forthedog | Derailment

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Derailment

He's not sure what wakes him. It could be any number of things. It could be the light on his face, the air moving over him, the shift of cloth against skin where before it had just been the cool of the sheets and the heat of two bodies. It could be the hard ground under his back, which would also explain the aches in him as consciousness drifts closer. He's gone soft, he thinks sometimes, fallen out of the habit of sleeping well on the ground, lost in the embrace of Tom's big bed. But he still roughs it sometimes, so at first the fact that he's clearly outside doesn't sound any alarms.

But it's the kind of outside. It's not the light but the quality of that light; not warm and glowing but thin, pale, anemic. When he opens his eyes it's not the trees swaying over him in the morning breeze but what they're like, them and the other plant life, still thickly growing and untamed but bad. Unhealthy. Sparse where it shouldn't be and dense where it shouldn't be. No birds, no fucking birds at all. The hints of a world knocked out of balance and gone horribly wrong.

There's a cold wet nose pressed against his cheek, and a weight pressing into his arm, numbing it. He rolls, pulls it away and sits up, shoving Neil harder than he meant to. Dexter steps back, whining softly, and Mike stares around and then down, absorbing it in quick shocked bursts. The car. The campfire, smoking ashes. Dexter. The two figures, curled together on the ground. Tom's old and ragged sweater. His own pants. Camo. Boots. The itchy feel of clothes that haven't been washed for a while.

His gun.

There's no mistaking what this is.

He doesn't want to wake them. As long as they're still sleeping, this is his nightmare and his alone. Maybe they never have to wake up. And yet he has no idea what's really worse: being back here or being back here on his own.

"No," he breathes, barely above a whisper. No louder, because he's honestly afraid that he might scream. "No. No. Fuck."

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He's starting to panic. Hell, he left panicked a few fuckin' exits back. He's holding on too tight, I can't fuckin' breathe, let alone talk. I scramble at his arm, clawing and thrashing, but there's something cold and hard pressed against the side of my head and everything's starting to go black.

I can't see them. I squint out into the dark, I try so hard, but I can't. He's waving his gun between my and the sound of their voices, and I know that could be my chance to break free, but I'm too weak. My legs buckle suddenly and I slump against him but he hardly seems to notice or care.

"This worth your life, kid?" Tom said in a lower voice to the sack of skin and bones at the bottom of the stairs. He felt cold and sharp, very distant. It was hard to make the Realm feel real enough to care about.

"I'm gonna ask your friend to back down one more time," he said, not taking his eyes off the dark corner of the cellar as he eased down the stairs, feeling Mike as a source of strength behind him.

"And if he doesn't cooperate, things are going to get difficult for everyone."

"Neil," he calls again. He's letting his attention get too focused, too narrow a band, and he knows he shouldn't do that but somewhere in the darkness is one of the few people in his life that he'd give anything for, anything at all. "If you can hear me, say something. Say something so we know you're okay."

He's edging down further, slowly, gun raised, but he forgot about the kid on the floor forever ago, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to pay him any more mind.

Dragging in a harsh lungful of air, I try and call out to him, the sound of it nothing more than a strangled sob. I'm hauled up tighter against him, his breath hot against my ear.

"Don't tell me this little shit's worth yours," he calls out with a harsh laugh, "They told me you had a thing for him, Pinocchio. Said you'd be willing to cut a real sweet deal, but I just couldn't believe it. What's the world coming to?"

The kid is wild eyed, too young, and for a moment Tom feels pity. This is what the Realm did. Nuke a whole through the bottom of humanity and suddenly everyone's biting and scratching with their nails, turf wars and genocides. Maybe the kid had only be strung along...

But he was a slaver. He was young, but around his neck, Tom could see the iron stamp the traders used to brand their stock with when it was cherry red, and in his hand, the kid had finally gotten hold of a wicked looking cattle prod, well used and flecked with blood. Tom saw it it crystalline detail, every smudge of dirt and blood, the crap under his fingernails, and his thumb pressing down on the trigger...

No second thoughts. Tom leveled the gun and shot, catching the kid at the base of the skull. Flash, shimmer, he dissolved into nothing before he hit the ground.

"You're alone," he told the man, speaking clearly over the rushing sound of his own adrenalin. "There's no one here to help you. Let him walk away. We'll all just....walk away."

He hears the shot a second after it happens and he flinches without thinking, remembering the kid on the floor, remembering that he hadn't confirmed that he was unarmed, and he's suddenly sure that he must be dead. Dead here in this hellhole, and he'll never see Tom or Neil or his little girls again.

But then he blinks and there's nothing where the kid had been, and Tom there with his gun raised and an awful look in his eyes.

He feels a flash of cold pity and then equally cold gratitude, and he nods shortly. "Thanks." And he turns his back on that awful look and lifts his own gun, sliding down into the dark.

The floor feels slick, grimy, and the room is vast and shadowy. He can see a dim shape far ahead, half hidden behind a stack of crates, and he takes his own cover. There's no way to know for sure what's down here.

"He's worth fifty of you, you piece of shit," he hisses. "You know who I am? You know what I can do. You let him go now or you'll beg me to end it fuckin' hours before I do."

Edited 2009-08-21 04:05 (UTC)

He's considering it, I can tell, and that's when he makes a mistake. His arm loosens around my neck and I suck in another harsh breath, coughing roughly and then gritting my teeth, waiting until I know he's got the gun pointed blindly out into the darkness before I lean to one side and bring my elbow back as hard as I can into his face.

He lets out a roar of pain, rearing back and firing wildly into the darkness. Two shots, echoing loud enough in my ears to make my teeth rattle. Fucking stupid, I know it, because I can't overpower him, but I'm desperate and hoping for a fucking miracle. Right the fuck now.

"Neil!"

The shout comes from a place Tom didn't even know he had anymore, deep down in the foundations, dark and simple. It was the kind of emotion that made it much more than easy to kill, that sparked that delight, pushed you along the edge between savior and monster. He pushed forward, gritting his teeth, staring blindly into the darkness. Mike was okay, neither of the bullets had ricocheted.

"You're a dead man," he breathed quietly, almost entirely to himself. The shadows were deceptive, he could see movement but little else. "God dammit, Neil, are you okay?"

He ducks back behind cover--a pile of the ripped up chairs from the auditorium upstairs--but the shots are wide and he waves a hand to Tom. I'm okay.

"Neil!" he yells, adding his voice to Tom's. He needs to think, needs to figure a way out of this, but he needs to hear what he can't quite see. Neil could be...

No. No, he can't. There's no way this is going to work like this. Not with guns, not at this distance. He stills his breathing, listening for a sign.

I'm too much fucking trouble. He knows it. Hell, I know it. For a moment, I'm completely convinced he's going to shoot me. Just get it over with. There's no way out of this for either of us. He'll kill me, and then get himself shot. He's not getting me out of here. He's not letting me go and getting away.

His arm loosens and I think maybe he's grown a fucking soul, but instead of letting me slip away, he backhands me across the face and I go down in a crumpled heap at his feet, gasping for air and coughing blood onto his boots.

"Get the fuck back," he yells to the two of them, but I know he doesn't really believe it'll happen. He's got me by my hair, gun pressed to my head, and I look up at the shape of him in the dark, teeth bared and just fucking daring him to do it.

They'll be finding pieces of him all over this place for fucking weeks.

It's too much. Mike giving him a quick look of reassurance as bullets ricocheted around the stone cellar, the muted sounds of a struggle not ten feet from him, wet breaths and quick movements, sounds that drifted across to them like pleading and sobs.

He exchanged a long look with Mike from their respective covers, simple and concise. This is it. The last step. He waved Mike back, mouthing go around to him as Tom turned back to the sounds of struggle in the darkness.

"Lets talk," he said soothingly, hoping Mike got the message and was starting to slip beside the hostage taker in the deep shadows of the cellar. "You were gonna put him on the block, weren't you? Maybe we can work out a...monetary exchange."

He nods once, shortly, getting it. He'd been headed that way himself, he supposes. Guns are useless right now, here in the dark with hell very, very close. He makes a chattering motion with one hand--Keep him talking--and lowers his gun, hunching and edging around the stack of seats.

A few feet more and now his eyes are fully adjusted and he can see them in the dimness, the big hulk of a man and a smaller, crumpled shape at his feet. He feels dead except for a cold, steady, hateful rage. His hand is already close to his knife, and everything is surreally clear. There are only two ways this is going to end, and he can see them both like they're unspooling in front of him on a fucking movie screen.

"Just how stupid do you think I am?" he laughs hysterically and I think, really fucking stupid. But he knows as well as I do that he's not getting out of here with anything as clean as that. There's no deal to be made for him, and those words Tom's spouting out are just empty platitudes. A distraction, but maybe in that way, they're working.

He's lost his focus, lost his patience, and with both hands on the gun, steadying it, I look up at him, making out the shape of his eyes in the dark, glittering with the faint light coming from the cracked door across the room, and we just... look at each other for the span of a heartbeat before his lip curls back in a snarl and he pulls the trigger.

Click.

It takes a few seconds to process, but when it does, what it means, Tom is zipped up inside a kind of rage he hadn't felt in years, not since Sarajevo, looking down at ten year olds outfitted with semiautomatics and blades. It's a marrow deep kind of rage and it's dangerous. For a moment, he's thankful that there's no one close enough for him to lash out at.

"That was stupid," he said very, very quietly, staring at the man, so close as to see the glimmer of reflected light in his eyes, and Tom's gaze doesn't even flicker to Mike's as the other man's silhouette creeps up behind him.

"That was very, very dumb."

He freezes when he hears the click. Just for a moment, so still that he doesn't breathe, that for the third time in his life, he's absolutely certain that his heart stops. He knows the sound instantly, knows that it means a reprieve. But the fact that the man did it. The fact that he pulled the trigger.

He had been dead inside but he's twice as dead now. Closed off to empathy. Closed off to mercy. This is a place he hasn't been to in a long time, dark and foul as the room he's in, but it's served him well in the past and he knows it'll serve him well now.

It's just a pity he doesn't have the time or the means to really make use of it.

He's moving again, silent, around the man and up behind him, still hardly daring to breathe. He doesn't remember holstering his gun or unsheathing his knife but it's out, a pleasant weight in his hands, a faint gleam in the darkness. The man is fumbling with his gun, cursing under his breath, and he knows he's out of time.

They all are.

It's easy, and the only part he regrets is how quick it is. Fingers sliding into the man's hair, gripping, yanking his head back, and a single sharp thrust of the knife up under his jaw and a sharp twist. A slit throat still leaves too much time to react. Up into the brain, quick, so unfortunately painless.

Instantly his hands are drenched and warm, and he holds the man close against him as the man twitches violently, twice, flickers and vanishes, his gun clattering to the ground.

And the thing he remembers later is that in that moment, before he returns to himself, he's almost sorry that it's over.

It happens so fast. I'm waiting for it, waiting for pain. For dark. For whatever nothingness is waiting for me at the end of that gun barrel, but it doesn't come. There are voices, one yelling and frantic and the other cold and calm, and I'm just sitting there, blinking wildly and wondering why the fuck I'm not dead.

There's a scuffle, muffled and swift, and then I'm splattered in something warm and wet, and the room's lit up with a brief flicker flash and then... nothing.

The gun clatters to the floor in front of me and I've got enough presence of mind to shuffle back away from it, letting out a choked hiccup of a sound, but that's it. That's all I've got left in me.

He sees the knife, he sees the struggle, the arterial pulse when metal tears through flesh and sinew, spraying Neil's hair and the back of his neck. This story was written before they'd even opened the door.

Flash, sparkle, one bolt of lightening and the cellar goes dark. He should be more worried. Mike might be hurt, Neil could be...Neil could have been abused, but silently he holstered his gun and strode forward, pulling Neil against him for the first time in what felt like days. Hours, really, but time was strange here.

"Easy," he mummbled, lips against Neil's hairline, arms around his waist. He glanced up, meeting Mike's eyes in the half light, nodding once. We did it.

"Easy," he repeated to himself, to all of them. "We've got you, we're here."

He meets Tom's gaze, returns the nod, but he hangs back. When he lifts his hands in the dimness they're dark and glistening. He's seen this before. He can see the blood painting Neil's back and shoulders.

He doesn't feel like he should touch anyone at all, right now.

He wipes his knife blade on his thigh and sheathes it again. He stands over the two of them, watching. Trying to breathe normally again. Neil's alive. That's what matters. That's all that matters.

There's a moment, just a moment, where I let the relief wash over me, and I feel gutted, collapsing in his arms and curling my hands in his shirt. I let out a strangled sob, breath hitching, gasping to drag more than these little shallow pants into my lungs, my throat raw and aching. Every goddamn breath feels like broken glass.

One hand slides up along his neck, catching briefly on the chain I find there, and curls along the curve of his jaw. Touching his face just to prove that he's really there. Then I'm pushing unsteadily to my feet, bracing myself on his shoulder and knowing that if he wasn't there, there's no way I'd be able to stay up.

"We gotta go," I whisper hoarsely. "Somebody lit the place on fire." And it's as close to a joke as I can manage.

"Car's a quarter mile away," Tom said efficiently, looking up at Neil from the ground. The world and most of the things in it had been blacked out by the roaring in his ears, high and thin and all encomassing. There was so much be worried about, to ask, to do, but that was all for later. Now, they just had to get out.

He stood, giving Neil a critical once over. "Can you walk? Can you run?"

"We gotta go quick," he says, taking a step back towards the stairs, his hand on his gun again and his voice distant in his ears. On autopilot. Running on a pattern until the rest of himself can process. "'S not just the fire. We probably didn't get all of 'em and they might be coming down here to check on their--" His mouth twists sharply. "--Merchandise."

"Yeah, I got it," I insist, even though just standing is taking more effort than it should. My head is pounding, blood pulsing behind my eyes, heat flaring up in my swollen cheek, one eye open to barely a slit, and I don't even wanna know what I look like right now.

Stepping carefully away from him, I make my way toward the stairs, trying not to wince at the word merchandise, even though it's pretty fuckin' perfect.

"If you don't let us help you," Tom said firmly, going around and slipping an arm under Neil's shoulder, taking as much of the other man's weight as Neil let him, "It's just going to be more dangerous for all of us."

He looked at Neil, which was almost hard to do. Beaten, battered, eye swelled shut and clothes in obvious disarray. Jesus. Who knows what would have happened if they'd been later, what had already happened that they hadn't been here for.

"Don't argue," he said softly, starting to help him up the stairs.

He moves ahead of them, attention at once scattered and focused. The air is starting to darken with smoke, though that's no sure sign that the fire has spread this far. He glances back, catches both their faces, Tom tired and drawn and Neil bruised and filthy, walking somehow in spite of everything.

God, I'm so sorry.

"This way," he says, motioning down towards where he thinks the side entrance is. If he can focus on that, on getting them all out of here alive, he won't have to think about his bloody hands, about how much he doesn't even feel like he belongs here with them.

But he knows now: he doesn't belong out there anymore, either.

"I just wanna get outta here," I say, barely even a whisper, my arm curling around his waist and taking the offered support without argument. I'm too fuckin' tired to argue, anyway.

There are no bodies. The only sign that anything happened up here at all, when we step up out of the stairwell, are the bullet holes, the scattered furniture and the splatters of blood on the floor and walls.

I don't wanna know how many it was. Honestly, I don't really care. Not about them, but...

"What 'bout the others. There were kids up here."

Derailment

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