Chapter Text
Aaron looked at Liv, smiling as he threw her a packet of crisps. Then the world rocked. Quite literally. As if in slow motion, Aaron felt his body fall to the floor of the kitchen, the building falling through the floor. Glass cracked, and walls collapsed as Liv screamed. Aaron must have blacked out for a moment because the next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the floor, the house creaking above him, rubble everywhere around them. It looked like a bomb had just gone off, except he hadn’t heard an explosion. Grey dust was covering everything, and it looked like all the colour had been bleached from the world.
Liv. He looked around him for his sister, she’d been right next to him, surely she couldn’t have gone far. He couldn’t see her through the clouds of dust, rubble, bricks and started to panic.
“Liv…” he tried to shout, but his chest felt clogged with dust so he ended up coughing viciously instead. “Liv!” he tried again, better this time. Louder.
“Mm…” Behind him. He crawled in the vague direction, unable to stand in the limited space, then saw her, laying on the ground, blood from her forehead.
“Liv, look at me,” he said, pulling her into a sitting position. “Look up at me, come on.”
“Head hurts,” she whispered.
“Good,” Aaron said. “You’re awake.” Aaron patted his pockets, looking and praying for his phone. He found it. Cracked screen, but it still seemed to be working. “Come on,” he whispered as he called 999. The call went through, thankfully.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he said. “The house’s collapsed or something. We’re trapped.” Aaron kept relaying information, a hand stroking Liv’s back as he tried to keep her awake and conscious. “Come on, Liv, keep looking at me.” Aaron disconnected the call when he heard shouts from above them, knowing emergency services were on their way. Liv looked up into the creaking remains of the house, trying to work out where the voices were coming from, and who’s voices they were.
Robert took a sip from his pint, chatting to Vic while waiting for Aaron to join him when everyone in the pub heard it. A low rumbling that seemed to get louder, like a bomb going off. Even the floor of the pub was vibrating. Drinks were lowered, conversations stopped, eyes going towards the door as everyone wondered what was going on. When the noises faded away, people got up, racing to the door to have a look at what was going on. Robert joined them, too curious to simply sit and wait when it’d felt a little like an earthquake going on. Outside the pub, he froze. Out of instinct, his eyes flicked to his house, before trying to find the source of the noise. Except it wasn’t there. His house wasn’t there, instead there was a massive cloud of grey smoke rising from the space where his house had been. Bile filled his mouth in panic, as the fear made him move.
“Aaron…” he breathed, jogging towards his house, Victoria just behind him.
“Robert!” she called after him, which he totally ignored, the need to get to Aaron palpable.
He’d been in the house. Oh God. Aaron had been in the house which seemed to have completely disappeared. He got to it and what he saw made him freeze completely. The house seemed to have completely fallen into a massive sink hole. There was nothing visible except rubble and various bits and pieces of the house sticking up into the air, smoke and debris scattered everywhere.
"No..."
“Oh my God,” Victoria said next to him when she caught up, looking down at the devastation that the sink hole seemed to have left. “Robert, breathe,” she reminded him, searching for her phone to call emergency services. Robert seemed far too stunned to do anything, and he dragged air into his lungs, feeling faint. After another gulp of air, he started screaming Aaron’s name.
“Aaron!” Robert stood right on the edge of the sink hole, and the urge to throw himself in and look for Aaron was so strong he could almost taste it. It was so hard to hold on to his common sense, knowing that that wouldn't help. “Aaron! Liv!” He couldn’t help the screaming coming from his own throat. His voice didn’t even sound like his own. The pure panic was like a shot of adrenaline to his system. He needed to get to Aaron, and he needed to get to him now.