~chapter thirty-three~
spark
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I will take you away
I will take  you away

The first thing Mari hears is Kai’s voice.

No, wait, that’s not exactly right; it’s almost Kai’s voice. 

“Where the hell is she?  What do you want?”

Tinny, like it’s coming through a phone. Mari opens her eyes but they stung and the moment she inhales, she starts coughing.  

Smoke. Lots of it.  

She tries to stand up, to do something, but her hands are bound. Her feet, too. Whoever had kidnapped her hadn’t wasted much thought on it – Mari was tied up against the bottom steps of the metal staircase at the side of the warehouse. 
 
“What I want is poetry, Kai,” someone says from the side, catching Mari’ eyes even through the haze. Her heart stutters hard in her chest because she knows this voice and she knows these eyes; the sudden urge to puke and scream is so overwhelming at that moment that she throws her body around in a pointless fight with the ropes that are binding her.

Garn has a mischievous smile on his face. “I’m afraid Mari is a little… tied up right now, if you’ll forgive the pun. But I thought this last goodbye would be fitting.”  His smile widens.  “Don’t you, Mari?”

“Mari?” Kai’s voice demands through the speaker phone.  “Are you okay?!”

Mari whimpers, but Garn outright laughs.  “She’s fine. Well, for now, at least.  But I’m afraid she’s not going to stay that way for long.”

“What do you want, Garn?”

Garn coughs, but it’s as fake as the good humor he wears like a mask. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just a little smoke-y in here all of a sudden.”

Mari could almost see the thoughts processing in Kai’s head.  That horrible moment when he realized what was exactly going to happen to her. 

“I hate for this to be our final goodbye, Mari, but you get why I couldn’t resist, right?” Garn tosses the phone – with Kai still yelling obscenities through the speaker – down on the ground in front of her.  Just out of reach, even if she could move any of her limbs. “Just as Kai starts to open his heart again, someone comes along to burn it all down.”

“You’re sick,” she spats at him, disgusted and scared more than ever. The fire around her is getting bigger and her eyes are getting watery with every second, her lungs seizing in search of oxygen; how Garn is still standing without a single sign of weakness, she has no idea. “What are you playing at? I paid off all the money I owed,” she adds venomously, still trying to loosen up the ropes around her limbs. Garn sends her an amused glance and slowly creeps to stand in front of her.

Only then Mari sees his face entirely. He already looked bad those few days ago when she met him, but now his face was even in a worse state, fresh cuts and bruises all over it.

“I got to like you,” he admits, slowly pulling his hand up so he can touch her face almost tenderly. It makes her stomach curl; she yanks her head to the side, trying to avoid his filthy fingers, but there’s not far she can get while being tied to a chair.

Then Garn coughs, the smoke finally getting to him, and he looks sad.

“If I can’t have you for myself, no one can. I hoped that we would spend our lives together like this. It was a perfect vision; it’s a shame that your father and Kai destroyed it.”

Mari didn’t want to even think about how twisted and sick this man was and she scowled at him deeply until he smirked.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. No one will have you anyway.” 

He stands up, glances at her one more time before disappearing behind a wall, hell knows where, probably going to an exit.

The smoke should have made it hard to think, but it’s not that way at all. It was like all Mari needed for was for Garn to disappear before she suddenly started thinking clearer than ever.  Garn didn’t expect her to fight.  If the sounds Kai was making on the other end of the phone suggested anything, he wasn’t sure Mari was going to fight either.  But Mari was damned sure about one thing.

There was no way in hell she was dying here.

She pulls and twists and tugs at the ropes binding her to the rails of the stairs, but there aren’t any lose or potentially breakable bars. Her ankles are bound to the bottom railing closest to the floor, while her wrists are tied two or three steps up.  Enough for Mari to stay seated on the steps, but not enough to stand upright. She only has a few inches of give in either of her hands.
 
The only weapon she has at this point is . She leans to her left as far as her right arm allows her, which is just enough to reach the nibbling edge of the knot.

The sounds of fire are getting louder: boxes and crates are splintering, and the fire isn’t just spreading – it’s consuming everything. But there is a momentary lull, and in the gap of sound, Mari hears Kai screaming, “I swear to god Mari, you’d better be fighting,” before a rush of heat slams into her hard enough to throw her head back.

She can see the flames now. They are spreading to the containers on the far side of the cage.  They’ll inch their way around until they reach the staircase and then Mari will roast alive. The smoke is getting thicker – Mari didn’t even realize she’d started coughing until a series of coughs went so long that she thought he was going to hyperventilate.

She kicks off her shoes, because maybe that would give her some leverage, but she can’t move her foot enough to get the rope stuck between her foot and the stairs.  So she tries to shift towards the left, maybe hoping to slide the rope around the bottom of her foot at the very least.

But none of that would help too much if she couldn’t get her hands free.  So Mari tears at the knot with his mouth – the way Mari destroyed every day drinking straws, you’d think she’d be better at this – but the knot refuses to give easily.

The fire creeps closer and Mari starts yanking her head back and forth like a dog refusing to give up his bone, because seriously things needed to start working out. Right now. Because Mari is not going down like this. No way in hell.

She takes a moment to catch her breath, and when she attacks the knot again, her head jerking forward in surprise as the first part of it gives way. She shakes her wrist around, bangs it against the metal, and little by little the pressure on her hand eases up, and the knot starts to give.  Her spirits renewed, Mari goes back at it and within another minute, she has her entire hand free.

But that is only one step in the process.  Mari starts on her other hand, but it’s almost more difficult doing it with her hand than with .  Go figure.

Some of the metal near the ceiling starts groaning and Mari stops what she was doing to look up in fear. If the scaffolding started falling, some of it might land right on top of her. Then it wouldn’t matter how much damage the fire did, because Mari would be dead or unconscious for the whole thing.

But finally, she manages to get her other hand free, and then her feet. Kai is still yelling into the phone, and Mari scoops it up after climbing to her feet. 

“Mari?!”

Mari pants into the phone. Fire had engulfed half of the warehouse already, but it wasn’t the half that Garn had entered from and that meant there was still a way.  Her limbs are a little bendy, and she balances about as well as a newborn giraffe, but she keeps her head down and her hoodie up over her face and nose. Maybe it would help a little.  Maybe it would keep her conscious long enough to find an escape.

“Mari, are you okay?!  Dammit, answer me. I’m on my way. Please, please answer me, I’ll be there in a minute, I promise, please, Mari.” 

But Mari can’t talk. She hums into the phone, not in a creepy way like Garn, but a steady, low monotone. Kai seems to take that for what it was – an acknowledgment that Mari is okay. 

What if Garn is still outside? What if he’s waiting to see if I get out?  What do I do then?

But Mari can’t worry about that.  Right now she has to get out of the warehouse, because if Garn killed her in the lot, that would be a far, far better thing than letting Kai find her body in the warehouse’s burned wreckage.  There was no way she could let that happen to him.

Mari gets about twenty feet away from the cage before she realizes it wouldn’t be quite that easy.  There are crates and boxes stored fifteen feet high, creating their own hallway, and when she notices a little passage between the piles of burning boxes, her mind goes fuzzy all of a sudden, and her body goes completely numb as she sees everything go darker and darker and she falls, hitting her forehead so hard that blood slips from it. The next thing she hears is a sudden outburst, some kind of a loud thud, and her mind spins again because someone is pulling her up.
 
And then Kai’s arm is strong and warm against Mari’ shoulders, and her head is lolling on Kai’s bicep and Kai’s other arm is looped underneath her knees. And Kai is cradling her and he is a furnace. A freaking wall of heat and Mari cuddles closer, even though it’s weird and it’s Kai but Mari is so cold and she wants to leach any warmth she can get.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, clutching on her desperately. Mari can’t believe that she’d gotten him into this. How could she do that to him? She was supposed to stay away from him. She was supposed to forget about him. She was supposed to protect him, not making herself dependable from him, not bringing him into this whole ed up situation. 

She couldn’t forgive herself for being so selfish and ignorant.

“I’m so sorry,” she wheezes. “I’m so, so, so-“

“Shut the hell up,” Kai tells her without a beat, kicking something so hard it freaking echoes three times. Mari jumps in his arms. The girl paws at his chest, tries to tell him that he can put her down, but he lungs are still seizing weirdly at the smoke and she knows that she won’t be able to walk properly. 

“Put me down,” she says anyway, her voice raspy. 

“You’re gonna be okay,” Kai tells her, puts her down but never steps away from her. He throws her arm onto his shoulder to help her walk and they make their ways through the flames. 

Kai knows this place. He knows how the warehouse is build and he knows that there was a trapdoor leading to the basement where there’re now; he knows that the fire hasn’t spread entirely on the ground floor and he hopes, prays that they would still be able to make their way through that exit, because the passage he used to get here is now completely buried under layers of wood and cement. 

He can feel his skin burning and the fire is everywhere, making it hard to see or focus on anything else, but he spots the trapdoor and the sight makes him walk faster. He almost drags Mari towards it, the girl’s body seizing in crazy coughing attacks, and he can feel the smoke getting to him as well. He stops under the trapdoor, still trying to prop Mari against his side, but the girl takes the clue and pulls away for a second.

The thing is: the trapdoor is too high for him to reach and that little rope that was attached to it and allowed them to open them was now burned. Kai could still open it, but it was too high.

“On my shoulders,” he says to Mari quickly and the girl is fast in obeying. She sits on his shoulders and Kai, with a loud groan, stands up, his muscles strained. Mari opens the trapdoor after four tries, her hands shaky. 

“Climb up,” Kai says quickly. Mari sends him a distresses look. “Climb up, Mari, you’ll help me up. Don’t worry.” He tries to sound reassuringly, but it’s hard when they’re flames catching at his leg already; he kicks at it desperately.

Mari somehow climbs up, Kai making sure she gets up okay, and then he takes a step back and swings himself up. Mari already has her hands outstretched towards him and Kai really hopes that she’s propped her legs on something because he’s heavy. 

He catches her hands and the girl yelps loudly but starts to lift him up. Kai props himself onto his elbows, but then the floor underneath his forearms brakes and he falls with a loud thud back into the basement.

He can’t quite understand what’s just happened apart from the fact that he hit his head and something exploded on his left. A piece of something gets stuck under his skin on his calf and he groans loudly at the burning, excruciating pain. He glances back, relaxing for a moment because Mari is still there, she still has a chance to run away. 

“Run,” he crooks out; the flames are closer to him. 

“I’m not going anywhere, jump, you !” She shouts, and her voice and throat is so full of smoke it comes out raspy and as if from an old lady; she frantically waves her hand towards him, but her face is doing something weird, her eyes are closing—

She almost falls onto the floor and the only thing that’s keeping her conscious is Kai underneath her. She lets out a loud, honest-to-god shout. It’s desperate but it makes her body move again.

“Run, Mari, please, just run!” Kai shouts, standing up; his leg hurts, but he’s able to move, probably due to all the adrenaline in his system.

Then, when he sees Mari’s body fighting desperately for breath and to stay up, another face shows up behind her and Kai panics for a split moment until he realizes that he’s seeing Jaejoong.

He’s never been more confused, relieved and thankful in his whole life as he is at that moment, but he is even more surprised when the man outstretches his arm towards him. It must’ve shown on Kai’s face how shocked he is, because the next thing Jaejoong says is, “I don’t see anybody else lining up for the job, okay, so drop the deep interrogation of my motives, Kojak, and grab my damn hand!”

Mari is staring at the both of them; then she falls backwards, but Jaejoong somehow catches her mid-air. 

“Hurry the up!” He shouts at Kai and the boy jumps again. 

Jaejoong’s arms are much stronger than Mari's, obviously, and he pulls him up in a fast swing. Kai can feel the flames his shoes and he gets out of there in the last second. Jaejoong unceremonially drags him through the floor until he makes sure he won’t fall down again and then, without a word, both men take Mari by her arms and prop her on their shoulders in the middle of them. Kai doesn’t know how much she spend in the smoke, but she’s barely conscious and her lungs are letting out weird, raspy voices, and he panics. 

Jaejoong leads him to an empty area where the flames haven’t shown up yet and Kai sees an out. It’s the only possible exit in the whole warehouse and it looks like someone literally made a hole in the wall, but he has no time for thinking it over because he hears a loud thunder and he sees a sudden movement in the corner of his eyes. 

A huge shelf – the one that was filled with Mari’s paintings and fresh sheets for paintings – is falling down on Jaejoong and Mari, and the man doesn’t even see it, too focused on the exit. Kai shoves Mari towards the exit, circles them in a quick movement and find himself on Jaejoon’s right. The he pushes the man as hard as he can towards left and he sees them both stagger onto the side.

The shelf is there to hit him a second later. When Kai realizes that he won't make it in time to run away from it, he tries to turn so it falls onto his back and not onto his chest. But he doesn’t make it in time and the shelf hits his side.

Something pierces through his skin, painfully close to his rib; the shelf hits him full-force and Kai bends under the weight of it, but Mari and Jaejoong are safe. Jaejoong is staring at him in utter shock and fear, while Mari is wheezing wildly, tears in her eyes, and trying to get away from his brother to help Kai.

Kai, with all the strength he has left, pushes the shelf away. It hits the ground hard, the ceiling on their right practically collapsing; pieces of the building fall onto their heads. 

Jaejoong abandons Mari suddenly, but the girl seems to feel at ease for a second, because with the ceiling gone a fresh breeze of air hits them and they can see the cold, dark, night sky and the lights of the city illuminating in the background; Kai can also see distant fire truck’s sirens.

Jaejoong is by his side then.

“This is going to hurt,” he says, and Kai is on the verge of panic again but Jaejoong sounds a little farther away, muffled, like he’s down a tunnel and not currently holding Kai to his chest. 

And holy .

Pain, razor-sharp and shockingly hot, radiates from his side. His muscles seize and he lets out a cry, high-pitched and shrill at whatever Jaejoong just did. He realizes in shock that some piece of metal has just been taken out from his side and he wants to scream because he have seen enough movies to know that you do not take out things from people’s skin on your own. He tries to move away from it, his spine arched, his legs twitching, but Jaejoong clamps down on him.

“Calm down, Kai. I’ve got you.”

“ you,” Kai wheezes venomously, kicking his legs. “Why the would you do that-“

“It was burning, you idiot,” Jaejoong spats.

His eyes are watering. Each breath is a painful drag. His lungs are burning.

The pain yanks Kai from his sluggish haze and now every sense is intensely in focus. He can hear the embarrassing pained gasps emanating from his mouth. He can smell his own blood, metallic, heavy in his nostrils and can feel it dripping down his skin.

“Hold on,” Jaejoong says, his voice sharp. Kai feels pressure being put to his side, strong arms lifting him from the ground, and then he sees Mari running towards him. She ducks under Kai’s arm and drags him along with Jaejoong until they all get out of the building, cold air hitting them all at once, and they collapse onto the ground in the same time blue and red lights illuminate the place.

There’s shuffling, heated commands and footsteps and shouts hearable. Kai tries to bring Mari closer to himself, trying to make sure she’s okay, but the girl isn’t moving at all and he freaks out momentarily until he hears her taking a huge breath and then coughing as if she’s going to spit her own lungs out. 

Then someone flips him onto his back, lights suddenly in his eyes, and blood fills his throat, makes him loll onto the side to spit it out in a spasm; someone lifts him up by his shoulders and legs, cupping his head gently.

“Mari,” he whispers. “Take Mari. Make sure—“

An oxygen mask is put onto his mouth and he breaths in, feels the smoke slowly going out of his lungs and his body, and the pain is too strong at this point. The adrenaline is wearing off and only now he can feel how much he’s bleeding.

He starts to lose consciousness, but someone slaps him on his cheek a few times, demands to stay awake. He wants to comment about it not being a normal procedure – slapping, not talking – but he can’t because he’s sputtering blood.

“Mari,” he wheezes for the last time.

“We’re taking care of her,” someone says in the distance. Everything gets blurry and muted then. 

So there's officially like three chapters left of this story omg ;____;

Guys, if you think that I should tag/rate/give a heads-up before any of the chapters, just let me know, okay? I'm describing wounds here and there's blood and I know that it might be triggering for some of you so don't hesitate if it makes you uncomfortable. I never know what I should rate and what I shouldn't /sigh

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