Don't let go: Joel Miller x OC

Save Who You Can Save

Heavy head weighted down by the hard pull of gravity. Thick and cumbersome as if it was its own entity pressing down on his fragile skull as his brain throbbed within its suddenly restrictive cavity. A solid coolness pressed against his aching cheek, eyes sluggishly flickering open and vision pulsating painfully. Cold hard concrete being what he saw first. Ears ringing ever so loudly, blocking out any other attempt of noise breaking through as his expression contorted into a pained grimace. Why was the static so loud?....What's with the concrete? What the fuck was going on? A hefty concussion being the cause of some temporary amnesia.

His brows knitted as he fought the brutal pressure that pinned him to the floor. Fighting with an almighty effort to lift his head just a fraction. His eyes squinting as his sight palpitated in and out of focus, bright artificial lighting all around blinding him further. Where the fuck was he?

Slowly each sense began to return back to him. The smell of musky damp, the metallic coppery taste that bathed his tastebuds, his heavy limbs unmoved by a heavy ache. Yet, his ears still tuned out to his surroundings and his vision had a dark vignette that tunnelled. Some sort of warehouse... maybe? Why the fuck was he in a goddamn warehouse? And where...Fuck. Short incomplete fragments of harrowing memory flashed into his cognition. Heavy boots, a thick consuming smog, gun fire and the sound of Ava's ear-splitting cries... Ava. Where the fuck was Ava?

A delayed perception of panic finally settling within him, his sights frantically searching the space around him. Optic nerves straining as he forced his tunnel vision to focus. Her hysterical shrieks haunting his mind, the only sound he could hear outside of the persistent nauseating high-pitched ring. His own mind taunting him whilst his body remained almost incapacitated.
Get the fuck off of me- Joel!- I'll fucking kill you! Get off! She fucking called for him and he didn't get to her... why couldn't he get to her? Indiscernible images of a thick ghostly fog came back to him. What had they done to her? Had they touched her? Killed her? Both?

The receptors within his brain hadn't quite connected to the rest of his limbs as epinephrine took control upon setting his blurry eyes on her limp figure. Her body slumped face down on the ground, not too unlike his. She was here but her lifeless figure only put the fear of god into him. His already stiff chest constricting just that bit more as another bout of fright clouded over his better judgement. He had to get to her, had to protect what was his, couldn't lose her. Fuck, he couldn't lose her... not like this, not at this point. The consistent ringing in his ears finally beginning to dilute to reveal the incoherent muffle of surrounding voices, not that he could tune in to make the sounds coherent. He should be concerned, should be tactical and work out what, who and how many he was dealing with but his dazed mind did no such thing as he, without a second thought or shit given, scrambled to his dead legs and lunged towards the unconscious blonde.

Bang.

A pained grunt escaped him as impact was made. Excruciating pangs seared through his right lower limb, skin and flesh penetrated and torn into as his still weighted form levelled back to the floor with a hard thud. Shit. Fuck.

"Why the fuck is he not restrained?!"

An unfamiliar feminine voice called out from somewhere behind. The tone commanding, abrupt and to anyone else, likely down right terrifying. The first sound he'd successfully tuned into since his hazy eyes fluttered open just minutes prior. The smell of gun powder wafting through the surrounding the air. Goddamn it, he'd been fucking shot.

He attempted to glance back at the source from the corner of his eye, his vision blocked by two broad forms approaching on either side. Rough hands harshly grasping at his arms and tugging him back. He tried to fight as best as a man could whilst suffering from concussion alongside a fresh bullet in the back of his knee but he was weakened and exhausted, no match at all for two uninjured grown men. The anonymous figures gaining the upper hand as they continued to drag him back into the centre of the room, a trail of his own fresh, warm crimson smeared across the asphalt in his wake. A third, a young woman with darkened short hair approached as the other two continued to pin him down, arms forced behind his back as tight cable ties were secured around his wrists, binding them into place.