franklin_bash | fic: Bang, Bang, You Hit the Ground (Reply)

Title: Bang, Bang, You Hit the Ground (Nancy Sinatra Sings the Soundtrack)
Author: teh_bug
Paring: gen(ish); Damien&Hanna friendship (sorta)
Rating: PG
Words: ~1132
Summary: Hanna gets shot, Damien reacts the only way he knows how.
Warnings: Violence, characters going into mental shock, light angst, this is probably not the hurt/comfort fic you're looking for...
Notes: Just in case it's not obvious, the title comes from the fantastic song “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” as covered by Nancy Sinatra.

“You're being ridiculous!” Hanna is saying, laughing at him and rolling her warm brown eyes in that way she does when she's trying to decide if she wants to claw out his eyes or caress his face. “I can't believe you would think that I --” A sharp crack like the sound of a ceramic vase crashing on tile cuts her off and she gasps.

“Oh,” Hanna says and her eyes are large and wide. She presses her hand to her belly, her navy blue dress with the ruffles, and pulls it away bright red, like she dipped it into paint and no, no, no, nonononono.....

“Damien,” she says and his name is almost a confused question that Damien doesn't want to answer and she's swaying slightly, wavering on the edge of collasping and her lips are going pale...

He catches her before she falls, swoops an arm around her waist and guides her to the ground. For a moment that tastes like eternity, he is looking into her deep, brown eyes and she is looking back and he feels like it might be safer if he could just dive in and drown in her eyes.

But then the moment ends, he is bumped by a bystander and someone is stepping across his field of vision, breaking their gaze, terminating their connection, and Damien lets go, slips his arm out from under her without a fuss.

He steps back and reaches into his pocket for his cellphone. Mindlessly, he is dialing the same three digit number he's known since he was four.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“I'm at 421 West Memphis at the offices of Marks and Manners. My-my...” he chokes on the word as it comes out, “my friend just got shot in the stomach.”

“Okay, I need you to try and stay calm. A unit's on its way now.” says the operator in a voice that is mechanically calm and understated. “Is your friend breathing?”

Damien looks over, back down at Hanna. Her hair is crushed under her in a semi-circle, black curls mixing in the dirt – she will hate that, he thinks – and her lips are pale and parted in a desperate prayer of gasps. “Yes.”

“Good,” says the operator. “I need you to apply pressure to the wound and try to stop the bleeding with anything you can find. Clothes, towels, bandages if you can find them, and wait for help to arrive.”

Someone, a man in an ugly brown suit, is bending over Hanna's belly, his tan hands are stained a sharp red and Damien can't quite tell where he ends and Hanna begins.

“The ambulance is on its way. Just stay calm and try to keep...”

Hanna rolls her head, squints and stares unfocused in his general direction. Her mouth moves in a whisper and he imagines he can hear her over the white noise of people shouting in the background.

“Damien...” he reads on her lips and it sounds important. It sounds –

A siren shrieks through her words and paramedics are rushing through the glass doors, rolling a stretcher between them, pushing people out of the way and barking orders.

“Over here! She's over here!” Damien calls out and almost drags the EMTs over to where Hanna is.

“Hey girl,” says one of the paramedics with a smile like sunshine in a storm and a nauseating roll of confidence as he slaps a thick wad of bandages over the place where the man in the ugly suit's hands were. “Everything's going to be okay now, we've got you.”

“On three!” He commands his team and slips his hands under Hanna, “One, two, three!”

One of the teammates slips and Hanna slides to the side – and won't that be a lovely use of the taxpayers money settling that lawsuit, he thinks cynically – and Damien is there, bracing his hands against her side, coaxing her back onto the center of the gurney and wondering if he's always been able to feel her ribs.

Hanna's hand catches against his, her fingers curled around his like a loose lock. He tucks it back along her side and catches her eyes over the oxygen mask. Her fingers flex against his and it feels important and he never –

“Gotta move!” Shouts the paramedic with the obnoxious smile and the stretcher jerks forward. He nods towards Damien. “Anybody coming with?”

“I will,” says the man in the ugly brown suit. He follows the team outside and Damien can't think of a good reason to protest.

Damien watches through the glass doors as the EMTs load Hanna into the ambulance, watches the man in the brown suit clamber up beside her and lean forward intently to say something to the paramedic in the back, and watches as the ambulance doors slam shut and the vehicle finally drives off towards the hospital. He takes a deep breath and lets it all out in a rush. It feels like someone's placed a lead vest on his shoulders to keep his heart from breaking out through his ribs.

He turns back to the center of the atrium and walks slowly back to the corner where he was standing when this all started. He doesn't need to be here anymore; his business for the day is done. He needs to pick up his bag – although he doesn't remember dropping it – and report back to the office; call Stanton, call Mr. and Mrs. Linden, call Franklin and Bash, call...

Her purse.

Hanna's purse. Hanna's big black purse that she loves more than she loves most people is still here, flopped over in an undignified heap a couple of paces from where Hanna was lying, kicked out of the way in the melee.

They left her purse behind, thinks Damien distantly, how rude, and walks by it without picking it up.

“You're like a robot,” an ex-girlfriend had giggled one time, her fingernail tracing down his cheekbone. “It's like nothing ever fazes you.”

“I'm just practical,” he'd said and kissed her before she could respond.

Damien walks past Hanna's purse, walks past his bag, walks to the closest discreet corner and retches his Italian lunch all over a potted plant. He vomits three times and shudders through the dry heaves, frowning at the tiny white splatters on his shoes. Then he straightens, wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and turns back to head out towards the parking garage.

The buckle on his bag clinks a comforting greeting when it jostles against the big black purse in his hand.