#(pre-slash)

Pushing down the rising panic in his chest, Tangerine drew a deep, ragged breath, only to fall into spluttering, wheezing, gasping coughs. Something was wrong with his chest, too. It bubbled, each breath feeling thick and wet in a way that could only spell trouble.

“Make some noise if you can hear me!” 

Tangerine blinked hard. Nothing changed. The word around him was unnaturally black and still.

Where am I? The thought drifted through Tangerine’s mind, trying desperately to remember something – anything – before the tightness in his chest and the trickle that felt suspiciously like blood on his forehead and the numbness in his feet and hands.

“What the fuck happened?” Tangerine gasped, words barely more than a murmur as he tried to pull the pieces together, to remember what could have led to whatever the fuck was happening to him.

It started to come back in pieces.

A contract. Money. A cartel. Some fuckboy with facial tattoos and a shitty attitude. Russians? Japanese? No, Japan.

The train.

The fucking case.

Lemon.

Oh, Lemon.

Tears streaked down Tangerine’s cheeks as Lemon’s lifeless face flashed across his mind, the glint of his medallion sitting around his brother’s neck. He let his head fall back against the twisted wreckage and wished that the pitch black around him would hurry up and take him.

The world refused to stop coming back to him in pieces. 

At first, there was nothing but pressure; a weight across his chest, his shoulders pinned at an angle that didn’t quite feel right. Not painful – not yet – but undeniably wrong. The darkness around him – dense, and thick, and tasting faintly of smoke and oil – was starting to turn grey around the edges, as if his eyesight was finally adjusting.

“Is anyone still in there?” A familiar voice shouted, carrying through the dark, warring with the dust and ash and smoke that threatened to make his burning lungs give up hope altogether.

Tangerine couldn’t shout in response if he even wanted to. His chest felt tight, each breath a careful, considered action.

What was the point? The only person who mattered was already dead.

Above him, something shifted, the world around him grinding, metal on metal screaming in protest. A slab of something heavy – metal, concrete, luggage, he couldn’t tell – shifted, settling lower, forcing the rubble around him until nerve endings felt like they were on fire and breathing became an indescribable pain.

At least his hands and feet no longer felt numb, he thought somewhat deliriously.

“Hello!! Look, I really don’t think there’s anyone still in there who can hear us…”

Why did that voice sound so familiar?

Metal shifted again, a fresh wave of ash and dust raining down on him. Tangerine’s chest tightened as he stopped breathing altogether, fear freezing the air in his lungs. Whoever the fucking idiot was screaming for survivors wasn’t being careful enough. If he didn’t start moving more cautiously, he risked sending a wave of debris down that would only do more harm than good.

Ringed fingers twitched, brushing against sharpened metal and something smooth and cold and familiar.

The gun.

He shot someone, didn’t he? No… he was going to shoot someone. There was a scuffle. His finger was on the trigger.

And then the world around him had exploded in pain.

Tangerine swallowed, his mouth dry, dust sticking to his tongue. Every inhale felt like he was breathing in grit, the world around him too close. Too tight. Too much. The space around him felt like it was shrinking, like it couldn’t possibly hold.

For a second, panic won.

His breathing stuttered into something like a gasp, the wreckage shifting, creaking ominously around him.

Tangerine froze, not daring to move again.

The silence that followed was worse than the noise. It pressed on him, intimate and suffocating. All at once, it was as if he became acutely aware of every point of contact with the world around him: Metal against his ribs; something jagged and sharp digging into his hip; the unnatural angle of his shoulder – and his leg. The wetness, warm and slick and thick, that seemed to only be growing beneath him. 

At least I’ll be with Lem soon.

Tangerine breathed in slowly. Deliberately. Trying to force a calm that he no longer felt. He had failed Lemon. Had failed his baby brother. How could he? He had one job. One. And he had failed it so spectacularly. 

His mind drifted, tears streaking down his cheeks. Lemon was somewhere in the wreckage, wasn’t he? Couldn’t even arrange a proper fucking funeral. It wasn’t as if anyone else was around to do it for them.

I’m so sorry, Lem. 

“And I’m tellin’ you, he’s here somewhere. I’m not leavin’ until we find him. He’d do the same for me.”

“Even if he is here…”

“Do not. Finish that fucking sentence.”

That same familiar voice, the one that he couldn’t place, sounded closer. The other one… Tangerine laughed. Of course he was hallucinating Lemon talking in his final moments. Who else could there be?

He turned his head towards the sound, wanting Lemon’s voice to be the last thing that he heard. His heartbeat began to steady in his chest, more from sheer force of will than anything else; he didn’t want his own panic to be the last thing that he heard. 

Tangerine swallowed, the taste of iron thick on his tongue. Was that arsehole buried in there with him? He hoped so.

“Lemon. People are going to start turning up soon. We need to not be here.”

“How many times do I have ta tell you? I’m not fuckin’ leavin’ without him.” 

Somewhere beneath him, Tangerine’s phone started to let out a distinctive ping.

“What did I tell you?”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

Tangerine laughed. It slipped out of him – sharp, disbelieved, and wrong in the dust-filled darkness. 

“Did you hear that? Tan? That you?”

Tangerine’s head lolled back, the world around him swimming at the edges. Black-grey started to turn lighter. The sound of chatter drew closer. 

“I swear to god, if you’re having a fuckin’ nap right now, I’m never gonna let you hear the end of this.” 

There was something wrong with Lemon’s voice. Thick and wavering, as though he had been crying. It was enough to draw Tangerine back from the edge of the void. To force him to stop drifting, and to finally answer. 

“Y’alright?”

The world fell silent and still.

Tangerine’s breath caught in his throat. Fuck. Was it just a hallucination after all?

“Fuck me.” Breathy and reverent, the other voice drifted down to him. Tangerine frowned, finally placing it.

“Great. Now I’m hearing that bellend too.”

Light burst in a foot away from Tangerine, glass raining down on him. Was that one of the carriage windows above him? He tried to turn his face away, to shield it as best he could, but there was little he could do to move beneath the twisted wreckage. 

“Fuck! You tryin’ ta kill me?”

Metal scraped louder. This time, there was nothing raining down onto him in a glittering, deadly shower. A phone came through the gap first, torch light bright, a hand – bloodied and scraped – holding on to it, aiming the camera at him through the hole. 

“He’s alive! We need to get him out of there.”

“Get out of the way. I need ta see him.”

“This isn’t funny.” Tangerine said, voice thick. He was hearing things. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be Lemon. “You’re dead.”

“This isn’t a joke. You need to stop talking and let us get you out of there. Can you move? Or do you need us to get to you?”

Metal groaned. More light leaked in, flooding the space, giving Tangerine just enough room to see a familiar face peering down at him. Tangerine stared back. He didn’t dare blink.

“Lemon?”

A beat of silence fell between them, tight enough to feel physical, like the wreckage itself was holding its breath around them. 

“Can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?”

Tangerine let out a choked, broken laugh, relief hitting him too fast to be controlled, too sharp to be dignified. Catching in his throat, a wet, uneven sob – half disbelief, half pain – broke between them. 

Tears stung hot against his cheeks, leaving trails behind in the dust and blood streaking his skin. He blinked hard, as if that might somehow fix it, fear clawing at his chest that Lemon might not still be there by the time his vision cleared. But Lemon was still there, sunlight streaming behind him. Real, and solid, and alive in a way that Tangerine never expected to see him again.

Another scrape of metal. Of rubble being moved. Of someone working to get him out. 

“Now, I’m gonna need you to hold yourself together until we get you outta here, yeah?”

Tangerine huffed another laugh – broken and disbelieving – as Lemon turned back to say something to Ladybug.

“You’re really here,” Tangerine said, voice hoarse. 

“Yeah,” Lemon said softly. “I am. Couldn’t leave you behind, now, could I? Now. Shut up and let me get you out of here.”

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“Chef,” Carmen says, warning her of his presence. If he calls her Sydney, he might snap; if he calls her Syd, he might break. This is the comfortable middle ground. Her title. Who she is to the people who don’t know her. People like Adam Shapiro. Adam fucking Shapiro.

Maybe it’s something in Carmen’s voice, or the fact that he joined her outside at all when he no longer smokes, but when Sydney looks up at him, there’s nothing but contempt in her eyes. It’s so familiar that it winds Carmen up even more than he already was after being pulled aside in his own goddamn restaurant just to be asked if he was, “cool with the offer [Adam] made to Sydney.”

“What offer?” Carmen had asked. Adam’s smile faltered. “Oh, she hasn’t told you yet?”

Back in the present, Sydney sighs and says, “Whatever it is you need, can it wait like five minutes?”

Any other day, Carmen would give her the five. Give her the space. Anything she asked for, he would give to her. But it’s night right now, and the sky isn’t the only dark thing between them. So, Carmen says, “I think you’ve had longer than five minutes for this.”

Sydney’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, then relax as realization (and horror) dawn on her. “He talked to you.”

“Who?” Carmen asks – because he wants to fucking hear it from her. The person he built this place with, revived it with. First Mikey, and now her? And neither one of them had the decency to say goodbye themselves? “Who do you think talked to me?”

Sydney lets out something between a laugh and a scoff. “Okay. I can already see how this is gonna go,” she says as she stands up. “This is why I didn’t wanna have this conversation with you.”

“And what conversation is that?”

“About Shapiro offering me a position at his new place,” she answers dryly.

Carmen takes a deep breath to steady himself. “So when’s your last day, chef?”

Sydney rears back like she’s been slapped. “My last –? You know what, I changed my mind. I’m glad you brought this up.”

Some part of Carmen is thrilled that he’s getting a rise out of her, and he knows that it’s sick and twisted of him, but it feels like release.

“You know what your problem is, Carm?” Sydney asks as she crushes her cigarette beneath her heel. “You make decisions for me instead of with me.”

“Maybe if I didn’t have to pull everything out of you by force, I wouldn’t have to, Syd.”

“Oh, so now this is my fault?”

“Did I say that?”

Sydney gives him a look. “Were you trying to imply something else?”

“I’m not trying to imply anything,” Carmen intones. “I’m telling you, it’s harder for me to get you to say what’s on your mind than it is to scrub burnt caramel off a pan.”

She rolls her eyes. “Like you’re any better.”

“I am with you,” Carmen fires back.

The muscles in Sydney’s jaw clench at that. She looks down, then says, “Okay, you wanna know what’s on my mind?”

“That would be tremendous.”

“I think you’re a pain in the ass,” Sydney huffs. “I think you’ve found a way to make getting a star all about you when we were supposed to be doing this together. And like, I’m not suffering from the delusion that this –” Sydney gestures to the restaurant beside them, “– is going to be a fun little walk in the park every day, but it was supposed to be different. You didn’t even want a star when we were rebuilding, and then you flipped and went insane. Your list of non-negotiables is insane! Well, minus breaking down the boxes, you were right about that.” She shakes her head. “That’s not the point.”

“There was a point?”

Sydney rolls her eyes. “Oh, fuck you.”

“Fuck you,” Carmen returns.

“Fuck you!” Sydney snaps. “This is what I mean! You talk over me, you change the menu without me, you argue all. the fucking. time. Enough that even Shapiro noticed when he came here with his friends!”

“So go fucking work for him, then. I’m sure it’ll be so much better.”

Sydney tugs at her apron violently trying to pull something out of the pockets. When she finds her pack of cigarettes she launches it at Carmen, saying, “I don’t want to work for him, you ass! I want someone to work with. Someone to build a menu with. Someone to bitch about all of this – with. And that was supposed to be you! I applied to The Beef because I wanted to work with you!”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Carmen asks, sounding more defeated than he wants to. “Why haven’t you signed the partnership agreement?”

“I –” Sydney sighs. “I don’t know.”

“No,” Carmen says, taking a step toward her. “Bullshit.”

Sydney takes a step back not realizing how close to the wall she is and bumps into it. She looks back at the offending wall, then at Carmen again. “I can’t – I don’t –” she groans, annoyed with herself. “I’m putting everything into this that I have, and if it fails, I don’t know if I’ll recover again.”

Carmen takes a deep breath to say something but finds that he has nothing worthy of the air to say. Instead, he nods and rubs his fist over his heart. The moment he does, he realizes how long it’s been since he last used the gesture… and how many moments within that time frame that it would’ve been fitting of him to use it. After a moment, he finally says, “I was trying to make sure we didn’t. I was trying –”

Sydney raises her eyebrows, waiting for the end of that sentence. When it doesn’t come, she prompts him, “You were trying to…?”

He looks her in the eyes. “I was trying to get you to stay.”

Her brow furrows again. “You didn’t even know Shapiro tried to hire me on as his executive chef.”

Carmen laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. He runs his fingers through his curls and scratches at his scalp. “That’s, that’s not – I was trying to give you what you wanted.”

Sydney squints at him. “Did you think I would leave if you didn’t?”

Carmen is silent for a beat too long apparently because Sydney whines, “Carmen.”

“What?”

“Dude, if not getting everything I wanted was enough to make me leave, I would’ve left a long time ago. And also, you’re kind of a shit judge of character when it comes to what it is that I actually want. Or like, the ranking of those things.”

“It’s not like you’re telling me, Syd,” Carmen drawls.

“I am,” she insists. “I have been. So, do me a favor? Try to internalize it.”

“... Chef.”

Sydney sighs. “I want you to talk to me,” she says. “About the menu, about what’s going on in your head –”

“I don’t think you want me to do that,” Carmen mutters under his breath.

“Shhh,” Sydney hisses over him. “I do want that. Because, clearly, whatever is going on up there is fucking up what’s out here.”

Understatement of the century, Carmen thinks.

“Just – stop trying to do it all alone to prove a point. Believe it or not, everyone wants this place to work. Not just you. And they’re willing to help get us there, too.”

Carmen nods. “Yeah.”

Sydney opens her mouth, then closes it, then tries again. “Y’know what the best meal I ever had was?”

Carmen’s brow furrows, confused as he is by the sudden turn in the conversation. “... What?”

Clouds blanketing the sky and no source of light in hand, Dick sneaks unseen and unheard between the carriages and behind the few guards posted here and there. The smells of animals and bodies and dead bonfires cover his own, and also makes it harder for him to locate the cage he's looking for, but he knows his friend's smell better than his own and it's just a matter of minutes before he locks on Wally's distressed, feverish scent trace.

He doesn't have to whisper for him because Wally knows him in the same way, and is immediately awake and looking at him from behind the wooden bars with wide, shocked eyes. Dick reaches into the cage and for a moment they're just holding tight onto each other, Wally's breathing turning shallow as he fights to keep composure.

"Why did you come back" he whispers while tugging at the sleeves of Dick's shirt, anguish making his voice tremble even if he's speaking so quietly. "I thought you were safe, miles away from here. I thought—"

"I could never leave you behind" Dick squeezes his nape. "I abandoned my family once. I won't do it again."

He starts working on the lock of the cage as quickly and quietly as he can, and it's a heavier padlock compared to what he's used to pick but he manages anyway, sighing in relief when it clicks open with barely a sound.

Wally slips out but it's immediately clear that he's not exactly stable on his legs. He twisted his ankle while they were running, and he must have been left without barely any food and water for a couple of days.

Dick tries to ignore the wet distress of his scent as they move, hoping it's not going to alert anyone. There are other cages with other captured strays in various states of hurt, which means their scents will remain hard to notice, or so Dick keeps repeating himself, trying however he can to be as silent as possible and mentally praising Wally for keeping his distress confined to sharp inhales and quiet grimaces.

He's not sure what ultimately gave them away, or if someone just noticed Wally's cage was empty, but they're trudging through the woods when they realize they're being chased. They both hear the barking and the voices, way too close for comfort, which means there is no way they're outrunning their pursuers.

The situation is very similar as when Wally initially got captured, and the redhead looks at Dick with an exhausted, resigned look as he stops moving forward. "You need to go" he says before Dick can push him to resume walking. "You can run. I can't."

It's pretty much the same conversation they had last time. Dick had agreed, but instead of leaving he stuck around, followed their tracks and eventually found the camp and got Wally back.

He shakes his head, already looking around for a hiding spot. "I'm not leaving you again" he says and he means it, and Wally seems too tired to object, just letting out a quiet whine of protest. "I don't care if I get captured too. I'll find a way to get us both out."

Someone pokes out of the trees and Dick immediately hisses, taken by surprise, putting himself between them and Wally. Then he realizes that this person comes from the opposite direction of the noises the search party is making, and they're looking at them with a surprised frown, not seeming to have expected to find two strays on his path.

Dick takes in the eye-patch, the velvet and leather he's wearing, the instruments in his belt. This is someone with good gear which means good money, possibly out on a hunting trip or something like that. He looks nothing like the people they're running from.

"We need help" Wally breaks the silence, now turning from this man to the trees behind. Their pursuers are very nearly there. "We need help, please. Those are slave traders. We didn't do anything bad, I swear."

"Then let me help you." The man's expression turns plain and he steps forward, between them and the first group of people coming up in the clearing, their dogs barking and pulling at their leashes. "What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?"