#bullet train ladybug

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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