"Lucien!" Mei-Lin's scream shatters through the crushing press of panicking families, bouncing off heads and clothes in so many directions that no matter how hard he swivels around, no matter how many times he scans the crowd around him, there's still no sign of where she called from.
His arms press people in every direction, fighting through the crowd first one way and then the other. Lee squirms in his arms, tears streaming down her small face. "Lucien! Lee! I'm over here!"
At the sound of her mother's voice, Lee's small head leaves its safe perch buried in her father's neck, joining his desperate swiveling and whirling, her small body squirming madly enough that Blake lets her down without really thinking about it, tiny cries of "Mama!" lost in the press of the crowd as he secures a tiny, cold hand in his large one, and lets out another desperate cry of "Mei! Where are you?"
"Lucien!" It's a shriek now, but so feint, barely audible over the monotonous cacophony surrounding them. Vaguely, he realizes Lee has stopped crying.
The crowd is faceless somehow, surging like a single living entity. "Lucien!" The cry is so faint, it barely exists. "Lucien, where's Lee?" It sounds so much like an accusation, somehow right beside him.
Lucien is on his knees, feet trampling around him, an endless sea of legs and hands, the screaming strangely muted. Someone trods on his right hand. A hand that is as empty as his left.
He raises his head to the sky, watches the clouds drip red. Lets a cry rip from his lungs.
"Lee!"
There is no answer.
00
"Hang on Charlie!" Blake's voice sounds strange to his own ears, remote and desperate and lost. The fingers that strain against his wrist bone are large, long and fine. The sort of hands that show diligence, care. He's strangely struck by the careful cutting of the nails denoted by the perfectly measured length shared by each digit digging into his skin.
"Doc! I'm slipping!" Charlie's voice sounds desperate too, but also panicked and close. Blake's other hand slips along the railing, scrabbling for a purchase as his legs slip out of their wedge against the tower boards. Charlie's eyes are wide, scared. He's never seen Charlie scared before.
His hand tightens around Charlie's wrist, knuckles going so white he can almost feel the blood flow constrict in both their veins. His breath comes in shallow puffs in the frigid air, ice scrapping painfully under his chin, sticking to the bristles of his beard.
"Sorry Doc." It's quiet, a perfectly still morning, not a soul about, not even the murderer they were looking for. Blake thinks he would have heard the whisper even in a gale. He always hears Charlie. "This is a pretty stupid way to die."
Blake finds just enough extra lung capacity on his next breath to scoff lightly. "Don't be ridiculous Charlie. I can't think of a better way to go." Charlie huffs out a breathy laugh of his own. Blake's right foot slips completely, sending them both lurching a couple inches closer to the good forty foot drop below. Blake thinks one of them might just survive it, by at least a few seconds. He tightens his grip.
Charlie's face is white with freshly falling snow, his eyelashes strangely ethereal in the morning cold. "You could just let me fall you know Doc. There's no sense in us both dying because I'm a clumsy fool."
Blake hasn't been a father in almost twenty years, not properly. He's far from forgotten how to look stern and disapproving though. "Don't be foolish Charlie. And don't you dare loosen that grip young man!" The last is uttered in response to a slight twitch in Charlie's ring finger, which may very well have been from the cold at this juncture, but Blake's taking no chances with his current cargo.
His left leg slips a little further. Blake fixes his gaze steadily on Charlie's and goes for deadpan. "If it makes you feel any better Charlie, you get to explain this one to Matthew."
Charlie laughs. The tower door bangs open. Blake's hand slips off the railing.
00
"Lucien!" Mei-Lin's voice sounds strange, almost as if an Australian accent was slipping into her cultured vowels. The terror is still there, the desperation.
The crowd swirls around them, Lee a warm weight in his arms. She's crying, her tears leaking into his open necked shirt. "Mei! Where are you?!" Blake feels the weight in his arms begin to slip, the crowd begins to melt away.
"Lucien!" It's Jean's voice somehow, the crowd's faces coming into a strange sort of focus. The air is cold, frigid in the summer heat. His breath puffs painfully against the wood beneath his chin.
"Daddy!" Lee's hand slips from his fingers, his knees hitting the ground with a crunch. The crowd surges, an endless parade of Munros trampling over his empty hands.
A cry rips from his throat. "Charlie!"
There is no response.
00
Blake's hand slips off the railing with a painful wrenching scrape, his legs feeling strangely detached as his body plunges forward.
He catches Charlie with both hands as his torso clears the edge, an abrupt jerk bringing them both into painful contact with the wooden slats surrounding the tower.
Blake meets Charlie's incredulous eyes, pausing just long enough to assess whether the pained gaze is lucid enough to risk looking away.
A chanced glance later, and Blake feels an incredulous laugh shake through his body, warming him from his clenched fingers right down to where Lawson has his ankles in a vice-like grip, Hobart laying full across the superintendent, bracing the whole lot of them with his not inconsiderable bulk.
Blake glances back at Charlie, who is looking at him like he's completely crazy, seemingly unconcerned with still hanging a loosened grip from certain death. His voice warms the air around them, cutting across Lawson's exasperated "God Blake, how on earth do you get into these situations!?"
"Oh Charlie. We're never going to live this one down."
Charlie's laugh lights up the winter air with a shower of scattered snow.
Hobart nearly drops them all off the roof then and there.
00
"Lucien?" Mei-Lin is standing in front of him, bright summer dress hugging her beautiful figure to perfection, gentle smile gracing her face, radiant as the gentle swelling of her middle.
"Lee, where are you sweetheart?" Giggles peal through the garden, echoing around the humid air. "Over here, daddy!" His daughter's small form darts from one tree to the next, slightly reddened black hair swirling in the wind.
"Doc! I'm right here!" Charlie's eyes flash a cheeky grin around the door of the surgery, Rose reaching out to swat him playfully, as Blake shook out of his apparent latest contemplation of Jean's ability to make amazing tea. "Charlie, we've got to go back to the victim's house!" A chair squeaks back in exasperation as Charlie dutifully heads for the door. Blake's voice filters back through the opening. "And get your coat, it's bloody freezing out here."
Charlie's mouth quirks into a smile as he throws a sarcastic, "yes dad" at the doorway.
"Lucien." Jean's hand is soft on his clenched fists, soothing the whiteness out of the skin.
"It's alright. You can let go now." The voice sounds odd, many people overlaying each other, a cacophony of noise that somehow isn't the least bit afraid or terrified or desperate.
If anything, it's almost warm.
Blake slowly lowers his eyes to his hands, blinking once, twice.
He waits a beat. Then another.
Slowly, he opens his hands. A slender fingered hand finds its way into one palm, a small, warm one answering the emptiness of the other.
Blake squeezes his fingers gently, closes his eyes, and holds on.