Glass Shard - Tumblr Posts
glass shard / vehicular accident / watch out! (they never saw us coming, ‘til they hit the floor)
"WATCH OUT!" Faye's exclamation came at the precise moment that Spike himself noticed the dangerous way the vehicle they were tailing began to swerve on the pavement. Cursing the inability of the other driver to maintain control, though even Spike had found it a challenge that actually required both hands on the wheel, he tried to avoid the brick wall of the buildings and shoot past the van with the blacked out windows before it could crash as it was clearly about to.
Unfortunately, he was only able to achieve half of that goal. They'd narrowly streaked past the two-story structure but the van careened madly over into their space to knock against the rear passenger tire just as Faye was able to wrangle Spike's seatbelt into position across his chest and lap. He heard the snap of her own seatbelt locking into place as the angle of the impact threw the vehicle they were driving into a roll.
Glass shattered as every window conceded defeat to the ground whenever it was their turn to meet. Over and over again they rolled as the momentum of their speeding vehicle slowed with each smash and flip. The noise was thunderous. There was nothing to do except wait for the world to stop violently spinning. Side airbags deployed almost as an afterthought as their jeep finally heaved itself to a stop. It took several moments for Spike to realize that they weren't upside down.
His seatbelt was cutting into his shoulder as he tried to turn to take stock of the situation and his passenger. Irritably, he managed to scrabble at the button until it released him from the prison it had become after likely saving his life. There was no telling what would have happened if Faye hadn't thought to strap him in, but it seemed likely that he would have been forcibly ejected from the vehicle at some point during its prolonged tumble.
Faye's hair was in disarray and glittered with glass shards. She had shards all over her face like crystalline freckles and some drops of blood were seeping out of a few spots where larger pieces must have scraped past in the tumult. Her eyes with narrowed in fury as she yanked ruthlessly on her own seatbelt until Spike reached over to cover her hands with his own.
"Hey, hey, hold on! I'll get you out," he assured her.
"I'm gonna fucking kill them," she snarled. "I don't even care about collecting their bounty anymore! OUCH!"
"Stop thrashing around!" He ordered. "If you broke anything, you'll just make it worse doing that!"
Her hands fell away from the seatbelt, relinquishing control of the situation to him, and skimmed across her still-flat stomach uneasily. Spike gritted his teeth to keep from gulping and making her nervous. Abruptly he remembered there was a knife stashed in one of her boots and he strained to rummage around by her legs until he recovered it and brought it back up to hack away at the material of the elastic restraint. It didn't give up easily, which was probably a sign of a quality product but also could have been lethal if they'd been trapped in a submerged vehicle.
Free at last, Faye twisted to scramble out of the vehicle only to discover her door was jammed shut. Spike hastily attempted his own, failed to open it, and vaulted through the broken-out window to hurry over to her side and lay down his jacket on the gaping space of her own shattered out window. Carefully, he helped haul her up and out of the wreckage. Faye was trembling by the time he got her to her feet outside, though whether it was from the adrenaline still coursing through her body or the rage that she very obviously felt, Spike couldn't tell. He looked around at the trail of debris from where their vehicle had traveled from the crash to here, and then spotted the van on its side a few yards further back. The front end was crumpled and smoke was pouring out from under the hood. One person had been launched out of the windshield and was lying very still, but the other bank robber was hanging half out the driver's side door which was ajar.
Turning back to Faye when he heard her retching, he moved to her side in concern but she waved him off weakly.
"M'fine, go cuff that asshole. Maybe grab one of those money bags too, hey? There's enough loose in the wind that a little extra missing won't draw any questions." She remarked, wiping her mouth with a shaky hand.
There was indeed quite a lot of the money the robbers had stolen billowing out of the back doors of the van. Faye's idea seemed like a good one to Spike, provided he could manage to be quick about it. He didn't know enough about cars to be sure this one wouldn't blow up with the way parts seemed to be on fire. Still, he opted to handle the bounty first.
The woman blinked in confusion as Spike yanked her roughly out of the van. "They never saw us coming," she mumbled, "until they hit the floor. We made it painless as possible, you see? The banks are the cruel ones... bleeding us to death with overdraft fees and late fees and so many bullshit charges... we just... wanted to get back what's ours."
Spike snorted. "That's the fourth bank you hit up this week. Somehow I don't think the judge is gonna be convinced you're the victim here, especially since you've been racking up murder charges left and right. You're just lucky I don't let my partner handle your fate."
"Buncha bootlickers... the system is designed to keep us all down, you fool! And here you are, doing the dirty work for the cops..."
Hauling her over to the side of the street, Spike looked down at her with disdain. "Lady, we ain't doing shit for the cops. We're doing what needs doing to get ourselves paid so we can eat. Fuck the police, and fuck you for nearly getting us killed."