#tracker 3x02

"Nice to see a dead man," Jost says. "I'm not armed."

Russell's keeps his expression static. No irritation at the dead man comment, and no hesitation at the I'm not armed thing. He keeps his gun trained on Jost."You the one in charge?"

"No."

"Who is?"

"Schneider."

Of course Russell is stuck with the lackey. Colter is probably in that bunker kicking Schneider's ass right now without him. Figures. He holds his hand out for. "Gimme the keys." He makes a give it here gesture with his hand. "C'mon."

Jost hesitates a moment, and then reaches into his pocket and tosses the keys to Russell. Russell takes his attention off the man just long enough to catch the keys, which is still too long he knows better, but his reflexes had taken over and the distraction is long enough for Jost to strike.

The feeling of being tased is instantly recognizable—pain igniting through his entire body as every muscle clenches. Worse than that is the utter lack of control, the horrible knowledge that he's completely vulnerable and at the mercy of the one who tased. It only lasts five seconds, but in the moment, when his muscles feel like they're on fire and he's entirely helpless, it may as well be an eternity.

His muscles release just in time for him to throw his arms up and avoid taking a tire iron to the face. A tire iron to the forearms doesn't feel too good, either, and he lets out a shout of rage. But Jost is angry, too, and he's desperate, and before Russell has the chance to recover, he's swinging again—not at Russell's head, protected by his arms, but as his exposed torso. The makeshift weapon connects with Russell's lower ribs. He's trying to catch his breath when it hits him again in the same spot and there's a crunch and agony explodes through his chest.

Fuck.

He needs to get his gun, but he doesn't want to leave his head exposed. He just has to time it right, then, and move quick. The tire iron hits him again, lower this time, driving into the soft flesh of his belly. Nausea rises in his throat, but he pushes it down, ignores the pain. Jost is rearing back to strike again, and that's Russell's opening. He uncurls, snatches his gun from the dirt, aims, fires.

Jost falls to the ground, dead.

Russell lets out a long groan, closing his eyes against the deep, sharp ache in his torso. Every breath is agony. He's pretty sure he can feel the grind of shifting bone from his broken ribs. The idea of moving is...unpleasant. To put it lightly. But Colter is out there on his own, and Russell needs to make sure he's okay. So he allows himself twenty seconds to stay laid out on the dirt, and then he forces himself to get moving.

xxx

Colter looks at the faces on the screen, at his sister and mother staring out at him from the monitors. Schneider is monologuing at him, all smug self righteousness, and Colter can't take it anymore.

He punches Schneider in the face, so hard that he knocks the man out of his chair and he hits the floor, unconscious. Colter barely gives him a second glance before looking back up at the screens.

"I'm ending this," he says aloud, and pulls out his gun. There's a grim satisfaction that comes with firing round after round into the computers that Schneider and Jost had used to cause so much suffering. He empties his clip into the wall of screens, and then he just stands there, gun still raised, and breaths.

He's not sure if it's over now. He hopes like hell that it is, but it's impossible to know for sure without someone looking further into it. He'll let the feds figure that out.

There's a sound behind him and he turns, gun raised even though it's empty. Russell is leaning against the door frame.

"Pretty sure you're out of bullets," he says, and then he falls forward.

"Whoa!" Colter says, rushing to catch his older brother before he hits the ground. He wraps an arm around Russell's middle—and Russell screams. Colter's blood runs cold as he lowers Russell to the ground, his heart hammering as he looks for any sign of injury. He doesn't see any blood, but he could just be missing it. "What happened?"

Russell shakes his head, leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed and his mouth drawn into a thin line. "I let my guard down. Stupid."

"What happened?" Colter repeats.

Russell groans, cracking his eyes open to look up at Colter. "Tire iron. Bastard got me in the ribs."

Damn it. Not good. "Anything broken?"

"Yup." Russell groans again. "I'll be fine. I've had worse."

Colter watches him for a moment, paying close attention to his breathing. Russell's breaths are short and shallow, his chest and shoulders moving visibly with each inhale.

"I don't like how you're breathing," he says, and Russell scowls up at him.

"It's just a couple cracked ribs, Colter, I'll live."

Colter just shakes his head as he pulls out his phone and dials the local sheriff's office. "If you keep breathing like that, you're gonna get pneumonia."

Russell throws up a lazy middle finger. Colter returns the gesture.

"Denver County Sheriff's Office."

Colter quickly explains the situation, answers a few questions, hangs up. He shoves his phone in his pocket, then walks over to sit next to Russell.

"So...What made you go all John Wick on the computers?" Russell asks, pointing at the wall of destroyed monitors.

Colter stares at the shattered screens. Schneider's words echo in his mind. What would you do to save your mother and sister? Which would you save first?

"He had Dory up there. And Mom."

Russell lets out a low growl, only it turns into a coughing fit.

"Russ?" Colter says in alarm, sitting forward and turning to face his brother. "You okay?"

Russell nods, holding up one hand in an I'm fine gesture. His face says differently though, deep lines etched at the corners of his eyes, his brows pinched together. Colter knows how painful coughing with even bruised ribs is. Coughing like this with multiple busted ribs must be excruciating.

"You okay?" he repeats as the coughing fit finally dies down. Russell's face is pale and there's sweat on his forehead, a drop of it rolling down his temple.

"Will you quit? How many times are you gonna make me tell you? I'm fine." But he sounds breathless and worn. Even the glare he shoots at Colter looks exhausted.

Colter is about to argue when they hear the distant sound of sirens steadily growing closer, and his stomach sinks. Talking to them is going to take ages, and he's hoping to somehow talk Russell into going to the emergency room. Or just not telling him and taking him before he realizes that's what Colter is doing. Russell makes a discontented sound.

"I had to shoot Phillip Jost. It was self-defense, but this is going to take forever now."

Colter looks over at Schneider to make sure he's still unconscious (he is), then stands. He doesn't say anything as he extends a hand to help Russell up. Russell looks at Colter's hand, then up at Colter, then finally accepts. As Colter pulls him upright, Russell sucks in a sharp breath and his free arm curls protectively around his rib-cage. They both walk out to meet law enforcement. There's an ambulance, too, for Schneider.

"Colter Shaw?" a deputy asks, opening her car door and stepping out, one hand resting near her weapon.

"That's me," Colter says. "I'm the one that called. This is my brother, Russ. Schneider is unconscious inside."

Things get busy after that, Russell being taken aside by a couple of deputies to explain what happened with Jost while Colter talks to others about what went down on his end of things. Still others go into the bunker to gather evidence and make the arrest. Schneider is conscious and handcuffed to the stretcher when they load him onto the ambulance and take him away. The feds are called. All the while, Colter can't stop throwing worried glances over at his brother. Even at this distance, he can see that Russell isn't doing too hot, his posture getting increasingly hunched. He keeps coughing, too.

"Mr. Shaw?"

Colter looks back at the deputy and blinks. She's looking at him like she'd just asked a question, maybe more than once. "I'm sorry, I...got distracted. What was that?"

"Did Mr. Schneider threaten you directly?"

He's trying to decide how much he wants to say when Russell's coughing gets worse. He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and he turns in time to see Russell going down, and there's a clamor as the deputy nearest him tries to slow his descent.

"Russ!"

"Mr. Shaw--" the deputy begins, but Colter is already jogging over to his brother.

"What happened?"

One of the deputies, a young man who looks barely out of his teens, turns with wide eyes. His face is pale. "I, I don't--"

Coulter steps around him and his heart plummets. Russell is lying on his back, eyes barely open. There's blood down the front of his chin.

"Russ." Colter kneels next to him, pressing two three fingers against Russell's neck under his jaw and finding the pulse there far too fast. "Someone call an ambulance!"

"Already have one on the way!"

Colter moves around so that he's sitting behind Russell's head. "C'mere," he murmurs, maneuvering and shifting his semi-conscious brother until Russell is sitting up, his back against Colter's chest. Russell lets out a few small noises of discomfort as Colter gets them both situated, but doesn't respond otherwise. No complaints, no teasing...Colter hates it.

"Keep breathing," he says, voice low as he blinks back tears. "Come on, Russell. Keep breathing for me."

Russell's lips and fingernails have taken on a bluish tone by the time the ambulance arrives. They let Colter ride in back with him, and he watches numbly as the paramedic fits an oxygen mask over Russell's face and cuts his shirt open. There are bright red-purple bruises over his rib-cage, and another across his middle, the colors made especially stark by the papery whiteness of Russ's skin.

"Do you know what he was hit with?" It takes a second for Colter to realize that the paramedic is talking to him.

"Uh...tire iron. He said it was a tire iron."

"Jesus," the paramedic murmurs under his breath.

The ambulance ride passes in a blur, and then they're wheeling Russell into the hospital and Colter follows, but they don't let him into the emergency room and he's left standing at the doors, staring through a small window as they try to save his big brother's life.

-

The x-rays show four fractured ribs and a possible lung contusion that's confirmed by a CT scan. There's no other internal bleeding, which is something, but the lung damage is bad enough to require surgery.

Colter doesn't remember calling Reenie – did he call her, or did one of the hospital staff somehow know to get a hold of her?--but suddenly she's there, wrapping her arms around him. Colter returns the hug without thinking, bending his head down to bury it in her shoulder. He doesn't cry.

-

Russell's face is pale and there are dark circles under his eyes and there's a pillow resting on his lap so that he can press it against his ribs when he coughs, but his lips are pink again instead of blue and he smiles tiredly when he sees Colter.

"Hey," he says, voice scratchy from the breathing tube they'd placed during his surgery.

"Hey," Colter says back.

"Shouldn't you be off to your next job by now?"

Colter shrugs. "I'm taking a few weeks off."

Russell's eyes narrow. "I don't need babysitting."

"I'm not staying in your RV. Thing's tiny."

"It's not babysitting, it's...some much needed brotherly bonding. Plus someone needs to make sure you do all your breathing exercises so you don't end up back in here with a chest infection."

"Actually," Colter says, "I've got that all worked out. Reenie will be putting us up for a few weeks until you're back on your feet."

The scowl on Russell's face softens slightly. "...Reenie said she'd let us stay with her?"

Colter suppresses a smile. His brother is unpredictable in most ways, but not all. "Yup. As long as you behave."

Russell breaks into the shit-eating grin that Colter knows all too well. "Yeah, no promises."

Colter rolls his eyes. "Don't think she won't kick your ass just because you're a little under the weather..." He sighs, feeling his smile fade. "I thought you were gonna die. It scared me."

"Oh, come on. It's gonna take more than that to kill me," Russell says, but his expression is...gentle. Sympathetic, maybe? Not teasing, though, which is what Colter had expected. "I'm okay, Colter."

"Maybe now, but all the other times you told me you were fine, you weren't. You can't...you can't do that. I need you to be honest with me. You..." He takes a deep breath. "You lied to me when we were kids, and I get it, I do, but after, we spent so much time apart. I had no idea where you were, if you were—if you were even alive. And I don't want that to happen again. I don't want to lose you because you aren't being honest with me."

Russell just stares at him for a long time, silent, studying him. And then he says, "Okay."

Colter's eyebrows jump up in surprise. "Okay?"

"Okay."

Colter lets out a sigh of relief that turns into a small half-laugh. "Okay."

"I'm sorry I scared you," Russell says. "And, uh...thanks, I guess. For getting things figured out with Reenie so I have someplace to heal up."

Colter shoots him a sly smile. "Yeah, we'll see if you're still thanking me in a week. She runs a strict household."

Russell just shrugs. "Joke's on you, I'm into that shit."

"Shut up," Colter says, reaching forward to smack Russell's knee.

"Hey!" Russell protests. "I'm injured!"

Colter laughs, but there's a sadness underneath it, an undercurrent of regret turning everything bittersweet. He had missed out on so much of this. He knows the novelty of having his brother around is going to wear off quick—Russell has always been a pain in the ass when he's forced to rest—but he's determined to do his best to soak it in. The good and the bad.