Swiftcurrent Creek I lost a friend, like sleep on a red-eye

Realized my reply makes more sense as its own thread. @Akavir

The girl had passed out as she was grabbed. The last thing she would remember upon waking was the sight of Colt being swallowed by shadows; unaware that his body had been thrown in to the creek.
Upon waking now, she was disoriented. The two black-furred bastards weren't far. She could hear the wind in the trees, and thought for a milisecond she was in the maplewood again.
When she tried to stand up, pain shot through her from chest to belly. She was battered and bruised, with a hefty chunk missing from where someone had ripped in to her chest during the scuffle.
Wincing, the girl crumpled against the earth once more.

The girl had just slept.
Trauma, probably—mind and body—and he told himself not to care, but he knew it would only be a matter of time infection would set in, or dehydration if she didn’t stir.

So when the hours passed and there was still no sign of their redheaded attacker, Akavir gave a grunt of annoyance, finding a chunk of wood that had rotted in the middle and carving it to a small bowl-like fashion. Filling it from the creek, he took it to where she rested, hearing the shuffle of foliage as the girl fell down, an ear sliding back.

He’d done a number on her, but survival was a bitch like that.

He plunked the makeshift bowl of water in front of her, sloppily at that, allowing it to slosh to her muzzle slightly. “If you don’t drink, you’ll die.”

She fell and didn't rise.
The pain was everywhere. Her awareness of the surroundings suitably dulled, so when the man approached she did not notice until he dropped something by her nose. Water sloshed at her snout.
There was a desperate, hostile look to the girl as she recognized the man.
Where's my friend?
No matter how parched she felt, Indra refused to drink.

She felt well enough to manage a withering glare, and impassively, Akavir stared down at her in return. A part of him had wished he had simply let the pale woman drag the redhead off with her—though she probably had bled out from her injuries or surely would have if she tried to carry the unconscious girl.

But she was young. Caught up in the wrong crowd, perhaps?

“Dunno,” he returned, not willing to sugar coat anything. “The woman retreated and I threw the man into the creek. It’s in nature’s hands, now.”

Sadey. Her tone was barbed. It could've been from the pain, it could've been a sense of possessiveness, or defensive control. Sadey n' Colt.
If this beast was going to talk about them, he'd better use their names. They weren't just a man and woman to her. She glared daggers at the shadow, unafraid to watch his yellow eyes with her own.
Her breathing was hitched.
They'll come fer me. That was a promise — and a wish, a trembling, tender bit of hope that they weren't actually dead. Indra knew better than to have hope for anything these days, but she couldn't help herself.

She thought he cared about their names—her insistence of saying so only drew a blank stare from the man, his own wounds apparent upon his swarthy form. “I have no doubt they will,” he mused aloud, not once removing his gaze from her. “They seem like possessive fuckheads.”

There was a pause, and then he blew his breath out, feeling once more, the reins of regret pulling at him. He should have left the nearly dead woman carry off her nearly dead redhead friend—why did he care what crew she ran around with?

His thoughts turned to Arielle and Lilitu. It hurt to even consider they’d be involved with a crew like this—and that was why he had reacted so spontaneously on the matter. For all he knew his own children were dead… and for all he knew, the moment this young girl before him could worm her way over to him, she’d kill him in his sleep.

“So I guess you better drink up so you can be in perfect shape for when your cavalry comes, yeah?”

He didn't lash out at her after her comment, only stared, and spoke in an even drawl of the pair; Indra wasn't able to focus enough on the words to be offended by them, and in fact felt a strength imbued by the term fuckhead.
She was silent a few more seconds. Her mouth was parched, her throat felt as if she'd swallowed gravel. Going without water as some kind of ill-conceived power-move would only hurt the girl in the end. She knew that much.
Her nose hovered over the water; was it poisoned? Drugged? Indra had been a captive often enough through her little life, she knew the drill. She knew what could be trusted and what couldn't, and so far this man was more beastly than her own crew. How could she eat or drink anything if Yellow Eyes was the one to offer it?
Without taking her eyes away from him, Indra punched the vessel and sent the water in to the earth.

he'll go unless stopped... but lmfao i love her.

She stared at him—a meager sniff given to the water he provided, and after having tenuously carved that damn piece of wood, didn’t she send it rocketing away from her with a hearty punch of pure spite.

He blinked at the remnants of it, almost certain she expected him to hold a reaction one way or another for her antics.

In truth, it wasn’t like he expected much from her.

“Suit yourself,” he noted, and with a flick of his tail, he left everything where it was—he wasn’t about to waste his own energy to refill the thing, and if she wasn’t about to accept assistance in getting better, there wasn’t much he could do about that.

<3!!

Indra studied the man acutely.
She watched for the bunching of certain muscles. For the flicker of that lantern-light gaze, to see where it might track, where he might lunge, what he might do; the vessel clattered, fell still, and they both stared.
Then the man didn't lunge for her at all. He looked indifferent — if there was any annoyance, he did not express it in any way Indra might recognize. Rather, the man withdrew.
The vessel lay discarded and the water gone.
Indra, alone.