Participants:
| Scene Title | Ashes to Ashes, Death to Life |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When Eve and Gillian make an attempt to prevent one of her dreams from coming true, it has a most unexpected outcome. |
| Date | August 29, 2009 |
SoHo, Else's Apartment
"Fhhh," the sound is breathy, a sharp hiss, "I got fuckin' ashes everywhere."
Padding around a coffee table, bare feet precariously dance over cigarette ashes spilled onto the hardwood floor near an overturned ashtray. Moving with light steps, the wispy blonde's silhouette is dark and narrow, backlit by the venetian blinds spilling with morning sunlight around their edges and through their slats.
With a cup of coffee steaming in one hand, Else Kjelstrom sees the sun rise for the first time in months without having been up all night to see it. Her studio apartment is lit only by those soft blue tones that wash away other colors. Making her way into the tiny kitchenette, Else's bare legs shine pale and bright in that dim illumination, an oversized black t-shirt serving only as something to keep her from getting goosebumps.
On her way by the refrigerator, Else picks up her house phone, turning the receiver on as she makes her way to the sink. Pausing as her hand starts to reach out for a dishcloth, her dark brows crease together, setting down her coffee as she looks at the phone. Her thumb presses the off button once, then the on button again — no dialtone.
"Well tha's fuckin' odd, in'nit?" Turning the phone off, she sets it down on the counter space and reaches out to turn on the faucet, grabbing a dishcloth and wetting it as she flashes a perturbed glance to the phone again, long and slender fingers wringing the cloth out before balling it up as she makes her way back towards the toppled ashtray.
On her way across the room, Else passes by the doorway to her bedroom; blinds pulled down in there to keep it comfortably dark all day in the event that she needs to sleep at odd hours. But this particular morning, that doorway to her bedroom provides the necessary shadow for something other than sleep — a serpent in her midst.
The black-gloved hand lashes out like a striking viper, snatching Else by the face as fingers wrap over her mouth and she's yanked off of her feet, spun around and violently slammed into the wall beside the doorway, the silenced barrel of a nine millimeter pressed at the center of her chest.
Panicked, Else drops the wet dishcloth as her wide, dark eyes see nothing but her own reflection in the black lenses of her attacker's sunglasses — it's a wonder he can even see in the dimly lit apartment with them on. She's terrified, so much so that all she can do is breathe in a shuddering breath, hands trembling, lips parted and jaw trembling, tears already welling in her eyes.
Feng Daiyu is many things, and an interrogator but one of them. As he presses the silencer of the gun harder into her chest, the fingers around her mouth slowly unwind as he offers instructions, "If you scream, you get shot. If you struggle, you get shot, if you do not answer my questions you will beg for me to kill you." Then, after allowing her to shakily nod her head, he eases back on the gun's forceful press into her sternum and asks, "Where did you hear about Munin?"
But this is where the record skips. Not the same old song and dance.
Click
"Bad…" a cool female voice says as a gun is pointed in the middle of Feng's back. No silencer but that's ok, Eve isn't all that worried about people hearing.
Feng would feel something else at his neck. Eve did not waste any of her equipment, yes that's a nice knife on his neck. The singer's eerie grey eyes study Feng from behind. She doesn't say anything not yet.
She is dressed in a long black dress, with slits up the sides for easy movement, her steel toed boots adorn her feet and to complete the outfit, why lookie there a trip down memory lane. Eve has donned her old black leather trenchcoat from the PARIAH days. "Leave." it would seem like Eve is only into one words today.
Feng's eyes narrow behind his sunglasses as he feels the gun in the middle of his back. There's a raise of his brows, and he eases back on the hammer of his silenced nine millimeter, lifting one hand up then the other, moving very slowly as he starts to turn around, his voice calm and slow. "Alright… alright," there's a tense swallow, "just— don't do anything foolish, now." Eyes wide, Else's reaction to seeing Eve over Feng's shoulder is a startled one, silence still caught up in the back of her throat.
Feng lets his pistol drop to the ground with a clatter of metal on wood, and in that noise there is a stunning movement of trained reflexes. Eve was trained to fight hand to hand in a somewhat slipshod way, a girl who can handle herself against drunk, in a bar brawl, or against someone trying to mug hero n the street. This, here, is one of Eve's most great experiences in humility.
How she winds up on the floor with a broken arm is too quick of an experience ot recall, there was a flash of black, her arm wrenched and fingers unwound from the gun, somehwere in that Feng wound up with her gun and Eve felt the bones in her forearm crack from the angle he bent her in. What follows, though, she can see coming clearly — Feng's polished shoe.
The kick to her face sends Eve sprawling across the floor, and Feng's gun raised up with both brows arched over the rims of his glasses. "Who are you?" It's the immediate question Feng Daiyu asks; he was just jumped by someone — it had to be a setup.
Outside, however, Eve isn't without backup for this situation. But the woman leaning against her Mustang parked on the street isn't watching for Chinese ex-pats sneaking thorugh windows, but rather someone else sneaking around in the dark.
Gillian spots her target climbing down from the roof onto the fire escape. He lands with a quiet clang, hands brushing over the dark iron grating as he starts to stand up straight, creeping towards the same window that Eve just climbed into moments ago.
Oh fuck. "Had to come in from the fucking roof, didn't he," Gillian rasps to herself as she gets away from the car, running to the building and the fire escape. He thinks he's Batman, doesn't he? She's not near as stealthy as the older woman or the man sneaking to the window had been, making quite a rattling noise as she tries to ascend as quickly as she can.
While she came armed, there's a gun she's barely trained to use tucked into her belt, safety still on. Shooting herself in the ass isn't part of the plan. Nor is getting shot at all if they can help it. Creeping and being stealthy may be the name of the game for all other people approaching that window, but not her. Metal makes a sound, and she even starts to use the 'loud-whisper' voice up at him. The kind that's toned line a whisper, but loud enough to be heard from a far, "Wait, don't go in there yet."
The bruises and limp may be gone, but she's never been much for this kind of quick activity. Suddenly she's wishing she would have been waiting up on the fire escape.
The dark haired woman expects the pain, or something like it. She had dreamt of this man's skills of course. Her nose bleeding, Eve bites her lip. Ahh that really hurts.
If Feng expected.. a scream or look of terror, he will be sadly disappointed. Instead he gets..
Laughter. The laughter of a woman driven mad, and this woman finds something very funny. "I thought you were gonna break my nose first. Damnit." She grins up at Feng, blood seeping into her mouth from her nose.
Else is given a quick glance and then a look towards her bedroom. Go to your room and wait. Is the message she would send if she was a telepath. "You ready?" she says to Feng, "Drop the gun, we got about.. ten minutes to settle this. Cops are on the way." A bluff but Feng wouldn't know that. With a grunt, Eve sits up and cracks her neck. She looks down at her arm, "Damnit, gonna have to find a healer or something."
"Who am I?" Eve throws her head back and laughs. "Well.. I'm the woman that let the first evil in, the shadow." A 'duh' sort of look given to Feng. She hisses in pain at the broken arm, but her eyes have the look of a mad woman in them.
Feng's eyes narrow slightly, it's hard to tell where they're looking from the sunglasses he wears. Dark brows furrow behind those lenses, and his head tilts to the side. His instincts tell him something that is a wrong interpretation, that Eve is playing crazy to try and buy time for something else, but what Feng doesn't realize is that Eve's plan is far more cunning because — she isn't playing, she really is out of her mind.
Moving his foot, Feng manages to nudge the islencer of his pistol up onto the toe of his shoe, then kick it up into the air and snatch with his free hand, keeping that one aimed at Else. "The cops aren't coming, because no one is going to be able to call them." Feng's brows go up slowly, "So I wouldn't worry yourself about that, dear. And besides," his head tilts to the side, "I'm one of them. Are you?" Aiming Eve's gun down at her midsection, he adds a demand into the mix. "Tell me why you're here, or I shoot you in the stomach with your own gun. If these are something teflon coated in here, you'll have about twenty minutes to live after I shoot you. If these are hollow points," his head tips away, "well, I'll just ask someone else."
"Gillian." The name comes as a sharp hiss out on the catwalk as Peter's head snaps to look at her down thorugh the metal grating. Glancing up thorugh the window, Peter squints before moving towards the metal stairs, "What are you doing here? I just saw Eve go inside after Feng Daiyu— Gilian you have to get out of here, he'll kill all of you. He's been spying on this building for a couple of days now I think, he's going to do something to that singer I— " he exhales a sharp sigh. "Get out of here."
Those blue eyes show none of the traditional softness that is Peter's, but a softness that belongs to someone else, different eyes — not Peter's, she can finally see it up close, like looking into someone else's eyes entirely. "Feng'll kill them both," he emphasizes the urgency with a jerk of his head. "Go or come with me."
"I know," Gillian says in the same loud whisper as she hurries up instead of going back down where it might be safer to be. Even if the eyes staring back at her are those belonging to someone very different, someone colder, she can't help but exhale softly and look mildly pleased at one simple thing.
Go. Or come with me.
"I'll be with you," she assures, before she pulls the gun out from the back of her pants and turns the safety off. Target lessons, gun training, all of it. It's been paying off. She looks much more comfortable with a gun than she did on any of the other times he would have seen her with one. That may not mean she's ready to use it against a trained fighter, but it means she's not backing down, either.
"But be careful, please. We didn't come all this way just to let this happen," she insists as she makes sure there's a round in the chamber. Eve described the dream— there's so much that could go wrong with this.
"Who says I didn't call them earlier.. hmm?" Eve raises an eyebrow and looks to Feng as he points the gun. "I've been face to face with Sylar and met Kazimir Volken too many times to be afraid of a gun." Eve snorts and places a hand behind her, gaze on the Asian man.
"I'm a woman who knows exactly the information you are looking for. Munin/." The dark haired woman smiles at Feng sweetly. "I even have pictures." She says to the man, she slowly rises, leaning against the wall. Giving off the effect that she is more hurt than she actually is.
"Now I've told you who I am, who are you?" Eve shakes her head at Feng. "And put that damn thing down, I'm hurt and tired now. Shit." She says and raises an eyebrow at Feng. "We can share information. Without all this.. fighting." Eve hums to herself and she drums her fingers on the walls. A constant beat on the wall. "Do you want to know what I know? About the moon being swallowed up in the darkness, darkness so dark that it rivals Volken's shadow?" she tilts her head at the man, speaking in a haunting singsong kind of voice.
"The clock is ticking.."
Confusion, disbelief, all of those normally guarded expressions flash across Feng's face as he clicks back the hammer of Eve's gun, but keeps the other one trained on Else, who's back is pressed to the wall and arms still held up in some pitiful attempt to seem even less threatening than her waifish form is. Feng takes a few steps back, motionign with Eve's gun for her to get up, but keeps his trained on Else. Unfortunately for Feng, he's now moved out of view of the bedroom window, not expecting more guests.
"Nothing," Feng says with a raise of his brows, "rivals Volken's shadow. You're living in it." His head tilts to the side subtly, "For what little time you have left." There's a squint, Eve can see the shadow of Feng's eyes moving up and down behind his sunglasses. "You know too much to be on the outside, you know about the eclipse." The eclipse? "There's a crease of Feng's brows again, and he looks to the door, then back to Eve. "You said you've seen Munin, how? When?" He doesn't mean the girl, clearly. "It's shadowed, there's no way for Clairvoyants or precogs to pick up its location. Where is it?"
Climbing in through the bedroom window, Peter stops and eases back from it to allow Gillian space to move in. She brought a gun, that's some forethought that Peter himself didn't quite consider, but he's a terrible shot anyway. Silent now that he's in the dark of the apartment, only the faint blue of his eyes catching morning light coming in through the window shows exactly where he is as Gillian follows him inside.
They can both hear Feng's voice now, hear what he's talking about, but all they can see if Eve laying on the floor with a split lip and blood on her chin. Else and Feng are out of the line of sight, save for the tip of his gun pointed towards the wall near the bedroom door — that has to be where Else is. Peter stops, crouched down on the floor and looks to Gillian, both brows raised in a well now what expression.
Despite her lack of any stealth at all going up the fire escape, Gillian's being a lot more careful once they get inside the window. Years of sneaking out of her parents' house with older boyfriends might actually pay off, as long as the floor doesn't squeak in betrayal. Unsteady breath comes out as softly as she can manage, trying not to let that be the thing that gets them caught. The pistol has been readied for fire, and the knot's strong enough in the back of her head. She is more than aware that the man crouching on the floor near her is close enough to need it locked up.
The gun in sight, but not the man, she raises her own and trains it on it. That target practice only managed to get a small target a few times, but she rarely had a long time to sit and wait for it. Eve's down, but she's may not even be shot, just slightly punched around.
Eyes shift away from the weapon, toward Peter, looking at him. He can see the confusion, the insecurity, and worse the worry. She saw the paintings, she knows how this could be made worse. Else can be shot, Eve can get shot, she can get shot, but not him. They don't even know how to make him leave. Get away was a plan, but a unsure one at best. A flash of determination and then she looks away, eyes shift back to the gun, the target she's keeping. Jaw sets. Really wishing she would have tried shooting the sunglasses on the painting a few more times…
Eve has indeed hit the jack pot in information. The seeress gets to her feet more steadily and looks at Feng as she steels herself. Her expression neutral and then one of inspecting the air in front of her, not directly looking at Feng. Out of her peripheral vision, Peter and Gillian can be seen.
"I will show you." She says and looks towards the door, "He didn't like to speak on it.." she shakes her head and looks down. Eve's shoulders shake as she laughs and lays her head against the wall. "You mean.. he didn't tell you?" Eve shakes her finger in his direction. "Come then, I'll show you where Munin is." She assures him and looks at Feng for confirmation that she can move. "Munin.. //Munin.. //Munin.." Eve sings softly and she raises an eyebrow to Feng. "Let the woman go?" she asks with a tilt of her head.
When Eve starts to lead Feng to the door, there's a quirk of his head to the side and a tense expression of his lips. She had him going at first, but now, something doesn't fit; the wording, the way she references Kazimir, that Eve will show him. The last thing he wants is her leaving the building, and that's when Gillian's hesitation causes her to lose her opportunity, asa the barrel of Feng's gun disappears from the silhouette of the door, and two quick snap snaps of a silenced gun being fired, coincides with a blossoming of red on Eve's midsection, sending her slouching against the front door of the apartment and down to the floor, leaving a bloody trail on the wall.
Else breaks out into a panicked scream, covering her mouth with her hands as Feng levels Eve's gund own at her and aim's his silenced one back towards Else. "I said shut up!" Feng screams, but this is about all Peter can handle. Charging in through the doorway, Peter dives forward and tackles Feng off of his feet, snapped gunshots from the silenced pistol perforating the ceiling as the man crashes into a glass cabinet, sending shards of glass raining down onto the floor and the books held there with them.
The struggle on the floor lasts only for a few moments as Peter is bodily hurled off of Feng as the assassin gets back to his feet, pointing both guns as Peter and —
Oh no.
The painting, the dream made it very clear— anyone can get shot except Peter. The power that devoured Else could devour any one of them if that happens. As soon as he runs at Feng, Gillian straightens, knowing from the description she'd been given the possible next moments. It happens so much faster than she ever imagined it would…
Bodily hurled off, to the ground. The man gets up. Both guns pointed at him.
Some people say moments like this slow down— it's rarely true that they do. There's just so much that can happen in this split seconds that they seem to move slow when people think back on them. There's only so much she can do, so much she prepared for— and she lost her chance to fire at his gun.
Moving foward quickly, to where Peter is laying, she fires off a shot that may not be well aimed— cause she's moving. They're the only one she really can, and then puts herself right in front of Peter on the ground. She wore the vest in hopes that they would protect from bullets— but she hadn't really factored in trained military.
The bullets make impact and Eve gasps, so many of her dreams have things stabbing.. impaling.. turning her to dust to kill her.
As she sits on the floor, her legs out in front of her. She grins and spits blood from her mouth. As Feng points both guns at Peter, she pulls out two guns as well.. ahh there's the backup. Without a beat, Eve opens fire on Feng, a few rounds from each pistol. While she may not be an superb fighter.. firearms are her specialty.
The rounds are all aimed at Feng, two to the chest, two to the thighs and one to the head. Her eyes are narrowed and she grits her teeth as she fires each round. The dream cannot happen, this was Eve's reasoning for coming here for not letting Peter get shot and kill Else.
"Else.. run!" she shouts as she fires.
Teeth gnash and Feng snarls as he squeezes the trigger and fires both guns at Peter. Eve's primary gun gives off a loud report, while the silenced pistol is just a snap that does not echo beyond the room. But the bullets don't go into Peter, no, instead they find themselves slamming into Gillian as she dives in front of Peter's prone form.
Gillian's frantic shots do little more than distract Feng enough so that what should've been killing shots manage not to hit anything immediately vital — perhaps a more saddening fate. The bullets from Feng's gun slice through her vesy in the way armor-piercing rounds are designed to do, puncturing her vest and sending blood spilling up through the holes. The rounds from Eve's gun do what normal nine millimeter rounds do against body armor; flatten. The bullet impacts her side, bruising a rib and mushrooming out against the fabric of the vest as she falls backwrads onto Peter.
In thatr same moment, Feng is blindsided by Eve's shot. The way her hands shake from the blood pulsing out of her causes the shot at Feng's head to shatter the arm of his sunglasses, sending them spinning off of his face and leaving a thin cut across his temple. His head jerks back a moment after in reflexive pain, he spins with the shot, taking two rounds right to the chest, sending him toppling over a sofa and backwards onto the glass table that shatters with his impact. That those shots took him right off his feet mean the lower bullets just rip thorugh the sofa and embed in the floor.
With Gillian laying bleeding in his lap, Peter's gloved fingers fumble and search, pulling back with blood; blood that is rapidly filling Gillian's lungs. She can feel her breathing tightening, pain coursing through her body; she's going to die — here.
Else freaks out at all of the shooting, and is frozen in her place when she's yelled at to run. It takes a moment of silent fear for her to start rushing for the front door, then skid to a stop and dash back to her bedroom, going for the fire-escape instead of trying to get around Feng.
The assassin is up, up after being shot, grunting and exhaling a hissing breath as he scrambles to his feet, pressing the barrel of the one gun he didn't manage to drop to the couch and just shooting through the sofa blindly, the shots smack into the sheetrock near Eve, one punching trough the door as Feng scrambles on hands and knees away from them, before upending and diving through one of the windows.
Glass shatters outwards as Feng falls down from the third story, tumbling through the air before smashing thorugh a cloth awning at the ground level, landing directly on the roof of a car parked below it, denting the vehicle as he rolls off and down to the side, staggering, using the wall as a brace, stumbling as he gets to his feet to try and make it away.
In the apartment, however, there is a far more pressing concern.
Gillian is dying.
Nothing ever exactly turns out as planned.
The gun falls out of Gillian's hand as she lays there, bleeding heavily, staring out at the activity in front of her. Shattering glass. The threat is leaving. Else is still alive. And while she died a half dozen times… it doesn't ever compare to this moment. Did she see this once in the visions of her death she saw all those months ago? There were so many of them. Maybe this is one…
The pale— even paler than sometimes— woman doesn't have much time to think of that as her lungs fill with fluid. There's a choking cough, as she must have been attempting to say something, and blood runs down her lips, brightening them red, much as they always were with lipstick. A different kind of red, smearing down her chin. The knot starts to unravel as her mind begins to go fuzzy, much as it had in Moab when she got electrocuted— but it may not matter near as long. Her mind tries to stamp it back down again, pulling at it, grasping, trying to hold onto it.
The mental threads tighten, but they pulse, they want to slip out. It won't matter for very long, though—
While the seer didn't scream when she was shot, she does when Gillian is. "Gillian!" she calls and crawls over to where they are, Eve is next to the window that Feng came out of and she leans over it heavily to aim and fire down at Feng a few times. Anger in her eyes.
"Else get over here!" Eve yells, taking back the shout for her to leave. "Feng is outside, do not go." Eve grunts as she feels her chest and she looks to Peter. "We need to get out of here, now." Eve holds herself against the wall. "My car is outside." She says and looks down at Gillian. "Gilly.. Gilly.. it's gonna be ok." She sings softly, tears running down her face. "Come on Else, you need to help us! We can't get out of here without you." She says and closes her eyes, before looking back up at Peter.
Else.
…Help.
"Else!" Peter roars from the floor, rising up as he slides an arm beneath Gillians and drags the woman to her feet, "Else get in here I need your help!" The sounds of frantic scrambling from the bedroom brings Else to the doorway where she sees Gillian's blood all over her floor. She freezes right there, and Peter looks over to Even, eyes wide, "Eve, get up, get up and get over here!"
Reaching down, Peter bites onto the cuff of his glove, tugging at the leather and pulling it back to reveal one bare hand. "Put pressure on the wound, He says to Gillian, guiding her over to the couch and laying her down on it, reaching to try and pull off the vest before stopping and looking up at Else as he yanks off his other glove. "Goddamnit get over here!"
One of Peter's hands lash out, grabbing Else by the wrist and yanking her close, even as black veins begin to blossom and blister up from the skin turning ashen gray on her hand. "I'm sorry," he whispers, pressing his other hand to Gillian's forehead — the only bare skin he can find.
"What does it feel like to you? What have I told you? It's a tide, it's a flow of life from one thing to another. You can take a hold of it, redirect it, cut it off completely."
Gabriel's words echo through Peter's mind as he looks down at Gillian, and there's a haze of black that rises up out of his skin, slithering around like a half dozen black snakes that bulge up from his arm beneath his clothing, and Else — Else — she screams from the pain, trying to yank her hand away, but Peter's forceful grip keeps her in place, brows furrowed, eyes wide. It hurts — not her, but him, seeing this — use the emotion, use the pain.
This isn't a kitten in a box.
The shadows reach out and snake thorugh Else's arm, graying the flesh and blackening her veins. The musician howls in pain and drops to one knee, tears welling up in her eyes as the black fog rolls down Peter's arm and into Gillian thorugh her forehead. She wheezes out a ragged breath, gurgling and choking as her back arches and the blood — slithers back inside of her mouth.
Breathing in a gasp of air Gillian can feel the pain ebbing away under a tide of tingling cold that fills her body. Vapor of thin black tendrils rises out of her skin, sewing bullet holes shut, mending broken bones, drawn in from Else.
The emotional panic, the fear, the trauma all blends together. It's just like controling any other ability Peter ever had with his original power — he had to want to use it, he had to feel, he had to have the proper emotions. Fear, as it turns out, is the proper emotion.
Yanking his hand away from Gillian and Else, Peter looks down at his hands, blue eye wide and focused on her and the effect the ability had. While there's something in his chest that rises because he was able to save her, it also sinks because Gabriel was right, he could do this all along, he was just too stupid or too proud to realize it, and that makes him bitter.
Looking at Else, holding her arm and whimpering, backed away in a corner of the room near the shattered tabel like a wounded animal, it becomes obvious that Peter isn't going to be able to siphon any more life from her without doing permanent damage.
"Get up," he demands of Gillian, reaching for his gloves, "Drive Eve to the hospital, you said she had a car outside?" Dark brows furrow as Peter grabs Eve's gun that Feng left behind, tucking it into the back of his pants. "Else's house was broken into, Triad, something. Make something up, but don't fucking tell the cops about Feng Daiyu. You'll get put on some government watch list or— god who knows." His eyes dart to Else, "She's going to need a doctor too, but she'll be alright."
Peter backs away, looking over at Eve with a weak, worried expression on his face. "I— can't go with you. Wanted criminal." His brows rise, hands held up.
The ability had been able to do this— it's how he'd gotten it in the first place. Gillian's grasping at the threads of her ability as she's moved, right up until she can breathe again. All of a sudden everything comes so much easier. A hand goes to her chest, the blood smearing on her fingers, her palms. It takes a few seconds for her to process everything, her ears ring for a moment. A hand goes up to the forehead, the point of contact. There'd been pain, but something about it changed—
Eyes move to Eve, bleeding, then to Else, then back to Peter as she gets back to her feet, surprised she's able to move…
"We'll be going to a Ferryman doctor, not a hospital," she says, though with all the shots fired, the unsilenced ones especially… they won't have much time. "Else can't stay here, what's to stop him from coming back? We— Peter." She hesitates for a moment, then moves over to touch Else, "We have to go, we have to go now— hurry, please." Gillian would prefer to stay missing, in this case. And she doesn't trust hospitals not to do surprise Evolved tests. "Eve, can you move? We already know I can't carry you." She had to call a taxi.
"Your own fucking fault." Eve grits out and she begins to slide up to her feet weakly. "You're are going to help me in the car, and come with us. When I'm patched. We talk." She says to Peter and points to his hand. "Put the glove on, Gillian can't do it by herself." The carrying her.
"Else?" she calls out, her voice grow weaker and weaker. "I dreamt you were gonna be killed. I came to save you." She smiles weakly. Mission accomplished at a price as always. "Will you come with me? I can protect you, I promise. We have so much.. to teach each other." She says to the woman and looks to Peter and Gillian. "Ya know… if I die… I'm gonna be real pissed at you two." basically move it! "Please Else.."
"Whatever you do, do it fast. Eve's only got about thirty minutes with those wounds…" Peter's eyes settle on Eve, head shaking. "Thanks but no thanks, you screwed up my catching Feng." If only he knew, "Next time, stay out of my way." With that kind show of gratitude, Peter slips into Else's bedroom door and the singer is now curled up in the fetal position in the corner of the living room, crying, her gray and bruised hand cradled against her chest as fear and panic keep her from doing anything resembling rational thought.
Peter, on the other hand, slips into the shadows of the bedroom and towards one of the open windows. "Don't follow me," he hisses out, stepping out onto the fire escape with a clank of the metal grating, then several more clangs as he hops stairs down to street level. He isn't done with Feng Daiyu, and that means leaving them behind.
At least Else is alive, traumatized, but alive.
Stay out of his way. Don't follow him.
Not too long ago, Gillian had said that she wouldn't go looking for him again, wouldn't try to go after him. Saving Else was the reason for coming. Mission accomplished. But that doesn't change the small choke of pain as he hops down the stairs and makes his way away. Yeah, he saved her life— yeah she's happy he didn't just tell her to go when he saw her— but…
Sorry, Else, she's taking it out on you.
"Get off the fucking floor and move if you ever want to fucking sing again." she growls at the woman, with far more force in her voice than someone who'd just nearly died should be able to have. She still tastes the blood in her mouth, smells it when she breaths. It's lacing so much of her— it'll take forever to feel like herself again.
"You're coming with us, right the fuck now, cause that man will come back and you will die, even if you can't tell him jack shit." Her hand wraps around the woman's arm and starts to pull on her. Adrenaline. She doesn't want to get caught. If she doesn't come after a few steps, she might have to leave her.
Eve only has 30 minutes. If she can half walk, then that may be enough. "Fucking help me carry the woman who saved your life. I know what he did to you hurt, but would you rather be dead?"
"Fuck you!" Eve calls out, "Learn how to fight and use a gun before you go after him, dipshit." The singer uses most of her strength to say that stuff to Peter and then she looks at Gillian and nods. Then a second thought enters her head and she looks out towards the window, Peter isn't that far so he'll be able to hear her. "I'll fuck see you in a bit, asshole." Ok there, time to get herself better.
"Just tell her to hurry, we gotta get to the docs and then I gotta.. so much stuff to do. "Else? Grab your other notebooks please." She says and then pushes away from the wall, she slumps over. "Ah that's gonna hurt something fierce." She looks up to Gillian. "Thought you were gone, but let's get the fuck out of here. I gotta feed Nanai." She says and hums weakly, the blood trickles out of her wounds. "And I need to get these photos to show to that thing." She says referring to Peter.
Fear and adrenaline causes Else to rocket up to her feet when Gillian snaps at her; her rather prompt reaction to barked orders speaks volumes of sad stories about what her childhood may have been like, but the alacrity with which Else rushes to Eve's side is something of a relief. Reaching down to take one of Eve's arm, Else drapes it over her neck, looking to the purple and blue bruising all over her own injured arm, then down to her distinct lack of pants.
Swallowing awkwardly, she realizes this is probably not the most awkward thing she's ever been seen doing. With one arm around Eve and one of the singer's arms around Else's neck, she and Gillian are able to lead her out into the hall of the apartment thorugh the front door. But as they go down the hall — Else without pants on and in just a t-shirt and Gillian in a blood-covered bullet-proof vest, Eve bleeding out from the stomach and the prior sounds of gunshots — doors are already open, people watching from apartments slam their doors and futily struggle to call 911 from severed land lines.
But invariably there's going to be cell phone receptions from the area, frantic 911 calls, police will be at the apartment before they can get back from the Ferrymen doctors office. It's only by the time she's halfway down the hall that Gillian realizes she left her gun on the floor inside, shell casings everywhere, their blood, everyone's blood.
Everyone's blood but Feng's, thanks to his vest and Peter's from not being harmed.
It's a mess, it's an absolutely clusterfuck of a mess.
But as they go down three floors of stairs, as Else chokes back sobs of fear and confusion and anxiety as she helps the dark-haired seeress into the lobby, past confused people watching from their apartment doors and out towards Eve's waiting car.
All the mess in the world, makes up for one life saved.
Even if no one will realize what was averted.