𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐘 sweating, Noah awoke with a jolt, slightly scaring Zara awake from her slumber in the seat beside his bed. She sighed with relief, resting a hand on him to calm him down. He soaked in his surroundings. He was laying in one of the beds in the infirmary, he was shirtless and his turtleneck was in tatters beside his bloodied trench coat a bit of a distance away.

   He tried to sit up, but was met with an excruciating rush of pain in his lower abdomen. "Don't move so much, Monty just redressed your wound." Zara instructed. His aching body fell back onto the mattress. "I was afraid you weren't gonna wake up, you'd already lost so much blood when we found you."

   "Where's Angelo?" he spoke hoarsely. His lips were chapped and his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, but he couldn't seem to get his mind off of the events from last night that he could recall.

   "He escaped, as well as most of the Ascots that got in, but a few of them were killed in crossfire." Zara answered. Noah's eyes panned the entire room, and she was the only one there.

   "Where's Monet?" he asked, as he weakly propped himself onto his elbows.

   "She volunteered to give some blood for you. I offered but we're different blood types and apparently that can be fatal." she shrugged uncomfortably. Noah exhaled with relief, glad that she was safe since he didn't remember ever seeing her last night. He looked across the room again and, this time, realised how many beds were full with residents of Everwinter.

   "How many...? How many people...?" he stuttered incredulously.

   "There were about eight injured... Thirty-one of ours dead, and twelve of them were from the north lookout points..." Zara answered, almost inaudible, worried about his reaction to it. She shakily continued, "They took most of the ammo crates from the weaponry at the east wall. They found three Ascots dead."

   "That motherfucker." Noah growled, moving out of his covers.

   Ignoring Zara's demands for him to stay in bed, he snatched the spare t-shirt off of the pile she had brought for him. He painfully pulled it on and put on his stained trench coat. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "Reid, stop! You basically just woke up from a coma. You're not fit to do anything right now."

   He brushed her off, "I won't lie, Zara, you are the last person I want to be hearing from right now." Her face fell, seeing nothing but the seriousness in his expression. He briskly walked to the door, throwing it open and striding in pursuit of the dungeon.

•

   By the time he'd reached the bottom of the stairs, he was severely out of breath. Shaking away the dizziness that he felt, he scanned for Mackenzie's cell. He'd instructed Carlton and Kenji to take him there while he dealt with Angelo, last night.

   His blue eyes were fixated up at the window that was bringing in the littlest bit of morning sunlight but still managed to keep the dungeon at a chilling temperature. Blood had dried down his cheek like tears. His hair was in greasy streaks of sweat and sat in disarray. To Noah, he, quite frankly, looked no different.

   Mackenzie's head fell once he heard nearing footsteps. His right eye was bloodshot and swollen shut. Without proper treatment, Noah knew it was soon to become infected. "Good morning." he smiled. "You look worse than me, mate. What happened last night, I heard gunshots?"

   "You know exactly what happened." Noah snarled.

"You're out of luck, 'cause I really don't. But I do know that it definitely went wrong since you're still alive. You did say you would've loved a stab wound, didn't you?" Mack chuckled, his face soon falling when his head began to ache.

Noah exhaled a ragged breath, it wouldn't be pretty if he physically wasn't able to withstand his growing explosion of emotional anger. He leaned on the cell bars. Through his one good eye, Mack could sense his uneasiness.

   "What do you want?" Noah heaved. "You want me dead so you can have Everwinter to yourself? Just like you did the very first time."

   "That's a little shallow to think I don't have other goals. I want to kill West and Zara too but, you know, focus on yourself then, innit." Mack shrugged, his unusual charisma was revolting.

   "Answer my fucking question."

   "Everwinter is mine, always has been and will be once you're dead." he simply responded. The charisma had departed swiftly, as his face fell. He rose to his feet and took a few steps closer to Noah. "You, Zara, West, Angelo, youse are all a piece of work and a waste of fuckin' space. Your head is so far up your ass that you think you started all of this."

   "A little late by three years, don't you think?" Noah scoffed in return.

   "It's a process." he shrugged nonchalantly, turning and sitting back on the ground. "It's really a shame that you weren't killed last night." he hummed.

   Noah slammed his hand into the cell bars. "Whether or not you want Everwinter, using Angelo is suicidal."

   "How? He wants what West and I want: you rotting under four thousand pounds of dirt." Mack stated. "Angelo knows you authorised that RPG shot. I'm sure he would take any opportunity to obliterate you if handed to him, and that's what he did clearly, and all he wanted was a few fuckin' crates of ammo."

   "You are sick." Noah spat.

   "I'd say you might be. You seem to be struggling there, mate." He wasn't wrong, Noah gradually grew dizzy, looking as though he was losing balance in his legs. He grunted, not wanting to be there for a second longer, he pushed himself towards the exit before he completely blacked out.

   By the time he'd reached the door, he was crawling. He wanted to break down that cell door and kill Mackenzie right there, but he could barely hold himself together. The dungeon doors opened to reveal Monet. She sighed with relief and quickly went to help him up. After drawing her blood, her and Monty had entered into the main infirmary, finding Zara in tears and Noah's bed empty. Almost twenty minutes later of frantic, aimless searching, she finally found him.

   "Are you alright? You know you're not well right now." She guided him back onto his feet with help from the wall. He leaned his weight onto her shoulders to steady himself, she cocked her head to meet his eyes.

   "I just need to get out of here." he heavily muttered. He was confused and terribly conflicted. "I really don't want to pull my gun out." he continued to himself, restraining his fury. Monet placed a hand on his abdomen to steady him, feeling sticky blood soaking his shirt. She cursed under her breath.

   "Come on, you're bleeding again." she steered him up the stairs and out of the darkness.

   "No, wait! I don't know why he killed that orphan. I didn't ask—"

   "Noah, you're bleeding out, I'd rather not be dragging you when you've passed out. You need your transfusion." Monet firmly told him, using all her strength to keep him going in the right direction. He raggedly sighed and pulled as much of his weight as he could towards the infirmary.

•

   Monet sighed softly to find Noah asleep. The transfusion was successful and Monty gave Noah some painkillers that knocked him right out. His face was beginning to bruise around his jaw from the fight that Zara had sloppily told her about.

   She was in such distress, seeming like she wasn't able to hold herself together at all without Noah's attention. She was now certain that Noah hated her, and in Monet's opinion, she didn't blame him. Although she felt like she was in the same position by withholding what she knew about Mack and Westley, Zara had helped them and did everything she could to keep it a secret—it didn't even matter if she was planning to say something at some point.

   Monet sat in the chair at the side of his bed, fiddling with the ice pack that she was meant to be holding to Noah's face, but she was taking the time to inspect him. Despite the amount of pain she could only imagine he was in, he slept peacefully, his features relaxed and almost alleviated of all the stress he was facing. She didn't want to pity him, she knew he wouldn't want that from her either, but so much was going on at once, she knew he was struggling to keep up.

   The door creaked open and Westley entered the infirmary, he wandered carefully through the injured residents of Everwinter before reaching Noah's bedside. He halted at the sight of his sister, who didn't even spare him a glance.

   "How is he?" he asked timidly.

   "Alive. Though, I'm certain you wanted the opposite." Monet responded.

   "What?"

   "You knew Angelo was coming, didn't you? You and Mackenzie, you both knew." She finally shifted her gaze to him, and it sent Westley's heart to the pit of his gut. Her murderous intent was becoming more and more visible to him; it was only a matter of time before she did kill him, and he knew that. She replaced the ice pack onto Noah's head.

   "What are you talking about?" he scoffed, wagering if lying was the best option.

   "You were the one at the east wall. You shot first, didn't you? Some innocent people were getting in your way while you were helping the Ascots, isn't it?" She rose from her chair, gradually approaching him. His expression grew stern, once she stopped in front of him. "This hunt for power is making you sick, Westley. You're beginning to harm those that you want to be the one to protect, hurting the person already protecting them?" she gestured to Noah, "You want him dead."

   "Mack wants him dead." he emphasised.

   "But you want him gone. Just like Dad. Everwinter will have the same fate as Goldcrest, if you even think you can get away with killing him." she spat, "If you even dare cause havoc for this place, I will kill you." Their faces inches apart, Monet sounded every syllable through her gritting teeth.

   His eyes wandered her face, and he wondered why he hadn't killed her back then too. He should've chased her down, set her up the the same fate as their father.

   He could kill her now. No one would know.

   Throttle her and hide her in the unused closet near the exit.

   Squeeze the fire of intent from her eyes. Make the flame pop and soon burn out. Strip her of that sickening sense of justice.

   She was the final piece to this puzzle. Once she was gone, all would be his, everything she took from him.

   Zara entered the infirmary, snapping the siblings out of their murderous glares. "Oh! I didn't know you lot were here." she started. She walked around the bed and gazed at Noah, who was still sound asleep. She focused her conversation on Monet, ignoring West with all her being, since their heated argument, she couldn't bear to properly speak to him.

   Setting aside all the bubbling tension, the three stayed and waited for Noah to finally awaken.

|𝟐𝟕| 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬:
Hello! I am so bloody sorry this took so long! I have been so stressed out with my last year of school that I don't even get the time to write what has been sitting in my head from months.
   After this chapter that I was struggling so much to finish, I have a few pre-written chapters, so the updates will be back for a little while so I can keep up with it all.
   Excuse the mistakes, I haven't even got the time to proofread, gosh.
   Hope you enjoyed, though!

~𝐠𝐥𝐝𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐬.