The Heart of a Villain (a Tom Hiddleston fanfiction)

Flee

[Rose]

"Your shoes, Rose."

Tom's voice is strained, but not angry. Rose looks down. The beautiful, black velvet shoes with the high heels that were embossed with metallic gold, the shoes with heels so high that she was practically on her tip toes, the heels she'd been wobbling on for the last two minutes --

They had to go.

"Fuck," she grunts. There's a strap around her ankle. It will take time to undo, especially since her hands are shaking. All her earlier bravado when she'd picked up the Sig strapped to her thigh and showed off how she could unload it was completely evaporated under the weight of actually being shot at. The best she could have done if Mark had tried anything was shriek like a little girl. She'll be damned before she admits to Tom now, though.

Tom turns, looks at her. It's a fleeting look -- he's trying to keep them from being surrounded and it's a losing battle. He glances down.

All she can managed is to squeak, "The straps!"

Tom takes in the situation with a sweep of his eyes. He pushes them both into an alcove -- one of the doorways in this hallway is a bit deeper set than the others but if they stay here too long they're going to get boxed in. For the moment, though, it provides heavy wood for bullets to splinter.

He flips something from his pocket. Some kind of small switchblade. He flips the gun over in his hand, offering it to her handle first. She takes it almost without thinking. He doesn't need to tell her what to do -- but that doesn't stop her from staring at it stupidly for a second.

A bullet sends splinters of wood brushing against her cheek. She holds the gun up, fires back --

Tom has bent over and is at her feet. The blade goes to one strap, slicing it clean without touching her skin. His hand grasps her ankle as he holds the other foot steady. It utterly astounds her later when she can still feel his fingers as they press against her skin.

She fires a second bullet. She's hitting nothing -- maybe she's bluffing well enough but these men are probably trained killers and if she can't hit the broad side of a barn they'll know by three shots.

"Rose," Tom says as the second ankle is freed. He has even pulled her shoes off for her after unshackling them from the unforgiving strap. She knows he's not going slow but dammit it feels like he's taking forever.  "Each bullet counts."

He starts to stand, but he pauses at her skirt and before Rose knows it he has delved under it and suddenly she feels his hand  in exactly a place where it should not be. She gives a startled yelp, the gun in her hand jerks and fires, and the man who had gotten brave enough to take a few steps closer to their hiding place falls over dead.

"Hey--hands!" Rose cries, cheeks crimson, as Tom completes his rise. He holds the Sig Sauer, a P238 380 ACP with pearl inlays, which had formerly been strapped to her thigh, in his hand, ready to fire. He gives a quick look over his shoulder and acknowledges the dead man with a raise of his right eyebrow.

"Helped your aim," he quips, before turning and firing two shots to take out another shooter -- this seems to remove any resistance from that direction, temporarily giving them time to get out of the hallway without being shot from behind.  Rose's only retaliation is to push down the skirt, which had been ruffled by his...withdrawal. He grabs her hand and they're moving again, her shoes forgotten behind them.

The adrenaline is too much for her. This level of violence is too much for her. She's never been closer to things like this than the distance of her television screen. The loud explosions around her are causing her ears to ring and her eyes have suddenly gotten the uncontrollable urge to shut. She doesn't know where they're going, just blindly follows Tom's lead. Up, down, sideways, it doesn't matter. She just wants to get away.