"I'm tired, Sanford."

Sanford hardly stirred, already floating in and out of consciousness. His mind was foggy with sleep; he was sure that he couldn't even open his eyes again if he tried at this point. He could hardly focus on Deimos' words, he was just so out of it, so out of it…

They were sleeping in the back of the car again, just as they had been every other day. Or every few days. He and Deimos had hardly been able to get any sleep anymore. They would go for nearly four days running only on whatever caffeine that they could get their hands on, adrenaline rushes from constant combat, and sheer willpower. That was all they had left at this point.

Everything had gone to hell. Everything. Each day was filled with more carnage, more death, and even more mental strain. Sanford could feel his already-dwindling sanity slipping away more and more by the day.

He had to become a machine while he worked; it was the only way to get anything done anymore. If he was human, if he thought for even a second about what he was doing and what he would probably end up doing, then it was all lost. He just couldn't be human anymore, and neither could Deimos.

It was a miracle that neither of them had snapped entirely yet, he thought as he shifted slightly where he lay. The back of the car was cramped and uncomfortable, but it was something. His muscles were sore and overworked, and he just needed someplace to rest. Even if just for a few hours. Just even three hours of sleep would be nice, just that…

Sanford heard Deimos mumble something again, and he forced himself to open his eyes just a bit. His eyelids felt as if they weighed several tons, but he managed to peek out a bit at his partner.

Shit. Deimos wasn't in any better shape than he was. Maybe if Sanford felt like joking, which he didn't, he would say that Deimos looked like a mummy what with all the bandages wrapped around his head, arm, middle…everywhere, really. But it wasn't funny and it wasn't a joke, because just about all of those bandages were bloody and grimy and there was nothing that he could do about that.

"What?" The word sounded more like an exhausted slur than anything else, but it was a response nonetheless.

He heard Deimos shift a bit more. "I said I'm tired."

"We're all getting tired. Hardly anybody around here is sleeping." That sounded a bit more awake, even though it was still hardly more coherent than a mumble. "We'll get some real sleep eventually, just a few more da—"

Something had changed in Deimos' voice, then, and it actually almost scared him, because that was exactly when it hit Sanford that the annoying, carefree kid that he used to know was gone and wasn't coming back.

"Sanford, I'm just really fucking tired."

Tired. That kind of tired.

Sanford knew what Deimos meant. It wasn't just physical exhaustion, it was mental, too.

Day after day of killing, of knowing that you've killed at least over thirty people in less than four days, constant bloodshed and injuries and just being so goddamn exhausted. Waking up in the morning and knowing that you're a cold-blooded killer, a machine, and that you're never going to be able to go back to the way life was before everything happened. Heading out to just another damn mission and knowing that it might just be your last, since everything else has already gone to hell and it makes no sense that you would end up surviving such a mess when nobody else has. Finally shutting your eyes and trying to sneak in just an hour of sleep and having your last coherent thoughts be that you're just some fucking machine who doesn't even know how to be human anymore, and that you're done. Knowing that you're never going to be close to human again and that you can't do anything about that, even if you wanted to, and you did.

Sleep didn't help that kind of tired much, or even at all. That kind of tired just stuck with you, and no amount of caffeine, or cigarettes, or alcohol was going to take it away.

Sanford reached down, his eyes slipping shut again. He wasn't even really sure what he was doing until he found Deimos' hand and grabbed it.

What did people do when they weren't sure what the hell they could even do anymore? How did people stick together in a crowd, in a bad situation? They held on, didn't they?

The old Deimos would have no doubt pulled his hand away, snickering something like, "No homo, dude." But that was a long time ago, and before both of their hands were covered in grime and bandages that were crusty with dried blood, before they were so tired.

Deimos just held back.

And maybe if Sanford was drunk again, he might have even said something completely ridiculous like, "It'll be okay."

But he would have to be really, utterly, incredibly drunk to even think that for a second. One of them was going to slip up eventually, or maybe even both of them.

Partners were supposed to look out for each other. That was the deal. He and the kid had gotten a lot better at working together, but just looking out for each other wasn't going to cut it now. You can't do much for someone going straight to their death. It was like walking somebody up to the scaffold: you can hold their hand, try and offer some pointless words of comfort, but in the end they were still going to end up dead and that would be that.

It didn't matter, though. They were just killing machines at this point, weren't they? Killing machines that were going to end up dead themselves soon enough, or maybe just doomed to realize that they already were.

So he just held on tightly to the other dead man's hand and said something that wasn't too ridiculous.

"I know, kid. I'm tired too."

A/N: Well, can I be somewhat forgiven for not having updated Eights in a million years? Sorry, guys, writer's block and art classes have been draining me a bit.

I actually don't really know where this came from, but I wrote the majority of this last night at like ten at night. Inspiration just randomly hit me, so here we go. I might just be overthinking things, especially considering that Madness Combat mostly is just a bunch of guys killing other guys in a crazy world, but I always try to consider just the kind of mental toll that kind of life would take on the trio. I mean, the stuff they would deal with on a daily basis is pretty insane, and to me it's honestly a miracle that they haven't snapped. Especially Hank, eesh.

So just more of a drabble type thing here, trying to explore that dwindling sanity, and picking on Sanford and Deimos again. I think once (if you'll pardon me slipping up and actually swearing for once without the use of the words 'heck' and 'frick') the shit hit the fan in Nevada, they had to be trying to keep each other sane. It's what best friends gotta do, right?