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Leo doesn't hear the explosion.
One moment he's talking on the stage, the moment after he's lying on the ground, someone covering him with his own body. He has no idea of what happened, or of why his line of vision is suddenly completely different. The world just stops making sense.
For the longest time, all he can hear is a flat, persistent whistle, like a broken radio giving off one, single, high-pitched note. Aside from that, he sees people screaming and calling, but he can't hear a sound coming out of their mouth. He tries to move, but he can't with the other body pinning him down on the floor. He turns around to see the shocked face of one of Casey's men staring at him. He's dead.
Dust is everywhere, and it's turning the air heavy and white. He coughs as someone abruptly pulls him off the floor and shakes him gently. It takes him a few seconds to realize that it's Blaine and that he's asking him something with urgency. Leo struggles to understand, but he can make out the word alright from his lips. He nods. At least he thinks he's alright.
They drag him away from the stage. As they walk along what's left of the wall in the press room, he realizes that whatever happened involved much more than the stage and those around him. People are running everywhere, screaming and crying. Falling.
He can see the starry sky.
Half of the room is gone.
By the time they get to the car – a SUV Casey insisted to get armored just a few weeks ago, and apparently he was right – he starts hearing the sirens in the distance and the choppers overhead. Casey is speaking so quickly through his headpiece that he can barely make out any word. Someone keeps repeating, we need to go, we need to go.
“Are you alright, kiddo?” Blaine grabs him gently by the chin and makes him turn towards himself. He's got a bad cut on his forehead and there's blood on his cheek. “Leo! Look at me! Are you alright?”
“Yes,” he has to push the word out of his mouth before he can hear it. It turns out he was trying to talk but no sound was coming out. When he can finally hear himself, the rest of the sounds just follow. Suddenly, it's like someone had turned up the volume. He looks around the car that is finally moving, together with them there are a couple of Casey's men, Casey and Meredith. He reaches out to squeeze her hand and bring it to his lips. “Where are the others? Blaine, where are they?!”
“En route to the safe house,” Casey is the one who answers.
“They are fine,” Blaine adds, seeing the panic in his eyes. “They were closer to the exit. Casey had his men take the President to safety right away. Cody is with him. We're going to join them right now.”
Leo pulls Meredith next to himself, clings to her for dear life. She's covered in soot and she looks terrified, which in turn makes him panic even more. “What happened?”
“We don't know yet,” Blaine says.
“Was it a bomb?” Leo goes on as his brain struggles to keep up. It's hard to even think, everything right now seems unreal.
“Most likely.”
“But, who—?”
“We don't know,” Casey says.
“How did they plant a bomb in the press briefing room of the White House?” Leo goes on. “How did they get past security?”
“We don't know,” Casey repeats, his jaw set. He and his twin Cody don't look much alike, except in anger were the their jaws set in the same straight line and they suddenly become all angles and sharp edges.
“Is there something we do know?!” Leo snaps, irritated.
“Yes! That you're under attack,” Casey retorts, snarling. “As I told you you would be. But did you listen to me? All of you? No! Because apparently chief of security is an honorary title for you idiots! You—you think the world is a better place now because you got rid of a few assholes, but it's not, Leo! It's not. There are way more assholes where those first ones came from and they're gonna strike back!”
“And what do you want us to do? Lock ourselves behind the wall of our white castle and never show our faces again?”
“That'd be better!”
“That'd be going back to how things were, Casey!” Leo protests. “We didn't do this—Adam didn't make a revolution to become the very thing he despised!”
“Well, his revolution won't last long if he gets himself killed, does it? And my brother and you and the rest of your family along with him! Fuck!”
Blaine lets out an exhausted sigh. “Alright, that's enough,” he says, squeezing both their shoulders. “We don't know enough to make assumptions. Whatever happened, it's happened already and we're going to deal with it as we've always done. We didn't survive a regime and overthrew it just to be at each other's throat one year later. Let's get to the safe house and regroup. Right now that's all that matters.”
The safe house is a huge farmhouse just outside the city.
It was left vacant after the first wave of arrests, together with hundreds of other properties. Most of them were repurposed or re-assigned to those that had been living in the ghetto and had no home to go back to. But Casey insisted to save a few of those to make sure he had places to hide the President in if it came to that.
The farmhouse is on top of a hill looking over a small wood of firs and a decent-size field that might be cultivated if needed. Casey had it re-painted in its original white and added a whole new section in the back where a small security detail could live comfortably for a few months. The house runs on its own solar panel energy system, it has an armory, and a water-filtering system as well. They could survive way more than a terrorist attack in that thing.
The moment the car stops in front of the door, Leo, Blaine and Meredith are rushed out of it. Casey's men shield them escorting them to the door as if there was still the chance of snipers perched between the branches of the nearby trees. But everything is quiet.
“Leo!” Cody is the first one to come downstairs. He throws himself into Leo's arms, squeezing him tight, his fingers digging into his skin for a moment. “Are you alright? Did you get hurt? Are you scared?”
There's no real fear in Cody's voice if not for him, Leo realizes. No matter how much he fought in the small war they fought to free the Country. From Cody's perspective – being brought up as he was in the most inhospitable part of the city, the ghetto, and forced to fight to survive since he was very little – Leo will always be the privileged, pampered kid who only experienced mild discomfort in his life. And so, a bomb goes off, aimed at Cody too, among other people, but all he's worried about is if Leo was scared by it.
One year ago, Leo would have got offended by this. Sure, he had been a privileged middle-class kid, whose only discomfort had been being forced to follow gender-based norms. He didn't suffer any physical abuse like Cody did. But after meeting Blaine and the others, after joining the rebellion, he had fought alongside them, he had seen blood and, even if not directly, he had killed. So considering him naive and clueless and weak like a baby rabbit was unfair.
But things are different now. He grew up a lot, he got over his annoyance at being considered just a pampered kid. He sees now that Cody's worry comes from love, and that it's true that for all the fighting he has done and all the blood he has seen, Cody is and will always bee a tougher nail than he is. So he welcomes the embrace and he responds to it, he clings to Cody for dear life. He finally releases the breath he was not aware of holding and buries his nose in his hair. “I'm alright, Sweets,” he reassures him. “Not even a scratch. You? Are you okay?”
Cody nods, sniffing. “I felt the air wave of the explosion, but nothing else,” he says as he turns to glare at his brother. “And then they dragged me away! Casey, what the fuck?!”
Casey doesn't even flinch. “The first person to get to safety is the President,” he explains calmly. “ And you were already with him. It's just protocol.”
“You left half of our family behind!”
“I got them in another car right after that,” Casey replies.
“We got separated!”
“Well, that's bound to happen in a life-threatening situation, considering there's a million of you!” Casey snaps. “I can't move you all safely from one place to another in one single trip!”
“One or two trips, either way screaming won't help,” Adam joins them, his face tense as Leo remembers it when he was in the cave systems, planning his coup. All it took was one bomb and here is the revolutionary again. Adam squeezes Casey's shoulder. “You did well, my friend. Now let's calm down, we're all in shock.” He pats Blaine's back and walks to Leo, hugging him tight for a moment. “Everything's alright?”
“I'm fine. I just don't know what happened.”
“What do we know?” Adam asks Casey.
“Not much,” Casey shakes his head. “It was a bomb. Inside the room, judging by the damage it did. So it either came in with someone, passing through the safety check, which worries me, or it was someone from the inside, which worries me a great deal more.”
“Are we sure it was a bomb, and not something else?” Meredith asks, hesitantly. “Like a gas leak or something? I remember something similar happening in a southwest factory when my father was in charge. Everybody thought it was a terrorist attack, at first, but it turned out to be an accident.”
“It could be,” Casey admits, “but it's unlikely. There has been unrest since the beginning of Adam's interim mandate, and it only grew after he was elected. Some kind of retaliation had to be expected, and I'm afraid this is only the beginning. But I will know more once our investigation will be over. I'm going back now.”
“I'm coming with you,” Adam says immediately.
Casey shakes his head, “No, you're not.”
“I can't stay hidden here while people in the city are in possible danger,” Adam protests.
“You can and you will. You won't set foot in Washington until I make sure it's safe for you to do so, sir,” Casey turns formal to make it instantly clear that this whole arrangement is not up for discussion. He was hired to take care of security and for fuck's sake, he will be listened to on that. “We will arrange for you to address the Nation in an hour. Beyond that, you and your family will wait here and let me make sure everything's okay back home. Once that's done, we're gonna find the responsible, track them down and capture them, so you can put them to d—“
“I don't want to hear that,” Adam stops him. “Just find them. And make it possible for me to return home. Leave the rest to me.”
Casey nods. “Yes, sir.”
Adam watches him go and then, finally, he lets out a tired sigh. “Jesus fucking Christ...”
Cody looks at Leo, almost asking for the permission to move away from him and go to Adam, but Leo moves first and brings them both to him. They hug, the three of them, Leo and Cody's faces pressed against Adam's neck.
“It's alright,” Cody says, comforting him. “We knew this could happen.”
“I just thought we would have more time to consolidate what we had done before we had to defend it.”
“The good thing is that now we're so many more than before,” Leo smiles a little. “It's not just us, it's not just the movement. The Country is with you and it will respond with you.”
“Not all of it, apparently.”
“The part that counts,” Cody smiles.
Blaine looks at them, feeling anxious and proud at the same time – a feeling he thought he had left behind with the worst days of his life. But the boys are right, there's no other way but forward. They need to face this with their head held high because that's what the Country expects of them, and because that's the only thing you do with the enemies. You face them. But they can take five, at least for one day.
“Alright, guys, why don't we make ourselves at home until it's time to go back and build everything up again?”
“Right,” Meredith nods. “Leo, this calls for one of your chocolate cakes. We could all use some energy, a cuddle and something to munch on as we help Adam write the speech he'll make later today.”
“I'm on it!” Leo detaches himself from Adam's arms and marches to the kitchen, when he proceeds to boss around some of the security staff, hiring them as sous-chef.
This is just a minor set-back, Blaine thinks.
They have seen worse, and they handled it.
They have seen worse, and they survived.
This might be only the beginning. But one thing is sure, they will see the end of it.