Sauve Le
Saturday morning couldn’t have come soon enough for Siriussy. He was up with the sun, sitting around in his dorm restlessly. M. was bringing “gear,” so Siriussy didn’t have much to dress himself in, leaving him without much getting-ready to be done.
The break-in was supposed to be at 9:45. Siriussy would have to arrive about ten minutes early in order to gear-up, so he’d leave at 8:50, just to be on the safe side.
It was currently 6:58. The dining hall wasn’t even open for breakfast until 7:30. Siriussy was just so…ready. He was so close to getting his Jame back. He could hardly even sleep last night. It just—time just needed to move faster so he could hold Jame in his arms. See him with his own two eyes.
So, when the clock struck 7:30 and Siriussy was ready for his day of saving the love of his life, he made his way downstairs for a fueling breakfast, in preparation to exert himself however much it took to get Jame back in one—breathing—piece.
Breakfast was eaten far too quickly, leaving Siriussy with another hour or so of waiting.
He tried wandering the Training Centre, but he couldn’t stop himself from lingering around the hospital wing, reminding himself of Jame and leaving him all the more restless to get him back. He just wanted to get Jame back. It had been three weeks without seeing his face. Three weeks.
So, then he tried talking to his Professors, but hardly any of them were awake enough to entertain his questions and besides, Professor Buns was the most boring person in the entire world. Siriussy wasn’t even exaggerating. That man would talk for hours about paint drying, Siriussy would swear it on Sigma Merlin’s tits!
Siriussy was then left with twenty minutes, which he filled with waiting at the train station. He was catching the first train of the day at 8:50, seeing as though it was a lovely Saturday. Not that the trains would be running any differently on a Saturday with poor weather, but it did make the reasoning seem more romantic to Siriussy. And, well, he was feeling quite romantic on this sunny morning, the scent of dew filling his mind and warm breeze tousling his black curls.
Today was already gearing up to be beautiful without the promise of Jame’s presence gracing the world around him. Siriussy couldn’t wait to see how the birds sang when Jame returned, the way the flowers bloomed when he passed. Oh, how the world bloomed beneath Jame’s blinding light. He would bring this marvellous day of early summer into a paradise made for Siriussy and his love. There, in the fields of flowers and buzzing bees, they would dance and laugh and embrace.
The world was the orchestra and Jame was the conductor. Siriussy was the audience, waiting for what they would grace his ears with.
Music would be Jame’s arrival. Sweet, sweet music.
“All aboard!” A voice called, startling Siriussy out of his fantasies of what was to come. The train had arrived at the station beside him.
Siriussy grinned and hopped on. He was forty minutes away from the beginning of the rest of his life. And wasn’t that something to smile about?
The train ride was uneventful, but the cityscape passing by had been illuminated by the summer sun, grinning upon this day. They even arrived at the Betapolis station with five minutes to spare.
Siriussy left the station, ignoring the nervous knot in his stomach, tightening with each step he took closer to the street where he’d been shot. He wouldn’t even be walking through there and this mission didn’t have anything to do with the AURORs. He was rescuing Jame from a criminal. Not stopping a government bomb from going off.
No one would be shooting at him on his walk to the factory. It was off on a quiet dirt road and there were pedestrians walking about and the day was gorgeous and the sun warmed him, but not quite to the core. He’d need to see Jame for that.
But he was on his way to see Jame. Down a beaten road, the tall grass lining it filled with the buzzing of cicadas and rustling of deer.
Siriussy was supposed to meet the rest of the team about halfway down this road at 9:35 and it was 9:15. He could relax and enjoy this walk. Soak in the sunlight, marvel at the clouds above. He could finally relax. Jame was going to be safe.
A sudden pounding of hooves and snap of twigs shook Siriussy out of his nature-appreciation and threw him into defence-mode. But when he whipped his head in the direction of the ruckus, he was met with the sight of a magnificent stag with ivory antlers, shaped like the prongs of a fork, its fur an auburn, its broad chest an off-white colour, dirtied by the dirt and mud this glorious creature trampled through on the daily.
Siriussy looked at this stag and felt it was an omen. The strength and grace. The beauty and power. Siriussy would have to face adversity, but in the face of it, he would persevere as this deer did in the path of any obstacle. He would move forth with all the robustness and agility as this stag and bring the government toppling down, Jame’s hand in his own.
And in that moment, staring eye-to-eye with this symbol of intuition, Siriussy knew the war would not end without the world changing for the better. (A/N: stop why did that work so well? fam am i a genius??? I think i’m a literary master, bringing the title to life like that :3)
“Siriussy! You ready?” Dorcas called to him as he rounded the corner, coming upon their control centre (a big black van parked in the bushes).
“‘Course I am. We’re going to take those fuckers by storm and my boyfriend home,” Siriussy stated decidedly because, well, he had decided that that was exactly what was going to happen. The stag had made it all perfectly clear in his mind.
“That’s the spirit, mate!” Pandora exclaimed, raising her hand for a high-five, which Siriussy immediately obliged to, smiling slightly. Yeah, this was going to go well. Siriussy could tell.
“Alright, Siriussy you should gear up. We’re waiting on Remu right now, but once he arrives, we should be able to go in a bit early,” Lily explained quickly, pointing toward M. who was holding up a bullet-proof vest and various weapons for Siriussy to carry. M. helped him get everything on with an expert knowledge that only slightly scared Siriussy…okay it scared him a lot. She was bloody terrifying.
But that was fine. Remu arrived soon after she’d geared Siriussy up, so Siriussy stepped into the van and out of the way in order to get this mission started. Dorcas, Remu, Evan, and M. would be going into Cunter’s factory while Pandora, Lily, and Siriussy monitored everything they had access to (thanks to Lily’s utterly brilliant hacking skills) and stayed in contact with Edgylus, who was doing some monitoring of his own, of the AUROR radio/call networks. Everything was planned. They had eyes pretty much everywhere. They were going to bust Jame out of this kidnapper’s creepy factory and escort him safely back to the Sigma Training Centre, where Siriussy would never let him out of his sight again.
“Alright, here we go!” Dorcas called to her group. She was a bundle of nerves today because they could not afford for this mission to be a failure. Everyone involved would likely be imprisoned if not killed and they were pretty much the entire war effort at this point. Hopefully Jame would be unharmed and able to help her lead the Order once they get him out of this shithole.
Dorcas exhaled. All they had to do was get him out.
Edgylus was sitting at his desk, his door locked behind him. Emma had agreed to stay in his room while he carried out this mission from the “safety” of 21 Grimace Shake Lane, seeing as though fucking would be the perfect cover for how ever long this rescue could take.
Emma had also promised she wouldn’t tell anyone about the Order, claiming that she’d even like to join. She had a girlfriend, she’d explained to Edgylus, and maybe in the new world that the Order was building they’d be able to love freely. Edgylus had joined for that very reason. Only, now, he didn’t have anyone to hold out hope on marrying.
So, there he sat, headphones on, computer light shining in his face, a stark contrast against his dark room. There was chatter here and there on the AUROR lines, along with on the Field Team’s line, but nothing of importance. It was a good thing that Edgylus could pick out non-important words from detrimental information with ease, or else he’d probably have missed the words, “Hello, I’m Cunter—” which would never get to see the inside of any AUROR’s ears.
Close call.
Siriussy was nervously watching the two camera feeds Pandora had assigned him to. She had another two and Lily had a separate task involving her computer, which Siriussy didn’t feel the need to ask too many questions about.
The fact that there were only four cameras that they had access to was mildly infuriating in itself, but the fact that they didn’t seem to be showing any useful footage just piled onto Siriussy’s annoyance. There was zero movement in camera 1 and 2, not even shadows on the walls they were pointed towards! Leave it to a man with a name like Cunter Cockwise to have extremely shitty camera placement…
Well, now that Siriussy was thinking about it, it could be because he was committing crimes every day and didn’t want them on camera…
Nah, he was just bad at camera placement.
Dorcas’ heart rate accelerated as she and Evan busted down the factory doors in a flashy display of distraction tactics. She was worried that she’d be shot onsite by Cunter’s hoards of men.
…where were the hoards of men?
Evan and Dorcas stopped shooting their guns wildly, and shouting to look around. There was—
“No one’s here?” Evan questioned suspiciously. “What the fuck?”
“D’you think Evans had the wrong information?” Dorcas looked at her friend. He looked back at her.
Neither of them believed Evans would give them right information in the first place. But they really shouldn’t say that when there could be cameras anywhere that she had access to.
“Dunno,” Evan responded, pumping his eyebrows once in a motion too small for a camera to pick-up. They had respectively mastered the art of miniscule facial expressions to communicate in front of people and cameras without being obvious.
Dorcas turned around to look at M. and Remu. “I—you two stand guard out here. I think just me and Evan should go through this place.” M. and Remu both nodded, planting themselves on opposite sides of the door, standing facing each other for the ability to see both the path coming up to them, but also the door into the factory.
Dorcas turned back to her mission partner. “Shall we…go upstairs?” Dorcas nodded reservedly toward the rusted metal staircase standing in the centre of the conveyor belts lining each side of the large open room. It looked highly unstable, but hey, maybe Cunter had ditched Jame in this run-down factory to be killed when it was demolished in likely a matter of days, judging by the looks of it.
Evan shrugged and gestured for Dorcas to lead the way, which she definitely did not want to do. But she was going to save her friend. She could do this.
Dorcas swallowed and took a deep breath before she stepped onto the first stair, which creaked concerningly, but held her weight. So, she took another step. Then another. And another, until, eventually, she’d made it to the top without falling through the metal and breaking her ankles. Dorcas released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding and watched as Evan scampered up the stairs behind her. He was far smaller than she was, but that didn’t stop the stairs from groaning with each step. Luckily, he made it as well, breathing heavily by the end of it.
Dorcas turned around wordlessly and began leading Evan through the only hall there was. Evan knew to follow her, they had worked together for years now.
The corridor they found themselves in was dark, the only light breaking through was sunlight streaming through the occasional crack in the metal exterior of the factory. Dorcas really didn’t appreciate the structural integrity of this building. It looked like it wanted to collapse in on itself, out of spite.
“Cas?” Evan spoke, stopped in front of a door. It was shut, unlike all of the other doors they’d passed without thought. Dorcas had just assumed the doors in this terrible building were unable to stay closed because that seemed like a pretty sound theory. But this one was.
“We have to go in,” Dorcas decided with very little thought. “Jame could be in there.”
“I dunno, Cassie. D’you think he’s actually still here—?”
“Of course he is!” Dorcas exclaimed. “We—we’re going to find him today. Okay, Evan?”
Evan bit his bottom lip. “Okay, Cas. We’ll find him.” He reached out and took her hand, giving it a quick, reassuring squeeze. It did nothing to settle Dorcas’ nerves.
What if Jame wasn’t here?
What if Jame wasn’t alive?
What would Siriussy do? He wouldn’t be able to live without his boyfriend.
What would she do? She could hardly run the Order all alone. She needed him so they could win this war, once and for all.
Fuck, Jame had better be behind that door.
Siriussy yelped as he saw a figure in camera 2. She wasn’t someone he recognised, with her large, black hair and brown skin, but she looked dangerous. And so far, she was the only person he’d seen this entire time.
“Someone’s walked past camera two!” Siriussy exclaimed into his radio, everyone on the mission tuned into the same frequency.
Lily tapped a few keys on her laptop. “They should be rounding the corner, Cas.”
Dorcas came in over the radio, murmuring in assent before she abruptly cut-out. Siriussy prayed she was okay. He wouldn’t be able to cope if this mission to rescue Jame turned into a bloodbath. It would be entirely his fault too. And that would not be very cash money.
Edgylus sat up straighter in his chair when he heard the distress in Siriussy’s tone when telling Dorcas about the unfamiliar person rounding the corner towards her. Emma noticed the change in his demeanour, but Edgylus really couldn’t answer her questions and listen to all of the talk going between AURORs and the people on this mission, so he elected to ignore her. He could explain later.
But Remu was inside. He—what if she was—if he didn’t come out—
No. Edgylus had to stop. He and Remu were no longer together. He didn’t…there was no need for Edgylus’ worries. Remu could handle himself. It’s not like they were married. Edgylus was married to Emma.
He exhaled and turned his attention back to the endless chatter. That was his job.
Dorcas whipped around the moment Siriussy had warned them of their company, the distress in his voice enough to set her on-edge, her cool demeanour no match for this mission.
She didn’t immediately see anyone, and neither did Evan, it seemed. But Lily had said that person was coming toward them…maybe they went off-course? Dorcas blinked a few times, breathing heavily, before turning back around to the closed door, most likely holding her friend.
“I say we knock it down,” Dorcas said, steeling herself and her voice, not wanting to flaunt her nerves. “What d’you say, Evan?”
She glanced to the side where Evan was. Evan…should be.
“Evan?” Dorcas looked to her other side. “Evan?” She turned around. “Evan?!” She knew she was making a ruckus, but whipping her head back and forth, Evan wasn’t anywhere around her.
She sprinted to the nearest corner, peering around it. He wasn’t there. Dorcas—she couldn’t…not another one, please, Dorcas begged in her mind. If Pandora lost her brother…
“EVAN?!” Dorcas’ voice was louder than she should have let it be. She screamed for him primally, raw and angry. If she loses another person, she wouldn’t know how to—what would she do?
(A/N: if you’re forgetting, Barty died earlier and Dorcas is a part of that friend group; it’s Evan, Dorcas, Pandora, Jame, and Barty [but he’s dead <3])
Dorcas was breathing. In and out. In and out. In…In…In…
She couldn’t—what would—In…In…In…
The room spun and her vision fogged, but she continued yelling for Evan.
“E–Evan?!” Her speech slowed as she took her place against a wall. Someone was talking over her radio. Something about Remu and M. But—well she couldn’t—maybe it wasn’t important.
“Evan?” Dorcas sunk to the floor
“Dorcas?” Evan’s voice rang out through the hallway. Footsteps thudded toward Dorcas’ weeping figure, curled in on herself. “Dorcas? Are you okay?”
Dorcas peered through the curtain her braids had created for her. Evan kneeled before her, hands on her knees. His expression was filled with worry, but Dorcas’ was now painted with rage. She shoved Evan off of her and stood, brushing invisible dirt off of her clothes.
“Cas?” Evan asked from behind Dorcas, having stood as well.
Dorcas spun on her heel, taking quick strides in order to throw her open hand across his face. Evan reeled back, but he wasn’t frowning anymore. No, in fact, he was grinning ear-to-ear.
“There you are, Cassie.” Evan made eye-contact with one of his oldest friends and his smile softened. He reached out to pull her into a hug, which she immediately melted into. Dorcas wouldn’t be losing Evan today, she decided, shoving her face into the crook of his neck and breathing in the smell of his shampoo, lavender and coconut. They’d always make fun of him for it. Back when Barty was still…Back when they were all still young and happy.
“I love you, Evs.” Evan tensed up at the nickname, but ultimately squeezed Dorcas even tighter.
“I love you too, Cas.”
A slow clap began from behind Dorcas, causing Evan to straighten up, eyes wide. Dorcas spun around to see what he did.
“Cunter Cockwise.”