corvus, jack (corbinian) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-09-06 20:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | colin craven, eric draven, mary lennox |
Who: Jack, Colt, and Erin
What: An ill-advised key leads into trouble.
Where: A flower shop, then Aubade 106.
When: After this.
Warnings: Blood, dead folks, some swears, temper tantrums, canes thrown so well even House would be jealous.
Erin was walking along the sidewalk late in the afternoon. She’d been out all day and she was feeling as tired as she usually did when she didn’t get home on time, but there was too much work to be done and she needed Byron’s signature on several documents she wanted to be in the overnight mail. She never drove from Bathos to Colt’s apartment in Aubade, since it was in easy walking distance and she liked being out in the fresh air more than her heels and business suit liked to admit. Her mind was on construction problems and security firms when a sharp sound distracted her from her thoughts, and she looked around to find herself on a very fine street lined with shops. A flower shop was nearest to her, and as she stared at the CLOSED sign, looking for some indication of what she had heard, she saw shapes moving deep within the rows of delphiniums and sunflowers. The sound was a cry of fear and pain, very small and high, and it was unmistakable.
Subject to her whims and without hesitation when spurred by curiosity, Erin turned in her path and tried the door of the flower shop. It was locked, firmly, and again without hesitation, Erin put her hand over the lock and came away with a new shiny brass key that fitted it neat and sure. She pushed open the door to the flower shop just as the chorusing crash of breaking glass greeted her from within.
Jack was following Erin, who hadn't been all that difficult to track down, really. That left one mark in her favor from the beginning. If she had been difficult to find, as if she was actually trying to hide from scrutiny, she would have already had a strike against her. It didn’t mean he trusted her, far from it - that was why he was out following her, after all. She professed to be running a school with only the best and most charitable of intentions, and aside from getting in on the ground floor, which he had every intention of doing, his best course of action was to just follow her and see where she went and who she spent her time with.
He very rarely headed out before the sun went down, but it was late afternoon, and if he really wanted to see where she spent her days, he was better off checking in on her while it was still light out than when she’d settled in for the night. He was in luck - just as he arrived at the Bathos, she struck out the front doors. He’d only seen a glimpse of her so far, after looking into the windows of her apartment the night before, but it was enough for him to recognize her as she walked down the street, even from his perch on the roof.
He followed carefully, not that he expected her to look up in search of a tail. She seemed totally unconcerned with anyone following her, actually, another small mark in her favor. Still, just because someone was open and assured on the surface didn’t mean they were innocent of all wrongdoing.
He’d been following her only a short while when she stopped in front of the flower shop. He hadn’t heard the initial noise that made her stop, and he peered over the edge of the rooftop at her. What was she stopped at a closed shop for? She put her hand around the knob, and he saw a glint of...something. Then the door swung open for her, and he distinctly heard the sound of breaking glass.
Hell.
He dropped from the roof, landing in front of the window only a few seconds after she’d gone inside, and followed her in. She was an enthusiastic connoisseur of spectating break-ins, or she’d heard the noise and decided to investigate. Either way, she was about to walk into trouble.
Trouble, Erin discovered, was an understatement. Her heels crunched on glass as she pushed through the swinging back door and into the refrigerated warehouse section of the shop. Two men in nondescript clothing--one in jeans and tan, the other in a cheap business suit with no tie--were standing on either side of a third, a small man in a green apron. Erin came through the door and stopped just in time to watch the first man, who had hands like sides of beef, drop the little proprietor with a shove too hard, and his head bounced off a stem-scattered counter in a way that was almost comical if it hadn’t been so sudden and so real.
Erin dropped her briefcase with a gasp and froze in place. The Suit shouted at Jeans for the mess (“WE WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM, IDIOT--”) but Jeans wasn’t listening. He was looking at Erin, at the suit and the key in her hand, and leaping to some very logical conclusions. The register outside and the safe within were still locked tight, and if the two thugs wanted to go from protection racketeering to burglary, they were going to need Erin’s key--or the others they assumed she had on her. The first one, the nearest, lunged for her, and she let out a self-serving scream and tried to bolt, but too late.
Jack got from the front of the store to the back in record time, fast enough to hear Erin scream only a few feet in front of him. He saw a fast moving blur and shoved her down and out of the way. There was no time for delicacy, really, if she didn’t want to get killed. What kind of insane was this woman? To be fair, he would have gone into the shop as well, but not as a sight seer.
He took the hit from Jeans hard enough to knock him back through the doors he’d come through, breath nearly knocked out of him from a strike he hadn’t been able to prepare for. But, if nothing else, Jack was durable. He was back up and swinging far faster than he should have been, and took the man by the hair, slamming his head into the cement wall to the left of the door with every ounce of force he could muster. That force, backed up by muscles coursing with the whatever it was that kept him going with such consistency, was considerable. He left a smear on the wall as he slid to the ground. He might not be dead, but he was most likely unconscious, which was all that really mattered. He came back through the doors looking for Business Suit. The man could be armed, and he didn’t know where Ms. E. Gracewater had gone.
The man was definitely armed. A bullet zinged off the door frame and Erin screamed again, perhaps in warning, perhaps in surprise, but more likely in fear. Her tumble on the glass-strewn floor hadn’t been a pleasant one, but she would have preferred the floor to her present position, which was backward on the floor with the Suit’s hand in her hair and his gun several inches from the top of her head. Apparently the Corbinian’s reputation preceded him, because the Suit knew exactly what kind of trouble he was in and he wasn’t likely to stand there and take it, not while he was armed and stuck in a room with a dead body and a screaming eyewitness.
Jack hadn’t brought a gun with him (stupid, stupid). He had a knife, and hadn’t checked to see if Jeans was armed. Now he wasn’t even going to get the chance. More mistakes. There was already one man dead in a pool of his own blood, here, and he wasn’t going to see yet another innocent get killed on his watch if he could help it.
He had his hand on the doorframe and glanced left along the wall. An idea trickled into the back of his head, and he kept his eyes fixed on the tensed form of Business Suit. He started talking, watched Business Suit follow his every move. There was a point to this, some of the time. Sometimes when he spoke in the midst of the fight speaking was all it was, something that came into his head and wouldn’t allow itself to go unsaid. This had a purpose. He held a hand up to placate him. “And much of madness, and more of sin. And horror the soul of the plot.”
He hit the lights. The switch had been next to his raised hand, and he moved immediately, because in all likelihood Business Suit’s first reflex would be to fire blindly at the place where he’d last seen him. By the time that happened he’d slid behind a pallet of cardboard boxes and was listening for the ragged sound of Business Suit’s breathing, which he found about ten feet back, roughly. There was a dragging sound as well, like he was pulling his hostage along by her hair. The room immediately filled with her screaming, which sent out confusing echoes and covered the sound of his movements.
He swung around the back of the pallet, coming out into the walkway in a space he figured was still about five feet back. Making sure he didn’t fire the gun before he got to it was going to be a neat thing to pull off, but he hardly had another choice. He stepped forward once, twice, clearing the space in two long strides, and grabbed at his wrist, pulling up before he could react to fire. Clearly Business Suit wasn’t someone much used to using the weapons he carried, thankfully. It was a simple thing then to wrap and arm around his neck from behind and snap it. He fell, leaving him alone in the dark with a screaming woman.
As another body fell only feet from her, Erin’s screaming choked into silence all at once, and she fell into a white-faced automatic retreat, palms grinding down against the glass chips. She’d heard a lot about this particular vigilante, enough that she recognized him on sight, and her quiet sane words about not judging his ilk too harshly were long ago and far away. Now with faint sobbing and wrenching hiccups, she put distance between the two of them and fought through strangled breathing while she waited to see which way he moved in the gray pre-evening light.
He stood over her, looking down at her, a dead man at his feet. He knelt down. She looked frightened, but it wasn’t as if he’d never gotten that reaction before. “Are you hurt?” He’d seen her grinding her palms into the glass scattered all across the floor - if nothing else, she’d likely cut herself that way. As far as he could tell, however, she had no serious injuries, but it never hurt to check. He’d just killed a man in front of her; despite that, his eyes were strangely soft and concerned, a gear switch that happened so fast it was difficult to believe he’d just snapped Business Suit’s neck. He didn’t try to get closer to her, not while she was still pressing herself away from him.
She didn’t see any of that softness, she just saw the paint and the things that he had done moments before. She had never been one for tears, and while she sobbed her eyes were still clear, almost dangerously, glassy clear, and she pressed her back hard into the wall, as if any sudden movement might make him strike.
He went very still. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, though he doubted that would have much of an effect if she’d already decided he was the enemy. He hated to see women in distress - crying, screaming, it all hit him in the same place. “You need to get out of here. Someone will have heard the glass breaking and called the police by now. Can you walk?”
She sat there for a slow count of five and, inexplicably, decided to believe him. Her shoulders came off the wall and she pushed up it, palms leaving bloody smears on the wall. Once she was standing she swayed a little dangerously and scanned the floor, mindless and automatic. “I need my case.” She never went anywhere without that thing, and for some reason she felt more vulnerable without it, even now. It wasn’t a high-functioning thought.
Jack got up from the floor, thoughtfully rolling the dead Business Suit over so she wouldn’t have to look at him staring sightlessly up at her, and then went to go get her case. He remembered seeing something by the door, and found the case off to the side where it had fallen. He carried it back to her.
By the time he returned, she was standing again in the exact center of the room, hair tangled, jacket askew and skirt seam loose at one side, looking altogether lost in the middle of all that destruction. She hesitated upon seeing him, but her eyes didn’t focus on his face, and she took up her case in the injured hand without apparently noticing the pain. Even more oddly, she gave up her other hand to his, and there was just as much glass there as in legs and back. Her skin was clammy and her breathing too light.
And now she looked like she was going into shock, which was no good at all. Her palms were full of glass, as were her legs. The light had been so dim that he’d missed it at first. She needed a hospital, or a safe place to stay at the very least. He could take her back to her apartment, but that was a ways back from here. Closer was the destination he’d assumed she’d been heading toward when she left the building, the apartment on the first floor of the Aubade. He had no idea who was living there or why she’d gone, but he hardly had many other options.
He picked her up as carefully as he could, trying not to jostle her arms and legs. The poor thing looked like a goddamn pincushion, and he grabbed her case on the way out, since it seemed to matter enough to her that it had been her first thought.
He went out the back, darting through alleyways and moving in the opposite direction of the approaching sirens. He couldn’t take the rooftops, his preferred route, so the going was slower than it would have been otherwise. Still, he reached the Aubade in under ten minutes because he had the luxury of being able to run as long as he liked, even with a woman thrown over his shoulder.
Once he reached it, however, there was the question of getting in. With a guard out front and a wall around the building, it wasn’t going to be as easy as carrying her up to the window and knocking on it. He went around the side, past the guard house and out of sight, and gauged the wall. He couldn’t exactly toss her over it, so the climb would be awkward. She wasn’t in any state to cling to him, either, so he had to be careful not to let her fall as he grabbed hold of the top of the wall and pulled himself up.
It was a balancing act, getting over the spikes and dropping down the other side, and he landed badly on one ankle when he dropped. Still, they were over the wall, which was well worth an ankle that would heal up in the next thirty seconds or so.
He checked the door. Locked, as expected. Whatever happened to trust? He could break the glass to get the door open, but in a place like this it would most certainly set off an alarm somewhere. He could also politely knock, but that would get the police called on him, which was something he wanted to avoid. He remembered Erin’s ease with opening the door to the flower shop, and he reached over to touch her shoulder. “Can you open the door?” If not he was going to break it down and damn the consequences.
Her skin was cool and her eyes distant but she at least responded to both touch and words, sluggish but true. She looked from him and the alien face he presented to the world to the door in front of her. She knew what to do with doors that she wanted to go through, and this one was familiar and presented unmistakable safety. She reached out for the lock, and when she pulled it back she turned her palm up and presented him with a new key not unlike the one she’d left on the floor of the flower shop. Modern locks were much the same, varying only in complexity but not key size and type.
She held it a moment more, but he was holding her, and didn’t take it immediately, so she turned back and put it in the lock, where it slid neatly within, pushed pins, turned tumblers, and allowed them entrance, exactly as it was designed to do.
He pushed the door open and carried her inside, into an unfamiliar apartment that looked like a hurricane had hit it. Aside from the chaos in the next room over, however, the place was strangely bare, and he carried her inside, looking for a place to set her down. If someone was here, it would be best to deal with them now. “Hello?” This would be interesting, to say the least.
Colt was in the study, but he’d heard the doorknob turning on the terrace. He never used that door, and it was most definitely locked, unlike the front door to the apartment. And so by the time the male voice called out, he had opened the drawer to his desk, pulled out his gun and loaded it. “In here,” he called calmly, but clearly, and he pointed the gun at the open door.
The voice left Jack expecting the sort of greeting he received when he carried Erin around the corner, and the gun pointed at his face didn’t even make him flinch. “You can keep that gun on me, or you can help me lay her down somewhere. Your decision.” Her color was definitely not returning, but she kept the key she had made and now turned toward the sound of a familiar voice.
Colt recognized Erin immediately, and the way she hung limply in the man’s arms sent a chill down his spine. It didn’t take a genius to realize this was some damn vigilante idiot, not with all that white face paint, and that made him all the crankier. Colt kept the gun focused on the man, even while he used his other hand to hold onto the end of the desk and lurch to his feet on rusty, unused legs. “What the HELL happened?” he asked, and he motioned to the recliner he slept in, worn in and old leather, not offering to actually help, since it would slow the process down.
He’d shoot the bastard once she was out of his arms.
He carried her to the chair, unconcerned with the distinct possibility that Colt would probably try to kill him shortly. What he was concerned about was treating Erin’s shock, and he set her down carefully on the seat, slinging her legs over the arm of the chair and casting about for a stool, something to rest her feet on that would keep them up. “She walked in on two men trying to beat the bloody pulp out of a shop owner. You can ask her why she thought that was a good idea when she wakes up. Right now, she needs a blanket. Do you have one?” He turned to look back at him, his gaze gone hard. If he was really going to waste time gunning him down instead of making sure she came out of her shock alright, that was his decision.
The clown was lucky he kept talking, because the more he talked, the less inclined Colt was to shoot him. He motioned (with the gun) to the bathroom beyond the kitchen, and he didn’t bother actually talking to the strange man in his study beyond that. He swallowed his pride, and the pain, and lurched unevenly to the chair, using the cane secreted beside it to raise the leg rest and knock the stool away. He’s spent enough time on the battlefield to know shock, and she was definitely in shock; her pulse raced at her throat, and her skin was a pallid gray instead of its normal translucent white, and she was clammy to the touch. He leaned over her (with difficulty), and he loosened the fabric at her throat and neck, and he waited for the clown to come back.
“Byron,” she said, by way of greeting. She still had the key to the side door she’d made curled tight in her fingers, and little drops of blood beaded on her arms and palms where she’d fallen on the glass. Bits of it and clipped flower stems were tangled in her hair, and she looked absolutely ghastly. There was an unnatural calm about her, however, and she didn’t offer any further communication beyond that. The wide pupils lifted up to his, fascinated by the new angle.
Jack carried in a few towels, the closest thing to a blanket he’d been able to find, and dragged in a solid wood chair as well. He put the chair under her feet and offered one of the towels to her friend with the gun, who he had a sneaking suspicion might shoot him for coming too close to her if he spread them over her himself. She didn’t look well, gray and dotted with blood. “She might need to go to the hospital,” he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.
Colt knocked the chair away and pointed to the leg rests. “Just lift those,” he ordered, all military command and expectation that he’d be heeded. He pointed to the phone on the desk. “911,” he barked, again, commanding, and then he looked down at her and reached for one of her hands, taking it in the one not holding onto the cane. He gave her a look that was softer than any he’d given her previously, though he managed to keep the worry from him voice. “How many times have I told you to quit being impossible?” he asked her, giving her an almost smile before turning his attention back to the stranger. “Go wash that off your face, you fool man, if you want to go with her. I’ve got questions to ask of you.”
He didn’t think the leg rests were really adequate to keep her legs raised enough to negate the shock, but if she was going to the hospital in the next few minutes anyway it hardly mattered. He picked up the phone, dialing emergency services, keeping the conversation brief. They had a woman in shock who needed help immediately, and he evaded explaining exactly how she’d gotten that way.
He was just hanging up the phone when Colt looked back at him. “And I’m to take it on your word that you’re not going to report me to the authorities?” He didn’t get that feel from this man, though he asked regardless. He seemed more worried about the woman in his care than getting some kind of misunderstood vengeance on him. He was more curious to see what he’d say.
“I can’t go with her, so I’ve got to trust you. And I’m not sending her alone, so you’ve got to stay,” Colt said, and his tone was not one that allowed argument; the gun in his hand helped matters. “I’ll pay you anything you want, you just take that phone, and you call me every step of the way,” he insisted. Damn woman. He was going to more her into the damned apartment, whether she liked it or not. No. Next door. He’d move her next door.
He seemed satisfied with that answer, if not threatened by the gun, and he walked out of the room to the bathroom he’d taken the towels from earlier. The makeup took some coaxing to get off, clinging to his skin, and he used a towel along with hot water and some of the soap laying on the edge of the sink to wipe it away.
He looked entirely different when he re-entered the room. He’d made sure there was no trace of the makeup, which left the long scar over his nose exposed, and the contact that evened out his eyes had gone down the drain as well. Vigilante or no, there was a history of violence written in that disfigurement. The shirt he’d been wearing was balled under his arm - he’d had another on beneath it, shorter, that would do just fine. He didn’t have any blood on him, and the sleeves still covered almost to his wrists. Above almost anything else, he was strangely young under the stage makeup, but the sense of still purpose was unchanged.
“Who is she to you?” he asked. He couldn’t tell if she was a girlfriend, a sister, or a lover on the side, but she obviously had no influence on this space. The rooms that were furnished were distinctly masculine in their mess. He still seemed strangely unconcerned about the stark reality of the gun, but even if he’d thought getting shot was a distinct possibility before, that moment seemed to have passed.
Christ, the clown was a fucking kid. Colt groaned, and he looked back down at Erin, the sound of sirens finally managing to ebb through the silence in the distance. “She works for me,” she said, but his fond expression belied the simplicity of the that statement. True, the woman infuriated him, but she’d actually made his blood run for the first time in half a decade and that counted for something. He engaged the safety on the gun, which was held in the same hand as his cane, and he let it fall onto the desk. “Hide that thing,” he ordered the boy, and he brushed the glass out of Erin’s hair. This damn town was going to go up in flames at this rate.
He took the gun, looked it over for a brief moment, and then moved around the back of the room, trying to find a good place to hide it. In the end he shut it inside the back of a cabinet, hidden behind a myriad of other things. It wouldn’t be found, the same way nothing else would be found in the mess around them.
Colt didn’t act as if she was someone who worked for him, but he doubted he’d much like to hear that. He said it anyway, partially for that reason. “You don’t look at her like she works for you,” he said, leaning against the desk, dark and light eyes sharp and fixed on him. They had a few short minutes left before the ambulance arrived. “Have you thought of a cover story for her yet?”
“Have you?” Colt shot back, not addressing the ridiculous comment about how he looked at Erin. “You were there; I wasn’t.”
“Break one of your windows and you can say she tripped through it,” Jack offered, half a dry joke and half a serious suggestion. “Unless you have something better that’s made of glass to explain the shards under her skin. You don’t want to give them a reason to test her blood against the crime scene.” He looked over at her again, making sure that she was still with them, still breathing. She looked restless and ill at ease in the chair, and he glanced toward the door. Only a few minutes more.
Colt pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and he lamented being surrounded by idiots and children. “Is there a blood trail from the crime scene?” he asked logically. “And why wouldn’t we want to report it and possibly CATCH THE MEN WHO DID THIS?” he asked, his voice rising at the end of the question. The ambulance was close enough that it had to be outside the building now, and he moved away from the recliner and leaned heavily, awkwardly against the desk.
“Because they’re dead, and the last thing she needs is to be brought to the police station this evening.” Jack stated bluntly, like there was no other alternative and no reason to worry about it. “I had her over my shoulder. I don’t think she was actually losing enough blood to leave a trail, considering how little there was on my shirt.”
This damn boy standing in his study had no idea how the police worked, how criminals worked. Hell, he didn’t even know how to keep himself from getting sliced near to death. None of it was reassuring, and Colt groaned as feet could be heard approaching. “Where was this place?” he asked. “I’ll need to get someone to scrub the place,” he said practically. Whoever had done this, they’d type the blood at the scene. It wasn’t just the police they needed to worry about. He pointed at the window outside the terrace, just to the left of the tile outside the door. “Take her shoe and break the glass from the outside,” he said. “Fast.”
Colt hoped the paramedics didn’t come with police, and if they did? Colt hoped it was a very young, very stupid officer.
Jack still seemed strangely calm about the entire situation, if much more sober than he normally came across. “A few blocks west. Main Street Floral, I think.” He picked the shoe up from the floor. If the tone of Colt’s orders made him bristle in any way, it certainly wasn’t visible on the surface. He went outside and swiftly broke the glass inward, dropping the shoe just inside the window before coming back into the apartment.
Erin hadn’t been still at all, shifting restlessly and reacting to quick movements and loud sounds around her, and Colt’s shouting a few moments previous had made her toss to the point she almost got out of her chair even in the cold sweat. The glass breaking was the last straw, and she let out a small bird’s sound of distress and kicked restraining towels away to escape the chair.
It took Colt longer than he would have liked to get to her, but when he did he pressed a soothing hand to her forehead. “Calm down now,” he told her in the sort of soothing voice he’d used on the horses when he was little, like he was talking to something that might spook and startle. He motioned the stranger toward the door, where the paramedics were knocking, and he wished to hell and back that he could crouch down beside that chair and get closer to her. As it was, his hand would have to do for now.
The paramedics pressing into the room moments later definitely did not help. The shock was wearing on the system but Erin’s system wasn’t the kind that functioned like a human’s, evidenced by the fact that it wore down practically to nothing when she forsook her garden for any length of time. She’d never been away from home long enough for that to become obvious to her, but it wasn’t helping her situation now because she would only get steadily worse. She reached a bleeding hand for Colt’s wrist and wrapped her fingers around it. She sat up and shied away from reaching hands gloved in powder white and immediately degenerated into the hoarse, tearless sobs of panic.
The sobs of panic did Colt in, and he roared loudly enough that the paramedics looked up from the fighting woman. They’d been about to sedate her, but he didn’t give them a chance, and he grabbed his cane and pushed them out of the way. When they threatened to call for backup, he calmly told them he’d call his lawyer if they didn’t get off his private property. In the end, medical integrity won out and they did what they could for her there, while he tried to keep her calm, assuring her they weren’t going to take her anywhere. He barked at Jack to call the number on the kitchen fridge, the one for his personal doctor, and that seemed to appease the paramedics slightly.
For her part, Erin tried to stay away from the glass and any hands and faces she did not recognize. It was fortunate that the Corbinian was without his make-up, since she recognized him neither as friend nor foe. None of the glass damage was worthy of stitches, though the paramedics warned about blood-borne pathogens and infections, they couldn’t get near enough to her to treat them, either. She would lie back if they weren’t in her range of vision, and since they were all concerned about hypovolaemic shock, they wanted her on her back and warm instead of struggling to function. However, she was responsive and her pupils were back to normal by the time they checked it, and her pulse was rapid but at least not alarmingly so. The paramedics backed off, but they didn’t like it.
Jack called the number for the doctor with his eyes fixed on the chaos before finally turning away from the sobbing, screaming Erin. The man on the other end of the line seemed to be able to hear her in the background and assured him that he’d be there right away. Jack hung up the phone watching the medics work with a curious sort of intensity.
Rarely did he stay close to a victim this long, not because he had no desire to, far from it, but because it was simply impossible. He couldn’t go with them to the hospital, or do much more than watch from afar until the paramedics came and let them do their work. When they left, he was still standing beside the desk, watching Erin silently, almost unblinking. She was still sobbing, and it was difficult to resist the urge to try offering some kind of comfort to her, but she had her friend - her employer, apparently - at her side. It occurred to him then that this must be the benefactor she’d mentioned. It made sense. What there was in the apartment was richly appointed, and he did live in the Aubade. The idea of whether there was any way for him to still work in the school they were trying to get together was dismissed almost immediately. That wasn’t important right now. “He said he’ll be here in twenty minutes,” he said, and he was still enough and quiet enough before that it would have made someone jump if they hadn’t been paying attention, finally pulling his eyes away from the girl on the floor. She was alive, and the doctor was coming. He pretended not to see anything braced against the wall on the opposite side of the room, knowing too well that no one else would be able to. “He’s coming from the other side of town.”
Colt barked orders at the paramedic like a man accustomed to them, and when they agreed that Erin was stable and offered to leave her in Colt’s hands he gave them a hefty ‘donation.’ He wasn’t surprised they didn’t linger - the rate crime was skyrocketing in Seattle lately meant that there wasn’t enough medical personnel to go around, and the paramedics probably had a pile-up a mile long waiting for them. When they cleared the room, Colt let himself teeter back, uneven gait landing his hands heavily against the desk for support. In Alaska he’d forced himself to stand through the pain on a regular basis, and his good leg had learned to work for the bad. Here? His life was limited to 20 square feet and he was out of practice. He pointed at the stranger. “We need to get her somewhere more comfortable,” he ordered, as if Jack was a petty officer in his regiment. “Go down the hall and buy a mattress from someone. Now.”
Over the last ten minutes, Erin had quieted. Her responses were still sharp and rabbit-like (a good sign) but everything else had slowed. None of her color had come back, and more disturbing she didn’t seem to feel any pain from the glass speckled scrapes in legs and arms. As long as nobody moved too fast or made any loud noises, she was quiet and very still. After the paramedics left, the room was more empty, and she went even more still, only eyes moving in the very light pauses between breaths.
The desk drawer was hanging open and there were stacks of bills inside, an oddly unprotected location for them. He pulled one out, flashed it at Colt for approval, and then disappeared down the hall. He didn’t exactly carry a wallet on him while out doing his work, unfortunately.
The first person to open their door was a wired looking yuppie with raw nostrils who jumped at the offer of a fat stack of bills for his mattress, thankfully. The money was probably five times what it was actually worth, but that didn’t really matter in that moment. He pulled the thing off his bed and carried it down the hall, reflecting on how many substances were probably ground into one part of it or another. Ah, well.
Once the paramedics had gone, once the stranger had disappeared from sight, Colt rubbed his eyes, and he watched her. He didn’t move at first, opting to just lean heavily against the desk and be objective. Her color was still terrible, and she was unnaturally still, and logically he knew her reaction wasn’t what it should be. She should be crying, tears should be trailing fat and thick down her cheeks at the pain from the glass. “Erin,” he said, gruff-quiet. “Can you hear me?” There was panic in his voice, and dammit when did he start carrying about this annoying, impertinent nothing of a woman?
She reacted well to her name, and her eyes came up to try to get a better look at him from where she lay, but it was an odd angle and she soon gave up. “Just tired,” she said, in a very small voice not at all like her commandeering one. Tired she might be, but her eyes weren’t drooping and she wasn’t showing any sign of sleeping. She just didn’t move, without energy.
Colt hated using his ability. The hatred came from years of intentionally not using it for years with his father, and he hesitated. He hesitated even though he could tell there was something not entirely normal about her reaction to what was happening. He moved toward her, his bad leg dragging, and he reached out a hand and touched her forehead - a light touch, just fingertips and hesitancy that he wore like an unfamiliar, ill-fitting coat.
She didn’t resist, and her forehead was unnaturally cool and damp at the same time. “Are you alright?” It was a strange thing for her to ask, being the one lying flat and apparently unable to move much. Her eyes shifted again, up to his, looking for some sign of ill-health, and then, with a great amount of effort, touched his wrist again. The torn rice paper skin brushed his own with a touch of grit and rough, dried blood.
For Colt, reading the abilities of others wasn’t like reading a newspaper or watching something happen on TV. It was a flow of knowledge that surged through his fingertips like electricity, and it came with a momentary feeling of the power of the ability. He didn’t get the emotions of the wielder, he couldn’t tell if the ability had been used for bad or ill; he could just tell what it was, he could feel it in himself. The sense of opening things, of keys, of being without limits wasn’t precisely tangible, but he understood it, and he frowned as he moved his fingers from her forehead to take her fingers, the ones covered in grit and danger. Figured she would have an ability that was going to get her into trouble for the rest of her damn interfering life. Figured. “I’m as impossible as always, ma’am,” he told her. “Just worried about your fool ass.”
She looked troubled, but the expression was passing. “I wanted to know what was happening.” She didn’t sound particularly apologetic about the inclination either, even then. She had felt something when he touched her, but she wasn’t aware enough of her senses to understand what it was, and it left her no different than she felt before. Her eyes transferred from his to her hands. “And then I fell.” It was a very broad, broad term for it. Her expression turned faintly gray, for it could go no paler, and some of the panic seemed to come back without warning.
Colt absolutely hated that he couldn’t get down to her level and take that confusion away. It made him feel impotent in a way he’d stopped feeling years ago, right around the time he’d stopped living. He let go of her hand reluctantly, just long enough to grab the stool he’d shoved away earlier, and he tried to stifle the noises of pain as well he could as he sat beside her and took her hand again. Colt was a gruff man, a man used to grabbing things he wanted to protect and putting them somewhere (preferably with his body as a shield). Talking someone into feeling better was entirely beyond his scope of knowledge, and he didn’t even know how to begin talking about soothing things. Woman’s work, was the thought that ran through his mind, but he took her hand in both of his and he looked down at her unnaturally pale face. “You listen here. You’re going to be just fine, Erin, or I’m going to find a way to bring you back, just so I can kill you. You hear me?”
Curious, with some child-like resentment mixed in. “I’m... just tired. No need to be angry.” Then, shifting with a bit of a sigh at him and his lordship, “I can just go home.” He was fortunate that she didn’t look for the briefcase and start expecting him to go through papers, because she didn’t seem to be particularly aware of her own state, judging from the way she kept shifting her gaze to something farther away.
Jack returned with the mattress, carrying it in and lying it down alongside her, moving slowly to avoid startling her. He moved to pick her up and lay her down on it, glancing up at Colt to see if he protested. He’d seen the level of pain it seemed to cost him just to stay standing, and he doubted that he’d be able to pick her up, but he was also having a hard time predicting how Colt would react to much of anything.
Colt let the boy lift her, and he reassured Erin that the boy wasn’t going to hurt her. “He’d make a good butler,” he told her, trying to bring her mind back from whatever starry place it’d gone too. The Erin he knew would have been complaining about being carried around like a doll, and that worried him more than anything, at the end of the day. “He does what he’s told,” he said in an attempt to be infuriating.
There was a small struggle, but not much of one, since Erin apparently didn’t have the energy to react with any more than minimal effort. “You’re spoiled,” she told Colt, once flat and calm again, though she was watching Jack very carefully to see if he did anything else, plainly nervous that he was here and she did not know him.
He set her down carefully and stood, looking down at her for a moment. She didn’t look well. In fact, she looked like she was getting worse, and that was a far greater concern to him than Colt’s apparently spoiled expectations that people would cater to his whims. He agreed with Erin on that one. “I try to help where I can. How good is this doctor of yours?” There was an undertone there that Erin would likely miss, or so he hoped. He was starting to think there might be more to this than just the shock.
“He’s a Creation, if that’s what you’re asking me,” Colt replied without a hint of thanks or politeness. “You got a name?” he asked the man, even as he reached down for Erin’s hand again (a challenge now that she was on the mattress on the floor). “I am spoiled, but you like me anyway, dontcha?” he asked, the teasing grin not quite reaching his eyes.
“Yes,” she said, frowning at him. She stretched the tattered hand a little to reach him and then looked at it again. “My hand hurts,” she informed them all, quietly, as if this was a new revelation. She completely missed Jack’s question about the doctor and any implications therein. Anything that was not a direct question passed her by, and anything that was not in front of her wasn’t there. The evening was draining out into night now, and she had to squint a little.
That hadn’t been what he’d meant, but regardless, he’d have to do. Hopefully he had some kind of ability that would actually be of help to her. He shook his head at the question of his name, laughing a little without much mirth to it. “Jack,” he said. It hardly mattered, at this point. All he would have to do was put out word to look for someone with a scar and they’d find him.
He frowned a little when Erin mentioned her hand. She seemed much too distant, still, and if her hand was all she was feeling that could be a problem. “Nothing else?”
Colt was both glad that Jack had asked the question and annoyed by it. Yes, it was odd that nothing else was hurting her, dammit. Wasn’t that obvious? The man hardly had to bring it to the forefront like that. But Colt was prone to ignoring things he didn’t want to know about, and he recognized that it was an important thing to know. A knock came at the door (the doctor), and Colt called for him to come in.
The doctor was 50 going on 200, having come over from Musings a few years ago. He was discrete, could be counted on to take your money and give you the truth straight, and then shut the hell up if you wanted him to. Colt liked the man.
It was like Colt to like somebody who would take his money and do whatever he wanted. Erin was not in a position to criticize, however, as yet another stranger who wanted to examine her wasn’t the most reassuring of prospects. There were more dry sobs and quite a bit of talking and convincing to get her to stay still, and it was more like they exhausted her into acquiescing more than anything else.
The doctor, being the practical sort and aware there didn’t seem to be anything violently wrong with her where he couldn’t see (probably with his ability) began work on her hands, fishing out bits of glass with tweezers and dropping them into a petri dish he brought with him. He spoke as he did this, sterilizing and bandaging while he tried to get her to respond with more than one word answers. He did several tests on her eyes, which didn’t focus properly, and his expression remained puzzled even when she told him that she wanted to go home.
“I’ll get someone to take care of her,” Colt informed the doctor, already thinking about the annoying nurse on the forums. He’d put up with her if Erin was suffering from shock, which was the best he could come up with. He crossed his arms, and he watched the old man work, his gaze occasionally rising to Jack, who looked younger in the harsh light of the blinds the doctor had opened. “You need something less dangerous to do with your life, kid,” he said, because he was reminded of all the kids that had come through the military academy, the ones who ended up pissing their pants at the first sight of a front line.
Colt looked back down at Erin, his expression going soft again. “She’s going to need a room with furniture.” It was a silly, practical statement, but it was easier to concentrate on the practical. Damn city needed a damn military movement.
He glanced up at him. Young as he might be, those eyes were old, dark and deep. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, smile small, and looked back to Erin. He considered mentioning that she’d only need a room with furniture if she didn’t continue worsening, but refrained. He ran over what had happened. Could he have gotten her out of the way without shoving her to the ground? Possibly, but in the moment what had mattered was getting her away from the man charging toward her, and he hadn’t exactly had time to look for the glass or factor it in. Still, if she got worse, what he’d done would eat at him. It had already started to.
The doctor was now picking glass out of Erin’s knees, but she wasn’t watching. She’d given up sitting and slumped back down on the mattress without being much aware of the shift. The waxen color of her face was a sharp contrast to the dying light, and the doctor was giving her occasional glances to see if she was still conscious enough to react to what he was doing. She wasn’t, and he did more sterilizing and bandaging before checking her pulse and blood pressure. He made her lie down and put three layers of blankets on her, and then stood there looking especially intent for several seconds. Erin was looking at the wall with half-closed eyes.
Colt was getting more worried with every minute that passed, and with the worry came anger at his inability to do a damn thing about it. The way Erin was staring at the wall terrified him, and Colt didn’t do well with being terrified. “Can’t you DO ANYTHING?” he yelled at the doctor. “What the hell am I paying you for?” he demanded, throwing his cane in anger.
The doctor, luckily, knew all about Colt’s temper tantrums, and he didn’t so much as flinch. “You’re upsetting her,” he pointed out smoothly, looking at Erin, who at least reacted to the shouting and the throwing things by attempting to turn over and see what the fuss was. Even her concern was listless and when she only saw the three of them and no impeding crisis, she chewed a little on her worry and settled back into her half-trance. The doctor watched with interest until she went still again, and then he said, ruthlessly, “There’s something that’s keeping her from recovering, probably something Creation-related. Throwing things at me is not likely to help.”
“I can tell there’s something keeping her from recovering,” Colt said, all quiet ire directed at the annoyingly calm doctor. “Fix it, man,” he ordered, and it was not a request. The fact that the doctor had no control over Creation-related maladies was not his concern. His concern was the woman on the mattress, and his gaze raised hard and sharp on Jack. “What haven’t you told me?”
He didn’t flinch when Colt threw the cane, but his brow furrowed. The doctor took the words out of his mouth, however, so it would hardly help to chastise him twice. “Nothing,” he said, not letting the accusatory tone bother him. He was worried about Erin and looking for answers, so he’d give him a pass. He looked up at the doctor. “She’s mentioned going home more than once,” he offered. “And her hand seems to be the only part of her that hurts.” He didn’t know if either of those things helped to puzzle out what was wrong, but they needed to figure it out, and throwing things around the room wasn’t doing anything to help that along.
“Come here,” Colt said, his voice dangerously low and calm, his attention entirely directed to Jack in that moment.
Jack stared at him. “I haven’t left anything out. I also don’t intend to walk within arm’s reach of you so you can try to strangle information out of me that I do not have. You’re her employer. Is there anything you know about her that might explain why she keeps getting worse? I’ve known her for an hour.”
“If I knew anything, I would have said as much by now,” Colt replied, no less dangerous sounding, no less calm. “If I find out there’s something you’re keeping out, there’s nowhere you can hide, you recognize.” It was a statement, not a question. Colt might not have use of his legs, but he had something better when it came to making someone pay - he had money.
Threat made, Colt turned back to the doctor. “You planning on telling us what to do? Or you just going to stand there and take my money for a whole lot of nothing?”
Jack suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Like Colt was the worst of his worries. His concern for Erin was admirable, but his behavior was not. Nevertheless, he understood what it was like to be that worried about someone you cared about.
He knelt down next to Erin, ignoring both Colt and the doctor. She seemed barely conscious at this point, but it was always worth a try. He was close enough to hopefully get what remained of her attention, but not close enough to scare her. “Can you tell us what you need?” It could be anything, really, he’d heard of Creations as varied and different as deer were to whales. Some couldn’t be out at night, some during the day. Some collapsed into balls at the slightest provocation, some so sturdy as to be unnatural. The possibilities were too wide for them to conjure up an answer out of nothing.
The difficulty with Erin was that she didn’t know too much about being a Creation. The key-making came to her so natural that she never questioned it, and though she tired at the end of the day, a lot of people were tired at the end of the day. Erin was business; she never took long vacations, never indulged in close relationships that took her from her house, and had no relatives to visit. She came home like clockwork and never understood that inexplicable drained feeling she had at the end of the day. A product of aging, she assumed, as her experience seemed much like the working lives of business women everywhere.
Her eyes came back to Jack. “You were the man in the shop,” she said, recognizing the voice in a rare moment of clarity as her lashes dipped. “You killed those men.” The doctor tipped a head to one side with interest, but he didn’t look more than mildly worried. This doctor was marked by his calm.
Colt had enough.
“If you aren’t going to do something, then get the fuck out of my house, sir,” Colt told the doctor, and then he turned to Jack, eyes narrowing. “You find someone to scrub that scene, you hear me? I don’t want the people loyal to whoever you killed coming back there an testing blood and fingerprints and tracing back to her somehow. You take what money you need, and you fix it.”
Jack said nothing at first. He went to the drawer, took out two of the bound stacks of money, and wrapped them in with the shirt he was carrying under his arm, the one he’d stripped off earlier. “And you get over yourself long enough to find out what’s wrong with her, or you won’t be able to hide anywhere either,” he said. He took a last look at Erin, glanced up at the doctor, and walked out.
Erin met his eyes, but as soon as he moved out of her vision she gave a very great sigh, as if she had done something extremely regretful, and fell silent again. The doctor exited as well, looking thoughtful.
Colt stared after them, scowling. Once they’d left the apartment, he looked back at Erin, and he took his time hunkering down on the chair beside the mattress and taking her hand. He didn’t say anything, he just bowed his his head over their joined hands, and he did something he hadn’t done in years.
He prayed.