He Who Controls the Flame (001 fanfic)

Chapter Twenty- Tearful Hellos and Goodbyes

I had never been in a car crash before.

Sure, I had been in a fender-bender with Manuela in the grocery store parking lot when I was ten. She had been rambling on about how everything was getting more expensive and how organic produce should be cheaper and not more expensive than "trashy food" as she called it, when she accidentally bumped someone's rear. My father had paid for the fines and Manuela now had an apprehension of organic vegetables, but really there was no harm, no foul.

But people always said that in the middle of a car crash, things seemed to happen in slow motion. Like, your brain couldn't handle the speed of the moment so it slowed things down, made it easier to process.

That was what was happening now. I watched as the rain around me began to slow, the noise of the gunshot still ricocheting in my ears, muted and warped. I watched as Peter's entire body flinched, his brows furrowing as if he didn't realize what happened. Then I watched as his body began to fall backwards, his legs crumpling because they couldn't hold his weight anymore.

He fell to the ground on his back, his lips parting as if he made a noise of hurt, but I couldn't hear him. There was a high-pitched noise buzzing in my ears, muffling everything. It took me a moment to realize that it was me. I was screaming.

Another shot went off sounding garbled and demented, and then something was slicing into my arm, white-hot pain richoechting through me. The pain broke me out of my trance, shooting me back into reality.

Everything spun back into real time.

I whirled around to see a dark figure in the trees, gun raised. Heat washed over me and I let out a scream, throwing out a hand, I let fire unfurl out of my fingertips, aimed right at him. The ball of flames shot out and hit the tree next to him. Shit.

The man then stumbled away from the burning oak and sprinted in the opposite direction. I cursed, my muscles aching to go and run after him, but my legs wouldn't move. I couldn't leave Peter. Not ever.

I turned back around to see that a crimson patch was staining Peters shirt, right at the space between his chest and arm. The bullet had hit his shoulder, dangerously close to his heart, but not his heart. Not his heart. Thank fucking God.

I fell to my knees, the rough pavement surely cutting into the skin there, but I couldn't feel it. All I could feel was icey fear rooting itself into my veins, making me shake, making tears well in my eyes. I was going to panic. I could feel it, taste it, I was hovering right at the edge of descending into mania.

"You're hurt," he rasped. His voice seemed to reach out to me and clutch onto me, grounding me in the present.

"What?" my voice was only a gasp. Peter's gaze dropped down to my arm and I followed it to see that a long slash ran horizontally across my bicep. Blood was seeping down it, mixing with the water to make it look even worse. But I couldn't feel it. Why couldn't I feel it?

"Juliette," he groaned, his eyes fluttering closed, "you need to run."

"What? No." I peeled his suit jacket off of me and began to unbutton his shirt. I had no fucking idea what to do when someone was shot, seeing as it wasn't something I dealt with on the daily, but I did know that the amount of blood seeping out of him wasn't good. In fact, it was very, very bad.

"Peter, you're delusional, I think the blood loss is getting to you. That or a piece of that bullet traveled up your bloodstream and severed something important in your brain." I realized I was rambling, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. At least the talking kept me from screaming. Because I felt very much like screaming.

"Juliette, they're coming." He looked extremely pale now, his shirt now mostly stained with his blood. How was he bleeding so fast?

"Peter, please, just let me help you," I said, bundling up his pristine white suit jacket that was now going to be out of commission for well...ever. Unless Peter found some way to get the stains out. He most likely had some kind of fool-proof mastermind concoction for that.