Sleep and dreams had a funny way of changing your mindset on something. On waking up, I'd decided that Mark was still breathing and I needed to get on with it. There were things that surely needed to be done, people and supplies that needed my attention. Besides, the Medics and Becca had checked in on him every 20 minutes the day before; he'd be as okay as he could be in the woods without proper medical attention.

There were very few people who approached me as I did a tentative round of the camp surveying everything. I couldn't quite read their avoidance. Did it have to do with my sadness over Mark, or what I'd done? Either way, feeling slightly more emotionally level than I did yesterday, I pushed both from my head. 

"Cole!" Kellen caught up with me as I helped a freshman lowering a sack of rocks from the upper level via pulley. "There you are. You okay? I was worried when I woke up and you were gone."

He said it without a concern for who might hear him. I wanted to be frustrated at him, and the unabashed gaping the freshman was doing; why were people so interested in speculating about our non-status? But after everything that had happened, I could only smile.

"You shouldn't be doing this!" he grumbled at me, as he checked my arm in its sling.

"This stuff needs to get done, Kels."

"I'm not saying it doesn't. Leave it to Jacks or me. You can take over the room checks from Hads."

"And how exactly am I supposed to get up there?" I asked mildly annoyed at him coddling me. I could see Jackson approaching, glad to have found me; he'd likely repeat Kellen's lecture.

Sighing, I repeated my question, letting go of the rope to gesture at the upper level. The rope scorched through the hands of the freshman who'd loosened her hold on it, and she jumped back with a yelp to avoid being hit. Kellen's hand shot out instantaneously to grab the rope, and the bag snapped to a stop above us, swinging wildly. 

"See?" He shot me an annoyed look. "This is why you shouldn't be doing this. I'm not worried about you, Bae—Cole. I'm more worried about the freshies you'll no doubt injure trying to do stupid things like this with one hand."

"Thank Gob!" I scowled. "Here I thought you were going to baby me all day. We don't have time for that anyways, we have shit to get on with."

His face, so different from the impassive one that everyone was used to seeing, battled a number of reactions before he snorted at me. "I will baby you all I want, Cole! I'll carry you up there if I ha―Good God! Will you stop staring at us like we're standing here naked, kid?"

The freshman flushed and quickly went back to work, re-hoisting the sack of rocks instead of unlatching it so they could lower a new one. I watched in amusement.

"Leave the poor freshie alone!" Jackson interjected, startling the freshman. He took the rope from her and brought the bag back down. "You can't blame her, really. You're planning on carrying Bae up there?" He looked at Kellen pointedly, as if in that statement alone, the freshman's interest was more than explained. "Besides that, what are you going to do when she falls back down here from lack of balance?"

Kellen huffed as if he hadn't thought of that, and scrubbed at his jaw petulantly. "Then I'll baby her even more. At least if she falls, she won't be in any place to run around making her injuries worse!"

"Are her injuries stopping her now?" Jackson asked with a laugh, as I shoved Kellen.

"No."

"So then what makes you think any more injuries will stop her from being stubborn and stupid?"

Kellen eyed me as if it were a valid assessment of my character and shrugged. "Ah, I suppose you're right, Jacks. Just don't give us any more heart attacks, Cole." 

"Not sure I can guarantee that," I grumbled at them. "Seeing as how I'm so stubborn and stupid."

"Aww, Cole!" Kellen chuckled as he led me away from the pulley and the rocks, leaving Jackson to take over. "Don't be too offended. It's only the truth!"

He snickered, jumping back as I swiped at him with my good arm. Catching it, he pulled me into his side and directed us toward one of the fire pits. He waved someone over as he forced me to sit.

"Do I need to remind you of Fight Night?"

"Fine. I'm stubborn," I admitted with a small voice. "And I can do colossally stupid things. But working up there with one arm is not one of them!"

"Fair enough. I didn't think of that. Maybe you can watch the fires and visit all the huts?"

"What's up with the huts?" I asked as I was handed a breakfast of watered down oatmeal and foraged berries. As I'd wandered through camp earlier I'd noticed several evergreen bough huts that had seemingly sprung up overnight.

"They're for the injured."

"How many?"

"Not too many, considering." He caught my look and quickly gave me a number. "Fifteen, including you."

I nodded. I felt selfish and uncaring. I hadn't bothered to be worried about any of them the night before; I hadn't even asked about the other shots we'd heard. "So what happened? We heard shots and booms from where we were."

"There were two groups of Wardens. The first one passed all of us because they had Tank. We didn't know what to do, but after they passed us, Mark and the boys came running through. We would have come too, or done something, but the scouts issued another alert.

"Without Mark and the boys there to stop them, we stayed put; same with Katy's squad. Honestly, I was hoping that Katy would stop the first group, that they wouldn't get as far as you. But I really couldn't be worried about it because the second group was moving faster, I guess because they could hear Tank yelling."

Had he been worried about me specifically? No, I shook the thought from my head. The closer they got, the greater the risk for everyone was; after my squad, Jackson's was the last to stand between them and the Nest.

"I used your landmine trick." He smiled, and mimed an explosion. "But then they started shooting. I didn't know until then that the rest of Mark's squad was following them. It was pandemonium for a bit. My squad was pelting rocks down at them, and Mark's guys were using Katia's ice-canon. Then we heard shots coming from behind us.

"The Wardens bolted, running toward you guys. It was stupid and a bit reckless, I know, so don't be mad, but I gave the command to abandon post and go after them. So there's all of us, chasing them down like we expected to stop them—"

"Kellen!" I gaped at his blatant disregard for the lives of his squad.

"I know!" He flinched. "Then Tank comes screaming back toward us, waving a Warden's gun around, covered in blood. Then Danny and Remi. And I guess the Wardens kind of freaked a bit―Tank was pretty crazy looking! He started shooting, the Warden's were shooting and the rest of us just tried to get on the ground so we wouldn't be hit.

"God, there was so much yelling, Cole. I don't know how but we managed to coordinate attacks, so we'd get them at the same time, front and back. The ice canon did a lot of damage, a lot more than the slingshots did. I actually saw a Warden's ear explode."

"Ew."

"When they went down, we fought their weapons off of them. Then suddenly there were more Wardens running at us, coming back from you. We thought they were coming to help the other guys, but... No one in your squad is talking, so we don't really know what happened. I can guess, though...

"They looked like they'd seen ghosts. They didn't stop to help the guys we were fighting, they just kept running. One of them actually threw his gun at a kid, grabbed another Warden and kept going. Alex, I think, couldn't even hold the gun for how covered in blood it was. We'd thought our fight was bad..."

I didn't say anything, not too keen on rehashing what had happened with our squad; what I'd done. He grabbed my hand, running his thumb over the back gently. "You know the entire camp is calling you Hero now, right?"

I looked at him in disgusted shock. Hero?

"Babe, you did what you had to do to save us all."

I realized what he and everyone else thought.

"No I didn't. Elliot did. He used an explosive. What I did wasn't to save us."

"But..." I could see him working out the fact that I'd been standing there with the gun. The fact that I was bruised and wounded from having fired it. I could see him working out why I would have needed to.

"Aww, Cole!" He choked out, hugging me as tears filled my eyes. "Cole, they didn't suffer because of you."