"What are you in for?"
Taking a moment to properly size up the man next to her, Selena saw that there was no sense in threats, implied or otherwise. That said, she wasn't going to back down either, and she met his leer with a sickly sweet smile of her own, the ghost of her lost sharpness sparking in her eyes.
"Corruption, larceny, perjury..." Selena counted the parodies of her real crimes on her fingers. "sabotage, and accessory to murder. My incarceration has turned out to be less... white collar, than I had always hoped, but I'll make do." She toasted Barrows with her own glass, before draining it.
"A friend of yours?" she asked him, noticing his eyes darting from her to the slime at the back of the room at precise, regular intervals.
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'Looks like trouble...'
Chen watched from the rafters, as a group of six of the General's new 'recruits' swaggered in to the production floor. Making a bee-line for Felix as the only other presence they could sense in the room. Was this guy important to them, or did he just look like someone they could bully, being on his own? Silently, Chen cursed his mistake. If he had just left the man well-enough alone, they could have moved on by now. Now, his party couldn't move without making noise that could give their position away, and they were outnumbered. Chen just hoped against hope that these thugs would move on without making too much of a fuss over the guy, so the rest of them could move out. He wasn't sure if her could trust the others, Clementina in particular, to just stay and watch if things got ugly.
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"What the hell happened?"
"Just a splinter." Nikolai growled "It is nothing."
He snatched his hand back from Lucia, a little too hard, and started plucking the needles of wood from beneath his nails with little grace. He looked at none of the others that were sat round the table, but he could tell they were all looking at him. Natalia in particular, he could feel her eyes.
He was being honest, insofar as the physical injury was not bothering him in the slightest. He'd been pulling sharp objects out from his skin and flesh since he was a boy, and often they had been put there with ill intent. There was truly no pain. But something else was wrong, he felt wrong. The noises of the saloon seemed to be growing louder, and blurring together in an unbearable cacophony. Nikolai's heart raced in his chest, and he struggled to keep control of his breathing as a flush crept over him. He felt so angry, the primal rush of a fight coursing through his veins, but with no direction for his violence. It felt like there was a fire storm inside him, spreading from some long-forgotten place, engulfing him. If he opened his mouth, surely he would breathe red hot flame all over the saloon, burning all to ash around him. Shutting his eyes tight, Nikolai tried to recall the face again. He wasn't sure why, but the face was key to everything. He needed to remember the face! What flashed surfaced behind his eyelids stung him like a shock of static, and were gone before he could make any sense of them, enraging him further with each flash; and now the screaming was starting again, playing on the edges of the noise being made all around him, scratching the inside of his skull. The woman, and his name, over and over again, nothing else. Why was it still tormenting him?!
Nikolai needed to hit something, to kill something? Most of all he needed air.
The chair tumbled and clattered behind him, as Nikolai practically bolted to his feet and stormed outside, barging his way through the throng of people, not stopping for their protests or curses, his mental leg thudding along louder than ever. Outside, he sped down the alley between the saloon and whatever the ramshackle hut that had been raised next to it was, doubled over, and retched. Panting, Nikolai's wild eyes searched all around him, settling on a discarded and rusted oil drum. In his fit of madness, Nikolai seized the drum, and pounded on it with his other fist with all his might. The metal clanged furiously, and the dents he left were deep. Finishing up his onslaught, Nikolai booted the barrel with all his might into the long grass behind the saloon, before sinking down against the wall next to him, his heart rate finally beginning to slow.
This wasn't him. He had always fought with poise and control. Those who looked at him and saw a berserker had always learned better. The madness of this violence had taken over him, and he couldn't explain why.
"Would ya cut it out? We're helpin'. Retard."
Nikolai's head rose as he picked the worried tones out from the general noise of the crowd on the street. Two men were carrying a young girl (or at least, he thought it was a girl) towards the saloon. Even at a distance, Nikolai saw the blood, and was quick to rise to his feet.
"Put her down." he ordered the two men. "Go and get what you need inside, I will watch her. She needs stillness and solid ground." Growing up in a prison mine, head injuries were no stranger to Nikolai.
The two men, did not look like they took orders from complete strangers lightly, yet they caught the tone in Nikolai's voice, and weren't inclined to argue once they got a good look at him. Once he had the girl in his arms, Nikolai swung round a chair from one of the tables outside, and sat her down on it with surprising gentleness. He held her shoulders, not hurting her, but hard enough that she could feel the enormous strength he possessed.
"Look at me." He commanded, and when she did, Nikolai emphasised slow, deep breaths, channelling his calm through his arms to her, so that her ragged, panicked breathing slowed to match his.
"You are going to be alright." he said, looking deep into her eyes.
