IT WAS SOBERING, this entire conversation that was happening before him that he hardly noticed how fast his heart was racing against his chest or how tight his hands were balled into fists at his side. He didn’t dare flinch at the tone, instead, it made him feel seasick, recalling all the things that have happened between them that could go against everything she said. Her words played over in a reel of his thoughts, his mind trying to process just where she was getting at like he hadn’t heard her clear as day. This isn’t going to work. Something he knew and had refused to see and it only made him feel more defeated as crueler words spin out, her eyes on him like he had so badly wanted.
We’re not going to be friends. You’re convenient and I will lie to you.
Brandon took a step back rather than go forward, suddenly desperate for the space to grow between them as his eyes fall close in an ill hope that the room would stop spinning just as his teeth sink into the inside of his cheek. A mess of emotions — anger, resentment, hurt, loneliness, guilt, sadness. Everything he’s feeling and they’re all tied to her.
“I don’t want to ever talk to you again.” And he wanted her to know that he meant it as every single word was dragged out against his tongue. No hint of humor or his usual boyish smirk. Just a bitter stab to his chest that caused his voice to strain. Pathetic, this was pathetic and he didn’t want her to see him like this anymore. Too many times has he tried to see if this could work, too vulnerable. A hopeless, injured golden retriever just wincing and begging for her touch. Her attention. He can’t do this and it has him stepping back even further with a lift of his hand from his pocket to wave her off, walking with hyperfocused steps from their small space because he just needs to get away from any and all things Jack Taylor related for the sake of the new year.
And then it happens. All of it so quick that it doesn’t register to him at first, the hit to his chest immediately putting him in a daze as he swayed in his stance. A rock in his shoes, an unbalanced sort of feeling as the pain begins to radiate throughout his body, a red bloom soaking through a stark white shirt. He doesn’t pray much but he can feel himself reciting words passed down to him in a sort of surreal state, his mind split between trying to control what was happening and figuring out what he did to make Jack hate him so much. It took him seconds to hit the ground, the pain so unbearable that his face scrunched and his eyes began to burn, tiny beads pinched by his eyes. This was not how he planned this night to go.
Immediately, Jack wondered whether she might throw up. Whether her body might simply reject all the twists and turns, knotted up organs and simply seek to rid itself of the swimming feeling that didn’t quite feel natural anymore. She remembered, vividly, that the feeling existed only once before - something akin to an out of body experience as she pulled the trigger and watched Lincoln’s body convulse on impact. If adrenaline and shock could ultimately exist together in a way that wasn’t quite codependent on one another, she had a feeling this would be it. “Good, you finally get it then.” It’s sharp, Jack finally feeling more like herself in the few seconds it seems to take Brandon to accept this for what it was, even if the lurch within her chest feels something like tumbling from a plane at fifteen thousand feet. A nose dive to the solid ground below, only now, the solid ground is Brandon, and it becomes forever out of reach.
The singular hand that still clings to the railing has surely become one with the steel at this point, Jack convinced that should she let go, the metal would have bent to the shape of her hand. He steps back, and she wonders whether she can breathe yet without being taken over by his entire being. Momentarily, she’s convinced that should her body seek out breath before she suffocates, somehow, she’d go back on everything she knows is right. It’s in the echo of each step he takes that she knows beyond all doubt that truly, it would never work. Jack Taylor was steel - she was iron. Imperfectly rigid, able to be marked, yet never changed, while Brandon was everything but.
Though, her intention was to leave, she finds no reason that she should continue down the final few steps into the parking garage. It doesn’t seem right to follow in his footsteps now, so instead, she reaches for the door that will take her back to the party above. Until something that shouldn’t have surprised her at all, sent a chill over her entire frame.
It’s as familiar to her as the bitter scent of blood, she carries the sound in her memory so heavily that she almost doesn’t notice it at first. Over the years, Jack Taylor had become immune to it, blown her eardrums out a few dozen times before she’d figured it all out, but it sounds tonight louder than she’s ever heard it before. She hears the slump, it’s the same with every body. It’s clothing and limbs collapsing on itself in the most unnatural way and any other day she’d have kept on, but here, in the stairwell seconds past midnight, it turns her blood to ice.
Obsidian seeks out the crimson far too easily and before she realizes that she’s even moved, the weapon once holstered to her thigh is in her hands and at the ready and she stands over Brandon. As his body fell, it offered to prop open the door into the parking garage and a menial glimpse of the room beyond shows Diana holding another's body close as she screams, and her brother running out of her line of sight. Instinct takes over and almost immediately her spine straightens. She doesn’t yet know if the shot to his chest was straight through, or if he was even breathing and all she can think about for that split second, is where the fucking bullet came from - and how many she’d pump into whoever pulled the trigger. At least, it’s all she can think about until she hears sound of blood in the airways.
“Brandon?!” Panic hadn’t quite risen beyond the lump in her throat, as she drops to her knees beside him, hands immediately moving to stifle the bullet wound “Brandon? Hey.. c’mon, you’re okay.” He was so far from okay and it sent a tremor through her hands. “You’re..-- you... hey, we’re gonna’...” but nothing sounded right. It all sounded like too much of a promise when death was all she knew. A reaper, sworn to carry those to the depths of hell. And yet. The lump in her throat imploded, the subsequent sob letting lose what felt like heat in her eyes.
A singular hand shifts from the wound, subconsciously rising to brush the salt away before it falls too far, smearing her face with crimson. Her mind spins, in a thousand different directions and she knows that she’ll never be able to pick apart a single thought of how to fix this. “I don’t know how..--” And it’s a new admission, and perhaps another lie, because she does know how to fix this. Given, she’s not fantastic in the art of first aid response - she’s always been more, shotty needle work and a patchwork job on any wound she’d suffered before, but she knows how to react to this. She knows that whenever another Bratva had been injured beside her, she’s sprung into action once delivering the final blow of revenge, but this feels frighteningly different.
“We can make this work...” She mutters, her hand soon falling to his face as she leans a little further into the wound to offer more pressure. “Hey.. hey, we can.. I have no idea how, or what it is you want, but we’ll figure it out.” Where the fuck is my phone... “You’ve just gotta’ be here to do that, okay?” Hues shift to look beyond the doorway soon after realizing her purse and phone along with it are strewn on the ground a level above them, to the body still slumped in Diana’s lap and she wonders if what she’s feeling now, is simply universal. “Just,” she tries to breathe again, but she’s a little confused to find that it simply feels like she’s caught a cold, like her sinuses have simply decided no. “Can you please look at me, Brandon? Please... please fucking look at me.”