Disclaimer: I own zippo. Except the plot. And Jo. And the two pint-sized twins. (You'll see, I promise.)
Author's Note: I just saw Four Brother last night and woke up this morning with this idea. Let me say, wow. FB is an all-time favorite for me now. I loved the brother dynamic, and I 'specially liked Jack's character, (Bobby came in second, tied with Angel ;).
This starts off during the shoot out at the Mercers' house. I don't claim to be an expert with these kinds of settings…but I'll do my best ;) Let me know what you think and if I should continue…!
Also, for readers of Blackbird and Crash and Burn, updates will be coming soon, I promise — I just couldn't get this idea outta my head :)
Collide
The road is long before me now,
but the memories beg me to stay.
-Holly Brook, "All Will Be Forgotten"
It was a quiet morning, but with her childhood rooted in the rough suburbs of Detroit, Jo Davis knew better than to rest easy and assume it would be a quiet rest of the day. Something was always going down in this city, in this neighborhood. Bullets didn't have to be flying for trouble to be stirring.
The clamor of bickering kids drew the college sophomore from her thoughts as she turned another corner. She was on her way to drop off her two pint-sized passengers at their new address. It was rare that an adopting family chose to take siblings; Jo considered it a tiny miracle in the vast expanse of disappointments that so often went with the adoptions of in-town kids. And though 'chauffer' generally wasn't in the intern job description, this was Social Services, and you did what the job required of you to ensure any kid's safety.
"Hey you two, pipe down or the duck tape's coming out," Jo warned, glancing in her rear view mirror at the seven-year-old twins.
"Oooh…duck tape. You scared, Lena?" The male half of their duo, Samuel, asked his sister.
"Uh-uh," Lena shook her head of black curls.
Jo was chuckling when she turned the corner onto the next street. Until, that is, she saw some crazy knucklehead dash out into the middle of the pavement. She slammed on the brakes before she made the jerk road kill, only to realize that he was chasing someone else towards the corner of the three-way intersection.
"What the…" Jo trailed off, cutting the ignition.
"Why're we stopping?" Lena asked in her squeaky voice. The small girl leaned forward to see more, silently unbuckling her seatbelt.
The hooded figure turned and drew a gun and Jo felt her heart stop in her chest. Her fingers were frozen, gripping the steering wheel as panic seized her. Just like before, ten years ago, when the robber wearing a ski mask pulled a gun on her dad.
"He's got'a gun! He's got'a gun!" Lena and Samuel were screaming in the back seat, clamoring to get her attention. "We gotta go, Jo!"
A gunshot rang out, breaking the morning's silence, and the guy she'd almost flattened a second ago crumpled to the ground.
"Jo, please! We hafta go!" Samuel cried.
She watched as the hooded figure lowered the gun directly into the guy's face.
No, no, no… Jo thought. This couldn't be happening again, not to some guy on the street that probably didn't even deserve to die on his knees.
A van came screeching around the corner as Lena and Samuel kept screaming out in the backseat. At the same time, a second gunshot rang out, and she saw the hood stumble back and collapse on the powdered pavement. The sound echoed in her mind and she forced herself to start the car, her foot slamming down on the gas pedal without another thought.
"Lena, Sammy, hang on!" Jo called as she sped towards the van.
She regretted it the moment she saw several masked and armed men jump out of the car and run across the street. She barely even saw the wounded guy stumble and fall towards a telephone pole in front of a corner house. Jo willed herself to keep her eyes open until the moment she felt impact with the van, and the vehicle wasn't her only victim. She watched as at least three bodies skirted onto the hood of her car as they were thrown in different direction by the force of the impact.
For Jo, shock set in soon after that. Time slowed.
The air bag took the brunt of the collision as it inflated upon impact, but she could feel something crack near her shoulder in the haze following. She heard gunshots. Lots, and lots of gunshots.
The kids! Jo thought, frantic.
"Len…" she stumbled to form words. "Len…Lena — Lena. Sah! — Samuel…"
"Jo! Jo!"
That sounded like Samuel's voice, very far off to her ears.
"Jo, wha'appened? Are you OK?" The young boy asked through the haze of her mind. She heard a door unlocking, the unbuckling of a seatbelt. "I held onto Lena. She's OK. Let me help you!"
"Don't…" Jo struggled to speak. She could still hear gunshots ringing out, but they were slowly thinning out… "Don't…get…out…"
"Jo! Wake up!"
The gunshots. She could still hear them. It wouldn't be safe outside of the car; it wouldn't be safe inside the car, maybe only a little, maybe enough to keep them alive. She couldn't let little Samuel die because of the choice she made.
"Don't get…out…of the car," Jo gasped, but it came out only as a mumble. She opened her eyes, shoving off the air bag as she fumbled to find her seatbelt and unbuckle it.
She heard her door open and small, quivering hands clutch her shoulder in an attempt to shake her awake.
Gunshots. Still more gunshots.
"Jo you gotta wake—"
Three near-simultaneous gun blasts — one close by, two a little ways off — and then silence.
And then,
"SAMMY!"
Lena's voice, and it tore into Jo's disoriented state. Her eyes shot open at the little girl's gut wrenching scream and the absolute silence that followed it. Her heart began to hammer in her chest as adrenaline coursed through her veins at full speed for the second time in less than three minutes as she looked down at her fatal mistake.
Samuel's frail, seven-year-old body lay at her feet, his tiny form fallen to the snow-covered street pavement. A near-black pool of blood gathered at his shoulders. His chest was still and his eyes were closed.
"Where the fuck did they come from!?"
"From Sweet. Who else?"
"Not the shooters, dumbass. That car that took three of 'em out!"
Jo heard the conversation as it was bellowed from across the street, heard footsteps pound towards where she sat staring dumbfounded down at Samuel's lifeless body. She heard a woman close to hysterics shouting for an ambulance; Jo hazily hoped that she had dialed 911, even if it wouldn't do little Sammy any good.
The twenty-year-old girl — who had seen someone die before her eyes once already — fell to her knees and gathered Samuel's small, lifeless body in her arms as she passed out from the white-hot pain darting through her shoulder.
"Jo! Jo, wake up! Please wake up!"
"What the fuck was she thinking?"
"Who's the little girl?"
"Sofi, get a blanket! We need to get both of them out of the street 'fore any more a Sweet's men come knockin' again."
"Tell me that boy she's holding isn't dead."
"Sammy can't be dead!"
"Where's the driver? I'm gonna blow his fucking brains out."
"Jo! Come on, Jo! Wake up, Sammy!"
"Already shot his sorry ass to hell, Bobby. Jack's bleedin' like a goddam fountain here."
"You hang on, Jackie. Don't you dare fucking die on me, you hear me?"
"I got…shot."
"Damn straight, white boy. How's it feel?"
"You believe what she did? Camille'd kill me if I ever did anything like that."
"You have done somethin' like that. A whole lotta somethin's. How shot is your memory, Jer?"
"An ambulance is coming!"
"'Bout fuckin' time they arrive — get Jackie and that girl up now!"
Pain was the first thing Jo felt as she opened her eyes. It was dulled, but it was there. The fog clouding her brain threatened to make her pass out again, but she fought through it. The memory of the shootout came back to her and she had to swallow tears that threatened to overtake her again.
"Lena—" she choked out, her voice hoarse from lack of use.
"Lena Delgado is in the safe care of her foster parents, Miss Davis," a hard, monotone voice spoke, cutting off her thoughts.
Jo cracked open one eye to see a cop staring down at her. He was African American, with close-cut hair and a light mustache. He looked kind. A good cop, she hoped, but you could never tell these days.
The realisation that she was being visited by a cop raised internal alarms as well — where was she? Jo tried to push herself up, but immediately felt a stab of pain shoot through her right shoulder. She sunk back down onto whatever bed she was laying on — she assumed it was a hospital bed, judging by the whitewash walls and soft beeps of machines nearby.
"She's OK?" Jo asked the cop.
The tall man nodded in answer. "Her brother, however, was not so lucky."
Jo felt her heart clench at the memory of holding Samuel in her arms just before she passed out. He'd been shot, because he was trying to help her, because she was trying to help some stranger. What the hell had she been thinking! Armed men. Several of them, and she thought, what? That she could take them down like the hero she knew she wasn't?
Jo pushed down the grief in her chest; there'd be a time to mourn for Samuel. Now, while she was still in the hospital, with no idea of what had caused the shootout, was not the time. She needed answers.
"There was a man — he was shot," Jo said, swallowing a couple times before she spoke again. "He wasn't part of the group that started the whole thing."
The cop tilted his head to the side a little before speaking. "Jack Mercer. He'll be fine. His brothers were the ones who dialed 911."
"Why'd I pass out?" Jo asked, glancing at her immobile right arm.
"Dislocated shoulder," the cop supplied. "You were lucky, Miss Davis."
You think I don't know that? Jo thought, suddenly frustrated.
"What's going to happen to the men who killed Sammy?" Jo asked next.
The cop gave her a funny look, as if asking 'You don't know?'
"I went into shock," Jo said. Her voice took on a hard edge when she repeated her question, "What about the men who killed Sammy?"
"They're dead, Miss Davis," the man said at length. "Self defense in a shootout, I'm afraid. I figure the youngest Mercer boy'd be dead too, if it weren't for you."
Jo closed her eyes at that, unable to think about the consequences of what saving this Jack Mercer's life meant for Samuel. Hell, she would have traded places with Samuel if she could, but it was pointless wishing. Kids were caught in the crossfire all the time in neighborhoods like hers, the only difference this time was that it was under her charge that a little boy had been shot.
The cop must have left, because she wasn't questioned any further after that. All she wanted was her discharge papers from the hospital and a cab so she could inform the director at Social Services that she'd be canceling the rest of her internship.
She let her eyes close as sleep enveloped her once again, the drugs kicking in.
When Jo came to again, it was to look into the face of a young man. He had grey-green eyes and longish dirty blonde hair; some of it was plastered to his forehead from sweat. His shoulder was bandaged, his arm in a fabric sling. He was dressed in faded blue hospital garb. Looking down she also noted he was in a wheelchair. By the pale color of his face, she guessed he probably wasn't supposed to be out of bed.
"You that crazy ass chick who crashed into the van on purpose?" He asked abruptly, breaking the silence first. His voice was deeper than she'd expected for someone who looked to only be a few years older than her.
"Depends," Jo answered. "You that idiot moron who ran into the street screaming Bloody Mary?"
Jo watched as the guy's face darkened for a moment, his gaze drifting off to stare into memories long buried, but never forgotten.
"I was bait," he sighed after a moment. His gaze settled back on her as he said, "I'm Jack."
"Jo," she returned, indifferent to his attempt at introduction. Normally, she might have made an attempt to be patient and kind — her job required both, but Samuel's death weighed heavily on her shoulders, and, at that point, she couldn't focus on anything but grief and her own self-disgust for her actions.
"Jo?" The guy quirked an eyebrow at the name, drawing her from her thoughts.
"Joanna," she elaborated automatically. She hated her full name. The second half was a tribute to an absent mother. Besides, her father always called her Jo. Used to always call her Jo. She shook her head at the change in verb tenses.
Jack nodded silently and unconsciously rubbed his bandaged shoulder. "I just wanted to say thanks," he said. Jo gave the guy a weak half-smile in response; it was still wholly her fault, but at least Samuel didn't die for nothing. "My brothers probably won't be in, but they're grateful, too."
"How many do you have?" Jo couldn't stop herself from asking. She was an only child.
"Three," Jack smirked as he answered. After looking at her for a moment longer, he nodded his head as goodbye and turned his wheelchair around, ready to leave. "I'll pray for that kid you lost," he said just as he began wheeling out of the room.
Jo's voice stopped him. "You pray?"
Jack turned around in his chair and Jo saw his mouth quirk in a half-sad smile. "My mom raised me right."
So...what do you think? Review and let me know, cool? ; )