my tears ricochet

And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves
You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same

"George, stop."

Somehow, at last, something got through to him. Not very well, granted, since he was still heavily under the effects of the dream cacti spines, and for a brief moment, he stops struggling - long enough, at least to lose his weapons. The monster was intelligent, then, or at least enough so to know to rid him of his many daggers: not just the two held in his hands, but also the hidden ones up his sleeves, tucked into his boots, even the one built into his belt buckle, until he was metaphorically stripped and naked in the snow.

But why would Hotaru tell him to stop? She was in danger - they all were! Couldn't she see that? Wasn't she in trouble? Hadn't she been screaming?

The creature swam in front of his eyes, another shadow coming up beside it - the monster he'd wounded, or so it seemed, by the way it limped into view. For a brief moment, in the background, he thought he saw Hotaru's golden hair, and he snarled a response, his gaze flicking, almost panicked, between the two monsters that held him captive. "Hotaru, run!"

And then he was struggling again, determined to do whatever he had to do to save her. He forgot, for the moment, that she was perfectly capable of protecting herself, that she was perhaps better equipped than he to deal with the monsters that held him in their clutches. He was too busy realizing that he had, perhaps, gotten himself into a situation that he couldn't get out of. He was going to die here.

But while he was weaponless, he was hardly defenseless, and somewhere in the dismal realization that he likely wasn't making it out alive, he realized that the monster had left him one thing: a knitting needle. So with all the strength left in him, he yanked the needle out and thrust it, point-first, towards the monster holding him, trying to pierce it through its unprotected neck.

Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
You turned into your worst fears

George