OC Fic - Firelight

Her eyes are the thing that keeps him awake tonight.

Warm, honey brown, nearly gold in the dramatic light. His brows knit together, stars bursting behind his eyelids with the force he applies to lock the images out. It's futile, of course; in the blackness that normally leads to sleep, her eyes remain stubbornly insurmountable.

The air escapes Trapper's lungs as he rolls onto his back, the sheets below him damp with cold sweat. His luminescent eyes gaze at the smooth surface of the ceiling without taking anything in, his sharp ears dimly aware of the wall clock's rhythmic ticking.

He'd been fighting it off since he got home around nine in the evening, and with renewed vigor since he climbed into bed a few hours later.

He was tired of fighting.

Another soft exhale ushers in the images from the night before, flashing across his mind's eye with such clarity that he could once again feel the heat of live flames licking at his skin.

-

A vampire, Eoghan had told him after the fact. Probably on some mind-rotting drug. He'd snuck into the boarded-up apartment building in the bad part of town to ride out his shaky high in peace. Hadn't counted on a squatter.

In the confused mess that followed the intruder's appearance, some of the oil-soaked rags littering the hardwood third floor (presumably left by the inspecting crew that had deemed the place uninhabitable), were set ablaze when the vamp knocked over the squatter's single candle from its precarious perch beside the ratty blanket she'd been using as a bed.

Trapper had been closer than any firehouse when news of the blaze appeared on the police scanner Eoghan had managed to jerry-rig together in the apartment the crew had made home and headquarters. He broke into a run the moment Eoghan's voice – straining to keep its usual calm – had spoken into his earpiece.

The hunter smelled the smoke three blocks away, and saw it not soon after. He rounded the corner onto the proper avenue, grateful he'd left his sunglasses on this evening.

The light from the blaze was powerful, lighting the entirety of the abandoned street in an eerie, flickering orange glow.  Everything from the second floor and up was engulfed in unyielding flame, black smoke billowing from every shattered window. Only a handful of homeless people had gathered at a safe distance from the blaze, farther down the road. One look at the half-empty liquor bottles closed in their fists was all Trapper needed to decide questioning them was useless.

The hunter shrugged out of his long, tattered red coat and allowed it to fall to the ground as he sprinted to the opposing sidewalk, his hands immediately coming up to pull his faded gray wifebeater over his mouth and nose.

With three, well-placed kicks to the termite-eaten planks sealing the main entrance, Trapper was inside. The ground floor was free of fire but filled with smoke, the heaviness and heat of it scorching the back of the hunter's throat even through the (admittedly shoddy) barrier over his mouth. Sensitive ears pricked for any groan from the floor above his head, Trapper moved deeper into the building as quickly as he dared.

The original tenants, he saw, had abandoned this place years earlier. All that was left from the period where this was once a home was the occasional broken chair or upended lamp. Less to navigate through, he told himself, glad to be free of obstacles on his quick trek to the stairwell set into the far wall.

He was halfway between the second floor and the next when he first heard the sobbing. He froze, the hand not protecting his airways tightening around the wooden rail beside the stairs. Listened closer.

Between the roaring of the flames and the groaning protests of the deteriorating building, he heard it again. Dry, wretching coughs mingling with frightened sobs. Above.

His feet were moving again all on their own, taking the steps two at a time. He reached the third floor and was through the stairwell door with one powerful slam of his shoulder, straight into a forest of fire. Instinctively he dropped to all fours, allowing his shirt to fall from his face.

"Where are you!?" he demanded of the disembodied voice, his words throaty and hoarse with smoke. "Yell for me!"

He replaced his shirt as he listened for a reply, heart racing with the possibility that it was too late, that they'd suffocated or been crushed by a cave-in or-

"Here!" came the reply, the word cracked and weak. Ordinary ears certainly would not have heard it. "I'm –" A bone-rattling cough. "I'm here!"

He moved easily over the floorboards that weren't burning, nimble and sure. Peering through the flames behind the lenses of his glasses, he finally spotted a form on the ground, ten yards from the stairs. He maneuvered around a large pile of rags that burned especially bright and reached her, his gloved and bandaged hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder.

When she looked up at him, tears in her eyes from the smoke and fear, he very nearly stopped breathing.

She was young. Too young. Fifteen at the oldest. Her dark, sweat-slick skin – shiny with burns tame and severe – was pulled tight against her bones, elbows and knees protruding almost grotesquely. Dark, coarse hair fell in singed clumps around her shoulders. A runaway.

What threw the hunter momentarily, however, was not her age or her state. No. It was her eyes. Such a pale brown they were nearly golden, almost like his own.

The startling discovery only stumbled Trapper for a split second, and then he was reaching for her, lifting her slight frame easily over his back and shoulders.

"Arms around my neck," he instructed her over the never-ending, whooshing roar of the fire. "Keep your shirt up over your nose!"

He felt her shift slightly against his back before her slender arms came around to weakly grasp him as told. When he was certain she wouldn't fall, he crawled back towards the stairwell, a renewed sense of urgency eating at his thoughts.

Her struggling coughs and weak gasps for air were right in his ear when they reached the stairwell, where he pushed himself to his feet and grasped her legs like a father giving his daughter a piggy-back ride. A few of the stairs groaned in protest beneath their weight, and he just managed to step off one before it gave way to age or heat, preventing a nasty fall.

The hunter and his passenger reached the ground floor in minutes even as Trapper's superhuman muscles and joints screamed in agony, his lungs burning with smoke and exertion. The last yards to the front door and down the stoop were a full sprint for fear of the upper floors collapsing and encasing them in a burning tomb.

The second he was out into dry night air and a safe distance from the blaze, he was aware of the screeching brakes of a fire engine pulling up, the heavy footsteps of a team of fire fighters leaping from the truck before it came to a full stop.

Three or four approached him, attempted to relieve him of his cargo, but he was only dimly aware of the barking yell of defiance that escaped him, made them draw back in shock and fright. His eyes were focused only on the stretcher being pulled from the ambulance that must have arrived seconds earlier, the paramedics. Her hope for survival.

He used the last of his strength to jog to them, panting.

The paramedics – one man and one woman – began to shout medical jargon he didn't comprehend at each other and to fire fighters that weren't actively engaged in putting out the blaze as they moved behind Trapper, gingerly lifting the starved girl from his back.

The hunter took a step back, only vaguely acknowledging the drunken homeless woman who appeared beside him to return his discarded coat. He gave her a quick nod as he accepted the tattered cloth, and then she was gone again.

His eyes watched, almost unblinking, as they lowered the girl onto the gurney and checked for her pulse. They found none. His mind felt strangely empty; even the sounds of the flaming building being extinguished behind him and the numbers shouted by the paramedics as they moved into CPR formation ceased to register in his brain.

They tried for several minutes. Chest compressions, filled her lungs with their own, even pulled out the electrical device designed to restart her heart. And still it seemed to be too soon when the somber expressions appeared on their faces, their hands falling from her body.

The volume of the world around him seemed to return all at once, and he could barely make out the female paramedic's words in the din.

"Time of death: 8:24 PM."

He felt more hollow than usual when one firefighter – who had removed his helmet when the girl was declared beyond saving – patted his shoulder on his way to report to his chief. He was aware of a faint ringing in his ears.

Slowly, he approached the stretcher. The look on his face must have prevented the paramedics from attempting to stop him, because their eyes widened and they excused themselves – nervously – to file the proper paperwork.

The hunter gazed down at the girl, something unpleasant ricocheting around the empty cavern inside him as his eyes focused on her lifeless face. He supposed it was sorrow.

She looked even younger under the lights flooding the stretcher from the back of the ambulance. White and orange flashed across her face, cast from the rows of emergency lights lining the vehicle's rear.

He tilted his head slightly as something gold caught his eye in the ever-changing light. He recognized it almost instantly – one of those false gold necklaces popular with girls her age. The sort that hung her name from a humble gold chain around her neck.

"Charity". That was her name. Had been her name.

Trapper felt sorry he hadn't had the mind to ask her himself.

He lingered at the stretcher's side a moment or two longer – taking in the sight of her face, so peaceful in death, and remembering her remarkable eyes, so much like his own – before he peeled himself away and started the slow walk towards home.

-

The hunter let out a slow sigh, raising one hand to brush through his unkempt black hair. The incessant ticking of the clock remained the only sound in the room aside from his own pulse in his ears.

He'd arrived home that evening to Eoghan attempting to make him feel better. He vaguely remembered yelling at the werewolf to shut up, that it didn't matter. The memory of his best friend recoiling in hurt was much clearer.

He could also recall Jay coming home ten minutes later, carrying the news that she'd shot a strung-out, singed vampire between the eyes a few blocks from the fire. Good, he'd spat. It was the last thing he said before grabbing something blindly from the fridge and retiring to his room.

The dip in the mattress beside him pulled him from his thoughts. He dropped his hand and glanced over to find Kavanagh sitting at the edge of his bed.

Her green eyes were full of exhaustion, primarily. But there was also a hint of understanding in her gaze, more reserved and private than the kind Eoghan had tried to offer him earlier. Something mutual.

Loss.

Silently, the hunter shifted over on the bed, gathering the sheets that had tangled at his feet during his restless tossing and turning. Just as wordlessly, the redhead pulled her legs onto the mattress fully and settled in beside him. She easily curled against his side, her forehead touching his shoulder, and he rolled over so that he was facing her, his arm slipping over her pale waist as her fingers came to rest on his side, idly tracing over aged claw marks rising from his skin.

No one else understood, really. Jay would certainly think of this occasional sharing of a bad to be reserved exclusively for lovers. Eoghan, who understood the werewolf desire for contact that Kavanagh carried, might make little more sense of it. But neither of them had seen life slip through their fingers. Especially the life of a child.

Kavanagh, unfortunately, was equally familiar with the sensation.

But Trapper was always silently grateful for the ability to bury his nose in soft curls, for a warm body to tether him to reality, momentarily relieve him of his haunting thoughts. To help him feel less broken, if only for a night.

In minutes, he drifted into sleep.