Disclaimer: I own nothing of this series.
Summary: She'd never imagined herself in this position. Rahne/Sam. Mature content.
Author's Note: Forgive me for not remembering much of my high-school German. I used an online translator to prompt me, and hopefully my memory and the translator are accurate. "Ruhe!" :: Be quiet! (Interjection, asking others to be quiet). "Ich dachte Kitty könnte etwas auf ihren Computer—":: I thought that Kitty might something on the computer— (Sentence he was going to say: I thought something might be on Kitty's computer). "Es tut mir leid." :: I am sorry. "Und es war nicht." :: And it was not. "Ja!" :: Yes! "Ich denke." :: I think.
The title for this chapter is a line from the song "How to Save a Life" by The Fray.
Warning: This story lurks around much sexual, mature material; it is extremely obvious throughout the entire story. If this makes you squeamish, disgusted, or self-righteously angry, do not read this story. Please be advised that you continue reading at your own discretion.
…
Lines of Fear and Blame
…
(Going in and going under.)
Her mate needed her. One of her packmates wanted to free the man she loved. Another packmate could not sit by while she had the means to assist and the desire not to see them go at it alone. The third packmate stood guard, protecting the woman he loved while respecting her right to fight and her ability to protect herself.
And luck was on their side, when the cover of darkness proved the captors to be cowards.
But they still had to return to the pack, and what they missed while on their own.
(Being someone's friend isn't always easy.)
What he'd like to know was how he was supposed to sit there and eat dinner as if everything in the world was right. Two of his friends were missing—yeah, two: one from the mansion and the other, the Brotherhood gang.
Ray didn't have a problem with their former rivals that some of the older team obviously did. As far as he was concerned, one street kid regarding another, Lance had done a good job. He was a natural leader, especially without Mystique and Magneto footing the bills and demanding obedience. Maturity got knocked into him after Apocalypse, and when the boys were again left alone with that battered house down the road Lance stepped up. They did okay for themselves despite a lack of privileged money, which separated them from the Institute kids.
Class issues aside, after Apocalypse tensions were smoothed between the two main mutant gangs of Bayville. The Institute was held under a microscope by the media, which put a heavy responsibility on the students who were able to relax in the comfort of their well-guarded mansion. The Brotherhood, on the other hand, simply had less time to "get into trouble" when they had jobs and bills and the status of emancipated minors and barely-legal adults in a house with only mutant owners to act as a security system.
Sometimes Ray got uncomfortable thinking about it. He got the better luck this time 'round, but remembered well his own days before the Institute (and in worse places than the Boardinghouse, at that).
So he wasn't uncomfortable with the boys at his end of the table, with the younger team between them and the older one clustered around Xavier. And they weren't uncomfortable eating across from him, either. Without the main team at school and under the banner of mutant unity, he'd spent a fair amount of time in and out of class keeping an eye on Todd. Even outed himself by dropping a few tips about picking pockets, though he'd added somewhat uncomfortably that he no longer needed to get his hands on petty cash to make it through the week.
Todd hadn't held it against him. He'd gotten the time of day from the youngest Brotherhood member because Lance's little team-switching stunt had been accepted easily by the younger team members at the Institute. Just as they'd been all right with him, he had maintained good relations even in the worst of the Brotherhood's post-Sentinel and pre-Apocalypse days.
It would have been nice if Kitty was there with them, at this strained and quiet dinner. But like Rahne, he didn't blame her for not showing up.
Of course, he could see on Jubilee and Amara's faces that they were curious about Rahne's missing status. Jaime was right beside him, picking at his food. Ray was only able to sip at his soup because he knew what it was like not to have any food. He guessed it was the same for Pietro, Fred, and Todd, each of whom had small portions but full plates (well. Fred had two, but he was the Blob).
He could just guess what was going to go down later tonight among his teammates. They needed a distraction from the stress and worry. Rahne's words—if they were remembered, and they likely would—as well as her actions, would provide enough incentive for gossip. Speculation. Questions.
And he was so going to get dragged into it, him and Jaime. They'd be the likeliest source, after all.
He did not want to answer questions, even knowing what he knew. There was the obvious: his two closest friends definitely did not see each other as just friends. Rahne's confession about their drunken sex was a complication, but he had prodded Sam to get him to talk to her about it. After that point, all he knew for sure was that "behind closed doors" was more sex. Remarkably recalcitrant at first, Sam had a set of strange morals that made him shut his lips about their little friends-with-benefits deal up until the stress had gotten to him.
A couple of months after it started, Ray was minding his own business with notes for a test when Sam came waltzing into the library, locked the door, and proceeded to vent about his sex life as if Ray had nothing better to do. While at first stunned, he had proceeded to wonder how insane Rahne was and then whether Sam himself was all right in the head. His two best friends weren't the type to thrive with a casual relationship—especially Rahne, who always said her instincts demanded much longer-term commitment.
He could hear the excuses rolling around, the justifications and ultimately the truth that Sam knew but didn't want to accept: that he was letting her use him, and using her in return. Because neither of them wanted to commit to something that changed their relationship, they were using excuses to pretend that they were still just friends—even though their friendship definitely had changed, and would never go back. Some people could enter a casual fling with a friend and go back, but not everyone was made that way.
Except… "I don't think this is a good idea, so you two should stop it now." Yeah, that would go over well. No. And he was admittedly feeling irritated at Rahne for not telling him about this development, even though it was definitely her secret to keep or tell. Ultimately they'd do what they wanted, so he could only give advice to the one who had approached him. And Sam took it with that look that said he thought he knew better than Ray what he was doing.
Well, it wasn't like he could stop them.
And who knew—maybe they would admit to each other that they wanted more. If one of them confessed, the other would follow suit. Rahne's little "You hurt my mate!" freakout was proof enough that she thought of Sam that way. And Sam hadn't exactly kept him updated on the situation—only venting the stress out twice more since that first conversation, and each time he had listened to Ray's advice of "Tell her, you idiot!" with more consideration.
Then he had to go and get himself captured by psychos.
Ray tapped his spoon on the edge of his empty soup bowl. He didn't want to get up from the table, but as he glanced around at the other glum and worried faces, he also didn't want to stay. Damn, they all looked so depressed.
His eyes traveled over each of the senior team members before he noticed something odd. Rogue wasn't sitting with them. Letting his gaze travel instead of staring into the space above his meal like he had been since he sat, thinking all those thoughts he probably shouldn't have, he realized that she was the only one he wouldn't have expected to be missing. Kitty and Rahne, sure. Rogue?
Well, Remy was out there with Logan, the two of them tracking the vans. The Professor had said that only the senior team would be involved in any rescue attempt when he'd spoken to them all in the med wing after they were fixed up from their injuries.
But she shouldn't have been too worried about him to eat. Remy was a Master Thief, trained by the New Orleans Thieves Guild (he spoke about it as an all-caps honor, which admittedly impressed Ray although he was sure Scott would throw a hissy fit if he knew). He knew how to take care of himself in any kind of fight, and he was sneaky enough to avoid fights most of the time anyway.
Then again, she was pretty close to Kitty. Maybe she was just up in their room, being a good friend. He was planning to check on Rahne before bed after having been told in quite clearly, if softly, that she wanted to be alone for the evening.
Scooting his chair back from the table, he took his bowl to the kitchen. Behind him he heard another set of dishes clink, and Jaime's slightly shuffling walk followed him to the kitchen. He pulled the kid under his arm as they left the kitchen, guiding him towards the TV room. Some mind-numbing was definitely in order.
(Surprises can be both welcome and uncomfortable.)
A couple of hours later, he still hadn't managed to stop thinking.
At least Jaime was distracted. Tabby had cuddled up to him while they watched some random program, keeping the kid from feeling isolated among the still uncomfortably-silent group. Most had made their way into the TV room following dinner, except for the adults. The Brotherhood boys hung around the back of the room, in a corner by themselves. Ray really wished that Kitty had decided to come down and join them, so the guys wouldn't feel too lonely among this crowd.
He responded to everyone's lackluster reception by taking the chair closest to them, angled so that they could talk if interested. Todd and Fred seemed content to worry in silence, though Pietro had a stack of books he'd picked from the shelf on the wall. He was working through them at a ridiculous speed, but still slower than Ray bet he could make it through them. Wasting time, which the speed demon had too much of on a regular day.
Hopefully boredom wouldn't spark a war, though chances were when Pietro was done with those books he'd be jumpier than Todd. They really didn't need that right now—none of them, neither team. While the senior team was in the room, Scott was the only one periodically glancing at the Brotherhood over the top of his textbook. Jean had worksheets spread out in front of her, and Kurt sat on the other side of Jaime and Tabby with his eyes squarely on the TV.
Thankfully Evan was still with the Morlocks or he and Pietro would already have blown up the mansion.
Rogue was still missing, but now Ray was pretty sure she was with Kitty. He wondered if he should check on Rahne soon, before deciding against it and sticking to his original plan.
Most of the younger team was clustered by Tabby and Jaime on the couch, heads together as they chattered quietly to fill up the obvious missing space. Each of them sat somewhat stiffly: no one had escaped unwounded. McCoy had hesitated before allowing them all out of the medical wing for dinner, and only relented because each promised to take the rest of the day easy.
He was right about the gossip, though. Jubilee was eyeing him as if she were about to come over and start asking pointed, annoying questions. He clutched one of the books Pietro had finished in his hands, trying vainly to read it and ignore—
"Ruhe!"
On the couch, Kurt sprung upright like someone had poked him with a stick. Ray raised an eyebrow, the room hushing even further from an uncharacteristically dull murmur. His eye caught on the TV screen just as Tabby grabbed the remote from the table in front of her. Then he got it.
And he felt like throwing up.
The national news had followed whatever program had been on. And framed, playing out for the country to see, was footage from that afternoon's fight at the high school. Whoever called the news had known what was coming, because the clip was right at the start—Todd was being pulled out of the tree, something he hadn't actually seen. He'd turned around to see the amphibious mutant on the ground.
His stomach twisted as the newscaster's voice was overlaid upon the slightly-grainy sound of the fight. "…anonymous source claimed that the local news would be interested in what would happen with the local high school's mutant students at noon. We caution viewers to be aware that this is violent content we're about to broadcast. Here in full is a shocking fight and the immediate aftermath, captured by reporters stunned to witness what happened earlier today."
The sounds from earlier that afternoon rushed through the speakers. It sounded like he was back in the fight, the chaos of it. Now able to see without having to protect himself, he refused to wince at each punch. Whoever had the camera caught it from a sideways angle, and they didn't zoom in but stayed at a wide range, capturing pretty much all the action—the running, the way the rest of the mutants ran towards their friends while the other students were half-running, half backing away.
The camera wobbled when Lance's fists hit the ground, the cameraperson struggling to keep hold of what was happening. "Don't you dare!" He recognized that scream, faint though it was—the camera crew had stayed across the street for this, to capture it all. He swallowed hard at the sound of Kitty's fear.
The camera righted just as Sam took off, his landing beside Lance much clearer as the camera stabilized. Ray realized then that even though Kitty had obviously been phasing through the rope, Rahne had refused to change to her wolf shape until that point. Until, faced with many attackers who obviously intended violence, her Sam trapped by them, she—and her wolf—had no choice. And the rest of them did the same, at first determined until forgetting entirely about the school rules in the face of violent hate.
"We only need two!" That was the signal that all bets were off, shouted as the reinforcements stormed forward.
On the screen, Rahne turned furry and feral, but fought without her teeth and her claws. She tried to scare them off first, backing away, frantic, before a dirty shot to the ribs. He watched as Bobby got an even dirtier slam to the diaphragm that dropped him, breathless. Amara tackled the guy before he could go in for a second hit, all but clawing the club out of his hands and swinging it wildly in front of her. Biting his lip, he saw how Jubilee tried to defend herself from a woman who left her crumpled to the ground with not one, but three swings of that club. Tabby got a punch in the eye and he winced in sympathy (she'd mentioned her dad to him), understanding her panicked bombs to create distance to breathe. Almost proudly, he noticed that Todd used those strong leg muscles to kick one who got a chain wrapped around his hand. And he winced as he recalled how he got the bandage on his head, seeing it in violent Technicolor on the screen.
Then his fists curled helplessly, watching as it unfolded. "Go! We've got two!" and Sam and Lance thrown into a van just within the camera frame and their attackers leaving the field and laughter, just as cruelly gritty as it was live. Ray had to turn his eyes away as he heard Rahne's chilling howl. He kept his eyes closed as the howl transformed into a scream.
They snapped open again as the sound jumped, and saw that the footage had paused in the middle. It resumed closer to the action, and moving closer while recording, just as Kelly opened the floor.
"…the world you were thinking, but this kind of violence is wildly, ridiculously unacceptable on any terms! How dare you—"
"Murderer!"
He bared his teeth in a grin that he'd dared not show when it had been live. Kitty interrupted him, her words filtering clearly through the speakers. Ray was shocked to hear it, though. Guess that was the "aftermath" mentioned, though if he'd known all this was filmed, he never would have thought that they would include this bit.
"None of you are that stupid. They were Friends of Humanity, you—" She was bleeped out. "Those vans had their symbol, you've seen it! You know what they do to anyone they take! And still you didn't call the police, or the Professor! You just stood there while they took our friends! If they die it's on your head! Murderer!"
Ray rolled his eyes at the principal's incompetent sputtering denials, but his eyebrows rose higher and higher the longer the clip continued into Kitty's diatribe.
"What you saw was a group of students attacked by grown adults, two of them kidnapped, and the staff members and principal of this school doing absolutely nothing to help!"
Now he was shocked. How much of this were they going to show? He'd thought that if it made the news, it would stop with the battle to show how dangerous mutants were—but this, this was going into things said on the air that had never been said before. Things that non-mutant people rarely, if ever, heard any mutant say, and it had never been on the news.
"Open yer eyes an' look at reality! Ye are not the ones in danger here! We are the ones who canna walk down the street safely! We are the ones who canna be in school without ye encouragin' hatred! We are the ones who canna be safe in our own homes! Ye have no right, no right tah be afraid, because we are the ones livin' in danger! Not ye!"
Rahne's freaking speech…he had never dreamed would be heard by anyone but those present at the school. And now people all over the country were watching Rahne with that fire in her eyes, with that agony in her voice. After the silence that rang at her words, her face became cold. He watched himself and the rest of their friends, realizing with a shock that all of their expressions matched hers—a disturbing coldness, echoing her. The way their anger was echoed her shouting accusations.
"Donna dare tell me that we put others in danger, Kelly, when ye are tellin' them to hurt us. If my friend and mate dinnae come back alive, ye are responsible. By encouraging hatred."
And the kickers, spoken as he finally saw the Professor come into view, Scott pushing him through the grass alongside the senior team, whose faces were easily recognizable by the media.
"I wouldn't be surprised if you were the one who told the Friends of Humanity to come for us."
"I always knew ye hated us—I jus' never thought ye'd be a monster."
"Enough—"
The professor's expression was the most shocking. Betrayal and anger were plain on the face the world had never seen captured in anything but a benevolent kindness (no camera crews could even get close enough during the Apocalypse mess). The world knew him as a spokesperson for mutants, as one of the major faces, as one of the most powerful alive.
And there, the video stopped.
Kitty and Rahne, fifteen minutes of fame—and likely a hell of a backlash. His lips pressed together at the thought, but then simply couldn't bring himself to wish they could change any of what was said. There was a reason the rest of them had moved close behind the Rahne and Kitty, a visual support. They spoke for all of them, the thoughts they had never shared with the normal students, in the adrenaline-fuelled aftermath of the battle. Truth purified by fire.
The cut was no accident, either. Although he could appreciate how much of the encounter was shown, he recalled how carefully the senior team had helped each of them leave the field—the true aftermath, their injuries, was not obvious in the frames where they stood proud and defiant, holding themselves together by sheer will and a refusal to allow Kelly to see them cowed by anything while their own were speaking.
Acknowledging their injuries would have made them human, revealed that they were essentially children who had been brutally assaulted by grown adults with the evidence captured on film. And the footage had stopped while focused upon the Professor's face. On his fury. It was a scary image even if you didn't know who he was, and since most people did…
Well. It wasn't exactly hidden sympathy for mutants. It was calculated. And it was still fairer than past news reports.
He clutched the arms of the chair as the anchors looked uncomfortably out at the audience, shock thinly veiled behind serious expressions. They talked about the facts of Bayville High and Xavier's Institute, restating Kitty's claim of Friends of Humanity and adding that the police had no information to confirm or deny that claim yet.
They were just turning it into the usual debate of safety in schools when Scott took the remote from Tabby's frozen hands and switched off the TV. The room startled, half of them demanding it turned back on while the other half expressed their outrage. The Professor rolled into the room, raising his hands and patiently requesting for them to calm down.
Ray ignored it all. Struggling not to spark all over the place, he slipped out of the room and headed toward Rahne's room. She'd want to know about this. And he needed to get out of the room, out of the discussion. What happened, they couldn't do a thing about now.
He stood outside her door for two minutes, knocking patiently, before finally letting himself in. He glanced around the room. A spark of clarity hit as he took in the crumpled clothes on the floor, the open window. He backed out of her room, hoping that he was wrong, heading toward Kitty and Rogue's room. The other two missing girls, surely they wouldn't be so stupid….
A minute later he cursed and ran back to the TV room at full speed.
(Waiting is unpleasant in some circumstances.)
He was sparking.
It was a little hard to control himself when he was feeling so many different things. The sense of betrayal was pretty strong—he wasn't sure if he was amused yet at the irony of the Brotherhood outing the Professor's decision. Worry, that was up there along with frustration.
Couldn't just one thing today go right? Just one?
If Rahne didn't come back from her rescue mission in one piece he was going to kill her. She was injured! Kitty was injured! What had Rogue been thinking? Well, maybe she thought she could stop them from aggravating their wounds too much. Whatever. They were dead. He'd fry her. And Sam. Both of them were going to be thrown in a tub together and he was going to zap it because they were both out there somewhere and got themselves hurt and damn it.
And didn't she even think about him or Jaime? Jaime because the kid was freaked out now. Him because he could have helped her! If she had told him what she'd overheard he would have been right there alongside her. Hell, the entire younger team, her team and Sam's, her freakin' pack, would have been right there to back her up!
God if she was thinking of herself and Sam as alphas were they going to have a long talk when she got dragged back. She couldn't just up and go on a rescue mission without backup, or at least telling someone where she was going, to protect them. They'd have kept it secret if there wasn't enough room for all of them to go! They could have said they were going to hang out together in groups in their rooms, bonding and commiserating silently. Bam, there you go, cover that the Prof wouldn't detect!
Did she never think?
He sighed and dragged himself out of her room, where he'd been storming around as if he could find a clue to where she went. Of course she thought—she thought that she had to go get her mate back, and hadn't considered telling them because her mind was so focused on that.
She wasn't alone, at least: Kitty and Rogue were good, and were both on the senior team so they had more experience. And she likely had Remy's help, too, since they had to figure out where they were going from somewhere and the resident Cajun thief had tracked the vans away from the school and got a location.
Ray had to admit, he was glad he wasn't Remy right now. Logan was going to tear him to shreds when he found out what Ray suspected was going on while he was talking to the police and leaving the thief to watch the warehouse. The Professor had sent Scott and Jean out to meet up with Remy at the warehouse to confirm what they thought, deciding against sending the whole senior team or notifying Logan while he was busy.
His lip tilted up a bit as he left Rahne's room. Personally, he suspected that the Professor was a bit afraid to tell Logan without proof. Nobody liked it when he got into one of those angry moods, including their resident leader and guardian.
Glancing both ways down the hallway, he saw the door to Kitty and Rogue's room was slightly ajar still. He hadn't closed it all the way when he left. But when he walked over, he realized that he could hear sounds within the room and entered without thinking to knock or pause. Because it sounded like…
Kurt's head turned quickly upon Ray's entry, but the blue mutant waved him over instead of leaping away from Kitty's computer. He was practically vibrating with excitement, speaking before Ray even had the chance to ask a question. "Ich dachte Kitty könnte etwas auf ihren Computer—"
"English." He leaned forward, eyes tracking the three videos open on the screen.
"Es tut mir leid. I thought Keety's computer might haf answers und es war nicht—"
"Was it sleeping?" He interrupted, knowing like Kurt that Kitty had excellent computer security. "This was running?" There was movement on the screens. He recognized the setup from the Danger Room sessions with those masks that Kitty and Forge had cobbled together. Had they actually…?
"Ja!" Kurt pointed at the screen. "Live." He clicked on one screen, brought it up, and moved the mouse. "Here."
He started that one over from the start of the feed, and Ray watched as a ski-masked face came into view. Yup, those were the masks—sure enough, Kitty's voice echoed out of the speakers, captured by the microphone in the edge of her mask.
"This is a rescue mission. There are three of us infiltrating, one standing as backup to alert others in case of our failure—failure, which is not an option. For those of you who are unaware, this afternoon an attack on mutants in Bayville ended with the abduction of two of them. We are acting now against explicit orders from the Institute because we believe that waiting will leave those two in unnecessary danger. The Friends of Humanity have been linked to a recent rise of anti-mutant hate crimes and a body count which has not brought the police attention it should receive. As is evident from the attack at Bayville High, none of our systems are reliable. Without those systems we must take care of ourselves. So, we'll show you just what mutants are capable of doing."
It was quite the speech. As news-worthy as her last.
Ray clutched the back of the chair and sped the video back up to the live feed, pushing it back so that all three videos were visible again. Kitty, Rogue, and Rahne…and guns. Aimed at a group, some of the forms almost familiar from that afternoon merely by bulk and weapon choice. The captors, probably.
Kurt said one of his favored German curses. Ray let out several of his own preferred English ones. But neither of them could tear their eyes away from the screen.
What were they doing? Were they crazy? He could faintly hear one of the people in the center—the leader, it seemed like this was a FOH meeting, were they insane? Up against all those people? Once the guns weren't on them anymore, or if any of their members were slipping through the shadows to sneak around them—and why hadn't they used their powers to walk away from this?
He wouldn't have his chance to kill Rahne. The Professor would do it before him
His panicked thoughts latched back onto the scene in front of him at the sound of familiar words in Kitty's voice.
"This is what mutants are capable of."
On her screen, the arm holding the gun swung upwards and fired. Sparks flew down and the mob beyond was cowering as all three turned. The movements were shaky, and though the night-vision filters had kicked in it was difficult to tell what was happening. He thought that on one of them, the next shot fired was directed towards a wall. Maybe.
He held his breath as he waited. Watched as light showed, as the three figures were running, their movements making the picture too shaky at this small size to tell who was who for sure. They couldn't hear much, very well, but they could see.
Kurt hissed out a breath at the sight of a familiar Jeep, and Ray cursed in relief when he saw the backs of two heads in the front. Kitty's camera went dark after she'd leapt in, and the other two remained on. One was turned around, looking out the back of the Jeep as it drove, and remained turned that way for the longest couple of minutes until finally…she turned around. No one was following them.
Then hers went off, but one was still on. The angle was tilted strangely, and he saw Kitty's concerned expression before the final screen went black.
The two boys sat in front of the computer for the longest minute before, finally, turning to one another. Kurt's expression was everything that Ray could feel—shock, relief, overjoyed at what appeared to be a success, frustration at having to have sat there and just watched it all happen.
Reaching forward, he restarted each of the videos, watching as all three ran together—through Kitty's speech again, and then into their rescue mission. He and Kurt watched in silence, tracking the unstable motions of the cameras, the warehouse. They heard the harsh cheers and shouts, the words that seemed to burn like acid to his ears. He bit his lip in shock at the sight of his friends in that cage, one of the three angling slightly upward for him to see that the cell had bars on the ceiling, which opened up to the warehouse above. He heard murmurs from Kitty and Rahne to Lance and Sam, telling them what to do.
He stopped the playback as Kitty shot out the light. They had to be on their way, but he didn't know how far away the warehouse was from the Institute. It wasn't in town, the Professor had said that much, so it would take at least forty-five minutes to get back from somewhere outside of Bayville. They should alert the Professor. But Ray couldn't make himself move. "Now what?"
Kurt shook his head slowly. "If zhe Professor goes to court…" Ray stiffened at the reminder of the seeming betrayal from the senior team.
And an incredibly rash idea came to mind, one he didn't even second-guess before deciding that he was sick of being inactive, waiting, watching. He wanted to do something. He wanted to stick it in the face of the people who had shown the footage of that horrible fight at the school on that evening's news.
Ray nudged Kurt aside, finding the files in Kitty's computer and opening a web browser. Kurt knew what he was doing within minutes of starting it. He could have tried to stop Ray, but he didn't. That was a declaration of support in itself.
In five minutes, all three were uploaded to the Internet.
Yeah. This was what mutants were capable of, all right—taking care of their own without abusing their powers, using weapons other human beings had access to, controlling their powers with a firm enough grip that even in the face of that violence, not one of them attacked with mutant abilities. They simply broke in, rescued their missing comrades, and left without harming a single person who was calling for their blood, who would have killed them—and who had already attacked them that very day.
Maybe people would see that in this footage, uncut and not manipulated by the media.