five things that never happened to Nikki Heat...

1) WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

She comes to with a god-awful ringing in her ears, like she's sixteen years old and has spent the night at CBGBs dancing by the speakers. Ears ringing, head splitting, yup, must be the morning after a really good night out. She can still smell the smoke from the club on her clothes. Her mother is probably so pissed off. Again.

It takes Nikki Heat a moment to realise that the intermittent noise she hears above the ringing is someone calling her name, and it's not her mother calling her and completely freaking out, her mother's been dead for years. The huge weight on her back disappears and she's grabbed by a pair of hands. Suddenly she's fighting back hard because for god's sake what's up with the light, and the smoke which is totally not cigarettes from a club, and why does it hurt so much to breathe or move and who the hell is touching her like that?

'Nikki! Nikki, it's me, stop!'

It's loud enough, close enough that she can hear it, and though the voice is completely distorted, there's something about it that's okay, familiar. She blinks her eyes open and it's Jameson Rook's face above her, sweat and grime coating his skin. It's Rook holding her, rocking her, patting her face and her arms and her legs, bending close enough for her to read his lips.

'You're alive. You're alive, thank god.'

'I'm alive? What happened? Why are you here?'

It comes back then, his panicked call and the mechanical voice. Running like hell for the bedroom, diving under the mattress praying it was going to be enough. Clearly, it was. She hurts in more places than she can count, but not the kind of hurt that says something vital has been pierced, something bony broken. Just the kind that says tomorrow is going to be exceptionally unpleasant.

Rook is still talking but she can't hear, and she can't breathe with him in her face like that. She pushes roughly at his shoulder and tries to sit up. That is not so good. That is, christ, that's her ribs and maybe her shoulder, and the world spinning, and for a moment she has to stop moving because she's sure she's going to throw up.

'Nikki, damn it, let me help!'

He's yelling loudly and right in her ear, so she hears that just fine. She pushes at him again. 'My ears are ringing bad enough, Rook, without you creating permanent damage.'

She's pushed him away, but now she finds she needs him after all, because her legs are strangely wobbly and she's finding it difficult to walk. The headboard of her bed will only help so far, and the heat of the wrought iron is a shock that's slowly clearing the fog from her mind. She looks around and realises she's standing in a pile of burning wreckage that used to be her home.

'We have to get out of here,' she says. Rook is nodding inanely, mouthing more words. She takes a step towards him, and another, and really she must be in shock because it takes the horror on his face to alert her to the fact that she's walking barefoot on burning embers and god knows what else.

It's not until he puts his coat around her that she realises her feet are not the only thing that's bare. Clearly she should never take showers at night. Bad things keep happening when she does that.

Rook is gesturing for her to put her arms around his neck and she shakes her head. She had shoes here someplace, didn't she? A closet? A sudden burst of heat to her left signals the end of that. It's all starting to burn around them, everything she owns, everything of her mother she still had left. That's a pain that's worse than the ribs, worse than the indignity of Rook hooking an arm behind her knees and hauling her into his arms whether she wants to be there or not. And then he's carrying her through the living room and there's nothing, fucking absolutely nothing left.

By the time they hit the entrance to the building they're both shaking, he from the effort and she from the shock that's either wearing off or setting in. 'You're never going to shut up about your manly rescue, are you?' Nikki says, as the ambulance crews jump into action at their appearance.

'Nope,' Rook huffs, directly in her ear. 'I'm gonna have to explain this hernia somehow.'