shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2008-06-06 22:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2008 twelve characters challenge, author: shiegra, crossover: baccano!/dogs, pairing: luck/nill |
Baccano!/DOGS
Title: A Chance Echo
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: Baccano!/DOGS
Pairing/characters: Luck Gandor/Nill
Rating: PG13/R
Warnings: swearing and shooting, otherwise it's pretty tame
Prompt/challenge you're answering: * Luck Gandor and Nill with the title, "Lost and Found."
She crashed into him when she veered right, careening down the closest alley with no hesitation. He was emerging from a building, tugging a hat down over his head, and she bulleted into him and staggered back, her small body savagely unbalanced. When she looked up at him, she met golden eyes, a calm and unreadable stare.
Shouts echoed down the alley. She twisted, reeled back in preparation to bolt, and he caught her wrist as though to steady her. His eyes widened minutely when she jerked, brought in against his body, and her wings fluttered against his arm, his shoulder, feathers brushing frantically against his coat.
They’d already chased her into the thick tangle of dark streets; her dress was torn in places, her shoulder stung at the back, blood trickling hot down her skin. If she could struggle free she could keep running, maybe find some pathway too small for anyone larger than herself.
When three men rounded the corner they milled briefly, set back by the man holding her, and Nill dug in her heels and prepared, desperately, to fight back.
The foremost man jittered with drugs, an illegal cocktail mingling steroids and something mood-altering, and his grin was a manic rictus. "Fuck, man, let g-go. That's our property."
"There is," the man holding her said in a low, velvet-even voice, "no flesh-running on Gandor territory."
One of the men faltered, drew back a little; he was a coward, and three against two would be better than three against three if this man really decided he took exception to someone breaking the rules of his Family's ground. Nill hoped desperately that he'd break, cast a glance down the long alley.
The other man hesitated as well, but the first kept the knife out and finally the second one cursed and shook his head. "Too much money on that bitch." He said in a harsh undertone to the third, "don't make the boss hunt you down." Louder, he directed a comment to the men behind her. "We aren't flesh-running, just recovering our property. Had to chase her this far, that's all. Don't make things difficult." He had guns under that long coat and was sweating heavily with more than the heaviness of his clothes, face pasty.
Nill twisted to look up at the man's face, seeing hooded leonine eyes and the straight, thoughtful line of his mouth. He looked down at her for a moment, inscrutable, and then loosened his grip. Fear lanced through her.
Then he turned his head, and the tallest man came forward, moving like a mountain with his mouth twisted into a grin, fists flexing. "Move along." He rumbled, and the first man lunged--there was blood at his nostrils and lips, he must have overdosed.
Overdose or not, the point rapidly made moot as he made rapid connection the man's fist.
"Berga..." The man who had held her made an elegant gesture with one hand and she measured him with a glance, gambled, and stuck close to his side rather than bolting.
"I know, Luck." Berga rumbled, and took a step forward.
A machine gun swung free with a flap of leather and 'Luck' shoved her behind him, staggering her as the hot impact of bullets threw him backwards into her. She bit back a scream that wouldn't have made sound anyway, wings pulling tight to her shoulders, as they both went over backwards, her back smacking concrete.
A lightning-hot memory flashed through her, another man who had died for her--but this man wouldn't be getting up again. A mournful cry choked off in her throat, unvoiced as always, even as she squirmed and shoved at his shoulders in an effort to dislodge the weight of his body.
He was heaved aside in a moment anyway, and the junkie's hand fisted in her collar. His face was coated in blood now, dripping plentiful onto a crazed snarl. She came up fighting; one foot planted into his groin and she clawed at his face, nail skidding off his eye as she twisted to escape. The genetically altered had an even higher market than they did when Haine was alive, and she was an especially high prize since she couldn't speak and what they did was now illegal.
He squealed and fell back from the pain, and she landed on her feet, body bunching like a cat's rather than a bird's, and almost made it--almost got out of his reach--before his fingers closed solidly on the arched bone of her wing and hauled. If she could have made a sound she would have shrieked in pain, but as it was she tumbled silently back into his arms.
They closed crushingly around her and he gave a nervous, ragged howl of triumphant laughter."Got you--"
The man with the guns was kicking the big man's downed body, and bleeding heavily from the shoulder. Each word was punctuating be a blow. "Thought--you--could--order--me--around-
A big hand reached up, closed around his shin, and snapped it like a twig.
The man howled, and further down the alley the third man shrieked, eyes round and terrified, and turned to run, colliding with the tall, lean man who caught him with an elbow to the throat. Nill writhed in the junkie's arms like an eel as he staggered back, open mouthed and astonished, and then his arm was torn away and he fell back, jittering and squealing as Luck straightened and adjusted his hat on his head, mouth tipping ruefully as his fingers brushed over a bullethole.
Her heel drove into the man's instep as she scrambled out of his slackened one-armed grip and collided with Luck's bullet-riddled coat, smelling the acrid spark of gunpowder and beneath that a rich, subtle cologne. Deja Vu possessed her, tight and strong in her throat as she thought of Haine, who had been thinner and harder and sharper and smelled of blood beneath the gunpowder. This man didn’t even have stains on his clothes, but Haine had always been touched with blood even after the wounds healed over.
His arm supported her after a split-second startled hesitation, and this time Berga didn't hit him, he slammed the junkie's head into the wall until it splattered over the stones.
Somewhere above them a window scraped open. "Mr. Gandor?" Someone called. "Do you need any help?"
"No, we're fine." His smile was veiled, polite and neutral as he took her in. Nill was breathing hard. He shifted his grip, from against her shoulder blades to where his hand could curve against her elbow. "Are you well?"
Her wings still felt tight, a sharp tense arch running along the tendons and muscle, but after a moment she forced her shoulders down and allowed the grip to settle, giving a brief nod.
She was surprised by how much life she felt in the warmth of his skin, and for the first time in the long, icy gray years since Haine’s death, she felt some approximation of interest and hope.