AN: Just when you think the whump is over, remember, the whump is never over :) There is something that I've begun in this chapter that is a change, and is symbolic of a change occurring throughout the fic. If you think you know what it is, let me know! And as always, I hope you enjoy, and please leave a review :)
Going with Bright to a psychology conference was never something that JT had wanted to do, but he would take that any day over getting shot at by the Albanian mafia. Getting shot at wasn't new to him, but the Albanian mafia? That was a little out of his wheelhouse.
"Damnit, Bright," he muttered under his breath as he hid himself behind a tree. He only had the one mag for his Glock, and it was empty. Gunfire still rang out towards the cabin, but more sporadically. There was no way that the mob was out of ammunition, but they might have thought that JT was dead. One of their bullets had rung true, taking him to the ground for a moment before he was able to get behind the tree.
JT glanced down at his bleeding shoulder. His adrenaline was going to keep the pain at bay for a few minutes, but soon enough it was going to hurt like a bitch. It was a through and through, not touching the bone, but that didn't mean JT wasn't concerned. It took time for infection to set in, but JT had no way of knowing when he was going to see a hospital again. Bright certainly needed it too.
The gunfire stopped. Voices spoke in a language that JT didn't speak, loud and angry and emotional, maybe even grieving. Carefully, JT peered out from behind the tree, and saw one of the remaining men dragging a struggling Bright into the cabin, while the other checked all of the bodies on the ground, finding each of them unresponsive. JT never enjoyed taking a life, but he was glad to see that it was down to only two men.
The man dragging Bright shouted something to his friend, causing the other man to abandon the bodies and follow him into the cabin. The door closed, and JT couldn't see what was going on through the window. He knew they weren't going to immediately kill the kid, because if that was their plan, they would have killed him outside. That was all that JT knew. He didn't know enough about the Albanian mafia to guess anything else.
JT relaxed against the tree once more. He needed to find a way to at least try to stop the bleeding, then he could find a way to get Bright and get them both out of the mess they'd gotten into. JT turned to his shoulder and sighed. He really liked that shirt. With a cringe, JT took a firm grip of the fabric, and began to tear the arm of his shirt off. Once it was torn off, JT wrapped it around his bleeding shoulder, using his teeth to hold the other end, and tied it as tightly as he could. That would have to do. There weren't exactly many other options, at least not when Bright was in imminent danger.
And there weren't many options for him to get Bright out of there, either. JT could hear voices from inside the cabin, but he couldn't make out what they were saying, despite the shattered windows. Taking a deep breath, JT forced himself to move. His head was pounding in time with the throbbing of his shoulder, but it didn't matter. He had to get to Bright. As carefully as he could, JT crept down the incline and towards the cabin, making sure to stay as out of sight as he could. He needed to know what exactly he was dealing with if he were to have any shot at getting Bright out of there in one piece.
The closer JT got, the more he could hear coming from inside the cabin. Bright was towards the end furthest from the door, and at least one of the men was near him. He could hear the kid groaning in pain, but he tried to put it out of his mind. JT headed for the closest body, intending on grabbing the fallen man's gun, but as he rifled through the man's pockets for a mag, he found something even better: keys to the SUV.
A bone chilling scream filled with unbelievable pain and agony dropped JT's heart into his stomach. What were they doing to Bright? Was JT going to be too late? His entire being was tuned in to what was going on inside that cabin. He could hear the kid crying and begging, and it took Bright screaming a second time to spur JT into action once more. Grabbing the keys and the empty AK-47, he raced towards the SUV and quickly hopped in. A quick glance at the backseat proved that it truly was empty, as was his habit to check. With a quick breath to calm his nerves, JT put the keys into the ignition, and moved the car into reverse. He backed up until the distance looked far enough, then put the SUV in drive.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered, then floored it, driving the car straight into the cabin with a deafening crash and a nauseating thump as the SUV made contact with a human body. Moving the deployed airbags out of the way as quickly as he could, JT got out of the car and rushed towards the shocked man holding a bloody power drill - which was the clear cause of Bright's heartbreaking screams. JT must have looked like something out of a horror movie, with blood streaming from his now broken nose and even more blood coating his arm and shoulder from where he'd been shot.
The man took a frightened step back as JT ran towards him, still clearly in shock. JT would take full advantage of that. He brought the butt of the AK-47 down on the man's arm as he lifted it up in defense, making him drop the drill with a shout of pain. JT bashed the rifle back up and into the man's chin, dropping him to the ground. JT dropped to his knees next to him, and bashed the man's head in, again, and again, and again, and someone was shouting in rage and maybe that was JT. He didn't stop until the man's head was a bloody pulp and soft whimpers from next to him brought him back to the present.
"J-JT?" Malcolm quietly called out.
JT finally fell back from his assault. The man was dead, had clearly been dead for the last several bashes. JT had killed him. He'd made the man completely unrecognizable. There would be no open casket for him, thanks to JT. He let out a stuttering breath at the realization of what he'd done, leaning back on his feet.
"JT?" Malcolm repeated. JT's attention shot over to his friend, taking in Bright's tear stained and bloody face and the various wounds peppering his small frame. He glanced back over at the bloody drill, his stomach dropping once again at the knowledge that that terrible tool had been used to torture the kid. JT grabbed his knife from his pocket and began to saw away at the duct tape, careful to avoid touching the bloody mess that was the kid's arm.
"Yeah, I'm right here," he muttered. "I've got you now." The words flowed naturally from JT's mouth, which surprised him more than anything. He was saying what Gil would've been saying in that situation, and he didn't even have to think about it.
"Your shoulder," Bright said, his voice filled with pain.
"Don't worry about it," JT insisted. "I'm fine." He was most definitely not fine. His shoulder throbbed and the room was spinning, but he couldn't worry about that. The kid was in much worse shape, and taking care of him was all that mattered. He finished getting the duct tape off the poor kid's wrists and ankles, then stepped back to take a good look at his injuries. Malcolm was bruised and battered, clearly having sustained one hell of a beating. There was blood still sluggishly pouring out of the reopened gash across his hairline, and several gashes where it looked like rings had broken the skin.
But JT hadn't seen either mafia man wearing rings. He glanced over at the other body, and noticed the bloody brass knuckles still on his hand. JT focused on breathing evenly, despite the rage still boiling in his gut.
He turned back to Bright. Those wounds weren't even the most concerning ones. The holes in his shoulder, upper wrist, and thigh were definitely the ones that he needed to be worried about. That poor kid. JT should've been faster, he should've ignored his own shoulder and gotten to Bright before these horrors were done to him.
JT looped the kid's good arm around his shoulders, biting down on the pain that it caused his own GSW. Luckily, the man had attacked the kid's left arm and shoulder, but his right leg, making it easier for JT to be an effective crutch.
"I'm gonna lift you up on three, alright?" he asked. Malcolm just nodded, taking a deep breath. "One, two, three," he said, lifting the kid up and forcing himself to ignore the whimpers that the movement elicited from the poor kid. Slowly, JT brought the two of them past the totaled SUV and the two dead men, and carefully manuevered them through the wreckage of the cabin wall and out into the sunlight. The ground was still muddy from the earlier downpour, hindering their progress as it clung to their feet. "We'll follow this road, and we'll find some help, okay?"
"We can't stay on the road," Bright groaned out. "There's more coming."
JT slowly brought them to a stop. "What do you mean there's more coming? More men from the mafia are on their way?"
"Plaurent Dervishaj, they all but said he was coming, or at least one of his top lieutenants," Bright said. The kid took a shuddering breath before continuing, his voice sounding a little stronger despite the subject matter. "Gjokaj was getting a camera, to take a picture after they killed me. Dervishaj liked things like that, pictures of his victims taken during and right after death. They were going to take a picture of me to add to his collection."
JT fought against the urge to vomit at the thought of a man having a scrapbook of dead people, people he'd ordered killed. Knowing that the kid had almost been a part of that disgusting tradition only fueled his rage. Still, he focused his energy on the present.
"And if he's coming towards the cabin..."
"We can't stay on the road," Malcolm finished for him. JT nodded, then slowly began to move himself and Bright to the side, back towards the treeline. The mud was turning every step they took into a beacon shining down on their location, but there wasn't anything JT could do to cover their tracks. The horrific storm had also made the incline much more difficult to traverse going up than it was going down. JT held on to Bright as tightly as he could with one arm, and used the other to help pull them both back up the incline and into the trees. He had to ignore every whimper of pain that the kid let out, and tried his best to make his own pained groans sound like they were coming from exertion and frustration rather than the agony in his shoulder, nose, and head. JT doubted that Bright was buying it, but neither one of them said anything. At least he was able to keep himself from hurling the meager contents of his stomach all over the grass. Each step made his head pound even more, and he doubted that Bright was feeling much better.
JT brought them both to a stop once they finally crested the incline and were back among the trees. He gently lowered the kid to lean against a log, out of sight from the road.
"We gotta bandage some of these," he said, gesturing towards the still sluggishly bleeding wounds caused by the power drill. How anyone could be so cruel, JT didn't know. "Which one is the worst?" he gently asked, taking a knee in front of the kid.
"Arm," Bright muttered. "It went all the way through, through the bone too. The other two didn't touch bone, or go all the way through at least." Despite the kid's word's, JT didn't doubt that the other two were any less agonizing. "Just wrap it, don't worry about stabilizing the bone."
"You sure?" JT asked. "I'm not exactly MacGyver but I'm sure I could come up with something." He'd done enough field medicine to know how to pack wounds and stabilize bones without any real medical equipment. There had to be something they could use to keep Malcolm's wrist from becoming even more fractured.
"We can't take the time," Bright said. "We'll only have light for another hour, then we're wandering in the dark. I'd rather get as far as we can while we can. That's more important."
JT sighed. He couldn't exactly argue with the kid when he was right. The light was limited, and would be gone in about an hour. He and Bright needed to get much farther from the cabin in order to be safe for the night. If Dervishaj really was going to the cabin, then when he arrived to find all of his men dead, he would begin searching immediately. The mafia had every advantage over them. JT and Malcolm needed to get as far away from the cabin as they could while there was still light to do it. As much as he hated it, he needed to just stop the bleeding as best he could, and forgo stabilizing the bone.
"Okay, but you gotta let me wrap them," he insisted. Bright nodded, and used his good hand to pull weakly at his tie. The kid was exhausted. "Let me help you," JT softly said, lightly pulling Bright's hand away and undoing the knot of his tie himself. Once he had the tie off, he took as gentle a hold of Bright's injured wrist as he could, and began to wrap the tie around it. The kid's eyes were shut tight against the pain, which JT did his best to ignore as he carefully wrapped the long tie around around the wound, even looping it around his hand to stabilize his wrist in the only way that he could. JT had never much been one for ties himself, and forgot how long the things actually were. He was thankful for that.
Once Malcolm's wrist was wrapped, it was time to move on to his shoulder and thigh. The kid's suit was already destroyed, but JT didn't want to tear it up more than it already was. Unless a miracle happened, they would be spending the night in the woods, and JT knew it was going to get cold. Having the suit jacket in one piece - more or less - would help the kid to stay warm. It would have to be the dress shirt that got sacrificed for the sake of stopping the bleeding. The thing was thin anyway, and wouldn't do quite as much when it came to keeping Malcolm warm as the thicker suit jacket would - for all the good it had done him during the rainstorm, admittedly.
"Alright, bro, I'm gonna have to tear your shirt up," JT said.
"It's already destroyed," Bright replied, beginning to pull his suit jacket sleeve up with his good hand to expose the dress shirt underneath. JT helped him to take off the jacket on the other side, making it easier to tear the sleeves. Soon enough, the shirt was well and truly destroyed beyond repair, and looked completely ridiculous. JT couldn't help but let out a chuckle under his breath. "What's so funny?" Bright asked, but he was smiling too.
"It's a good thing you have that jacket, because damn, the torn off sleeves look does not work for you," JT said, letting himself smile even more.
"Oh, because you're really rocking the one sleeve look yourself," Malcolm replied around a chuckle. "If Tally saw you right now, I don't know if she'd be able to contain herself."
JT's smile slowly fell at the thought of his beautiful wife and unborn child. He would give anything to be back with them, to hold his wife tight and ensure that he was there for the birth of his baby. But then again, maybe he wouldn't give anything. He had had the opportunity earlier to leave Bright for dead and drive away in that SUV, but it hadn't even crossed his mind to leave the kid. Still, he felt a physical pang in his heart at the idea of never seeing his beautiful Tally again. He loved her so much. When he got back to her - because it was when, not if - he was going to show her just how much she meant to him, just how much he was never going to take her for granted again and how he loved her with all of his heart.
"I'm sorry I got you into this," Bright muttered, his eyes downcast. "You should be home with her right now, not stuck out here with me."
"Hey, no," JT said, stopping him. He continued gently wrapping the fabric around the kid's leg, as tightly as he dared. "This isn't on you. If we got attacked by drug dealers that I got put away, would say it was my fault? No, you wouldn't," JT said before Bright even had the chance to respond. "So this isn't on you either. You did your job, you helped take down the Albanian mafia, you almost got their head guy. That's something to be proud of. What the mafia does is on them, not you." He moved on with the remaining fabric to the kid's shoulder, wrapping it around both the shoulder itself and up around the opposite side of Malcolm's neck to hold it in place. "Just don't make any jokes about us having matching scars, alright? I don't do matching," he said, only half joking.
Bright smiled. "That's the least I could do," he said. "Thank you for this, by the way."
"What, like you could've done it yourself?" JT pointed out, but gave the kid a smile nonetheless. He was done with emotions for a while. Seeing that his work was done, and Bright was as mended as he was going to be before they got to a hospital, JT stood up and held his hand out to the kid. "We gotta get moving," he said. Malcolm took his hand allowed JT to help him up. JT looped Malcolm's good arm around his neck, and turned himself back into a crutch. They moved a bit further into the forest, just to be sure that they were out of view from the road, but could still see it. Following the road was their only chance at getting back to civilization.
They made their way sluggishly, like the slowest three-legged race in existence. Both of them were too exhausted to keep up any attempt at conversation. That could be saved for when it became too dark to continue on. The effects of hunger and thirst were beginning to make themselves known without anything to distract from them. All in all, it was a pretty miserable time.
They couldn't have been walking for even ten minutes before they saw lights on the road. JT pulled them behind a tree as well as he could, just to be sure that they truly were out of sight. Both he and Malcolm peered around the tree to look down the road, seeing a black SUV, much the same as the one that JT had crashed.
"Dervishaj," Bright muttered. They didn't have long now until the man would be combing the forest in search of who killed his men. Their time was running out. Logic dictated that a mafia boss would have brought men with him, but they had no way of knowing how many. They could have been dealing with only three men looking for them, or up to seven. At the pace that JT and Bright were going, those men were going to catch up with them. It wasn't as if it would be difficult for the men to figure out which direction they went, with their footprints engraved in the mud. JT cursed the earlier thunderstorm once again.
"Come on, we gotta keep moving," JT said once the SUV had passed them. With slightly renewed vigor, he and Bright kept on their way, moving as quickly as they could without risking further injury. It was getting too dark to clearly see the ground, but they managed to avoid too many serious stumbles over the various fallen branches exposed rocks as they continued to make their way through the forest, hoping every second to catch a glimpse of civilization ahead.
They had been walking for about twenty more minutes in relative silence when JT heard it: the light clink of something hitting metal, the sickening crunch of metal crushing bone, and Malcolm's bloodcurdling scream.