Bulletproof

A few minutes later left me with a nagging feeling rattling in the back of my skull. There was something terribly wrong (other than what was obviously wrong, laying on the floor of the van on either side of me). The nagging feeling hounded my poor addled brain, refusing to let me be. I sat in a stubborn silence, trying doggedly to remember what it was that I had apparently forgotten. I thought that it must’ve been something that happened or was said when we were picking Ray and Mikey up, but most of that was an adrenaline rush. I didn’t remember much of it other than fighting that woman on the ground and almost dying.

That woman.

That made the feeling rear up and roar, so it was obviously the right direction. I remembered every detail I could about her, but the feeling (which had been rolling in my stomach like I was on a rollercoaster) was dying fast. Maybe not the right direction I’d been hoping for. I tried again, just leaving it at the woman. She’d been with three Dracs…

It hit me then, quite literally. I remembered in the same moment that I went flying into the side of the van from the impact of another vehicle colliding with us from the side. I swore loudly, hardly able to move the arm that had absorbed the worst of the impact, and I could hear Kindred swearing up a storm up front. Dr. D’s chair had toppled to the side, and he was using all sorts of creative phrases the likes of which I’d never heard. Show Pony looked to be okay, if not like he’d suffered some whiplash. I looked quickly to Mikey and Ray, and I thought I’d heard a quiet groan from one of them. I could’ve been mistaken with all of the other noise, though. We were more prepared when the second collision came, though the sound of screaming metal on metal made me cringe and cover my ears.

“What the hell is going on?!” Kindred shrieked over the noise, turning back to make sure we were okay.

“The Drac said ‘he’!” I responded, though I expected that an answer like that didn’t make much sense to my friend. She seemed to accept that for the time, though.

“Who is ‘he’, then?” she hollered again. I thought again to the woman.

“I think ‘he’ must be our real Exterminator. The woman went down way too easy!” I grunted as a third collision came, nearly throwing me into the wall again. Show Pony decided that that was a good time to become an aggressive driver, so he rammed our van back into the offending vehicle. I gasped as I hit the other side of the van, the air whooshing from my lungs and leaving me breathless. Dr. D narrowly avoided tipping over again, and I leaned down and tried to shield Mikey and Ray both with my body as the deadly game of bumper cars continued. After about five minutes of that, though, everything went quiet. I heard the squealing of tires on pavement, but we weren’t moving that fast.

“Did he run?” I questioned after a silent second, blinking to try to rid myself of the dizziness that came with being thrown around like a rag doll.

“Looks like it… fuck, Show Pony, open the window. I think I’m going to puke…” Scarlet answered, looking dazed.

Show Pony avoided letting her dirty the van with her vomit only by about half a second. He rubbed her back absently with one hand while he tried to focus on driving. When Scarlet was done, she sighed and slumped forward in her seat.

“I’m going to have a nasty bruise. The seatbelt just fucking slammed into me. Probably why I threw up.”

We listened to her babble on, all of us glad for the noise. Nobody wanted it to be quiet, but nobody wanted to say a thing, either. The sudden, unforeseen attack left us all a little winded.

“Is everyone okay?” I managed after a second. Show Pony and Dr. D nodded while Scarlet gave a shaky ‘Yeah’. I tried moving my arm again, but I winced and let it drop back to my side uselessly when it tightened considerably. “Fuck.”

“He’s gonna follow us, isn’t he?” Scarlet sighed, pushing her hair away from her face. She didn’t even sound worried, just slightly annoyed. Resigned, almost. “He’s gonna follow us to the Lair, and then we’re going to have to run and find a new place to hide. He’s going to try to kill all of us and it’s going to suck, right?”

“Probably,” Dr. D agreed, chuckling. “Nothing we can’t handle, of course.”

Scarlet looked pointedly and Mikey and Ray, which made my throat tighten. We continued on without speaking, Scarlet keeping watch while Show Pony did the same. Dr. D and I sat in the back with the guys, though we didn’t look at each other.

We arrived sooner than I’d hoped, and I was glad. I wouldn’t have been upset if I never had to get in that van again. Scarlet and Show Pony hopped out before opening the back for us. Dr. D rolled out on a ramp that Show Pony pulled down, and then I stumbled out. Show Pony and Scarlet grabbed Mikey and Ray (respectively), handling them carefully as we all moved inside. I held the door open for them with my good arm in somber silence; it all reminded me way too much of a funeral procession. The moment they heard the door open, though, the others rushed out to meet us. Gerard looked terrible, and it was only made worse when he spotted his sibling in Show Pony’s arms.

“Mi- shit, shit, no…” he breathed, rushing forward to snatch Mikey away. He cradled him close, babbling hysterical nonsense. He wasn’t even trying to hold it together, and I didn’t blame him. Both Mikey and Ray were taking in shallow, harsh, uneven breaths.

“We have to see if we can patch them up and stop the bleeding,” Scarlet muttered eventually, shifting Ray’s weight in her arms. Frank looked stunned, but he nodded. He helped her to get him into the office before coming back out and touching Gerard’s shoulder gently.

“Come on, G,” he whispered, barely audible. “We might be able to save him if we get him some help.”

Gerard babbled back uselessly, crying and gasping and looking like he might collapse. When Frank tried to gently grab Mikey away from him, he let loose a desperate screech.

“No! No, don’t take him!”

“G, listen: he’s not dead yet, but he will be soon if you don’t let us help him. He’s gonna die unless you let us help him,” Frank asserted, looking his friend dead in the eye. It took a moment for Gerard to register that information, but he relinquished his hold once he did. He followed along sullenly when Frank carried Mikey off to the office to lay him down. That left me, Scarlet, Dr. D, Show Pony, and Grace all looking at each other awkwardly.

“They’re gonna need some help,” Scarlet excused after a second, making her escape into the office. Right as the office door was swinging shut, the four of us left in the front could hear a string of foul curse words being muttered. The silence that followed was deafening. After a couple of seconds, Dr. D wordlessly wheeled himself back toward his studio, and Grace followed him. I sighed and sat in one of the booths, wincing and hissing as I jostled my arm as I leaned against the backrest. Show Pony came and sat opposite me, and I could feel his careful gaze on my person.

“I’m alright,” I lied, blowing it off. “Just a little sore after getting thrown around.”

He, of course, said nothing in return. We sat like that, quietly considering one another, for a long time. Long enough that Frank eventually came out to check out the damage to the two of us.

“I did all I could. I’m not counting on them living, but I’m hopeful,” he sighed, sounding and looking years older than usual. For the first time, his face didn’t have that boyish, mischievous look I’d come to associate with him. “What about you two? Kindred told us about the thing with the van.”

“I’m good,” I said quickly, forcing a tiny smile. It was a total lie, of course, because my entire body simply screamed at me not to move for a few days after all I’d put it through. He looked at the dried blood on my forehead and my destroyed arm (the left, the side I’d skidded on to avoid being run over), raising an eyebrow.

“You’ve got a shit definition of ‘fine’, Harley. Just once, I’d like to see you come back without being covered in blood,” he said, sounding a little too stiff and formal. I guessed that he was still irked about me blowing him off and leaving even when he forbade it. “What about you, Show?”

Show Pony shook his head in response, but the traitor pointed to my right arm after. I shook my head at him but stopped abruptly when Frank turned to look at me again. I just smiled blithely at him again, hoping he’d write it off. Of course he never would.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked in a long-suffering tone. Momentarily forgetting myself, I shrugged. And then I curled in on myself with a pathetic half-sob of pain, left hand flying to cradle my right shoulder. “What the hell happened to you?!”

“I was in the back of the van,” I choked, overcome with pain. “When we got hit, I ended up slamming into the side of the van. My arm took the brunt, though.”

“How do you manage to get so damn hurt every single time?” he demanded, sounding mad. I felt a little stab of anger at his tone. Why was he getting mad at me? I didn’t throw myself into the side of the van, damn it!

“Well, Jesus! Sorry to inconvenience you!” I hollered back, my temper snapping. I was tired and in pain and so not ready to deal with him yet. “Next time I’ll try to get it right and make sure you don’t have to fix me anymore!”

The silence that followed my temperamental outburst left everyone quiet. I didn’t look at Show Pony, but I could feel his eyes drilling into the side of my head. The look of fury on Frank’s face almost made me want to pull the words back and hide them away in my throat again.

Almost.

“What…” he breathed, deadly quiet and suddenly much too calm looking, “did you just say, Harley?”

“You heard me,” I hissed back, unable to reign in my temper. I felt like I’d just been through hell and back, and I wasn’t going to sit there and listen to him yell at me for attempting to rescue my friends. It wasn’t Frank’s fault, not really, but he wasn’t helping and I couldn’t stop even if I’d wanted to. I jumped back in my seat and bit back a hiss of pain when he suddenly slammed his closed fist on the table, looking ready to murder someone.

“Don’t you ever,” another slam as his fist hit the table again, “ever say anything like that ever again.”

I stared defiantly back at him, feeling my lips pressed together in a thin line of ill-temper. “I’d be out of the way, wouldn’t I?”

The whispered words, tinged with equal parts hurt and anger, hung between us heavily. Frank’s expression didn’t change. Not totally, at least. It flickered for a second, teetering between his rage and something else. It was such an utterly helpless look that I immediately felt bad, but I wasn’t ready to take it all back just yet. Neither one of us broke the eye contact, not even when Show Pony got up and left quietly. We continued to stare at each other, the air around us stifling, heavy with the words we’d exchanged. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he seemed hesitant. I realized that he didn’t want to be the one to break the silence. After another few minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore; I turned and looked completely away from him, staring out of the window on my other side.

“Harley…” Frank’s voice had lost a lot of its venom. An edge of pleading worked its way in there, but I stared pointedly away from him. I was being stupidly stubborn, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to look back over just yet. No one’s perfect. “Harley, hey, c’mon.”

My obstinate silence could only hold out for so long, since I could actually picture the sad look he was giving me in my head. I turned my head back to face him so slowly that I could almost hear the bones creaking with impatience. I stared at him, trying to keep my expression neutral. He looked tired and sad and just a tiny bit apologetic while I continued to struggle to keep the chilly act I had going.

“What?” I asked. I had been going for frosty indifference, but it came out more of a weak, beaten sound.

“This is stupid. We’re fighting over something that doesn’t even rationalize fighting while two of our friends are…” he trailed off, clearing his throat thickly. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

I noted that that wasn’t really an apology, but there was an apologetic note in the way he said it. I took a long breath through my nose, nodding slowly.

“It’s fine,” I replied. Even though neither of us actually apologized, the air in the room had shifted from tense and angry to tired. We were both bone tired. I noticed for the first time the dark purple that circled Frank’s eyes, the way they were a little dull. The spark of playful childishness was still there, but it was dimmer.

“We should take care of your arm,” he announces after a few quiet seconds, nodding to himself slowly. I couldn’t help but cradle it closer to myself, trying to keep it out of reach. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Frank, since I absolutely did, but I didn’t want anything or anyone touching that arm. He gives me a stern, fatherly look, so I sighed and nodded my consent warily. Standing slowly from my spot in the booth, I took a seat on top of the table so that he would have a better view. There was an ugly black bruise forming. I felt myself stop breathing when his hand even got close to my shoulder. He hadn’t even touched it yet.

“Can I…?” he asked carefully, waiting for me to swallow and squeeze my eyes shut. His fingers were very gentle, but it felt like I was slamming into the side of the van all over again. I stifled a whimper, but it escaped as a choked groan anyway. Tears pricked behind my eyelids, and that’s where I tried to keep them. Until he took a gentle grip on my bent elbow and tried to move my arm forward a little. I let out a surprised and pained yelp that honestly sounded more like the howl of a wounded animal. Frank’s hands dropped quickly away from me.

“Shit, sorry!” he gasped.

“Please don’t move it,” I begged, my eyes still shut tightly. I could feel some of the tears I’d been trying to hold back working their way through my eyelids and lashes. “Is it broken?”

“I don’t really know. I don’t want to touch it to find out…” I could hear the frown in his voice.

“Just put it in a sling and we’ll call it good,” I suggested, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. I remembered that I’d torn up my shirt to make bandages, and I vaguely remembered passing Kindred her coat back before the real pain in my shoulder started. No one seemed to care that I was running around in my bra, though, so I figured I shouldn’t worry about it.

But I was cold, damn it.

I heard the office door creaking open, heard the footsteps padding softly towards Frank and me. I peeked through my eyelashes and saw Scarlet considering me carefully, a shirt in her hands.

“You look like hell,” she stated, frowning.

“I know,” I agreed, blowing out a sigh. Her frown deepened before she seemed to remember that she’d gotten me a shirt. She handed it over without a word, but Frank shook his head.

“We need to clean the gravel out of your arm first,” he decided, reminding me that I’d skidded across the ground on my left arm. The thought made it ache vaguely. I nodded, and he disappeared for a couple of minutes, coming back with some water in a dish, a towel, some bandages, and tweezers. I swallowed nervously, looking away. Kindred sat at my side, taking my hand and letting me squeeze it whenever it hurt. Frank worked quickly, though, and my arm was wrapped up nice and tight much sooner than I’d dared to hope it would be.

I took the shirt (which I’d put in my lap while Frank worked on my arm) and put my bandaged arm and head through. I looked anxiously to my right arm, though, not quite certain that the shirt was worth the pain I’d have to go through to get it on.

“Don’t be a baby, Harley,” I chided myself quietly, swallowing and taking a deep breath before I shoved my arm through the sleeve. My whole body tightened in on itself in protest, and I just barely avoided curling into a pitiful ball. The loose shirt hung from my frame, and I realized that it wasn’t mine. It didn’t matter, though. I could see a few wet spots on the front of it, though. I touched my face and sighed in an irritated way, but I held my silence. I looked up again and noticed that Frank had disappeared.

“He went to find something to make a sling out of,” Scarlet explained, rubbing my back comfortingly. I nodded, sighing again.

“How are they?” I asked quietly after a beat of silence. Scarlet sighed and shook her head.

She didn’t answer other than that.