Chapter Text
Monday, August 14th, 2017
Winn didn’t care for slow nights. He knew that it was a selfish thing to say. Slow nights meant less street crime, which meant fewer people being victimised by street crime, and it was always good when there were fewer victims of anything.
But slow nights were boring.
Seriously, if Winn wanted to spend an evening listening to police broadcasts about pulling over speeders (none of whom were apparently in the mood for a car chase, tonight.), he would have at least done so in the comforts of his own home, not inside a cramped van that smelled faintly of rotten sushi.
(Okay, so that may been his fault for forgetting about that one tuna roll that had fallen in between the seats a couple of weeks ago. Some smells just don’t go away, no matter how many Febreeze bottles you use up trying to get rid of them.)
Anyway, it was a slow, quiet night, and Winn was leaning back in his chair in the back of the van, trying to balance a pencil on the bridge of his nose (yes, he was that bored) when the police scanner crackled to life, startling him into dropping said pencil. ‘All units, structure fire reported on the corner of Binder and Plastino. Repeat, structure fire reported on the corner of Binder and Plastino.’
A quick check of the map confirmed Winn’s suspicions; the fire was only around the corner and two blocks down. He could actually see a section of Binder Street out of the van’s window.
So much for a slow night.
“Oookay.” Winn sat up properly and turned his microphone on. “Hey, James, I got something for you. I just got reports of a structure fire on Binder and Plastino. Dunno yet how far out first responders are, or if anyone’s trapped inside.”
“I’m on it.”
He could hear James’s breath rate increasing as he started running towards the blaze; meanwhile, Winn got into the driver’s seat and moved the van, parking close enough that he could actually see the orange glow of the fire and the huge plume of smoke. “Damn,” he whispered, “That’s a big fire.”
True to their fears, there were people trapped inside. Luckily, Winn had installed a filter in the Guardian mask, so James had a slightly easier time of breathing as he ran inside. It wasn’t perfect, of course, and it didn’t magically turn the air that got through into pure oxygen, so it wasn’t long before Winn started hearing a lot of coughing on James’s end. Despite that, James kept going in and out, dragging people out of the burning apartment building.
“Dude, you can’t keep going much longer,” Winn cautioned him as James ran into the burning building for a third time, “This trip in has to be your last one.”
“There’s-” A trio of coughs interrupted him. “There’s still some more-” Cough. “People inside!”
“And you won’t be much help to them if you’re on the floor, dying of smoke inhalation!” Winn fired (no pun intended) back.
It ended up even worse than Winn predicted. James was on his way out with his third rescue – a young child – when disaster struck. Winn could hear a loud crashing sound and a few curse words from James – something he would never say in front of kids under normal circumstances.
“Wait, what was that?! James, what happened?!”
“Part of the hallway-” Cough, cough, cough. “-collapsed.” Cough, COUGH. “We can’t-” Cough, cough, cough, cough. “-get through.”
“Oh, shit!” Winn practically dove over to his scanner. No good. The fire department had been busy elsewhere on another call, and while some cops were on the scene, they probably didn’t have the equipment needed to get James out of there. On top of that, Winn had already texted Kara, only to remember right after hitting SEND that she, J’onn, and Clark had gone down to help relief efforts for the monsoon floods in Bangladesh.
By now, all he could hear on the other end of the comms was coughing.
“Whoa, hey, James, stay with me, man!” Winn was doing his very best not to panic, but not doing a very good job at it. “The fire department’s almost there, just stay with me!”