Shadow

Shadow could hear the sirens now too, layered over each other, growing louder by the second until they felt like they were inside his head instead of out on the road. He stayed close to Finch's side as a firetruck rolled in and parked in front of the house, the red-and-white wash of its lights stuttering across everything. 

The firefighters jumped off the truck and moved with practised efficiency, voices overlapping, boots heavy on the asphalt, equipment clanging as they laid the hose out. They had it almost set up when a window smashed and something too fiery to look at directly screeched as it shot off into the night, leaving a streak burned across his vision. 

"What the fuck!?" one of the firefighters shouted over the noise of the truck and the fire. 

"Phoenix!" Adin shouted back. He leant in to talk to Finch more quietly. "We won't be able to deal with that one ourselves, considering our current situation. Make sure you tell the police about it when they get here." 

Finch nodded.

An ambulance came in next, more lights, more sound. Shadow pushed attention away from himself just enough that anyone not specifically looking for him wouldn't notice he was there. Finch considered him for a moment, eyes narrowing, but it was Malyn, still coughing, who he ultimately settled on. 

“You need to get checked out,” Finch told him.

“I’m fine,” Malyn said, his voice strained. He tried to say something else, but it was too much and he started coughing again.

“Uh huh,” Finch said as he took him by the arm and led him over to the ambulance.

Shadow didn't want to go over there, so he hovered near Adin instead. Adin had his arms crossed tight over his chest, his eyes on the strangers moving around them. His heart wasn't hammering the way it had been during his fight with Katrina the night before, but it was beating faster than it normally did. 

Another large vehicle was coming. Shadow heard it before he saw it and assumed firetruck, or another ambulance, but when he turned to look, it was a bus. Not a city bus.  It was like… like a tour bus musicians and other performers travelled around in.

It parked further down the road. Shadow took a small step closer to Adin, shoulders drawing tight, but when the doors hissed open, it was Luther who stepped down onto the road. 

Shadow ran.

Luther's arm went around him as soon as he was at his side, his gaze skipping between Shadow and the burning house. "Are you okay? Is everyone okay?" 

"Yes," Shadow said, quieter than usual even for him, because his throat was still raw and the world was too loud and Luther was here now. Luther could hear even his quietest words. "Well, mostly. Malyn keeps coughing." 

“Katrina, I assume?”

Shadow nodded.

Luther raised his voice to speak to Adin as he approached. “I’m sorry. Genuinely. I didn’t think she’d find you.”

“I can tell you care about Shadow and you left him with us,” Adin said as he stopped in front of them. “So of course you didn’t.”

“I wish…” Luther stared at the burning house for a long moment and then shook his head. “I wish a lot of things, but none of it matters.”

“The problem with wishing to change the past is that changing the bad things often changes the good as well.” Adin offered Luther a small smile. “And that it doesn’t do anything, of course.”

Luther returned the smile, tired but real. "That last part is particularly problematic, yes. Well, then, what can I do now?" 

“You can provide transport,” Finch said as he joined them. He was holding Shadow’s bag, and when he reached them, he passed it to Shadow. “My car’s a fucking inferno right now. I’m going to take the bike and follow Malyn to the hospital. Can you take Adin and Tyla somewhere for me?”

“Yes,” Luther said. “Just tell me where.”

Finch’s gaze cut to Adin and he gave him a significant look. “I’ll meet you under the lemon tree. Okay?”

Adin nodded. “I understand.”

Luther opened the door to the bus and held his arm out towards it. “Let’s get settled, shall we?”

Shadow could feel his shoulders drop the second he was through the door. The flashing lights were muted by the walls, the sirens still audible but distant, dulled, the firelight on the windows reduced to a soft flicker instead of a glare. 

The bus wasn't as fancy as a rock star's tour bus, but it had seating, a little kitchen area, and four curtained bunks in the back. He sank into the nearest seat and let his head tip back against the cushion. Adin moved past him to look around the tiny kitchen. 

Luther leant his hip against the kitchen counter. “This is what I came up with. You always did want to run away when you got scared. Maybe you had the right idea. Predators can’t find you if you keep moving, as you always said.”

Shadow opened his mouth to tell Luther that he’d liked having a home, but he shut it and nodded instead. This is what they had now. There was no going home. 

“I’m still looking into other solutions,” Luther assured him. “But for now, I think this will work. If I hire someone to take over driving during the day, I doubt she would be able to catch up. Or rather, I doubt she would be willing to commit to the degree needed to chase us down.”

The bus door opened again and Tyla stepped on, Finch nudging him forward, his arms burdened by the rest of what he'd rescued from the house. Tyla didn't look happy. 

"He wants to go with Malyn to the hospital," Finch explained to Adin as he dumped the items he was carrying on the floor. "But he can't, because he can't drive the bike, and if both of us go it's gonna be a problem when we all need to get back and we have to try to figure out how to stack three people on a motorcycle." 

Tyla made an unhappy sound in the back of his throat, but he didn’t disagree.

“Besides, I’m gonna pretend to be Mal’s brother so I can go in with him, and that probably wouldn’t work as well for you,” Finch said. When Tyla didn’t respond, Finch placed a hand on his shoulder. “He’ll be okay. Really. It’s just important to take this one seriously because his lungs are already kinda fucked.”

“I know. I want him to go and get checked over, I just…” Tyla shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m being silly.”

Finch gave him two firm pats on the shoulder. “It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared. I just also happen to be shit at expressing my emotions, which can sometimes be confused with being tough.”

“You are tough, Finch.” Tyla offered him a strained smile. “You should go now. He needs to see a doctor.”

“He does,” Finch said. “Take care of each other and I’ll see you where I’m seeing you.”

Luther watched Finch leave, then turned and gave Adin and Tyla the lopsided smile he pulled out whenever he wasn’t sure which emotion he should be expressing. Sometimes he leant a little too heavily towards being cheerful when it wasn’t appropriate. “So, is someone else driving, or will you give me directions to this mysterious lemon tree?” 

"Drive around for a while and make sure we're not being followed," Adin said. "Then I'll tell you where to go." 

"Smart." Luther headed for the driver's compartment. "There's chilled water in the fridge if anyone's thirsty. Don't mind the bags of blood."

The engine turned over and the bus eased out. Adin and Tyla took seats near Shadow's.

Adin tried to talk to Tyla, but Tyla only stared down at his hands on the table, murmuring single word responses, and eventually buried his face in his folded arms and went quiet. Shadow considered slipping back to one of the bunks at the rear of the bus—somewhere dim and small, with a curtain he could draw—but this was probably the last he'd see of any of them. He wanted to be present for it, even if present mostly meant sitting still and not being noticed. 

Luther took them through the densest part of the city first, where they would be difficult to track from a distance, and then back out to quiet suburbs where anyone following them would be noticed. Shadow sat by the window and listened carefully. Luther's hearing was every bit as sharp as his, but Luther didn't have the same knack for sorting through what came in. He could pick out a distant engine making turns, sure. He might not realise that the pattern of those turns meant they had a tail.

Adin went to join Luther in the driver’s compartment to give him directions and Tyla got up to pace the moving bus.

“He’ll be okay,” Shadow told him. “I’m not a doctor, but I have good hearing. His lungs were irritated, but I don’t think they were damaged much.”

Tyla stopped pacing and made himself sit back down. "Thank you. It's just… he already had lung damage." 

"Oh." What Shadow wanted to say was did he, because nothing in Malyn's breathing had given him any reason to guess that. 

"The doctors know what they're doing, I suppose. And if they don't…" Tyla dipped his head and pulled in a deep, shaky breath. "Well, humans aren't allowed in Nuuvatu. But I'd find somebody to help him." 

Shadow nodded.

Tyla pressed a hand flat to his stomach and made a face. "My stomach feels…" 

Shadow waited for him to finish the sentence, but Tyla seemed to have gotten lost in whatever he was feeling. His already pale skin had gone practically translucent. His breathing came shallow and uneven, and underneath it Shadow could hear his pulse climbing. 

Tyla pushed up from his seat and lurched toward the kitchen sink. He made it just in time. 

From the front of the bus, Luther's voice drifted back, perfectly conversational. "Your boy just threw up." 

Adin was already moving. He reached Tyla in a few quick strides and gathered the loose copper hair away from his face as he heaved into the sink again. 

Tyla pulled a shaky breath in and accepted the tissue Adin offered him, dabbing at his mouth. "I've never thrown up before." 

"You may be in shock, or reacting badly to something you breathed in," Adin told him. "You don't get sick, but that doesn't mean you're immune to every physiological reaction to stress or toxins. The bus ride probably isn't helping either." 

Tyla nodded. He looked intensely focused on staying upright, hands braced white-knuckled against the rim of the sink. 

"I need to finish directing Luther. We're almost there, and then you can lie down somewhere quiet." 

Tyla nodded again, and Adin headed back to the front of the bus.

Shadow got a bottle of cold water out of the fridge for Tyla. There were indeed bags of blood in there, but he was used to that. 

He held the bottle out. "I think drinking water helps." 

"Thank you." Tyla took it with a shaky hand. He managed a few small sips, then paused to concentrate on breathing through whatever his body was subjecting him to. "I feel awful, but I'm not even sure how awful, because I'm always fine. Is this as bad as it seems, or does being unwell always feel this terrible? Sometimes Malyn gets a headache or an upset stomach and I have no point of reference for how he feels." 

"Well, now you do." Shadow thought about it for a second. "Sort of. Maybe. You know what it's like for your body to feel bad. I guess that's all any of us ever know." 

"Mm." Tyla leant his face against his arm and shut his eyes. 

The engine note shifted as the bus started up a hill, and through the window the streetlights gave way to the dark shapes of trees. A few minutes later, the bus pulled to a stop. 

Adin came back through, slid an arm under Tyla's shoulders, and walked him off the bus. 

Luther watched them go, then took the seat opposite Shadow. "They're quite dramatic." 

“They almost died.”

“I suppose. I imagine they almost die all the time, though. It’s part of their job.”

“Their house burnt down.”

“Is that worse than almost dying?”

Shadow shrugged.

“Well, it is what it is. Shall we get going?”

Shadow hesitated, then shook his head. “Something’s wrong with Tyla. We should wait until Finch and Malyn get back.”

"I suppose." Luther tilted his head, considering him in that mildly curious way he had, fighting a mind naturally inclined to apathy to try to make sense of him. That was what nobody else would ever appreciate about Luther—his love ran so impossibly deep precisely because it shouldn't have been there at all. "Do you like them?" 

Shadow nodded.

“Hm. You don’t like many people.”

“I don’t give many people a chance. But… most people don’t give me a chance, either.”

“I didn’t know it bothered you.”

"It didn't, really." Shadow looked away, out into the dark beyond the window. "It's fine. I know we have to leave." 

“You never much liked other kids, but you’re not a kid anymore. If friends are what you want, we’ll find you some after all of this is over.”

Shadow shook his head. “I don’t want to. I don’t want friends. I just liked them.”

“Ah.”

"But it doesn't matter. All I've done is ruin their lives, and I don't want to make things any worse. I know we have to go." 

"We do. But you're allowed to not be happy about it, Shadow." 

Shadow leant his chin on his hand and stared out at the dark woods surrounding the bus. “I’m not happy about it.”