He doesn't know what he's witnessing—the blood's the only thing he can make sense of, and he fixates on it, watching it trail down the man's hands. Drip to the ground. Are they being claimed? Is this what's going to happen, metal shrieking out of their bodies, their flesh swallowed up by the landscape?

“Don't touch your head, don't—you have claws. Fuck.” The last word a kind of verbal shudder. He winds up in a demented dance with the other man, trying to keep him at arm's length as he lurches and snarls. A voice exhorts him to get it together. Fuck you, William thinks. His skull feels ready to crack, a cacophony of no and stop ringing through it.

Breathe. That takes, at least. He forces himself to inhale. Exhale. Consciously or not, his breathing starts to line up with the other man's.

“Her eyes are gone.” His voice, flat, veers into disbelief at the last moment—catches on something like a laugh or a sob. Don't say she's dead. Don't say she's dead. “Don't say she's dead,” he mutters under his breath, steadying himself against the wall. “She was over there.” On the ground. Unresponsive.

He points, then for some reason—maybe it's the way the other man's eyes don't seem to follow—says, “Let's go together. Okay?”