#taryn and ari are not making wise decisions here

[just-horrible-things]

'Verse: Resistance Alt: Ari forced to whip Alex Timeline: Something like a week after the rescue of Ari and Alex

For @sir-fenris who asked what happened to that healer...

Rescuing Rowan [First | links to follow when I close up the gap]

Ariadne is ready to coax the healer out of his cell - ready for fear and reluctance and uncertainty. She isn't ready for the young warlock to stagger to his feet, come straight to her, and collapse into her arms. "Woah," she murmurs, "Easy, I got you. We're here to get you out of here." "'s he.... still alive?" "Alex?" Ari’s breath stops, a lurch like falling. She doesn’t know why. "My... cellmate? Yes. Yes, he's alive and – safe and he's going to get better, thank you." The teen clings weakly to her jacket, shuddering. Ariadne glances back, unnerved, at Taryn, who gives her a thumbs up.

There isn’t time to give all the reassurances and explanations she ought to. Ari tries to set the healer back on his feet, but his knees buckle. “I’ll carry you,” she decides, already manhandling him by her grip on his arms. “Hold on tight.” He cooperates as she crouches to heft him onto her back. Bony legs wrap tight as they can round her hips. The movement sets off a fit of deep, wet coughing.

“Alright?” Taryn checks. Ari nods. The kid barely weighs a thing. “If I go down, you run to Taryn,” she tells him. “She’ll get me up, don’t worry.”

Back in the hallway, they both look up and down the rows of doors, then meet eachother’s eyes.

“We can’t take everyone.” Taryn’s the one to voice the harsh reality. “We can open the doors,” Ari returns. “Some of them might be well enough to run with us.” A moment’s further hesitation, then Taryn nods.

She breaks the locks one by one. Each takes no more than a couple of seconds’ focus, a sharp gesture, and a flash of light. Ari follows behind her, repeating, “This is a break-out. Run if you can. Help someone if you can. This way, follow us.”

Not all of them make it even past the doors of their cells. All of them are weak, drained out, underfed. Scared and confused. In no state to be running. But they won’t make it if they don’t run.

Pursuit catches up with them only halfway down the hall. The door slams open and the feds pour through already shooting. Healers scatter, screaming. Half of them hit the floor either shot or trying not to be. Ari ducks automatically into the closest cell for cover.

Fury is a wild thing, clawing at the inside of her ribcage. She wants to fight, she wants to face them and kill them all or go out shooting but – the kid on her back has an arm around her throat, half-choking her as terror lends him a little extra strength he didn’t have before. 

If she stays and fights, he will die here.

“With me!” Taryn is yelling. Meant for Ari, and meant for any healers who can hear and obey. Stepping out into the line of fire feels like madness, but Ari trusts in Taryn’s magic. Swallowing, she breaks into a run.

The gunfire is deafening. Bullets ricochet from the concrete. The air’s full of blood.

Taryn is running already. One hand is up, casting, the other grips the wrist of a wide-eyed healer. She’s levitated another, the poor guy curled up in midair with his hands over his ears. Ari pelts after her. 

There’s an enormous tearing crash behind her. Metal screaming, masonry falling. Dust blooms past her. Ari doesn’t look back. There’s at least one healer still up and running on her heels. Frantic footfalls, a voice choking on fear. Taryn’s at the locked door ahead and it explodes ahead of her, firing shards of metal into the room beyond. 

Slowed for a moment by casting, Taryn glances back once to check that Ari’s behind her. Her eyes are wild, teeth bared in a grimace.

They run.

Ari calls the directions, and Taryn breaks doors open ahead of them. Wherever Ari sees uniforms, she shoots. When the feds duck for cover it buys the escapees precious seconds. When they’re the ones who have to duck and hide, it eats time.

The girl Taryn’s dragging by the wrist is stumbling, struggling to keep pace. She’s not been here long enough to be starved to skin and bone but she’s bleeding through her clothes and she’s weak. The one held in Taryn’s magic is still curled up tight.

The kid on Ari’s back is holding on for dear life, but his grip is slipping. With her gun in one hand she can only support one of his legs. The other keeps sliding down from her hip to her thigh until it interferes with her ability to run and she has to waste seconds hoisting him back up. 

Doors and halls and rooms flash past in a blur of breathless violence. Ari’s only half sure where they are, which way they’re going, like a half-forgotten dream. She can only pray her intuition is leading her right.

And then they’re back in the zone they started in, following their own trail of destruction. Bodies, rubble, bloodied footprints on the concrete. Ari shoots, and shoots, and her gun clicks empty, and it takes her another attempt to realise. Reloading is an ordeal, the kid on her back struggling to keep his grip without either of her arms supporting her legs.

And then the wall Taryn blew open to get in is ahead of them, a slice of floodlit nighttime visible through the ragged gap.

They’ve already started to barricade it. They must have known they’d come back this way.

“Just run,” Taryn orders tersely. “Straight ahead.” It should be suicide. But Ari trusts Taryn. Lungs and legs burning, she plunges forwards.

A spearhead of fire rushes forward ahead of them. A wave of light and heat and flame, forcing the feds to stagger back or duck for cover.

Plenty of them still manage to fire their guns.

Ari feels the impacts like punches to the gut, the chest, the thigh. Instinct tries to tell her she is dying, she is dead. She stumbles as the suffocation of it tries to drag her down. But she keeps running, straight ahead. Taryn’s magic holds. Screams are all around her.

Then she’s through the cordon and the sky opens out above her. With the after-images of flame still leaping in her eyes, she can’t see Taryn. She can’t see where she’s going. She just pelts onwards, hoping to find flat ground under her feet. Shots keep ringing out from behind.

Then Taryn is right there, pushing Ari sideways, and the unexpected force almost sends her sprawling but she takes the hint and turns and they run on. She can’t go much further. She’s flagging already, slower than Taryn and Taryn is dragging a person – literally dragging the girl bodily across the ground now, her legs must have failed her.

The other one, the one she was levitating, is gone. Left behind.

When Taryn stops, Ari practically trips over the prone healer. Her body is screaming at her, telling her she’s done too much. It’s nothing. It’s barely pain. It doesn’t matter.

Taryn lifts a manhole cover with a gesture, and bodily manhandles the healer into it. Then she gestures Ari forward. Finding the rungs to climb down takes excruciatingly long seconds. She bumps the kid on her back against the far edge of the hole and he makes muffled noises of pain into the back of her neck but he just about keeps his hold.

Her limbs shake like jelly as she climbs. Taryn doesn’t tell her to just drop, which must mean she’s almost out of magic.

At the bottom, the floor feels like concrete again under her boots.

Taryn is the last down, and as the cover fits back into place above her, it takes the light with it. The darkness is absolute. 

Finally it’s quiet enough for Ari to hear the ringing of her own ears. It’s not silent, though. The healer on the ground is sobbing, muffled as if she has her hand over her own mouth to try and stifle it. Ari and Taryn are panting heavily. Somewhere, something is buzzing or humming – or maybe that’s the tinnitus too.

Exhaustion washes through Ari like a wave. The temptation to let her knees buckle is intense. She could just fold to the ground right here and lay face down. Except she’d probably never get up again.

“Oh my god,” the healer whispers into the side of her neck. “Oh my god.” “Welcome to the Resistance,” Taryn says.