AN: Working through my fear that I've lost all understanding of the characters and trying something a little different here - actually, a lot of somethings different. Just, you know. Preparing you.
And if you've been offering me some friendly pushing and/or encouragement (you know, over PM, DM or another medium entirely), I thank you for it!
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Sun That Lights The Day: Part 1/2
It's like, one second, they're listening to Spike talk them through what he's doing, a mass of wires and filaments that none of them understand the way he does. Spring's right on the horizon, air smells clean. She's mid-sentence, giving him information from the profile.
In the next moment, there's just nothing.
She's aware that her heart rate's changed, sniper breathing right out the window, no four counts anywhere to be found. She knows there was an explosion, knows that there's dust in the air, knows the earth rattled hard under her boots. She can feel Sam's eyes on her, turns to face him with difficulty.
He's got this look on his face like he's going to be sick or he's going to touch her and if he touches her, she's going to be sick. "No." No. They already did this once. "Jules-"
"No. No. Boss, did he get out? Ed, did you have eyes on him?"
Boss doesn't answer her.
Ed does though. "Negative." His voice is completely even and if Jules didn't know him like she knows a part of her own self, she'd never have heard it, that hitch in his breathing right before he answered.
"All I've got on this side is debris." Leah sounds like she's reading from a teleprompter for the very first time, words over-enunciated, just a little too clear.
"Boss?" Jules says again.
He still doesn't reply and she wants to go pound her fist against that stupid truck, find out why in the hell he's not answering her and then she hears his voice in her headset and she freezes, figures the rest of them do too, none of them thinking any other way but straight, only focusing on the obvious because that's what they've been trained to do.
"How are you doing, Winnie?"
Sam does reach out and touch her now, hand clamping down on the top of her arm like he's drowning. Jules reaches up blindly and covers his fingers with hers, suddenly realizes that everything she's seeing is wavering. Sam's fingers tighten on her skin, a shade away from painful and she can see again and she can't-
"I'm here, Boss."
And Jules thinks everything she hears in their dispatcher's voice is going to make her tumble right to her knees. She knows, knows too well what it's like, and the blast was loud, rumbled right through the cement and it looks like a little toy house that someone just came along and put their foot through, everything filled with smoke and dust, like they've been transported right into the centre of another city (and why is she thinking about this at all, has to blame Spike and his taste in movies but part of her is waiting for Bane to come leering out of the shadows).
"Okay. Okay. We're going to need you to send out Fire and EMS for us. Can you do that?"
"Already done." She sounds dull and flat and nothing like how Winnie usually sounds.
Jules thinks it's shock. Wonders if Winnie's eyes are glassy.
"That's good. Thank you, Winnie. Team One, I need to know if we can move in there. Eddy?"
Jules hears Ed take a deep breath, can hear him reciting tac plans in her head. "I don't know."
"What was it?" Leah demands. "Was it a bomb? A-a mine? Is there a chance that he-that he-"
Jules can't hear anymore, she won't, pulls the ear piece out and looks at Sam. "I want to get him out. I want to get him out of there now." It's stupid but she's thinking of how she and Sam ran into Spike and Win in the parking lot this morning, just a few hours ago, how Winnie had been laughing and Spike had been tickling her and how she and Sam had stood there and watched the show until Sam had cleared his throat (sounding remarkably like Ed) and how Spike and Winnie had stopped dead like two teenagers caught making out behind the gym. It had made Jules laugh all the way through work out.
Sam's so pale, eyes stark against his skin, so blue that she almost thinks she can see things that aren't this, aren't nightmares.
"Sam-"
"I'm going to go in."
"I'm going with you." Automatic reaction, always the two of them.
"No you're not," he says firmly. "It's not stable. It can't be. One of us is going. It's going to be me."
"What if there's another one?" she asks and her voice is shaking in a way that she's finding completely unacceptable. She takes a deep breath, puts her earpiece back in. "Your bomb disposal skills are-"
"Both of you can forget it," Leah says sharply. "I'm going in. I'm closest."
"Leah!" Boss snaps.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"We need to wait for-"
"No offence," she interrupts, voice all steady, "but we're going to wait for the Fire Department? While I'm standing right here? It's just going to waste time."
And Jules can picture the set of her jaw, the kind of woman who ran towards flames instead of away from them.
There's a pause. "Be careful."
Jules can hear sirens howling somewhere far away, outside the periphery of right here, and all she can focus on is Sam's face in front of hers. Idly, she hears Ed giving Leah instructions, the two of them talking strategy, this edge to his voice where he's telling her that if she goes in there and doesn't come back out, he's going to kill her.
Jules knows that Sam's leading her closer to them, she can see the top of Ed's head just over the hedge and she steels her whole body when they round it. She just catches the bottom of Leah's boots before the other woman's gone and Ed turns and looks at them, lines on his face like he just aged a hundred years.
"There's still a chance," he says and his voice doesn't crack and Jules thinks that that chance? It's more than other people they've lost had, clings to that hard.
"I shouldn't have let him go alone," Jules says, mutters it so quietly that she doesn't think anyone else is going to hear her.
Except Ed has the hearing of a wild animal and he shakes his head sharply. "Don't do that, Jules. Don't. You followed protocol. And we are not debriefing out here. You hear me?"
Sam's grip on her elbow is almost painful, jerks her back into the job and she nods firmly, ignores the way something in Ed's eyes crumples a little, reaches out and squeezes his forearm, gives him something to hold onto because Sam is what she holds onto.
Time does a weird thing, where she doesn't know if it's been minutes or hours and when Leah doesn't find him right away, Sam's fingers tighten on her elbow. All she's thinking is that Spike's supposed to be standing there making jokes and it doesn't make any sense that he isn't doing either of those things. Four extremely large firemen are trying to tell Ed that the building's structure is compromised and what does he mean they let one of their guys go in before Fire even got there and Ed mutters something rudely under his breath about it not being 'a guy' and oh well, it's done now. Any other day and Jules would be smirking.
She barely hears Leah exclaim something, something about breathing and blood and head injuries, slides the back of her hand against Sam's, forces herself to keep breathing so that he will too, knows he's watching her pulse and is mimicking what he sees so she slows it right down, hears his breathing slow down too.
"Oww, fuck," she hears in her headset and she feels light-headed, like she's going to do something completely embarrassing and pass out. (It's relief, she realizes. The violent kind.)
"That's what you get for messing up your wires." That's Leah. Leah who sounds so relieved and so shaky that she doesn't even sound like Leah at all, how calm and placid she is usually.
"Didn't mess it up. Asshole set it wrong. These people, I fucking swear."
"Hey hey, now. Watch your language, this is going right into the transcripts, you know." Boss doesn't sound like himself either, like he might need to clear his throat a few dozen times.
"Sorry," Spike mutters, doesn't sound sorry. "Leah, can I use your phone for a second?"
She snorts and Jules finds herself smiling despite everything that's happening right here because she can picture the look on Leah's face, all older sister, another piece of Spike found in someone else. "Yeah. Don't move too much though. I've just gotten the bleeding under control."
Jules can barely hear his side of the conversation, knows it's Winnie, thinks if it was her sitting on the other end of a phone in a building half a city away, she wouldn't even-
Spike's telling her something Jules can't even follow, catches Ed rolling his eyes and it makes her smile, this miniscule bit of normality, Ed teasing Spike about Winnie in the early days because he'd always get such a good response, a blush or an eye roll or a light shove into the wall. She can hear Leah moving pieces of rubble.
"I think I can drag him," Leah says more to herself than anyone. "At least part way."
"Wow, that sounds fun," Spike mutters.
"You sure we shouldn't wait for EMS?"
"That's stupid," Spike pipes up and Jules can tell from the expression on Ed's face that Ed wasn't asking him. "This whole building could cave in. My spine's fine, Leah."
"Yeah? What about your head?"
"Still attached," Spike says cheekily and Ed lets out a grudging chuckle. Jules wants to laugh too, feels the hysteria way down in her stomach.
And then she hears something sliding across cement and Spike inhales sharply.
"Sorry." Leah's voice is all concern.
"S'okay, Leah. It's fine. Just. Let's get out of here." Jules wonders if he's full of shit, if it's for Winnie's benefit, on the other end of Leah's headset.
Leah chooses a different path for their exit, a firefighter down to her bones, knows broken buildings better than any of them, knows about stability and studs and load-bearing walls, comes out with Spike holding tight to her shoulder, almost dragging him, her arm around him and there's blood all over his face, chalky white dust too, all over his uniform and Jules covers her mouth with both her hands. Dimly, she sees Boss open the door to the command truck, thinks he aged a hundred years too.
Spike takes one look at the three of them standing there, at Boss on the steps and smiles real big (Jules would be able to see how fake it is from a mile away, not like she hasn't known him for years here, honestly). "Nothing you guys need to worry about," he says. "Just a scratch."
Leah snorts rudely, this look on her face like she half wants to let go and drop him on his ass, see how much of a scratch it is then. Jules nudges at Sam a little, lets the paramedics get through, and she has to turn away a little, focuses only on Spike's face when they're cutting his uniform off of him. His breathing's all shallow and she thinks he's got some broken ribs in there, probably a dislocated shoulder too, if the tightening of his features when his arm gets probed is anything to go by.
He smiles up at her, raises his other hand and touches her forearm. "I'm okay."
"Yeah well," she says, thinks her voice is trembling and she doesn't care, not at all. "That's only for now. And it's not me you have to worry about. Winnie's going to kill you."
Sam laughs, this funny laugh that doesn't sound like a laugh at all, like it's either that or he's going to make some other kind of sound. "She's right, buddy. You'd better hope she stops at making you sleep on the couch."
Spike makes a face. "She wouldn't-ow, Jesus, seriously?"
"It's broken, Officer, and-"
"Yeah well, great, stop touching it!"
"This is what you get for letting a building collapse on you," Ed says, leans down and squeezes Spike's other shoulder.
"Letting?!" he echoes incredulously.
Leah lets out a slightly high-pitched noise. They follow the paramedics and the stretcher and Boss leans forward, grasps Spike's chin in his hand and shakes his head. "That's going to scar."
"Who doesn't love one of those?" Spike mutters sourly and Jules nearly laughs because if there's one thing she knows Spike hates, it's people crowding around and giving him the wrong kind of attention and then she wants to cry, that there's even the wrong attention to give him.
She glances up and sees Boss looking carefully at her and they take a few steps back from everyone else, flip their radios off. "Jules, I think you should go with him," he says quietly. "I'm going to go back to HQ and get Winnie."
"She okay?" Her concern shifts, thinks about what it would mean if it was Sam, just gone, no voice on the comm., alone with no one to check on him.
"She is. Want to make sure we stay that way. Okay?"
Jules thinks about that, how their family has grown and shifted, all of them falling into roles that overlap, thinks if Spike is like a son, then Winnie's like the girl next door, the one he's always stared just a little too long at, the one they always knew he'd fall in love with. "Okay." She clambers up into the ambulance, smiles at Sam and wonders about all the ways that he knows everything she's saying without her even opening her mouth.
"Meet you there," he says, and his eyes finish it off.
Spike's drowsy, whatever they gave him making him spout out crap she can't even follow for several minutes, even the paramedic next to her trying to hide a smile. "Jules?"
"Yeah?" She leans closer, brushes her fingers through his hair.
"Winnie okay?"
She has no idea how to answer that, thinks that the last thing Winnie's going to be until she sees him is okay. "Boss has gone to get her. They're going to meet us at the hospital. Sam, Ed and Leah too."
"Think this'll make her change her mind?"
She stares at him.
"Cause her Dad. Only. Got shot."
She has to swallow several times, get the lump out of her throat before she can answer him. "No. No I don't think she's going to change her mind." See, Jules knows a few things about changing her mind and she knows Winnie Camden and she doesn't think Winnie can compartmentalize the same way (it's the only way she could stop her and Sam, and even then, it never really stopped, just got pushed into a room with no windows and so she'd learned to build a door). "I uh." She snorts. "I don't think she's ever changing her mind, Spike."
His eyes fly open and he grins suddenly, the first time she's seen him look like himself since Leah hauled him outside. "Yeah? Hope not. Think I'm done."
"Done with what?" She's still stroking her fingers through his hair, has to lean closer to catch what he says next.
"Think she's it for me."
Her fingers stall, just for a second and then she finds herself smiling, tears in her eyes even though the only time she's ever cried with her vest still on is the day they lost Lew and they didn't lose anyone today. "Good. That's good."
"Don't go telling her that though. Don't want her going and getting a big head."
Jules rolls her eyes at the incredibly lame attempt at humour and then spontaneously presses a kiss to the part of his forehead that's not covered in blood and gauze. "Wouldn't dream of it."
When they get to the hospital, she follows the stretcher as far as she can go and then she turns around, finds Sam waiting behind her, throws herself into his arms, doesn't give a single shit about protocol, all the things they decided when they chose them. He catches her, slides his hand up her back to her neck, holds her tight.
She breathes in his familiar scent, how different he feels against her in kevlar, resolutely doesn't let out any of the tears that she's holding back. "I love you," she says, raises her chin and kisses him. "I love you." It comes out all defiant and she almost wants to laugh at herself.
"Love you," he whispers in her ear. "Always."
She leans against his side and he's strong against her as he slides his arm around her waist and leads her to where the rest of the team is waiting. Leah's drumming her fingers against the arm rests of the chair she's sitting in, Ed pacing back and forth in this five foot square. Jules clears her throat, hands Leah back her phone. She did her best to clean the blood off of it, knows she didn't get it all. Also knows that Leah won't care.
"He okay?"
"Conscious," she answers. "Think they gave him something good in the ambulance cause I couldn't follow half of what he was saying."
Ed snorts, turns to look at her and then slides into a chair. "If all of this was for the morphine…"
Sam laughs, short and just for a second but it feels like everything is going to go back to normal, like they'll all get to walk away from this one, too.
None of them move when Boss walks in, Winnie beside him and Jules sees the gap between them, thinks that Winnie's probably going to lose it if any of them touch her and it won't be the crying kind of losing it (Spike told her once that Winnie had a temper, the only one of them who ever saw it, way back before they ever even got together, "fuse as long as Yonge St but if you fry that, it's totally your funeral", how he'd sounded equal parts impressed and gleeful about it).
"Have they said anything yet?" Boss asks and Jules sees Winnie look at him sharply, sees her taking these deep breaths, arms crossed over her uniform and Jules knows Sam sees it too because he sits down, doesn't offer Winnie his chair.
"Not yet," Ed answers. "Think they're still checking him over."
Jules is still looking at Winnie, at how her lips are pressed together, how her face is pinched and white, this hard look on it, how she's still standing. Winnie's looking at Leah and Jules follows her gaze. There's a smudge of blood on Leah's neck from where Spike leaned against her as she hauled him out of the building.
None of them say anything and Winnie stands in the exact same position until the doctor comes out to talk to them, still, like she's made of stone.
Jules doesn't hear one word the doctor says, gets everything she needs to know from the way Winnie's arms drop to her side, how the other woman leans back against the wall, bites down on her bottom lip hard like she's trying to bite through it. How Winnie looks all shaky, relief painted all across her face, right down to her chin.
"That's good," Boss says to no one in particular. "So as soon as they move him we can go in and see him. That's good."
Winnie looks at him like she can't see any part of this at all that's good and Jules sees the moment that Winnie realizes that it could certainly be worse and it's Sam that stands up, leans back against the wall next to her, talks to her softly, things none of them can hear and Winnie doesn't wind up and hit him and Jules thinks he's got to be saying something right. (It took Jules a long time to see it clearly, the way Sam's only ever asked her to be careful, would never ask her to give this up. No man ever understood it before, is all.)
They all go, take up the whole hallway outside the room Spike's in and Jules thinks all of them standing out there sag against the wall in relief when they hear him make an absolutely ridiculous and slightly inappropriate joke, even though he's slurring a little, and Winnie huffs and tells him, "Careful – there's nowhere for you to hide."
Winnie's got tear stains on her cheeks when she comes out but the hard look on her face is gone and she hugs Leah fiercely and doesn't say a word.
Jules swallows hard, Sam sliding his hand into hers and she takes a deep breath, smiles up at him, squeezes his fingers hard.