Garbled words filtered through the terror like crackling voices from a beaten phonograph, softening into a distant hum as his attention focused on the memory at hand. His drenched fur clung to his scrawny frame, fragmented ribs jutting up against his skin and visibly shifting with every fearful convulsion. Exhaustion quelled his fitful struggles soon enough, the energy to fight abandoning him to pant and sputter blood with his chest heaving. Flat on his back, he could distantly taste the old blood of his death rising in his throat like coppery bile. Albeit drained, the boy still wriggled beneath Moth, his irregular shift of shoulders and kicks no longer supplied with any strength. He wouldn't give up that easily; he wasn't going to let anybody hurt him again. You're helpless. His lip seemed to quiver at this unspoken truth, beginning to cry anew. Somewhere in the haze clouding his mind, Beck listened to himself in disgust. Was he really that pathetic? Yet once the dam crumbled, he could do little to stop the years of bottled waterworks from spilling forth. At least the mental anguish flooding his senses distracted from the pain splitting his underbelly and chest.

    Pressure pinched around his nose, earning a tearful grimace as fractured cartilage clicked beneath the weight of Selby's paw. On deeply-rooted instinct, his scarred mouth opened to suck down a gulp of air, desperate to stanch the burning ache in his lungs -- only for his friend to cram borage down his throat, its sweet taste clashing with the bitter tang of his blood. Beck gagged to no avail, his breath hitching. What did Selby do to him? Jaws snapped forward in anger, the skin of his teeth catching the sawbone's paw, too late to inflict as much pain as he currently found himself engulfed in. A low growl replaced the sobs previously wracking his form, his dampened expression darkening before he worked himself up into a frenzy once more, emotions dulling his thoughts like a blade cut one too many times. His phantom paws found themselves curling around Moth's wrists, claws sinking in as his grip tightened like twin constrictors before he tugged every way imaginable in an effort to free himself. Whether her flesh would tear and bleed under his grip or not, Beck stubbornly persisted until another took her place. The smell of roast peanuts managed to hit his nose through the tar-like blood slicking his lower face, catching his attention while the demon secured his arms. A hiss of pain escaped through gritted teeth, but he could do nothing more than feebly squirm as time passed and the sedative herb took its effect.

    His movements were lulling into a sluggish daze, his eye half-lidded and muscles unwinding. A figure approached, blurred by his myopic eyes and the tranquilizer. With the last of his awareness, Beck kicked a hindleg into where he believed Red's gut to be before wrenching his arm from his grip in the moment of distraction, swiping down at the figure's face with splayed claws. It would be easy to subdue him after the final outburst, his body falling limp as the borage thwarted his erratic consciousness. Agonizingly slow minutes ticked by as the poltergeist countered the drug as best he could, twitching occasionally. His breathing refused to completely relax into its labored pace as he wheezed and whimpered with a leaden weight crushing his shallow chest. An oh-so familiar darkness encroached his vision, turning his sight into a fuzzy tunnel he couldn't reach the exit of. Blown pupil flitting up to the rainy sky, his jaw slackened, allowing a pale tongue to poke past blue lips. A death rattle lodged in his chest, Beck found himself mumbling to the heavens, last words to an ignorant god echoing for the present to hear. "I... I don't wanna die... don't wanna die." Speech slurred and thunder relentless, his hoarse voice was swallowed by the din of the area. The boy slumped like a ragdoll in Red's arms, an oozing ribbon of black dripping from his mouth and nose and onto the demon's skin. He hoped that maybe, just maybe, he would wake up to realize everything had been a nightmare after all.

Two others show up on the scene after just a moment, both of them people that Wormwood cared about, although one immensely more so, even though he'd never admit that to anyone – or himself, really. Still, even if he didn't enjoy delving further into his emotions on Red, he couldn't deny the way that his body tended up when the demon approached, and put himself directly in the line of danger when it came to Beck right now. His paws seemed to move without him even thinking, and he could faintly hear Moth in the background pointing out that holding him down wasn't a very good idea. He wanted to follow what she was saying, and keep himself back for both his own and Beck's safety, but he also knew that there was no way that Red was going to listen to this, and he didn't want Red's wounds to become exacerbated by anything that Beck did. He knew that soon the medicine that Selby had administered to the boy would kick in, and Beck would finally pass out, but there was no telling when that would actually happen, considering Beck's ghostly endurance. Wormwood wanted to tell himself that he was being logical when he came up beside Red, their shoulders brushing together as he made a soft noise of warning, but ultimately he knew that logic had nothing to do with it.

The hellhound's mouth opened, ready to whisper reassuring words to Beck to try and assist in calming him down and pulling him finally down into his rest, but suddenly things were moving all too quickly. Time seemed to move in slow motion as all of a sudden Beck's legs were kicking out wildly, landing a solid hit at Red's already injured gut. Wormwood's breath came in quickly as a sudden gasp, and he turned his head to check and see if Red was alright, but pain was exploding throughout the right side of his face, and he felt the sharp dig of claws against his eyeball and eye socket, blood immediately filling the right half of his vision, and within a moment the left half. He let out a pained shriek mixed with a yip as he stumbled backwards, his paws quickly moving up to his face to cover his eyes. Pained noises left him as he sat back on his haunches, agony still echoing through his eye and the right part of his face where Beck's claws had hit. Normally a scratch from a domestic feline, even in this form, wouldn't hurt Worm this much, but Beck had managed to hit just right that he had been afflicted by a great deal of pain, and he couldn't really see anything but red. He felt warmth pooling around the right side of his face, and everything was foggy on his left side, while he couldn't see anything on his right.

He crouched down nearby after a moment, his breath coming out in unsteady gasps as he tried to ease the pain and the sting that had struck him. He couldn't even imagine the pain that Red was in right now, or even Moth, but when he tried to focus on somebody else, he found that it couldn't distract from the fact that his eye was ripped, and blood – probably rotten blood, considering who had inflicted the wound – took over his sight. He could hear Beck's still slightly panicked voice as the boy finally passed out, and he felt a part of him wanting to reach out and comfort Beck, to convince him that he was fine and wasn't dying, but he couldn't even imagine trying to focus on something as concentrated as comforting Beck right now, bent over and trembling in pain. He didn't want to distract Selby's attention from the ghost, but he couldn't help the injured noises that left him,  "Hah... ah... f-fuck, fuck, that hurt... Red... Moth... are you guys okay..?"