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These things are supposed to happen slowly.
Daisy has been shot before, many times, so she knows the mechanics of it. The speed of a trigger being pulled, the feeling of the impact and then the pain and then the sound, coming in that order, one after another after another. But she’s never been shot quite like this, with half a second to recognize the intent of the gun, the way it is aimed directly for her head.
So, these things are supposed to happen slowly, life flashing before your eyes and all that. No matter how fast that bullet flies, no matter what the word “instantaneous” means, this was supposed to happen slowly.
It doesn’t.
There is the flash of a silver barrel, the heavy feeling of a hit and, yes, here it is, here is death, whisking her away, pulling her from this standing position and throwing her to the ground. Here is death, black fur rippling and the sound of a wounded dog echoing, high pitched. Here is death, not blowing her brains out with a bullet, but slamming her down to the ground with a shoulder to the back.
And Daisy is not dead, when she hits the floor, but very much alive, and very much pinned beneath a whining, squirming dog.
A dog that is quickly rolling off of her and sweeping a leg to take out their attacker, even as they bark and snarl and the bullet shifts deeper into their side.
“Lars.” Daisy recognizes that voice even with her face buried in the dirt. It makes her blood boil and her hackles rise and an awful, awful feeling fill her chest. A feeling from a hazy apartment in London and a whirlwind romance across the world.
The heavy crack of a cane striking a head rings through the room, and then Daisy is burying her face back into the floor to avoid the blood and brains that arc from its target and splatter directly in front of her. She looks up to see the body of their attacker limp, skull bashed in, and Sylvester Cross, kneeling on his bad leg over Lars Vandenchomp, the tip of his cane dripping red with blood.
“Lars, my dear, be still, be still.” Daisy can see the way his hands hover over their body, the way he can’t seem to decide whether pressing on the wound or holding Lars’s shoulders down is the better course of action. “You goddamn dog,” impossibly warm, affectionate. Daisy recognizes that tone of voice. Recognizes it because it used to be directed at her.
Daisy takes a breath, inhaling the smell of the floorboards and the brains dripping closer and closer to her, and then pushes herself up. “Are they okay?”
Sylvester ignores her, still bent over Lars, muttering to them. Sylvester never speaks quietly. He makes every goddamn thing into a show; even intimacy with him had never been truly personal, just an extension of that performance. From one performer to another, Daisy can recognize and appreciate that, even now, after everything. What she can’t understand is how, why, he’s dropping that persona, dropping that act, leaning down and pressing his hands into the wound in Lars’s gut—finally getting above a ten on that medicine check—and putting his face right next to their muzzle.
Sylvester ignores her, so Daisy repeats herself, trips over her skirts as she moves towards them, “Are they okay?”
“Get away from them,” Sylvester snaps, finally turning around and glaring at her with all that hatred they’ve been slinging at each other for days now.
Good, Daisy thinks. Any reaction to her presence is better than… than looking at Lars like that, all helpless and hurting. Than looking at someone else with that kind of love. And then Lars lets out the most gut wrenching whine, so loud it makes her flinch, and she forgets all of the anger at them, at what they represent now in Sylvester’s life.
“Let me help. Sylvester, let me help.”
“Don’t you dare come near them,” Sylvester spits. “They might have saved you from that bullet but I certainly wouldn’t.”
And that? That hurts. So much more than it should.
“I don’t know why they did that,” Daisy protests, moving towards them, clambering across the floor and ignoring Sylvester’s warnings, getting her hands on Lars’s shoulders to keep them still.
“Truly, the idea is boggling to my mind as well,” Sylvester snaps, before turning away from her and leaning back over Lars. “Hey, shh, it’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
“You need to put more pressure on the wound.”
“Don’t— Don’t tell me what to do,” Sylvester sounds watery, teary-eyed, like her last encounter with him before coming to Loam Hall.
“You have to or they’ll die.”
“I’m not going to listen to you.”
“Do you think I want the person who saved me to go… wasting their life because of some feud between us? This whole pissing contest aside, Sylvester, I don’t want you dead. And I don’t trust you without them.”
“Oh, believe you me, I trust myself plenty without them.” Sylvester, even kneeling, even with his hands pressed desperately into Lars’s wound, manages to roll his cane so that the light catches on the crimson blood at its tip.
Daisy stares at that cane for a moment, looks up at the lost expression on Sylvester’s face, and knows that she isn’t making any headway here. “I’m going to go get Gangie. He can— I’m sure he can help.”
“You think I—”
“I think you’ll do what’ll keep Sargent Vandenchomp here alive. I’m… I’m getting Gangie.”
Things are still moving so fast. Daisy pushes herself up from the ground, takes a moment to look at the two bodies, one still moving and the other just still, both a bleeding mess, and bolts down the hallway.
“Gangie!” She screams, banging every door open as she goes. She hopes and prays that their attacker was the only one, but there’s no time for stealth, no time for investigating. There is just a dog on the floor and a steadily growing pool of blood and a fate that she cheated once again.
“Now, what is it?” Gangie says, a floor down and seated across from an extremely alarmed Mrs. Molesly, who looks to be starting a new knitting project.
“Gangie, it’s Lars. They’re bleeding out, up— upstairs.”
Gangie heaves a deep sigh, leans over and presses a kiss against Mrs. Molelsy’s forehead, and mumbles something about, “Fucking Vandenchomp,” before taking off with Daisy, back up through the narrow halls of the hill and to that little room.
“I told you,” Sylvester spits, when they duck back through the doorway. Gangie immediately rolls up his sleeves and takes a position on Lars’s other side.
“And I told you what’ll happen if you stop him,” Daisy says, approaching slowly before placing a hand on Sylvester’s back. “Listen, I know you don't trust us, and I understand why you don’t trust me, but Gangie’s been nothing but good so far.”
“I ‘ave a criminal past that begs to differ,” Gangie grumbles, looking up at them momentarily before focusing back on Lars—who is moving less, making less noise, than they were before. “Right, sorry.” Gangie pushes Sylvester’s hands aside so he can see the wound better, eyes darting back around to both of them. “The doctor, I need him. Fast.”
“Right, I’ll—”
“Not you. Cross.”
“What? No,” Sylvester protests, leaning further forward over Lars’s body.
Gangie’s lips pinch tight, “You’re just in my way. Can’t retry a failed medicine check, now can you?”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Clock’s a-tickin, detective.”
Sylvester doesn’t move for one long second, until he pushes himself up with all of his strength, leaning heavily on his bloodstained cane, and runs from the room. As fast as he can while limping.
“You should’ve let me go,” Daisy protests, sinking down by Lars’s head and running her hand over their brow.
They whimper, slightly, eyes screwed up tight. Daisy understands it. The pain is one thing, is mind numbing, but the sensation, more than the pain itself, is what overwhelms you. All those feelings, all those people talking over you. Daisy’s fairly certain Lars has been shot before, what military person hasn’t, but it’s still so much, no matter if you tell yourself you’re used to it.
“It’s good for the old man, gives him something to do,” Gangie says. “Plus, I’m giving you access to the body. You’re welcome.”
Daisy huffs. She doesn’t like it, but he’s right, and she moves away from Lars once again to pick through the jacket of their attacker, attention snagging on a piece of paper and a torn up ticket stub, and slipping both into her pockets.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Huh?” Gangie asks, hands pressing so hard on Lars’s wound that she can see his muscles straining.
“No, not you. Lars, why’d you take that bullet for me? Lars.”
“They’re not going to—”
Lars, eyes screwed up and paws only slightly digging into the ground, flicks their head, their ear twitching.
“Lars. Please, I have to know. Please.”
“Sylvester,” Lars pants, through gnashing teeth, eyes still shut, “cares about you. And I—”
“You what? Lars, come on.”
“Daisy, don’t push them,” Gangie warns. “I can’t keep holding this many intestines in forever.”
It’s quiet, barely more than a whimper of pain, but Lars says, “And I care about Sylvester.”
“I have the doctor!” Sylvester literally slams into the room, ramming his shoulder into the wall as Corbin Magpie runs in after him, doctor’s bag at his side.
“Took you long enough,” Gangie grunts, moving over so Dr. Magpie can assess the wound and take out his surgical equipment.
“We’ll have to act fast,” the doctor says. “Gangie, your assistance would still be appreciated.”
“O’ course.”
Sylvester tries to push himself off the wall and it’s so, so easy to go to him, to put her hand on his arm and make him lean back. “Don’t, it’ll only distract them.”
“They can’t die. Not like this. Not from something as stupid as a gun.”
“A gun isn’t stupid, Sylvester. It’s just a gun. The people who wield it, they’re the ones who give it meaning.”
“Don’t get all poetic on me right now, Daisy. I can’t stand it.”
Sylvester’s watching where the doctor and Gangie work with such focus that Daisy worries he’ll pop a blood vessel. She tentatively moves the hand from his arm, placing it on his chin and tilting his head away. He reaches up and snaps his hand around her wrist, dragging it away from him.
“Don’t.”
“I—”
“Don’t.”
Daisy stares up into Sylvester’s eyes, sees the fire, the agony, that lies there, and keeps looking even when he goes back to watching Lars, even when he drops Daisy’s wrist and she’s free to move as she pleases.
Lars was wrong. Daisy knows Lars was wrong. Not about Sylvester caring for her, because he clearly does if he allows her to ruffle him this much. But about everything, about this whole mess. Sylvester cares about Daisy, but he wouldn’t be broken by seeing her dead on the floor. He’d be upset, he’d rage, he’d probably cry, but he wouldn’t be shattered into pieces, shattered like his eyes look right now, like his soul looks. The way he looks for Lars, who isn’t even dead yet, who won’t die yet.
So, Lars Vandenchomp was wrong. But they’d acted how they thought they should, in the slim time available. And these things were supposed to happen slowly.