It's like listening to an earthquake without feeling it, hearing the tremor and the shudder and at the same time struggling, inexplicably, to locate it. Scraps of instruction—the gaps stand out more than what's there, like a dilapidated staircase—whisk through his head. Along the way, William closes his eyes. He leans into the other man, though the idea of William supporting him, William as a bulwark, is fucking—

The claws retract into the man's body. William cringes against the sound, reminded of a knife or a braking train. He makes a noise, not a sob but close, a series of choked gasps.

He opens his eyes and looks, but the man doesn't even seem to have registered what's happened. That it's under his skin. “Okay,” William echoes. “Just—” He reaches for the man's hand, heavy and callused, and swabs with the sleeve of his jacket at the blood pooled in his knuckles. Thorough to the point of meticulousness. “Here. Other one.” He does it again, feeling stupid and automatic and desperate, as though blotting up the blood will blot out everything else.

“You can't see, can you?” he asks when they reach her body. She's tipped over on the rocky ground, blood dried to her face and clothes. “I'll look for a pulse,” he says, inflection out of tune with the words. I'll start digging, he might as well be saying.