Fic: when the smoke clears (Comfortember)

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: when the smoke clears
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Genre: Hurt/Comfort. Angst. AU.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 1230
Pairings/Characters: Quinn Abercromby/Creedy
Synopsis: In which Quinn faces the ruins of the castle in the aftermath.
Comments: Written for Comfortember 2020, (Alternate) Prompt: Music. First time writing for Reign of Fire, no idea how that managed to work its way into my responses for this challenge. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

Quinn doesn't want to go back inside.

There isn't much left to go back to, anyway.

He stares at the shell of what had been their home for years now, the scorched corpses of stone rooms and reinforced corridors scattered along the mountainside, burned to little more than ash in the wake of so much dragonfire. Somewhere in there is what's left of Creedy's body. Part of him wants to find it, bury it, say a proper goodbye. Part of him knows it would be useless to try. There are too many bodies to bury, and there are too many memories to find.

But, he goes in anyway.

Picks his way through the piles of debris into the heart of the castle. The sounds of tentative celebration outside grow quieter the further in he gets until there's nothing left but an eerie, empty silence.

The memories hit him immediately, the two of them putting on their nonsense shows for the kids, trying to give them a little bit of normal in the chaos of their lives. The horrid dances to barely audible music, the goofy skits meant to make them laugh when there was little else that could when they all had empty bellies and nightmarish dreams.

Somehow, he makes it through the ruins to his room, which has taken surprisingly little damage. He sees the two of them sharing drinks in the wake of the loss of the crops a few days ago, before Van Zan and his crew had come into their lives. He sees Creedy there patching up his wounds and talking him out of his own head. He sees his empty bed, where they did a different kind of dancing, to their own music.

Eventually, he ends up where it all ended, his hands pressed flush to the door in the bunker that kept him away from Creedy. Every time he's closed his eyes since then, he's seen nothing but that look on Creedy's face when he realized what was coming. Trapped in the weird quiet of the empty castle, and Quinn would swear he could still hear the echo of his own desperate sobs, the children crying out with him, his voice breaking as tried to say their words.

He sits there, like he did before, his hands folded in front of him, praying for something else now.

How is he supposed to do this alone? How is he supposed to do this without Creedy at his side? It's just him and Jared and Alex and Van Zan's few survivors and dozens of children, their parents all gone. They've got no food, no real shelter, and even with the Bull dead, there are still dragons around, and they certainly haven't gotten any easier to kill. What is he supposed to do now? He's tired, he's broken, he's alone.

If only he had Creedy.

And then, like music to his ears, he hears a groan. He's barely sure he even really heard it, at first, but it comes again, pained and pinched. He's up off his knees, following the sound to the door and beyond, around the curve of the dimly lit hallway. Surely, it can't be-

"Call out," he says, unwilling to risk the crushing disappointment that would ruin him if he gave name to the little bit of hope he has now. "If you can hear me, call out!"

A garbled moan, not quite a word, comes in response. It's closer now.

Quinn carefully sidesteps over the rubble of a stone wall, the exploded shell of a fire extinguisher. Shit.

"Creedy?" He dares, finally.

Another groan, and Quinn starts frantically digging through the debris underfoot, shoving aside chunks of wood and stone until he finally sees a bloody hand reach out. He grabs it, desperate and hopeful and finds an arm, a torso, finally works his way up to a head. "Creedy," he sobs, when he finds beautifully familiar grey-green eyes blinking up at him. He can't stop himself from leaning over the other man, pressing a desperate kiss to his dirty, ash-covered lips. "Creedy…"

The hand he'd found comes up, frames his face, smearing blood and ash and dirt over him, but he doesn't care. "…Quinn?"

He's crying, can feel the hot tears streaming down his face, but he nods. "Yeah. Yeah, it's me," he says, pushing aside more of the stone piled atop the man. "It's me. You're gonna be okay. We're all gonna be okay – it's over."

"Dragon?"

"Dragon's dead," he assures Creedy. "I killed him for you. Fuck, I thought I lost you." That's not to say that he might not still lose the man, though. He's well aware, painfully aware, that Creedy shouldn't be alive, that it's a miracle he is. That fate can snatch him right back if it so chooses. He's been pinned here for nearly a day now, trapped under the wreckage of the wall. He's got quite a lot of burns, too, he discovers, as he slowly works Creedy free of his prison, and it looks like he took a few hits from the shrapnel of the exploding fire extinguisher – though it doing so probably kept him from burning to death outright.

"Not just yet," Creedy tells him, wincing as he helps Quinn to shift off a particularly heavy chunk of debris. "Do me a favor and go get some help?"

Quinn hesitates, doesn't want to leave Creedy here alone, doesn't want to ever leave Creedy alone again. But he has to go, has to get someone to help him get Creedy out of here and taken care of. One of Van Zan's survivor's is a medic, he thinks. He'll grab him, and Jared, he decides, no one else just yet. Not until Quinn's reassured himself that Creedy's still here, still with him. Then, all the kids can swarm in.

He finds Jared. Jared quickly but quietly finds the medic. Together, the three of them manage to get Creedy out with a minimum of issues. They carry him back up to Quinn's room and settle him in bed there. The medic does what he can, stitches up the cuts, medicates the burns, doses him with some hefty painkillers and sedatives and leaves Quinn to handle cleanup and watch duty, both of which he is more than eager to do.

"What now?" Creedy asks, floating now on the edges of a drug induced sleep.

Quinn doesn't answer at first, concentrating on carefully washing away the last traces of dirt and grime and ash and blood from bare skin. He's feeling a lot more optimistic about the future than he had been earlier tonight. He doesn't think much will change, though. There are still dragons. If a dragon comes, there will still be fire. They'll have to keep eyes on the sky for a long while yet, he's sure. But, if a dragon comes in, they'll do what they've always done. They'll rebuild the castle, rebuild their supplies and their crops. They'll care for the children, now more than ever with no one else to do so. They'll dance and joke and tell them stories. The two of them will bicker and fight and drink and love.

"We spent 18 years fighting to survive," he says, grasping Creedy's hand in his own, pressing a kiss to bruised knuckles. "Now, maybe we finally get the chance to live."