Hello again! After a long absence I have returned! A word of advice, moving 800 miles and taking 2 online courses at the same time are not conducive activities for fanfic writing/plotting. Thank you to everyone who has favorited and followed this story during the hiatus and when I was publishing somewhat normally! Y'all have helped me keep this thing going.
Disclaimer: If Fable was mine there would have been an option for a nice long chat with Theresa about how heroes are rewarded after doing the dirty work. Alas there wasn't. Also those "companions" would have actually been companions.
Consciousness came to him in a sudden gasp of dusty air. He choked, his body convulsing as much as the heavy weight that pinned him to the ground would allow. On some unconscious level he registered screams, at once deafening and muffled as though they came from a long ways off. With a groan, Reaver pushed feebly at the weight on his chest. Dimly, he remembered Sparrow tackling him to the ground, so, judging from the female voice that was now coming to consciousness by his ear, it must be her laying like a dead log on top of him.
"Get off." Reaver coughed and pushed at her once more. She rolled off him easily enough and landed limply on her side. Their legs were still tangled but he could breathe again. Reaver breathed in deeply, enjoying the feel of his lungs expanding to their fullest. Instead of the cool night air the pirate imagined, he got a lungful of smoke and dust. Reaver devolved once again into a fit of coughing. When he stopped coughing, he began cataloguing his every ache and pain so that he could repay whoever blew up the bloody clock tower. He felt Sparrow stir next to him.
"Do you see a way out?" Sparrow asked softly.
"My eyes aren't even open." Reaver's voice cracked a little but he didn't notice. For a wild moment Reaver felt a rush of fear, he couldn't see wiped at his eyes and his hand came away sticky and wet. He tried again to open his eyes, his eyelashes came apart slowly. A bright blue light filled his vision and he blinked several times, wiping more half dried blood from his forehead as well, before his eyes adjusted to the light. A shimmering field of Will kept the debris off them, forming a half-dome just big enough for the two of them. He looked over at Sparrow intricate patterns burned a bright azure in her skin.
"You are lit up like a Beltane bonfire at midnight." Reaver replied hoarsely. Her clothes were hardly more than dirty, blood soaked rags. Her emerald eyes were half-open, strands of her copper hair were pasted to her skin by sweat and blood, and blood dripped down her chin from her split lower lip.
"You look worse than Lucien after a decade in the Spire, Hero." Unconsciously, Reaver reached out to push the loose strands of hair from her face.
Sparrow coughed then groaned at the pain it caused. "Buried under a clock tower and yer still tryin to flirt." She said wryly through gritted teeth. "Incorrigible."
"I am nothing if not optimistic."
Sparrow's mouth twitched in amusement but she quickly settled back to the frown Reaver was accustomed too. "One good push and I could get us out of here."
"Then by all means."
"I have no idea who's around us out there." Sparrow looked up at the debris waiting just beyond her shield to crush them. "I don't want to hurt anyone else."
Reaver watched her, annoyance rising up in his chest. "Sparrow," he whispered sharply. A hundred different responses to her concerns raced through his mind. She was more concerned about hurting another villager than saving them? What kind of mad woman was she? The kind that sacrifices the only family she's known for the lives of others. He pushed back the guilt ridden thought. Guilt was not something he felt. Ever. Besides, there was nothing he could do now to change what he had done, and now was certainly not the time to wallow in emotions that he thought he had purged himself of decades ago.
Sparrow interrupted Reaver's introspective wallowing (which he had ended up doing anyway) with a brisk, "Let's do this then." Before Reaver had any chance to respond, Sparrow had her eyes closed and her blue Will lines were growing brighter and brighter. The shimmering shield that had kept them safe disappeared and, as the debris began to fall, Sparrow's will pulsed outwards.
The sun's rays were just beginning to tint the sky with morning light. He rubbed his eyes and his hand came away with smears of red on it. The rogue wasn't surprised to see his own blood but he was unsettled by it. He felt a wave of nausea and took a grateful, deep breath of fresh air but it was clotted with smoke. He choked and coughed to clear his lungs until he was doubled over and breathless. Beside him Sparrow was muttering something but it was drowned out by the wailing and the screams of the people of Bowerstone and his own struggles to breath. He was immortal but at this moment he was reminded that he was not invulnerable. Reaver allowed Sparrow to guide them out of the smoking ruins of The Cow and Corset; he honestly couldn't have stopped her, the head wound coupled with the hacking cough he couldn't seem to shake left him unbalanced.
They were forced to stop several times when they're path was blocked by debris. Each time they're path was blocked, Sparrow raised her hand and a blast of Will cleared the path. When they reached the bridge he saw her standing just before the drinks stall. Her blonde curls were disheveled and her blue eyes were rimmed red and full of tears.
"How could you do this?" She shouted at him her voice filled with confusion and horror.
"I didn't know." Reaver knew he shouldn't answer, shouldn't give this apparition any more power but he did. His head pounded and for the moment he forgot Sparrow.
"Your friends!"Your family!"
"I didn't know! Please! I didn't know!" He couldn't stand to see her anymore. He hadn't known what the Shadows wanted from him.
"You let me die. You let the shadows take me."
"Reaver, whatever you're seeing it isn't real." Sparrow's voice sounded strained. He realized dimly that she practically supporting them both. "Snap out if it! I can't carry us both!"
Reaver tried to get his feet back under him but his legs shook. His vision swam in and out of focus; the ghost morphed into a pox marked man in a patched suit. Reaver could feel Sparrow's body tense beside him.
"Arfur." She growled and suddenly Reaver could feel her rage like a fire burning in her skin.
"Sparrow!" The man slapped his hand against his thigh. "I fought it were yer! Yer've grown since last I seen yer." He raked his eyes over the hero. "Almost pretty now, 'course we boff know Rose were the pretty one."
"Don't you say her name!"
"Or wot, wee Sparrow? Yer'll bleed on me?" He scoffed and stepped forward as if conveying some sensitive information. " He's 'ardly spoilin' for a fight, birdie. It's just yer and me now."
Sparrow moved quickly, her left hand rose up and the sharp report of a pistol sounded. Arfur doubled over, his own pistol dropping from his hand unfired. He howled in pain and clutched at the blossoming red stain at his crotch. The mobster fell to his knees and looked up at Sparrow, his face a twisted mask of pain and rage, and screamed "Yer bitch!"
Sparrow said nothing. She merely aimed Reaver's Dragonstomper at Arfur's head and squeezed the trigger.
After that Reaver's recollection of events got very hazy. He hoped that Sparrow did not drop his beloved weapon to the cobblestones, but he was not sure that she didn't. He might have heard her say something like "This damn seal better still work" or it could have been "Aim better ye damn shark." Whatever she said, only moments later his vision was filled with a blue light and then darkness.