Title: Lost Luggage and Lost Souls
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
oOo oOo Chapter 2: oOo oOo
Tim was on his feet before the man behind the counter hit the ground. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do against five armed men, but he'd be damned if they were keeping him from his daughter. Not today of all days.
He strode forward. He remembered a time when men quailed just because of his stride, his stance, but anymore, the men with the guns didn't even seem to notice. Well, too bad for them. He could take them from behind.
Right when things were going along smooth, one of those sons of bitches spotted him coming. The man swung around, and Tim thought about his little girl, how he'd never get to see her face when he gave her his grandmother's ring.
And then there, standing right in front of him, was that tiny man and his daughter. He had stepped in a bullet's path for Tim, but it didn't look like he was aiming to get shot. No, the man was talking a mile a minute. "I'm a doctor," he said, holding his hands up. "I need to see the man you shot. It's possible he's still alive, and you know as well as I do that assault is a far lesser crime than murder. Now, you haven't shot anyone else, which leads me to believe that you probably shot that man in order to prevent his pressing some kind of emergency button. One of you can accompany me, but I do need to see to him."
"And the Hell's Angel behind you? Or the pretty little piece of tail next to you?" one of the men asked. Tim's nostril's flared. Cocky attitude, curl to his lip, that boy had to be the leader of this sorry pack. "Are they doctors too?"
The doctor glanced at the girl and edged in front of her. Tim approved of a man who'd shield a girl with his own self. Chivalry. "No doubt this gentleman and my friend were just concerned about me." He turned and fixed Tim with a gaze like an eagle's, sharp and flat. Somewhere under that silly exterior, there was a predator, Tim realized. He'd seen enough of them in his time to know. "If you want to protect someone," he said, his words a quiet, quick patter, "there are a mother and her two young children down this aisle who must be very frightened right now. And I would be particularly grateful if you would take Ace with you."
The girl at his side shook her head. "Never happen, Professor. If you're walking with a gun to your head, there's no way I'm not right by your side."
"Ace," the doctor said.
The leader cocked his gun. The doctor hissed his frustration and glared at her. She stood her ground and the doctor said, "Fine."
Tim stood still. He wanted to help the mother and her children, but at the same time, this Ace girl was reminding him more and more of his own daughter, or at least the way he imagined his own daughter would be when he finally saw her. He didn't want Ace walking into danger with just this doctor for help. Even with something predatory in him, he just wasn't all that big. Tim may have been getting on in years, but he was still of a size that men thought twice before crossing him.
"Enough with the fucking tea party, already," the leader said. Of course, Tim thought, he needed to swear to make himself feel larger. Same reason the runt carried a gun. Tim would never swear in front of ladies, and if he had to kill a man, he sure as hell wasn't going to use the weak man's solution of firearms. "All three of you are going to get your asses over there and check that guy out before I get bored and shoot him in the face." The runt walked over and pointed the gun directly between the doctor's eyes. "And then I'll shoot you in the face and do your 'friend' in front of all these people."
The doctor didn't even flinch. Tim had seen other men piss themselves looking down the barrel of a Colt .45, but not the doctor. He had a look of such deep contempt that even Tim felt it.
The doctor's voice was low, almost a growl, and utterly different from the little man he'd seen teaching some kid to juggle. He seemed to grow, and a sense of unnamable menace permeated the air around him. "Why is it you feel the need to point a gun at me or threaten my friend in such a way? I'm no menace to you. You're the man with the gun."
The runt looked to be the one about to piss himself. The gun shook in his hand and he was looking at the doctor like the little guy could and would tear him a new one. "That's right," he said, his voice quavering as badly as his gun hand. You'd best look to that, Son, Tim thought. "I'm the man with the gun, and I'll use it if you fuck around with me."
"Why are you so afraid, Benjamin?" the doctor asked.
The man let out a yelp like a kicked dog, but he didn't shoot the doctor. Instead he swung the gun around and cracked him across the face with its butt. The doctor was knocked sprawling.
"How the hell do you know my name?" asked the runt. "How the fucking hell did you know my name?"
Ace, who had dropped barely a second after the doctor went down, had one hand on his shoulder and a pair of burning brown eyes locked on Ben the Runt. "It's sewn on your shirt, Toerag," she said.
Ben the Runt looked down at his shirt, got even angrier and pulled back a foot like he was going to kick the doctor. It was time Tim said his piece. "You don't kick a man while he's down," he said, bending and taking the doctor by an elbow. He pulled him to his feet with almost no effort.
The doctor had a hand on his temple, which was already showing the greenish-brown birth of a spectacular bruise. A line along the side of his forehead had caught a corner, and a thin trickle of blood was running down the side of his face. Straightening his clothing, the doctor made his way toward the ticket booth, Ace at his side, and Tim hovering behind him.
oOo oOo oOo oOo
Thomson watched the tense standoff end with the little felon getting a crack across the face that should have broken his skull. Nothing doing, though, and the guy got back up and made for the ticket booth. "Great," Thomson muttered, "we've got a fucking good Samaritan."
"Whereas the police just sit by and watch," Jimenez said.
Thomson had no intention of sitting by and watching, but he couldn't figure out how to get a shot off without a whole lot of people, himself included, getting blown away in the crossfire. The last thing anyone wanted was a firefight in a bus station. So, Thomson was stuck, angry, frustrated, and lost, watching a hold-up without being able to do anything about it.
"Who takes a bus station hostage, anyway?" Jimenez asked, her voice barely a whisper. "I mean, a bank, sure, but a bus station? There's no money here, nobody worth holding . . ."
"I've never solved a case through motive," Thomson said. "No one cares about why, anyway. That's all for the reporters to make up."
Jimenez was shifting around, just a little, but enough that Thomson noticed. At first, he thought she had to pee, but then he saw her gun disappear between the seat cushions. Smart lady, Jimenez. Thomson shifted around to do the same.
oOo oOo oOo oOo
Tim, Ace, and the doctor (Tim still hadn't caught his name) were all wedged into the ticket booth with a boy who was doing his damndest to bleed to death. Tim figured this situation couldn't end well, he'd seen enough bullets in his time to guess that, but the doctor was working away nevertheless. Tim had to admire his persistence, if nothing else.
"Professor," Ace said, crouched down next to him at the boy's side as the little guy put pressure on the shot with his suit jacket, "couldn't you just do that thing you did with my ankle? You know, during the whole Dalek invasion?"
The Doctor didn't glance up and didn't let up on the pressure. "A sprained ankle is a far cry from a gunshot wound, Ace."
"Okay, granted," she said, glancing over at Ben the Runt, who still stood in the door. He aimed the gun almost casually at her before giving her a once over. Obviously, he had never been taught how to act in front of a lady. Ace didn't flinch, and her glare sharpened at the implications in that look. She turned her back on the Runt, and dropped her tone. "That wouldn't seem to matter. Considering." Tim wasn't sure what they were considering, but it was a damn sight more interesting than sitting in the waiting room with Ben the Runt and his posse waving guns around.
The doctor shook his head. "Well, it does," he said. "A few torn ligaments, even a broken bone is one thing, but the human abdomen is a tricky, delicate place. More than likely, I would get lost and damage something irreparably." He applied more pressure as the kid spasmed.
"Professor!" Ace said, falling gracelessly out of her crouch as the kid splattered blood all over her.
The doctor used his free hand to pin the kid, and his face was twisted in agony as he muttered, "I was utter rubbish at xenobiology, anyway."
Tim felt an unease settle over him. He had a fair to good nose for something being wrong, and there wasn't a thing right about this doctor. Even the fact that Tim, a suspicious man after so many years of living, trusted him instantly and implicitly, was wrong. He remembered those eagle eyes, and took Ace by the arm, helping her up from her sprawl. Her eyes flashed up to his, gauging his intentions. After a moment, she let him draw her to one side.
"What is it?" she asked.
Tim nodded in the little man's direction. "Who is he?" he asked. "Really, who is he?"
"Him?" Ace asked, looking over as well. "He's the Doctor." Tim knew without asking that this Doctor was the definite article. He also knew that this name was supposed to possess a good deal of import even if he didn't recognize it.
The kid on the floor let out a kind of wet cough. Blood speckled his face like a smattering of crimson freckles. Ace broke away from Tim and dropped to her knees, clutching at the Doctor's sleeve. Tim watched the kid shaking and splattering his blood all over the room and he knew that nothing short of divine intervention was going to save him now.
"He's going to die," Ace said, staring at the Doctor.
"Yes, I had noticed that, Ace."
"It doesn't matter if you damage him any more! Just do something!"
The Doctor hesitated and then said, "Fine. Don't let anyone interrupt me." Tim took the hint and stepped in between the Doctor and Ben the Runt, blocking his view.
The Doctor removed his jacket from the wound, and there was blood everywhere. He pressed a hand down in the middle of all of it, right over the shot. What he thought he was doing, Tim had no idea, but he watched with interest as the Doctor closed his eyes and just stopped breathing.
Tim felt an itching at the back of his head and thought that some spider was running through his hair. He slapped a hand back, but there was nothing there. The itching persisted, getting worse. Ace, kneeling next to the Doctor, put a hand to her forehead. The Doctor himself seemed to have turned into a statue, sitting utterly still. So still that time itself seemed to slow to a halt around him.
Tim felt the world and everything he knew stretch and fray at the edges as tension built. The universe didn't like being static. It didn't like the norm getting shattered in a single spot. Just when it seemed that the whole of creation would snap under the stillness, everything yanked itself back into place. Tim sucked in air.
The Doctor's eyes opened and, under the bare bulb in the ticket booth, deep shadows were cast over them. Their color was leeched away, leaving his previously bright irises a deep and unrelenting black. For the first time in what seemed an eternity, the Doctor drew a breath. He seemed ancient, graven. Tim had once taken his little girl to an art museum in Chicago, and he'd stared for minutes on end at the statue of an old man in a toga. The bronze label had said he was some sort of god, and the Doctor brought back that same sensation Tim had felt when he looked into the old god's blank stone eyes. Tim felt scared and small and so very young. He felt that the whole of his life and knowledge were but a pittiance, and in all honesty, he knew nothing. The Doctor pulled his hand away from the kid's gut, and through the crusted blood, there was no bullet hole. Come to think of it, the bruise and cut on the Doctor's temple were gone, too, and Tim's own hip had stopped hurting. Tim, for the first time since long before he went to jail, felt his mouth hanging open. Only divine intervention . . .
The kid's eyes opened, and Ace leaned in over him, smiling. "Morning," she said. "A bit thirsty, are we?"
"What . . ?" the kid croaked out.
"Best not to ask these things," Ace said.
"You should stay still," the Doctor said, his voice low. "There's a great deal of delicate work in there."
"What did you . . ?" the kid tried again.
The Doctor didn't respond, and Ace was already standing and helping him to his feet. She hovered very close to him, a worried frown on her face. "Are you alright?" she asked.
He waved her concern away, but it seemed a great effort to even raise his hand. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm just a bit tired."
Ben the Runt was confused. Hell, he looked like he was going to piss himself again. Not that Tim would blame him at this point, but he hadn't actually seen anything. Tim had stood in the way of the Runt catching a glimpse of the miracle.
Still, there was a kid who'd been shot who wasn't shot any more. That would need an explanation. The Doctor, however, wasn't looking to be handing those out any time soon, and he walked to the door with Ace still holding his arm. Ben the Runt moved aside without a word.
Tim moved to follow them, but the Doctor turned and said, "Would you stay and look after this young man? I can see to the woman and her children."
Tim did as he was asked without hesitation or question. After all, when a man stood in the presence of a stone god, one honored his request.
oOo oOo oOo
Judy wasn't sure whether to be more frightened or relieved that Greg wasn't one of the men with the guns. She supposed that everyone on the bus was running from or to something, so any one of these people could be the real target. Then again, it might be no one in particular. It might be that this was random, and she was just keeping up her run of bad luck.
Of course, the why of a thing doesn't matter much when a man with a gun is standing not ten feet from you, your eight-year-old daughter, and your three-month-old baby. A baby who, incidentally, had chosen the worst possible moment to wake up and start screaming.
Judy held her close, bouncing her up and down in an effort to calm her. She'd gotten lucky this far and the baby had slept well, but a gunshot was too much to ask. Ace and the Doctor had gone to help the man behind the counter, and she wasn't sure what to do when the nearest thug started inching his shotgun in their direction. She concentrated on not looking, on acting as though this were just another in a series of events leading to her new life. After all, hadn't the Doctor promised she'd find the peace she was looking for? As odd as he was, she didn't peg him as a liar, and even if he didn't actually say it and no one was able to tell the future, she'd trust him.
Though it was little consolation, no one seemed to be doing any better with the situation than she. The students across the aisle were in a small huddled clump, with only a few strays sitting apart and rooted to their chairs. Across the room, a man and a woman who looked to be plainclothes cops weren't doing much in the way of protecting or serving, but then again it would be two against five, so Judy didn't blame them for wanting to stay alive just as much as any of the rest of them.
Around Judy, a sort of moat had formed when the baby started crying. No one wanted to sit too close in case the next shot was meant for either of them. Judy knew she was alone and exposed with a screaming baby. She was tempted to send Zoe over to the others, but she was leaning hard on her mama's leg with the Doctor's umbrella all wrapped up in her arms, and didn't look to be budging any time soon. Any attempt to move her would just cause more of a scene.
Judy wasn't the church-going sort: her daddy believed in Jesus, her mama believed in Mary Kay, and she just didn't believe in much of anything after thirty-odd years, but she was praying. She was praying to every god she'd ever heard of and a few she made up on the spot to pull her and her kids through okay. When she ran out of gods and ideas for gods, she looked down at Zoe and she prayed to Father Time, too, just in case.
And then there he was, looking exhausted as he staggered out of the ticket-booth. He had his jacket off, and his hands were bloody. He was leaning on Ace, who had her arm slung around his waist and a worried frown taking up residence between her eyebrows. The other man, the biker, had stayed in the ticket booth, and Judy doubted the Doctor would have had him stay with a corpse. Somehow, he must have saved that boy's life. Judy breathed a sigh of relief. Zoe was just too young to have to learn about death quite yet, and it was good to know that if things went south, they'd have a good doctor in the station.
He glanced up and their eyes met. Judy was amazed at the change in them. Before they had been full of life, playful and mysterious all at once. Now the mystery had risen up and swallowed the play, and Judy knew that the bad wasn't through with them yet.
She didn't even need to look to know that Benjamin had his gun pointed to the Doctor's head. He was, in most ways, a very stupid man, but even a man as deeply stupid as he knew the real power in the room when he saw it, and it was scaring the bejabbers out of him.
"What the fucking hell did you do in there?" he shouted.
The Doctor and Ace didn't turn. They kept walking, and the Doctor's eyes didn't leave Judy's. It's all right, they seemed to say, I'm here to save you all. And she believed them.
Until the gun moved. Until Benjamin stepped in front of them, cutting off their path, and pointing the gun in Ace's face. "What if I shoot her?" he asked, cocking the handgun. "You want to demonstrate that trick for the entire class?"
"Oh, lay off it," Ace said, staring down the barrel of a gun as though it were something she did all the time. "You're not going to shoot me. You just got one murder charge knocked down to attempted, so why would you take the chance a second time? You're a moron, but you're not that much of a moron."
Benjamin lowered the gun and Ace smirked. She made to move past him, but he reached out and grabbed her by the arm, jerking her from the Doctor's side. The Doctor stumbled, grabbing the back of the nearest chair for support. Ace tried to twist, tried to hit or scratch or claw, or whatever a girl who wasn't really trained in much, but had enough guts could do, but Benjamin had a knife in his hand, and as he laid it against her throat, she lowered her arm. Not her gaze, though. That remained defiantly locked on Benjamin. "What are you going to do, Ben?" she asked. "You going to cut me? Are you going to look me in the eye and kill me?" She snorted. "Of course, it takes real courage to kill an unarmed girl. Not many blokes have the stones for that."
Ben didn't say anything. He didn't need to really. The man with the knife has that kind of intimidation without any help. He just flicked the knife and sliced through a strap on her tank-top, drawing a thin, beaded line of blood in the process.
Ace's eyes went wide as everything clicked and she understood what he had planned for her, probably had it planned since he laid eyes on her. She jerked back away from the knife, trying to get leverage, but it was too close, and all her struggles just drew more little cuts. The next strap went, and Judy saw that Ace, for all her toughness, for all her pluck and strength and uncanny maturity, was fighting tears of panic.
The Doctor straightened himself up and shouted, "Stop!" in a voice that filled the room. Filled the whole of the world, seemed like. He had such presence, such command, that Judy pulled Zoe close and waited for lightning bolts.
Benjamin wasn't affected, but then again, being the man with the knife does funny things to a person. "Why?" he asked, sliding his free hand around Ace's middle and jerking her back against his chest. "You wanted a piece of this? Maybe already had one?"
"Bastard," Ace was hissing, tears getting away from her as Benjamin's hand slid up under her shirt. "Dirty, rotten son of a bitch. I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you."
The Doctor was the still point in the middle of the storm, and it seemed that cold radiated out around him. He let go of the chair and stepped around it, and the Gothy little girl in the chair shrunk away from him, eyes round under her liner. Even Benjamin was standing behind Ace, and the hand holding the knife to her throat was shaking. "You can't do a fucking thing to me," he said, but he didn't seem all that certain.
The Doctor cocked his head a fraction. "Are you so certain? Do you have any clue who I am? What I am? You have no idea what I'm capable of. I have no idea what I'm capable of, except that I've yet to reach my limits, and if you had any inkling of what I've done in just this lifetime, that would make you quake. Now, if you don't remove your hands from her this instant, we'll all find out just how far I can go."
And then, in the corner of the room, the plainclothes policewoman was on her feet, clutching a gun in both hands and shouting, "Police! Drop your weapons and put your hands on your heads!"
Three of the thugs turned their guns toward her. A fourth and Benjamin were still staring down the Doctor. Judy stared at the tiny man right in the middle of everything and willed him to do it. She willed him to save them all.