Apologize for Collateral Damage

[andhiswife]

September 8th, 2018:

It might as well be some sort of magic, the way it happens.

Greta's out shopping on a Saturday morning, Saoirse in tow. Window-shopping more than anything else; people are starting to put out their autumnal displays. It's a little premature, but after the long, sticky summer they've had, she really can't begrudge anyone a little wishful thinking. And Saoirse is understandably excited for the season that includes her birthday.

(With any luck, she'll actually have able to have it on the day, this year. If there's to be another Purge, no one's whispered of it, yet.)

Not that she has any business invoking luck. Her own has been in rather short supply for the past few weeks. Nothing dramatic, just a steady trickle of inconveniences and little accidents. Things she could brush off if they spaced themselves out more, or if she still wasn't leaving out offerings for Sweeney, as if they might do any sort of good.

So she's a little on guard, though there's really no guarding against what happens. They're headed down the sidewalk, Saoirse's hand in hers, when Greta registers a few odd, metallic pinging sounds, like a pebble tossed into a tin cup, and then a hiss not far from her left ear, as if a fast-flying insect had gone past. She turns toward the sound with a reflexive start, frowning. Then she registers the tear in her sleeve -- when did that happen? -- and as she frowns at it, bewildered, the blue of her dress begins to slowly bloom with crimson.

She's bleeding.

Only then does the pain kick in, as if her nerves were waiting for her to work out what had happened before sounding the alarm, and she stops short with a little squawk of dismay. Her grip on Saoirse's hand tightens. Without thinking, she tries to shift her arm to get a better look at the injury. The pain flares. "Wh--?!" she squeaks, appalled. What happened?

Comments

[selkiesaoirse]

"Mum?"

It's supposed to be a simple, maybe somewhat cheerful walk through the streets. Saoirse loves seeing all the harvest things, and a few shops even have Halloween themed decor in their windows. It resolidifies that her birthday is right round the corner, and she'll be a mature eight years old.

She'll be as old as Ben was before she came to Darrow.

But all thoughts of that leave her when she registers that Greta is bleeding, that she's hurt, and she gasps.

"Mum!"

[to_do_and_die]

It wasn't possible. By any measure of physics or geometry, it wasn't possible for a bullet to have hit the woman walking down the street. But it had. Billy actually just stared for a moment, trying to work out how it was that Greta had been hit.

Then his brain kicked back into gear. He holstered his weapon; it disappeared beneath his suit jacket as he swept onto the sidewalk, mostly interested in getting between the little girl and anything else that might come that way.

"Castle!" he yelled, sharp and a little shocked still. "We have a situation."

Frank had to have seen it too, if he was as close as Billy thought he was. He hadn't seen him when the first bullet whizzed passed his head and embedded in a wall, but he was there.

[onebatch_twobatch]

Frank's gun was still hot from the brief exchange that had been going on when whatever had just happened happened. There was this brief, breathless moment where everything seemed frozen in place. He could almost hear the carousel music, the laughter of his wife and children, their startled screams cut short--

He was moving even before Billy called out to them. This was not in the unspoken rules of dealing with each other. Even in times of war, the civilian population was to be protected as much as any soldier possibly could. There were rules of engagement, even for non-civilian combatants. Only Frank and Billy were the ones at war, and there was no reason--no physical way--that anyone else should have been in danger for that salvo.

He flipped the safety and slipped his gun safely away, despite the heat of the barrel, into the waist of his jeans. Now, he could see it wasn't just the woman with the grazed arm, but a little girl too. He swore under his breath.

[andhiswife]

Staunch the bleeding. Reassure Saoirse. Those are the two things she needs to do, but she flounders a moment, reluctant to release the girl's hand.

It doesn't even occur to her that she's been shot. She knows a little of guns -- what they look like, and how they'd sounded during the Purge, all distant, staccato bursts. But there was no sharp report of a weapon. She might just as easily have had a spell cast at her. Either way, she has no idea where or who it came from, and no idea how to protect Saoirse from the next volley. If there's a next volley.

She corrals the girl towards the nearest wall, more out of instinct than anything else, and only then risks releasing her hand. "I--it's all right," she lies, hovering over Saoirse like a large, anxious bird, gingerly pressing her palm against the wound with a hiss of pain.

Then someone snaps a word that is both so familiar and so senseless in this context that she has to see who's speaking. It's that man she met at the coffee shop -- Billy -- and he's striding towards her with such unexpected purpose that she doesn't know whether to be relieved or nervous. Without really thinking, she shifts herself to stand between him and Saoirse.

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse feels suddenly scared. Greta is bleeding, and two men are coming at them, and she doesn't know what to do!

She clutches to Greta's skirts, and later, she'll be ashamed of herself for hiding and not protecting the only mother she's ever known. But right at that moment, there are two people she's never met, and she's certain that one of them is somehow responsible for this.

"Mum, don't be hurt," she insists. Her voice is tiny, and she peers around Greta to eye the men distrustfully.

[to_do_and_die]

Billy put himself between the kid (and Greta, since she was already shielding the girl) and everything else until Frank made an actual appearance. Seeing him still felt like a swift punch in the chest. But there was a bleeding woman and a freaked out kid to deal with.

"She's okay."

Well, she was bleeding, but as far as Billy could tell, Greta had been grazed. At worst, maybe shot through-and-through, which hopefully meant no digging out a bullet. Billy had trouble taking his eyes off Frank, like he'd get a bullet in him the first time he did.

"Greta, we need to see that arm."

He wasn't even sure how to handle the fact that she had a kid with her.

[onebatch_twobatch]

Billy knew the woman. Frank didn't. Frank was not instinctively surprised that Billy knew an objectively attractive woman, around their age. Billy kept looking at Frank; Frank looked at Billy and then didn't. Billy seemed to know what he was doing with the woman. There shouldn't have been anything to deal with.

But Frank's eyes gravitated toward the child. She was young, very young, and her eyes went everywhere, to all of them.

So Frank moved. Got small and low and closer to the girl, shushing softly. Frank had had children. Frank had worked with children. But Frank was also large, and a stranger. Everything was a mess, and none of this was how it was supposed to go. There was never meant to be collateral damage. Frank and Billy were too good for that.

[andhiswife]

Oh, god, and now there's another one. Greta eyes the newcomer uneasily; he's large and imposing, and the crooked angles of his nose don't speak to a life spent bookkeeping. All his attention -- once he's done glaring at Billy -- turns to Saoirse. The way he makes himself smaller, as if to make himself less frightening, might remind her of Bull, a little, if she was inclined to be charitable.

She isn't.

"I don't know what happened," she says. Ten seconds ago, she would have just sounded bewildered. Now, there's a faint, cranky stress on the word 'I,' because she's beginning to suspect Billy and whoever this other man is aren't the least bit in the dark. "I was--we were just walking. Who are you?" That's directed at the crouching stranger near her feet. "Did you do this?" That's for either one of them, her gaze shifting suspiciously between the two men. She makes no attempt to offer her arm for inspection.

[selkiesaoirse]

The big man isn't bigger than Dad. He's not even as big as Dad. But he's bigger than Thomas, and he's filled with muscles, and his jaw and nose are big and drawn in hard angles.

But his eyes are sad, and gentle, and Saoirse can feel herself trusting him despite the situation. She sniffles and tugs Greta's skirts.

"Why's Mum bleeding?" she asks, and she asks the big, sad man with his big, sad eyes, because she senses he'll answer her outright, like she's a grownup, even if she's so little. Everything is a jumbled, noisy mess, and Greta is bleeding.

[to_do_and_die]

This was the kind of clusterfuck he never had to worry about at war. Collateral damage was best avoided but sometimes inevitable. No one could think about it in the moment other than calculated risks. That this scenario should have been impossible didn't make dealing with it any easier.

"That's Frank, it wasn't him. It wasn't either of us."

Billy moved to fill Greta's line of vision, attempting to distract her for a moment while Frank handled the little girl; maybe they were of a mood to kill each other, but Billy trusted Frank with kids.

"Hey, focus here for a second, let me look." He was surprisingly gentle as he held Greta's arm, tried to see how bad the injury was. She likely needed a hospital, but from what he could tell, it was barely even a disabling wound. She'd recover fully. "You have some bad fucking luck, lady," he muttered under his breath. "That shot hitting you was impossible."

[onebatch_twobatch]

The noise of Billy and the woman talking was background, because in this moment, Frank was focused on the girl. Frank put his knee on the ground, fingers jittery, tapping against his thumb.

"She's hurt," Frank said, but then quickly assured, "But it's gonna be okay. Bill's gonna make sure she's okay, and I'll stay with you until we know, too."

[andhiswife]

Frank gets a suspicious look, mostly by virtue of existing near her when she's inclined to be suspicious of everything, but then Billy distracts her with his (admittedly gentle) handling of her arm.

Gentleness aside, she still hisses through her teeth when he turns it to examine it better. The pain is sharp enough to almost distract her from what's being said, but she still hears it -- clearly enough to wince when he mentions bad luck, and to narrow her eyes when he speaks of a shot, impossibly, hitting her.

She's been shot? She knows little of guns -- what they look like, and what they sounded like at a distance during the Purge -- but she knows she didn't hear the telltale report she'd expect if a gun was involved.

Billy, on the other hand, seems to know altogether too much. "So it wasn't either of you who did it, but you still know exactly what happened," she says, aiming for deadpan, but too strained to quite achieve it.

[selkiesaoirse]

When Greta hisses, Saoirse's entire being focuses on the sound. She cries out, a mixed, truncated sound of anger and fear, and shoves at Billy with both hands.

"Don't hurt her!" she yells. A tiny fist flails and hits him in the stomach, and it doesn't occur to her that it might not harm him. She won't stand for letting him hurt her mum even more! Tears are streaming steadily down her face, now. She doesn't understand how it's happened, but she knows it has to do with a gun, and guns are dangerous. If Greta dies, she doesn't know what she'll do.

[to_do_and_die]

"Hey, easy down there." Billy glanced down at the little girl, only mildly reproachful, after she shoved him and hit him with a little hand. He remembered, once, feeling protective of his mother. The last time he felt that, he'd probably been about this girl's age.

He turned his attention back to Greta's arm, and the fact that she was getting salty about the whole thing. He couldn't blame her.

"Yeah, now you and I match," he said to Greta. "Look, that thing impossibly ricocheted like six times. Ask Frank, he knows the geometry as well as I do. But there's no bullet to dig out. We should get you to the hospital, unless you have somewhere else you'd rather go."

He almost offered to take care of it himself, but that would mean going back to his place, and even if Frank knew where he was living, he wasn't inclined to just invite him in.

[onebatch_twobatch]

The little girl moved, and Frank actually managed to utter a brief little bit of a laugh. The situation was so fucking ridiculous, so completely and utterly impossible, and to watch her go after Billy like that and have him be so gentle broke him of whatever imbalanced reverie he'd been in. Gently, he put a hand on her shoulder.

"She's hurt," Frank said, "but Billy's not going to hurt her. We're going to make sure she's okay."

He said it with a certainty that he felt down into his bones. Now you and I match--Frank's stomach lurched, thinking of Billy's face after the DHS officer had shot him. There had definitely been a bullet to dig out there, Frank thought, but he didn't say that. It was good that this woman's was a clean through and through.

He looked at the little girl. "Do you want to be up and see? I know it's a bit scary, because Mama's in pain, and there's blood. Mama can't pick you up right now, but I could, so you can see she's going to be okay and that Billy's helping."

[andhiswife]

Greta looks down in shock as Saoirse starts swinging her fists, the girl's name dropping from her mouth in astonishment. Billy is obviously unhurt, and privately, Greta doesn't blame Saoirse for deciding he's in need of a smack. But this is also becoming more of a scene than Greta would like.

"I'm all right," she says, pouring all the reassurance into the words that she can muster. Frank's offer earns him a faintly dubious look, but then she nods. "Do you want to come up and see?" Not that she thinks a good look at her wound will help much, but it's true that she's in no position to pick Saoirse up. Even her uninjured hand is covered in blood, and she's loathe to start smearing it on her daughter.

To Billy, she adds, “No, the hospital’s best.” It’s relatively familiar territory, and they handled Saoirse’s arm well enough. How fitting that they should both return under similar circumstances.

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse is reaching for his shoulders even before Greta can finish repeating the question. The moment she realizes that her mum is alright with it, she takes him up on it. She's not afraid anymore: she's just angry.

The sight of the blood is enough to bring a couple more tears rolling down her cheeks. She reaches with one sleeve of her coat to try to wipe it away.

"Mum, you're going to stain," she fusses, focusing on the one thing she thinks she can actually help.

[to_do_and_die]

"Blood's not as hard to get out of fabric as you think it is," he said to the little girl. Frank's got her, that's all that mattered. Billy already had his phone out, because they needed a ride and they didn't need the fuss and noise of an ambulance: Greta wasn't exactly hanging by a thread.

"Is Saoirse coming with us? Should Frank take her somewhere?"

He realized that to Greta, who barely knew Frank, that the idea might sound terrible. Well, it was out there now. He coaxed her toward the end of the alley so they could at least see their ride when it arrived.

[onebatch_twobatch]

Hospitals meant questions, and possibly police, and the idea of it made Frank instantly leery. The last time he'd been in a hospital he'd been under arrest, waiting for arraignment. He'd died and come back since then.

But Billy had all of that handled. Frank held the little girl on his hip, as familiar with that as he'd ever been with his own kids. No, stains certainly weren't a worry, and if Billy was right and it was a basic through-and-through than there hopefully wouldn't be any lingering damage to the woman either.

"Either way," he said gently, "I can keep an eye on her."

[andhiswife]

"It can all be mended," Greta reassures Saoirse, trying to smooth some of the pain out of her own expression, now that it's in clearer view. "Me and the dress." There's something utterly heartbreaking about the way the lass tries to help, dabbing at the mess with the pristine white fur of her coat. Greta's still hesitant to put her bloody hand anywhere near her, but the back of her palm is still clean. She lifts it to Saoirse's cheek, gently brushing some of her tears away, wishing she could do more.

Billy's suggestion earns him a sharp look. "Of course she's coming with us," she says shortly, frowning at Frank as if he might just take off with her. Saoirse seems comfortable enough with him, but that's not saying much; the lass has always been trusting to a fault. At any rate, she doesn't think Saoirse would appreciate being taken away, and she doesn't want her to think it a likelihood.

[selkiesaoirse]

"Yes, I'm staying," she insists. She'll bite and scream if they try to separate her!

Greta's reassurances do a little to settle her, at least, but she's still worried about her. There's bright red drying dark against her coat sleeve, and she sinks into the big, sad man's strong arms and hides the sleeve from herself, and from Greta.

She chooses not to pay attention to how long they wait for their ride to hospital, just like she chooses not to wonder whose car it is, so long as she and Greta are together the whole time.

[to_do_and_die]

Billy held his hands up in a kind of surrender. "Forget I asked," he said. He urged Greta into the car when it arrived, and gestured for Frank to get in with Saoirse. He'd ride up front. It'd be too awkward for men their size to cram into the back together with woman and child.

"Hospital ER," he said to the driver, who he was guessing might be a local given how generally lax they looked about the whole affair. Natives had the weird ability to just roll with shit that Billy almost envied. He was already trying to think of how to talk through this one with any doctors. There were too many people involved to get a story straight, especially when the kid back there was likely to just blurt out what happened.

The last thing he wanted to do today was talk to any kind of authority. More than that, he had no intention of spending one second in a jail cell. Not here, not ever.

[onebatch_twobatch]

The whole mess of it made Frank uncomfortable, first and foremost because he and Billy were armed, and not least of all because the last time Frank had been in a hospital he'd been under arrest--and the time before that, he'd been shooting at someone.

He sat, rather awkwardly, with the young girl between himself and the woman--Greta, Billy had called her, but he hadn't caught her daughter's name. It was important, though, that he let her be close. And now that Greta's arm was away from her, Frank thought it was good to have her as near as they could get.

He did buckle her seatbelt, though. Safety was important, even if she was too little to be properly and safely restrained.

[andhiswife]

Greta would have liked to spend the short car ride to the hospital comforting Saoirse; instead, she spends the better part of it just trying not to get blood all over a stranger's upholstery. It makes for a quiet, intensely awkward ride. By the time the car deposits them just outside the hospital, she's about ready to just grab Saoirse by the hand, blood notwithstanding, and leg it inside, leaving Billy and Frank to sort themselves out.

But she makes herself wait, her hand still clamped over her wounded shoulder. "You don't have to stay," she tells Billy, her gaze sliding over to Frank to encompass both of them. Not that she relishes the thought of taking away Saoirse's support system, but they can and should call Thomas, anyway. "Unless either of you have a better explanation for this than 'I don't know,' which is about all I'll be able to tell them." It's mostly true, which means she'll sell it better than whatever outright fib they might try to collectively concoct out here on the sidewalk.

[selkiesaoirse]

Saoirse wriggles down out of the big, sad man's arms, because she'd much rather snuggle up to her mum. She doesn't want to hurt her — she'll be so, so careful not to hurt her — but Greta is the best at making her feel better, and even though Saoirse thinks she should be making Greta feel better, she's still just scared enough that she wants a little reassurance and comfort from her mum.

After that, she'll supply comfort. Besides. They need to call Thomas, and Saoirse has her phone in her pants pockets. It'll be easier for her to call than it will be for Greta.

She looks up at the smartly dressed man, the one that Greta seems to know, or that seems to know Greta, anyway. He's been very good, so far, taking control and making sure nothing else bad happens. Saoirse doesn't like his eyes, and his accent is funny, but he doesn't seem to be a bad person, and she likes that he's in charge right now.