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Hoo boy.
Steve had finally killed one of those creep things (goblins, whatever), and now all of them were out to kill him.
He sprinted down the street as fast as he could. He’d had no time to grab his Vespa, and now they were catching up and he was panting hard. He wasn’t going to make it much further…
Blue light caught his eye and Jim flew at the goblins. He stopped running and stared in awe as he sliced them with his glowing sword.
Steve would never get used to seeing that.
Remembering what he was doing, he yanked a stick from the lawn next to him and started smacking them with it.
Claire, Toby, and two of the troll guys joined them, making quick work of the goblins. Toby flattened one with his GIANT FIERY HAMMER APPARENTLY??? And Claire made a giant pile of the creeps and then used a twisted silver stick to make a purple and black circle and sent some of them flying into it. The big, mossy creep wasn’t smushing them, merely redirecting them towards Jim.
One launched itself at Steve and he swished his stick wildly, eyes shut tight. He heard a whack, followed by a squishhh, and green goo went everywhere, splattering on Steve’s clothes and the street.
Yuck. Also, how was he gonna explain the stains to his mom?
Focus, Palchuck, you have bigger problems right now!
The little creeps were all gone. Jim’s armor vanished, balls of floating blue light streaking back into the amulet.
Then out of the corner of Steve’s eye, he saw it.
A lone creeper.
It was crawling towards Jim, who didn’t have his armor on.
And hoLy FUCK IT HAD A KNIFE IT HAD A KNIFE—
“Jim, look out!!” He yelled but he wasn’t fast enough, the goblin was already launching itself straight at Jim.
The knife sunk into Jim’s back with a squishy shhhhhkkk and a cry of pain from Jim. Steve, Claire, Toby, and the trolls yelled “JIM!!” at the same time (except one of the trolls said Master Jim instead of Jim which was weird because weren’t they like hundreds of years old and Jim's like, 16, FOCUS, STEVE, SOMEONE IS DYING).
Jim fell to his knees, blood spilling from the wound.
Steve paled. That was a lot of blood and the knife was still in there.
The team jumped into action.
Toby squished the last goblin, and Claire and the trolls rushed to Jim’s side.
Steve just stood there.
They moved so fluidly, as if this had happened before.
…Had it happened before?
For the first time, Steve thought about what Jim risked, protecting both worlds. He had to fight monsters every night, and all those days he missed school…
Was that because he was healing from wounds like these?
Snapping back to the present, Jim was lying on one of the trolls laps, the four armed one, head being cradled by it, gritting his teeth as Claire tore off strips of her jacket.
He wasn’t even screaming.
Steve knew he would have screamed with a wound like that.
The four armed troll was stroking Jim’s head like he was a child, and it and Toby were muttering words of encouragement as Jim whined in pain.
“Jim, you know I hate to do this, but we’ve gotta wrap some bandages around the knife, okay?” Claire asked, regret clear on her face.
Jim let out a small sob of pain, nodding slightly and muttering something almost incoherent to the troll.
The four armed troll nodded and cradled Jim closer to his chest as Claire and the big troll looked at each other and nodded.
Steve was confused. The four armed, six eyed troll was holding Jim like a father would (not like Steve knew much about that either, his dad was a deadbeat too). Was Jim like, part troll, or something? It might explain how freakin’ tall he was.
No, he probably just looked to the troll like a father. The trolls did probably train him, after all. Kind of like how Steve was starting to see Coach Lawrence as a father, now that he was a part of his life all the time.
Focusing back on the present, Steve noted how eerily quiet the neighborhood was. Arcadia was such a sleepy little town that no one could see the boy bleeding out in the middle of the road, twangs of copper assaulting Steve’s nose.
Claire wrapped one of her hands around the knife, stabilizing it, and ever so slowly began to wrap around it, strips tightening.
Jim looked like he was trying his hardest not to writhe and scream in pain, body clenching with tears sliding down his face and he was biting down on the rag Claire had given him.
More blood began to spill out of the wound, adding to the slowly growing puddle of crimson around him.
Claire paused, shrugged off what was left of her jacket, and pressed as hard as she could against the torrent of blood.
Steve wasn’t a medical expert or anything, but he knew the knife acted as a kind of plug, and that Jim shouldn’t be bleeding this much, and by the looks in all their faces, the others knew that too.
“Do you think it hit an artery?” Toby whispered to Claire, but she shushed him, shooting a look at the trolls before concentrating on stopping the blood.
Jim was sobbing hard now, rocking against the four armed troll as Claire pressed.
Toby started ripping pieces of his shirt off into makeshift bandages, and when the bleeding finally slowed, they worked together to wrap the strips from Toby and Claire’s clothes around the wound.
“Alright,” Claire nodded to the bigger troll. “We’ve got to get him to Trollmarket so Vendel can do stitches and clean the wound properly. And…take the knife out.”
Steve winced internally, he knew that wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone involved. Also, Jim was still bleeding…
He might not even make it to this Trollmarket without bleeding out entirely.
“The risk of internal bleeding and infection is high with knife wounds, so AAARRRGGH, I need you to be careful while carrying him, and Toby—,”
“Antibiotics. I’ll see what I can find in my house after we fix him.” Toby interrupted Claire.
The unspoken if we can fix him was hanging in the air, weighing on all of them.
The four armed one was repeating what Claire said to Jim, then starting to transfer him to the big one’s arms as gently as possible, but Jim still whined loudly in pain, blood already starting to soak through the makeshift bandages.
Feeling as though a trance was broken, Steve found himself able to move and speak again.
“What can I do?”
It seemed they had all forgotten he was there, most gazes snapping to him in an instant.
Claire looked puzzled for a moment until an idea dawned on her face.
“You can get some water and soap and try to clean the sidewalk and road. If people see blood and goblin goo…” she trailed off, standing shakily and wiping blood (Jim’s blood, too much blood, Steve would never see the color red the same again) on the leg of her jeans.
Steve knew what she was implying. People would freak.
“If you can’t clean it, find roadkill or something to disguise it. Then you can go home. Or tell Jim’s mom that you were out late studying with us and you left early, but he’ll probably be another hour or so. She should be home tonight, unless she got called in for the night shift randomly, which would be a miracle for us.”
Jim’s mom…doesn’t know?
She doesn’t know her son risks his life every night for a town that is absolutely clueless about what he does for it?
Also, how the hell was Jim gonna get better without a doctor? A human one? Maybe trolls knew something about human anatomy but it kinda seemed like they didn’t and that wound looked pretty serious.
The group hurried off, heading toward the fabled ‘Trollmarket’ before Steve got a chance to share any of his concerns.
Steve stood stock still again.
Holy shit.
So.
That happened.
He hoped Jim would be okay, he didn’t particularly like the buttsnack, but Jim had saved his life.
…possibly in exchange for Jim’s own.
He started walking towards his house to get water and a mop.
Wow.
He was never going to bully Jim again. All the punches seemed like nothing compared to what Jim just went through. The kid probably had like, trauma or that brain scarring stuff, what had Eli called it? PTSD?
He couldn’t believe anything about that scenario. It seemed like a dream.
Two things were for sure, though.
He wouldn’t speak to anyone about this (except Eli).
And he would never see James Lake Jr. the same again.