gabriel_tam | (no subject)

It's too dark to see. It's too dark to see, and he's completely alone in the panicking crowd, and someone collides with him and they both go down in a confusion of limbs and some entangling fabric. For a moment he's thinking ambush, until it registers that the other man is half-sobbing in fear; he holds still long enough for the man to disentangle his coat and lurch away, and then pulls himself up to his knees.

The noise is overwhelming, seeming made of every sound of anger or fear that a human throat can make, from the birdlike shrieks of small children to the bull-roars of grown men. It should be impossible to make out any one voice in the cacophony.

Nonetheless: his mother's voice, screaming his father's name --

his father's voice, screaming in hoarse wordless agony, a sound that sends his mind reeling back to the Djose Temple --

his sister's voice, crying out let me go, he's made of killing, I can hear it --

Simon struggles forward blindly on his knees, trying to reach the stage.

Blindness is relative.

River Tam and Gabriel Tam -- what used to be Gabriel Tam; what now is something a lot messier -- are separated from the rest.

Time to make their move forward.

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!"

The harsh light bleaches River's face to white, makes the blood drenching her knees and her father's body a bright unnatural red. There are twin red streaks down her skirt where she wiped off her hands. Her lip is split, and another trickle of blood has traced its way down her chin.

She's crouched by Gabriel's head, hands fisted in the fabric at the back of his shoulders. Her head is lifted, eyes wild and instantly narrowed against the white-hot flare of magnesium, and everything about her posture is poised for instant motion -- fleeing, or lashing out.

"Hold still, bà bà," she whispers as the first streak of light explodes into being, and tugs hard; she's small, but strong, and with the fierce and desperate strength of adrenaline she drags him back a foot or more.

"Not time yet."

Pain rips sharply through him as she pulls at him, jerking him fully back to awareness. Gabriel groans, then tries to look around.

"Simon."

It takes more effort to get the single word out than he'd expected. Choking, he coughs, then tries to bring a hand up to wipe the bloody froth from his lips.

"Simon. Where-- wǒ de ér zi, I have to-- he has to know--"

"Shhhhh."

River's voice trembles. Her grip doesn't.

"Gonna fix it. He will. Gotta stay here. That's the job."

Another yank, and another; there's a bloody, smeared trail along the stage.

Galadan eventually lets go of Raguel's mangled throat, blood staining muzzle and teeth.

It is still a heady taste, even if the creature that spawned such riches is now dead on the stage.

He shakes his head once, attention shifting focus from the former threat to his current charges.

Gabriel is breathing, as are River, Regan, and Simon.

At the moment this is all the good news he has. He can, after all, smell Gabriel's blood, thick and heavy in the air, even beside that of the creature.

And River, though strong, should not have to carry her father's mangled body--not when there are other options.

Galadan's shape blurs as he stands on two legs instead of four.

He swipes his tongue across his teeth, removing blood and the few last lingering bits of demon-flesh. Then, mouth still stained a deep, bloody red, he moves swiftly toward River and Gabriel, hands poised to take the Senator's weight.

"River."

His words echo in her head again, soft and almost not present at all. His voice, however, is iron-hard and steady.

"River, I'll take your father--can you handle Regan and Simon?"

River is -- River is dragging Gabriel, and Gabriel is on the ground and in the face of that Regan can't even focus on the assassin with his throat torn out and the blood staining Galadan's mouth, because Gabriel is on the ground and, oh wŏ de tiān, a, the blood.

He's dead, Regan thinks wildly. He's dead, no one could be sliced apart like that, like meat, and live-- And in the same moment she's thinking Simon, Simon, all of you doctors, somebody HELP HIM--

"I will be a stone," she whispers, not even hearing herself, as Crowley yanks her along with him towards the back of the stage and she stumbles after him. "I will close my ears and my heart and I will be as stone."

It doesn't help.

Her husband is torn apart on the ground.

Four shadows, pitched long on the aisle; four shapes standing stone-still on their way to the stage.

Four shapes with arms thrown over their eyes, over the goggles on their eyes.

Four figures with evidently malign intent, who it appears were prepared for the unusual darkness but not for the sudden flare of light.

Bajian Li's security team -- Li's hand-picked and highly-trained security team -- doesn't need any further cue than that to recognize their targets.

The stench of ozone fills the air, along with the crackling hum of controlled voltage as the tazer contacts are launched, bringing the would-be assassins down to the ground writhing in pain.

Half of Li's team sets about securing them, none too gently, while the lieutenant calls for backup.

After one look at the stage, Li himself is barking orders into his wrist unit, calling for medical trauma response, right-fucking-now.

And Simon drops to the stage next to River, his hands knocking Galadan's away in a swift unthinking movement, finding breath and pulse. Both there; neither strong.

(Below the stage, a heavyset young man picks himself up from where he was thrown aside by the Senator's son on his way to the stage. He starts to protest, sees what's going on, swallows the half-formed complaint and stands staring in horrified fascination.)

His eye runs over the wounds: bad. He's going to need --

"I need a first-aid medkit," he says aloud, very clear, very calm. His hands are already moving, bunching the shredded fabric of the shirt into a temporary pad to stop the worst of the bleeding.

Somewhere in his head, a voice is saying with the same calmness: Oh, I see. This is a nightmare. All right, then.

River's head snaps towards Galadan. Her eyes have adjusted to the light; they're wide now, and fierce. She shows no sign of noticing the blood smeared across Galadan's mouth and chin, except the way her eyes narrow for a moment: half assessment, and half savage approval.

Her gaze whips over to Crowley, dragging her mother to the back of the stage, to Baijan Li and his team dispatching the goggled figures in the aisle, and back to Galadan.

"Facilities," she says low, almost a whisper, to the air between Galadan and Simon. "I remember."

To Galadan, fierce again: "Where."

With a convulsive jerk, Gabriel lifts his hands and clutches frantically at his son's.

"Simon." His head lolls to one side for a second as he looks around, his blurred glance going to River and holding before he turns back to him.

"You -- you -- take care of them," he manages to gasp out. "So proud-- of you both-- proud of you, Simon, always--"

Another breath, this one shallower, as his desperate grip begins to weaken.

"Wŏ ài nĭ. Always have. The three of you."

Galadan ignores Gabriel's apparent death-bed ravings, much as he ignores the rest of the drama around them--or so his reactions would suggest.

Winter-grey eyes meet River's for a split second, and an image of Boukephalos flickers at the top of his mind, shields slamming back down a second later.

"Where we met, that first time. There are too many unknown factors here--it won't be safe for some time, and while he can be guarded day and night, better not to have to."

He encompasses Simon in his glance this time.

"We're going to move him now, Simon. River, fetch Regan."

And again he puts his hands on Gabriel Tam, preparing to haul him away.

The Wolflord is, for all his relatively small stature, very strong.

With Regan waiting behind the stage, Crowley turns to begin the search for Simon - then sees the huddle over Gabriel Tam, painted in dancing grey-white flickers as the closest flare sputters gently from the auditorium floor.

Rising from his crouch for a better view, his eyes flick past them.

A limp, heavy shape further across the stage, beyond the reach of the hissing glow of flares.

The crowd, still in a panic - and in its midst, being swiftly secured by Baijian Li's team, one two three four figures.

(And then there were - )

And then there was a nice, tall, standing silhouette on the stage, and Crowley sees the pinpoint flash of a different, orange-coloured light before he hears the unmistakable crack of a gun being fired.

He hits the stage again, and takes a moment to mutter a truly inventive curse under his breath - and the renewed shrieking of the crowd - before scrambling over to the Tams.

"Milliways," he says, appearing at Galadan's elbow.

And then someone fires again.

i e yu i
Simon's free hand closes over his father's, and squeezes tight for a split second.
no bo me nu
Then he gently moves both of his father's hands to the makeshift pad on the worst of the chest wounds, closes them around it.
ren mi ri
"Ba," he says very steadily, "I need you to hold on to that, while we're moving you. Keep pressure there. Can you -- Ba, look at me." A shade louder, a touch sharper. "Can you do that?"
yo ju yo go
It's highly unlikely he'll be able to. That's not the point. It'll be something for him to focus on, in these few crucial moments between here and the Milliways infirmary, where there'll be equipment and supplies and maybe another doctor to help --
ha sa te ka na e
The cracking sound of gunfire over their heads sounds distant, unimportant, like receding thunder.
ku ta ma e

River nods a little. Swallows, and nods again.

"Canda," she says, low, and then in a swift darting movement she spins on her heels and she's scrambling across the stage in a low crouch. Her boots and fingertips leave scuffs of lurid crimson on the boards.

Regan is staring in fixed horror at Gabriel's mangled body, at Simon kneeling over him. River grabs her arm, and it's a moment before Regan's head turns.

"Through the door," River says, low and intense.

"Over the river -- now, we have to now!"

She doesn't -- she doesn't understand, Gabriel is dying and if nothing else she should be there, should be with Simon now, and River should too, and above all she should wake up from this horrible nightmare, she should wake up because this can't possibly be happening--

But River's tugging her arm.

And because it's River -- because it's her daughter -- she lets herself be pulled, and lets herself (makes herself) turn her head away.

"River--" Her voice shakes, and she clamps down hard on it. "River, what...?"

"Find the doorknob," River hisses, and pulls sharply enough that Regan takes a stumbling step after her, and then another.

They're halfway to the corridor behind the stage before she understands. When she does, she sucks in a sharp breath, and starts to run of her own accord.

"Simon."

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.

Simon's at Galadan's side, matching his stride.

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--

The lights come back on.