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ic inbox pumpkin hollow
[ audio | letters | action ]
[ audio | letters | action ]
"What you need is to punch something."
These are words to live by. Angry about your life turning upside down? Punch something. Haunted by the guilt of your own sordid and contemptible actions? Punch something. Spill coffee on your favorite shirt? Rear back an arm, thrust that arm forward and bask in the sweet electric shocks of pain through your knuckles. This intemperate advice finds its way to South Dakota, and by way of a miracle, she's coaxed into Carolina's yard for an impromptu spar.
The rest goes unsaid; that's if you can land a hit.
So, her yard. It's nothing special. You only need a few things to make a space like this function as a training floor. Namely, space. A dirt circle to step, old farm supplies hauled out of the way. A sandbag swings from the thick wooden branch its tethered to, currently occupied by a small, bipedal dog throwing punches like its life depends on it. Carolina doesn't know what this thing's problem is. She feeds it sometimes. She'll spot it in the early hours of the morning, hiding in a bush to watch her train. Whatever, it's doing its own thing.
"You can't lay around drinking booze all day and expect to feel better. So, you're bored? Do something about it. You have energy? Put it somewhere. Save your liver from giving out."
Carolina walks a slow back-and-forward line across the dirt. She's just finished wrapping her knuckles in tape; bends her neck and feels the vertebrae pop. There's an unmistakable focus to her; a lightness in each step. She's lethal. The best of the best. This is South's problem now.
"Sure you don't wanna fight as a matched set? I could call North."
(What's a spar without some friendly taunting as foreplay?)
She feels stupid for coming, now she's here. Mostly-sober and regretting that fact more with every passing second, South looks around Carolina's yard like it's going to bite her, somehow. Weird little blue dog thing over at the punching bag. Bunch of fucking farm supplies. Dirt. Lots of dirt. Just so much fucking dirt.
With so little to her name, she even has to borrow the tape to wrap her fists and she quietly resents that, too. She's used to that, piles upon piles of tiny little resentments that grow until they start to overflow and start hitting people. (Until she starts hitting people.) What's one more?
She steps into the circle anyway, stood firm at her chosen spot and just watches Carolina's slow back-and-forth with those ice-blue eyes that look equal parts sharp and exhausted. Rolls her shoulders. Cracks her knuckles.
"Ha, yeah, no—not unless you really want to lose a few fucking teeth in the next five minutes," she snaps back, bouncing loose on her heels, less preparatory than it is restless energy leaking out. "But maybe you're into that."
It's really not a good return zinger, but it's the best she's got right now.
"That's the spirit. Aspirations." The unrealistic kind, she means. The crayon self-portrait of yourself as president kind. Carolina shakes her legs loose. If South has retained any memory of how she fights, she'll know to watch out for those. Her fists are accessory; a pretty handbag you can break someone's nose with. "What, like you?"
I know you don't like me. That's fine. Utilize it.
South's big. She hits hard. Harder when she's angry, and twice as much with Carolina as an opponent. Another agent might choose to play defensive— wait for South to make the first move. Carolina isn't another agent. She's Carolina, and she strikes first and certain.
She charges. Dirt breaks under her heel. Where South Dakota is large, Carolina is fast, a blur of skin and red scalp against the shabby half-light of that afternoon. She siphons all her weight into her left heel, brings her opposite knee up and goes for a round kick, a one— two— three beat. Pelvis, ribs, face.
If the tips of South's ears go a little red (from rage or embarrassment? Yes) then no, actually, they didn't. Snorting air like a pissed off bull again, she refuses to rise to the bait, just raises her fists in a loose stance and waits for the strike she knows is coming. No chance in hell that Carolina lets her get in first. Nah. No way.
Carolina lunges, and South arcs back, reduces the strike at her pelvis to barely a brush and blocks her ribs with a cross-block, her face by throwing the leg away with the flat of her arm. Each point of contact brief and yet a flash of pain—sharp, and focusing, in the way it keeps her grounded in her own nervous system. (Maybe this is just what she needs.)
Her turn. She springs off her back heel, throwing herself back at Carolina fist-first—a wide swing to make her swerve, an uppercut aimed at the diaphragm, twisting on the ball of her feet to build momentum to backhand her in the face. Nothing held back. No holds barred. Pure, unrestricted strength and momentum, chaining one into the other with no sign of a break unless you force one.
Edited 2025-11-07 18:03 (UTC)
Here comes the fists. They're an asset of South's, aside from the sheer size of her. They break air with the force of trains charging at full speed, squealing and spitting sparks on their tracks, and if she looked up to South panting out billows of steam, she wouldn't be surprised.
Carolina back-steps. The swerve meets air. South's on her again, ready to pulverize her organs, wreck her face— a bull rearing forward to spear Carolina's guard on her horns until it bleeds. She won't let her in so easily. Disengage and strike at a new angle. Ignore the pain flowering between her ribs, through her cheek. Carolina throws up her arms and dives into a back-handspring, drilling her toe up under South's chin, if she can catch her. A parting gift as she repositions herself a short distance away.
And forward again, using her shoulder to threaten South's guard. Jab upward with her elbow, strike at the throat, disengage with enough space for a hook kick and bask in the sweat sliding down her neck.
(When's the last time someone challenged you like this?)
One of those overdramatic, acrobatic flips of hers and South's teeth crack together so hard she'd be surprised if it didn't chip a couple, jaw throbbing and a shooting pain rocketing up the side of her skull. She spits, saliva tinted with the faintest hints of red, and barely looks back in time to throw her arms back up between them.
The block falls apart like Carolina's thrown herself through a brick wall and South avoids getting an elbow to the windpipe by millimetres, breathing hard and tasting iron. That's where her luck ends: Carolina's heel catches the side of her skull and the pain returns in a bright, burning starburst that blots her vision white for a half-second. Fucking hell, legs like fucking vipers—
Half-blindly, South grabs for Carolina's ankle on its way down and yanks—dirty fighting, technique and etiquette be damned. Throw her off rhythm, off balance, down to the fucking ground if she can manage it.
The impact of ankle to skull tolls like a bell through her leg. Carolina draws her tongue across her teeth, thoughtless gesture, wetting her mouth in the in-between. Good, she tells herself. Good. Just like that. Eight or so terrible months with nothing to do, no facilities to use, damned to sandbags and dirt circles and punching angry holes in her walls with no reciprocation— and she's fine. See? No worse-off than before.
(The stakes to this are larger than she's comfortable with. If she loses— unthinkable— it'll go in with the fast-growing mass of losses she's accumulated since she got here. Watch as it shoulders right up to her cold, dead body and the memory of that siege of black, come down on her like a wave. You can do this, she thinks— you're enjoying yourself— because if she doesn't, it's death all over again.)
Fuck—
Distracted.
Carolina yelps. Her stomach summersaults and her back hits the dirt with a force that squeezes her breath out like paste from a tube. There's one place you don't want to be in a fight, and that's on your back with someone on top of you. She tries her best to roll away.
Edited 2025-11-07 19:05 (UTC)
The sound of the impact—body against the dirt, air forced from Carolina's lungs—is one of the most satisfying things South has heard in months—years, even. Not often you get the Number One (she never has really stopped thinking of her that way) on the ground at your feet, not often she's reduced to scrambling to get up and away before you can take advantage of it. And oh, South has every intention of doing taking every advantage.
Not as quick as she'd like, head still spinning from that last kick the way it is, but she's upon Carolina and throwing her back flat before she can roll all the way to her front. Knees in the dirt, weight blocking easy escape, she swings for Carolina's face yet again, the shock of bone against bone no deterrent at all. (Every shot of pain is another shot of adrenaline, another shot of feeling.)
Just when she thinks she's made it, South grips the back of her shirt and throws her down again. Carolina's lungs falter a second time (are they in a worse state, after the Desolation? She can't tell) and in a jerk of knees and weight dropped down onto her waist, she's pinned. Her guard is smashed to pieces. Her face will be too, if she doesn't find a way out of this—
South's fists come down in a sloppy fury. The cartilage forming the wide bridge of her nose crunches, a disgusting noise inside her head. One punch, two. Blood sprays in an arc. She snarls, bucks her hips upward in an attempt to throw off South's center of gravity, only to feel herself tamped back down in the dirt. She'll need to bridge high to get out of this; arch her back, thrust up through her legs, capture South's wrist in one fluid motion— tuck together and roll.
Carolina springs up— teeters. She's dizzy. Walk it off. Blood pools in the corners of her mouth. She spits a glob on the ground, captures South's shoulders in both hands and drives her knee up into her stomach.
Cartilage cracks against her knuckles and she feels her own skin split, fresh blood mixing with the splatter already painting her fists in red. It's messy and it's dirty and it would never fly in an unarmoured training room, back in the day, trying to mincemeat your sparring partner's face like this, but this isn't some friendly spar to get your damn rank up. This is a fight, this is the release of months upon years of tension coiled so tight that the only way it could ever come out was violently.
Carolina finds her opening, bucks South off like a bucking bull and throws them into a roll that she takes advantage of to throw herself back to her feet— only to get dragged back down, piston-like leg burying its knee in her gut and making her choke on air. Spit and blood erupt, spray the air, and South grits her teeth through the struggle to breathe. Fuck this—
She snaps her head forward to crack against Carolina's and yanks herself back when it connects, stumbling and dizzy but reclaiming space. Chest heaving, lungs still not quite full, she launches a jump kick at Carolina's torso.
Did she know, when she invited South to her front yard, that they would end up this way? Was the Project's watchful panopticon— the Director and Counselor, stood side by side— really the only gate keeping them from tearing into each other? Are these flat, packing punches a direct response to Carolina's existence, or is she just looking for skin to break? This was never going to be just a spar. You don't even know me. How can you possibly hate me so much?
She knows how.
Carolina feels somehow pathetic and ignited in her lack of self control. Freed by her desire to break something or else feel herself broken, when for so long she'd played by the rules.
South's forehead meets hers and stars explode into her vision, migrainous and vomit inducing. She grits an ugly noise through clenched teeth. Like hell she's going to throw up. Like hell she's going to do anything that isn't tossing herself to the side to avoid South's steam engine kick. She lands in a flip, clumsier than she'd like. Staggers to one knee, forces herself up. The tree line is soupy behind South's head. The little bipedal dog, one she hasn't bothered to name, makes a startled noise and flees for a bush.
Breathe. She's trying. She spits again, circles the mat like a fevered animal to stall for air.
Carolina's lip pulls up in a bloody snarl. "Still got my teeth."
I'm not slowing down.
(She is. She will.)
She bursts forward, meets her in a chest-to-chest collision, hands finding purchase on her shoulder— biceps— anywhere— to hook her leg around South's and knock her balance. She pivots, plants a kick squarely at the small of her spine.
The inside of her skull rings like an explosion went off right in her ear, vision fuzzy at the edges but clearing as the exhilaration strives to keep her on her feet. Everything hurts. It's amazing. It's dangerous. It's the most alive she's felt since she saw Dmitri's body lying there on the concrete and knew she would never feel whole again, never stop being aware of the empty space she'd carved in her own life with a rusted blade that left the wound festering and sick.
(Is she going to know when to stop? Are either of them going to know when to stop?)
Another burst of movement. South can't move fast enough, feels the leg around the back of her knee before she can even try, making the joint buckle and slip and give Carolina that opening she needs to slam into her spine. Her balance is shot and she stumbles, falls, topples like a damn skyscraper to hit the ground. Arms flying out to catch herself, the impact jars her shoulders and she can feel the bruises that will bloom later.
Shit. Groaning, she flips herself over as quick as she can and kicks out to keep Carolina from getting to her.
There's a beauty in beating the shit out of someone— in getting the shit beaten out of you. Carolina prefers the former. Detests pain for what it means, the body signaling failure, as if a drop on the leaderboard or lack of attention weren't already enough to make her want to scream. Now, she's starting to see the appeal, present in a way she hasn't experienced since she arrived. Her nerves and muscles tick frantically. Contract, go slack, pull tight again with every movement. Her pulse throbs in her nose (broken?)— in her knees. Everything is pain, everything is a struggle. Fighting for fighting's sake, not for survival.
Dying doesn't cross her mind, anyway. She isn't losing this.
South's on her back— she's up— which means she has the advantage. Good. Carolina catches the kick in her fists, biceps quivering with the effort to force her prone. She fights her way on top. South doesn't make it easy. When does she ever? She thrashes and bucks like an animal in the final fight for its life, kicking up dirt and dust with the effort.
Carolina drops all her weight onto the small of South's spine, driving her knees into the ground. If they're fighting like animals, fine. Etiquette doesn't matter. They might as well have trampled it into the dirt, spat on it and said fuck you simultaneously.
With this brilliant new philosophy in mind, Carolina hooks arm under arm to rend and yank the shoulder backward in its joint. If she incapacitates South's assets— her arms— this fight ends that much quicker. Sorry, not sorry.
Blood leaks out in a splash from her nose, pooling down South's back. (Yep. Definitely broken.)
With teeth gritted despite the way it makes her jaw ache and throb, South thrashes beneath her with all the frantic energy of a prey animal in the grasp of a predator. Like she's pinned with the jaws of a big cat struggling to wrap around the back of her throat and end her here and now. If she can just get her goddamn legs under her, she's got a couple dozen pounds on the wannabe puma on her back. Just gotta—
The sick pop of her shoulder wipes her mind blank and shocks a sharp shout out of her. "Son of a BITCH—!"
Holy fuck, okay, damn, shit shit shit— bone and muscle and tendon move against each other in ways they're not designed to and South hisses, breathing hard through her nose. Gotta get out of this fucking hold, gotta get her off—
Adrenaline pumping, South twists her good arm back to grab Carolina by the hair and yank her off. Rolls with her, all of her weight thrown against her, but deliberately pinning Carolina's leg beneath her hip, wrenching until she feels the joint start to bend the wrong way.
Two can play at that game, bitch.
You pick up a few things, fighting non-lethally. What to pull and where to strike. How to make soldiers drop as dead-weight, scream themselves into an easy submission.
And there it is. The elastic draw and snap. The full, wet pop of the shoulder from its socket. She shivers over with memory— the white lip of a cliff, shrinking from view— her stomach, sinking with it; splitting ice with the steel teeth of her grappling hook and hoping it will catch; tether-line slack then snapped straight; a tremendous force and a pop! It hurts, doesn't it?
Carolina makes for her second shoulder. South intercepts, grabs her ponytail and pulls with a force that burns like fire across her scalp. She gasps, head jerked back into the dirt, victim to the crocodile roll South throws them both into. Fine. That's fine. She fought her way free once, she'll do it again. She'll—
Fuck. Fuck. Reposition. Get her off, get her off—
South drives her weight home, and Carolina's knee slips with the force. She screams— "Fuck—!" —two miserable octaves higher than normal. Beats the heel of her hand against South's chest in a useless attempt to get her away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. Probably going to wreck her other leg if she doesn't get her the fuck off—
But what can she do, with a boulder's weight on top of her?
Carolina arches upward, fights for freedom that can't be won. And it hurts. It hurts, hurts, hurts and how is she going to do her job, fix her house, if she can't fucking walk? She grabs fistfuls of platinum hair— shirt— skin. If she scratches somewhere along the way, fuck you.
(For god's sake, you cannot possibly be this off your game.)
Can't help but laugh, when that curse passes Carolina's lips—so much for the clean-mouthed leader, huh? Just takes the right application of the right kind of pain and she finally acts like a fucking soldier, rough and tumble as the fucking rest of them instead of some preppy little bitch who thinks she's so much better. Which she's not. Her knee joint slips and pops out of place like anyone else's would, she struggles and lashes out desperately like any else would, she yelps in pain like anyone else would. Nothing more, nothing less.
Being right has never been so fucking gratifying.
Carolina grasps and hits and writhes around, hands yanking at her hair and nails catching at her skin and the pain barely registers, beneath the sharp throb of her useless arm being jolted by every jostle. She ignores it easily, keeps her weight pressed down to keep Carolina in place, keep her from turning this around, but—
Ignoring the other thrum beneath her skin is a lot more difficult.
(Fuck, why is this turning her on? Between the pain, and this side of Carolina she's never seen, and the fucking writhing—)
South curses under her breath and rolls off of her, jarring her shoulder anew and barely able to catch herself on her good one. Can't keep fighting if Carolina can't move, right? That's the only reason. That's the only fucking reason.
It doesn't feel good, being at someone else's mercy. South's, of all people, who will probably stagger out of this fight with a shit-eating grin and self-congratulations at lassoing a curse from her. Pull it together. She's good at that, right? Fight through the pain, get up, walk it off and keep going. She won't stop here. She closes a fist around her integrity— refuses to let go. Stop acting like an animal. Stop acting like her—
Another attempted bridge. Carolina wrestles her hips, meets something with her thigh. Has gotten down onto the mat with York enough to know a hard-on when it happens— and knows South enough to piece two and two together. Is she really getting off on this? Did it have to involve obliterating her kneecap? No, that assumes she isn't getting off on everything else happening here.
South bowls to the side. Carolina picks herself up on her elbows, glances once at the state of her kneecap and feels briefly sick. The bone-cap juts like a pale shell beginning to surface in the sand. Okay. Okay. Up.
She stands up, weight trembling on her good leg. If she can't kick— and she can't, not unless she wants to blow the cap out completely— she'll punch.
(Yanked free from its tie at some point during their scrap, Carolina's hair drapes freely across her back and shoulders. Another feature of her strict outward appearance, gone. She huffs, hard and petulant, to clear stands away from her face. Stows the brink of tantrum behind something dubiously stoic.)
Carolina draws her fingers into tight fists and lunges.
(God, the wild hair is not helping the situation in her fucking pants, right now. It can't be fair for Carolina to be this fucking hot when she's finally letting loose. Let a girl fucking live, for fuck's—)
Carolina lunges, ignoring her twisted knee like it's barely more than an inconvenience and with her arm hanging useless at her side, South can't even raise a proper block. All she can do is brace herself and throw up a half-block, try to stop those punches from getting anywhere they can do any worse damage, only—
The fucked knee buckles with a sick sound and sets Carolina staggering, stumbling, sailing right into South with all that force behind her leap forward now crashing into her chest. Sputtering curses South tries to catch them both and fails, legs collapsing from under her and sending them both back to the ground, return postage, next-minute delivery.
The impact jars her shoulder fucking horribly, a shout caught against her gritted teeth. She pulls herself out from under Carolina again as quickly as she can, shoving her away at the same time, but doesn't make it far before flopping back onto her side again. Shit, is she seriously wiped—?
The noise is disgusting, like the split of a rotten log under an axe head. Worse than the pain itself, she thinks, for how wrong it is. Bodies shouldn't make those sounds. Joints shouldn't be so fallible, hers least of all. Carolina's leg buckles like a newborn fawn's and the momentum she works so hard for falters into a chest-to-chest collision. She cries out, tumbles. Embarrassing. She should never be this sloppy, stumbling around like a rookie in her first week of Basics. If the Director saw her—
South shoves her aside. She rolls limply onto her elbows. Stirs up dirt with the in-out heft of her panting. If her vision blurs, she wills it straight again. If she feels the impulse to scream, it's swiftly necked back. Fine. This clearly isn't going anywhere, and she's going to be the bigger person— like always.
"I'm calling it. We're done."
Carolina turns onto her back to stare into the murky, all-color sky. Catch her breath, compartmentalize her rage, school herself straight. She just needs a minute. Blood crusts in rings around her nostrils. Her skin and hair is dusted brown with dirt. She looks horrendous, reeks of sweat and iron. As if South's any better.
Speaking of South—
She stares at her for a long minute, then forces herself upright.
"Alright, come here."
Some stubborn part of her still almost bites back to say no, no we're not fucking done, but it gets drowned out by every other inch of her screaming protest at the idea of trying to keep going like this. Her head's throbbing like a motherfucker, her shoulder's a mess, her face already feels like it's going to swell up and that's barely the half of it.
So, yeah. They're done. Whether she likes it or not.
And now she's got a whole other problem on her hands. Or, well, not so much on her hands as her thigh, actually.
"Uh." South blinks at her. What the fuck? What does she want now? God, if she moves Carolina is going to see and that's just fucking out of the question. More than that, it's humiliating. And that's without knowing what Carolina's fucking angling for, here. The places her arousal-addled mind wants to go are fucking absurd and so she slaps them away. "Okay?"
She shuffles over toward Carolina and awkwardly pulls herself up into a sitting position that is not, at all, natural looking, in an attempt to keep her legs crossed in such a way that it'll hide her fucking shame. She's not sure it's really working.
There can be literally no other explanation for the pathetic way South shimmies over to Carolina's side, and in that moment she almost feels sorry for her. Almost, but not really. If anything, her mood improves. Nice to know she isn't the only one to have embarrassed herself, let alone like that. What a pain in the ass it must be, to have your own body screw you over so royally. She might have enjoyed it more if her knee weren't screaming— but if there's anything Carolina can do, it's make the most out of a bad situation.
"Move," she says unkindly, knocks South's legs open with a slap to the knee. "So I can take care of that." Lofty pause. "Your shoulder."
Make her feel like an idiot. For fun.
Carolina sits between her legs. Better angle, this way. Better grip. She reaches for her, one hand stabilizing her shoulder, the other clamping around her wrist. The bone makes an awful crackling sound, and she hasn't even started yet.
"So. Is that all it takes, or was the dry spell really that long?"
Edited 2025-11-10 15:42 (UTC)
South's heart just about leaps out of her fucking chest. Embarrassment flushes what little of her face isn't already bloodied, dirty or starting to bruise a fantastic shade of red, right up to the tips of her ears, and she almost throws herself away before Carolina roots her to the spot with that long, agonising pause.
Right. The fucking shoulder. Of course she means the fucking shoulder, god, don't be fucking stupid—
"Oh fuck you," she bites, reflexively, and immediately regrets her choice of words the second they leave her mouth. Wincing for reasons only half to do with the pain, she keeps her eyes very pointedly away from the woman now settling herself between her legs, rather than risk staring at something she shouldn't. "Fuckin' sorry for trying not to give you the impression I'd actually expect you to do anything about it. Next time I guess I'll just swing it around!"
It's not like she's never thought about Carolina like this, before. The boss is hot, always has been, and South's easy: a commanding, attractive woman who can kick her ass is pretty much her type to a T. So, sure, sometimes she looked a little too long in the locker room, or got a little hot and bothered after a sparring match—she's only human.
But she knows when someone's not just out of her league, but was never going to even look at her twice in the first place. And that's fine. If she made a move on every woman she's ever been attracted to, she'd have been rejected even more than she already has been.
"You try getting laid when you're on the run with your fucking brother."
Carolina wears the suggestion of a smile, trying not to be outwardly amused and failing. "Fuck me?" Repeated in faux-astonishment, letting herself have the curse for the joke of it. "You always were forward. Now breathe in. A big one, and hold it. This is gonna hurt." Like she doesn't already know that. Like she won't enjoy it at least a little bit— to feel her body set right again, and to feel the starburst of pain come with it.
Is it bad that she's missed this? Freelancer bantering. A feeling like being home. When in actuality that home covered itself in gasoline, switched on the gas and set itself on fire. Still. She's having fun with this. Circling back;
"Maybe, if you're nice. Right now, you can save 'swinging it around' for your fists. One... two... three."
On three, Carolina scoops the joint and works it back into its socket. A sound, like two wet stones colliding. "There." Carolina rests her hands on South's shoulder— rotates it in slow circles. "Better?"
"I'm not gonna—" put the moves on you, I'm not that stupid, alright. Ugh, calm the fuck down. Carolina's just teasing her, she knows she's just teasing her. Don't take things so personally. Take the banter for what it is, try and enjoy it for what it is. This used to be normal, once. So, she at least tries to match the energy again. "Ugh, shut up, little miss hot shit."
Fucksake she can feel how red in the face she is. In the late autumn chill it's like having a damn furnace under her skin, threatening to steam. How easy it is to get a rise (ha) out of her is so fucking embarrassing, sometimes.
She takes the deep breath in, and braces. Knows what to expect. Not her first rodeo. Carolina counts down and then—snap, the spark of pain like lightning through her veins. Air hisses between gritted teeth (fuck, she should've found something softer to bite down on, her fucking jaw—) and then she gasps, exhales, and swallows. Jesus fucking christ.
"Yeah, yeah, that's— that's better. Thanks." Gonna bruise nastily and hurt for a while, may be more unstable than it was, but it'll do. They know their field medicine. "...c'mon, lemme do your leg. Just be careful how many boner jokes you make or y'know, maybe I'll laugh too hard and slip."
Snark, snark, but— fair's fair. Carolina fixed her, so she'll fix what she did in turn.
Little miss hot shit shuts her mouth. Plays nice. Doesn't want to ruin this, if she's being honest. Resists another CT-scenario, wherein they avoid each other like magnets with the same charge, neglecting to address their issues, but not for Carolina's lack of wanting to. It's weird. How a person can feel so close but also so far away. So familiar and so like a stranger. She hasn't stopped feeling guilty. Doesn't think she ever will.
Right, her leg. Shit.
"Oh, it'll be hard alright." Bad pun. Stupid.
Carolina lays back with her forearms throw up over her face, premeditatedly bracing for one of the worst feelings in the world— and not by measure of pain. She's particular about her legs. Squeamish that her biggest asset could be ruined by simple force— maybe not by South, but by someone. Times like these where she misses her real armor— and modern medicine.
Carolina draws in a breath.
"Careful."
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