I asked for four reviews. I received two. Half. Half, half is good. Especially since the ones I did get were so positive, they truly made my day!
And I know that this is an insane updating speed for me… ~cough~ but… yeah. Enjoy another two chappies!
"CO się stało?" ("WHAT happened?") Halina repeated in disbelief, staring at the phone in her hand.
"W-well… Ms. Warsaw… ma'am…" The voice seemed very nervous as it repeated its previous lines from what Ravis could hear, sitting across the table from the woman holding the device.
Just a minute ago, he had been trying not to fall asleep over the large cup of mint-and-chamomile tea Miss Warsaw had brewed him, but now, the obvious fear in her voice had jolted him awake.
He was very curious to find out what exactly had happened, but unfortunately, despite the fact that he could hear her conversant's voice, it didn't help him any because whoever it was spoke almost hysterical Polish. And he knew better than to ask at a time like this, because despite the fact that she was a City, not a Nation, as a capital, she had all of Mr. Poland's authority behind her. And after his time in the USSR, Latvia knew better than to draw attention to himself if something bad happened, because when it did… there would have to be a scapegoat to place the blame on. More often than not, it was Toris, but he himself was also an easy target.
So, despite his curiosity, he sat quietly and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Sawa, on the other hand, seemed to have her own problems as she hung up on the caller and made call after call, either barking orders or demanding information in rapid-fire Polish. With every call she made, however, the "bite" of her voice lessened and she looked more and more distraught.
She kept repeating one phrase in circles, whoever she called. And even though Ravis had no idea what it meant, it seemed to be almost a plea for reassurance.
"Na pewno?" ("For sure?"/"Are you sure?")
She finally hung up for the last time. Her face showed an age it hadn't before- but then again, Ravis reasoned, despite the fact that she was physically in her early 20's, she must have been hundreds of years old. Her expression was drawn taut with worry.
Silently, she walked around the table to stand next to Ravis- who instinctively flinched as she neared him- and pressed him to her chest in a hug. He could feel her shaking, very slightly. It was then that he realized just how serious things were.
Finally, she whispered two words that even though the Latvian didn't understand, the message of which was very clear.
"Boże mój." She breathed, cradling Ravis' head in her arm. "Boże mój."
If Feliks hadn't been to hell and back, he'd have thought that this was it. It only took a heartbeat for a relatively normal bus ride to turn into a fiery inferno that seemed to swallow up the world.
The first warning sign was that the bus suddenly lurched to the side. He didn't think that much of it in the fraction of a second that he had before he realized that the bus had driven down a steep slope to stop literally a few meters from plunging into the Vistula River and had flipped onto its side.
It took several seconds for the hysteria to begin. Nobody had any idea what to do. They screamed and, despite the panicky driver's best efforts, proceeded to throw themselves against the emergency exit, all "little red hammers" forgotten in the mayhem.
And that was before the engine exploded.
Most of the people had managed to push their way out of smashed emergency exits and regular windows alike when tongues of flame rippled through the back section of the two-part bus.
It may have been this very fact that the bus was two-parted which saved Feliks from certain death, because he was sitting in the front half and had those few precious moments more.
One of his arms was pinned under a seat at a painful angle. Nobody stopped to help him out, because everyone's first instinct was to clamor to save themselves and whoever was riding with them. Friends, family…
He coughed violently as the smoke reached his lungs, trying to swallow his panic. The clean air was rapidly running out despite the open windows. Nie, nie, nie!
Smoke. Fire. Weight. Pain. Dark. He was losing the ability to form coherent thoughts.
The snow. The snow was his only chance. If he could just soak his shirt in the snow, he could breathe.
Air. Air seemed like a nice idea. If only he could move those two meters that separated him from the nearest hole. Alas, that would require getting out from the prison that held his arm.
Air? Darkness. Smoke. Weight. Pain. Choking. Dry. Heat.
He had to get out… breathe… his head was spinning from the smoke that filled his beleaguered lungs as he strained against the contraption that was crushing him in place.
Heat. Red. Smoke. Breathe. Choking. Stop. Move. Pain.
Those seconds felt like they took hours on end, when he struggled for consciousness against the searing heat. After a while, the apathy of a drowning man seized him and he slumped against the wall, resigned. Resigned to die.
Fire. Smoke. Darkness. Smoke. Fiery, stinging, searing smoke.
It was only when his pant leg caught fire from a stray tongue of flame… which seemed to be coming nearer, but he couldn't be sure… did he suddenly jerk into consciousness, screaming and slamming the limb against the floor until the fire went out.
Hot! Numb. Pain. Burn. Movement. Lungs. Smoke. Air. No air. Choking. Coughing.
This didn't help the stability of the crumbling vehicle at all. The whole thing shifted a few inches, and Feliks somehow knew what would happen if it collapsed.
Or if it fell into the river.
Was it a choice between death in the water or death in the flames? Had he retained the power of thought, that would have been the thing that would have floated to the front of his mind With a final effort that seared his lungs with agony, he pushed against the seat. To no avail.
Effort. Weight. Pain. Breathe. Pain. Fire. Heat. Breathe. Smoke. Weight. Pain.
Suddenly, the weight of the chair was lifted from him. He vaguely wondered what was going on, but his oxygen-deprived mind couldn't even do this properly so he simply lay there limply, once again buried in apathy.
Calm. Quiet. Finished. Smoke. Pressure gone. Dark. Far away. Sleep.
"You idiot! Move!" A heavily accented voice reached his ears, but not his brain. "I can't hold it! If you are conscious, move!"
Conscious. Was he conscious? He saw and heard everything from far away. It didn't concern him as much as the fact that he just wanted to rest…
More shouting. Sharp movement. Blur. Pain. A kick? A shove. Shock. A slap.
"Obudź się!"("Wake up!") The blurry figure in front of him slapped him, managing to get him awake. A little. The language he spoke loosely- very loosely- resembled some archaic version of Polish, which seemed familiar…
Spinning. Dizzy. Movement. Tugging. Smoke. Lungs. Air. Snow. Brightness.
…Air! Snow? Brightness?
Feliks' back arched as he inhaled sharply, then turned around and retched into the snow. The smoke was still there. But he could breathe.
Finally, almost as an afterthought, he turned around to try to figure out what exactly had happened.
The people from the bus had been evacuated. There were footprints everywhere, but nobody in sight. Perhaps the authorities had deemed it beyond saving. Or that it would fall into the river anyway. Or that there was nobody inside anymore. Because he didn't shout for help. Or anything.
Who, then, had saved him?
The Pole realized slowly that he was lying on his stomach in the snow. But the cold felt good against his heated skin. He attempted to get up on his hands and knees, the only thing he could do at the moment.
Nobody was visible. His head was fuzzy from the movement, and when his vision cleared, he realized it was because he was seeing white on white.
The figure was dressed solely in white, with a white mask over his face to conceal his identity. He only managed to get a glimpse of his receding figure. Then he was gone, and Feliks was alone.
The sirens far above his head signaled that someone was there, on the top of the steep fall. But between him and them was the bus, which was now leaning in his direction dangerously, viable to collapse at any moment.
On his other side was the Vistula.
Wouldn't it be ironic if he drowned in the very river that his legendary savior, the Varsovian Mermaid Sawa, had sworn to appear out of in Poland's hour of greatest need?
And, he thought, his mind going off on smoke-drunken tangents, where was she during the wars? The Partitions? The bombings, concentration camps, and shootings of not-long bygone years?
Where was she when he made the biggest mistake of his life?
The rescuers seemed just to have noticed him. A bunch of shouting ensued, full of what were probably instructions but simply sounded like gibberish in his ringing ears.
It didn't seem like anyone was going down there to help him, which was good. At least, he was convinced it was good. So he ignored them.
All the while, the wreck teetered dangerously above him. But that didn't really feel like it mattered… did it?
A voice suddenly called out. Unlike the others, it rang out clear as a bell inside his brain. Why?
"FELIKS! Let me GO! I'm going down there. I said, LET ME GO! FELIKS!"
It was Sawa's voice. But that was impossible, wasn't it? She was… at her flat… which couldn't be too far from the place she was now.
The sound of her voice finally seemed to snap him back to reality. It was as if he was suddenly looking at the situation through a completely different filter.
It only took a few seconds for him to rise to his hands and knees again, then to his feet. It felt like his head had just been run over by a bus…
And it would be, if he couldn't get out of there!
He took a staggering step or two, then simply lunged to the side, praying that he would roll long enough to save his life. It was just in time, too. The structure groaned, leaned, then toppled. At the same time, there were footsteps running toward him. Sawa had broken free of whoever was restraining her and…
He didn't exactly know what happened afterwards, but the next thing he remembered was standing next to her, on top of the precipice… She was repeating one phrase in a circle while helping him stand.
"I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead…"
An odd thought struck him: it was all vaguely embarrassing how easily she could pick him up or take his entire weight on her shoulders after yet another near-death experience.
He tried to say something, but devolved into a coughing fit. Finally, he managed: "You can't, like, kill a phoenix."
It was meant, of course, to sound reassuring, not full of himself. And he didn't think Sawa cared until he felt her slap him full in the face "Don't you ever do that to me again, you idiot!"
"You say that like every time." He was beginning to recover full functionality of his senses.
Her only reply was a laconic: "Get in the car." But she didn't sound quite so furious that time.
It wasn't a long drive, but it was enough for him to recover and become fully aware. Even for a Nation, Poland healed shockingly fast. He had had to learn to do so in the past, and it was a mixed blessing during wartime.
Yeah, it was nice, not remaining down and out for too long. But it also meant that more of his would-be captors were intent on killing him rather than simply successively weakening him, day by day until he couldn't go on.
The burns running down his leg, however, would stick around for a few days at the very least.
"Just like old times, huh?" He noticed.
Sawa didn't react. Okay, so it was true that she was left to pick up the pieces whenever he came out worse in a fight (which was more often than one'd think, seeing as he would even pick a fight he couldn't win in the name of freedom or autonomy), but…
"This is different." She replied hoarsely, and after a long pause, during which she pulled into a parking lot and stopped the vehicle, cleared her throat to continue:
"When you get beaten up by another Nation, I know you know better than to let them kill you. But you can't 'know better' in a natural disaster. When they phoned me to tell me you were missing, I assumed… without help…"
"Hey. I'm fine now. Don't, like, worry about me."
"I'm not worried!" She snapped, ending the conversation abruptly. This definitely WASN'T like old times, but Poland didn't dare point it out.
"They called me in for a meeting earlier, you know." She continued more quietly. "Trying to find out how I let this happen. They threatened to take away my cityhood if I refused to show."
"What?! But it's, like, totally not your fault!"
"They don't seem to think so." She said flatly, handing him a key. "You go to my flat, okay? I'll be back in a few hours." Her tone of voice made it clear that that probably meant "next morning."
"And who are 'they,' exactly?"
"Among others, your president, head of the Ministry of Defense…"
"Then I'll talk to them." He pushed the key back into her hands forcefully.
"They told me very specifically not to bring you. Something about you being half-if-not-dead and needing to recover. Sound familiar?" A small smile graced her lips.
"I'm totally fine." He huffed, crossing his arms.
"And Ravis?"
His eyes widened almost comically. "Y-you, like, left him alone?"
"What was I supposed to do?" She retorted defensively. "Let you die?"
"But… you left him ALONE?!"
"I didn't have any other options! He VOLUNTEERED!"
"You know what… I, like, can't be mad at you because you just saved my life…"
Feliks surrendered- which was a rare event indeed- but his mind subconsciously ran worst-case scenarios. He was usually quite easily able to shut out these visions, but somehow, he wasn't able this time.
Was this how Liet felt whenever he did something incredibly rash and, let's be blunt, stupid?
He quickly said a rushed good-bye to Sawa, then ran upstairs.
He wasn't quite able to get up four flights of stairs without breaking a sweat just yet (despite everything, he had just been through a near-death experience that he was trying to shut out of his mind along with the pessimistic scenarios).
He stopped about halfway through to lean against a wall and try to regain his breath. As soon as the pain in his side was gone, he continued up another two stories.
Do you remember those worst-case scenarios that Feliks was imagining earlier? All his greatest fears were confirmed when he opened the door to a dark and seemingly empty flat.
