"You love that," she waves her hand towards the wilderness, "more than me. And you'll love it more than our kids."

"Honest, Molls. I'll stop. I promise. I'm gettin' older anyway. You been wantin' a little girl your whole life, right?"

"It'll only be worse if you lie, Nine."

A long pause. A deep sigh.

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right."

---

An infinity of stars over pockmarked ground-- a night that thrums with hidden life and heat as a wolf blasts by, cut to his target, a hare, whose heartbeat can be heard even above its rapid-fire footsteps, tap-tap-tap. 

With every stride, he eats up the space between him and that bobbing white tail, pistons thrusting and engine worked to full throttle. His hands grip the ground. This is what it feels like to be alive. Sharks die if they stand still because the only way they know how to breathe is by moving. 

The hare stumbles and its momentum throws it forward, skidding-- "Gotcha, you bastard." He catches it by its nape and gives it an aggressive shake. The simple motion reduces some of its vertebrae down to dust. He listens to its heart slow, stutter, and then stop altogether. We see Nine Lives, a silhouette, hunched over a nighttime meal as he turns to hear something, or someone, in the dark.

Whatever image that popped up in your head when you thought of salvation-- well, it wouldn't be Nine Lives. In God's dictionary of all living things, his entry would end with a footnote of see also: asshole. 

The scene was very much reminiscent of a raccoon just about to smother itself in the contents of some poor urban household's trash, except whoever was behind the flashlight was someone even more pathetic than him. Anything more depressing than a vacuum-sealed economy class dish was a vacuum-sealed economy class dish that had to be shared.

Oi. Stop grovelin', will ya? C'mere. Nine huffs, his voice heavy with the implication of hurry up before I change my mind. So what'll it be? Legs or arms? Myself, I enjoy the thigh meat. It's softer. He wipes the drool from his mouth, twitching with impatience.

With about as much grace as a claw machine, Nine tore the furry hot pocket hare into two and tossed its upper body over to Yosemite. And with about as much fervor as a poor college student, he dove in. It was, in essence, the bachelor meal, complete with a dirt garnish.

He sat back, his stomach half-full, and belched. Sparing a baleful, are you happy now stare at the back of Yosemite's neck, he shifted his position from one foot to the other.

Bad idea.

Shi-IT, he crescendoed. In his pain, he had somehow managed to add another syllable onto the expletive-- a feat he might've found impressive if it wasn't for the pain in his bad leg. God was stabbing that bone with a fireplace poker, laughing, why are you stabbing yourself? Huh? Why're you stabbing yourself? Shitshitshitshit that hurts like a-- like a shit. Classic Nine. So very eloquent. Any and all resentfulness that he'd previously felt was now replaced by a bull in a china shop, trampling all over his poor sensory neurons.

Through the fuzz of pain he sees Yosemite scrabbling away and he's conscious enough to think resentfully, Why's he so scared for? I'm the one with the goddamn broken leg. For a while, that's the only coherent thought in his head and he clings to it as his mind bucks and weaves.

He stares at him as if they're both underwater and shouts back through gritted teeth, Do... I... look alright?

After he stands there for what seems like a minute, cradling his leg, he finally has the nerve to set it back down on the ground again and he's not sure if he believes himself when he says, simply, Christ. That could've been worse. But it comes out as a question, not a statement.

I broke it a while ago. I was doing fine since-- I think it didn't heal right. Chewing on the inside of his mouth and feeling the hare gristle stuck between his teeth, he waits for the pain to subside. It'd went from dynamite proportions to a throbbing ache and now a dull heat like an epicentre of some self-contained earthquake.

The kid mentions something about his Uncle Enoch and his mind goes crazy at that, chases that unfinished sentence like a mad dog-- what happened to him? What did your Uncle Enoch do? And when no answer comes, he puts his head in his hands, exasperated and still in pain and now left on a cliffhanger with nowhere to go like a car in a police chase run up against a chainlink fence, sirens flashing and wailing...

Is there anything I can do?

He looks back up. You'd do that for me? In anybody else's mouth those words would've been duly impressed, but Nine was Nine, and everything he said came out half-done and drenched in cynicism, bog beasts surfacing from Irony Lake.

How could I trust ya? Some small part of him is enjoying the situation, straight out of a movie where a rough-around-the-edges hellion is having a dinner conversation with a boy in a restaurant that desperately wants to be urban. He leans forwards. Wait. What's your name, kid? 

Once the hare taste had faded from his mouth, a much stronger smell overrode it. It stunk of anxiety and fear, and it was emanating from Jojo so thickly that it should've been as opaque as steam from a nuclear reactor.

He licks down his rough edges for now. It didn't seem right to terrorise a kid who seemed to constantly be on the verge of an anxiety attack. Nine was an asshole, but he wasn't a sadist (admittedly, not a very high standard to have).

I'm Nine, he says, in a voice that almost passes for calming. How'd ya end up here? He swallows. Jojo?

The way he saw it, either Jojo had incredible luck or there really was a god out there looking out for everybody, because he was one of the only wolves Nine had ever seen that had managed to starve in summertime. Life was strange.

Jojo kicks off his story with a lackluster beginning like a sprinter missing his starting pistol cue and Nine is about to rescind any trace of empathy he'd felt for him, but the plot thickens-- he can't help but cock an ear.

The empathy floods back in at his next words. It's a story that's been told and experienced thousands of times before: a scrappy youth plunging into the wilderness with bright eyes and skyscraping hopes, only to come out the other end defeated and terrifyingly aware of his own shortcomings.

Right, kid, he says, sounding almost irritated. Nine was a spectacular failure at showing compassion. Jojo.

You can stick with me, but... he draws himself up, looking down through hooded eyes, ...I'll get the softer grass to sleep on. Deal?

Truth was, Nine needed company just as much as he did. Aside from his bad leg, he could always use an anchor to keep him from spiraling too far, too fast (that was Kincaid to him, in a way), though this kid seemed less of an anchor than a small paperweight. Not that he'd ever admit this, not even after the heat death of the universe.

Almost satisfied with himself, Nine can't help but smile at Yosemite's theatrics, and the smile grows even wider as he belches, queasy and mortified.

Any other reasonable person would be starting to feel the first throes of apprehension, maybe even regret. It was possibly a good thing for Yosemite that Nine was a wilful stranger to any kind of introspection. Alright, alright kid, he waves him off, though he's pleased at being treated like a demigod.

But if you do anything stupid and get us killed, I swear I'll track you down in whatever afterlife there is and never let you forget it. 

With that, Nine and Yosemite became a pair. No trumpets, no brassy fanfare-- just the sounds of poor digestion and the frenetic tap-tap-tap of his foot against the dirt.

Fitting.