Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Eleven: War Far From Over
Chapter Eleven: War Far From Over
Contents and Warnings
Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years
Chapter Warnings: Mild fantasy violence, some regular violence, there are guns, mentions of rape and identity theft, PTSD again, big pile of conflicting goals, don't try this at home at your local hotel.
“What do you mean, you can’t find Leila?” asked Taylor, echoing my alarm. Allie looked like she was struggling to keep her concentration on her spell without actually speaking the words aloud.
Sawyer shot Allie and I a sidelong glance as he replied. “The files she was working on haven’t been copied, she’s not in any of the rooms, and as far as I know, she’s not in the apartment.”
“But where would she go?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” Sawyer almost shouted, turning from me to Taylor, “I leave her alone to do the job, and then she’s just gone - this was always a bad idea -”
“It was necessary,” Taylor said, cutting him off, his voice suddenly much brisker. “Shut up and think, private! If she’s not in the penthouse, she’s gone somewhere, and I want to know where!”
Sawyer was still blinking at being addressed as private, but I had a sneaking suspicion. “When you say you got Ana and Grey out of the apartment, how did you do that, exactly?”
“They went to the Fairmont,” Sawyer replied automatically, before realizing who was asking. “Is there a reason we’re telling them everything?” he said to Taylor in almost the next breath.
The Fairmont… Cleaned up, Leila looked so much like Ana… And she certainly hadn’t left our apartment earlier tonight intending to help two security guards sort papers.
I reached out and grabbed Allie’s hand, ruining her spell for good. “She’s gone to the Fairmont to confront Christian Grey,” I said.
[Leila takes Matters into her own hands]“Stay here,” Taylor ordered us immediately, though we’d already turned for the door.
“Absolutely not,” Allie snapped back, and I was half way out of the room behind her again.
“I’m coming -”
“For God’s sake, stay and finish your job!” Taylor said to Sawyer, and that was the last thing I heard of the two of them before the four-step of Allie racing down the stairs with me drowned out all other sound, but not all other thought. We could get to the Fairmont Hotel on foot almost as fast as Taylor could by car. It was a good thing, I thought, that Allie and I were so used to running.
We settled on a high speed jog down Fourth Street, but when a dark grey car passed us doing about fifty five at Union Street, I knew we’d be walking in on the aftermath. We still ran the last block, dodged the lightweight bistro tables next door, nearly tripped over the shrubberies lurking in our way, and hit the doors at a breathless pace.
There was a minor commotion at the check-in desk, which was probably going to tie Taylor up a few minutes, but we weren’t headed there: Allie had already put her tracking spell to good use. “Upstairs,” she said, and we marched quickly past the front desk before anyone could think to stop us. Then there were even more stairs.
“I think,” I panted at Allie on the fourth floor, “that it was safe to use the elevator.”
She didn’t bother replying to that. “We’re close,” she said, and darted away, upwards and onwards, down the empty halls of the early-morning hotel, casting about for the right room.
Most mages who are more powerful than average, and moderately clever, can get regular, tumbler locks open with sufficient preparation: a spell that mimics a key might rely on changing air pressure, or a spell that detects the tumblers might aid a mage in picking the lock more traditionally. For key card doors, you have fewer options, but melting or destroying the latch is one of them.
Ever-subtle Allie cracked the door in half down the middle and pulled it out of its frame. We weren’t exactly spoiled for time.
It was a good thing that she did, because we were only just in time.
Lelia was standing in the middle of the room, gun pointed at Christian Grey.
I could say that I spent time examining the surroundings and coming to conclusions about the events that had lead up to this, but that would be a lie. I was more concerned that somebody might get shot - and though I wasn’t sure I’d weep tears of grief were Leila to put a bullet in a certain scumbag CEO, an untrained gunwoman running on revenge and almost twenty hours without sleep was not a good scenario.
Allie and I pulled up very short on the inside of the door.
I saw Leila’s hands trembling, Grey smirking at her, and the terrified face of Ana behind him in the second before her gaze flicked over to us, he lunged, and she pulled the trigger.
He was on top of her before the echo of the bang had faded, one hand around her throat while the other twisted her wrist around. The gun hit the ground before I was halfway across the room, knocking over an end table and a lamp that were in my way - and Allie tore Grey off
Leila with all the force of a minor hurricane, blasting him into a couch, which capsized backwards onto the floor with a thump.
“Lindsay, help Leila,” she said tightly, her spell keeping Grey pinned to the furniture.
I went and gently chivvied Leila up and off the floor. She was going to have some bruises on her neck and her wrist - thankfully it hadn’t been the injured one - but for now she was more shaken than damaged, and breathing in ragged little pants.
Unfortunately, miss Anastasia Steele chose that moment to try our patience.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she half-squeaked, half-shrieked, “What did you do to Christian? Who do you think you are?”
I’ve always entertained the thought that I can practically hear Allie’s eye-rolls; this one was a classic for all the senses. “Room service,” she replied, and Ana floundered in the depth of her sarcasm, gaping like a goldfish.
Meanwhile, Lelia had shaken herself together. “Why did you stop me?” she shouted, shoving me away and diving for the gun. I attempted to tackle her gently, which resulted in me getting a very sharp elbow to the face, which knocked my glasses askew for a blurry brightly washed-out moment. I shoved them back on.
“Leila, it’s all right, it’s me, I need you to calm down -”
“Traitor!” Leila screamed at me, “I could have fixed this! I could have won!” she kept screaming at me as she turned on me and started fighting back.
Allie had telekinetically shoved the gun out of the way, but Leila clawed at my arms and I had to practically sit on her. It was too easy - she was too shaky and weak, still - but I ended up with a throbbing eyebrow and scratches across my chin in the minute or so it took to subdue her. Once Leila was sprawled, exhausted on the floor, I registered that Ana was still shrieking at us and that the much lower pitched shouting was Christian Grey.
“SHUT UP!” Allie bellowed at them, and made a gesture that dumped Ana on her ass and pinned the struggling Grey back on the couch.
For a moment, there was blissful silence while I took the opportunity to surreptitiously work my jaw and try to pop my eardrums back into place. If the gunshot hadn’t woken the whole hotel, Allie certainly had.
“The police are on their way,” she informed everyone, and I could see that she was swaying on her feet with exhaustion, “so everyone shut up and sit down so they can arrest us all together, yeah?”
“They’ll take me back and put me away,” Leila said in a small and squashed voice - I was still holding her restrained by leaning on her.
I eased off her, but she didn’t bother moving even when I sat up properly. Instead, she lay there like a puppet with all its strings cut, empty even of anger.
“I never should have trusted you,” she said, and I heard her voice break.
I blinked a lot, and swallowed. I must have gotten dust in my eyes and throat during the fighting. Yeah, right.
Predictably, Grey sneered, looking at us all with cold, predatory eyes. “Do you know who you’ve just assaulted?” he asked, “By the time my lawyers are done with you, you’ll never see daylight again.”
“Christian will hire the most expensive lawyers in the country,” Ana piped up from where she was still sitting on the floor. This time, when she got back up, I saw that she was wearing a very ruffled silky nightgown that was in grave danger of eloping with gravity. “Don’t you understand? They’re going to sue you and put you in jail,” she said with a high, nervous laugh, “There was never any way that you could get away with this! Even if you could delude yourselves into working with this - this psycho,” she spat, pointing at Leila, “who just can’t give up - how did you ever think you could get away with this?”
Surprisingly, the fact that she had seen her asshole boyfriend tossed across the room by someone who hadn’t touched him, and the fact that she’d just been knocked on her ass with no apparent physical cause hadn’t entered her mayfly-sized brain.
“Actually, we’re here to make your boyfriend answer for his crimes,” I informed her, before deciding to ignore her completely in favor of trying to help Leila, who twitched away.
The running footsteps in the corridor had to be Taylor. Strange, how he was only a few brief moments behind us - the cops would be here soon.
“What the hell?” I heard him say when he saw the broken down door and the strange tableau before him.
“Taylor!” Ana cried when she saw him, “Leila attacked us!”
“This is your idea of a secure location, Taylor?” Grey barked at the same time, “Restrain this rabble immediately!”
“Don’t worry, Miss Steele, I’m on it,” Taylor said, not even bothering to acknowledge Grey, whose face was slowly going the color of an apoplectic fit, and crossed the room to Leila’s side right away, reaching for her elbow. “Come on, you’ve gotta get out of here,” he said to her in an undertone, but she flinched away.
Then he turned one of the most chillingly murderous glares I’ve ever seen on me. “What the hell did you do to her?” he growled as he stood up.
Allie had taken half a step towards us, despite needing to focus to keep Grey restrained, and I shook my head at her.
“Mr. Taylor,” I said quickly, “I swear to you that we are still on the same side -”
“Shut up, now.”
“What do you think you’re doing, Taylor?” Grey demanded, and Taylor finally looked directly at him, letting an expression of satisfaction cross his face.
“What I should have done years ago, Sir,” he said, drawing his gun and pointing it at Grey. Because we needed this cat’s-cradle standoff to get even more convoluted. The only blessing was that Grey turned white and, miraculously, shut up.
“Drop it!” Ana shrieked, and my head snapped up - she’d picked up Leila’s gun and had it trained, shakily, on Taylor. “I can shoot, you know,” she continued uncertainly. “What do you think you’re doing? Doesn’t Christian deserve your loyalty after he generously used his money to save your daughter?”
Taylor didn’t look at Ana, but he didn’t shoot either.
“Miss Steele,” he said, “Your Christian Grey has ordered me to help him steal the identities of eight young women in the past four years, conduct illegal espionage, sabotage his competitors, and look the other way as he repeatedly beat, raped and persecuted young women such as yourself - all because I was desperate, and he offered to pay for the bone marrow transplants that saved my daughter Sophie’s life.”
Ana’s brain tried to turn over, but failed to gain any traction. “No,” she said, and her gun’s trajectory wandered around the room, “You’re lying, he wouldn’t do that, not my Fifty -”
“Police!” yelled a voice from the hallway, “Drop the guns and put your hands above your heads!"
Chapter Twelve: Conscience
[Notes]* I owe Ket and her instructive videos from the sporking of chapter 8 research kudos for showing many ways how Taylor, Allie, and Lindsay could not only get into the Fairmont, but discover the room number and get through the door. I ended up going with magic anyway. :D
** Fairmont Pictures are here (scroll down) and here. I spent some time reconstructing the floor plan from the 360 tour, but it’s not perfect. I’m pretty sure based on that and logic that the hallway door opens on the living-room area with that fireplace, though.
*** … Yeah. Everyone who was rooting for the “rescue Ana” storyline, I stuck to the canon portrayal, where she is several ells deep in the Nile and has the self-preservation instinct of a frog in a saucepan.
**** Meanwhile, I’ve been sitting on my research into Leila’s mental state as suggested by canon, so have some research here. (Most of these are various legal perspectives, but I also have some research on Complex PTSD, which I found pretty valuable as a baseline source of different symptoms in PTSD from domestic violence and psychological abuse that aren’t always recognized in literature that focuses on post-combat PTSD.)
***** The fanwiki says that Grey pays for Sophie Taylor’s schooling (Incidentally, I named Sophia Colonomos before I knew that Sophie Taylor existed,) but Gehayi and Ket mentioned the possibility of a medical procedure in their sporks… and I’ll take them as more authoritative than the Wiki, any day, as the wiki editors don’t appear to have actually read the books. EDIT: Except the one who just dropped in to tell me that they lurk at Das-Sporking and that they've been trying valiantly to raise the overall content, but that they're fighting a lemming army to get shit done. Everyone, bow to the valiant anon who makes our research at least somewhat easier. (By the way, I also stand corrected in that it's never explicitly stated that Grey paid for any medical procedure for Sophia, but my headcanon has already diverged from canon at this point and will not be moved.) :D