[AU Crackship] Blair + John

[Blair Davis]

 Blair couldn't believe any of this was happening. She was down to a few rounds left in her primary carry, a Glock 19. It had been a hellish time getting past the men at the front door, but she'd managed. They'd never anticipated she would have been coming after John, because they'd done their research, and they knew that the two didn't get along. They were right, for the most part, but they hadn't stopped to consider the possibility that Blair was a strange, strange woman and she was driven hard by emotions. For a Serpiente, hate and love had a fine line between them, and when it came to Blair, she blurred them frequently. Hell, she'd gone through a period where she'd hated Coop, too, but we all know how that turned out.

She really didn't know how John felt about the issue, and she didn't care. She didn't care much about anything right now but getting into that house and tearing up anything that got in her way. At the moment, that was working well for her. Another guard came around the corner, despite how quietly she'd disposed of the men at the front (she thought), but the radio silence had been enough to alert him of an impending problem. She could feel her heart thundering as her research repeated over and over in her head. There were seven total, and John was in the back room. She had four more to go through aside from this man. Did she fire and give herself away, or did she try to be quiet and delay the inevitable discovery of a snake in the hen coop?

She'd taken too long to decide, and he was on top of her. Why Gwendolyn had ever hired human men she wouldn't know, but she knew that Brandy and Britton had disposed of the main threat already there, and that insane woman wouldn't ever be pulling this shit again. They went down to the floor and Blair managed to get her gun between them, squeezing off two rounds into his chest. She pushed him off and stood up, her movements clumsy as the scent of blood hung heavy in the air. She was covered in it, now.

"Brandy, can you hear me?" she asked, talking in a hurried, hushed voice into her radio.

"Yeah, and we heard that, too. I'm pretty fucked up, I'll be honest. I'm holding off as long as I can, but I'm not sure how much longer I can stop Britton from zapping me to the hospital," she replied, her twangy voice disgruntled and faint. "How many more are there?"

Blair stopped and scanned the foyer. The holding house was in New Jersey - they'd made sure they had taken him out of jurisdictional lines, but Blair was FBI now, and that didn't really matter to her much. Brandy and Britton were risking their asses at the moment, but Blair knew what they couldn't explain their way out of, Britton could fabricate and force them to believe. "Four more," she said, grunting as she realized the asshole had gashed her with a knife on the way down. The cut was deep enough that her arm was still bleeding, and she gritted her teeth together, ignoring the burning sensation as the air hit it.

"Get out of here. I'll handle the rest," she said firmly.

"As much as I hate to, I'm gonna have to follow your advice. I think I have a concussion. Let me know as soon as you have him," she drawled. The radio went quiet again, and Blair clipped it to her belt and planned to ignore it from that point on.

A movement in the stairwell caused her to jump behind the first thing she found, which ended up being a large grandfather clock. She had no idea how many bullets she had left, and she cursed herself for using them carelessly. Two large men came down the stairs in a rush, speaking a strange language Blair, even in her schooled tongue, couldn't understand. John had once said, offhand, that Cygni had their own language, and now she understood what he meant. It was almost like French in its fluidity, but heavy and guttural from the mouths of the men who spoke rapidly as they ran.

She slammed into the clock with her shoulder, effectively crushing it in a most painful manner. The result was what she cared about, and it worked: the clock topped over the first, sending him sprawling into the second with a magnificent racket. The sound of wood and glass and a horrible metallic clanging echoed up the stairs and through the main room, no doubt alerting the remaining two as to the problem. She wasn't betting they hadn't already known, but now it was definitely obvious that there was a rescue mission at hand.

Blair kicked the man who was still conscious as hard as she could in the face - whether she knocked him out or killed him, she didn't know. She went up the stairs, hands trembling around the grip of her gun. This was it. This was game time. She was on her own, really on her own, and she knew it. If she died here, they would kill him for certain. She had a sneaking suspicion that Gwendolyn would rather have her only son killed rather than see him alive and free, and she would be right to assume it. As she came up the stairs, she saw one man in front of the closing door, the other heading inside - and he was armed.

The hallway seemed endless as she ran down it, using the element of kamikaze as her only real plan. It worked well enough - she took a round to the side as she dashed, and it put her on the ground. The guard, prideful of his victory, approached her with swift means, readying to fire another round at her head as she lay there, but she was still cognizant enough to recognize the danger even in her pained delirium. She shot him square in the face, climbing up over his fallen body and dragging her now wounded form to the door.

When she pushed it open, she saw the other man trained with his gun to John's temple. John was - he was alive but that spoke very little. These men were Midnight with the way they'd tortured him - she could smell burned flesh and see a maddened, rabid sort of pain in his eyes that were half-lidded. One was nearly swollen shut, but she could see his fingers twitching and she knew that he was still there, somewhere, hanging onto the hope that someone would have found him. Of course, it would have to be Blair, the woman he hated with nearly as much passion as he hated his own family.

"This... is a sticky situation," the man said, finger trained on the trigger. As a human, he didn't know what Blair was, and only assumed that she was a fellow officer, and human herself. Because she was the last one they saw on this hail Mary of a rescue, there were varying degrees of education on her particular skill set. In fact, they probably thought she was Brandy, which was good for Blair - very good.

"I suggest you turn around and go back down those stairs, miss, and forget you were ever here. Unless, of course, you want me to blow his head off right here in front of you."

"Where would the fun in that be?" Blair asked, her voice husky with pain. She could see John wince, and she knew that he knew who she was, even if he could barely see her. She had her gun aimed right at him, and she pulled the trigger once, knowing that she could move faster than he could - but there was nothing except an empty click to be had.

The man laughed, a loud and cold sound. "My turn," he said. Before he could manage, John jerked in the chair he was tied to, hitting the gun with his head and knocking it from the man's hand. It slid across the floor and out of the reach of all of them, giving Blair the opportunity she needed.

She came across the room as fast as she'd ever moved for anything in her life, tackling him before he got to the gun. He hit her in the face once, twice, three times, pushing off of her body and booting her in the chest cavity as he made another reach for the gun. Blair, though, was on full adrenaline mode, and she didn't feel any of it after the first crack. She grabbed him by his ankle and yanked with all her might, sending him face first onto the ground.

There was more scuffling, as one could imagine two people fighting for their lives would put up, but in the end, Blair ended up on top of him. "My turn," she hissed. Her face changed then, for a split second; her teeth became different and distorted and her eyes were golden and slitted and terrifying. She lunged for him like the snake she was, and bit him - bit him multiple times, injecting him with as much venom as she could push out. He screamed in pain and began flopping around on the floor like a fish, but she bit him in the face and in the neck, and she hit a vein.

She rocked off of him, covered in blood and shaking, and scrubbed her face with her dirty hands until it was normal again. She had forgotten who she was for a moment, where she was and what she was doing - but then she saw John and she remembered. "John?" she said, her voice a high-pitched whisper bordering on tears. "John? Baby? Can you hear me? Oh god, please still be with me," she whispered, sliding to her knees by the chair. She fumbled with the chains that bound his hands and feet and waist to the chair, shaking too much to get them undone in a skilled and timely manner, but eventually she got them.

"...you?" was all he managed.

She pulled the radio off of her belt and pressed the button, pulling him into her lap and cradling his face in her arms. "Britton? Kat? Gabriel? Someone, please, get us the fuck out of here," she begged, tears streaming down her face. "I think I'm going into shock - he's hurt bad, we don't have much time, someone please..." her voice broke off into a sob.

The last thing she remembered was putting her head down on top of his, as though to shield him from any more attacks - attacks that would not come, obviously, since she'd killed everyone, but in her mind - and most likely in his - they would never stop coming. "I got you," she whispered. "I got you, I got you honey, I got you.."

Everything went black.

[John Valentine]

Truly, John couldn't quite believe that this was happening, either.  The few times he'd mentioned his family to the people that surrounded him in this new life he'd built for himself, he'd stressed how unstable and delusional his mother was, and that she had a lot of wealth and power to throw around.  That woman could do some serious damage if she wanted, and he knew that she had a plan for him that he was further ruining with every day that he stayed out of her clutches.  Essentially, she wanted to pimp him out to further her own wealth and influence, and then she wanted to marry him off to whatever pretty swan lady would carry the most strategic benefits for her.  He was a tool to her, and a valuable one.  He wanted nothing to do with it.

That much was obvious, as was the fact that she really didn't see any reason why he would require a modern education in something so base as police work (A civil servant?  Not her son).  She also didn't like the increase in aggression, independent thinking and other changes to his attitude that were inconvenient to her agenda.  Ask him how much he cared. 

Except, right about now, he cared.  He didn't want to change his ways, but he was being given little choice but to care how much it pissed his mother off that he wouldn't do things her way.  She'd had him kidnapped (a New York City fucking detective kidnapped) to let him know that not only did she know where he was, but she was tired of playing 'nice'.  Apparently, that meant that she was going to attempt to exert her will on him by force, her threats starting with ruining the career he was building for himself before she got frustrated and told her henchmen (that sounded so dramatic, but he couldn't think of another word for them) to have at him.  Initially, they weren't permitted to do anything that his shifter healing couldn't take care of without scarring, since she intended to twist him to her will and required him to look the part she wanted him to play.

After he miraculously (to her, since she remembered a quieter, 'weaker' son) held up under torture and continued to refuse her, usually violently and with a significant number of expletives, she lost her temper and had her thugs beat, burn and cut him until he didn't have the ability to do so again.  Fortunately for him, he didn't have the ability to do what she wanted of him, either.  She was likely banking on letting him recover a little and trying again, but he pretty much figured that he was going to die in that room by that point.  He might not have believed that she'd kill him before this, but now, he believed it. 

He wasn't sure if he believed that there was anyone who could, or would try to get him out of it, though.  He wanted to believe that Brandy cared, that Britton worked with him often enough to put his power as a vampire to use, that Gabe would stop being such a nerd and prove to them all just how rough whatever time period he'd been born into had been, that someone he worked with and backed up on a regular basis would pull through when he needed it.

When he was so desperate for it all to stop that he'd have preferred dying to sitting there another moment, help seemed to arrive.  Everything hurt, and not in a distant sort of ache like most people might experience after a rough day; he was nearing a breaking point for pain and may have already crossed whatever invisible line was there, the desperation nearly all he had left.  How he'd continually refused was a mystery, except that perhaps it was all he had to hold onto as they went on, well after the words themselves had lost all meaning to him.  He was staring through one eye at a woman who'd entered the room he was in (his other eye was swollen shut from one too many blows to the face), and he didn't immediately recognize her.  He understood the concept of a gun to his head and the man holding it saying that he was going to 'blow his head off', but he wasn't exactly concerned.  It would be a reprieve at this point.

Still, getting out was preferable in a distant kind of way, if it wasn't an inconvenience, or anything.  He may not have been able to see the woman who'd entered well enough to identify her (he kind of thought it was Brandy, too), but he knew the voice.  He was fucked, it seemed, though he didn't really understand what she was doing there or why.  There was no confusion regarding the empty click of her gun, or the man saying it was his turn.  Fuck that.  John wasn't going to have Blair be the last person to see him alive.

He jerked towards the gun, not even really noticing the pain when his head impacted the metal to knock it out of the man's hand, and though he tried to follow what was going on with Blair and the man, that was a lost cause.  He got the picture when she beat the guy, but he'd definitely drifted in and out of consciousness during the process and wasn't likely to maintain any kind of coherency in the immediate present.  The fact that he managed to question her presence there was amazing enough.

"...you?"

She was talking to him, low, soft words meant to soothe instead of antagonize, and they were the first kind words he'd heard since his mother had ordered his tormentors to begin.  That he blacked out again was hardly a surprise, however unexpected the kind company was.

==========

Waking up was hardly a relief, though he was definitely going to believe (when he could analyze the situation at a later date) that he was deliberately sedated multiple times to give his body a chance to heal itself before he began actively working against it.  It was either that, or his mind and body conspired against him to accomplish the same goal that the drugs would have, which had the bonus effect of preventing him from having to face the situation until he didn't feel like he was dying (or wish he was).  The first few times he woke up, he was downright boring and the total time awake was brief, though he was smart enough to wonder why there seemed to be a different person sitting in the room with him each time he drifted in without being sharp enough right then to put together an answer.  They all took it easy on him when he started to be awake long enough to function, not talking about what had happened too much except to assure him that he was no longer being pursued.

Ben showed up after a day or so, and that made things better.  His cousin could explain a few things that his police friends couldn't, and the details that he possessed seemed to suggest that he'd been there for some portion of the crazy rescue mission.  It was Ben who told him that his mother had 'passed on', and that Brandy had been hurt in the process.  That made sense to John, since he remembered a woman being there at the end, but other than giving his injured cousin an odd look, Ben hadn't specified exactly how Brandy had been injured or how John himself got out.  It wasn't until she was the one in the room with him when he woke up that it all started to click.

"You," he said, his already deeper voice still thick from sleep, and he tried to sit up a little, if only to deal with whatever she was going to do with dignity.  It was tough, because half of him felt pretty apathetic about it, like it didn't really matter at this point if she wanted to fuck with him, while the other half felt more angry than usual over the thought that he would have to put up with more bullshit.  A random, tiny little part of him felt something else, something that was almost...okay, but he wasn't really sure what it was.  Big surprise there, he already knew he was messed up.  The problem was that something was nagging at him, something about the way Brandy had reacted to things he'd said, about Ben's talk with him, about those last moments in the room his mother wanted painted with his blood.  Something about the woman in front of him, the one he'd hated all this time, who hated him.  She'd been there, and not to hurt him.

"You?  Why?" he asked, blatant confusion marking his features, and he didn't even try to pretend that he wasn't totally in the dark about it.  He didn't have the energy right then for complicated mind games.  He just wanted to know why she'd risk herself to go into a mess like that for him.  It made no sense.

[Blair Davis]

It had been a rough few days, to say the least. Sunlight had finally broken, filling the room with a strange blue-purple glow, and tinting everything shadowed a strange shade. The first thing that registered to Blair when she heard John's raspy voice was that she was dreaming, and in that dream her head was twisted completely around. She also must have been a bust of herself, because she couldn't feel her arms. Her eyes flicked open and she inhaled sharply, the mixed scents of sterile recovery room and freshly waxed floor invading her sensitive nose. It took longer than necessary for them to adjust, and as they did the dark figure of John, now sitting up in his bed, became less shaded and more clear, dyed blue - like everything else in the quiet, quiet room.

"What?" she whisper-spoke, her voice faint, as it always was when she was waking with no recollection of anything. It was barely audible, but he heard it all the same, even though he could recognize how soft it truly was. It was odd for Blair to speak with any tone other than a biting, sharp one, like freezing rain. He'd never heard anything else from her, anyways, at least not until the night that had caused all of this trauma.

Blair sat up slowly, and only then did she really understand what her dream had meant. Her body had been screaming at her to change positions, but as the horse pill of a sedative that she'd been given to help her relax and ease her pain had taken charge over her conscious state, she had not done as directed and pull herself into bed. No, she'd refused Britton's offer to take her home in a heartbeat, instead staying stubbornly with John that night. She'd fallen asleep in a chair next to his bed, and had laid her head down on crossed arms at his side, golden-brown hair falling around her like a tangled halo that scented of lavender and mint. At least she'd showered.

Everything was in focus now, in total clarity in fact, which meant that she was in a moderate amount of pain. She sat back too far in the chair, actions quick and surprised now that she had a grasp of where she was. She pulled at the stitching in her side from where they'd had to extract the bullet, and let out a pained cry that came out a half-silent scream, dry and high-pitched (akin to when a cat tries to meow, but only half comes out). Her throat was still raw from the yelling that she'd done the few days before. Shifters didn't always heal as well as the rumours told, especially when they slept leaning over on coarse hospital beds.

She placed a hand on her side, a hurt expression on her face as she shut her eyes to try and think herself out of the burning sensation the yanking had left in that general area. Her plush lips pressed together in a firm line as her chalky features twisted; one could see her visibly pushing the feelings out of her mind. She looked horribly exhausted when she finally opened her eyes again - Blair was known for her beauty and certain je ne sais quois, but what John was seeing right then was the real deal. She was as stripped down and run ragged as it ever got.

"How do you feel?" she asked, her voice a little more clear now. The scratchy nature was evident since she had some volume to it, although she still made an effort to speak softly. She probably hadn't understood his question, as it acted only to wake her from her nap. The feeling had returned to her hands again, finally, and she reached out and placed hers on his left, since it was closest to her and above the covers. Even her hands had the tiniest scratches on them, things one could imagine having been much more extreme in their presence when John had first been submitted. Blair had no fear of glass, especially when it came to putting her hand through it.

In truth, she couldn't explain herself to him. She was a creature based on emotion and she had to make an honest effort to justify a great deal of what she did when it was guided by instinct and whims and desires or revenge. As a criminal profiler, she could use that to her advantage, but only if she was careful about how far she could take it. This situation, though, wasn't a typical case, and she'd gotten out of hand, herself. She'd never killed anyone before now. She felt different, like how people expect you feel after you have sex for the first time - she felt empty inside, to be honest, not that she would tell anyone else that. She didn't allow herself to be analyzed, and thus she didn't give off the idea that there was a problem.

Of course, John asking, "Why you?" was to be expected. Everyone else, literally, had asked that exact question. Even her own sister had demanded to know why she was risking her life to save someone she supposedly hated. The truth was that Blair never hated him at all. He brought out some sort of fight in her that she didn't really understand. Mostly it was directed at him, and she overstepped her boundaries all the time when it came to awful things she said and did. She alternated between staying away from him and being unable to resist the urge to attack him - partially it was because he was a bird, she had no doubt. But when those urges to fight stopped grasping her in their clutches, Blair was just as she always was - the Blair John thought was a fake.

She placed her hand down on her side again in lieu of the pain, and when she felt a dampness she realized she had popped a stitch. "Damn," she hissed. She looked away as she winced, knowing now he was scrutinizing her every breath, and stood abruptly. She was wearing simple clothing, which was uncharacteristic of Blair - a pair of long plaid flannel pajama pants, for one, was not something she'd normally every leave her house in, but there they were, the blue, grey and white tartan design seeming to go on endlessly against her stupidly long legs. Her dark blue tank top she had never been more thankful for; when she got to the cabinet on the other side of the room (which she did at a very slow pace thanks to general soreness - John was used to scuffles, not her), she unpacked some gauze from its container and rolled her shirt up to just below her breasts. There was a little patch of dark red, sure enough.

As she began re-wrapping her own bandaging, she looked over her shoulder at John, who was still waiting for an answer. With a visible sigh, she concentrated on the task at hand with all of her might. "Because it wouldn't have worked otherwise," she said cryptically. When she'd finished, she went back to her chair beside his bed, but stood behind it with her hands rested at the back rather than sat down in it. "Your family knew to expect everyone to lead the charge but me. Evidently your mother did her homework, but they all failed to realize I'm not human. Even if it seems like it at the moment," she added, gesturing to her freshly bandaged midsection. "And before you ask why Britton just didn't come and poof you to the rescue, the house was warded. It was ridiculous. Your mother had more money than sense; you don't buy wards from just anyone." Blair hinted that she'd bought them from someone associated with Midnight, and she'd be right.

"Besides, I couldn't live without knowing what you looked like in a hospital dress," she said, her voice teasing but strangely without the usual malevolence. She nodded to the white gown with its little tiny blue floral pattern on it and smiled crookedly. "It looks like an old lady named Satsy-Bell lent you her best summer moo-moo."

[John Valentine]

Which was more surreal, the fact that his mother had him kidnapped and tortured nearly to death, or that the woman who he shared a deep mutual hatred with was the one who lead the charge for his rescue?  And then, was it crazier than all that to find that same woman sleeping in an obviously uncomfortable position by his hospital bedside for who knew how long?  Both good questions, and John had answers for neither of them, but who needed answers to questions like that when there were better ones at hand?

Seriously, who had the energy for questions?

John sure as hell didn't, so once she woke up, he merely focused on her behavior as much as he was capable of at the moment.  If one didn't know him well enough to understand that he had quite a bit of training in psychology (particularly criminal psychology) without going to far as to be considered a profiler or anything, then it would be understandable to wonder if that was what his training had truly focused on.  He paid attention, even when his brain was fuzzy with the drugs they had him on, too much sleep and too many bad memories, and Blair wasn't making sense.  He just had to decide if he was going to let it bother him more than her usual behavior did, or just lean back, take a deep breath, release it and let himself take the simple relief that her pleasant demeanor was offering him without pulling it apart to look for tricks.

If she was playing some nasty, tricksy game, he was going to make her life seriously terrible as soon as he was back at work.  Picking on a man in a hospital bed was bad form.

The suspicion had to be obvious in his expression and body language initially, because let's face it, John was a suspicious sort because he'd been 'on the run' from his family for so long.  He couldn't help it, and Blair wasn't someone he immediately trusted, anyway.  That she reached out for his hand right after asking how he felt should have bothered him, and he did flick his eyes down to their hands like he was uncertain, but his eyes slipped closed and he released that long, slow breath, like he was making a decision that he didn't really even have the mental capabilities to consciously work out right then.  He didn't move his hand.

"I'm not really sure.  Fuzzy, I guess," he told her, totally honest and without any nasty retorts or aggression, which was kind of amazing.  He probably couldn't have drummed up much even if he tried, though.  He opened his eyes again when she cursed softly, moving to touch her side and then standing.  She was right in thinking that he was scrutinizing her because he was, taking in her every movement, breath, sound, and he would have taken her thoughts as well if he could have.  He didn't understand, and though his mind was feeling a little sharper as he woke up, he had every intention of figuring it out.  "How do you feel?"

Yeah, because it made sense for a man who was pasty white, drugged out and still healing some extremely nasty and cruelly administered injuries to be asking someone who was well enough to be on her feet and wrapping her own hurts how she felt, but he couldn't help it.  She didn't seem to have escaped without some nasties, herself.  He still didn't understand what she'd been thinking.  Without waiting for her to answer how she felt, especially since he could essentially see it, he asked a new question.  "Why you?"

The answer wasn't really what he expected because it was so ridiculously logical, and when were snakes ever logical?  It didn't make sense in the way he was really asking, why she would risk her life for him, but she went on with more of an 'answer', and it still didn't make sense.  The problem he wasn't realizing was that Blair probably couldn't explain why, but then, maybe he did realize, because he didn't push it.

Quite the opposite, actually; he was still a little too 'out of it' to react properly to a joke (nor was he accustomed to JOKING with Blair, so that was unusual), but the edges of his lips quirked up just a little into something of a smirk, a more friendly expression than Blair ever received out of him before.  "Don't be jealous that my moo-moo is sexier than yours was," he told her, and yes, he knew that if she was bleeding from her side like that, she had to have had at least a brief hospital stay. 

"You almost got to see my best Blues," he pointed out with a lower tone, almost as an afterthought.  He assumed his mother's thugs would have dumped him somewhere if they'd eventually killed him, and it wasn't like they ever really wore their dress blues.  He couldn't remember the last time right then.  Actually, he hoped they would have buried him in his blues, and that his mother wouldn't have fucked that up for him, too.  Bitch.

[Blair Davis]

Blair pressed the pads of her fingers gently over her new bandaging, to the point of where she sent sharp bolts of pain through her body. She nodded, as though satisfied of something, and began slowly rolling her shirt back down so as not to muss her work. She turned to John fully, her tall form seeming more sallow and pale than usual, and made her way back to the chair by his bed. He could see her face fully now, and it was obvious she hadn't had much in the way of respite. She gave him a wry smile all the same, evident by how it did not reach her eyes. It wasn't the usual venomous smirk she threw his way, though.

"I'm... okay," she said, responding to his question of how she felt. "Took a little more damage than I'm used to, but that's to be expected with the whole storming the castle bit," she trailed off. She didn't want to think about it. Blair rubbed at her nose a little, the itch annoying her. It was the after-effect of some of the medicine they'd given her for the pain. She didn't even ask the dosages they'd prescribed, but she imagined them lethal to a regular human given she was feeling side-effects already.

She didn't seem to appreciate his joke about being killed, and said as much. "Not funny," she responded, the words too drawn out to be a snap, but too harshly spoken to be a gentle chide on the matter. Jokes about the ugly outfits were okay; jokes about how they'd almost died, she wasn't ready to hear yet. Perhaps John was more used to a lifestyle such as this, but Blair only unthreaded them, she never lived them.

"They said they were going to let you out in a day or two," she said, changing the subject quickly. "Your home got torn up pretty bad. I'm assuming that's where they grabbed you. Brandy was the one who found everything." It was a more normal scenario, at least, Brandy having had a part in this. There had been rumours circulating that they'd even been involved, however much of a lack of truth there was. But Brandy was a good friend, at least, and it was strange that she hadn't played a more... aggressive role. Of course, she actually had, but she was human, and a human didn't simply just walk into Mordor.