Chapter Text
Randall Brown sat furtively at the far end of the bar nursing a coffee. It was a rare and lovely spring day, sunny and although a bit brisk, still very serviceable. The double doors to the outside seating area were flung open. A cool breeze, dusted with a sprinkle of pollen rippled through his hair, which no matter how much Brylcreem he put on, refused to be truly tamed. He was thinking back on his younger days when his hair would have been left untamed and this cup of coffee would have been a glass of something more potent. He supposed it would be cause for ridicule from some of his old friends. He supposed it still was for some. He interrogated himself, delineating his weaknesses, his failings over the years. There were many, there could be no doubt. But the most painful one was the woman standing just outside on the patio with several of the team from the show, her camera scrunched to her smiling face as she framed the shot of her coworkers.
She had changed so little and he had changed so much. Or so he thought. She was still wickedly intelligent, willfully sassy and stunningly beautiful. He sipped his coffee as he drank her in. She was his failure to end all failures. He wanted her so badly, but he could not claim his prize.
“No, no, that’s not the right way to frame it,” he thought. She was no prize to be claimed. She was more than that. Her name was Storm, but to him she was always the source of calming, of quieting. She was the only one who had ever brought him peace. “A gift,” he thought, “more of a gift than a prize.” In the end it didn’t really matter. Prize, gift, calm or storm; any way you called it he had lost it. He had hoped their daughter would help them reconnect, but now that was classified in the failure column as well. He was devastated, and Lix knew it. But while he wanted her love, he could hardly bare to stand her pity. He would never let her pity bring her back to him.
He ordered another cup of coffee and slid up the bar closer to the double doors leading outside. He lied to himself that the reason for this was to get a bit more of the fresh air, but he knew it was to be closer to Lix. She was wearing a crisp light blue blouse, a summer-thin cashmere white cardigan tied around her waist and flattering cropped khaki slacks. It reminded him of when they first met in Barcelona. Before the dead horses, dead people, and deep red stains of blood in the crevasses between the cobble of the street took over those memories. But this was not Spain, the stone corners of the building were not etched with the trails of bullets. And although London had deep bitter scars from the war, it had never had to bear the assault of ground troops sullying her. Those scenes from Spain, over twenty years ago, were burned in his mind in grey tones, black and white images, except for the blood in the streets and for Alexis Storm. These were the only things that had any color in his memories. He had arrived about seven days before Lix. They had both gone to Spain in July of 1936 to cover the People’s Olympiad, but had ended up covering a devastating civil war. He stayed because he was vehemently opposed to fascism and because of his overwhelming desire to tell the story truthfully with the hope that it might spurn action from other nations. He grew up fast, learning that the truth and horror alone would not necessarily result in actions from distant governments. He honed his journalism chops, surrounded by some of the best; George Soria, David Seymour and Lawrence Fernworth, they all were ensconced at the Hotel Majestic in Barcelona or, the Hotel Florida when they were in Madrid. These were the set pieces where the hard-working days followed by equally hard-drinking nights formed a backdrop for his coming of age. He blinked hard, his eyes flitting to the bottles of Scotch lined up across the counter from him. Then he took a deep breath and shook off the memory. He decided it would be safer to focus on something else, so he shifted his gaze across the street.
It was a quiet afternoon, the street was mostly empty, with the exception of a delivery van just pulling up across the street. The driver exited, then furtively looked around. He squinted into the afternoon sun, then spotting the group on the patio outside, he smirked. Randall stopped himself. Had he imagined that? It was quite odd, but he was sure he had seen a smirk. He had seen smirks like that before, usually in a conflict zone, immediately preceding an act of obscene violence. The smirk and, though it was hard to tell, the cap he was wearing both caused Randall to focus on this stranger. The cap looked quite like a Nationalist officer’s cap. He loathed that kind of smirk and that kind of cap and it nagged at him. He watched the man walk aggressively to the back of the vehicle, open the doors and pull out a long parcel, something wrapped loosely in a wool blanket.
Randall stood up. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled in warning. Something was very wrong, he felt it. He walked to the double doors. Lix smiled at him, but he did not return it. He absently set his cup on the first table he came to and peered across the street, like an eagle sighting its prey. Meanwhile, Lix leaned back, one leg bent and her foot planted on the wall, steadying herself as she advanced the film through her camera and framing Randall in the viewfinder. She snapped a few quick portraits.
Randall’s gaze was now following the driver as he disappeared behind the far side of the van. Lix pulled the camera away from her eye, looked over at him, and frowned. She recognized the posture, the furrowed brow, the way his shoulders were pulled back. He was tense. She tried to follow his eyes, to see what had caught his attention, but she just saw an empty street, a van and a woman walking her dog. Hardly the type of scene to cause such consternation. But Lix knew Randall well enough to trust that he was worried. Randall, always the master of observation, always the one to spot something out of place, and try to fix it. It was the desire to fix everything, to put it in its proper place, that was almost his undoing, but it had saved her life and countless others, over and over again in Spain, and during the last war and who knew how many other times. Lix trusted that look.
The camera slacked in her hands, her attention now completely focused on him, “What is it Randall?”
He raised his right hand, silencing her so he could concentrate. There was a ghost of movement and Randall saw the barrel of a rifle swing up over the hood of the van. The driver was hidden, crouched behind the vehicle. Randall followed the line from the gun to its target, turning his head, he saw the weapon was aimed at Lix. His eyebrows rose and he moved with astonishing speed, spinning around, blocking Lix. He threw his hands up against the wall on either side of her head. Lix, not understanding, glared at him, “Randall, what the hell is going on?”
Before he could answer a shot rang out, the repercussion echoing through the narrow street. Then everything went into slow motion. Randall was staring right into Lix’s eyes. The look on his face was one of fear and longing and regret. It didn’t suit him, she thought, and was about to point that out, when he jerked and blood sprayed across her and a bullet, having lost most of its velocity as it decelerated through Randall’s flesh and bone, hit the wall next to her left ear. She shut her eyes reflexively, but immediately realized she was fine and opened them to see what had happened. Randall sagged a bit falling slightly into her, pinning her against the wall.
“Alexis, for God’s sake, get down, please,” he croaked. Then he was sliding down the wall, falling on his back to the ground. He had called her Alexis. He almost never did that. It was him calling her by her given name that impressed the desperation of the situation upon her, vividly. Lix fell with him, holding tightly onto his jacket lapels. Around them people were screaming. Someone with a few grains of common sense, threw down a couple of tables to serve as scant cover. Another shot rang out. Wood chips flew off of one of the edges of the upturned tables. Someone was shouting, the bartender was calling the police. Things were happening all around them, a cacophony of motion and sound, but all of that existed beyond the sphere that enclosed Lix and Randall.
She stared at him, stunned with the realization that he had just been shot. He had blocked a bullet meant for her. A thick, sticky red splotch spread out from his shoulder under his suit. Lix peeled back the jacket, exposing a formerly immaculate, crisp white shirt, now torn by the bullet and soaked scarlet with Randall’s blood. Lix snapped out of her shocked state. She untied the sweater she had around her waist and pushed it into Randall’s shoulder. Then she loosened his tie, removing it so she could use it as a make-shift tourniquet.
Lix looked up trying to get someone’s attention. “Shit! Somebody get a bloody ambulance!”
He squirmed under the pressure she was putting on the wound. She turned her attention back to him. He looked pale, well, paler than usual. She shook her head. “For the love of god Randall, why did you do that?”
He very slowly closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, struggling against the pain. Then he opened his eyes, staring at Lix with a look of complete bewilderment, as if it was so blatantly obvious that he could not fathom why she would even need to ask. She pushed an errant lock of hair off his forehead, and he smiled at her, “Alexis. You are… worth at least… a thousand of me.” He struggled to get the words out, but he never broke eye contact with her.
“Oh for god’s sake Randall." She was about to launch into a lengthy discussion of how flawed his statement was, when he reached up and shakily grabbed her hand.
“Lix…don’t argue…”
Alexis Storm stopped. All those carefully constructed barriers crumbling. He had said that to her in Spain when the bombs were falling and the heat had been cut off and he wanted to enfold her in his arms, to warm her and protect her, as best he could given the circumstances. Death had only been a heartbeat away in those days. She supposed that was always the case, but now the potential immediacy of that insight froze her to the bone. She squeezed his hand and leant down to brush his lips with a kiss. She whispered in his ear, “Don’t you dare die on me Randall Brown. We have unfinished business.”
His eyes widened and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth at this comment, and he murmured, “I’ll try Lix,” before lapsing into unconsciousness.
Slowly, Lix’s senses unfolded and the shouts and sirens and chaos starkly took center stage. An ambulance medic approached and knelt next to her and Randall. He gently placed his hands over Lix’s where she was compressing her sweater against the wound, “Ma’m, I’m a medic. My name is Jason. Let me take that over for you.” Lix stared at him as if he was speaking in another language. She looked down at her blood-soaked garment. Jason removed her hands and set the sweater on the ground. His partner joined him with a stretcher.
“Gunshot wound, clean through the shoulder. He’s in shock and has significant blood loss. Let’s get a pressure pack and an IV going to stabilize. We need to transport him immediately.” Jason worked quickly. He had seen much worse in Korea, but knew that the injury was severe, especially since it looked like the bullet had clipped an artery. “Radio in that we’re on our way to Kingston. It’s closest.” He helped Lix to her feet and stood her aside as they loaded Randall onto a stretcher.
Lix stepped forward, “I want to come with him in the ambulance.”
Jason looked over his shoulder, “Certainly mam, follow us. We will situate your husband, then you can hop in. We’ve got to get to hospital straight on.”
Lix looked at the man puzzled, then said softly, “He’s not my husband.” But the medics were already half-way to their van and didn’t hear her. She fingered the ring hanging on the chain around her neck like a talisman. Then she sprinted over to the ambulance and clambered in the back. She took a seat on the bench across from Randall, taking his hand in her’s, gently circling her thumb in the area between his thumb and index finger. A quick drive and they were at the hospital. Jason asked her to step out first, then move aside. It was one of the rare times that Alexis Storm did as she was told.