She paints him with it when she pulls them both to slick asphalt. Red blood. Human blood. He doesn’t think of Leo— of the way it had poured out of him as if he were shattered, fragile glass (fragile machines; he’d known but didn’t listen)— or he does, but consciously shoves past it when his heavy hands claps themselves over North’s, her fingers tangled in torn cloth until the bleeding beneath fractured plating slows.

Red and blue.

He opens his mouth to argue. Another set of shots pierce the front of the patrol car: too high to effectively strike at where they’ve taken cover. What can he say? That he did what he had to do to make sure Jericho survives another night? That she isn’t a killer? That every human life they take is one they’ll feel a thousand times over in delayed retaliation or resistance? This isn’t the time. This isn’t the place for it, and maybe— she isn’t wrong.

His grip narrows, he works printless fingers in underneath her palm, against the grain of the gun she holds.

“We need to draw them away.”

From the others. From Jericho.