The Scythe's Song | By : hallowedmaiden Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 2844 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
Disclaimer: I do not own POTC or the characters and I do not make any money from this story. |
Rich, cloaked in tinted black cars, watching the city fly by tucked away in the safety of what money can offer...poor, watching the rich look at them with that complication in their eyes...to help or to ignore, to be ignorant or to lower themselves for the gratification or heroship…
...Old, seeing the thundering world with knowing eyes, eyes that have seen too much, perhaps things they shouldn't have, but should and shouldn'ts sometimes get lost in a world like this...the old go day by day battling with losing their place, their belonging. Concepts and connections, things and places, things within those places, places made by those things...language, people...everything changes, while the old are still tethered to one place, one time...maybe everyone is doomed to live in the world that produced them, only seeing the new through a glass window….
A window caked with grime and must and the cloud of age, true age that comes from sitting alone in a desolate wasteland of technology, advancement...humans will never really advance, the race is eternally doomed to running in place, looking at an imaginary horizon, full of imaginary dreams and imaginary futures, hollow, obscure, obtuse even...they fret over what new scientific discovery might come about, they squabble over laws and policies, riots in the streets and death threats being commonplace, all over social abstractions and identity…
Yet all of them...at least, most of them, fail to see the only real truth...life as a concept, life as a whole, no matter who is trying to define it...it doesn't mean anything...the entirety of the animal kingdom could be erased off of the face of the earth...barely anything would change...humans could all die tomorrow, nothing would change...humans live, and humans die, and the things they do that have any impact on their individual lives...it floats away, becomes nothing in the grand ether of everyone else…ideas and thoughts and legacies may linger still, but even those are forgotten eventually, left to be twisted and recycled into something entirely unrecognizable…
There is a smaller truth, one that grinds against the utter base of humanity...that they are all expendable, blips in the universe...that smaller truth of individual power, of presence, of mindfulness...the human mind is capable of believing itself so important that it can assign importance to all minds around it, to every mind on Earth, the selfishness of being a person, of accepting the sentience of oneself...it is the folly of man to think of themselves as important...why live if you cannot have a reason to live, but then they fill their time with searching, reaching, looking, and never finding the answer, because there are no answers, there is nothing except for the inevitable coffin and loss of everything about a person that the individual mind thought mattered.
So, what then is the point in the creation of a human, and what motivation does a human have to take every step across the Earth, to open their eyes from the temporary death of slumber...to create thought, to make waves, to act...what do the young see the world as, those that are not jaded, processed...do they see a giant sandbox, do they see something to play in, to mold and shape...how can a human do anything knowing that there is always an end?
The world played a neat trick on people, on their minds...populated their dreams and their thoughts with so much imagery, so much, that it made itself endless, like the sea, a vast expanse of space...like a city, where no matter where you stand, the roads turn into another road, and then another road...just another idea that on the surface has meaning, but when examined closer, joins the plethora of substance on the planet that is pointless in the end. The people who built the cities, they are all long gone, the people enjoying the cities now, even if enjoying is a thin word to use, they will soon be dead…
Death, such an unforgiving concept, yet beautiful in its own right...everything succumbs to it, inanimate and organism alike. Even the greats...Gandhi, Hitler, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, all of them, for all of their grand ideas, and grand talents, and grand presence, even they couldn't escape death because death does not care about paintings or inventions, politics or peace, death exists as a reminder…
But being human himself, it would be dreadfully boring to detach from life, to accept that nothing he was doing would last...true enough, he often questioned everything with a tired "why", went backward and forward in his mind about the point of all of it...especially since the one thing he believed that made life worth living until there wasn't a life to live...it had been taken from him too...love, life's cruel tease...it made you enjoy your time, made you forget that it couldn't go on forever...and then when it's gone, you wonder whether it was even real, or if it was just a figment of your imagination, like everything else.
The problem with sentience, with that awareness, is that humans cannot accept that nothing means anything, they can't go on like that, so they conjure meaning, they find it in the most mundane places, they try to connect things together, wild networks of images, thoughts...they create, and expand, and nurture...they convince themselves, as far as they possibly can, that they are immortal.
The door behind him opened with a soft click, scratching the thin carpet of the luxury hotel room, and then closed with another soft click. Repetition...sometimes he liked that.
"Izumi-san?"
Naoki.
A quiet man, yet that didn't fool many people into thinking he was vacant, far from it, in fact. He was the only person in the world that he found to be on par with his own intellect.
At least, until now.
Because life had given him a drive...a goal...the only other thing besides love that kept his heart beating, that kept him from giving up…
Two goals, intertwined and roped together...the mechanics of such a union unclear still, but he would unravel them.
A concept...intuition had always been abstract to him, imaginary...logic, reason and evidence was what made decisions...not feeling.
But...he felt a presence now...an equal...if such a thing exists among people...like his mind had found the corresponding card in the deck, the hero to the villain...and those things definitely didn't exist, not in the real world.
And if they did, which part would each of them occupy? The classical dichotomy of good versus evil, yet another thing that death made superfluous...villains and heroes died in the end regardless of who came out on top…
Jack Sparrow...a thief, yet somehow he knew that he was so much more than that...an enigma...a puzzle...something to unravel, and he knew even now that every time he stripped another layer of the man away, he was risking a piece of himself at the same time...able to twist Scotland Yard into a mess just from a threatening phone call and a ruse…
Chess...a dangerous game of chess between him and Jack was just beginning, starting to form, both of them miles away from each other, not yet seeing clearly, seeing the other as a shapeless entity...to the other, they could be anything, but soon they would reveal one card at a time, until there was no more deck to draw from…
...until one of them was dead.
"They're all so small, aren't they?"
Naoki was standing beside him now, holding the same tumbler of sake that his two fingers gripped, the liquid untouched.
Both of their gazes were drawn to the small crowd of people standing on the street corner below the hotel room, waiting for the final bus to arrive, only half of them illuminated by the orange glow of the tall street light. Strange for people to be out there at five in the morning, perhaps not for the big city, but Bath...
"From up here, everything looks small," Naoki replied, sweeping his glass in an arc across the window.
The world was small, in many ways, no matter how vast it may seem, because the only part of a world that a person can see at any given time was the distance their eyes could look...beyond that, the world may not even exist...and the people, to most...to most, everyone else just looked like faceless shapes, shifting and moving across the ground like items on conveyor belts, always moving and traveling to the next, to somewhere else…
But then, for every person, there was a specially selected handful of others, people that matched a certain formula...friends, lovers, husbands, wives...even idols...everyone in the world was something to someone else, and beyond that familiar circle, people were just a concept.
Because no one in the world cared about everyone, no matter what they claimed.
"Yet, out there somewhere, are a hundred things that could ruin me."
"Or a hundred things that could help you."
"Ah, always the optimist, Naoki. You should teach your brother that trick."
"Koji is far too stubborn to learn anything from me."
As he said it, he turned towards him to highlight the bruise on his neck.
"So, did you come to tell me how it is that Suzuki escaped?"
"I...didn't think I needed to."
His gaze was drawn away from the window then, peering down into the dark brown sake instead. "Indeed. At least this way I can now ask her why she lied to me before I personally end her."
"Lied? You think she was lying?"
"Oh, I don't think, I know."
"Care to explain?"
It was the hidden things, the mechanics behind the surface that gave people away, the things that they couldn't prevent with speech alone, things that manipulation and talking and misleading couldn't cloak.
"Let's take it one at a time, shall we? He started, turning to face Naoki. "Jack Sparrow, the mysterious thief. We know he is resourceful, smart, not one to cower."
Naoki nodded, a look of mutual suspicion adorning his face.
"Yet, he might as well not exist. He's made no move."
"That we've seen."
"Oh no, Naoki, Sparrow isn't a man to whisper here and there, shift little things into place slowly, unless necessary. He is a man that likes results, quickly. Sure, he can play a long game when he feels bored, but when there is a real threat, he doesn't play, he works."
"You...think she warned him about you?"
"I do, which brings us to our first lie. She does know where he lives. The fact that she went to such lengths to protect him...it speaks of a closer acquaintance than she let on."
"Protect him?"
"Ah, that brings us to our second lie. When I say 'protect him', I mean protect her for him."
"The woman she talked about...Elizabeth?"
"Elizabeth. I believe her and Sparrow are involved...romantically. It is the only reason that he is being quiet. He has other things to worry about besides himself. If he didn't, I suspect I would have had several near death experiences already."
He could tell that Naoki wanted to ask about his connection to Liz, but wisely avoided it.
"And is there anything else? What about the evidence?"
What about the evidence, indeed.
"It is possible that Sparrow has it, but she could have been lying about that too. There is a child at stake...that drives any person to extreme decisions."
Naoki downed his sake in one elegant swallow, and then sighed.
"So, what is the plan?"
The plan.
The chessboard.
Where did the pieces fit, and who had which piece? Where did everyone stand in this story of insanity and crime, of morals and lack thereof…
The police, the protectors, working diligently in the background, yet oblivious to the leak in their system...the Cartel, the other half of the battlefield...Elizabeth, his target, Gabriella...an innocent caught in the middle of everything, and her parents...victims of the poison…
Like his wife…
Jack, the other player...still shadowy across the table, keeping his strategies and plays to himself for now…
And all of the unknowns, having not yet revealed themselves to the challengers, wildcards thrown in along the way to shake the game up.
Was it the puppet masters, were they going to be the last ones standing? Him and Jack, alone and bleeding, alone without anyone else, fighting to the death...or was it going to be a different sort of game...where there were no real challengers, were everyone was fighting everyone else...where they all realized that good and evil, power and knowledge...the only thing that ever mattered was who won in the end...which one of them got to forget about death just for a little longer.
A game of intelligence, of information revealed, of hands shown, a cold war, fought in the silence, in the dark of night, by knights, the kind that only fought for themselves, and their own worlds, their own little worlds...what did he have to fight for at this point?
Revenge...Jack Sparrow had interfered in his life, and that was something he could not permit.
Elizabeth had killed his wife.
Fate putting two people together that were both going to die by his hand...how interesting.
But none of that meant it was going to be easy. The only thing that life had to offer, besides death, was sometimes wishing death may come a little sooner to avoid the unforgiving nature of life...sometimes life overcame death in that respect, teaching death a new meaning of cruel, because life almost cared that it tortured, ate away, bruised...while death just ended things, erased things...life carried on, and on, prolonging all of the pain it collects and builds along the way.
"We need to find Suzuki. I want you to go to the airport. Look for her there. Stay there until you find her. Bring Tsubasa. When you do find her, let me know."
His first move. Take down the piece on the chessboard that was already chipped, already crumbling onto the surface...the first losing pawn.
In the background...he needed to figure out what Jack knew...what his thoughts were...whether he was prepared to throw the chessboard to the ground to win, or if he cared about the pieces…
What kind of enemy was he?
"Hai, mochiron."
And what kind of pawns was everyone else?
Could they become queens or kings, depending on the moves of the players, or would they go rogue...playing their own game off the board.
As it was with the way of the world, there was never any real control, just the illusion that you could control.
To some, it was enough.
"Izumi-san?"
"Hm?"
"Why count Sparrow as an offensive enemy? Why not defensive?"
He thought about the question for a moment.
"Because, Naoki, it's the same reason that he sees me as an offensive enemy. We have both stepped into the others periphery, territory, circle, and neither of us like an intrusion. Also, collect Suzuki's vehicle. I have plans for it."
The other man nodded once and left the room just as he finally finished his glass of sake.
The mirror across the room held her reflection, her black hair swept up in a neat ponytail, dark brown lipstick adorned her lips, and a stillness lay in her eyes. She looked perfectly professional.
Suzuki, the assassin. Suzuki, the guardian. Suzuki...what else was she?
A dull gray, a gray the same color as the disgusting slush in the winter, that dirty gritty gray, the entire room was washed in it...it touched everything, turned the walls bland, washed out the red in the bed comforter…
...just like everything was blanketed by the dull melancholy of a morning without a rising sun, that stillness...almost as though the world was tired, waking up with labored breathing, wanting nothing more than to shut the city back down, turn the sky dark again, and make the earth fade away into the distant background of the universe.
Her hands were rubbing against the rough fabric of the comforter every time they twitched, trembled with some deep-rooted reserve of nervousness...but her back was straight, her chin raised...the heaviness of her gaze had been leveled at the door of her hotel room for ten minutes, not that she expected anyone to come through it.
7 A.M., the busses were running, the city had come out of its temporary death...London never slept, but here, the dark erased almost any signature of life...turning everything...peaceful.
At least, it was peaceful to the people who didn't know better...good for them, having that kind of awareness only sapped happiness...the two halves, happy and ignorant, smart and desolate. Knowing too much, it took the mystery out of life, like a child unwrapping his Christmas presents in July, or someone learning their death date at the age of eleven. You stop running, you stop searching for answers. Instead, you search for ways to make the answers you have make sense.
Not that anyone really succeeds...people like her, like Jack, Elizabeth...Izumi, Arturo...they had all seen the construction of the game, the bits and pieces and the inner workings, the faults, the holes...all they had left was conquering...making the world know they knew, knew how it worked, knew how to play, knew how to win
Some people were lucky enough to have someone to win for, someone to step into the wild with, to take the colors of the world and paint their own picture...and some people were too interested in the game to remember that there were others around them, that others could mean something.
The challenge was to keep playing, to throw all of your chips in besides the ones that matter, because once you bet it all, once you lose it all, you understand only in that moment that playing the game was never worth all of that, that you lost everything because you wanted to win, because stepping away was never an option.
Pride could be a nasty possession, and it did possess.
And she was playing, stepping into the open world with enemies hunting her down...the city...time, luck...the big challengers, those ones that she couldn't control...humans, they could be pinned down, learned...but concepts, things that exist in the membranes of society, of the universe...they had powers beyond her understanding.
There was a million hotel rooms like this in the UK, all filled with the same shitty televisions, the same crusty carpets, the same windows overlooking the same scenery...the only difference is whether the person staying in them is staying to run away from life, or to run into life...or if they are waiting for life to run to them.
But she had a special case...she was running to get life back, to reclaim something...it made her feel like a hero for a second...in a world where everything was painted black and white, human souls were good and evil, and evil was conquered…
That world didn't apply when the hero spent the other half of her day killing people.
When you climb a mountain, you start at the bottom, and you look up before you start...you see how high the world goes, how much height you are going to ascend…
...and it makes you feel small, it makes you feel like the mountain owns you, like the world owns you, and when you start to climb, that feeling fades every time you make dust and debris fall down from your feet...you're getting somewhere, you're going higher...your muscles may ache, your skin may burn, but you're still climbing.
Then you reach the top, maybe after a day, maybe a few days...you breathe in the air, you look around, feel the stillness, or the wind hitting your cheeks...and you ask yourself…
Now what?
Because that accomplishment, that sense of fulfillment...it gives way to realizing that nothing changed, that all you did was climb a mountain, all you did was climb it...you didn't move it, you didn't change it, you just climbed it, and now you have to climb down back into the shit, back into the cesspool…
She had stopped climbing mountains, but she was still rising and falling, winning and losing, and the cycle, the wheel, it was never going to stop spinning, not for her, not for anyone.
That concept, of winning and losing, playing the game...it wasn't real, no one ever won, not really. People might gain for a little while, they might be on top for five minutes, an hour, a few days, but another always comes to take the crown, to put you back in second place...and when you did get that last word in, when you did come out on top for that infinitesimal amount of time...someone else always got burned...that was the consequence of wanting to win.
You left behind casualties.
Perhaps she should feel bad about what she did to Jack...to Lizzie...perhaps she did...but that wild variable...amidst all of the planning and coordinating, thinking...the variable was the moment, and the impulsiveness of humans...angry, reckless, like the best computer in the world still fucking up because it is a hunk of metal and plastic and it and everything else in the world will never be without faults.
The beginning of life...infants, and then children...their slate is clean, unmarked...she thought people should envy them more, recognize the purity of them. Only the child can be surrounded by evil and depravity and know that there is no path to take, yet look up into the sky and see something better, see a world away from their own.
Even a child living in perhaps the greatest cesspool on Earth...a drug cartel...Gabriella was a soldier, no doubt...intelligent beyond her years, always so curious, sometimes to a disadvantage. She practically lived at the library...at least when she was home. Now she was being used as punishment...and perhaps the thing that terrified her the most about it, was Brielle figuring out the reality of everything as she got older...understanding the depravity of what her father had turned into...how close she was to death every second of her life...both her own death and the death of those around her...she feared that time would make the light in that little girl's eyes go out as it had done to her so long ago, before she took her first life, before she even saw a gun.
Sometimes she saw herself in the way Brielle turned the pages of books, like she was searching for something beyond the paper and ink...in the way her eyes, even now, would regard strangers with uncertainty, suspicion...the little girl's eyes reminded her of someone else too, in those moments when she feared she knew too much or had started to...it was Jack's eyes, that jade, that...age in them, as though she was already prepared to wash her hands of the world and the people, plans, a future...everything be damned.
Jack's eyes had changed since...but she knew that the cold could return to them just like winter returns on the heels of fall...all it would take was the wrong intrusion, a crack in the carefully constructed life he surrounded himself with.
And she would be damned if she let Gabriella go through life like Jack had...a hand on a gun and an eye over his shoulder every waking moment...no, Gabriella would know life, enjoy life, just like Rosalina kept telling her…"Hay muchas maravillas en la vida, pero solo las verás si tratas a la vida misma como una maravilla."
There are many wonders of life, but you will only see them if you treat life itself as a wonder.
A fine goal, if life was worth treating wonderfully.
That was what divided people, in the end, really. Those that could, and those that couldn't anymore.
She was determined to make the line between them a chasm for that little girl so that she may never need to cross over.
Taking a deep breath, rising from the bed on the edge of her inhale, she let the air out of her lungs slowly, with a measured evenness, then stepped over to the hotel phone, dialing a number that she barely needed to think about anymore, yet the way her fingers deliberately punched in the numbers…
The voice on the other line answered on the second ring.
"Bueno?"
"Nicolas, buenos dias, or should I say buenas noches?"
There was a rustling noise on the other end, probably a pack of cigarettes, or he was opening a fresh case of beer.
"Hola, Suzuki. Hay noticias?"
For a moment, she wondered what all he knew...surely he had seen the bomb threat covered on the news…
"Que sabes?"
What do you know…
"It was all over the news...the violencia at the Departamento de Policia...I imagine that was the price to pay for this mess…"
"Si...this mess indeed...but it is hopefully over soon. How is Rosalina?"
"Rosalina...she's...fine. Worried, but then I think we all are."
"Better than being cómodo, I think. I called you to tell you that my part in this is done, as is Arturo's, hopefully. He got what he wanted, I got what I wanted...I'll be back in Méjico
by tonight...well, morning there."
"Me alegro. And my niñita?"
"I am going to collect her as soon as I hang up the phone. As soon as I have her, she'll be safe."
"Arturo is a slippery man."
"Si, he is, but he gains nothing from her retention."
A few moments went by before he spoke again.
"I hope you're right."
In the background, she heard a soft female voice ask something about Gabriella, and Nicolas replied with a "soon, Rosa"...
"Yo también, Nicolas. I will see you when your sun rises. Adios-"
"One more thing, Suzuki...are you sure that everyone got what they wanted?"
"...you mean the Yakuza? They are not a threat, Nicolas. I assure you."
Another few moments, the silence between them was just long enough to let her doubt creep in.
"Alright. When my sun rises."
"Cuando se ven las sombras."
When the shadows are seen…
"One more thing for you, Nicolas. Have you learned your lesson in all of this?"
A throaty sigh, then what sounded like a swallow.
"...Too many lessons...too many."
After a quiet "adios", the line went dead.
Eight in the morning.
The sleep he had gotten since the tub had been more of a nap...only four hours...
He had hoped...thought…
...hoped that the hot bath would soothe some of the aches that were plaguing his body, that had been plaguing his body ever since he had taken this bloody job, under duress...well, duress of himself being too distracted by suddenly having Lizzie back in his life, duress of not wanting to deal with assassination attempts from Suzuki, duress of the thorn in his side that was fucking Handa, and the duress of being so goddamn bored.
After coming to the conclusion that it was his body punishing him for swimming in the lava like he always did, he had chosen to dutifully ignore the very obvious signs of physical and mental stress...well, more so than he usually did, anyway.
Normally, he just chalked it up as part of being a criminal, part of doing the jobs he did, flying on the edge of the law, on the edge of death, on the edge of losing everything at any given moment. And normally, he didn't second-guess his choices, because he never had fucking time for that.
But that was before.
When the world barely meant anything anyways, the sky could have turned purple and he probably wouldn't have cared...dinosaurs could have made a sudden reappearance...maybe it could have started raining diamonds...the fucking Purge might have even happened...rum might have-
...no, he would have noticed that even if he was dying from the plague, being possessed by Satan, and...well.
Now, he noticed when the temperature changed outside, noticed weather patterns, noticed how fucking nice his cars were, actually scrolled through the news on his phone...at least until he had about all he could handle of it…he noticed the most mundane shit like they were all winning lottery tickets.
He had seen things before, the world, people, stuff, things...but he hadn't really seen, in the way that mattered...with appreciation, with the thought of 'oh, I actually enjoy being alive again, imagine that'...
How fucking dark...
Then again, everything in his life was a little dark since...forever. A father that could barely be called a human being...losing his mother, running straight into his fate of being a pirate by actually trying to do the right thing and losing his ship...then going full retard (a quote he joyfully applied to many things in his past since seeing Tropic Thunder) and making a deal with Sea Satan to raise his ship...then going full retard again by giving up the heading to Isla de Muerta only to be marooned on an island that he'd been resigned to dying on...losing his ship a-fucking-again (it still kind of pissed him off)...
Better stop now before he ended up falling asleep on the damn table thinking of all the shit he had done and seen since then…
The point was that this job was quickly becoming something far more sinister...a war.
And something told him that he would've been declared as an enemy whether he had taken the job or not…
...at least, eventually.
Fate had a funny way of making him involved in shit that he wanted no part of…
Thank fuck for the fact that he knew a thing or two about wars, about playing the game...both because he had been involved in several wars, and because he fancied himself a historical expert on global conflict.
However, the current climate of the war was absolutely not to his liking...he would have preferred getting death threats over the silence...the not knowing...and as he sat there breathing in the dewy scent of the air coming from the open window, coupled with the soothing soft light of the English morning, and the birds chirping outside...something became very clear to him.
His fucking shoulder killed.
It probably didn't help that he was hunched over glaring into his steaming mug of untouched coffee, wishing that the answer to all of his problems would come climbing out to wave at him. Though he rather thought that problems were a paltry description of…
Nevermind swimming in lava, he was perched right at the top of an active goddamn volcano.
But what other person had four people willingly perched there with him, prepared to get blown into the fucking stratosphere as volcanic ash, coming back down to the ground slowly, drowning out sunlight in the process?
No one, that's who.
And he had a nice ass fucking house, a lot of nice cars, all the alcohol he could ever need…
Not that any of that was going to mean shit if anything went dramatically south in the next few days…
He would be damned twice and sentenced to life in Hell, the Locker, and whatever other doom existed before he let any of them get hurt.
And what the fuck had he made this coffee for if he wasn't going to drink it?
Maybe something was missing...he gazed around his kitchen mural, hoping that Zeus could float out of the wall and give him some advice…
A ghost of warmth floated across his neck...strange...also strange that a voice was evidently attached to it, a sweet husky-from-sleep feminine voice, coming from a lovely mouth attached to a beautiful angel, the one that was currently kissing her way up his neck to arrive at his ear.
"Why are you up early?"
Because I'm an insufferable insomniac Lizzie, you know this.
"Woke up, couldn't get back to sleep, so I came in here and made this mug of coffee that I haven't even touched yet."
"Mmm." Her teeth sunk into his earlobe with a little nibble before the comforting warmth of her presence suddenly vanished, and his eyes followed her as she crossed the room to his stash of alcohol...his brain caught up with what she was doing a second before she extracted his bottle of Captain Morgan.
"Are you sure you're actually Jack Sparrow? I find it very difficult to believe that you would forget that you like a shot of rum in your coffee."
Of course. Obviously. Obviously I am Jack Sparrow, obviously I like rum in my coffee, and I definitely, completely, entirely forgot.
"Ahh, that's why I have you around, to make sure that I get all of the rum I need."
And to turn his heart into a mushy mess, his brain into a state of dumb that only allowed him to think about her...when all of his power of focus wasn't being sent by his brain elsewhere...and only she had the ability to make him feel okay about everything.
He watched the amber liquid stream out of the bottle into the mug appreciatively, leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the hand holding it, the hand that could calm him down even if he was stuck in a blind rage, the hand that could bring him such pleasure…
...and the hand that lovingly flicked him off once in awhile. That always made him laugh at her.
"Besides, maybe that lovely bath addled my brain."
That got a laugh out of her as she sat down in the chair to his right, scooting it closer to him.
"There are many things that addle your brain, love, but water has never been one of them."
Stupidity, non-alcoholic beer (what the fuck's the point), slow cars, slow drivers, a lack of alcohol (though having it now required a proper time and place)...he noticed her eyes surveying him with that knowing look...that look of 'something is wrong and you're not telling me', and he sighed, already resigned to revealing the thing that she would eventually figure out anyways.
"My shoulder...well, it's my back, really. It hurts."
The rum swished in the bottle, the now glowing kitchen light illuminating it as she brought it to her lips to take a swig. "And how long has this been going on?"
He really did bloody love her and her ability to see right through him. It helped with the torturous process of explaining things he didn't really want to explain. "Don't know, awhile."
With a short sigh and a small smile that just quirked up the corner of her mouth, her hands dove under his gray long-sleeved shirt and dragged until it was bunched up at his neck, exposing his entire back, skin and tattoo.
"Where at?"
Succeeded by her lips skittering across his skin, almost like she was carving out her own line of words in the poem.
"Just in the middle of my shoulder blade, on the right,"
She arranged her chair so that it was behind him, arranged him so that his chair was facing the other way, leaving his back exposed, and then planted her legs on either side of him, and then her fingers got to work. The immediate pleasure entirely stole his ability to curb his reactions, a long groan making its way out of his mouth.
"How do you always know…"
There was a smile on her face behind him, he knew it, could practically feel it. "Because I love you."
Rum, life, and Lizzie. Eternal life.
Only made worth something because he had Lizzie.
What more could he need?
A surefire way to fuck it all up, apparently.
"Mmm, well then remind me to-oh my god-to...to...what was I saying?"
"Pretty sure you were talking about how you are going to make staying here just as fun as Lima would've been."
Oh. That. They had decided upon exiting the bath that it was in their best interests to stay here. Logically, it made sense to flee the kitchen if there was a squealing smoke alarm, a stove on fire, and a collapsing ceiling…
But now they had stakes, things to lose, things to worry about, things that might not survive impulsive decisions, like leaving.
"You sound like you doubt me."
"And you sound like you are preparing to disappoint me."
Not quite.
"We do have a bed. And a shower. And a couch. And a table," and then he realized he was counting off on his fingers as he said each. Six more fingers to go. "We have cars, chairs, countertops, a pool, the floor, and plenty of walls."
She leaned forward again to kiss his head. "Why is it always sex that you use to pretend like something isn't bothering you?"
The words "nothing is bothering me" tried their mightiest to be uttered, but it was not to be. There was no pretending with her. Never had been. The second she had demanded to know the true story of the island, a million years ago, he had crumbled like a poorly constructed sand castle.
'Last time…last time I was here a grand total of three days, alright?'
'That's the grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow? You spent three days, lying on a beach, drinking rum.'
"Who says I was pretending...maybe you're pretending."
Her fingers gave one last rub before she tugged his shirt back down, keeping her hands under it. "Right. You should call Suzuki at some point. Make sure she made it out of the U.K."
"I will tomorrow morning."
Not that he necessarily cared about Suzuki, he certainly didn't wish her dead, but beyond that...the thing that had been recently nagging at him since last night, that had been swimming in and out of his thoughts, a blood-starved thought vampire...there was a little girl at stake now…
A little girl that already saw enough shit being buried in the bowels of a drug cartel, now she had been drug into something that a child had no place being in...thrown around like a bargaining chip, like an item...a commodity.
He feared for her, but he couldn't place why.
"Surprised you care."
"I don't. I care about the little girl-"
"Me too, love."
The rum coffee was still hot when he brought the mug to his lips, taking a good long swallow.
Me too.
Her arms tightened around him, pulling his body closer to her in a hug.
Just then the other three walked in from the hallway like a strange version of the Three Musketeers.
"Morning," he and Lizzie said at the same time, half paying attention to the direction they went into the kitchen. Shawn to the pot of coffee, Chris to the fridge, and Ringa to the alcohol cupboard. Tequila, probably.
They responded back with "morning" at different times, and they all sounded like death. Chris turned around and peered at the position they were in.
"Did we interrupt something?"
Yes, Chris. I was going to lay Lizzie on the table in just a few moments, damn your timing.
"She was trying to fix my shoulder."
"And her hands got lost?"
"This is my house. If you don't like what I do in my house-"
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you too. I sign your paychecks."
"Jack, you fucking pay me in cash."
Lizzie was giggling at their antics behind him. Of course she would find it funny. It was good that any of them could still find things funny, he supposed.
The chair at the other end of the table was pulled out, Ringa sinking into it with a tumbler of tequila. "Chris filled me in on the drama from last night. Muy jodido."
Pretty fucked was right. He had not expected Suzuki to run her mouth, and he had not expected to be exposed to a Yakuza boss. He might as well run into Parliament waving a shotgun around screaming "fuck the government"...
Or maybe not. He wasn't stupid or crazy. At least, not at the same time, usually.
Lizzie returned her chair to its original position, and he almost protested at the loss of her hands on his chest.
Chris and Shawn took the other two chairs on the left and right, setting down their coffee and soda. "So, now the Yakuza know your name. This person...Izumi…"
But Chris trailed off when he didn't have anything to actually describe the man. None of them did.
"Yeah, and it makes me about as uncomfortable as losing several poisonous snakes in my house."
"And he thinks you have the evidence?"
Maybe. No. Possibly.
It depended on whether he had bought Suzuki's lies. And with no measure of the man's intelligence, the fact that he had managed to capture Suzuki at all notwithstanding, he couldn't settle on an answer.
"I think for now we should assume that he thinks that. Prepare for the worst."
"We have already started preparing," Lizzie continued for him. "We're not going to Lima. As much protection as you would have in this house, both from artillery and the fact that no one knows where it is, we don't think leaving is the best option at the moment."
The can of soda made a hissing noise when Chris popped it open, before glancing up at Lizzie. "With the way things are going, I am not entirely sure that you would be safe even if you did go to Lima."
He wished he knew if that were true, but he just...didn't. Hated not knowing his enemy, hated being so blind.
In his pirating days, back when the world wasn't so damn complex, it was fine if they came upon an unfamiliar enemy ship, because the variety of tactics that could be used against him was a short list. But now, everyone had the entire world at their disposal, the ways of communicating had advanced, everything had so many layers, overlaps, connections…
For all he knew, Izumi already knew that he had booked a damn plane ticket to Lima.
Fuck Suzuki.
"Either you're considering murdering your coffee mug, or you're still pissed about Suzuki," Chris said, amused.
Of course he was still pissed about her. The one thing that they had needed to manage was keeping their involvement in the evidence theft unknown. And they would have been just fine if Suzuki had told him the fucking truth in the first place.
"She fucked us over. Bad."
Chris nodded, but he nodded in that 'I only half agree with you' way.
"What?"
"I mean, she did lie about Lizzie. You have to give her some credit."
"Doesn't change the fact that if she had told me that a little girl was dependent on the job, I might have suggested doing things a little differently. A little more quietly. Might have taken longer, might have had more risk in different areas, but it would have kept the Yakuza from learning that we were involved."
Under the table, warm fingers curled around his own, stroking softly. "We can't really change what already happened, so there is no point in ruminating about it. All we can do is try and plan for whatever the fuck we are going to face next."
"See, at least Lizzie is pretending to not hate her."
He almost laughed at the look she sent Chris just before Shawn piped up. "Kind of fucked that people throw children around like that, like they are just objects. Kind of fucked that children are in that kind of environment at all."
Shawn had seen some shit involving kids, he knew. Kids that were living on the street, kids that jumped from house to house because their own house was too unsafe to be in. Kids hooked on drugs, kids selling drugs, kids selling guns...the world wasn't kind to anyone.
Then again, it never really had been. Cavemen had to learn the hard way which berries were poisonous and which weren't. Then they realized eventually that other humans could be dickheads, and that they could be dickheads in return, creating war. Basically one fuck up after another ever since the discovery that rubbing sticks and flint together made fire.
"Yeah, it is. I was telling Lizzie just before you guys came blundering in here that I was worried about...what did Suzuki say her name was?"
"Gabriella," came Ringa from across the table. "Pretty name."
"She shouldn't be involved in all of this shit," he said to no one in particular.
"Her parents," Shawn started with a tinge of aggression in his voice, "are the ones continuing to keep her there."
"Didn't Suzuki say that the reason the Cartel took her in the first place was that the father tried to leave?" Lizzie asked.
"Yeah, I guess. Still, sounds like her parents have strange priorities."
"Cartels can have a toxic effect on everything they come into contact with," Ringa said. "They make the people dependent on them, brainwash them...the Cartel life is so integrated sometimes that it is almost impossible to break free."
The Yakuza was no different.
He watched Ringa finish off her tequila. "We are going to have to keep an eye on the news. The Trivoly woman isn't going to just disappear if we ignore her."
"Going to be kind of hard to defend against law enforcement if they manage to do their jobs correctly for once. Not a great track record, considering the three major security breaches they had not too long ago," Lizzie said as she took a sip of his rum coffee.
Tower of London, Bank of England, and fucking Pentonville Prison. He was still side-eyeing the competency of Scot-New Scotland Yard after that shitstorm.
"Trivoly seems to be a competent detective, but she also seems like she enjoys the chase more than she enjoys doing things by the books. I think things could get interesting with her."
"And what about Izumi? I realize that there isn't much we can do until...until he does something, but we can't just sit here and wait."
He studied Chris's face for a moment, coming to the same conclusion, and the same solution, that he had arrived at while in his own headspace in the tub.
"I'm not sure I could handle just sitting here and waiting anyway. We need information, from them."
"...Yeah, I was afraid you would say that."
"He's got a couple of goons, henchman, foot soldiers, whatever you want to call them, here with him. If Lizzie and I can corner one of them, alone, we might be able to shake some intelligence loose. Get a better picture of the situation."
"Is that our only option?" Shawn asked
Better than sitting here doing nothing. At least this way, they would have some balls in their court.
Lizzie had her head tilted at him. "Shawn, I don't think Jack would seriously suggest the kidnap and interrogation of a Yakuza member if there were any other options."
Time to move the first pawn across the chessboard.
"We'll do it tonight when it gets dark. Think Lizzie and I will probably take a short nap at some point. Didn't get much sleep."
"What about Handa?" Chris asked. "Can't see him suddenly thinking of you as his best friend."
Handa, that psychopathic rich disgusting shit mouth. Out of all the people he had fantasized about killing, Handa made it to the top of the fucking list as far as frequency and use of violent force went. Nail beds, wood chippers, long gruesome torture, vats of acid, running him over with all of his cars...
"I will remind Suzuki of that problem when I call her tomorrow morning. She and I will have words if she chooses to back out on that arrangement."
"Hopefully she has enough brains left to realize that fucking you over again is not in her best interests."
He chose not to mention that it would be the third time, technically, with that stunt she pulled just before she walked out the door.
"Chris, why don't you and Ringa flick through the news, see if you can pick up anything. Lizzie and I will try and come up with a plan, take a look at the city map. Shawn, I want you to go through the house and make sure that all the firearms are where they need to be, loaded, and ready to go."
They dispersed after agreeing, leaving him and Lizzie there alone.
"So, you realize that I hate this idea too, right?"
"I don't like it any more than you do. But we'll be cautious, obviously...we'll abandon the idea if I even get a hint that it might turn sour."
He knew, and she knew, that sometimes in war, you had to make moves to learn, to advance.
Do nothing, and eventually, the enemy will make the move that you should have made.
The drive back to London was quiet...there was the sound of the motorway, with all of its bumps and cracks, the noise of the tires against the road...the car she had...borrowed from Izumi was loose in the door, so a small amount of wind whistled through as she drove, but she had stopped noticing it eighty miles into the trip…
Focus, it was all she could think, and it consumed her, made her read every single street sign that she passed, memorizing the route, kept her on the lookout for anything suspicious...focus, because in the chaos it was all she could rely on at this point. Not many police cars were out and about...she had seen a few, but it gave her a sense of security...even though in her experience, law enforcement weren't reliable across the board. If they were, her job would be a lot more complicated.
Not that she couldn't handle it, but she would prefer not having to handle it.
It made her think of her place in all of this, what had led her here, the significance of these events...because really, in the grand scheme of things, it was just another power play in the world of the Cartel that had involved the wrong choice of challengers...a wildcard in Jack...the antagonist in Izumi, the distant force in the Russians, and the good guys...the cops…all wrapped up in a neat criminal network that involved far more than just trafficking.
That Trivoly woman...she hadn't seemed exactly stupid from the small bit of news coverage she had managed to catch in her hotel room. Izumi wasn't stupid either, but he was driven by self-interest...wanting to clear his name…wanting power...
She just hoped that Jack was smart enough to keep quiet unless his hand was forced. Izumi may want him dead, but Izumi had also never dealt with Jack before in any capacity, and a defensive Jack was like trying to break into Alcatraz. Next to impossible.
It was by some grace that surely lived on a very thin string that she was allowed to step out of the ring...to take leave of the battlefield...she had only one task left. Deliver Gabriella to her parents. Then she was done.
At least, with Arturo, anyway. There was still the problem of Handa, which she intended to clear up as soon as possible. That little fucker had been allowed the privilege of being alive for far longer than he deserved. His time was up.
She passed the sign for London at 9:56 A.M., and finally allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Nearly there.
McDonald's...disgusting...a bunch of random shops...the tall skyscrapers could be seen in the distance...and of course, the traffic was just starting to turn into a clusterfuck. Thankfully she had gotten an early enough start.
The petrol station was just on the edge of the airport complex, and when she turned in, she saw two black SUV's that were already parked around to the side. She drove around the pumps and parked her car on the edge of the curb, looking around her to make sure there was nothing out of place.
Finding everything to be...normal, she climbed out of the car, making sure that her .45 was tucked into the back of her pants. In front of her was the ugly generic visage of the station, and out of the corner of her eye, she spied Arturo climbing out of the back of the SUV, dressed in a suit for once in his life.
With a few steps, he reached her, stopping to extract a cigar from some pocket in his suit jacket. His pasty lips wrapped around it once it was lit, taking a long drag, and then blowing the smoke out like it was an important thing to do.
By the time he reached her, the cigar was burned down an inch.
Hopefully, this conversation would be over before it was gone.
"Hola-"
"-Where's Gabriella?"
His lips wrapped around the cigar and froze there as he regarded her cooly.
"In a hurry?"
Eyeing the smoke around him with distaste, she peered around him at the second SUV.
"London doesn't suit me."
"Ah, I'm not sure London suits anyone. Little Gabriella is waiting for you just behind me," he paused to wave his hand in that direction, "but I feel like we should cover any loose ends first."
"Loose ends?" she asked with a tight face and a clipped voice.
"Si, make sure I know what you know, and vice-versa."
"Jack did what he was hired to do, I did what I was hired to do, you have your evidence, you can shake the Yakuza off your back, Nicolas and Rosalina can have their daughter back, and the fallout was minimal. What else is there to know?"
For a second she thought he was staring behind her, but then he pointed his finger at her neck. "What are the bruises from?"
Damn. Too fucking late to play dumb now.
"Izumi...interrogated me. And before you run your mouth, I didn't tell him anything I could get away with keeping a secret."
"But you did tell him...things."
Of course she did. She had to.
"I told him...that Jack still had the evidence. He doesn't know about this," she twitched a finger back and forth between them, and then swept it in an arc to indicate the station, "and he doesn't know that you already have the box."
"And Gabriella?"
She fucking hated Izumi.
"He...found out about her and Jack through someone else. I am guessing one of yours."
It was a slow nod from him, divided by a few puffs on the cigar. "I am guessing that you are correcto. No matter, with the evidence in our possession, his hands are tied, and once you have Gabriella she is no longer my concern. Jack...he chose to place himself in the line of fire, so if he gets burned, I'm sure I will hear about it on the news. The police seem awfully keen on figuring out who was behind the bomb threat."
"They do."
He seemed awfully blasé about losing one of his own men…
"All I am concerned about now is finally destroying that box of trash, and...Nicolas. Have you spoken to him?"
"I have. I updated him on the situation."
"Good. I have hopes that this will teach him a lesson or two."
He certainly said as much.
"If not for his sake, for his family's sake."
The sentiment didn't appear to translate to Arturo, but then again, it rarely ever did.
"Can we end this charade now please?"
"Si, si, certainly. I am in a hurry as well."
He turned to motion to the Cartel henchman standing next to the second SUV, who then turned to open the back door.
Gabriella climbed out wearing jeans and a yellow t-shirt with a graphic of Mexico on it. She had that expression on her face...like she was actively learning just by looking at the environment.
It took an obscene amount of time for the pair to walk the short distance towards her, but as soon as Gabriella's hand was within reach, she reached out for it, delicately snatching her away from the man.
"Gracias," she said, but said it in a way that sounded more like "get the fuck away from us", and then turned her attention back to Arturo.
"I thank you for coming through on your promises, Suzuki. It is much appreciated."
"De nada. I hope we never meet again."
"Considering your profession, I won't hesitate to agree with you."
What she wouldn't give to have her next target be him.
Sometimes she hated when people assumed she was stupid just because she was a kid.
She understood that they were running.
That had been obvious her entire life, always running from place to place, her mother was always making her turn away from things, or go back to the car, or stay in the house...her father was always leaving, saying he didn't have time, rushing out of the door...leaving her with a sheet of homework in her hand, or a drawing…
But this was the first time that she felt like she was running for no reason.
And this was the first time she really felt like she was running away.
She was supposed to feel like she was going home, like she was running towards something better…
It was scary not being happy to go home.
Is that what her mother and father felt like? Like going home didn't change anything? Like there was always something waiting...a new problem, a bigger problem…
The city was so big, and she felt so small...but she also felt like things could happen here for her...different things...new things.
"We're going to the airport. We should be back home by tonight."
It took her a moment to realize that Suzuki had spoken to her, as she had been distracted by everything outside of the window.
"I miss my parents."
Except she said it in such a way that it held no feeling anymore, like it was just something she said, because she had spent too long missing them already that it had started to feel like it was part of her.
"I know you do."
"I missed you too."
Suzuki didn't say anything to that. It was a few more minutes before she did speak.
"I talked to your father on the phone. He misses you too, so does your mother."
"Are you okay?"
A flash of a look was all she got, a few seconds of eye contact, and then she kept driving.
"Your mother is going to keep you at home-"
"Suzi, I asked you a question."
She hadn't meant to sound so forceful, but everyone around her was always so sad, so tired, and she was tired of it.
"How I am isn't important. You're safe now, that's all that matters."
"...Oh."
Tried to focus on the approaching airport, tried to distract herself with the street signs and the other cars and anything else she could see, but the only thing that she could think about was that something was wrong.
"Where are you going after we get back?"
"I have some things to take care of."
"Think you could stay long enough to watch Treasure Island with me and-"
"No, B, I don't think so. Maybe next time."
She picked at the car seat, feeling frustrated. She didn't really care about the movie, or the car, or the airport or anything.
"I guess…"
They passed by the information building three different times, passed by the exit to the motorway three different times, and by the time they made the third round, she was able to recite the slogan on the billboard rising high above the road.
'More flights to more destinations.'
Except she doubted that people really went on vacation when they left. They took themselves with after all, and that's what everyone is always really trying to escape.
Finally, they turned into the parking lot.
"Come on, grab your backpack, make sure nothing fell out, and let's go inside. Our flight's soon."
Her brain felt like a malfunctioning merry-go-round stuck in a fever dream.
And it was only ten in the morning.
Still eight more hours of this shit to go.
Leaning forward towards her black wood coffee table, she tried to wipe the fatigue from her eyes, tried to will her brain to activate genius mode…
...who the bloody fuck was he?
Every tangent of thought, every road she went down always came back to that question. The mysterious man on the phone, the caller, the threat, a security issue, a national problem, a thief, fuckhead...she had come up with plenty of names to call him, but she knew the names of the hookers that snuck around at night better than she knew his name.
And she hated it and loved it at the same time.
Figuring his identity out wouldn't be such an obsession if she didn't believe him to be the key to the entire thing. He knew about the Cartel's involvement, he knew about the Yakuza, and if he was trusted enough to steal evidence for the Cartel in a multi-crime international case, then he could be a tool for her as well.
She still felt like she was trying to put a puzzle together blindfolded. Goddamnit.
Glancing up at the painting she had over her fireplace, a modern art piece of various newspaper clippings, all stories with ambiguous moral messages, she wondered, just for a moment, about the train of thought that she always ended up on in her rare chances of introspection.
When she had been hired on as a detective, it was with five dollars to her name, two sets of outfits, a piece of shit car, and a mission to take down every single criminal she came across.
Back then, to her, the world was easy, simple, good people stood on one side of the court, and bad people stood on the other.
Bad people did drugs, robbed grocery stores, gas stations, bad people had guns and weapons, they didn't care about civilians, they were criminals just to be criminals, they deserved what they got…
Bad people.
Bad people.
Such a thing didn't exist, she had figured out.
Good people didn't exist either.
People existed.
Just people.
And people were never completely good, or completely bad, they were on a spectrum, they tread on shades of gray, some darker than others, some walking back and forth, some wishing they could be a lighter color…
The bottom line, the end of the rope...the thing that most people had such a hard time accepting, was that anyone could rob a grocery store, anyone could start using drugs, anyone could become a criminal...all it takes is the right string of events, a bad day…
A human is nothing but an amalgamation of their experiences, and how they have translated all of the information they have taken in...into a kind of code, a framework with which they learn how to operate within the world, and that framework can shift and change and warp…
Fuck.
Her temples ached, her eyes ached, her head felt like it weighed a million pounds, because she knew that no matter how many times she tried to tell herself that her only job was to catch the bad guy, to clean the streets up, to be the protector...all she could think about was getting into their world...into the dark side, the wild side, to understand why they did what they did, what led them there, what went on in their heads...how they saw the world from their place in it, how they managed to make sense of everything…
And this...man...this...person…
Not even fucking sure why he is so fascinating...all he's done is stage a bomb threat and steal a box...but it was his presence, his…
Fuck.
Suddenly, out of the blue, her phone started screaming at her.
Bouncing back and forth about six times between ignoring the call and answering it, she finally swiped to the right and lifted the phone to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Morning, Monica. You sound tired, so I won't keep you too long."
"Oh, hello Jasper. No, well, I am tired, but it's just this case I'm on...feels like I've stumbled into the ass end of a...nevermind, it's just complicated. Really complicated."
Jasper Kingsgrove...a professor at Oxford that through a strange sequence of events involving a previous case, a small scandal, and a few drinks had become a good friend. He had a doctorate in world history and a masters in historical art, with a side hobby of linguistics.
"Don't want to tell me about it?"
"No, it would take days to even manage to make sense of it to you, and I can't."
"Of course, just trying to make conversation."
"Sure."
"Anyway, I called you to tell you that we have a painting exhibit coming in sometime soon at the BM. Not sure exactly when, but within the next month or so. Quite a few historical paintings, some that are entirely new discoveries."
"You mean like they weren't trying to find them, but just stumbled upon them?"
"Exactly, there is one I thought you would like in particular, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll wait until you see it."
"Can't wait. Keep me updated."
He hung up after a mumbled, "gotta go, students".
Paintings were a sort of side hobby of hers, though she would have a better chance of explaining just about anything else than she would explaining why she liked paintings.
She just did.
But paintings were the least of her worries right now. Cyril had warned her about the ongoing and growing problem that had plagued her ever since the bomb threat…
The press.
They were going to be waiting outside the Yard, and she really didn't have the patience today to have microphones shoved in her face with ten people screaming about whether ISIS was behind the bomb threat, or whether there were connections to fuckall knows what…
She thought it should be illegal for them to swarm like that.
Rising to her feet, she grabbed her phone, buttoned her suit jacket, snatched her keys off of the coffee table, and paused to prepare at least something to tell the fucking reporters.
No, we haven't found the persons or person responsible for the security threat...No, we don't know the impact the loss of evidence will have on the case...No, we don't have any new suspects...Yes, we believe this is connected to the sex trafficking international case...fuck off, fuck you, go drown yourself in the fucking Thames, shove that microphone up-
Well, maybe not those things.
And she had to do another briefing with Cyril, go over the minute new details they did have...by the time they had something substantial, she was going to be reciting all of the facts she knew in her damn sleep.
Mysterious man, likes cars, likes to make scary phone calls, inserted himself into a war between the Cartel and the Yakuza, stole evidence for the Cartel for some fucking reason...and likes to disappear off the face of the fucking earth leaving her to worry about the entire goddamn case falling apart.
The Russian angle, the Cartel angle, the Yakuza angle, everything crisscrossed and overlapped and it was so goddamn insidious, so toxic…
Wrenching open her front door, she stepped into the outside so quickly that a blast of wind made her eyes water.
Time to head into the piranha frenzy.
The brakes squeaked when she stopped in the parking space, making her remind herself for the hundredth time to get them checked.
And for the hundredth time, she told herself she would do it tomorrow.
When she caught a glimpse of the black blob twitching and moving back and forth by the entrance to the Yard, procrastination suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea.
Steeling herself, really, it was never going to change so just get it over with and get inside, she gripped the door handle and pushed it open, pausing to push the door lock button on her keys.
Thank fuck for flat boots. They would notice her a little later than they would if she was wearing heels. Otherwise known as monstrosities.
But notice her they did. One of the blonde ones snapped her head in her direction like a triggered robot, the rest of them mirroring the action in a wave...Jesus fuck they're like a hive mind…
And here they come.
The first question rocketed out of the blonde's mouth before she even had the microphone to her lips.
"Detective Trivoly, can you tell us the status of the suspect search in the bomb threat?"
The first one always opened the floodgates. After that, she immediately hated the English language so much that she wanted to become deaf.
"What is the status of the case? Is it still international?"
"How can the citizens of London feel like they are safe? What is the police department doing to ensure their safety?"
"There are rumors that they are considering replacing you. How do you respond?"
"Some people suggest that the bomb threat was an inside job. Any comment?"
"When will the next press conference be?"
"Any word on the evidence that was stolen?"
'What impact will that ha-"
Finally, she spun on the spot and held her hand up like it alone could bestow instance silence.
And miraculously it did.
"We are working diligently on the international aspects of the case, and we hope to find new information soon. We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of this city and are keeping a close eye on further evidence of security threats in the future. Details about the case and suspects are to remain confidential until further notice. No further comments."
Like vultures not quite done picking at their carcas, they exploded into more noise, none of the questions discernible with the way they were screaming over each other.
Finally, after what seemed like a longer time than waiting in traffic, she made it through the door into the building, where they were mercifully not allowed.
"Morning Chief Inspector."
"Morning Rilkes. Is Chamberlain in?"
"Yeah, he's waiting for you in your office. He-"
But she was already heading away from him, eager to get absolutely nowhere again with the case. Just like Cyril was apparently getting nowhere with sleep. At least last night. His eyes were fixed on the middle of her desk and looked like they had been for some time.
"Are you contemplating how to achieve world peace?"
A quiet distracted "maybe" was mumbled out, but she doubted that he even knew what he was saying maybe to.
"For once I think I got more sleep than you did."
His eyes twitched to a spot just to the right of where he had been staring before catching her gaze. "They're turning up the pressure on me to put this case away. The UN has really prioritized the trafficking problem, and they have focused on this one especially…"
"Maybe they could help out and try and figure out why the Cartel killed that prosecutor...if Ramos even did. And if he didn't, it would sure help to know who is responsible."
"Or they could just sit on their asses and wait for us to hand solutions to them. Oh...they're already doing that."
"The bigger paycheck means doing less work…"
"...I guess."
She circled around after a short sigh and sat in her chair. "Pretty soon you're just going to have to move your desk in here. So, let's go over again what we think we know."
"Cartel killed prosecutor, but it is possibly a frame job, so maybe someone else killed the prosecutor, but the Cartel still probably hired Thief Man to steal the evidence, so they are involved one way or another...Thief Man has more questions surrounding him than the activities of the U.S. government...whoever killed the prosecutor was trying to protect themselves...but maybe they fucked up and didn't do it right...we don't know where or who Thief Man is...the Yakuza and the Cartel may or may not be here, and this is just a really giant clusterfuck."
For a moment she just stared at him, tilted her head, kept staring…
"...Thief man?"
"What the fuck else are we supposed to call him? Telephone man? Criminal man?"
"...Maybe just the suspect. I would hate to hear you accidentally call him thief man on national television…"
Couldn't even imagine the man's reaction to that.
"Well, the suspect might as well be a nobody at this point. Are we sure he ever existed at all?"
"I can bloody recite his phone call from memory."
"Right."
"I think all we can truly do right now is watch. We've still got people on alert at the airport, we have alerted all of the surrounding police departments...something always breaks eventually."
"You had just better hope it isn't us. No word on the location of the evidence?"
Yeah, vacationing somewhere in Mexico by now, probably.
"No. As far as we are aware, it is no longer attainable. Thief man is apparently quite good at his job."
"We skipped the last opportunity to do a press conference. Think we should do one now?"
"Maybe. We can release a few details about the suspect, at least what we have hypothesized him to be. Maybe we can play his phone call. And we can suggest we are focusing our efforts on London. Might make something happen at the primary interest points. Airport, for example."
She was reminded of the man's Jenga comment. At the moment, this entire case was a perfect tower of Jenga blocks, and either one could be removed, sending everything straight to hell, or one could be removed and leave the rest still intact.
"Sounds good. I'll write up the statement in a little bit. What about the run through tomorrow?"
The run-through with the government agents assigned to oversee them.
It was the third time that they were going to go over everything they had on the Russian-Japanese trafficking ring, except this time they had to add all of the new developments in about the Cartel and thief man.
"We have everything prepared."
"Good."
"Yeah."
Run-throughs were worse than licking hot sauce off of Satan's asshole.
"I'll send the necessary notices to the media, about what they can and cannot print from the conference. Let's say...half past twelve?"
"Sounds good to me."
Half of the media were already here practically having an orgy on the front steps.
She watched him get up from the chair and head out in the direction of the lobby and then turned to gaze out her window.
Where are you, and what do you know?
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