sunnydalealum | (no subject)

Beth doesn't laugh.

"I thought I could hide." Her shoulders hunch over. "I thought I could hide until they gave up, and then call you back and ... I don't know."

She lowers her head to take a sip of the tea.

"But they kept finding me. I don't know how."

She doesn't have to; Lorne's already moved on from being the concerned friend to someone more calculating. Someone who has had his fair share of magical encounters to know you don't keep finding someone who's actively trying to hide unless you have someone - or something - to aid you.

A precog, someone prescient, some sort of charm or fetish (no, not that kind)...a mystical tracking device of some sort.

But if they could find her before, what's to say they can't find her here as well?

"...how good were they at tracking you, exactly?"

She bites her lip, looking down into her teacup. "Good. Like they could see me through the walls."

A pause, and the change in his tone of voice registers, and she raises her head to stare at him with dawning horror.

"Get your things, sweetheart," he tells her, his voice murmuring and soft despite the determination in his eyes. "We're leaving." Not she; them, together. They'll figure this out as they go along.

"But --"

It's all she has time to say before the she's interrupted.

By the splintering crash of the apartment's heavy front door being kicked off its hinges.

No time to think, just react: "Hide!"

Despite the spacious apartment filled with big, kitschy pieces of furniture, there's really not that many places to run and hide. There's the bathroom on one end of the place, and the gigantic master bedroom that no one ever uses on the other end. Both can be locked up tight, but Emma'd better move fast.

"Go!"

There isn't time enough for him to reach for his gun - and even if there were, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to fight.

It's futile and part of her knows it: if they tracked her here in the first place, hiding in the closet or behind the curtains isn't going to throw them off. But the snapped order rides right over her doubts, and she makes a dash for the master bedroom.

The Council Slayers are emerging from the entryway as she stops just inside the bedroom and turns to look over her shoulder, realizing only then that Lorne isn't following her.

There's three of them and one of him, and from the looks on their faces and the weapons they carry (one big mother of a red and silver axe with nasty written all over it, a rather plain-looking crossbow by comparison, and a baseball bat carved and sanded to a fine point), Lorne knows he's mincemeat if he doesn't do something, and fast.

"If you wanted an invitation, darlings, all you had to do was ask."

The one in the middle, the one holding the axe, is clearly the leader; she's the one who steps forward, the other two flanking her.

"I'm going to ask you real nice to stand aside, sir. Our business here isn't with you."

"Oh!" the sound is enunciated, because she did not just take the courteous I'm a slap yo friend up route. His hands go up in a blend of placation and complete, utter disbelief and it's by sheer will force alone that he doesn't roll his eyes. "Honey. You made it my business the moment you went after my girl!"

Weapons, weapons, keep your metaphorical eye on the weapons, keep the leader focused on you, don't let her look away-- His eyes narrow, his lips press together for the space of a heartbeat - and he moves, one step, two, three, placing himself between the Slayers and the bedroom door, pushing it shut. "Emma, sweetie, do me a favor and lock up tight?"

There’s a pause, a hesitation, before Lorne hears the lock click into place behind him.

The one with the bat snorts. "'Emma', huh? She was calling herself 'Beth' back at the Academy."

The three are moving further into the room, spreading out, forming a loose triangle. It's getting harder to watch all of them at once.

Conversationally, "I could quote Shakespeare at you, but I'm not gonna. Somehow I don't think you'd appreciate it...

"It could've been any one of you, you know. Any one of you. Ever think of that?"

He's talking a chance, a gamble, a shot in the dark, but it's his only weapon right now. He thinks he has an idea why they're here, and he'll milk this chance until it runs dry.

It's with a sense of dawning dread that he realizes something. He's taking a stand.

"It could have been all of us," the girl with the axe says harshly. "It almost was. We'd all be dead now if it weren't for --"

"Jordie," says the girl with the bat, very low; it's a warning.

Okay, that's the twang what makes the shoe not fit. Casualties. Of course that's why they're here. Regardless, Lorne's losing his temper and knowing full well that's the last thing he can let himself do. He needs to stay calm.

"Do I look like I'm talking about the dearly departed? You think you know so much about right and wrong, it doesn't even occur to you you could've been in Emma's shoes. You're grieving, so you want more bloodshed? What kind of animals are you people?!"

Jordie stares at him in disbelief.

"Do you even know what she did?"

"She trusted the wrong person. You could've been any one of the zhirelin. You're no better than them or her. It doesn't have anything to do with what's right, it's who found you first."

"She trusted the wrong person. You mean, oh I don't know, somebody evil?" Jordie spits.

"You know what? We trusted her. With her oh-I'm-so-sensitive-I-hate-violence act. Right up until she stole the Scythe for Wolfram & Hart so they could use it in a ritual to kill us all."

"And you're telling me you wouldn't have infiltrated Wolfram & Hart to do the exact same thing in a heartbeat? Because you believed it was right and it had purpose and hey, what's another bunch of evildoers? What's another demon in the long run? Nothing, when you're one of the good guys."

Shaking his head. "You don't know anything. None of you do, you're just a bunch of ugly-hearted nobodies out for blood and vengeance."

Jordie's knuckles go white on the axe.

"We’re Slayers," she says, "and we came for justice. And if we were just here for blood and what's-another-demon? We wouldn't be giving you a chance to step aside."

"Yeah..." He has no qualms about looking her straight in the eye - so young, he wonders how young. Wonders if he'll ever see the world so clearly as when he was her age.

"You hide behind that title, why don't you. Hide behind your so called justice. Doesn't change the fact you're breaking and entering. Doesn't change the fact you're going after one of your own."

He doesn't move one inch. He won't budge. They'll have to get through him to get to Emma. Even if he's unarmed, he'll fight until he can fight no more. Over his dead body.

It's about damn time.

"Damn straight we're going after one of our own!" Jordie snarls. "Because nobody else will. Because nobody else has the right to. Because she betrayed us and she got Kennedy killed and she doesn't get to just walk away from that, and if you don't step out of my way I swear to god I will cut you down."

The door behind Lorne is thick enough that he may not hear the stifled gasp, but there's no way he can miss the sound of the lock being undone and the doorknob turning.

"Then cut me down." He's dead serious. "What do I know, right? I'm just another obstacle."

He's hoping to Whoever is Listening that Emma isn't about to do something very stupid. One glance to the right, looking for things to use as weapons, he scrambles to decide on a strategy a little bit more elaborate than hit a high note, duck, cover and fight for her life.

He doesn't even get that far.

"Wait," says a shaking voice behind him, and the door opens.

The two Slayers flanking Jordie brace, one of them raising her crossbow and aiming –- but the bulk of her is still behind Lorne, and there's no way to get a clear shot.

For her part, Beth's trying to meet Jordie's eyes.

"Kennedy's dead?"

Jordie goes white, her eyes and eyebrows standing out like streaks of ink against her face, and her mouth twists with corrosive rage.

"You didn't even know?"