When they took him away, my heart broke. He watched me in the back of the squad car with camera flashes of the paparazzi that chose that moment to be there.
I watched those flashing lights pick apart our misery one flash at a time. All of it felt impossible as impossible as a house built on water burning down to the ground.
Not like they aren't at least one around every day but the number was over ten. For a YouTube creator with a famous sister? And an artist that is well known but outside the art community the way it was explained to me you wouldn't know. She said his name in the way of a high-end designer bag but not all luxury designer bags are famous in the same way. Those in the know it's worth it made it seem. So again what were they doing there? It was almost like they knew. How did they know? As the car drove off the camera pan to me. Standing in the driveway to Noah and Zoey's house. Dirt covering my body and filthy wet tear tracks streaking my cheeks. Didn't even remember crying. Those greedy lenses didn't miss a thing.
"Miss, Miss- any comment?" A man yelled at me.
"Was there a fight?" Another hollered.
"Were you attacked?" The third followed up. As they all yelled, topping the next with crime scene horrors about what really didn't happen. Yet at the same time applying it to me being a mess like they could read what happened when they couldn't. How do you tell them I was barely avoiding the police and my rip and batter clothes were from that? All they saw was a man arrested and me walking out following. Sara having a freak out over the whole thing. Absolute mess of fucking tears.
I watched every frame of the video project. Then I double checked my work as my heart found another new break every blow into Noah. Every fucking angle of the cameras catching it. The saddest thing about it is, I had to put it into slow-mo to catch the beginning. It lasted only ten seconds, and I didn't realize when I drove up to the house that was damn near the beginning of it. I live eight minutes away from Noah, not speeding. And to get to that house I was speeding. So, the cop for some reason reach for Noah. He flinched away from the touch jerking back fast and it spooked the police officers. And they beat the shit out of him. Piling on top of him. And what made it worst was them coming after me because after that he started to break free. Which barely slowed them down from subduing a man who for the most part wasn't fighting back. He can easily bench press me, and two other people. Those idiots stopped and thought about it for half a second. A little de-escalation could have been used, they didn't though. But my fear and anger wasn't stopping. We still had to get him out of that station in one piece.
The paparazzi were ghouls and like ghouls they didn't wait a second for their pound of flesh. I couldn't know what they knew. The only thing I could do is get to the car. My tablet with the whole awful events audio version. I also pulled up the IP camera downloading and backing up the footage. The video was both physical copy and on my own encrypted web server I used for clients. Also, triple backed it up to a web-based storage I used for a job I did in my early years, fully encrypted as well. I wasn't fucking around. They didn't know who the fuck they were dealing with but they'd fucking know when I was done. Will know my name and know to fear it, goddamn it.
My hand shook as I got everything in a video timeline fast. Setting everything up with press packages. Working so fast that my carpal tunnel syndrome flared with fiery, sharp pain in my wrist.I kept going and set a timer for the release with a password to keep resetting it in case I was charged as well. I was not fucking around and this I promised the ancestors would blow up in their face.
The story was going to leak one way or another. Otherwise all these ghouls wouldn't be already picking at the bones. Searching out crispy fleshy bits before the house even finished burning down. All the safety I'd built in Noah and Zoey's home. When I had next to nothing they were there for me. In a way, they were family to me as much as my family was to me. Even if me and Noah never got back together, they'd both stay that way for me.
I had a mission, and I was sticking to it. Also, I'd not trust anyone from the police to actually release the police cam in a timely fashion. The simple fact of the matter is if they think they did nothing wrong they release it as quickly as possible. But on the off chance they think they did something wrong they will bog that shit down for weeks. And as the weeks pile up before the story gets cleared Noah will be villainized. The person they probably violated. So even if they do get cleared it will be too late to save anything. Plus, they will never admit fault of any kind. I wasn't fucking with these people I'm not stupid.
A quick text to Noah's lawyer yielded a good result. She'd meet him at the station. I was zoning out of the surrounding people. Stopping for Sara wasn't an option. All I could do was send a message to back up the file to the server. The woman was destroyed. Her hair is a mess. Plus, her eyes are like a stunned raccoon's trap in a trash can. With that how the fuck did I get here look? She really couldn't believe what happened. It spun out of control so quickly. Add to it, she had more faith in the cops than I was raised to have. For her maybe this was popping the Abercrombie bubble.
No matter how much I might have wanted to have myself a real cry, it wasn't going to happen. I had so much shit to do.
a/n: this is more of a bonus.