Speedster's Demise
Holy fuck that bastard's fast. Fast enough to take you down, which is definitely saying something. If you weren't the kind of guy who doesn't stay down from anything short of—eh, actually you've never found anything that can put you down for more than an hour or so. And this isn't going to break that streak, either.
Strider's chop job has you down and out of commission for all of ten minutes, though. It's pretty damn impressive, if you wanted to be impressed by a guy like this. Which you don't. He's finished the job you started, of ruining this outfit; you're so taking the cost to replace it out of whatever funds he's got around, once you finish taking it out of his hide.
Which you're going to do, just as soon as your lungs finish regenerating so you have enough oxygen to sustain movement. God, this is your literal least favorite thing to have to heal. Except maybe your dick. That shit stings like hell. Wait, there you go, you can breathe again without feeling air come out where it's not supposed to. Thank you, healing factor.
You roll up to your feet, testing to check that everything's functioning properly (it is) and glancing aroung to see if you can spot the bitch that you just failed to kill (you can't.) Wherever he's gone, he's taken one of your swords with him; he apparently couldn't get his own blade out of the wall. You're proud of your ability to guess where a wall stud is and embed a sword into it. It's like your superpower.
It's not too deep for you to wrench it out of the wall, though. Damn, this one's kind of a piece of shit, now that you look at it, but it'll work well enough. Your other sword's on the floor; you scoop it up, wipe the blood off on your sleeve—one of the few relatively undamaged patches of cloth on your upper body—and sheath it back in its proper place.
Poor thing's probably lonely back there all alone.
"We'll have your sister back in a minute, sweetie. Doohickey'll keep you company until we kill the bad man and rescue the fair damsel."
(Yes, you talk to your swords. Why not? Fuck off.)
Now, to get to the killing of the aforementioned bad man. He hasn't left many clues as to his whereabouts, other than the one big obvious one that you see as soon as you step out of Dave's room—the second door, the one that you assumed goes up to the roof, is half-open, a smear of blood left across it like a nice clear signpost screaming I'm a bastard and I went this way, please come stick several sharp things into various parts of my anatomy!
Well, who are you to disobey that kind of order?
The stairs are steep as hell, because of course they are. You're actually kind of surprised Strider decided to make his way up here, injured as you know you left him. The obvious explanation is that he wants to check on his kid as soon as humanly possible.
Somehow, that seems like a bad thing to you. It shouldn't, but it does. And when you get all the way up the stairs, even before your eyes adjust to the brighter sunlight up here, your suspicious mind's vindicated by the way Strider's standing over Dave, the way the kid's curled on the ground, the look on that bastard's face.
He's holding his sword, too. Got it half-raised already. What the fuck is he planning to do with it? You don't intend to find out.
"Hey! Pick on someone your own size, maybe?"
His expression when he hears your voice is priceless. What it changes to when you bury the sword you pulled out of the wall in his throat is somehow even better.
Strider opens his mouth and blood comes out. He drops your sword, reaches up with his good hand to grope at the blade sticking out of his throat. He can't quite reach far enough to get the hilt, which is a good sign. Means he's dying faster instead of slower.
He's not going down fast enough for you, though, so you speed up that process a little by stepping close enough to punch that stupid face as hard as you can. (That's pretty damn hard, for anyone who's wondering. Plenty hard enough to knock him down and out, where he can finish drowning in his own blood somewhere out of your way.)
Okay, now to deal with your main concern. The kid. Dave, who hasn't moved at all despite the fact that you just killed his brother three feet away from him. Fuck, that bastard hurt him, didn't he?
"Dave? Hey, kiddo, can you look at me?" He doesn't move at all, but when you kneel next to him and go to turn him over so you can get a look at him you get the reaction of a slight but obvious shudder, and him cringing down and away from you. "Okay, yep, you can't, I get it, but I'm still going to need to take a look at you..."
If he makes one move to try to get away, you'll back off. He doesn't, though, and you're worried about him above and beyond the whole issue of not getting paid if you don't get him to Lalonde in one piece.
(No. You're not going soft. You like kids, okay? Fuck, if she'd given you the deets on this whole shitshow, you probably would've came down and got him for just travel expenses. Maybe not even that; the way Dave's just shut down suggests that the bastard who's currently making sick gurgling sounds somewhere behind you is significantly worse than you actually thought.)
He's not badly hurt, at least. Not hurt at all, beyond a bruise rising across one side of his face.
"Oh, thank god. Here, come on, kid..."
When you pull Dave halfway up to a proper sitting position, his eyes finally snap open, staring up at you with what starts as fear and almost immediately moves on to pure confusion. Shit, his brother's still dying or dead behind you—
"What the fuck..." Dave doesn't actually resist when you wrap one arm around him and shift him slightly to put yourself between him and the not-quite-corpse. All he does is close those surprisingly red eyes again, hold himself stiff like he thinks he's not allowed to lean against you even the slightest bit. "Bro—he said he—"
"Killed me? Yeah, that never sticks." You have no idea if he knows what you mean. He sure doesn't answer. "You okay?"
Again, you don't get an answer, per se, but you do get a response in the form of something that approximates a question, in a very quiet voice that suggest he already knows what you're going to say. "Bro?"
Ooh, shit. Yeah. "Uh." That's very good, Wade. Don't give him any reassurance at all, but also don't answer his question. "...I almost feel like I should say I'm sorry, but I'm really not." Goddamnit, Wade, that's actually worse. Congratulations.
And the kid takes it about as well as can be expected, which is to say that he mumbles, "Oh, my god," and shifts to wrap his arms around himself. He doesn't actually pull away from you, but rather seems to shrink down into himself, like he's trying not to touch anyone or anything. "Dude, I...fuck."
You've suceeded in traumatizing a kid. Good fucking job, Wade.
Okay. Fuck what you're being paid for, your new job is to make sure he's going to be okay. Somehow.
"C'mon. Come here." Again, he doesn't move, but at least he doesn't pull away when you shift to scoop him up in your arms and rise to your feet. You put one hand over his eyes when he tries to look over at the dead body, though. "Nope. You don't want to see that, trust me on this."
"He's my fucking brother." Still quiet. Shaky, now. That's probably not great.
"It's a dead body. He was a motherfucker that I would've killed for free, if anyone bothered to tell me what the fuck was going on here." Like seriously, what the fuck's wrong with Lalonde? Did she not research you at all? Does no one here know who you are? Shit, you sound like a soccer mom throwing a fit at Target. "Don't look."
"You won't fucking let me, asshole." Damn, he gets even quieter when he calls you that, like he thinks you're going to retaliate. Which you're not. You are an asshole. "Put me down."
"In a minute." The door to the stairs is still half-open. You nudge it the rest of the way open and head down, careful where you put your feet because if you fall now, he'll be hurt, and that's not fucking acceptable. Not to you.
...you've got a feeling that you're only going to get more attatched to this kid, and somehow you're much less worried about that than you probably should be.