The squad of Chinese soldiers came out of nowhere. One minute, Cat and I were walking through the lobby, discussing the plans for later that day, and then BAM-full blown confrontation. Zhang Yixing had come sprinting over the black marble from the back of the building, waving us down, shouting at us in Mandarin, even though he clearly knew neither of us spoke it. An instant later, Cat and I were circling Lay, our arms outstretched in a desperate attempt to keep the seven soldiers from shooting us. They were wearing greens, unfitting of urban combat, but right then, I didn't really have footing to critique their camo choice. They were all yelling at us, most likely to stand down...but we didn't speak each other's language. I screamed at them to calm the fuck down in English, and then Japanese, just to see if it would spark any minds. I even tried Korean, broken as it was, but none of them acknowledged my plea.
The seconds that it took for the situation to develop, only took a minute more for it to escalate. The rest of EXO, having heard the shouting came sprinting down the stairs from the training rooms on the second floor. Baekhyun was right up front and calling my name, but I demanded he stop. I was so desperate for him to remain out of harms way that it came out in Japanese, the language of orders, what I used when I needed authority. He skidded to a stop on the landing and gaped at me, now even more concerned. He knew me, he knew that I would never order him around like my men, and the fact that I had-he saw my fear.
I felt more than saw Cat switch her footing from defensive to offensive. Even though she thought none of us knew about their relationship...we all did. Lay was her property, and if I didn't do anything, the Chinese army was going to find out the hard way that you don't mess with Catalina's toys. I wracked my brain for an answer, anything, tactical or otherwise. Was there even a way out of this that didn't involve a firefight? We didn't even know what they wanted-
There you go, Harper: Ask them what they want!
My arms sank down to my sides and I pulled myself out of my fighting posture.
"Hasa..." Cat hissed from the other side of Yixing, but I ignored her. Instead of looking at their hands or their guns or feet, my eyes went to their collars-the patches. Which one was the commanding officer. It wasn't like they came and left him in the car. None of the men in front of me were any higher than the next, according to their ranks, so I went around the circle. Cat nearly had a panic attack as she circled opposite me, desperate not to let anyone take advantage of an opening. "Hasa!"
Half way around the circle, I spotted a soldier with a higher rank than the others: stars instead of stripes.
"You," I pointed at him and held out my hand flat, "Give me the warrant." He didn't move at first, only stared at me evenly from under his standard issue cap. "Give me the warrant!" I yelled and slapped my own hand, as if to say 'put something there'. Language barrier or not, some universal gestures were still understood.
He knew I wanted something that he had, something that involved the Chinese national I was protecting from them. So, slowly, he holstered his handgun, nodding to his men to do the same. In my head, the only thing I could think was that 'holy shit, I somehow disarmed that situation', but I also knew that there would be a second part to this. Just because they put down their guns did not mean they wouldn't take them up again when I didn't hand over what they wanted.
The officer retrieved a bundle of paper from his pack and slapped it in my hand, eyeing me as he did so. I gripped and pulled, but he didn't let go, and we were stuck for a moment in a heated stare down. Almost every fiber of my being was scolding me for not breaking the contact. He was an officer, I was an enlisted, he outranked me, I should submit. But I was a Marine, and his People's Republic was not going to stop me from protecting what was mine.
Finally I pulled the papers from his grasp and, not bothering to look them over, handed them off to Yixing. Speaking Japanese and Korean was one thing, but reading any of those characters? Forget about it. He took them hesitantly, eyes darting from one soldier to the next, but Cat turned her back to the line and stepped closer to him.
"Find a way out of this, Lay." It was possibly the most intimate thing I'd ever seen her do. She was not a hug and kiss kind of girl. She kicked ass. She killed people. She did not beg them to stay. She did not wait for a political solution.
It was a welcome transition, although, at the moment, I could have used her wet works more than her submission. Yixing nodded to her and unfolded the papers. To me it just looked like a giant block of Chinese writing. Did he read it up to down, or right to left? Who fucking knew. All I could tell was that, the more he read, the more concerned he became.
"Yixing!" Kyung soo yelled from the balcony where, not only EXO was watching, but the entirety of SM entertainment had gathered. Even the Chairman was starting down the steps, and I wanted to ask where the hell he'd been for the last ten minutes. But none of that mattered when Lay held up a hand to halt his approach, and to silence his brothers.
"I have to go." He whispered to himself, or maybe to Cat.
"What? No! Why?" She rasped and snatched the papers from his hand. She stared at them fruitlessly for a moment before shoving them back at him, demanding to know what they said.
"Cat..." I made an attempt to calm her down, but she seemed to be coming more unhinged by the second.
"No! How can they just come and take him! This is his home!"
"No, actually...it's not." I said. Cat reeled a bit more, and thankfully, the Chinese Captain ordered his men to give her some space. He seemed to understand that he would get what he wanted, and that I would have to deal with any repercussions.
Yixing handed me the warrant and then tried to close the distance with Cat, who was only retreating more and more. Distraught as she was, I feared we were about to hit the bullet in our game of Russian Roulette. He tried to take her wrist but she yanked free, and her fury laser focused on him.
"What a spineless bastard! You're not even going to fight it!"
"Catalina..." He murmured her name as she continued to back away. Her words didn't seem to affect him, although there was the slight chance he didn't know what she was saying. Her Colombian accent liked to emerge when she was angry, sometimes to a point where no matter what she said, it sounded like she was cursing me in Chibchan.
"No!" Her hiss started to sound suspiciously like a sob, and my stomach sank.
"Catalina." He mulled again, but she threw up her hands, a defensive and desperate posture.
"You're going to leave, just like him!" I started forward at the mention of 'him'. There was not a single good thing that could come from her bringing up her father, not here, not now, not ever. She hated him, absolutely loathed the man, and if she was going to lump Lay in with her family, there was no telling what she would be willing to do to get away from him.
I managed to take two long strides before Yixing held up a hand in my direction, signaling for me to stop. I didn't want to, as he probably didn't know how much danger he was suddenly in (Chinese military aside), but he turned to look at me for a moment, and I saw in his face that it didn't matter. His eyes told me that no matter what, he was going to get through to her or die trying. So I backed off.
"Catalina, I have to go back. My people are demanding that I return." He explained to her as best he could in English.
"Why?" She shifted her glare from Lay to the Chinese soldiers behind him, probably assuming that they were 'his people', and that maybe if she got rid of them, everything would go back to how it was.
"I am not sure, but you know as well as I, that politics between China and Korea are falling apart." He took one step to the side, as if to call her attention back to him. For all his innocent demeanor, I never would have thought that Yixing understood how to manipulate a situation like this: centering her focus, using her name repeatedly, advancing only if she allowed it. Or perhaps he just knew Cat well enough to know that she had a feral side, and that angry animals hunted by line of sight.
"Yeah, and if you leave now, you may never be able to come back." She growled. She seemed to be going through these stages: desperate, furious, distraught, feral...at least one of those was a typical stage of grief. The rest, well...it wasn't like she had a normal enough childhood to develop healthy coping mechanisms.
Lay seemed to falter for a moment, knowing that she was right. If he went with the soldiers now, they would detain him and deport him. They had done it before after all. But after a moment of consideration, he seemed to come up with an idea. I could tell the exact instant it came to him because all the tension seemed to leave his shoulders, like he'd found the solution to fix all the world's problems.
"So come with me." He asked and took a big step forward, portraying his sincerity as best he could with his hands. It seemed to snap Cat out of her demented stupor, because she blinked and gave him a full up down, like whoever she had been speaking to before had suddenly changed into someone else.
"I can't, I'm-" She blurted, but he deflected her.
"Yes, I know. You're banned from China. Come anyway." Even though his back was to me, I imagined that he was probably grinning at her. That, admittedly, sexy smirk that would have worked on me once upon a time. I don't know how he knew, but he seemed to understand that one of the only things Cat had ever wanted was to be considered. Her mother had abandoned her and Afton when her father was arrested, leaving their father to barter them off to the United States government as wards. And anyone whose ever turned on a television knew that wards of the state were little better than pieces of meat, barely worth the check their foster parents got. No...not a day in her life had Catalina's opinion been taken into consideration. That was why she said whatever she wanted, to whom ever. Because she believed that it didn't matter anyway.
But this...this was a choice. Lay was giving her the option.
He had to go, there didn't seem to be any way around that. But whether or not she followed him...he was leaving it entirely up to her.
