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Hello and welcome!
We have gathered here to celebrate politics in a special way. All those beautiful puns brought to us by the election coverage and, of course, the people involved, have already sparked the imagination of most of us. This is the place to show your ideas to a (hopefully) big audience.
You want to read what David Cameron and Nick ( Read more... )
We have gathered here to celebrate politics in a special way. All those beautiful puns brought to us by the election coverage and, of course, the people involved, have already sparked the imagination of most of us. This is the place to show your ideas to a (hopefully) big audience.
You want to read what David Cameron and Nick ( Read more... )
It was all going wrong. Fuck, but he'd hoped that they might get longer than this, that things might just hold together for the planned five years. Get the economy back on track and avoid any messy military involvements and hope for a Tory majority next time around, riding the wave of public goodwill that would follow the elimination of the deficit. Hell, there had been moments when things had gone so well that he'd half-hoped for another coalition term, but now....
God, they'd be lucky if they lasted another bloody month, at this rate.
And the worst of it was that he understood Nick's frustrations; shared some of them, even. He could appreciate the irony of the LibDem backbenches having proved more loyal than his own, but trying to keep those rebellious Tories on-side had resulted in the electoral reform issues - Nick's responsibility - being pushed back ever further. The opposition and the press had never needed much encouragement to target Nick and his position, calling him a puppet, a lapdog, a parrot, a silent and obedient spouse, and with this situation.... Even the thickest of skins would start to feel it eventually.
He was caught between the needs of the country, the needs of the party, the needs of the coalition. Personal feelings had to be pushed aside, sacrificed for the greater good, the greater game. He wanted this to work - with the mess that Brown had left for them there were so many plates to keep spinning that it needed two to manage it all - but he didn't know how much longer he could hold the coalition together....
And things really hadn't been helped when, on their arrival, Berlusconi had gleefully expressed his open and loud amusement at David having brought his lovely 'wife' with him.
David groaned and opened his eyes to examine his reflection in the mirror, wondering when he had developed quite so many grey hairs. He had a feeling he might be getting a few more before this summit was -
The world went white.
- slammed back into place in a roar of pure sound and force and elemental fury, overloading senses as a searing blunt-edged wall of solid air took his feet out from under him and threw him violently back against -The world went black.
The world -The world went black again.
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This is really well-written.
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Or rather... not a vision, because that would imply sight and light and all that he could make out were sharp-edged shadows stained with red and flickering orange, a jumble of shapes that made no sense. The discordant shriek of claxons and car alarms sounded from somewhere past the ringing in his ears and he could hear running water nearby, a splashing rush like a mountain stream, and it didn't make any sense - not the fractured shadows or the distant screams or the taste of metal in his mouth or -
God, Sam. Where was -
No, no - Sam wasn't here, Sam was safe, Sam was in London with the children and he.... Taking a deep breath, David closed his eyes and forced himself to think clearly, to remember. France, he was in France, that was it, ensconced in a château for the G8 Summit and, if he got out of here alive, he was going to have some pretty serious bloody words with fucking Sarkozy about his bloody, fucking so-called security arrangements....
Assuming, that was, that Sarkozy was even still alive.
Something groaned ominously overhead, followed a moment later by a deep, echoing crack that he felt more than heard, the building shifting and settling around its wounds as if pondering complete collapse. The rattle of descending rubble spurred him into motion and he scrambled out of the bathtub - and how the hell had he ended up in the bath? - stumbling towards what little light he could see, counting limbs and joints and cataloguing hurts as he went, his battered body protesting every movement. There was grit in his eyes, in his mouth, in his hair, clinging to the warm wetness that seemed to be coating one side of his face, but beyond the bruises and the cuts and the pounding headache he appeared to be surprisingly whole. Score one for the curious indestructibility of Tory Prime Ministers. If he could just avoid death by descending architecture, he'd be back at the dispatch box before Clegg had had a chance to get too -
He stopped, leaning heavily against the broken doorframe - hadn't there been a door in it at some point? - as another fragment of memory snapped into place. Clegg. Nick. He'd been arguing with Nick. Again. And not on the phone....
Oh. Shit.
The floor didn't seem to be where he had left it, the smooth expanse of ornate silk rugs now a treacherous moonscape of jagged shapes and broken chandelier crystal that shifted underfoot, threatening to send him to his knees with each unsteady step. There was nothing familiar here, nothing recognisable as the rooms that he had stepped out of just a minute before, and if his deputy was lost somewhere in this, caught in the destruction -
No, David told himself firmly, he was not going to let himself think like that.
He almost collided with something - part of the ceiling? the room above? had anyone been in there? - angled across the space ahead of him, ducking under it awkwardly. "Nick?" he called hopefully, straining to hear anything over the groaning creak of the ruined building. "Clegg! Can you hear me? Say something, please!"
Nothing, and a sick sense of panic settled in David's gut, the situation suddenly becoming too immediate, too real. The threat of political divorce was one thing, but this.... "Nick!" he called again, stumbling forward, coughing on dust, focusing entirely on finding his deputy as a way to avoid having to think too hard about anything else. Tim from Special Branch would no doubt tell him that he should concentrate on getting himself out, but Tim and his team weren't here, might not even be alive any more, and Nick he could find, he was sure of it, if he could just work out where he was....
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Nick stirred weakly beneath his hands. "¿Qué pasó?" he murmured roughly.
"What? No - in English. Please." David felt a small, slightly hysterical laugh escape him and rocked back on his heels. "Now really isn't the time for showing off."
His deputy coughed, then gave a hiss of pain. "Wha'... what the hell just happened?"
"Explosion. Bomb, I should think. Place is in pieces. We have to get out of here before it all comes down on top of us. Can you move?"
"I -" Nick shifted slightly, the movement shadow-against-shadow... and then cried out, a sudden and raw animal sound of agony that sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline coursing through David's body. "Fuck!" he managed after a few moments, the word escaping between gritted teeth. "Fuck it. No, I'm not... not going anywhere. I think... think I'm trapped. You're on your own for this one."
"I think you'll find that 'coalition' means that we're in this together," David said mildly, suddenly determined as he set to groping about once more. If he could just find what was trapping the other man, he might be able to get him out. And if that wasn't worth a fresh start and another three bloody years, he wasn't sure what -
Something flickered at the edge of David's vision, brief flashes of brightness against the hellish dark, and then everything was bathed in the dim and sickly glow of the emergency lights. "Better late than never," he muttered, adding the standards of French electricians to his growing list of grievances, but then he saw just what the darkness had hidden and felt his heart sink.
It looked as though half of the building had slumped in on itself - floors and ceilings shattered, walls fractured or gone completely, pipes and cables hanging free, furniture reduced to jagged scrap. Half of the room above seemed to have fallen through, great slabs of masonry littering the floor where they hadn't just carried on down into the chamber below, dust and debris transforming the scene into something from the Blitz, all sharply contrasted shadows and the scent of smoke... and a crumpled form half-pinned beneath what looked to be several tons of oak-beamed ceiling. "Oh."
"What?" Nick ground out.
"You're right, I'm afraid - you are trapped. I thought I might be able to dig you out, but...."
Nick swallowed and took a deep breath. "It's that bad?"
"Yes." Even if he tried, the odds were that David would only upset whatever fragile balance the whole blasted mess had managed to achieve and make things worse... and wasn't that thought just far too close to home? He wondered if he should read anything into the fact that Nick was the one crushed and broken whilst he had emerged virtually unscathed. "Just... just stay still and stay calm. I'll see if I can...." David reached for his Blackberry, then remembered that he had left it on the table - it could be just about bloody anywhere by now, most likely in a thousand small electronic pieces along with his laptop. "Ah, well, they'll come for us soon, I'm sure."
"Not soon enough." Nick looked pale beneath the dust and grime, grey eyes bright with pain. He turned his head, seeing the debris piled atop him for the first time, then turned away with a groan. "Fuck."
"Quite."
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(I'd be a lot more worried if I thought there was any chance of unexpected Cleggdeath. Pretty sure you're not going to do that to us though, are you, anon?).
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"I should, yes." David looked towards where he thought the door had been, now a mess of rubble and twisted pipework, and dismissed the thought, a sudden certainty settling over him. "I'm just not going to. Not without you, you hear me?" The car alarms had silenced, replaced now by the distant two-tone howl of the emergency services. He wondered what had happened to their security detail, if they had survived the blast, if they were -
There was a tiny, muffled beep from somewhere close by and Nick stiffened, his eyes going wide. David reached for his shoulder, then jerked sharply back as Nick screamed, struggling and fighting against his entrapment for long seconds before slumping back, panting and weeping. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck...."
"Nick?" David leaned in, catching his deputy's face in his hands and making him look at him. "Nick, what just happened? Tell me."
"They're... they're trying to contact us," Nick managed after a few moments. "Bloody Blackberry is in my pocket. Still works. Fucking vibrate setting...."
"Okay." David frowned, trying to make sense of the other man's words. There was no way that he'd be able to reach the offending piece of tech, no matter how much he wanted to, but it was clearly causing Nick considerable problems, which meant -
"You can still feel your legs?"
"God, can I ever." Nick swallowed thickly. "I think... think they're broken. Probably more besides. Pelvis? Great - anoth... another month in fucking traction. Bloody phone's against my hip, I think - went off and everything... rattled."
"Well," David said carefully, stroking the other's dusty hair in an unthinking attempt at comfort, "better that you can feel them than not -"
"You think?" Nick spat. "Right now, I'd take the fucking...." He broke off with a sound almost like a sob. "Right now, I'd take the fucking wheelchair if it meant it just stopped bloody hurting!"
David closed his eyes, listening to Nick's ragged breathing and the clattering throb of helicopters somewhere outside. He had no idea how long they might be waiting here for rescue with no way to contact the outside world... and the outside world's attempts to contact them fated to make Nick's situation worse than it already was. Suddenly, differences in approach to policy didn't seem quite so important any more. Christ, if they got out of this alive, he was -
"You're bleeding," Nick said quietly. "Your head."
"I am?" David suddenly remembered the wetness on his face and cautiously raised a hand, wincing as his fingers found the laceration on his scalp. "Well," he said, looking down at the crimson now staining his shirt, "would you look at that - not quite as blue as our friends in the press would like to make out."
"Funny." Nick sighed and closed his eyes, the fight suddenly seeming to seep out of him. "Labour colour... should sue... red... huh...."
"Nick?" David frowned as his deputy trailed off into silence. "Shit! Nick?" He grabbed for a shoulder, shaking as hard as he dared and getting nothing more than a groan in return. "Nick! For goodness sake, Clegg, you can't go to sleep - you're hurt, you're going into shock, you...."
He stopped, set his jaw and tried a different tack. They did say that hearing was the last sense to go, after all, and he had long since learned where Nick's buttons were. "Giving up so easily?" he sneered, improvising frantically. "Must be why you tied yourself to such a no-hoper of a party - no need to worry about actually having to do anything when you can just talk a good game and sit on the moral high ground, safely removed from any actual power." He put as much venom into the words as he could manage and was rewarded as Nick blinked and scowled up at him. "Oh, thank god.... Welcome back."
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"Good to hear it." David looked around, trying to see if any of the soft furnishings had ended up in close proximity, then shifted position, carefully settling Nick's head into his lap. "Of course, quite a few of 'my bastards' would be more than glad to see the back of me as well - you're not the only one they hate. Hmm, I wonder if I should suggest that Interpol might like to investigate the 1922 Committee for involvement in this?"
Nick attempted a laugh, then gasped and started to make some of the most horrific noises David had ever heard, low and guttural and harsh. "Nick? Shit, no, no - don't you dare start fitting on me, not now...."
"What?" The noises stopped, Nick peering up at him through slitted, pain-glazed eyes. "I am not fitting," he said with exaggerated dignity. "I am swearing in Dutch."
David bit back his own laughter, half-afraid that if he started, hysteria wouldn't be far behind. "Please don't," he said mildly. "It's more than a little... disturbing."
"Enlightened as ever," Nick muttered. "Europe isn't the enemy, you know."
"I find that a little rich coming from someone pinned beneath quite so much French hospitality."
Nick glared at him. "Just as well it's... it's me down here and not you. Wouldn't want... wouldn't want to reinforce your opinions more than... more than...."
"Bloody good job it's not me, frankly," David said, warming to the subject - if he was going to keep Nick alive until medical help arrived, he had to try to keep his blood pressure up and this seemed to be as good a way as any. "If it was, I daresay you and Cable and Huhne'd have us in the Eurozone before the press had stopped banging on about terrorists long enough to notice, and then where would we be?"
"Joining the modern world? Not that the econ... economic circumstances are -"
Another muffled beep, and David barely had time to realise what was happening before Nick started screaming again, thrashing wildly against him as he tried to escape his electronic tormentor. "No, no, try not to...." David leaned forward, folding his arms around his deputy in an attempt to smother his struggles, suddenly afraid that he would do himself more damage or bring the rest of the building down on the both of them. He hugged Nick to him tightly, holding him until his screams subsided into desperate sobs of pain and exhaustion, all dignity discarded in the face of the pure animal need to survive. "Shh, shh, I'm here, you have to stay calm, stay calm, they're coming...."
"They'd bloody better be," Nick gasped against his neck, and David drew back carefully, stroking the other man's face, his hair, trying to offer what comfort he could. "Fuck it, I want to see Miriam, I want to see my boys, I want... I want -" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't want to die."
"You're not going to die," David told him firmly. "You've still got far too much to do. Besides," he added, gently carding his fingers through Nick's hair, "I'm not quite sure what to say to an atheist in a situation like this. So long as you keep breathing, I don't have to worry about embarrassing myself."
"All about you, huh?"
David smiled sadly. "Oh, always."
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idk how you update so quickly, anon, but you make me so happy.
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Glad you're enjoying it, anon! :D
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