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It's good luck that saves him. Nothing more. He turns around to look at the little girl thinking it's weird seeing a child in a police station.
He feels a prickle of uneasiness -- hair standing straight at the base at his neck-- when he hears her asking of the Winchesters. In the next blink, he's diving for cover, has enough time to overturn the iron table, to press his body against the wall before the pressure comes.
He has enough time for a prayer, before the heat of hellfire comes.
He awakens to acrid smoke, to total darkness. For a moment he forgets. For a blissful moment, he forgets. Then everything comes back to him.
But he can't breathe, the smoke so thick it's clotting his nostrils. His left leg hurts. There's a weight across his chest and Victor panics, kicks at it blindly.
Nothing yields, nothing moves and Victor pants, struggling for air. Through the acrid smell of burnt flesh, through his terror, he pants.
He doesn't know how long he stays like that. It could be minutes or hours before he talks himself out of the surging horror, before he's able to force air in his lungs. In the dark, the only thing he sees clearly, are two alien white eyes in a child's face. And the only sound he hears is the childish voice that had brought blood and destruction with a simple name.
Something snaps then, something primordial and raw that makes Victor go beyond the pain, and he kicks, pushes, and thinks I'm not going to die here. I'm not.
He moves the table with strength that surprises him, then he closes his eyes when tick flackes of ash drop on his hair, in his eyes.
Coming out of the table is slow, he drags his left leg when it refuses to move. It hurts, burns. Victor feels the skin ripping, can imagine his boot melted into the flesh, the cloth of his pants fused into his skin.
He can't see where he's going, uses his hands to taste his way in the dark so that they're bleeding freely by the time he finds the corner between wall and floor.
Victor realizes at the first try that standing is not an option. His leg folds useless under his weight, hurts so damn bad, too. He knows it's broken when he hears the bones grating against each other, screams when he falls painfully on the debris. He vomits bile and coffee, and coughs from the burn of it.
He lies sideways on the floor, thinks of the people that died in the fire. Nancy, sweet and innocent, and brave.
Of all the terrible things he's done in the last twelve hours, the one that hurts the most is that single promise he's broken.
Victor thinks of the Winchester boys, curses them for opening his eyes to this world where demons exist and they can kill half a dozen people with their eyes.
There, body shaking with pain, shivering hot and cold, Victor is tempted to let it go, to rest and forget. He closes his eyes and thinks it would be easier, blaming it all on the Winchesters. If he could ignore the black eyes and the sickly violation of his body, if he could go back thinking they were psychos, twisted terribly by an abusive parent.
If he could.
He hopes they are safe.
Voices comes from the distance, from outside, and Victor crawls in the opposite direction, terrified of who's out there, not knowing if it's friend or foe.
A sliver of light shows him the exit, shows him the destruction clearly too, the bodies – blackened ankles and arms, and he's not thinking about it. Not now.
When he gains the exit, the fresh air makes his coughing harsher. He's come out the back of the building, and the woods are close, maybe fifteen feet away.
There are people shouting and their voices are closing in, behind them, the urgent wails of the ambulances. They were safe sounds, once. They meant that order was going to be restored. Victor used to feel a jolt of joy whenever he heard them, used to think, too, that he was one of the good guys.
He'd lived his life thinking he was doing great things.
Now, he hurries as much as he can toward the woods, crawls behind a bush and drags his legs to his chest. He bites his lips against the pain, tastes fresh blood on his tongue, but not even a whimper escapes his mouth when people comes this side of the building.
He's lost his wallet, his ID, in the fire. He's got only a shirt on that's half in shreds. He's got some money in the left pocket of his pants, maybe four hundreds. Victor hadn't imagined going back to his old life after the previous night. And maybe he hadn't planned to go underground like this, but the chance is there and he's going to take it.
He huddles in on himself to save some body warmth, clutches the amulet hanging around his neck with stiff fingers.
It's the only thing that keeps him from screaming. It's the only thing that keeps him from going crazy.
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