Everything about the opening ceremonies for the new Family and Life Support Center is tastefully coordinated in order to appeal to a wide variety of supporters and clientele both
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Bajian Li is swearing furiously under his breath as he and the rest of the team strain to hear what's going on, navigating through the unnatural darkness by kinesthetic sense, sound, and sheer determination.
But it's the strange fiery flickers from the stage which give him the clue he needs, at last.
A few more desperate seconds, and then--
Light.
Magnesium hisses as Li lights the first flare, sending an arc of harsh, spitting white fire from his hand. He throws it into the aisle, already lighting a second, then a third, while the lieutenant beside him screams,
"We have visual, we have visual-- the Senator's down! Repeat, Tam is down-- go, go, go!"
"Move. You'll do him little good should I manage to trip over you."
With that said he lifts the mangled body into his arms, swift and seemingly effortless.
The makeshift pad falls to the ground as Gabriel emits a choked, strangled whimper and passes out.
Galadan takes little notice of that, focused on the chaos around them, and marking the path River and Regan take toward one of the side corridors.
Vanishing in plain sight is ever the fool's option. Galadan, it must be said, rarely plays the fool.
With one last narrowed look at Simon, he shifts Gabriel to a more comfortable position and strides across the room, avoiding the worst of the crowd as he does so.
He can, after all, see in the dark, and the flare's light reaches only so far.
Chest still rising and falling, but breathing is increasingly labored. There may be internal injuries; he'll need to run a scan as soon as they reach the infirmary.
The half-forgotten body on the far side of the stage looks whole from the feet up, right until ones's eyes reach the chest. Above that point there is only a soggy mess of blood and mangled flesh, and to look higher than the injury the sight is, by most accounts, worse.
But little by little, the wound is beginning to glow.
The light spreads slowly but steadily through the rest of the body, weaving torn flesh together into a red-tinted haze of blood and fire.
It's not bright, yet - the reddish glow spreading through Raguel is still dim enough to be mistaken for any one of a dozen emergency lights that, in a darkness not born of any electrical failure, have not yet flickered to life.
But what barely registers to the eye sets another sort of sense jangling -
- and when Crowley looks back, and meets Galadan's narrowed eyes, he realises he isn't the only one who's noticed.
"Get them out," Crowley says, as the acrid tang of wrongness fills his mouth and nose.
A bullet whizzes past, and the demon falls away again into the dark.
Galadan bares his teeth in what might, in a room full of blind people, pass for a smile.
But now is not the time. Gabriel is dying, and Galadan is no healer. The Wolflord's steps carry him swiftly toward Regan and River, and to what may be relative safety.
But he knows well what he saw, glittering above the creature that attacked Gabriel.
And later--perhaps not all that much later, in fact--there will be answers.
There is always more blood to be spilled, after all.
Usually Regan only has to want to see her children to turn a door into a portal to Milliways. Her children are here with her, and River is running beside her hand in hand now (and she doesn't think of the blood beneath her daughter's fingernails, she can't), but if it's a question of wanting--
Then it's no question.
There's help there. There's safety there, and medical facilities, and the barest breath of hope, and she doesn't have to strive to want it; she needs it right now, more than she needs oxygen.
(That oxygen rasps in her lungs. She's not used to this kind of adrenaline, not used to sprinting; she's not as young as she once was. But she's only panicked, not decrepit, and right now she can pace her daughter even in her designer flats.)
There's the doorway. Open she shouts at it in savage silence, open, damn you, and River stumbles a step, and the door changes.
Galadan does not even have to spur them on before Regan is stepping through the door, River shifting to the side, eyes on the corridor behind them.
The Wolflord spares her a quick nod of cool approval as he passes through the doorway after Gabriel's wife, Simon a half-step behind him.
That, of course, does not last long at all as they hit the floor in Milliways. Simon is, after all, very good at his job, and the infirmary is not far away at all.
River, too, follows them a bare moment later, casting one searching glance at where Crowley would be, if he were coming.
But he isn't, and her father is dying.
There are, just this once, more important places for River to be.
When the door closes behind them, shutting with barely even a soft click--
Crowley's jacket covers some of Raguel's light, but not enough - it's getting brighter. Bright enough that despite the chaos, and the gunfire, someone will soon start to take notice.
"Biàn shítou," Crowley whispers to himself, and fists his hands in Raguel's shirt.
They crash into a storage room, hidden in the wings, just as the light returns.
Crowley sits with one shoulder to the door, and watches Raguel lie amongst speakers' stands and wires and chairs, and burn.
The fire grows, engulfing the whole body in a pyre that would surely take down the entire structure if it spread, but nothing else in the room so much as smolders. Brighter, brighter, and it's a good thing no one's paying any attention to the storage just now or, crisis or not, there would be a lot of difficult questions about the painful-looking radiance erupting from the cracks around the door.
But the flames recede, as they do, and when they are low enough it's possible to make out the outline of the body, still whole. A little lower and the undamaged throat is visible. And just when they have extinguished themselves - almost just before - unnaturally blue eyes open on the ceiling, and without even turning to see Crowley by the door, Raguel attacks.
There's a gutteral snarl, fingers instantly at Crowley's throat, Raguel's eyes full of hate. Then he blinks, and an amiable recognition quickly sets in.
"Oh, hi, Crowley," he says, sounding pleased. "Here for backup?"
Crowley barely manages a grunt, as his shoulders are shoved against the thick planking of the door. As a small, detached, part of his brain observes the white flashes obscuring his vision, he thinks for an absurd moment that Raguel is once again -
"Fuck you," Crowley replies with feeling, once his eyes refocus (visibly so; his sunglasses are long gone by now). He swallows, under Raguel's nails digging into his neck. "That really hurt, you know."
"No," Crowley says flatly, arching his back to try and hold his shoulders away from the door. "No. Gone, and you're not going after them - look, could you let me go?"
"Because," Crowley says, hunching forward with a faint sigh of relief. "They're mine, and you can't have them. And," his eyes flick up to Raguel's face, "neither can Nic Rosse."
But it's the strange fiery flickers from the stage which give him the clue he needs, at last.
A few more desperate seconds, and then--
Light.
Magnesium hisses as Li lights the first flare, sending an arc of harsh, spitting white fire from his hand. He throws it into the aisle, already lighting a second, then a third, while the lieutenant beside him screams,
"We have visual, we have visual-- the Senator's down! Repeat, Tam is down-- go, go, go!"
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Galadan's voice is only a little sharp.
"Move. You'll do him little good should I manage to trip over you."
With that said he lifts the mangled body into his arms, swift and seemingly effortless.
The makeshift pad falls to the ground as Gabriel emits a choked, strangled whimper and passes out.
Galadan takes little notice of that, focused on the chaos around them, and marking the path River and Regan take toward one of the side corridors.
Vanishing in plain sight is ever the fool's option. Galadan, it must be said, rarely plays the fool.
With one last narrowed look at Simon, he shifts Gabriel to a more comfortable position and strides across the room, avoiding the worst of the crowd as he does so.
He can, after all, see in the dark, and the flare's light reaches only so far.
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Chest still rising and falling, but breathing is increasingly labored. There may be internal injuries; he'll need to run a scan as soon as they reach the infirmary.
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But little by little, the wound is beginning to glow.
The light spreads slowly but steadily through the rest of the body, weaving torn flesh together into a red-tinted haze of blood and fire.
Reply
But what barely registers to the eye sets another sort of sense jangling -
- and when Crowley looks back, and meets Galadan's narrowed eyes, he realises he isn't the only one who's noticed.
"Get them out," Crowley says, as the acrid tang of wrongness fills his mouth and nose.
A bullet whizzes past, and the demon falls away again into the dark.
Reply
But now is not the time. Gabriel is dying, and Galadan is no healer. The Wolflord's steps carry him swiftly toward Regan and River, and to what may be relative safety.
But he knows well what he saw, glittering above the creature that attacked Gabriel.
And later--perhaps not all that much later, in fact--there will be answers.
There is always more blood to be spilled, after all.
Reply
Then it's no question.
There's help there. There's safety there, and medical facilities, and the barest breath of hope, and she doesn't have to strive to want it; she needs it right now, more than she needs oxygen.
(That oxygen rasps in her lungs. She's not used to this kind of adrenaline, not used to sprinting; she's not as young as she once was. But she's only panicked, not decrepit, and right now she can pace her daughter even in her designer flats.)
There's the doorway. Open she shouts at it in savage silence, open, damn you, and River stumbles a step, and the door changes.
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The Wolflord spares her a quick nod of cool approval as he passes through the doorway after Gabriel's wife, Simon a half-step behind him.
That, of course, does not last long at all as they hit the floor in Milliways. Simon is, after all, very good at his job, and the infirmary is not far away at all.
River, too, follows them a bare moment later, casting one searching glance at where Crowley would be, if he were coming.
But he isn't, and her father is dying.
There are, just this once, more important places for River to be.
When the door closes behind them, shutting with barely even a soft click--
The lights come back on.
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"Biàn shítou," Crowley whispers to himself, and fists his hands in Raguel's shirt.
They crash into a storage room, hidden in the wings, just as the light returns.
Crowley sits with one shoulder to the door, and watches Raguel lie amongst speakers' stands and wires and chairs, and burn.
Reply
But the flames recede, as they do, and when they are low enough it's possible to make out the outline of the body, still whole. A little lower and the undamaged throat is visible. And just when they have extinguished themselves - almost just before - unnaturally blue eyes open on the ceiling, and without even turning to see Crowley by the door, Raguel attacks.
There's a gutteral snarl, fingers instantly at Crowley's throat, Raguel's eyes full of hate. Then he blinks, and an amiable recognition quickly sets in.
"Oh, hi, Crowley," he says, sounding pleased. "Here for backup?"
Reply
"Fuck you," Crowley replies with feeling, once his eyes refocus (visibly so; his sunglasses are long gone by now). He swallows, under Raguel's nails digging into his neck. "That really hurt, you know."
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"Sorry," he says instantly, "I thought you were Tam's pet wolf. Honestly, and he lets that thing out around children."
He looks momentarily disgusted, an expression that quickly mutates into a businesslike grimace.
"Where is he?" he asks, voice low.
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"Why not?" he asks, still calm.
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"Anyway, I only want one of them. And you shouldn't hurt the others, they haven't done anything. Except the wolf, of course."
His eyes gleam alarmingly. It would be laughable to call it worthwhile, but whatever he's lost, Raguel is at least free now to take his own vengeance.
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