PSL; [every moment's a day]

[royalboar]

[He can’t fucking see.

His eye flares bright with pain. It feels as if someone’s hammered a nail into it, blinding him, and the heel of his hand presses hard against the flow of blood that ekes past the wound, smelling of copper and warm like fire. He forces his other open, willing it wide, and light floods his vision. He sees shapes, and those shapes shake and stutter and finally fuse into the violent scene now engulfing him — them — like a storm.

He had fallen to his knees, the bones in his legs having become useless in those few treacherous moments when pain seared itself into his eye. He can feel the hard, tiled floor bruising them, shards of glass strewn around his feet (the once-drink in his hand), gunshots filling his ears. Somehow, instinct had overtaken his body as he fell, and the table they once sat at now lays upturned in front of him, his only form of cover. It might as well be made of paper, judging by the sound of the gunfire staccato-crackling through the air. Automatic, high-caliber. A bullet punches through the wood just inches away from his head, spraying splinters, and he grits his teeth as his ears ring.

Movement all around him. The rest of his retinue are scrambling for cover, and the men opposite them must be doing the same. That, or they’re already dead, bleeding out with bodies full of holes, and this thought has him reaching for his gun — when he realizes it had been resting on the table, now skidded across the floor. In the line of fire and out of reach.

Shit.]

Ashe—! [It’s the man closest to him, their crack shot gunman, who hunches behind their shared cover. Dimitri yells over the din, adrenaline and pain twisting his face.] I want you to put a bullet through the skulls of every last one of them!

[Them. Unknown, masked, wordless men who had interrupted a by-the-books, boring business exchange by barging in and lighting up the whole room. Just a handful at best, but a handful of assault rifles is all it takes to turn a good day into a bad one.]

Comments

[chivalread]

[ That “don’t” is sharp and final, a whip-crack of a word that makes Ashe flinch just slightly, a stark contrast to the cool ease with which he’d wielded his weapon in the chaos but moments before. It’s true that guilt won’t do any of them any good, but despite the fact that Dimitri very clearly chooses to carry the weight of this on his own shoulders, he won’t be the only one.

Each of them will take a piece of this, whether they want to or not. They’d all been there, and they’d all failed to save Sylvain, and in their own ways, they’ll each feel it. Felix especially must be beside himself. Ashe doesn’t say as much, however, instead willing himself to relax a little, his iron grip on the steering wheel loosening a little. ]

Yessir.

[ It’s not his place to argue one way or another, anyway.

He spends a quiet moment as he navigates their way through the sparse late-night traffic to think of the old films of which he is so fond. Gangsters in black and white scheming and manipulating and gunning down anyone who got in their way. Revenge is a common theme in those movies, but none of them ever really explore what happens when it’s over. When revenge is served in a hail of bullets, what then? Does it make the gnawing feeling of “could have, should have” go away?

They’ll find out, one way or another, but for now the spire of Sister Mercie’s church is looming a short distance away, a grand and gothic structure half-illuminated by streetlights. A low glow shines through the stained-glass panes in what Ashe knows to be the church’s sanctuary, and Ashe has to wonder if the Sister keeps a candle lit for them when she knows they’re going to be doing business.

Ashe brings the car around the back of the building per the usual – no need to go frightening innocent churchgoers at any time of day or night by waking into the place bloodied and bullet-riddled – and once parked, he gets out to open Dimitri’s door for him. ]