teddy beaufort ( technokinetic ) . (codebreaking) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2013-02-03 01:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback, ash, teddy |
not all of us can be heroes.
Who: Teddy and Ash.
Where: Some random motel somewhere.
When: June 13th 2003.
If there was one thing Theodore just couldn’t stand it was being bested by inanimate objects, and any sort of coding or wiring most definitely fell under that description. It wasn’t technically alive, and therefore fit the bill. So it was that, whatever the hour, if he had set his mind on a task, he didn’t stop until he was finished. No one could say he wasn’t committed, even if some people said sleep was more important than breaking through a firewall he had been attempting to breach for the last seventeen hours. Give or take. Theodore wasn’t really counting. Truthfully he hadn’t even really noticed the fact that the sun had set outside and it had gotten dark. At some point he had flicked on the lamp nearby but he hadn’t done so consciously, too focused on the screen in front of him and the seemingly infinite lines of code displayed there. Like hell he was going to let this little bastard get the best of him.
The rooms in which the team -- if you could call three people a team, though to be fair, why couldn’t you? -- were staying sat side by side, though currently one was empty, its occupant having departed the motel at some point on a personal errand, just one more detail that had gone unnoticed by the resident tech expert. If he could miss the departure of one of his own team, he certainly wasn’t going to notice anything going on at the rear of the motel; the shadowy figures were able to scale the fence and drop down stealthily on the inside, close to the back wall of the rooms, without the hacker hearing or seeing a thing. Not so surprising, really; sometimes you had to clap your hands beside his ear to get him to realise you were standing right there, and when he was working on something there was very little that could break his focus.
“Oh, you think that’s gonna trip me up?” He scoffed, shaking his head, fingers flying over the keys as he sighed, almost in disappointment. “What, like I’m some kind of amateur? Please.” One step closer to victory. Theodore allowed himself a small smile.
There was a window at the back of the room, looking out over what could only be described as an alley that ran the full length of the rear of the motel and all its rooms. The figures who had scaled the fence carefully picked their way over scraps of trash and discarded wood and other debris as they worked their way closer to one of the windows. All they had to do was glance through the window, several feet off the ground though it was, to see the individual inside. His back was to the window, and even if it hadn’t been he was too engrossed in his task, eyes fixed on the screen. Theodore had no idea he had company.
It wasn’t until the glass shattered inward that he realised he was no longer alone, and even then it took him a second to register that the sound, explosive and volatile as it was, had not only been real but close by. Dangerously close by. With the beginnings of a curse tumbling over his tongue he rose from his seat and turned in the same moment, knocking the chair over to the side as he did so, backing up against the desk, bumping his leg against its edge. The lamp rattled. “Shit.” There was more than one of them. “Oh, shit.” The door was only a matter of feet away. The lock was turned and the chain was on -- better safe than sorry, that was the general consensus -- but he could make it.
The intruders were still working their way through the shattered window by the time Theodore made the dash for the door, abandoning the laptop and everything he had been so engrossed in for the better part of the day. The first of the men who had scrambled through the window was faster than him and made it to the door just as he did, grabbing hold of the back of his shirt and swinging him around fast and hard. When his back slammed into the wall all the air went out of him and he almost buckled to the ground, his jaw dropped open in a ragged and fractured gasp. Something struck him across the face and he couldn’t keep from losing his balance then, falling and catching himself on the dresser on the way down. Everything went white and when he came around he was on the floor and there were black boots and darkly-clad legs everywhere. How many of them were there?
Before he could try to pick himself up, one of those boots came crashing down on his wrist. Theodore felt and heard bones shatter under the force of the blow and he couldn’t stop the agonised cry that tore out of him. In the next instant he was frantically -- and futilely -- struggling to get free.
The pressure released in the same instant a strong hand knotted in the back of his shirt, heaving him up off the ground. Once again his back struck the wall, and Theodore gasped and made a small, wounded -- and later, he would realise, rather pitiful -- sound in the back of his throat, trying to focus through the flood of hot pain that was fiercely workings its way up his arm. There was heat sliding down the side of his face as well, but he couldn’t feel it, his skull was throbbing so badly. Even when the blood worked its way over his jaw and dripped to his collar he didn’t feel it, had no idea he had hurt his head in his fall. All he could see was the face in front of him, hard and grim, dark eyes fixed on him with lethal intent. Something metal caught the light from the desk lamp, and Theodore felt his throat go dry.
In the beginning of his life on the road, motels had been Ash’s archnemesis. It wasn’t at all uncommon for him to inspect a room before committing to it, needing to make sure it didn’t offend the majority of his senses. By now he was used to it, but he still tried to talk Maya into hotels instead whenever possible. Of course he understood the logic - people at motels asked fewer questions. They were more used to questionable characters. That didn’t mean he had to like it. In general, he was happier if said motel happened to have a gym. Sadly, this one did not, but it did have a pool. A rather dingy outdoor pool that possibly hadn’t been cleaned in a week, but Ash had made his peace with that. In their spot of downtime, Ash had gone to the pool for a swim. After a hundred laps or so he had toweled off, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops, and headed back to his room. He had to reach only the end of the hallway to know that something was wrong. He could hear the scuffle, and even if he couldn’t pinpoint exactly which room it was in from that far away, it was still enough to put him in a full run. Halfway down the hall he smelled blood - and he knew whose blood it was.
Ash was usually a stickler for back-up keys; he believed that every member of Omega should have an emergency key to everyone else’s room, and was usually pretty good about keeping them on his person. He didn’t bother looking for it now - one swift kick was all it took to bring the door down. He assessed the situation quickly, immediately deciding that the one pointing the gun had to go first. Ash took two long strides and then dove, managing to take his opponent down and neatly snap his arm before the bastard could even think of pulling the trigger. Taking every advantage of the extra agility he had over this guy, Ash wrenched the gun out of his hand and promptly used it as a means to bash in the center of his forehead. The wet crunch coupled with the way the body went limp beneath him meant Ash knew it was now safe to move on to the next.
He didn’t bother using the enemy’s own weapon against them - if he fired a gun in here the whole building was going to hear it, and he didn’t want to count on getting lucky and people minding their own business. He at least had the element of surprise over the other two. They had clearly not expected him to be there, and Ash had apparently acted faster than they could decide how to handle this little snag in the plan. The one nearest Theo began fumbling with a holster, so Ash moved quickly to kick his legs out from under him. The man hit his head on the corner of the dresser going down, which stunned him enough to give Ash time to regain his own feet. He then grabbed the first thing at hand - the chair Theo had apparently knocked over in his haste to escape - and swung it wildly into the face of the third attacker. The sound of the wood breaking and bones cracking filled the air, and when his prey stumbled back Ash advanced to quickly and quietly snap his neck. Ash then made way back to the second man, still crumpled on the ground in a stunned stupor, and pressed his foot into his windpipe. As the man suffocated and clawed helplessly at Ash’s leg, Ash focused his attention on Theodore. “You alright then, Teddy?” Obviously he could see that the poor bastard was definitely not what he would consider to be okay, but Ash felt like staying calm and casual might surprise him enough to take his mind off some of the pain. For a second or two.
It was only a matter of seconds between the gun coming into view and the door to his room exploding inward but to Theodore it had felt so much longer than that. When Ash came barrelling in the way he did, almost methodically neutralising -- or to put it more bluntly, killing -- every member of the group who had come in through the rear window of the room, there was little the hacker could do but stand there, frozen in place, watching with a kind of shocked and detached disbelief as men went down, bones broke, and lives were extinguished. He had known coming in what Ash and Maya were capable of, he had seen it for himself on surveillance cameras he had successfully overridden and claimed for his own purposes in his time with Omega, but there was a big difference between watching it on a screen and seeing it first-hand. Honestly he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or terrified. Either way, that could wait until later.
By the time Ash was finished, that last man struggling weakly beneath his foot, Theodore had slid down the wall to sit in something of a heap on the floor, his shoulders hunched tightly as if that would somehow protect him from further attack. Breathing rapidly, equal parts shock and pain, he looked from the face of that last man up to Ash as soon as he realised he was being spoken to. All right? For a second -- and only a second -- he debated lying and saying he was fine, but then that seemed so monumentally stupid and pointless that all he could do was shake his head. It was only after the fact that he realised that was a bad idea, and when the room tilted and spun wildly he had to close his eyes tightly in a desperate attempt to make it stop. No. He was really not okay.
Once the man beneath his weight stopped struggling and Ash heard his heart take its final beat, he bent over to get a closer look at Theo. Oh yes, he would be hurting. That wrist was broken at the very least, and he might need a stitch or two in that wound. “Oi, Teddy. I need you to open your eyes and talk to me. I’m serious, I’m going to be a real arse about it.” His tone wasn’t harsh, but one would be able to tell with no difficulty that he was not joking. “I’m going to put these guys in the bath to deal with later, and then I’m going to take you to the hospital. But while I clean up I want you to keep talking to me. Tell me what happened.” As if he couldn’t figure that one out himself. Oh well, what Teddy chose to talk about wasn’t nearly as important as the talking itself.
Open his eyes? That didn’t sound like Theodore’s idea of fun right now, but if there was one thing he had learned about Ash by now it was that he didn’t stop until he got his way, and usually he had good reason for being so stubborn and relentless. So with a dry swallow that hurt his throat and as deep a breath in as he could manage, he did as he was told, opening his eyes, focusing on the face of the other man nearby. There was no one else moving now, that much he could tell without the need to look around, and under any other circumstances he might have been glad for that fact, but at that moment he couldn’t really feel anything other than the pain in his head and arm. That and nausea. “They, uh--” He broke his gaze away from Ash then and looked towards the rear of the room, beyond the entrance to the bathroom the other man would be making good use of soon enough, if Theodore had heard him right, getting his first decent look at his attackers’ point of entry. “They came in through the window. I--” His head rocked back against the wall, and he couldn’t help the wince of pain when his skull connected with the hard plaster. “I didn’t know.”
He was mostly coherent! That was good. Ash backed off and headed over to the broken window, taking a moment to determine that no one else was coming. He didn’t smell anyone else. Things were safe for the moment, safe as they were going to be. “Hang tight,” he said, heading over to the body of the man whose head he’d smashed in. “Did you black out at any point?” For the moment, he was trying not to think about how bad this could have been. Maya was going to freak out, he knew that for certainty. If he dwelled on it, it would get his heart racing as well. If he hadn’t been here... He pushed the thought away, and hoisted the body onto his shoulder. He’d have to store them in the bath for now. He and Maya could see to them later, once Teddy was okay.
Coherent? For now, at least, but Ash wasn’t wrong, that was something. Theodore’s head still felt like it was going to split down the middle and the longer he sat there the worse the nausea became. It took him a while to realise the other man had spoken again. “What?” He had asked a question, hadn’t he? Oh. Right. “Um.” Retracing the short but violent scuffle as best as possible, Theodore finally said, “I think so.” He couldn’t remember hitting the floor, only finding himself there after being struck across the face. That counted, didn’t it? That had to mean he had blacked out. “I feel sick.” It was only after he said the words that he realised they were coming out at all, and after the fact he almost wished they hadn’t. As if this whole situation wasn’t bad enough, now there was every chance he was going to throw up on the carpet.
Shit, shit, shit. Ash would have liked to call an ambulance and be done with it, but he couldn’t have anyone else seeing this room. They couldn’t explain this shit. Ash dumped the body without ceremony into the tub, grabbed a clean hand-towel and garbage bin, and swiftly made his way back out to Teddy. He’d taken care of the bleeding victim at least. He crouched down next to Teddy, and put the bin in front of him. “Have at it if you feel the need,” he said. Carefully, he folded the towel and pressed it against Teddy’s headwound. “Hold that there for me,” he said. “I think you might need a stitch or two, you need to put pressure against the bleeding. Just hold tight, we’ll be out of here in a minute.”
Unless they somehow managed to convince the paramedics Theodore had slipped, hit his head, and made one hell of a mess, then no, they probably couldn’t explain this away. One thing was for sure: he would need a new room when they got back to the motel, if they didn’t just pack up and leave as soon as he was patched up. Somewhat bleary-eyed, Theodore looked down at the trash can, only to be distracted from trying to focus on it by the pressure against the side of his skull. “Ow.” It was halfway between a groan and a whine that was somewhat childlike, laced with a pained protest, but he still managed to muster the energy to bring his right arm up and around to do as he’d been told. Had Ash said stitches? That wasn’t helping the rolling of his stomach at all. When he swallowed, there was a bad taste sitting heavily on the back of his tongue.
“Don’t worry,” Ash said, heading over to the second body and hoisting it up. “They’re going to give you the good shit. And when we get out of there I’ll give you more. You won’t have to feel feelings for the next couple days. It’ll be great.” Next time they encountered the bad sort of vampire, he was just going to have to drain that fucker and carry the blood around with him at all times. God, why had he never thought of that before? He made quick work of the other two bodies, and checked them over for any form of identification - they had none. He then took a moment to send a text to Maya. Ambushed, both okay, taking Teddy to the ER. We need to move when we get back. Don’t worry, stay safe. “Okay then. Can you walk?”
The good shit? That sounded nice. Theodore almost nodded before the slightest movement of the cloth against the side of his head reminded him why that was a bad idea. At least he hadn’t thrown up yet. Yet being the operative word. “One way to find out,” he said when it came to walking, looking up at Ash. It took his eyes a few seconds to focus but the other man cleared up eventually. Maybe if he just kept his eyes on Ash then he wouldn’t hurl.
That was not the sort of answer Ash liked to hear. He swiftly made way back to Teddy, and crouched down next to him again. He didn’t want to insult the man’s pride and carry him out of there, but he would if he had to. “We go slow,” he said, offering a hand. “All the time in the world, right?” Because there weren’t dead bodies in the bath tub. Perfectly normal. “Just remember to breathe and shout if things go bad.”
Being carried right at that moment probably wouldn’t even register as embarrassing, and Theodore didn’t really have much pride to wound in the first place. Ego? Arrogance? Those things he had. Okay, maybe he had a little pride, but what was worse? Being carried by a man who could transform into a genuine flesh-and-blood boar, or falling flat on your face and making your own concussion worse? It was kind of a no-brainer. “Right,” he mumbled, giving a little nod and then remembering that was bad. “Okay.” It was a good thing he wasn’t a leftie; he automatically reached up with his right hand to accept Ash’s offer of help, carefully pulling himself up. “I’ll try not to hurl on your shoes.” At least he could still make jokes. Never mind that they were bad jokes, and not really jokes at all.
“I appreciate that,” Ash replied, and really he did. Especially considering they were flip-flops. Not that it’d be the first time he’d come in contact with team member body fluids. Probably wouldn’t be the last either. He grasped Teddy’s good hand and helped slowly pull him to his feet, ready to move at any moment to keep him from falling. “Hope you weren’t doing anything important, mate.”
“Huh?” Oh, right, he’d been working on something, hadn’t he. The techokinetic gazed blearily across the room at the desk where he’d been seated before the men had broken in. Where had the chair g-- oh, there it was, on the floor. Part of it, anyway. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Honestly, he couldn’t remember, and remembering was hard, dammit. “Maybe.” He’d already said that, but he didn’t realise. At least he wasn’t falling over. Yet.
The topic of conversation didn’t matter so much. Ash just wanted to keep him talking. Teddy could ramble on about his favorite color or childhood crush on a cartoon character for all he cared. “So, when they ask at the hospital what happened, what are you going to tell them?” he asked. He opened the door to the hallway and quickly looked outside to make sure there were no more surprises. All clear.
Theodore knew why Ash wanted him to keep talking, he still had enough awareness to recognise that. He probably couldn’t keep one topic going if he tried though, so it was a good thing the were at his side wasn’t bothered by that. Ash’s next question was a tough one though. “Mugged?” That was a pretty good one, right? He couldn’t say he’d fallen. That wouldn’t be any good. You could break your wrist if you fell, even crack your head open, but the break was a bad one, too messy for a fall.
“No good,” Ash answered, but he wasn’t actually bothered. He hadn’t expected Teddy to come up with a brilliant alibi off the top of his probably-concussed head. The point was just talking, so Teddy could have suggested he injured himself in a tragic interpretive dance accident and he wouldn’t have cared. He helped Teddy into the car, then hurried around to the driver’s side. “They’d get the police involved. They’d ask you for descriptions. We don’t want anyone knowing there are bodies in our hotel room, and we certainly don’t want to leave a trail of police reports with our names on them,” he went on to explain, while starting the car and heading out of the parking lot. “Say there was a party, and a drunken pal pushed you down the stairs - but that it was an honest accident, he feels shit about it, and you don’t want to press charges. Can you remember that, mate?”
Thinking was harder than it had any right to be. The thoughts were there but whenever he reached for them they just danced right out of reach. Could a person’s own thoughts be cruel? Little bullies? Theodore thought they could, and that his definitely were, at least right now they were anyway. At the mention of bodies in their hotel room he actually laughed, a little shakily, a little breathlessly, but it was a laugh all the same. No, that wasn’t funny. “Party. Stairs.” He paused, trying to think about what Ash had literally just said. “No charges. Right.” That should be easy enough to remember. In theory anyway.
Ash had to grin a little. No help for it, really. “Or you can just play up the incoherent and woozy act and let me do the talking. Nurses usually love me,” he offered, rather cheerfully. And he might as well milk that for all it was worth, because God knew Maya was going to be an unholy bitch about everything and anything for a while after this one. He hadn’t even had the decency to leave her anyone to kill. Whoops.
Letting Ash do the talking seemed like an amazing idea. The best one Theodore had heard in a while, actually. His brow furrowed after the initial -- and just as unwise as the other times he’d tried to move his head -- instantly-regretted nod. “The nurses won’t love me?” That was not the sort of thing he would usually be worried about. Really he ought to be worried about the concussion and the broken bones. Clearly his priorities had gotten scrambled.
“Course they will,” Ash answered. “How can they not love a good patient? I don’t think you’re about to be too argumentative about anything they suggest right about now. Makes their job easy.” Teddy’s priorities were just fine by him, really. As he came to the main intersection in town he scanned road signs for a blue hospital sign he knew he’d seen earlier, and turned right after locating it. “I’ll bet you’re a lot of fun drugged out of your mind, too.”
Theodore didn’t think he was really the argumentative type anyway but maybe he was and just couldn’t remember it right now. Everything had gotten kind of rattled when he’d hit his head so who knew, really? And hey, when had they gotten into a car? That had somehow slipped right on by without him even noticing it. Huh. “Drugs?” He turned his head. Whoa, too fast. Theodore was pretty sure the world wasn’t supposed to spin like that. Closing his eyes didn’t really help but he gave it a shot anyway. “What drugs?”
“The drugs they’re going to give you at the hospital,” Ash answered. “If you’re lucky I’ll even dig up some vampire blood somewhere.” Maybe he could unleash Maya on a vampire to get her off his back. It might appease her a bit to kill a fanger. “That’s a trip everyone really needs to try at least once. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Oh right. Those drugs. That made more sense than what Theodore had thought he’d meant, because what drugs would Ash be carrying and why would he suddenly decide to share when he never had before? Not that Theodore took drugs anyway. He couldn’t help but pull a little bit of a face at the mention of vampire blood. “Gross.” Said sort of like a teenager might say it. But it was.
“Yeah, you say that now,” Ash replied with an easy chuckle. “But once you force it down you forget about what you just drank and how it tastes. Usually because you’re so distracted by the sensation of bones mending, but the sensation’s probably different if you’re just taking it for fun.” He, obviously, had not. Every time he’d had it had been more or less out of necessity. The fact that he’d healed in five minutes and then had a really fun couple of hours was pretty much beside the point.
The notion of people taking vampire blood for fun kind of made Theodore feel nauseated all over again and he didn’t doubt his expression reflected as much. Taking it for fun? No, that was just wrong. “Doesn’t sound like fun to me.” Not in the least, thank you very much. How did these windows open again?
Ash could buy that. Teddy didn’t seem the sort to even enjoy drunkenness more than once in a while. Probably didn’t enjoy the sensation of feeling stupid. Ash more or less believed everyone needed a stupid day now and again. “Just wait until they set your wrist,” he said, cheerfully. The hospital sign loomed ahead, and Ash drove straight for the ER. “Sit tight,” he instructed as he parked. “I’ll grab a wheelchair. If you fall asleep I’ll punch you in the wrist.”
Getting drunk? That just dulled the senses, fogged up the brain. Theodore had never much cared for it, not when he relied so heavily on his mental faculties and intelligence in general. The odd drink, sure, but no benders here. Stupidity was just annoying, doubly so when he was the one feeling that way, which probably explained the dull buzz of irritation in the background there somewhere. “Ow?” Theodore forgot about the window and looked back at Ash -- slowly, this time, it really wasn’t fun when the world around him did weird somersaults -- with a frown. “Don’t do that, man.”
Luckily Ash didn’t have to go far to find a chair, which he quickly wheeled back to the car. He opened the door and held out a hand, figuring Teddy was probably going to need it. “Right, come on then. Promise not to push you into a wall.” Even if he did have to bend over almost ridiculously low just to push the damn thing.
Ash figured right. For a moment Theodore wasn’t even sure he knew where the ground was. If this was what being stoned or drunk felt like then he definitely never wanted to try either. Before he knew it he was sat in the chair and they were wheeling along -- or he was, anyway, what with Ash still on his feet and perfectly functional and all -- towards someone who could maybe stop his head and wrist from hurting so badly. “Thanks,” he grumbled, sounding the most coherent and lucid he had since they’d left the motel room. “Maya said you were a bad driver.” Maybe she had, anyway. The truth of it didn’t matter so much.
That made Ash laugh loudly, and had the triage nurse looking their way curiously. “She would,” he said. “Maya probably reckons no one is a good driver but herself. Then again, as long as I didn’t drive into a pole you probably wouldn’t have noticed much.” He smiled charmingly at the nurse as they approached the desk, and informed her that his friend had a bit of a fall. She wasn’t happy at not having Teddy’s identification or insurance card with him, but Ash wasn’t about to leave any more of a trail than they had to.
Maya probably did think that. She’d probably tell Theodore to his face that he was a terrible driver if he ever took the wheel. Not that he did, he was usually in the back with something in some way electronic and gadget-y. “Why would you do that?” Ash couldn’t be that bad a driver, surely. He didn’t even notice the nurse or that Ash was briefly addressing someone else in order to get them all checked in or what have you.
Ash didn’t answer, not so worried about keeping Teddy awake and talking now that they were at the hospital. Teddy could do whatever he damn well pleased. He was in the right place to be properly revived now. When the nurse lead them back, Ash wheeled Teddy through, at least trying not to take turns too fast.