[complete] I'm home again, I won the war, and now I am behind your door.

[amberdrake]

Who: Amberdrake and Sanzo
What: Drake's been out Healing people since the riots began, and is finally hitting the bottom of his resources when a familiar face shows up. Sanzo always had a particular timing...
Where: Ludmead.
When: Very late on the night of the arena riots.
Warnings: A little gore and violence at the start.

Amberdrake's vision is finally starting to gray out, inkblots of darkness spreading at the corners and sometimes blocking the middle, making his balance skew way to the left, or way to the right. He doesn't have to see with his eyes to Heal, so here he is somewhere between Ava's place and his own little rental house, patching some poor sod up who couldn't quite make it out of the line of fire quickly enough.

There's a gunshot, and Drake barely has the presence of mind to flinch at the sound or at the burning line of white-hot fire slashed across the outside of his arm. He's too distracted by the fact that the man his Gift was threaded into just died. Bullet to the skull, his Gift informs him as it happens in such excruciating detail, millisecond by millisecond, that even the seasoned war-Healer feels supremely nauseated.

Just as when he was Healing Wolfgang earlier today -- when there was still light and his eyes still worked properly -- he can feel a gun aimed at his own head. And just as then, he doesn't really react. Later, he'll tell himself that he was too distracted by withdrawing his Gift from the dead meat beneath his hands, but right then...

He doesn't really have a reason to care, now does he? For one tiny moment of loneliness-fueled self destruction, he can't be bothered to so much as duck.

Get it over with.

Comments

[sanzo]

"A day. You didn't... they lost you, Haven got attacked and they couldn't get everyone back. They sent me to get you, but you weren't where you were supposed to be. Here, I guess."

Sanzo doesn't shrug, but Amberdrake can hear it in his tone anyway.

"And then I wasn't where I was supposed to be, either." He's repeating himself, but he's probably been saying it in his own head for a while, too.

[amberdrake]

"They sent you to Velgarth?" Amberdrake doesn't glance at him, since he can't see more than blurs and smears and inkblots right now anyway, and the world he can see is strangely grey. "I was there for... this place took me on the tenth anniversary of when I saw--" you last, he doesn't say it, although the fact that he's still wearing that lotus ring on his bloodied hand says it all, "from when I was left back on Velgarth."

Is it any wonder he's having such a hard time processing Sanzo's sudden presence? He'd hoped, when he'd shown up on another melting pot of a world, that Sanzo was here. When he wasn't, he'd been nearly crushed by the realization that he no longer had Winterhart, Windsong, Skandranon, Gesten, Aubri... anyone from his own world. And he had thought he wouldn't even get to see Sanzo again, either.

It had made it easy to burn through his Gift during all this chaos, and to not flinch whenever a gun was aimed at his head.

Dead people weren't alone.

[sanzo]

"This wasn't intended to happen, it seems." Sanzo's tone is as matter-or-fact as it always was, blunt but bracing in its own way. "But that's always how it goes."

Whatever he's thinking, he doesn't share it aloud with Drake, but his concern can be felt. He isn't made of stone, as much as he tries to be. This is one of his companions-- his lover, once, ten years ago by Drake's time, a few weeks by his.

What might have changed in all these years? Even the feel of the kestra'chern is different!

"And here?"

[amberdrake]

"A little under two weeks," Drake says, quietly, "I was sure I'd never see you again."

The lighting out here isn't so good, but ten years doesn't seem to have added any grey to Amberdrake's black hair. He has a few new marks on his face, both from worrying and from smiling, but it's easy enough to look at him and think that he's still thirty years old and not forty.

Especially if you don't know him.

But Sanzo, of course, does.

"That house," he murmurs, shaking slightly with the effort of hauling himself along as best as he can. "Hopefully there's no militia waiting inside. I may or may not be on their radar, now. I can't believe they'd hunt down Healers in the street."

He can believe it, of course. There's no shock in him over that little revelation, not after his childhood in the midst of Ma'ar's conquered lands. But he is a bit disgusted by the whole idea.

[sanzo]

"You always attract trouble," Sanzo grumbles. But he shakes his arm out, and blood splatters, but his gun is ready.

"Hope there aren't more than four." Because that's all the bullest he has left in his gun, and he doesn't have enough hands to reload.

Granted, there is a sword slung at his back, but their enemies have guns, too, and that changes a lot of things.

[amberdrake]

"You don't know the half of it," Amberdrake doesn't laugh, because it won't be the soft gentle thing he usually makes use of, and he doesn't feel like having a hysterical breakdown out here. Or anywhere, thank you very much.

But he doesn't remark further than that, 'listening' carefully with his battered Empathy as they approach the house. The lights are all off-- he left in the middle of the afternoon and hasn't been back since.

"It feels empty," he notes, carefully, "unless they're shielding..."

[sanzo]

"Unlock it," replies the monk. "I'll kick it in."

He's got his boots on, and they're itchin' for a good old-fashioned ass-kickin'.

It's almost like he's hoping someone's in there.

[amberdrake]

"Don't break it," Drake cautions gently, "rental."

Can you say 'we have a landlord', Sanzo?

So he unlocks the door and with a chirurgeon's dexterity, siiiilently turns the knob until the door is sitting there unlatched by a millimeter but still closed. Then he takes his hand away.