Author's Notes: Thank you guys for all the kind comments again! You're amazing readers. Also many thanks to RobertaWhickham for keeping me from embarrassing myself with the few little bits of actual French I threw into this chapter (and go read Fraternite on zir account if you haven't, it's amazing). I would apologize for the end of this chapter, but hey, the plot's finally moving forward, right? Right. Oh, also also, for anyone interested, the Dreamwidth blogs for the boys have multiplied because my beta is awesome. They should all be findable from agentofagency or artistwithoutacause for anyone interested in playing with them.
Part Twenty-Six: The Conflagration
It doesn't take Con more than thirty seconds to locate Enjolras once he walks into the emergency room. Part of it's due to the fact that he's been to this hospital before, both for classes and on his own, learning as much as he can while helping out where allowed.
A larger part is the fact that there's only so many people who would be yelling in a hectic mixture of French and English, and he knows both raised voices very well.
The emergency room's busy, and Con uses that to his advantage, brushing past the nurses checking people in, trusting Finny to stay close to him or run interference where needed. All his attention is focused on finding Eric—finding Enjolras—it doesn't matter what name they use, there's barely any separation between him and Combeferre as they continue doggedly about their task.
The doctors have Eric in one of the triage areas. It's not a proper room, rather a small semi-private space created by hanging curtains on three sides, with a bed and monitors tucked up against the wall. It's a space where the hospital puts patients who aren't currently critical while waiting for rooms to be found or for the doctors to decide whether or not they're even going to admit the patient. The space is crowded, Grant standing beside the bed, his hand locked tight around Eric's, an intern and two orderlies standing at the foot of the bed.
Eric looks terrible.
Con's breath catches in his throat for a moment as he takes in the scene. Eric's pressed up against the head of the bed, in shorts that may have been a light blue at some point but are currently waterlogged and blood-drenched. His hair stands out from his head in damp disarray, looking more like a lion's mane than ever. His skin is pale, several shades paler than usual, his cheeks ghost-white, even his lips having barely a hint of color. Dark bruises so purple they're almost black cover half his chest and the majority of his left shoulder and neck. His eyes are dilated, just a faint sliver of blue showing around wide black pupils, and his movements are jerky, lacking his usual fluid grace. An IV line is connected to the crook of Eric's left arm, and a small piece of gauze is taped around the inside of his right arm, telling Con that someone, at least, has managed to touch Eric and try to help him.
"—need to let us help you, Eric." The intern's voice tries to be gentle, but there's too much fear and frustration in it for the gentleness to sound anything but feigned.
"Don't." Eric's voice is thick, as though he's struggling to get each syllable out, and he slides into French. "No sleep. Mustn't sleep." Back into English, no flicker in his expression, none of the tell-tales that Con's come to watch for to indicate that Eric's allowed Enjolras to slide forward, though Eric's hand tightens around Grant's. "Don't. Need him. Need awake."
A string of syllables follows, a string that Con can't decipher though the syllables sound vaguely familiar, and his blood runs cold as a soft sound of surprise slides from his mouth. He should know any language that Eric or Enjolras would speak.
Eric notices him, finally, turning to him with that same jerky, ungainly movement. At first a smile breaks across his face, open, ecstatic joy; then hesitancy follows it, and Eric huddles harder against the head of the bed. "Sorry, Con. Combeferre. Désolé. Sorry."
Con's breath hisses out in a snarl of rage.
Eric's afraid.
Enjolras' afraid of him, and that's something that should never happen.
The intern—one Con's seen before, a woman he should know the name of, but he can't think of it right now and her nametag has apparently disappeared—continues to watch Eric, expression set in perplexity and frustration. As the senior medical professional present the intern's supposed to be the one in charge here, but it's clear that she doesn't know how to respond to the situation.
After a second one of the orderlies touches Con's shoulder. He's a well-built man, several inches taller and many pounds heavier than Con, clearly here to try to help with a fractious patient. "You really shouldn't be here."
"I think, if you want to do this without upsetting your patient more, it would be best if I stayed." Con's voice draws the attention of the intern, and he meets the distressed young woman's eyes evenly. "What are you trying to do right now?"
For a moment he thinks the woman isn't going to answer him. There's no reason she should. He has no standing here, and someone older, one of the residents or one of the actual doctors, would probably simply insist that he leave.
He's a familiar face, though, someone who's been around the hospital, and Con can tell from the way the woman's face is twisted that she's both out of her depth and unsure what to do right now. Instead of throwing him out, something that would be very bad for all of them, she turns to him. "You speak the languages he's using?"
"Yes." It's not quite a lie. He speaks every language Eric and Enjolras should be fluent in. "I'm a friend of his, a very close friend."
"If you're his friend, then tell us what drugs he's on. Tell us anything he's been up to that could explain what…" The woman blows out a quick breath, moving a strand of escaped hair away from her face. "Anything that could help us out."
"He's not on any drugs." Grant's jaw is clenched so tight it must be painful. "I've told you, he was fine this evening, he's not on any drugs, he barely drinks, and I didn't hurt him, so stop trying to send me away."
Pain and fury are obvious in Grant's tone, on his face, and Con knows that this isn't the first time he's had to say any of this.
Con doesn't know if Eric actually hears the words, if he actually understands what's being said as his eyes flick frantically from one person to another, but he certainly responds to the tone. As soon as Grant's voice shifts from quietly controlled to anger, Eric's hand tightens around Grant's, and he leans forward, placing himself between Grant and the medical professionals. "Stay. Stay. Stay."
The word alternates between French and English, neither quite pronounced right, and Con can feel something twist in his gut.
He needs time with Eric and Enjolras. They need time to help him figure out whatever happened to him, help him get his equilibrium back, help him sort through whatever mess the shadow's managed to make of his head and soul.
But first, he has to make sure Eric isn't going to die on him.
"—anyone but family. It's nothing against you. If not for the language barrier, I'd have no legal right to allow anybody other than family here." The woman sounds honestly regretful, her frustration giving way to a tired resignation. "We're just trying to find ways to help him, Grant."
"Sedating him is not going to help him." Grant's eyes meet Con's, horror and fear painfully obvious. "It's not a good idea, right, Con?"
"I think…" Con forces himself to think, to be calm, though he'd much rather push everyone else aside and simply start treating Enjolras himself. Except he isn't a doctor, no matter what skills Combeferre has, and Eric's going to be much better off having the actual professionals taking care of his body. "Grant's right, and Eric wouldn't willingly take any drugs. He values his capacity for thought too much. If I were to hazard my untrained opinion, based only on the few symptoms I know, I would suggest looking more towards meningitis of one form or another."
"We're looking into several possibilities for his symptoms, including meningitis, IMHA, a dozen other things…" The intern looks between Grant and Con before shaking her head. "He's delirious. He's reacted badly to several attempts to treat him. I need to sedate him."
Grant shakes his head, obstinate, determined, and Eric bares his teeth in an expression that does nothing to help their case.
"Eric." Con waits for Eric to look at him, his stomach clenching again as Eric's body huddles down into an instinctive defensive position. "They're trying to help you. Do you understand that?"
For a moment he's afraid that Eric doesn't. For a moment he thinks that Eric's too far gone, too lost in whatever was done to him, to comprehend what's happening around him. Then Eric nods, that terrible, jerky, graceless movement that seems to be all he's capable of right now. "Doctors. Help." He tries to say a word, stumbling and tripping on the syllables until he finally manages to continue in French. "Trying to help. I know. I'm trying. But they tried to take Grantaire away. They're trying…" Eric's body shudders, his lips losing even the faint color that they had as he slides back into English. "No sedation. No sleeping. Please."
Con turns back to the intern. "What is it that you need from him?"
The woman hesitates, just for a few seconds, before the low moans of someone else in pain outside their unit drags her from her reverie. "I need him hooked up to the monitors. We're already got bloodwork—he seemed to like the EMTs better than he likes us."
"Yeah, well, the EMTs didn't keep trying to send me away." Grant glares daggers at the woman, though he thankfully shuts up when Con sends an exasperated look his way.
"These?" Con moves to the same side of Eric's bed as Grant, his shoes squeaking slightly on water-slicked tile, and he notices for the first time that Grant's just as damp as Eric is. Time enough to ask about that later, though, and he lifts the ECG leads out of their basket.
"And the pulse ox." The woman frowns at him, moving slowly to stand on the other side of the bed.
Eric shifts, turning his back fully to Con and Grant as he watches the woman warily.
"Eric." Con hesitates, then reaches out very slowly to set his hand on Eric's uninjured shoulder. He slips into French, giving them a bit more privacy. "They need to attach these to you, Enjolras. You need to be still and trust them. Once you're hooked up I think we'll have some time alone to talk. All right?"
After a few seconds Eric's head inclines in the barest nod, and Con holds out the leads to the woman.
The woman does her work quickly and well, hooking Eric up to the ECG as well as a pulse oximeter and checking the settings on the IV drip within ninety seconds. Eric holds perfectly still for all of her ministrations, only the occasional shiver giving away his status as conscious and aware.
"There." The intern sighs as she steps away, studying the monitors for a moment before shaking her head. She addresses Con rather than Eric or Grant when she speaks. "One of the residents or doctors will be by as soon as the bloodwork comes down. He seems stable enough, but if you or he have any problems just holler. I'm going to say that you're allowed to stay here for purposes of translating until such time as his next of kin can be contacted. All right?"
"Thank you. It's appreciated." Con smiles at the woman.
She merely shakes her head. "Don't thank me. Just keep him from doing anything stupid, and don't do anything that's going to get me in trouble. If you could get him out of his wet clothes and into a hospital gown without causing World War Three, that would also be appreciated. Now, as I'm sure you've noticed there are about a hundred other patients that I need to go see, so if there's nothing else you need…"
Con shakes his head.
Grant stays very quiet, for once, and Con's exceedingly grateful for that.
As soon as the medical personnel are gone Eric relaxes, his body slumping back against Grant's.
Con reaches out to lay a hand gently on Eric's shoulder. "Eric? Enjolras?"
"Con-ferre." Eric lifts the hand that's still tangled with Grant's toward Con, turns his head to frown at his fingers, and then lifts his too-wide eyes to look at Con. A thin trickle of blood—too pale, the consistency far too much like water, Eric's definitely lost a lot of blood somewhere—slides from his right nostril. "You're here. You're not angry?"
"I'm here." Con's fingers tighten around Eric's shoulder. "And there is no reason I would be angry with you right now. Tell me what I can do to help you."
"Others? Amis?" Enjolras draws a deep breath, his head rolling limply on his neck until it lies against Con's arm.
"They're fine. They're all awake, and they're going to gather here." Some of them are probably already at the hospital, and he should probably find them. Later, though, once he's certain Eric's going to be all right.
"I…" Eric's eyes close and then are forced open again, seemingly by sheer force of will. His skin feels warm against Con's arm—too warm, just slightly, and Con's fingers itch to have Eric's medical chart in hand. When Eric continues speaking, it's in French again. "This is real, right, Combeferre? This is true?"
"This is real. This is true." He repeats the words in French, not knowing which language is registering better for Eric right now. "What's happening to you, Eric? Enjolras?"
"It's loud. Too many memories." Eric rubs the blood from his face with his free hand, not seeming to notice that he's switching between French and English haphazardly. "It's hard to think. Better now. Better with us. Grant and Combeferre. Want to see the other Amis. Say my name again, Con-ferre. Our names. Please."
"Eric. Enjolras. We'll say it as often as you want us to, as often as you need us to." Con's grip on Eric's shoulder couldn't be tighter. "You're going to be just fine, Eric. This is real, and no one's angry, and the memories will quiet down just like before."
"Yes. I'll be fine. We'll be fine." Eric's voice is a soft whisper. "Others?"
"I can send Grant to find them, if you want." It's selfish of him, perhaps, but he doesn't want to leave Eric's side, he's the one with a modicum of understanding of medicine, and he's the one who has some relationship with the hospital staff.
"Safe?" Eric's head rises and he turns to face them, his movement still wrong, fundamentally off. "Is it safe? Don't die for us. Die for the cause, not for us. Don't—"
"Enjolras." Combeferre's hand presses against Enjolras' pale, too-warm cheek. "There's no danger here, not in the real world. Remember what time we're in. Remember what world we're in. He can find the others, and there's no danger for anyone."
"No danger." Eric nods, slowly. "No danger. All right."
Grant doesn't move, his hand still twined with Eric's.
"Grant." Con raises his eyes to meet Grant's. "You heard what he wants."
"I don't want to leave him." The words are a soft, sulky whisper. "What if they don't let us come back? What if—"
"Stay." Eric straightens again, his body starting to tremble slightly. "Don't separate. Stay together. Sta—"
"It's fine, Eric." Con strokes damp strands of hair away from Eric's face. "He won't leave, then. He'll just call them and figure out how to give them directions here."
Grant pulls his hand away from Eric's slowly, reluctantly, but at least he seems to know better than to argue at this point. Eric watches him with eyes that aren't quite focused, shifting his hand to grasp Con's firmly. Con offers him a smile. "What else can we do for you, Eric?"
Whatever answer Eric's going to give is lost as the curtain at the end of the bed is flung aside and one of the male emergency room doctors charges in, a nurse trailing behind with a bag of blood.
Eric straightens, wariness and uncertainty filling his expression again.
"You need to leave." The doctor's words are clipped as he slides a short stack of papers into Eric's chart, his eyes fixed on the monitors as the nurse places the bag of blood on the IV drip. "The two of you shouldn't be here. And you need to get into dry clothing, young man, before you catch whatever your roommate has. We're going to be admitting him to the hospital as soon as we have a room available, so there's no need for you to stay."
"Translator." Enjolras' face is twisted in concentration, and he continues in French, each word carefully formed, though occasionally his accent slips into something almost English. "I need him as a translator."
"No." The doctor smiles at Eric, his gray hair standing on end, and continues in French. "I know you feel terrible right now. You're running a low-grade fever, and you've managed to lose an awful lot of blood. We're going to get you feeling better, though. In order to do that, I need you to rest, which means your friends need to leave."
"No." Eric's voice is determined, certain, but Con can feel Eric's hand shaking in his. "They stay."
"We stay." Con smiles at Eric before turning back to the doctor. There's no possible way they're going to separate him from Eric, not when he clearly needs him, but getting hospital security involved won't help anyone. A bit of deference could sometimes go a long way, though. "Please, sir, we're not going to be any trouble. I can monitor his vitals for you. I can—"
"No, Conlan. The best thing you can do for him is leave." The doctor picks up the chart and makes a few quick notes.
"If they leave…" Eric's breath catches in his throat, and he struggles with the next word but eventually manages to continue, still in English. "I leave."
"You're not checking yourself out against medical advice. You're obviously having mental difficulties at the moment, so I can prevent it." The doctor sets the chart down again. "And if you cause too much trouble, we'll do what's needed to protect ourselves and you, including sedating you."
"Visitor list." Choking again on the words, a thin stream of blood once more running down his face, Eric rattles off a string of words in what sounds like broken Korean. After a few seconds he raises his hand to his face and continues in English again, though French slides in as well. "I get to make a visitor list. I can do that. Eight names. No, nine. Let me—"
"There aren't visiting hours at four in the morning." The doctor watches Eric, an odd, wary expression on his face. "Conlan, I know you've worked at the hospital. People speak highly of you. Do you swear that there's no possible way your friend's been taking any drugs and that he hasn't had any serious injuries lately?"
"Yes."
The doctor nods, slowly. "Then I'd advise that everyone who's had close contact with him in the last few days get themselves checked out by their primary care physician, because I'm worried about some new kind of disease. Another reason you shouldn't be here."
"If he has something contagious, we've already got it." And they do, but it's not something he can explain to these people. If he starts ranting about shadow-demons that hunt souls in the dead of night, no one's going to believe him. He'll be separated from Eric for certain.
Whatever the doctor's intending to say is cut off by an intercom page warning of incoming burn victims and requesting all available personnel to be prepared to receive them.
"Damn." The doctor curses quietly, his brows drawing together sharply. "Stay. Go. It's no matter to me until your friend's parents get here, I suppose. But tell anyone if you start feeling poorly, all right?"
Con barely has time to nod before the doctor disappears again.
"Others." Eric's shaking again, watching the blood slowly slide down the IV line and into his arm. "Amis."
"Coming." Grant strokes Eric's hair back with infinite tenderness, his expression somehow both incredibly sad and loving. "Just a few more seconds, Eric."
Eric settles down to wait, and Con decides it's all right to take a few seconds to read Eric's medical file.
XXX
Courfeyrac bursts into the room in a blaze of light, and Cori wraps his arms around Enjolras, chattering rapidly in something that's probably English.
Enjolras doesn't speak English, but he knows the language anyway, if he tries. Eric doesn't bother to pay attention to the words, though, because the words aren't important. What's important is the way that Courfeyrac looks at him, the way Cori's hands cup his face before smoothing his hair out, the teasing, worried lilt in Courfeyrac's words.
Courfeyrac is alive.
Cori isn't angry or disappointed in him.
Another little piece of the world slots into place, wipes away the sense of things being wrong, and the mad cacophony in his head fades back a bit.
Feuilly comes next, and an apology is tumbling from Enjolras' lips before Eric can stop it, a mixture of French and English that attempts to stop the other words from escaping, the words from the ones still not quite awake, and he needs to stop hearing them. He needs to make them quiet again, make them calm, turn away from the images that come from them, even if they're infinitely preferable to the wrong wrong wrong that's been branded into his memory, Finny's hand on a dagger in his flesh, and—
"Eric. Enjolras." Combeferre's face swims into view, and Eric blinks until the world is slightly clearer again, until he can feel Finny's hand on his shoulder, see Finny's lips pulled back in an expression of mixed fury and sorrow.
Feuilly pushes Con gently away, his hands resting on both of Enjolras' shoulders. "I would not hurt you for anything you said, Enjolras. I would not hurt you for anything. Do you understand, Eric?"
He does.
It's right, so right, so much better than the burning agony and the wrong that it brought to him, imprinted on him, and Eric smiles as Enjolras nods and the storm falls even quieter in his head.
The rest of the Amis appear, talking too rapidly, too fast, a mixture of languages and a barrage of touches that go far quicker than his reeling thoughts can manage to follow, but it doesn't matter.
He can make out Joly's laughter, knows that's Jona's voice talking quietly with Combeferre about something medical.
He knows that is Lyle, making some dry comment about Enjolras managing to look good even half-dressed and drained of most of his blood, and he smiles at Lesgles even as he shakes his head.
He knows that's Jean, bloody scratches on his face, and for a moment Eric can feel the world snap into sharp focus again.
"It hurt you." Eric reaches over to trace the scratches, and Enjolras continues the thought. "It attacked you, too."
"I'm fine, Enjolras." That's Jehan's smile, his fingers clasping theirs tightly. "I'm fine, and you will be as well."
He doesn't know when Jean becomes Bahorel, time slipping and skipping in the nonsensical snippets of memory and fragments of language that fill his head. It doesn't matter. He knows the feel of Bahorel's fingers, lifting his chin up, running a hand feather-gentle over his bruises, saying that the shadow needs to be slowly drawn and quartered for what it's done.
Simply seeing them, hearing them, it's enough to give him what he needs, to help him re-establish his identity, to narrow down the voices in his head to just him and Enjolras.
It's wonderful.
After all that's come before, it's absolutely wonderful.
It also means he's able to not panic when a nurse finally comes to move him to a private room, keeping the Amis—the Independents, it doesn't matter what name he uses for them—from following.
He has no doubt they'll make their way to his side shortly, and if they don't he should be well enough to walk away from the hospital on his own in a few hours.
The fact that they're able to—that they'll want to—come to his side is really the only thing that matters, and he's once again quite certain of that.
XXX
"He's looking better." Cori sets a cup of coffee down in front of Con before sprawling in the seat next to him at the cafeteria table. "Talking better, too. By the end there he wasn't flipping languages every few seconds, or speaking in Klingon every once in a while."
"Not Klingon. Spanish. Korean. Chinese. Russian. Arabic. Something from Africa, I think, but I'm less versed in those phonetics." Con blows on his coffee, trying not to frown too strongly. The shifts are going to change shortly, and visiting hours start in only a few minutes. He'll be able to find his way back to Enjolras' side.
"What did you think of his chart?" Cori leans forward in his seat, a cup of coffee in his own hands. He looks good, somehow—really good, better than he has any right to look given that they all got woken up ridiculously early to deal with this.
"I don't know." Taking a sip of his coffee, Con rubs at the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension there. "He had a temp of 103.2 when the EMTs picked him up—"
"It was higher than that." Grant hunches down at the other end of the table, his hands locked around a third cup of coffee that Cori had slid down to him. "A lot higher. I took it at over 106, and that was before the seizure and the shower and everything else."
"It's been dropping steadily, though, and it was normal when we left him." Another burning swallow of coffee helps Con keep his voice steady. "He's also got a hematocrit of eleven. Given how in shape he is, I'd say the shadow made off with about two thirds to three quarters of his blood."
"It was trying to kill him." Barry's voice comes from behind him, a low rumble, and Con turns to study the man.
Jean tilts his head to the side, chewing at his lip for a moment before nodding. "It sounds like it to me. Nothing like this has ever happened to any of the rest of you?"
"No." Jona shakes his head, reaching out to touch Lyle with one hand and Maria with the other. "Maria… well, I suppose you should tell what happened."
Maria shrugs, looking down at her hand. At her bandaged hand, and Con studies the scratches on her temple, the gouges down Jean's right cheek more closely. When she speaks, Maria's voice is calm and determined. "I finally saw the shadow. I almost, almost remember being Musichetta. What I do remember… the shadow told me to try to wake Eric. It said that we would all know despair when we saw that even the strongest light could be extinguished by the dark."
"Well, it failed." Con's hand tightens around the coffee cup, and he barely manages to restrain himself from crushing the flimsy paper. Scalding himself won't help anyone, just like getting himself arrested or thrown out trying to stay by Eric once he didn't desperately need them anymore wouldn't have helped anyone. "He's not dead."
"But is he broken?" Grant's voice is a bitter, soft whisper, his eyes fixed on the dark coffee swirling in his cup. "He's… he's such a mess, Con. He keeps apologizing. He keeps thanking us for things that he shouldn't, for just being there. We're celebrating because he can string words together in the right fucking language so that we can understand him without needing a translator in our heads! He's—"
"That's enough, Grant." Lyle's hand falls on Grant's shoulder, his voice low and gruff. "It's Eric. It's Enjolras. He's going to be fine. He managed to go from single words to complete sentences in two hours. Give him a day and I'm sure he'll be looking even better."
Con hopes so. He really hopes so.
He'll be fine. Combeferre's certainty is a fierce, powerful thing. Enjolras won't let anything break him. He won't.
Eric wouldn't, either. Con remembers the way that Eric flinched back from him, and the coffee in his mug trembles in time to his hand until he sets down the drink. But being scarred, being changed by something, it's not a choice.
He will recover. Combeferre's tone brooks no argument. He may be changed, but he will recover. We'll be there to make sure of it, if this damn beaurocracy your world has created around the ill and injured ever lets us.
"It was good to hear him talking in complete sentences." Cori grins, and if it seems a little more forced than usual it's still a wonderful thing to see. "And he was looking a lot healthier at the end, had a bit more color in his face, looked like he had more blood in his veins."
"That's because he does have more blood in his veins. He has two pints more blood in his veins than he did before, and yet his temperature's come down two degrees from when he was admitted." Con looks to Jona. "It should have gone up, right? During the transfusion, his temperature should have gone up."
"It should have. Normally it does, from what I've seen and read." Jona shrugs. "I think we should just celebrate him being awake and his temperature being back down to normal."
"We need to figure out how it did this." Con forces his jaw to relax, trying to ease the start of a headache by pressing on his temples. "Because however it trapped him in the nightmare, whatever it did to him… we need to keep it from happening again, to him or to one of us."
"We noticed that, Con." Barry manages to sound both amused and exasperated.
Finny paces back and forth beside the table. "You really couldn't wake him up, Grant?"
Cori winces, his head rising and his mouth opening though no sound emerges. Jona and Lyle both reach out a hand to Grant, touching his shoulders, offering comfort.
Grant still slouches down in his seat, his posture completely dejected. "I tried. I did everything I could think of. Maybe there's something I missed. Maybe I should've done something different. I—"
"I'm sure you did everything you could to wake him. I doubt any of us could have done anything different." The words are hard for Con to say. Tired as he is, scared as he is, it would be easy to lash out at Grant, to question what he did, to insist that he must have done something wrong and that's why Eric was injured. That wouldn't be fair, though. It won't help Eric. Hurting Grant will only make things worse.
Grant raises his eyes, slowly, to meet Con's.
Barry breaks in before he can say anything, a low string of curses, and the whole group turns to him in confusion.
Barry simply points at the TV screen currently playing the early morning news. "Look."
Con turns to the TV, and feels the world grind to a halt.
A fire rages through downtown, consuming the political sector, turning night into day. A helicopter camera pans over the area, showing practically an entire block aflame, and then the scene shifts back to the image that had undoubtedly caught Barry's eye in the first place.
On the side of City Hall, burning so hot the letters shine blue-white even amidst the smoke and the other flames, words gleam in a familiar hand.
Vive la République!
Vive la Révolution!
"Oh." Cori sits up slowly. "Well. This isn't good."
"Cori." Con stares at the screen even after the image is gone, replaced by a female reporter. "That may be the biggest understatement you've ever made."