gun for hire

“Hey.” Dad. Daddy. Why wasn’t it you who saved me? Sometimes he gets a sick thrill out of torturing himself, imagining words that aren’t there. Her palm surprises him and he squeezes once, as tight as he can (which isn’t much and what if she feels the fever?). He pulls back quickly and turns in his seat, never one to handle emotional displays. Gritting his teeth, he pushes himself to make one more sardonic comment.

“So, how likely is it that we get to that freaking hospital without anymore casualties, Edmure?”

He checks his phone as he drives, glancing out the window to get his bearings. "We're about twenty minutes out, should be able to get there in one piece." Or mostly one piece, in his case. 

The back is still mostly a mess, everyone's covered in blood and that would only make things even more complicated when they need to get past the checkpoint. Not only is he coming back with four more people who up till now had been unaccounted for, but they're all dirty and one of them is wounded, which is going to make things even more difficult. 

He leads them around the block to the warehouses, counting down along the rows to his unit. Jorah and Dacey follow behind him cautiously, everyone on high alert in case of walkers. He'd scouted and cleared the area half an hour ago, but they didn't know that. Of course, the walkers could always have come in to the area from somewhere else. 

The rolling door slides up, as he digs a torch out from his jacket and flicks it on, peering around inside. It's a little dusty from misuse, but Edmure still remembers where everything is. (mostly)

“He said he’d be here,” Jorah murmured quietly. “I don’t doubt he will be.”

He damn well better be, Jorah thought to himself.  They’d as much as staked their lives on it.  Edmure Tully was reliable, though, despite his business of choice.

He rounded the corner of the street and nearly walked into the older man. "Shit!" Noticing the man's drawn gun, he holds up his hands placatingly, signalling not to shoot. "It's me. Don't shoot." 

Noticing another woman with him, he nods to her. She seemed to have a certain quality about her that seemed to him that they were related somehow. 

It all goes to shit in the blink of an eye; Jaime hears gunshots (one, two, he loses count) and someone screams ‘Run!’ and then both of them are scrambling out of the car, safety catches off, barrels pointed straight ahead. They hesitate before they shoot, not fully aware of where the danger lies and, anyway, there’s two children within shooting range - Jaime struggles to remember, is it the Martell boy? - but now is not the time to be idle. 

“MYRCELLA! IN THE VAN, NOW!”

There’s no time for a reunion; their eyes meet briefly and he sees terror there but he makes sure his right arm is hidden behind his back. No need for that now, you don’t need to see that, just stay safe. 

Edmure is already shooting and Jaime finally sees their target. Targets. Fuck. He can’t even count them, there’s too many and he’s distracted by the sight of Brienne making her way towards them. They form a line - a wall between the children and the walkers - and then it’s all just shots and smoke and growls. His aim isn’t bad - adrenaline, he guesses, everything is heightened - and two keel over, blackened blood staining the pavement. There’s more of them though and Jaime winces at the sweat that stings his eyes and the pain that’s returning to his arm. He has to force himself to focus but still a bullet ricochets on something it shouldn’t (the metallic sound makes a vein in his temple throbb).

Someone beside him shouts his name - or is it both of them shouting? - but Jaime shakes his head.

There isn't time to ask any questions. "Get in, quick!" He yells, all the while still shooting. The pistol's trigger clicks as he tries to pull it and he belatedly realizes that the clip is empty. "Fuck-" Fumbling in his jacket for another magazine, he kicks one in the teeth and gets blood splattered over his pants. 

By the time he curbstomps the thing to death everyone is piled into the van - Brienne must have helped Jaime into the passenger side while he wasn't paying attention - and he climbs in, revving up the engine. Gotta set aside one day for cleaning this thing out now, damn. 

As he jams his foot on the accelerator, the tires skid and there is a sickening squelch as the front of the van runs over a couple of walkers. 

She already knows the answer. No. But she wonders if he has courage enough to admit it. She’s not sick, she doesn’t have the disease, but she’ll disappear all the same. She knows it. He knows it. The man ahead of them knows it.

It’s the elephant in the room.

She swallows and looks away, hand slipping into her pants pocket. Her phone, with one battery left. She’s been darting in and out of ransacked stores, using what electric still hummed to charge it whenever she can. It’s the only connection she has to her family anymore.

Hunching over so he can’t see it, she sends the text quickly. Don’t come to the hospital, and then deletes her whole history.

There were some parts of the hospital even he didn't have access to, and who knew what they were doing there. Petyr probably knew, he was almost sure of it. 

What had she hoped for? she chides herself. She had just wanted to distract him enough to gain her freedom, but instead she had let herself get swept up in her own ploy. She has no one to blame but herself, but the London Royal Hospital stands before her, dark and menacing, and true terror races up her spine.

She doesn’t know how she knows but she can feel it down to her marrow, a steel spike hammered into her spine, that the hospital would become her tomb if she doesn’t escape, doesn’t flee.

The redheaded man is waiting for her, face streaked with an odd half-lighting from the hospital. It’s still vaguely familiar, but one she can’t place, and she almost jerks to a halt at that thought. What have you done? something hisses inside her. A man she barely knew, and she had let him touch her, sleep with her. And for what? For nothing.

But no, they didn't spend a week out in an unquarantined area only to walk away with nothing but singed fingers from grabbing the dragon's tail, only to have her slip away because he was careless.

"I can't." Edmure fiddles with the strap on his rifle, pretending to adjust it, just for something in his hands to do. "I'm sorry." The apology seems hollow as soon as he says it, and he knew she wouldn't accept it. He wouldn't have either, had he been in her place.

"Where will you go anyway? Back out there, to the walkers?" His hands pull on the strap, making sure it is secure, and he shoulders the rifle. "At least it's safe in here. You'll have a roof under your head, a bed to sleep in, warm meals every day. You can't tell me that's not preferable to how you've been living."

He doesn't know what Petyr wants to do with her, though. Even after all this time, his actual knowledge about the outbreak is pretty much nonexistent - all he knows is they're not alive, their blood can kill you, they're attracted to noise. Whispers had sometimes said the Targaryens were responsible for this mess, but he didn't see how bringing in one of Aerys' children was going to reverse the disease.

But then again, what did he know - he was just a simple gun for hire.

She isn't going to budge on this - that much is clear - but he has a job to do. The fingers on his left hand unconsciously reach for the ring on his fourth finger, and it isn't there - he always takes it off when going out, so he won't get crap under it - but the little hollow bump in the joint makes him feel empty now. The beginnings of guilt are starting to weigh down on him, and he is tired.

Edmure sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. He doesn't have to do it often, but this is the part of his job that he hates the most.

Hopping out of the van, he grabs his sniper rifle and starts surveying the area, checking for movement, potential ambush spots. "It's clear." he calls out, in case Petyr was waiting for a go-ahead.

Dany doesn’t realize she’s being tracked until they’re upon her, skidding to a stop in their white van as she turns a corner, looking for a fire escape back up to the roof.

Something sits chilled in her stomach that tells her to run but even as she twists on her heel, ready to dart away, a shadow moves like a sleek panther out of the van, long strides bringing him right to her. He catches her roughly by her shoulders, swinging her back against him.

Her elbow jams upward, the sensation of bone smacking against bone reverberating down the length of her arm, and he lets out a hiss of pain, but his grip’s solid, fingers digging into her bones. “Let me go!” she hisses.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” a voice says by her ear.

She doesn’t believe him for a moment.

She refuses to go quietly. It’s like the authoritative distrust of the East End had seeped into her bones, breed inside her morrow, and blossomed between her ribs, twining up her sides. She kicks and bites, though she was inevitably overpowered. One of the men was considerably taller than her, and it doesn’t take much for him to truss her up and toss her into the back of the van, especially when the smaller of the two had slipped in between them and snagged her bat.

A hand, not the man’s who’s holding her, pushes at the knotted mess of blonde hair tangled around her face. His narrow, handsome face is smiling. “Definitely Daenerys Targaryen,” he says. “Though you’d never guess it. You’re father would be so disappointed in you, Miss Targaryen.”

“Fuck you,” she snarls.

The man laughs. “What a mouth.” But it almost sounds approving as he climbs into the driver’s seat.

She glares, mostly because if she doesn’t she’ll be thinking of things like—government testing, and that horrible night of the gala, the dead and the dying, the smell of blood, the way teeth had pulled at skin and bone. She shudders, and swallows back bile.

 In the streetlights that rush by them, the man’s hair stands out stark red. Something about him seems vaguely familiar, like she ought to recognize him, but from another life. A life she has lost the night the sickness poured down on them.

Instead, she takes a grim satisfaction in the splotch of blood that mars the corner of his chin, dribbled down from where she’d bloodied his lip.

They didn’t bother restraining her, not with the man in the back with her. He could snap her in two, if he wanted. She curls her body inward, into a protective little ball that only offers the illusion of security. Government men, she thinks. She knows that the survivors of the Targaryen gala are being hunted, taken away to some shadowy underground lab for testing, blood samples and plasma samples and needles and vivisections, and she wonders if they’ll say she died at the hotel, eaten alive, bury her in some unmarked grave.

Don’t think like that, she orders herself. She has to think of Rhaenys and Aegon, both still alive, both still needing her. No matter what it takes, she has to survive has to get out.

 Her eyes track the redhead, who sits with his back pressed up against the van’s sliding door, watching her in case she tries something foolish. His knee is bent, and one arm rests lazily across it, and he considers her almost dispassionately. Something foolish, Dany thinks.

She wets her lips, the plan forming in her mind fueled on desperate and raw fear. She stretches her legs out, relaxes her body, slips back into the skin of the girl before the night of the gala, the girl who could charm and smile and dance around everyone and get everything she wanted.

"But painkillers and beer? You're not that far gone, are you?" Though he felt that Jaime was so far gone at this point that it wouldn't even matter any more, and anything to take the edge off might help.

But wish no more My life you can take To have her please just one day wake

But then she thought about her helplessness, and the way she felt like she was always drowning lately, in the most mundane tasks, in the quietest places. Out there— well, she was a liability. On a different scale than usual.

It was terrible, and selfish, that she wanted to make Edmure do this. He was her younger brother. She was supposed to protect him, not request that he protect her so that she can play daredevil out in the great unknown. And then there was the inevitability of his getting caught, because she wasn’t fooling anybody when she told herself that Petyr might not find out. He would know, somehow, immediately, and for all his apparent carelessness, his fury toward Edmure would be great.

No one takes what belongs to Petyr Baelish and places it in harms way.

And, somehow, this only made her want to do it more.

He's excited at the prospect now, of taking Lysa out of this place, if only for a day - away from her worries, away from her burdens. Baelish would bring down hell around him if he found out he'd done this, but he'd deal with that when they came to it. 

Perhaps Petyr was right, and they might yet be holed up somewhere - barely subsisting on field rations - waiting for a rescue. 

When he returns to the front of the vehicle Jaime's head is resting against his chest, as if he is dozing. "Oi, wake up." Edmure hits his left shoulder lightly, waking him up. "Here" he says, and passes the pills and a bottle of water, then starts taking apart the now-soaked piece of cloth wrapped around Jaime's arm.

"What-" Jaime begins, but Edmure cuts him off.

"Just hold still." He redresses the wound as Jaime takes two of the small pills, fumbling a little as he does so, unused to working with only one hand.