Participants:
| Scene Title | Here Alone |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Logan and Sasha discover that their household is one member short. |
| Date | May 26, 2011 |
The lights of the little brick house are all turned on and visible through the closed curtains. The window of the front door is black, unusual since there's a lighter curtain on it than any of the living room bays. Upon closer inspection it's the back of a sofa, propped up against the door, barracading it. The back door is much the same, only it's a stack of chairs and the kitchen table.
Logan's antiques may have suffered a little abuse in the time that he was gone.
From somewhere upstairs, the barking of a dog can be heard. Muffled through a couple of doors, more specifically Logan's bedroom door and then his closet; where Cheza is giving away Delia's hiding place as she attempts to either alert someone on the outside to danger or simply panicked.
"Ssh— shhhh… Cheza quiet.. sshhh.." The redhead whispers as she tries to soothe the dog, not risking reaching out to pet her. Her knuckles are white as she grips the bat that Tania used against Luka, necessitating the invasion of the Koslow siblings bedroom in order to procure it.
Someone is trying the door, a thing that only Cheza can really detect and bark about, unlike Delia in her dark hideaway, the rumbling of the dog's cries blotting out subtler sounds.
Backing down the squat, concrete stairs, Logan is baffled to the point of his defenses rising, unsure what to make of siege-like barricade laid down on his own home, and the distressed sounds of his dog upstairs, causing him to tilt a look up at the windows above his head. He twists a look back to regard both the street, empty of suspicious vehicles, as well as Sasha Kozlow, who probably lacks as many answers as he does. And maybe if this was any other neighbourhood, and maybe if he didn't know a thing or two about its inner workings, Logan would be more bemused than wary.
But he has a pistol in his hand for all that he isn't making an effort, yet, to kick in the door. Holster empty beneath his jacket, his clothes formal and fine, blacks and reds, with vain touches of a mandarin collared shirt left open and silver cufflinks, the mingling smell of cologne and smoke.
He sort of wants to come back in the morning, but he's wise enough to not immediately suggest it.
"Nothing inside. Radios, I mean. Nothing I can sense."
As Logan is backing down the stairs, Sasha is moving away from the house; either the Englishman's desire has temporarily bestowed upon him some sort of power of telepathic suggestion, or his companion is about to do something monumentally stupid.
And given who his companion is, it isn't difficult for him to figure out which, but before Logan has the opportunity to warn him off it, Sasha launches himself forward again, using the distance to establish a running start so when he kicks off the pavement and makes a grab for the drainpipe attached to the side of the building his hand catches it at the highest point off the ground. A combination of leftover momentum and upper body strength hauls him up several more feet.
Although the drainpipe wasn't designed to withstand the weight of a one hundred and seventy-odd pound man, it manages to hold — albeit with with a shuddering groan of protest and a popped screw that tinkles down onto the sidewalk and bounces against Logan's foot.
Sasha reaches out and snags the lip of one of the second floor windows with one hand, and then the other.
It's partial fear and partial desire to remain hidden that prompts Delia to 'release the hound' as it were. Logan's closet opens only enough to set the barking half wolf loose on the intruder before it snaps shut again. Inside, the redhead drawls further into the corner, covering herself with clothing pulled down from hangers. Anyone who knows Logan knows that his clothing is pristine and wouldn't be found in lumps on his closet floor. It's the young woman's hope that whoever it is, doesn't know Logan and won't think twice about the mop of red curls that tops the heap of clothing.
Cheza's barking quiets to a whimper as she waits for Sasha to come inside, hopping up to the sill and down again. Everywhere else inside the house is quiet, not even the sound of a television to welcome the man to his own home.
Protest forms and dies in Logan's throat as Sasha goes launching upwards, jaw clamping shut again and watching with locked fascination on what might happen next. Whether the Russian slips and breaks his neck, or gunfire from the windows, or— the sound of Cheza's scrabbling feet and growling barks that won't last when she realises the night time intruder happens to someone who smells familiar. Gun held loosely and pointed at concrete, there is perhaps no way in this world that Logan would be enthusiastic to climb up in Sasha's wake barring being chased.
He's not dressed for it, for starters.
Sasha's elbow punches through the window, splintering glass and fine pieces of wood that come away from its frame under the pressure. The leather of his jacket protects his arm from cuts and scrapes as he reaches inside and fumbles loose the latch between fingers that feel thicker and clumsier than they really are. It's squeaking open the next instant, and the Russian squeezes himself inside, mindful to duck his head and bring his shoulders together, making his body as compact as he is physically capable — which isn't very.
From inside the closet, Delia will hear the sound of broken glass ground under Sasha's boots, and a low grunt of surprise from Cheza when he roughly shoves the animal away from him on his way across the room. The closet would be one of the first places to check for the girls, and yet he strides purposefully past it and thunders open the door that leads out into the hall.
He barks something in Russian and, receiving no answer from Tania, thumps down the stairs. It's less than a minute before the couch scrapes across the floor downstairs and Logan is being admitted back into his own home.
Delia closes her eyes and hugs her knees tighter against her chest. The bat ticks against the closet door, muffled though it is with layers of fine cloth. Though the Russian's voice is a familiar one, she's reluctant to peek out from her hiding place until the thump of the boots goes from the stairs to the front entrance. Only then does the door squeak open.
Slowly, the young woman creeps from her hiding place, bat held at the ready in case Sasha isn't Sasha but someone a little more nefarious. The floorboards protest under her socked feet as she staggers to Logan's bedroom door to close it. She tries to be quiet but the clumsiness of her drug induced stupor causes her to slam it a little rougher than intended. Again, just in case. The glass littering the floor near the window is carefully picked through as Delia makes her way toward the window, intent on climbing out the way the intruder climbed in. Why she didn't leave beforehand is anyone's guess.
Knock knock.
Oblivious to woman upstairs tottering towards the window, Logan waits with feigned patience for the door to be opened, an eyebrow raising at the sound of heavy furniture being moved to clear the door, the ray of internal pseudo-sunshine of the brightly lit interior piercing through the thick glass. His expression is hard and steely as he pauses then steps inside, sweeping passed Sasha with a glance back at the Russian, prompting an answer without a question, before he moves to yell, "Delia?" up the stairs, impatience and command both in his voice.
But when he moves, it isn't upstairs — he heads for the back door and stops short at the configuration of furniture pushed up against it. "Fucking hell."
There are no soldiers here. Also no sign of his younger sister. Sasha's cursory exploration of the building and clipped attempt to bring Tania out of hiding with something spoken in their native tongue are confirmation enough. Whether or not Delia is still inside is less of a concern to him, and he waits to see whether or not she answers Logan's call before pursuing that particular question mark, occupying himself instead with searching for clues or anything capable of providing him with some sort of explanation for what happened here.
He kicks back the edge of a carpet flipped up in haste and stomps it flat under his boot in his frustration with a sound that resonates through the house like a gunshot. Snarls something that is likely the Russian equivalent to Logan's fucking hell.
One leg is already out the window when Logan's voice rings through the house. Ignorant or uncaring about the glass spread on his bedroom floor, she pulls back inside. Still gripping the bat with one hand as she stumbles, half shuffling, through it on her way to his door. A few of the shards prick through the protection of her socks, dotting the carpet with droplets of blood. "M-Mister Logan?" In the redhead's mind her voice is clear but it sounds foreign to her ears, as though her voice came from somewhere other than her own mouth.
"Mister Logan!" When she appears at the top of the stairs, she wobbles a bit, grappling for the bannister before sliding down the first few steps. The rest are tumbled down, adding a new collection of bruises to her already battered form. When she lands at the bottom, she scrambles up fully intent on running toward the kitchen. Her vision is blurred by tears of relief that she blinks away, not wishing to show the weakness to the British man or his Russian companion. With one arm, she wipes those that have spilled down her cheeks onto her long sleeve. "Mister Logan— I can't— I don't know where Tania is. There was a knock… I can't remember."
Turning at the sound of Delia's voice, and her bodily tumble down the stairs, Logan shoots Sasha a glance as he opens his jacket to slip the pistol inside, freeing up his hands so that he can curl them firm around the woman's wrists, mostly to steady her. Should he have had his usual ability, he might have been able to pick up on a chemical inbalance making her a little wilder and clumsier than usual.
As it stands, he doesn't, and picks up on something else.
Holding her at arms length, he twists to look down towards her ankle, where the device is newly strapped around it and emitting its little signal, a beacon in a sea of information. "Who?" is what he asks. Not what happened, necessarily. He's starting to paint a picture of that. That Tania is gone is not his immediate priority, but only because something else is.
Sasha is a column of tension on the other side of the room. It's his focus on Logan and Delia that keeps him from pacing the length of it. A hand splays fingers on the wall behind him. The other digs blunt nails into the softest part of his palm, which isn't very soft anymore and hasn't been since he was in his late teens.
What's on Delia's ankle is a broader answer to Logan's question — too broad for him to act on, and so he remains silent and still, awaiting a response from the girl that can spur him out the door and into action, but in case there's any confusion about what Logan is asking: "Names."
There's a slight shake of her head, the angry bruise along her jawline coming into light as well as another bruise on the opposite side of her neck. A small red dot is in the middle with a trickle of dried blood creeping a few inches down from its center. To Sasha's trained eye, it's the mark of a needle punched in much with too much force. "I— I don't know… it's all fuzzy. They had guns— I woke up on the floor."
One word rings through her mind, spoken with an accent much like Sasha and Tania's. As her breathing quickens and deepens, her lips turn downward as she threatens to let loose a new wave of tears. "A-abandoned… he sounded like you." That is spoken to Sasha before she turns her eyes back to Logan. "Please don't leave me alone. Please don't leave me here alone."
Logan can't readily say he knows the names of any Russians on the force, military or civilian, or otherwise European — for example, Heller is not — but it doesn't much rule them out. Just narrows it down. His attention is on the ugly shadow on her face, missing drug mark entirely, and seeing more of the threat of rising tear storm behind reddened eyes.
"Not planning to go anywhere," he tells her, putting a gentle slant on his voice that neutrally hard stare belies as he studies her. It would be a good cue to maybe draw her into an embrace, but he forgets. He's still registering that he is blameless. "What'd you tell them?" These are the kinds of specific questions that aren't very helpful, but his curiousity is sharp, cuts through the understanding that Delia barely remembers.
Sasha's nostrils flare out around the next exhale. His hand splayed against the wall connects with it once, twice, three times with increasing force and intensity, and if there was more hanging from it, it would rattle with each blow. Abruptly, he shoves away and stalks across the room — each footfall is louder than the last, reaching its crescendo as he crosses the threshold and explodes out onto the stoop.
There's a moment where it looks as though he might reach and pull the door shut behind him, but instead he veers off to take the steps two at a time and disappears.
A man who sounds like him isn't much to go on. It is, at least, something.
Opening her mouth, Delia's only answer is a breath inward and a blank stare into Logan's eyes. Her arms go slack and the bat in her hand suddenly feels too heavy, slanting out to the side. She slumps her shoulders and lets a long whoosh of air out through her nose, her gaze finally drifting off the man in front of her and to the floor where the socks with the mocking monkeys have turned red. "I don't know… What if I told them everything? What if I told them all about the Ferry?"
She flinches each time Sasha's hand pounds against the wall, visibly upset that she can't do or say more. More upset that she might have already done and said things that might have put the teen in danger. Turning her head to watch the Russian's back as he disappears, she stares at the space he leaves behind for a long moment before finally focusing on Logan again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know… I thought because I was with you… Please don't leave me here alone." His reassurance that he's not going anywhere don't seem to have much effect.
First, Logan is confused. The pull of his mouth and the furrow of his brow both communicate where the fuck're you going as pale eyes track Sasha's progress after they'd snapped to the source of the sound. Even when he remembers Tania's alleged absence, he hisses a warning, "Sasha," but the man is long gone by the second syllable. It's not as though he's even close to intoning a please don't leave me alone in echo of Delia's meeker plea, but—
But.
Letting go of Delia, he moves by the dented wall to peer out the door, and closes it again, neglecting the locks. Locks don't mean a lot when there's a broken window— they don't even mean a lot when there isn't— but it's probably true that the house is in no immediate danger. He stands there for a moment, eyeing the flat of the shut door, hands on his hips. "C'mon," he says, finally, conceding some sort of defeat as he backs up from the door. His jacket is peeled off, and he undoes holster with it, both things set aside and a hand going out to take Delia's hand. "There's bound to be something on television. Not much else we can do right now." And he plans to stay up.
Even though Logan has abandoned his gun, Delia keeps a firm hold of the bat in her hand. The other slips into his as she gives a jerk of a nod in answer and follows along behind at a slightly slower pace. The house is in shambles, which is nearly no fault of her unwanted visitors earlier. She doesn't lay claim to the rest, remaining silent with her head bowed. It's a guilty posture and Logan is astute enough to put together exactly who is to blame.
"My TV's broken," she answers, "I have books?" They're the worst of the worst in the world of trashy romance novels, he's caught her with them before. It's also an invitation to one of the only untouched rooms in the house, only because there was really nothing in her own bedroom that she could have used as a weapon. Except a bonsai tree.
Yeah his fucking house is a problem, but he isn't going to deal with it right now, sweeping a study around the place until Delia gives him an alternative. Books. "Super," Logan says, stepping backwards from the mess and urging her with a tug to lead the way up.
He leaves the lights on, too.