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Give Out; -Charlie-
Topic Started: Aug 20 2013, 06:47:01 AM (269 Views)
Adelaide McCallen
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Kelci; s:p | w:d
Monday
16 July 2040

Later, what she would remember about that day was the heat. How it had been driven up from the pavement in pulsing waves and shimmered in shop windows as they shattered. How spirals of her hair came loose and stuck to the back of her neck. How, in almost crippling contrast, the dread had settled like ice in her stomach.

Ada wove between the pedestrians crowding the sidewalk, drumming her fingers against the strap of her bag in time to the song blaring through her headphones. She had just come off a drop at a muggle hospital downtown, and she was taking the long way home. It was one of the downsides of her job that she was stuck in a basement nearly all day. She had to take her sunshine where she could find it, even if that meant boarding through Greater London in lunch hour traffic on the hottest day of the summer. And in spite of the temperature, she was in a spectacularly good mood- by some miracle, Charlie was free, too; they were going to have lunch near the Ministry.

She felt the explosion ripple through the concrete before she heard it, but the sound that followed in the next second was louder than anything she had ever heard, even over the music, even from half a block away. In almost the same instant, car alarms started going off on either side of the street. Then the screaming. Ada swerved and was thrown off her longboard when it rammed into the curb. She ripped her headphones off and was engulfed in the chaos. She got to her feet in a daze, registering the blood dripping from her torn-up knees and palms in a very vague sort of way. Bewildered and disoriented, she futilely wiped her hands on her shorts. Taking a few slow steps forward, she swung her bag around to her front and fumbled for her phone to dial Charlie's number.

Each ring sounded incredibly far away and impossibly long. When he didn't answer, she dialed again with the same result. And then the panic set in, because somewhere in the direction of the blast, Charlie had been on his way to meet up with her. Now she could see the flames pouring from the building, spreading quickly to the neighboring storefronts. The sound of glass shattering in the heat of the fire was added to the clamor.

Without even making a conscious decision to do so, Ada drew her wand and started running against the crowd, uselessly shouting Charlie's name.
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Charlie Gray
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s:c | w:d
Charlie took the visitor's lift out of the Ministry for his lunch break because it was more conveniently located to the restaurant where he would be meeting Ada. He thought he felt it hitch as it ascended, but didn't think much of it. He trusted the magic.

The slight disturbance in his ride was completely disproportionate to the view he had of the street through the phone booth window. It was like he'd came out in the middle of a war zone. In shock, he froze. He didn't even breath. But then he thought about how he was supposed to be meeting Ada and suddenly moving was the only thing he could do.

He burst out of the phone booth in a run. He headed toward what he thought was the epicenter. It was hard to tell. Everything was a mess. Everything was loud and hot and people were screaming and he couldn't make sense of anything and just wanted to find Ada.

"Ada!" he shouted. It was hard to see and he wasn't the only one screaming. "Ada!" he called again, and then threw discretion to the wind and pulled his wand out of his waistcoat. He couldn't think of anything to do with it, because he could barely think at all, but it seemed like he should have it. "Ada!"
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Adelaide McCallen
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Kelci; s:p | w:d
She was buffeted around in the swarm until she was forced to stop running. She was closer to the actual site of the explosion now and the air was thick with smoke and the smell of things burning. She coughed and pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose while she looked around frantically. "Charlie!" she shouted again.

Her mind was strangely empty, like she was operating on autopilot. And as loud as it was, the noise blended together and faded into the background. She was singularly focused. And then, through a gap in the mob, she saw him across the intersection. She let her shirt fall away from her face, raised herself up on tiptoes and waved wildly toward him, yelling his name. Her line of sight was blocked seconds later.

It was getting harder to breathe and why was it so hot. She lowered herself back onto flat feet and coughed into her arm. She tried to push through the crowd to get to him, but she was shoved backwards by an especially panicked-looking woman. Ada tried to break her fall and was rewarded with a shock of pain shooting up both arms. She didn't have time to think about it because there was a much more present threat of being trampled.

She instinctively curled up to protect herself, but somehow, she realized, she must have thrown up a shield when she fell. She looked down at the wand she'd managed to keep clutched in her fist and then out at the feet hurrying by her. They were giving her a wide berth, probably without even realizing they were. She hadn't used magic unintentionally since she was a kid, and while she would normally be horrified to think about the implications of using her wand where anyone could see her, right now she couldn't have possibly cared less. Ada squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm herself down enough to stand back up, but she couldn't stop shaking.
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Charlie Gray
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s:c | w:d
Charlie heard his name, snapped his head to look, and saw Ada. Relief burst through him like a spark of gunpowder and then was just as quickly snuffed out. "ADA!" he shouted, but couldn't see her any longer and couldn't breathe, either, and lost himself in a coughing fit.

He was panicky and his head was swimming, but his wand was in his hand and it was barely a conscious thought: he cast a smoke dissipating spell. The air around him cleared to reveal a sea of people. A sea of people where holding a wand was a very not good thing. He'd done magic around muggles before- but it had all been controlled and planned. There was no control here. He shoved his wand back inside his waistcoat and started off through the crowd.

There was a gap in the crowd where he had seen Ada, and he headed toward it. Why couldn't he see her? She was tall-ish, for a girl, and her bright blond hair was like a beacon in ordinary circumstances. He pushed his way towards the gap, and then found that he couldn't actually go into it. He was being kept out.

And there on the ground, all alone and bleeding, was Ada. And he couldn't move to get to her. Part of him knew that it must have been her magic keeping everyone away, even keeping him away, but he panicked anyway. He was already panicked, and being panicked on top of being panicked didn't produce good results for Charlie.

He couldn't move, he couldn't speak- it was like that day she'd locked herself out on the fire escape because she'd been afraid of him dying, only it was real and happening right in front of his eyes. Someone ran into him more than a little roughly, and he snapped out of it. Sort of. "Get up!" he shouted at her. He'd been shouting it inside his head over and over and over from the moment he first saw her on the ground, and it was finally literally pushed out of him.
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Adelaide McCallen
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Kelci; s:p | w:d
A singular thought looped through her head: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. What she was not thinking about was the fact that the magic that was keeping her alive was also extremely noticeable, which was really what she should have been thinking about now that she was safe. She momentarily allowed herself to be crippled by fear, then dragged a few deep breaths into her lungs. She forced her eyes open and stared through the sea of shoes and was horrified to see that she wasn't the only one on the ground. Just the only one who was obviously still alive. Her eyes fell on a trainer with the charred stump of an ankle still attached to the foot inside. She almost threw up, would have if-

"Get up!

The voice more than the words sliced through the panic that had settled over her. Ada followed the familiar shoes up the familiar legs and torso until they found his face. She barely managed to choke back a sob of relief. He was alright, he was safe and he was there now. But he was also decidedly not right there which meant that whatever barrier she'd put up was keeping even him out. That realization was suddenly more real than anything else she was feeling at the moment.

She shut her eyes tight again to block out the unseeing stare of a man whose body was sprawled across the left lane of the street and pushed herself to her knees. She looked up at Charlie and managed to get shakily to her feet. When she could finally loosen her grip on her wand, she stowed it in her back pocket, but when she took a step toward Charlie, she still pushed him backwards. She froze and turned her head to look around; it was the same on every side, she was still creating a gap in the crowd.

"Charlie," she sobbed helplessly. The sound of approaching sirens was added to the chaos. "I can't let it down, I don't know how- I can't."
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Charlie Gray
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He pressed his hands back against her shield charm, but it did not give. He shook his head at her words. "Okay, okay, I don't know. Ada, just, just..." he clinched his teeth against his stammering and tried not to cry "...think about how to be safe. You made it because you needed it to be safe. It's not, it's not keeping you safe anymore; it's drawing attention and making it dangerous. I'm going to keep you safe now, okay?" He nodded his head at her in a way he hoped was encouraging. "We're going to keep each other safe until we get out of here. But it's got to be together. So, so, so concentrate on that and I will, too." He pushed again against her charm and thought really, really hard about being with her, and about getting to safety, and about holding her and never letting go.
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Adelaide McCallen
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Kelci; s:p | w:d
She nodded along with him because yes, logically that made sense. She cradled her wrists against her stomach and tried, really tried, to let the charm down. But even though she knew that it was hurting far more than it was helping now, and even though she trusted Charlie, she couldn't do it. It was beyond logic.

Now that she'd started crying, she found that she couldn't stop. The sirens were getting louder and she looked in their direction, then back at him, her eyes wide with panic. "I can't, I don't, I don't know how to-" she stammered. But then, suddenly, she did know.

She pushed her hair out of her face, leaving a trail of blood across her forehead, and took a deep breath. Then she closed her eyes and remembered the feeling of falling. How fast her heart had been racing and the flash of unbelievable fear that had come just before the full-body calm and the realization that she was fine, and the way she'd felt when she'd turned her head and seen Charlie next to her, and how when he'd tightened his arms around her, he'd made safe more than some abstract reality.

When Ada opened her eyes again just as the first fire engine was pulling up, the shield shimmered briefly, then seemed to be reabsorbed into the hands she was still cradling against her abdomen. She nearly sank to the ground again in relief, but managed to stagger toward him instead, burying her face against his chest just as the thinning crowd closed around them again.
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Charlie Gray
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s:c | w:d
Charlie stepped to meet Ada as soon as he felt the barrier go down. "You're amazing!" His arms wrapped around her and held her tight. "Bloody brilliant," he said right before he tried to apparate. It didn't work- he should have known better. Half the city was an anti-apparition zone.

"We have to go, we have to go now," his voice was panicky again, and he started leading Ada away from the crowd.
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Adelaide McCallen
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Kelci; s:p | w:d
Her knees buckled once his arms were around her and, just for a moment, she let herself be weak and just sob into his shoulder. For about three seconds, her entire world was reduced to the space the two of them took up on the sidewalk. And then just as abruptly, everything around them slammed back into focus. They had to go, she knew that, but as it turned out, the relief she felt now was just about as debilitating as the fear had been. When he started leading her away, it took her mind a beat to catch up with her body, which was already walking as fast as it could. She wanted to ask where they were going, but it was like she'd forgotten how to form words. It didn't matter, anyway. She'd go anywhere as long as it was with him.
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