Hawke turned around.
He simply turned his back on her.
As if his body no longer obeyed the conscious commands of his mind, as if it had a will of its own, as if it absolutely did not want to see what was happening right in front of him.
"HAWKEEEE!"
Kaira's desperate cries and screams intensified violently, tearing through the air, begging, pleading for help that would not come.
And Hawke's foot took an involuntary step.
Moving away from her and her pleas.
Without looking, without turning his head.
'NO! That's not what I want to do, you treacherous body! COME BACK NOW! Have courage, be a man, COME BACK! Don't be a damn coward!'
But his body completely ignored the desperate mental screams, continuing to act on its own.
It took a few more quick steps, progressively gaining speed, moving further and further away from the scene, from the pleas, from the horror.
'NO, DAMN IT! OBEY ME, YOU DAMNED PIECE OF SHIT! GO BACK THERE NOW! She needs me, she's DYING! Don't abandon her like this, you coward, please, I BEG YOU! Do like i did that time I saved her from that violent brute, remember?!'
But words that weren't his flooded his mind torrentially, coming from some deep, primitive, and ancient place in his reptilian brain, completely stifling any other thought:
"IT'S NOT A WEAK BRUTE THIS TIME. IT'S AN UNBEATABLE DEADLY BEAST. SHE HAS NO MORE CHANCE OF LIFE. RUN WHILE YOU CAN. THE LAW OF THE STRONGEST ALWAYS PREVAILS. SURVIVE."
And with those words, his entire body instantly abandoned any microscopic possibility of going back, of trying, of fighting.
He was running wildly now, fleeing. Running with all his might, his legs pumping violently, his lungs burning.
"GYAAAAAAAA!"
A final, utterly agonized scream echoed painfully behind him through the entire forest, penetrating to the bone. A horrible, unmistakable sound of large bones breaking like dry twigs. Flesh being brutally torn. Wet, a repugnant chewing.
Hawke immediately brought his hands to his ears in a desperate movement and covered them with all his might, pressing painfully, trying to completely block out that unforgettable sound. His eyes streamed hot, uncontrollable tears down his cheeks, completely hindering his already compromised vision, blurring everything into a blur of green and brown.
'Why the hell did I do this? What kind of horrible person am I really? What kind of cowardly human was I before I lost my memories?!'
The action taken now went brutally against absolutely everything, against his previous consistent behavior of "not leaving anyone behind," against the very principles he thought he had. It fundamentally contradicted everything he thought was right and just, everything he thought defined who he was as a person.
'So this is who I really am when the mask falls? The kind of person who cowardly abandons others at the worst moment when things get really difficult and dangerous? Is this my true nature? I can't fight against the nature of things... and much less against my own rotten and cowardly nature...'
*SPLASH*
He slipped violently into a treacherous mud hidden under leaves. He was completely too distracted by the spiraling self-destructive thoughts, and the tears soaking his eyes and constantly streaming down his face made him totally confused about the terrain ahead; he didn't see the hole.
He went straight and hard to the muddy ground, hitting his face in the cold, extremely viscous mud that immediately stuck to him.
*THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.*
The absurdly heavy footsteps of the beast behind him finally stopped echoing.
Tense silence.
He had caught up with him.
******************
Hawke turned slowly, still lying pathetically in the cold mud, turning his head with effort, and looked directly at the monstrous face of that terrible beast that had killed everyone.
The bright, inhuman yellow eyes stared fixedly at him from above, penetrating. Cold as ice. Predatory and calculating. Completely devoid of anything remotely resembling pity or mercy or hesitation, it didn't seem to be seeking food, but amusement.
Before Hawke could even try to get up from the ground to minimally recover from the pathetic and useless run, the dinosaur raised a gigantic front paw high and stomped violently on his exposed chest with brutal and crushing force.
The weight was absolutely impossible to bear, unimaginable. Pressing relentlessly, sinking him deeper and deeper into the sticky mud that quickly covered his face completely, forcing its way into his dilated nostrils as he tried to breathe, invading his open mouth in a desperate attempt to scream.
The unbearable pressure intensified progressively with each passing second that seemed to last forever. It felt like it was literally breaking every single one of Hawke's bones simultaneously, his ribs giving way and cracking, his sternum splitting in two, his lungs being violently compressed until no more air could fit. And it didn't give him the slightest chance to breathe at all; the dense mud made absolutely everything dark and suffocating, forcing him to close his eyes tightly because they burned unbearably.
Each desperate and futile attempt to breathe any amount of air only caused more and more viscous mud to enter his lungs, expanding and suffocating him simultaneously from the inside and out in growing despair.
He felt the triumphant roar of the beast muffled and distorted by the dense mud completely filling his ears.
And finally, he completely gave up fighting.
He simply stopped resisting, remained completely still, accepting it.
The beast's gigantic foot slightly lessened its crushing pressure after noticing the lack of movement; it probably rightly thought he was truly dead now, no longer worth the effort or attention of continuing. Then Hawke heard the muffled sound of the enormous footsteps slowly receding, leaving him there abandoned in the mud like discarded trash.
'Miserable and pathetic creature...'
The thought came extremely bitter, completely soaked in pure, concentrated self-hatred.
'Am I not even worthy of being devoured like the others were? Don't I deserve the same final fate they had?'
His mind seemed to shut down, pausing heavily.
'...No, of course I don't deserve it. I cowardly abandoned them all as they died. If there's one thing I definitely don't have, it's dignity or honor.'
Hawke consciously decided not to get up this time, not to try to save himself. It wasn't worth it. The phantom weight of the creature's paw, even though it had significantly decreased now, still seemed to rest heavily on his crushed chest. He simply stood there in that absolute, suffocating darkness, in that complete void of meaning, sinking slowly.
Until something completely unexpected gently touched his covered face.
Something... different?
He tried to mentally decipher what it could be through the thick layer of mud. The texture was strangely different from everything else; it wasn't mud or earth. Warm instead of cold. Delicate and soft.
They seemed...
Human hands.
They were unmistakably hands.
Comforting in some way. Welcoming and gentle.
The horrible sensation of being progressively sunk into the dense mud gradually but completely disappeared. The immense pain in his destroyed chest vanished as if it had never existed. And so the paralyzing fear of opening his eyes and seeing the horror went away too.
Hawke opened his eyes slowly and carefully.