[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]

"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.