Glass.
My flight is short and I slam into something hard, my head cracking against the floor. The floor?
Blackness.
Heat.
When I open my eyes, I’m not sure how much time has passed, only that my head feels heavy, a splitting pain coming from the back of it. With shaking fingers, I touch it, and my fingertips come back covered in blood.
I look up.
The heat is from fire. And the fire is all around.
I’m in a pile of rubble in what used to be the café. Boards and ceiling and tables are piled around me, and people are on the floor. Dust is everywhere and I can hardly see through it. But I can see the fire.
And I can see Brand.
Like some sort of magnificent and fierce angel, he strides through the dark smoke, and I see him pry the school bus doors open. He leaps inside, and a scant moment later, he emerges with a child in his muscled arms. He hands the child to someone, then goes back into the smoking, charred bus. Over and over, I watch this process.
Some of the children he carries out are bloody, some are limp. But he continues to make the trips.
Finally, he comes out empty handed.
He stands still for a moment, and I see how his shirt is ripped down the front. I can see a chiseled washboard behind the large tear. I see how soot is smeared across his cheeks, and the same soot has turned his hair black.
I see him take a deep breath, I see him look around at the carnage on the street, looking for someone else to save.
And then he sees me.
I do need saved. More than he’ll ever know.
His eyes are a blue so bright that I can’t even name it. Sapphire, maybe? They shine through the soot, through the flames. He focuses on me, then with long steps, he comes to me. Straight to me. Through the chaos, through the havoc.
“Miss, are you alright?” his voice is husky, probably from the smoke. I can’t move.
“I’m stuck,” I manage to tell him. “My legs.”
My legs are beneath splintered boards, boards that used to be a café wall. As I glance up at Brand, I see my parents on the street, standing with an EMT. I can see my mother’s frantic arm movements, and I can read her lips.
My daughter.
I take a breath, but there’s no way she’d hear me if I called. She’ll have to wait.
Brand draws my attention back to him, back to his brilliant blue eyes, by speaking.
“I’m going to get this stuff off of you. I’ll try not to hurt you,” he tells me calmly. With muscular arms, he lifts the jagged boards off of me, one by one. True to his word, he doesn’t hurt me.
When he’s finished, when I’m free, he doesn’t help me stand.
He bends and scoops me up instead.
My head rests against his chest and I can hear his heart as he carries me effortlessly through the mayhem.
Ba-bump.
Ba-bump.
His heart is as strong as he is.