no fearsome tide: Amita 2/5
For warnings and notes see masterpost here
no fearsome tide: part two
Amita.
Los Angeles is burning.
They’re safe, the tiny group that had made it to the craftsman before the riots had started in earnest, but it’s been over a week, stuck within the same four walls. What’s worse is the people who are missing, the people who had promised to make it to the house before the riots had gotten bad, but who hadn’t ever appeared.
There are six of them; Alan, who had been at home, already in bed, when Amita, Charlie and Larry had managed to make it back from the university, arms full of everything they had managed to save on their way out. Colby had arrived an hour later with Robin, a backpack slung across one shoulder and a shotgun the other. They waited, for a long time, for Don, Nikki and the rest of their team to arrive, but in the end, after two days without any word, they’d surrendered to the fact that they wouldn’t be coming. It’s not that any of them believe they’re dead, they just know that they aren’t coming.
The riots never quite reach them, but they can still hear them, people screaming and yelling accompanied by the sound of gunshots. In the darkness of night, and ash, the only real light comes from the fires that haven’t stopped burning.
Charlie and Larry have been distracting themselves with the problems they consider to be their life’s work, holed up in the solarium with Colby sitting guard, though he doesn’t really need to. Alan cooks for them all, and gathers supplies for the trip they all know they’re going to have to make. They might have escaped the riots, might still be alive in the little bubble they’ve built for themselves, but the ash is still falling. One day, soon, they’re going to have to leave.
Amita and Robin sit together, neither of them even trying to pretend that the situation is anything other than what it is. It’s different for both of them, thinking of the parents they haven’t heard from, while Alan and Charlie take comfort in each other’s presence, and Colby and Larry were never close to their blood relatives anyway. The fact that neither of them have been outside of LA for any reason other than work for years speaks to that.
There’s a list, one that Amita makes in the back of one of her notebooks, of all of the people they know who aren’t with them. She isn’t too worried about Liz or David, they’re both on the East coast, far enough away that they’ve only barely been touched by the ash clouds. Don and Nikki she worries for, has to force herself not to think about the odds of them having found somewhere safe to hold up. Her parents are in India, for a long time now, and she hopes that they’re ok, that they’re beyond the reach of volcanoes and people’s fear. She doesn’t try looking for information on the internet, she’d rather not know and be able to tell herself that they’re ok, that the reason they haven’t contacted her is because they can’t. LA is a mess after all, it’s a miracle that she manages to get the limited internet access she does. She does her best not to examine that conclusion too hard; she knows it won’t hold up to analysis. That’s why she hasn’t spoken to Charlie in days.
He can never stop thinking, stop analysing, but he’s going to have to. Math can’t help them right now. Maybe, once they’re out of the city, it can help. Maybe it can even fix things a little, but now it’s nothing but a distraction.
“We have to go.” Robin’s voice is soft, and she doesn’t really move from her seat, but she’s tense.
Amita nods, glancing towards the door to the solarium, wondering if the boys have realised that yet or if she’s going to have to convince Colby to drag them to the car. “I know.”
Charlie and Larry don’t fight them in the end, but as she watches them in the rear-view mirror Amita knows why. At some point, when none of them were paying attention, they’d worked it out, given up trying to fix what was too broken and too out of their control. Larry doesn’t even argue when his food isn’t all white.
Amita’s driving her car, with Alan in the passenger seat and the boys in the back, following behind Colby’s car as he weaves his way around the scattered remains of LA’s traffic. They drive on the sidewalk as often as the road, the streets eerily empty as they edge around the centre, avoiding the freeway, which is clogged with all of the cars that hadn’t managed to make it out of the city.
It’s all Amita can do to look at the cars instead of the people in them.
Alan hums under his breath for most of the drive through the city, his gaze fixed on the horizon, while Larry and Charlie sleep, both them exhausted after days without. Amita tries to figure out what Alan’s humming, but she can’t focus on the sounds, can’t separate them from the ringing in her ears, so she gives up, turning her full attention to driving instead.
She’ll ask him once they’re safe.
They stop when LA is nothing but a dusky glow on the horizon, taking refuge in the first motel they find. There’s no one behind the desk and the rooms are all empty. Amita spends a few minutes searching for someone before she gives in to Alan’s insistence that she rest, whoever it was that used to run this place is long gone, and she’s not thinking about the look on Colby’s face when he appeared from the house attached to the motel.
They claim the biggest room and its three beds. Larry and Colby take the floor, laying out the sleeping bags they’d both brought, though she knows Colby isn’t going to sleep, while she and Robin curl up under the covers of the double bed, leaving the two singles for Alan and Charlie.
Amita ignores the look Charlie gives her, Robin needs the comfort of a warm body beside her more than Charlie does, and Amita’s the only one she’s likely to accept.
She isn’t surprised that it’s still dark when she wakes. She’s almost used to it, after so long, but it’s starting to confuse her internal clock. How do you count the days, when you can barely tell the difference between night and day?
Alan has taken Colby’s place by the window at some point, and he offers her a weak smile when he realises she’s awake. Neither of them speak, it would only wake Colby, and there’s nothing to say. Nothing’s changed. In a few hours they’ll pack themselves back into the cars and move on, until they can’t anymore.
Three days after leaving LA they have to abandon the cars, due to a combination of lack of petrol and clogged engines. The sky’s a little brighter now, though the ash is still heavy enough that they have to wear their masks still, the ash falling in a way eerily like snow.
Amita carries her bag, which holds her laptop, toiletries and two changes of clothes, along with her share of the supplies and remembers the days when she’d found it impossible to pack less than two bags. It’s funny how some things become easy when you have no other choice.
They move at a pace somewhere between Larry and Alan’s, with Colby trailing behind them all keeping watch over them still. Amita wonders, a few miles on, whether he’s doing more out of love or a sense of duty. She hasn’t asked him about Don, about what had been said or done to force Colby to leave without waiting for his team, but she knows that Don must have asked him, made him promise, to see Robin to safety.
They make slow progress, walking along deserted roads and through empty towns, not that she’s really sure it can be called progress. None of the places they walk through have names that she recognises, and she’s wary of searching for a road map. She doesn’t want to know where they are, not specifically, Colby’s compass tells them they’re heading east and that’s enough for her. It’s strange, she thinks remotely, how once she would have been asking for more data, but now she’s happier not knowing. Knowing won’t make anything better.
A week out from LA, Amita wakes to damp bedding. She thinks for a moment, trying to remember if she’d forgotten, but then she registers the empty space beside her. She sits up carefully, having to fight the urge to switch on a light and pull back the sheets. The smell, now that she’s more awake, is answer enough.
She wonders, for a moment, if she’s cold because all she can feel is relief that this time, they’re in a separate room than the men. It’s going to be hard enough, she thinks, for Robin with Amita knowing. She doesn’t want to think what it would be like if the men knew.
She swallows back sudden nausea, forcing herself to get out of the bed and move towards the bathroom. There’s a little blood on the floor, in a trail that ends at the bathroom door, and she takes a moment to close her eyes and breath, pushing her own feelings back for the moment before she reaches for the door handle.
Robin is sat in the shower, huddled in on herself, shaking. For the first time, Amita finds herself thinking of the other woman as small. She winces a little as she climbs into the shower cubicle, the cold a shock after the relative warmth of their hotel room. It’s the middle of summer, or at least, it would have been, and they’ve been sleeping in nothing but t-shirts the entire time.
Robin curls up in Amita’s arms, shivering, her cheeks dry, and they sit there, clinging to each other until Colby knocks on the door, starting them both awake from an uneasy slumber. It takes them less than ten minutes to wash off the blood and change into clean clothes. They leave the bed sheets, there are plenty of other beds in the hotel, complete with un-slept in sheets, for whatever unlucky soul next stumbles upon the place.
She watches Robin more carefully for a few days, trying her best to be subtle about it. She’s not sure what she would have done, if when Colby had woken them there’d been more blood on the tiles. She tries not to think about the fact that there would have been nothing any of them could have done.
All she can do is feel thankful for Robin’s presence in her bed, and by her side during the day. She feels helpless enough as it as.
It’s a shock when, almost two weeks after leaving LA, they run into another person. They’d all grown so used to one another’s company, to a world made up of only six people that it takes them all a moment to recognise that there’s a woman standing in the road ahead of them.
Charlie and Larry stop abruptly and Robin gasps, swaying a little in the middle of the road, covering her mask with one hand. Alan moves closer, resting a hand on Amita’s arm and offering a steadying arm to Robin, even as Colby motions for them all to stay back. It must be like being back in the army, Amita thinks absently, watching as Colby moves forward, doing his best to look unthreatening with a rifle slung across one shoulder.
The woman keeps her distance, clearly just as wary of them as they are of her. She’s unarmed, or at least Amita thinks she is. There’s no tell-tale bumps, nothing in the woman’s stance but fear. Her voice is quiet, almost non-existent, as she challenges Colby, but his doesn’t sound much different.
It’s then that she realizes that none of them have really spoken since this all began. They’d said a few words, when shuttered away in the house in Pasadena, and some since, but most of their communication has been with looks, touches and gestures. She’d never thought about it before, never minded because the silence was almost better than the alternative, but now she can’t help but be amazed. She’d always thought that talking was important.
It only takes a few moments before Colby turns and motions for them to join him, the tension across his shoulder easing just a little. The woman, Lisa, invites them to join her family in their home for the night, her voice tainted with a little bit of desperation. It’s been a while since they’ve seen anyone else.
They eat food from their own supplies, sharing with Lisa’s little family. They’ll pick up more when they reach the next town, the family haven’t been far from their little house yet and Amita isn’t sure they will, not for some time. It’s not as bad here, the threat not as immediate as it was in LA, the sky is still dark, and they’re still wearing their masks, but there’s some difference between night and day. And every so often, they can hear birds singing.
She shares a bed with Charlie for the first time in so long that she wakes confused in the middle of the night, missing the feeling of Robin pressed against her side. Robin is sleeping on a camp bed downstairs, with Larry and Colby on the floor and Alan on the sofa. Lisa’s husband had insisted that she and Charlie take their guest bed, as the married couple of the group. Amita had almost argued that she hadn’t felt like a married woman in a while, or at least, she hadn’t felt much of anything in a while.
When they move on, the next morning, Alan asks if the family wants to come with them, even as Robin’s gaze lingers on the little boy leaning against his mother’s side. Lisa’s husband is polite but firm when he tells them that they intend to sit it out, wishes them the best on their travels. It’s hard to walk away, more because of the darkened faces of the children than anything else, but it’s not their place to interfere. Not now.
Not when it might break up a family at the time that you needed your family the most.
Amita sits staring blankly at the object in her hand for over an hour before Colby appears in the doorway. She’d taken it from the last store they’d raided for supplies, all too aware of how uncomfortable her clothes were becoming.
“Amita?” His voice is carefully pitched so as not to startle her, but she still jumps, her nerves raw from so many days on the road. She almost wishes that they hadn’t left LA, that they’d just stayed, had just waited it out. It’s not rational, she knows, but wishes rarely were.
“I’m pregnant.” She whispered, hands starting to shake as it sinks in. She should be happy, they’d been trying for so long, but she can’t be. All she can do is wonder just what it is that she’s going to bringing their child into.
Colby stays where he is for a moment before stepping into the tiny room, lowering himself carefully onto the bench next to her. They’ve taken shelter for the night in a tiny abandoned spa/motel complex that smells of mould and rotten vegetables.
He reaches out to take her hand after a moment, squeezing gently, “We’ll get through.”
She starts at his choice of words, meeting his gaze for the first time in too long. She’d been expecting silence, or worse congratulations, she hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected the firm certainty behind those words.
They haven’t seen real daylight in almost two months, and yet somehow, Colby still hasn’t flagged, hasn’t hesitated. He’s this solid unshakeable presence for all of them, taking the hits for all of them and keeping them moving. He shouldn’t have to, but he does, and she loves him for it.
She’s leaning in to kiss him before she even realises that she really does love Colby, not like she loves Charlie, but it’s love all the same. He tenses, briefly before he gives in, and she deepens the kiss, suddenly desperate for him to touch her, to make her feel something that isn’t panic or dread.
Once she’s back in the room she’s sharing with Charlie, surprised by how guilty she doesn’t feel for what she’s just done, she digs out her laptop for the first time in days. She needs to reach out to people, to see if there’s anywhere left for them to run. If there’s anyone left for them to run to.
She doesn’t expect to be able to connect to the internet, doesn’t really expect that it’ll still exist, but the tiny icon in the corner of her screen tells her she has. She stares at it for a moment before she opens a chat window. There are exactly two people she knows, who she trusts, who are likely to still be on computers when the world just might be ending.
@kali @blueangel @tankgirl we made it out of LA
She leaves it at that, unable to think of a way that she could possibly expand on that without giving in to the panic she had been fighting back for so long. Now she just has to wait, and hope.
Garcia answers first, and Amita relaxes, just a little. She never really knew where Garcia might be, normally she’s safe in her office in Quantico, but that isn’t always the case, and it’s not like the other woman is really allowed to share all that much detail of her work, regardless of the fact that Amita has clearance.
Hardison doesn’t join the conversation for over an hour, and when he does he’s nothing like his normal upbeat self. It makes Amita wonder just how much they aren’t sharing, what they, like her, are holding back because they just can’t find the words.
It doesn’t matter in the end though, as after an hour talking to them both, they have something resembling a plan. Hardison knows the location of bunkers and safe houses that don’t even officially exist, something that would have bothered her before, but is actually reassuring now. Garcia provides the passwords and makes travels plans for each of their groups. She’d managed to track down Amita’s location, something Amita herself hadn’t even tried. She hadn’t wanted to know just how far they hadn’t gotten from LA.
Amita takes some time to gather herself once the other have logged off, each heading to tell their families about the plan. She draws out a copy of the map Garcia described, carefully noting down each and every instruction. She can’t afford to get this wrong, they can’t afford for this to be wrong.
If the vague comments that Garcia and Hardison had made, about attacks on their camps, there was only so long that they were going to be able to survive with just Colby to watch their backs.
Amita knew that she and Robin would be able to help him, but the others aren’t fighters, Charlie had proved that when he’d volunteered to go on the bureau training course, barely passing each section. The sooner that they can find the others, the greater the chance that they would survive, that her child would be born.
She finds them gathered together in Alan’s room, watching him create something resembling a meal for them all with two gas stoves and a small collection of tins he’d found when they’d arrived. She waits until they’ve all eaten, ignoring the looks that Alan and Colby cast in her direction, both of them able to read her far too well. She needs the time to prepare herself though, now that’s she’s actually in front of them; she knows they are going to have a lot of questions.
It takes her a little while to fill them in on the details, and they all have questions about where exactly she’s been getting her information. She hesitates, for just a moment, before she tells them the truth. She sees the flash of betrayal in Charlie’s eyes, before it fades, but she feels her own flash of anger in return. They both have things that they keep close to their chest, things that they do in plain sight but that the significance of passes the other by, but Charlie always takes it personally. The way he smiles at her through, as she finishes explaining, means more than she can say.
There may be things that have changed for the better, and if that is one of them, she doesn’t mind it.
It takes a little while for each of the others to consider what she’s said, Alan and Colby exchanging glances before Colby speaks, “You trust them?”
Amita nods, certain, she’s known them for a long time, long enough to get to know them and really trust them. Garcia works for the FBI, and is fiercely protective of her friends. Hardison, while he works on the wrong side of the law, and ‘works’ may be the wrong word for what he does, means well. He would never purposely hurt anyone. “I do.”
Colby smiles, and it’s a match for the smile on Charlie’s face, “OK, looks like we actually have somewhere to aim for.”
“We’re going to need a map,” Alan points out, “that compass of yours isn’t going to help us navigate our way to Arkansas.”
“I have a map,” Larry speaks up, pulling a rumpled map out of the depths of his backpack, “I found it in one of the convenience stores, I was waiting for the right time to bring it up.”
Robin smiles a little, which is more than she’s done in days, “We should have thought of it before now.”
None of them argues with her, though Larry shifts his weight a little. They all know why they hadn’t, and Amita can’t help but wonder if she would have ever thought about it if her hand hadn’t been forced. They’ve been relying on each other to stay alive these last few weeks, but they haven’t really been thinking ahead, they’ve been stuck in the one moment for so long.
She has to think of the future now though, has to plan ahead, because there is going to come a time when she wouldn’t be able to keep up the nomadic life style they’ve developed.
It takes them a few hours to plan out the route they’re going to take, and once it’s settled they make their way to their respective beds. They need to get as much rest as they can before they begin their trek again; they have targets to meet and a pace to set.
Amita hadn’t realised it had been night when they’d stopped. She’s used to tracking the passage of time by how often they’ve slept, rather than the meagre difference between night and day. Now though, with the sun shining down on them she finally lets herself remember what it was like, when LA had been sunny and warm, instead of dark.
She’s crying when Charlie wraps his arms around her, drawing her in against his chest while Colby settles on her other side, one hand warm on her leg. Part of her recognises that his other hand is resting atop of Charlie’s, but she’s too busy mourning the past to think about it.
It takes a little while before any of them are willing to start moving again. They still haven’t encountered any resistance. The world they’ve been passing through is eerily empty of life, apart from the odd bird or animal.
Robin walks alongside Amita, holding her hand. They’d gotten along well enough before, but now they’ve drawn closer. They’re the only too women in their world now, though gender matters less and less each day, and they’re happy to give and take comfort from each other in the way that none of the men are.
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part three: Garcia
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no fearsome tide: part two
Amita.
Los Angeles is burning.
They’re safe, the tiny group that had made it to the craftsman before the riots had started in earnest, but it’s been over a week, stuck within the same four walls. What’s worse is the people who are missing, the people who had promised to make it to the house before the riots had gotten bad, but who hadn’t ever appeared.
There are six of them; Alan, who had been at home, already in bed, when Amita, Charlie and Larry had managed to make it back from the university, arms full of everything they had managed to save on their way out. Colby had arrived an hour later with Robin, a backpack slung across one shoulder and a shotgun the other. They waited, for a long time, for Don, Nikki and the rest of their team to arrive, but in the end, after two days without any word, they’d surrendered to the fact that they wouldn’t be coming. It’s not that any of them believe they’re dead, they just know that they aren’t coming.
The riots never quite reach them, but they can still hear them, people screaming and yelling accompanied by the sound of gunshots. In the darkness of night, and ash, the only real light comes from the fires that haven’t stopped burning.
Charlie and Larry have been distracting themselves with the problems they consider to be their life’s work, holed up in the solarium with Colby sitting guard, though he doesn’t really need to. Alan cooks for them all, and gathers supplies for the trip they all know they’re going to have to make. They might have escaped the riots, might still be alive in the little bubble they’ve built for themselves, but the ash is still falling. One day, soon, they’re going to have to leave.
Amita and Robin sit together, neither of them even trying to pretend that the situation is anything other than what it is. It’s different for both of them, thinking of the parents they haven’t heard from, while Alan and Charlie take comfort in each other’s presence, and Colby and Larry were never close to their blood relatives anyway. The fact that neither of them have been outside of LA for any reason other than work for years speaks to that.
There’s a list, one that Amita makes in the back of one of her notebooks, of all of the people they know who aren’t with them. She isn’t too worried about Liz or David, they’re both on the East coast, far enough away that they’ve only barely been touched by the ash clouds. Don and Nikki she worries for, has to force herself not to think about the odds of them having found somewhere safe to hold up. Her parents are in India, for a long time now, and she hopes that they’re ok, that they’re beyond the reach of volcanoes and people’s fear. She doesn’t try looking for information on the internet, she’d rather not know and be able to tell herself that they’re ok, that the reason they haven’t contacted her is because they can’t. LA is a mess after all, it’s a miracle that she manages to get the limited internet access she does. She does her best not to examine that conclusion too hard; she knows it won’t hold up to analysis. That’s why she hasn’t spoken to Charlie in days.
He can never stop thinking, stop analysing, but he’s going to have to. Math can’t help them right now. Maybe, once they’re out of the city, it can help. Maybe it can even fix things a little, but now it’s nothing but a distraction.
“We have to go.” Robin’s voice is soft, and she doesn’t really move from her seat, but she’s tense.
Amita nods, glancing towards the door to the solarium, wondering if the boys have realised that yet or if she’s going to have to convince Colby to drag them to the car. “I know.”
Charlie and Larry don’t fight them in the end, but as she watches them in the rear-view mirror Amita knows why. At some point, when none of them were paying attention, they’d worked it out, given up trying to fix what was too broken and too out of their control. Larry doesn’t even argue when his food isn’t all white.
Amita’s driving her car, with Alan in the passenger seat and the boys in the back, following behind Colby’s car as he weaves his way around the scattered remains of LA’s traffic. They drive on the sidewalk as often as the road, the streets eerily empty as they edge around the centre, avoiding the freeway, which is clogged with all of the cars that hadn’t managed to make it out of the city.
It’s all Amita can do to look at the cars instead of the people in them.
Alan hums under his breath for most of the drive through the city, his gaze fixed on the horizon, while Larry and Charlie sleep, both them exhausted after days without. Amita tries to figure out what Alan’s humming, but she can’t focus on the sounds, can’t separate them from the ringing in her ears, so she gives up, turning her full attention to driving instead.
She’ll ask him once they’re safe.
They stop when LA is nothing but a dusky glow on the horizon, taking refuge in the first motel they find. There’s no one behind the desk and the rooms are all empty. Amita spends a few minutes searching for someone before she gives in to Alan’s insistence that she rest, whoever it was that used to run this place is long gone, and she’s not thinking about the look on Colby’s face when he appeared from the house attached to the motel.
They claim the biggest room and its three beds. Larry and Colby take the floor, laying out the sleeping bags they’d both brought, though she knows Colby isn’t going to sleep, while she and Robin curl up under the covers of the double bed, leaving the two singles for Alan and Charlie.
Amita ignores the look Charlie gives her, Robin needs the comfort of a warm body beside her more than Charlie does, and Amita’s the only one she’s likely to accept.
She isn’t surprised that it’s still dark when she wakes. She’s almost used to it, after so long, but it’s starting to confuse her internal clock. How do you count the days, when you can barely tell the difference between night and day?
Alan has taken Colby’s place by the window at some point, and he offers her a weak smile when he realises she’s awake. Neither of them speak, it would only wake Colby, and there’s nothing to say. Nothing’s changed. In a few hours they’ll pack themselves back into the cars and move on, until they can’t anymore.
Three days after leaving LA they have to abandon the cars, due to a combination of lack of petrol and clogged engines. The sky’s a little brighter now, though the ash is still heavy enough that they have to wear their masks still, the ash falling in a way eerily like snow.
Amita carries her bag, which holds her laptop, toiletries and two changes of clothes, along with her share of the supplies and remembers the days when she’d found it impossible to pack less than two bags. It’s funny how some things become easy when you have no other choice.
They move at a pace somewhere between Larry and Alan’s, with Colby trailing behind them all keeping watch over them still. Amita wonders, a few miles on, whether he’s doing more out of love or a sense of duty. She hasn’t asked him about Don, about what had been said or done to force Colby to leave without waiting for his team, but she knows that Don must have asked him, made him promise, to see Robin to safety.
They make slow progress, walking along deserted roads and through empty towns, not that she’s really sure it can be called progress. None of the places they walk through have names that she recognises, and she’s wary of searching for a road map. She doesn’t want to know where they are, not specifically, Colby’s compass tells them they’re heading east and that’s enough for her. It’s strange, she thinks remotely, how once she would have been asking for more data, but now she’s happier not knowing. Knowing won’t make anything better.
A week out from LA, Amita wakes to damp bedding. She thinks for a moment, trying to remember if she’d forgotten, but then she registers the empty space beside her. She sits up carefully, having to fight the urge to switch on a light and pull back the sheets. The smell, now that she’s more awake, is answer enough.
She wonders, for a moment, if she’s cold because all she can feel is relief that this time, they’re in a separate room than the men. It’s going to be hard enough, she thinks, for Robin with Amita knowing. She doesn’t want to think what it would be like if the men knew.
She swallows back sudden nausea, forcing herself to get out of the bed and move towards the bathroom. There’s a little blood on the floor, in a trail that ends at the bathroom door, and she takes a moment to close her eyes and breath, pushing her own feelings back for the moment before she reaches for the door handle.
Robin is sat in the shower, huddled in on herself, shaking. For the first time, Amita finds herself thinking of the other woman as small. She winces a little as she climbs into the shower cubicle, the cold a shock after the relative warmth of their hotel room. It’s the middle of summer, or at least, it would have been, and they’ve been sleeping in nothing but t-shirts the entire time.
Robin curls up in Amita’s arms, shivering, her cheeks dry, and they sit there, clinging to each other until Colby knocks on the door, starting them both awake from an uneasy slumber. It takes them less than ten minutes to wash off the blood and change into clean clothes. They leave the bed sheets, there are plenty of other beds in the hotel, complete with un-slept in sheets, for whatever unlucky soul next stumbles upon the place.
She watches Robin more carefully for a few days, trying her best to be subtle about it. She’s not sure what she would have done, if when Colby had woken them there’d been more blood on the tiles. She tries not to think about the fact that there would have been nothing any of them could have done.
All she can do is feel thankful for Robin’s presence in her bed, and by her side during the day. She feels helpless enough as it as.
It’s a shock when, almost two weeks after leaving LA, they run into another person. They’d all grown so used to one another’s company, to a world made up of only six people that it takes them all a moment to recognise that there’s a woman standing in the road ahead of them.
Charlie and Larry stop abruptly and Robin gasps, swaying a little in the middle of the road, covering her mask with one hand. Alan moves closer, resting a hand on Amita’s arm and offering a steadying arm to Robin, even as Colby motions for them all to stay back. It must be like being back in the army, Amita thinks absently, watching as Colby moves forward, doing his best to look unthreatening with a rifle slung across one shoulder.
The woman keeps her distance, clearly just as wary of them as they are of her. She’s unarmed, or at least Amita thinks she is. There’s no tell-tale bumps, nothing in the woman’s stance but fear. Her voice is quiet, almost non-existent, as she challenges Colby, but his doesn’t sound much different.
It’s then that she realizes that none of them have really spoken since this all began. They’d said a few words, when shuttered away in the house in Pasadena, and some since, but most of their communication has been with looks, touches and gestures. She’d never thought about it before, never minded because the silence was almost better than the alternative, but now she can’t help but be amazed. She’d always thought that talking was important.
It only takes a few moments before Colby turns and motions for them to join him, the tension across his shoulder easing just a little. The woman, Lisa, invites them to join her family in their home for the night, her voice tainted with a little bit of desperation. It’s been a while since they’ve seen anyone else.
They eat food from their own supplies, sharing with Lisa’s little family. They’ll pick up more when they reach the next town, the family haven’t been far from their little house yet and Amita isn’t sure they will, not for some time. It’s not as bad here, the threat not as immediate as it was in LA, the sky is still dark, and they’re still wearing their masks, but there’s some difference between night and day. And every so often, they can hear birds singing.
She shares a bed with Charlie for the first time in so long that she wakes confused in the middle of the night, missing the feeling of Robin pressed against her side. Robin is sleeping on a camp bed downstairs, with Larry and Colby on the floor and Alan on the sofa. Lisa’s husband had insisted that she and Charlie take their guest bed, as the married couple of the group. Amita had almost argued that she hadn’t felt like a married woman in a while, or at least, she hadn’t felt much of anything in a while.
When they move on, the next morning, Alan asks if the family wants to come with them, even as Robin’s gaze lingers on the little boy leaning against his mother’s side. Lisa’s husband is polite but firm when he tells them that they intend to sit it out, wishes them the best on their travels. It’s hard to walk away, more because of the darkened faces of the children than anything else, but it’s not their place to interfere. Not now.
Not when it might break up a family at the time that you needed your family the most.
Amita sits staring blankly at the object in her hand for over an hour before Colby appears in the doorway. She’d taken it from the last store they’d raided for supplies, all too aware of how uncomfortable her clothes were becoming.
“Amita?” His voice is carefully pitched so as not to startle her, but she still jumps, her nerves raw from so many days on the road. She almost wishes that they hadn’t left LA, that they’d just stayed, had just waited it out. It’s not rational, she knows, but wishes rarely were.
“I’m pregnant.” She whispered, hands starting to shake as it sinks in. She should be happy, they’d been trying for so long, but she can’t be. All she can do is wonder just what it is that she’s going to bringing their child into.
Colby stays where he is for a moment before stepping into the tiny room, lowering himself carefully onto the bench next to her. They’ve taken shelter for the night in a tiny abandoned spa/motel complex that smells of mould and rotten vegetables.
He reaches out to take her hand after a moment, squeezing gently, “We’ll get through.”
She starts at his choice of words, meeting his gaze for the first time in too long. She’d been expecting silence, or worse congratulations, she hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected the firm certainty behind those words.
They haven’t seen real daylight in almost two months, and yet somehow, Colby still hasn’t flagged, hasn’t hesitated. He’s this solid unshakeable presence for all of them, taking the hits for all of them and keeping them moving. He shouldn’t have to, but he does, and she loves him for it.
She’s leaning in to kiss him before she even realises that she really does love Colby, not like she loves Charlie, but it’s love all the same. He tenses, briefly before he gives in, and she deepens the kiss, suddenly desperate for him to touch her, to make her feel something that isn’t panic or dread.
Once she’s back in the room she’s sharing with Charlie, surprised by how guilty she doesn’t feel for what she’s just done, she digs out her laptop for the first time in days. She needs to reach out to people, to see if there’s anywhere left for them to run. If there’s anyone left for them to run to.
She doesn’t expect to be able to connect to the internet, doesn’t really expect that it’ll still exist, but the tiny icon in the corner of her screen tells her she has. She stares at it for a moment before she opens a chat window. There are exactly two people she knows, who she trusts, who are likely to still be on computers when the world just might be ending.
@kali @blueangel @tankgirl we made it out of LA
She leaves it at that, unable to think of a way that she could possibly expand on that without giving in to the panic she had been fighting back for so long. Now she just has to wait, and hope.
Garcia answers first, and Amita relaxes, just a little. She never really knew where Garcia might be, normally she’s safe in her office in Quantico, but that isn’t always the case, and it’s not like the other woman is really allowed to share all that much detail of her work, regardless of the fact that Amita has clearance.
Hardison doesn’t join the conversation for over an hour, and when he does he’s nothing like his normal upbeat self. It makes Amita wonder just how much they aren’t sharing, what they, like her, are holding back because they just can’t find the words.
It doesn’t matter in the end though, as after an hour talking to them both, they have something resembling a plan. Hardison knows the location of bunkers and safe houses that don’t even officially exist, something that would have bothered her before, but is actually reassuring now. Garcia provides the passwords and makes travels plans for each of their groups. She’d managed to track down Amita’s location, something Amita herself hadn’t even tried. She hadn’t wanted to know just how far they hadn’t gotten from LA.
Amita takes some time to gather herself once the other have logged off, each heading to tell their families about the plan. She draws out a copy of the map Garcia described, carefully noting down each and every instruction. She can’t afford to get this wrong, they can’t afford for this to be wrong.
If the vague comments that Garcia and Hardison had made, about attacks on their camps, there was only so long that they were going to be able to survive with just Colby to watch their backs.
Amita knew that she and Robin would be able to help him, but the others aren’t fighters, Charlie had proved that when he’d volunteered to go on the bureau training course, barely passing each section. The sooner that they can find the others, the greater the chance that they would survive, that her child would be born.
She finds them gathered together in Alan’s room, watching him create something resembling a meal for them all with two gas stoves and a small collection of tins he’d found when they’d arrived. She waits until they’ve all eaten, ignoring the looks that Alan and Colby cast in her direction, both of them able to read her far too well. She needs the time to prepare herself though, now that’s she’s actually in front of them; she knows they are going to have a lot of questions.
It takes her a little while to fill them in on the details, and they all have questions about where exactly she’s been getting her information. She hesitates, for just a moment, before she tells them the truth. She sees the flash of betrayal in Charlie’s eyes, before it fades, but she feels her own flash of anger in return. They both have things that they keep close to their chest, things that they do in plain sight but that the significance of passes the other by, but Charlie always takes it personally. The way he smiles at her through, as she finishes explaining, means more than she can say.
There may be things that have changed for the better, and if that is one of them, she doesn’t mind it.
It takes a little while for each of the others to consider what she’s said, Alan and Colby exchanging glances before Colby speaks, “You trust them?”
Amita nods, certain, she’s known them for a long time, long enough to get to know them and really trust them. Garcia works for the FBI, and is fiercely protective of her friends. Hardison, while he works on the wrong side of the law, and ‘works’ may be the wrong word for what he does, means well. He would never purposely hurt anyone. “I do.”
Colby smiles, and it’s a match for the smile on Charlie’s face, “OK, looks like we actually have somewhere to aim for.”
“We’re going to need a map,” Alan points out, “that compass of yours isn’t going to help us navigate our way to Arkansas.”
“I have a map,” Larry speaks up, pulling a rumpled map out of the depths of his backpack, “I found it in one of the convenience stores, I was waiting for the right time to bring it up.”
Robin smiles a little, which is more than she’s done in days, “We should have thought of it before now.”
None of them argues with her, though Larry shifts his weight a little. They all know why they hadn’t, and Amita can’t help but wonder if she would have ever thought about it if her hand hadn’t been forced. They’ve been relying on each other to stay alive these last few weeks, but they haven’t really been thinking ahead, they’ve been stuck in the one moment for so long.
She has to think of the future now though, has to plan ahead, because there is going to come a time when she wouldn’t be able to keep up the nomadic life style they’ve developed.
It takes them a few hours to plan out the route they’re going to take, and once it’s settled they make their way to their respective beds. They need to get as much rest as they can before they begin their trek again; they have targets to meet and a pace to set.
Amita hadn’t realised it had been night when they’d stopped. She’s used to tracking the passage of time by how often they’ve slept, rather than the meagre difference between night and day. Now though, with the sun shining down on them she finally lets herself remember what it was like, when LA had been sunny and warm, instead of dark.
She’s crying when Charlie wraps his arms around her, drawing her in against his chest while Colby settles on her other side, one hand warm on her leg. Part of her recognises that his other hand is resting atop of Charlie’s, but she’s too busy mourning the past to think about it.
It takes a little while before any of them are willing to start moving again. They still haven’t encountered any resistance. The world they’ve been passing through is eerily empty of life, apart from the odd bird or animal.
Robin walks alongside Amita, holding her hand. They’d gotten along well enough before, but now they’ve drawn closer. They’re the only too women in their world now, though gender matters less and less each day, and they’re happy to give and take comfort from each other in the way that none of the men are.
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part three: Garcia
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