burn.

As Delphine slipped her hand into his pocket and searched for the lighter behind his bible. Her gaze lifting to meet his as she pulled the fire starter free.

”Why shouldn’t I?” she asked softly, turning to see Sera coming back into the shelter with what she had been able to gather nearby. It would be enough to burn for a little while, but not all night. It would do for now. As Sera arranged the tinder and branches, Delphine used the lighter to ignite the bundle. It took two tries, but the flame took, and Delphine lifted her eyes to Sera and reached for her hand.

”Be safe.”

Sera looked down at her, and toward the man she would have been certain would be a corpse if it weren’t for Delphine looking after him, and ground her teeth before slipping back into the forest and following their tracks back to the supplies they had left behind. The french girl shifted herself so that she cast no shadows over his body. She moved her hand to his forehead, sliding her palm beneath the ushanka until she was touching bare skin beneath the growth of his hair.

”This will be easier if you rest.”

Whether he could, or would, Delphine moved on to what she felt she needed to do. Life on a farm had offered basic medical skills caring for animals and whatnot, but she’d always had a knack for healing. Her hands soothed infections and fevers, her intentions aiding the stitching of muscle and tendon fibers back together. Her bedside manner eased turmoil, aches and pains. Even now, in the darkness of the cave with only the sparse light from a small fire to aide her, Delphine managed to remove the strips of her dress from his wounds and lift or tear his clothing away from each bullet hole. She whispered softly in French, sympathizing with his pain and apologizing for the extra she put him through in order to heal.

Warmth radiated from her. Subtle was the shift from numb, prickling, angry cold to a light shiver, so much so that if it was noticed, it was noticed all at once. She hummed as she worked, an old french love song. Her hair falling in her face as she investigated the damage of each wound carefully, before cleaning them out the best she could with what water they had to spare. If he was awake, she asked him what medical supplies he had on him as she looked through what he had brought with them. Otherwise she was looking regardless. Whatever she found, if anything, she put it to use.

By the time she was done, the fire was already beginning to die. Her arms were covered in blood halfway to her elbows, and she’d torn two new strips from the hem of her dress to bandage him, exposing her legs above her knee, but she seemed either not to notice or to care. She used the snow from the banks outside to wipe the blood from her hands, coming back into the cave with blue and trembling fingertips she warmed over the burning cinders. Grabbing a few more branches, she fed the fire and then moved back to Leon’s side.

She’d arranged his jacket under his head as a form of pillow, and removed his shirt and cut a hole in his pants to reach his wounds, and although the fire and whatever it was about her touch had eased the cold, it did not keep it gone for long. Delphine came closer to him with the wool blanket in her hands. She draped it over his body, leaving enough left over for her to crawl under in just a moment.

”Body heat will help the most,” she spoke matter of factly as she began to unbutton her dress. She wore a slip underneath, sheer though it did keep most of her dignity protected, and then laid her dress down beside his body for some barrier between her and the ground. Laying herself down on her hip, and then lowering herself next to him, she tucked in against his arm and draped her arm carefully over his chest. With his body between hers, and the fire, under the wool blanket, she hoped he could find some relief from the unforgiving winter that surrounded them.

”Sleep, Leon,” Delphine murmured, her cheek on his shoulder as she fought off the shivers of her own. ”It will make the night go faster. You’re safe here.”