Hell's Around The Corner, Part 3! FINALLY!
I bet you will all hate me. ANYWAY.
Title: Hell's Around The Corner (But The Trip Ain't Free)
Rating: NC-17.
Disclaimer: I don't even own the Tin Man DVD, how pathetic is that?
Warnings: Character death, murder, violence, profanity, disturbing imagery, porn, a lack of morality and a whooole lot of other Bad Things that I'm probably forgetting. This fic remains quietly vicious.
Summary: When Cain moved to the city, he was intent on taking down the crime lord that controlled it. But the crime lord has other ideas. And that's when everything goes to hell.
Part 1: You Might Get An Example Before The Real Deal (but it sure ain’t with no Virgil)
Part 2: You Can Always Pay More (but if you don’t have two coins? You’re fucked)
Hell’s Around The Corner
(But The Trip Ain’t Free)
Sometimes You Can Leave (but don’t you dare look back)
“Get me someone. Something. Anything!” Antoine DeMilo slammed his fist into his desk while the terrified police in front of him stared at him and did nothing.
They were scared, but nowhere near his own personal brand of scared. He’d had war declared on him by a crime lord that had killed people in as tight a lock-up as DeMilo or anyone else could muster up. The man made other mobsters check under their beds at night, for Christ’s sake.
There had been skirmishes before, of course, but why this particular time had ended up with an all-out war, he still didn’t know. He still didn’t even know if he wanted to know. They’d shaken down Glitch’s spot plenty of times before and while yes, it more often than not got people killed, it didn’t let loose the hounds like this, didn’t leave dead police officers tied up in the lobby with notes and booze and so many implications…
"We don't have a thing, sir," one of his detectives said - and where the hell was Cain, anyway?! The only man who had a clue about what the hell he should be doing about Ambrose was off gallivanting somewhere and leaving him choking for air and hope in the office. He needed Cain. Cain would know what to do, would know what weakness to hit, know how to manage a peace deal with the psychopath.
DeMilo didn't know how the hell Wyatt Cain had managed to figure out Ambrose so damn fast, even solve his liquor supply system, but apparently the man broke under pressure or something. Where the hell had he gone?
He jerked out of his thoughts when yet another one of his men bustled in, sweating as he slapped a piece of paper on DeMilo’s desk. “It’s Glitch’s.” At DeMilo’s irritated stare, the man swallowed. “The shop’s burning down.”
Antoine lurched out from behind his desk, grabbed his coat, and ran for one of the cars to watch the building smolder and fall. Firetrucks were doing their best to put the blaze out, and were mostly succeeding, but the flames kept coming and coming, the second story crashing to the ground.
"Was Glitch in there?" DeMilo asked one of the firemen, who looked frazzled and irritated but waited long enough to glare and look a bit sad at the same time.
"Buddy, by the time we got here, anything in there was long gone."
---
Cain jerked awake at the sound of someone saying his name. He was blindfolded, tied to a chair, and naked. Considering the last thing he could remember was Dellia knocking him out after Glitch...no, Ambrose.
His shoulders slumped slightly. After Ambrose.
"Mr. Cain," a voice said, polite and hesitant. It didn't sound like Gale, so he was guessing it was either the Queen or Dellia. Or maybe it was someone else that Ambrose had foisted him off to. The woman cleared her throat. "Mr. Cain, rest assured that you are not the only one in an awkward position here."
"Who are you?" Cain asked. There was the long, sad noise of a chair being dragged across the floor, and then the swish of a skirt as the woman sat down.
"My name is Lavender," she said softly. "I'm Ambrose's aunt, Ahamo's wife, and the mother of Azkadellia and DG." She hesitated for a moment. "I'm the reason all of this started, and I wanted to apologize for that."
Cain bit out a laugh without even meaning too. "Ma'am, I doubt you turned Ambrose into a crime lord." He didn't want to hear other people taking the blame for Ambrose's actions, didn't want to hear how he was doing bad things for good reasons, didn't want any justification for wanting to forgive him.
"I didn't," she said stiffly. "But it was our family that drove him to it. He's a watchmaker, a tinker, not a crime lord." She let out a light sigh. "Or he was, at least."
He didn't want to know. He put the words on repeat in his head. He didn't want to know. Glitch was Ambrose, and that was the end of it.
Lavender could apparently read him easy enough, and let out a light laugh. "It's interesting."
"What is?" Cain asked, not even caring what answer he really got.
"When you first came to town, we held a conference," she began, voice amused. "Most of us were for getting rid of you, although our ideas of how to do it varied. And Ambrose flipped that coin of his and let himself decide that he wanted to see if you could see gray instead of just black and white." The silence stretched on, uncomfortable and strangely shameful. "I suppose he found his answer. Would you agree?"
Cain let his head fall forward, let out a long breath. "I guess so."
She made a satisfied noise, which definitely wasn't what Cain had been expecting. "I'm glad," she said simply. Even if he couldn't see her, his head jerked up almost painfully fast, and it earned him a light laugh. "I don't expect you to understand, detective. I'm just glad that there's someone Ambrose can't conquer. Someone who still knows right from wrong down to their soul."
He shook his head. "I don't think that applies to me, ma'am."
"Doesn't it?" she asked lightly, and it seemed that something shifted in the room. "Would you like to know, Mr. Cain?"
No.
"Yes," he whispered, and hated himself.
---
Ambrose sits in the back room of his shop, twenty-five and sunnier than summer as he glances behind him at his aunt. "It's hard to get the glass around it without hurting the clockwork," he says with a smile, and she smiles back. "I'll get it done for you, though."
"It was just a bet, Ambrose," she laughs, leaning back in a leather chair they use for nothing but sitting. "There's no rush." Besides, she's always known he can do anything he puts his mind to. Ambrose is unique like that - if there's something he decides to do, he can do it, given enough time. Sometimes it's maddening when he picks up a new project, considering how hard it is to pry him away from it long enough for him to actually tend the shop.
They make and mend car parts, fix pots and pans, specialize in watches, and have a side business in tailoring and costuming. Ambrose does almost all of the work, Lavender and her girls working on the clothing front as Ahamo works nights as a police officer. They're hard-working and happy about it. They're a family.
He's melting even more sand when the knock comes on the front door. Ambrose casts a pleading look to his aunt, and with a light laugh she stands up and heads for the front. The CLOSED sign is prominent enough that she's not quite certain what they need, but she opens up anyway.
There are three pale men, one of them bald and wearing a coat the buttery color of untanned leather. He smiles at her. "I'm here to speak to the owner."
Lavender Queen is used to this. As much progress as women have made, it's still a challenge for many of the men from previous generations to accept it. "I'm the owner. How can I help you?"
Even while she holds the door, he practically shoves her to the side to walk in, the two men just steps behind him. "I don't normally make house calls myself, but I figured this was a special enough occasion for it," he says. He's too close to her, and keeps getting closer. "You haven't been paying your dues. This is your warning."
"What dues?" a voice calls from the doorway, and she turns to see Ambrose leaning against the doorway, looking full of innocent confusion in his brown pants and white shirt, suspenders already hanging down the sides of his legs. "We own this building. I should know, considering I take care of the finances."
The man raises the skin where his eyebrow would be, sending a condescending glance at Ambrose. "The dues to make sure you still have a building to own, mister...?"
"Ambrose," he says, polite but frowning, and steps over with his hand held out. The man looks at the hand and turns back to Lavender without touching it.
"We'll be coming tomorrow. One hundred dollars for this month and the ones you've missed."
"One hundred dollars?!" Ambrose shouts out.
"But I won't be here tomorrow," Lavender pleads. They don't have one hundred dollars to spare, considering how tight getting by has made them, but the man doesn't seem like he heard her.
"Then we'll make the money up by taking some of the things in your store," the man says, shrugging and walking towards the door.
"Wait!" Ambrose shouts out. Lavender is pressed against the wall and glaring at the man and his lackeys, already knowing that there's nothing she can do to change this, but Ambrose doesn't know when to quit. He jogs towards the man and grabs his shoulder. The lackeys move for him, but the man holds up a hand, frowning and looking generally irritated. "Isn't there any way to make you reconsider? We've never done anything wrong! We're good people. We wouldn't even tell anyone you did this if you-"
"I'm assuming you're one of those children who never got the 'bad things happen to good people' idea set in their head," the man says, and swept Ambrose's hand off his shoulder with a single gloved finger. "Understand me, boy. Bad things seem worse when they happen to good people, because they don't think they deserve it. Do you honestly believe you're the only store paying dues?"
"We're not paying you," Ambrose says.
The man smiles in a way that is nothing but painful. "We'll see how it goes tomorrow, then."
Ambrose is going to say something again, but Lavender shouts out his name and he turns, finally breaking up something that could only turn horrifying if it goes on any longer. The man doesn't even say goodbye when he and his goons walk out, and neither of them wanted him to.
Lavender says everything she needs to in her eyes, and her nephew hugs her tight. "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything tomorrow, okay? You'll be back by dinnertime."
She lets out a light laugh. "It's only a daytrip, Ambrose. We can cancel it-"
"It's been planned for four months," Ambrose points out wryly. "And Ahamo's getting twitchy feet. You need to get out of the city."
Ambrose has argument after completely logical argument, just like always, and manages to share them all in a way that leaves Lavender almost forgetting the entire event ever happened. She packs up her things and helps her girls pack theirs up as well. When the morning comes, Ambrose is downstairs working on that tiny contraption of his, soaked with sweat but all smiles as it spins on the counter in front of DG's wide eyes.
"Have a good trip," Ambrose calls cheerily when they walk out the door.
The last thing Lavender says to her nephew is a reminder about the garbage men leaving a note about tomorrow's pickup being late.
Their trip is wonderful, a picnic by the lake where the girls run wild, acting ten years younger in the fresh air, and Lavender and Ahamo lean against each other in a gazebo pretending to read every time their daughters get in sight. The weather stays at a wonderful seventy-two degrees, clouds almost unbelievably beautiful as they swim above their heads.
It's absolute heaven.
When they get back, Ahamo escorts the girls upstairs for bedtime already since they stayed longer than planned. Lavender is still smiling when she walks into the back room and sees her nephew bleeding on the floor, breathing hard as he looks at the bald man's scalded body, the bloody knife next to the man's hand, and that see-through clock he's been working on, resting right next to Ambrose's cheek.
Ambrose survives, but Lavender knows something important died in him.
He buys them a suburban house and takes over the shop on his own when the police investigation shuts down the store. Nobody can pin anything on Ambrose, and he's a good enough liar that even Lavender's convinced he didn't kill that man, that the man sliced Ambrose's back open and managed to stumbled into some of the deadlier items in the store without Ambrose even touching him. There are valves in the house that they experiment with, and discover they cut off the water to a significant portion of the city.
One of the lackeys shows up at the house, and Lavender doesn't ask what happened to him, either, simply stitches Ambrose's back up once again and wishes she could manage to put his soul back together.
Things keep changing, until the lackeys don't disappear. They take off their hats when she enters the room. They defer to anything Ambrose says. They guard the house when Ambrose isn't there, to the point that Lavender refuses to look out of any windows simply to avoid seeing the black car she knows will be sitting on the other side of the street.
He moves back to the shop, opens it again under the name Glitch, and Lavender wants to kiss Glitch the first time she goes into the shop. The fact he invited her to tell her about how he organized his people into making a speakeasy and he wants her opinion on it when it opens tomorrow night dampens her mood, though. But he's smiling, and even laughing sometimes, so she smiles and nods and tells him, "Of course I'll be there," because she's already missed one important night in her nephew's life, and she never intends to let it happen again.
---
He knew Lavender was watching him, utterly silent as Cain tried to swallow the story. He fought believing it, tried to think Ambrose had always been bad, tried to ignore the pang in his heart at the idea that Glitch was everything Ambrose used to be.
"That doesn't change anything," Cain told her, and hoped she could understand he really meant 'anything' and not just his own opinion. When she nodded, he guessed she actually had.
"I never expected it to," she said simply, and stood up with that same swish noise as she'd sat with. "But you're the one who needs to know it."
"Me? Why me?" he asked.
The only thing that answered him was the door shutting gently against the doorframe, and the polite click of the lock.
---
DeMilo walked back up to his office, trying to ignore the pounding headache he was developing. Stress, definitely stress, and even the headache was stressing him more. His chair creaked comfortingly under him when he dropped into it, pulling open one of the lower drawers and pulling out a bottle of scotch, pouring the liquid into his coffee cup.
He leaned back, took a swig, and rubbed at his temples. The fire had been refreshing, slightly comforting even, to see, but that only got rid of one problem. One of many, many problems. The most pressing of which was the knife he finally felt against his back.
DeMilo froze, liquor-filled mug trapped midair as he tried to find out who was behind him without turning around.
"You know what I was asking myself last night, Antoine?" a man asked, light and distantly familiar. "I asked myself why haven't I killed Antoine DeMilo yet? You'd never believe the answer. I barely believe it, honestly."
DeMilo swallowed the lump in his throat, and carefully set the mug back on his desk. As soon as his hand had left the desk, his chair swiveled around violently and he found himself looking at a man wearing a dark gray suit and an ominously familiar black mask, tossing a knife from one hand to the other. "Ambrose." Ambrose stopped juggling the knife just long enough to toss off a salute so tiny it was almost offensive. DeMilo would have bet money that the bastard had been aiming for just that. DeMilo offered him a shaky smile. "Hey, I know you've got this declaration of war gig going on, but what's the big deal, really? What's so big-"
"Wyatt Cain was in Glitch's shop when you and your men attacked." Ambrose stopped shifting the knife from hand to hand, twisting it around the fingers of his left hand instead, never even looking at the blade. "The detective's out of bounds, Antoine."
DeMilo gaped at him. "Hey, I never knew there were limits to begin with! If you want to make up a treaty or something with me, believe me, I am all for that idea."
"It seemed like common sense," Ambrose sighed. "He's a good guy. Good guys don't get involved with stuff like this."
DeMilo just stared at him, trying to figure out how off his rocker the crime lord really was.
The knife sped up, and it was hard for DeMilo to keep his eyes off it. "Now. Last night, when I actually wondered about why I kept on letting you live, I realized that I was keeping you alive because of hope." He let out a light laugh. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"I. I've always been a fan of hope," DeMilo said, hoarse. "What were you hoping for? I have connections..." He stopped when he remembered who he was talking to, and specifically that the man he was talking to was giving him a very obvious 'you must be shitting me' look.
"I was hoping you'd do a good job, Antoine," Ambrose said, and stopped the knife mid-twirl. His lips quirked into a sad smile. "You haven't."
"I can do better, though," DeMilo said hastily. "People can change. I can change. I can be good." God, he felt like he was begging the schoolmaster to not hit him or something equally perverse. This had to be a nightmare of some sort. Besides, why the hell would Ambrose himself come out in the open to kill him?
There was a knock on DeMilo's office door, and he nearly fainted with relief. But DeMilo was born to swindle people, and he leveled a firm stare at Ambrose. "You might want to leave now."
Ambrose was actually grinning now. "Or what, you snap your fingers and bullets rain from the sky?"
"Or I arrest you and walk you to the electric chair myself," DeMilo smirked.
Ambrose shook his head, and called, "Come on in."
It took DeMilo a moment to recognize the officer that walked in. Blond, huge sideburns, it was Ahamo, the man who'd been working at Glitch's. His eyes widened as he took in the scene, and to DeMilo's shock he actually stepped in and closed the door behind him, snapping the lock in place behind him.
"What are you doing?!" both DeMilo and Ahamo shouted at the same time.
"I'm taking out the trash, that's all," Ambrose said dryly while DeMilo glared and pleaded with Ahamo with his eyes. Pleaded with him to do anything other than stand there and frown.
"That was my job," Ahamo said, voice slow and composed.
"Go home to the family. I'll be home after this," Ambrose said, and even though Ahamo didn't look an inch happy about the situation, he nodded.
"What side?"
"Head."
Ahamo nodded, and walked back out.
DeMilo gaped at him. "How fucking insane are you?"
"As crazy as I need to be," Ambrose replied, and pulled the mask off, casually flinging it onto the desk, right next to DeMilo's coffee mug of alcohol.
It took DeMilo a while to swallow the fact he was staring at Glitch's face. Ambrose seemed completely fine with it, simply watching him right back, as if he was used to this happening.
"Your store burnt down," DeMilo said weakly.
"I was the one who burned it."
DeMilo nodded, looking back over at the pitch-black mask sitting on his oak desk. "You're gonna kill me, aren't you."
"I'll give you the choice of poison or knife," Ambrose stated. He smiled slightly. "Poison would look like a heart attack. Knife...well. That's rather obvious, don't you think?"
DeMilo was surprised by the actual display of kindness hidden behind the words. He could go out relatively painlessly, at the cost of their knowledge of his murder, or he could choose Ambrose's capture over his own form of death. He smirked. "Me or you, eh?" DeMilo shook his head. "No way in hell I can make that kind of a decision. How dirty are your hands-"
The knife was fast and sickeningly efficient as it plunged into Antoine DeMilo's throat, the man barely getting out a squeak that turned into a gurgle before he was dead.
Ambrose wiped the knife on DeMilo's shirt, and hesitated for a moment before stabbing the blade through the top of his desk, leaving the knife upright, proud, and vicious, a sign that at least this battle was over. His hand stuttered for a moment above the mask, but after a glance back at DeMilo's still warm corpse, he grabbed it and put it in one of the wide coat pockets of his brown overcoat.
"They're dirty enough," he said quietly, and after closing Antoine's eyes for him, walked out the office's door.
When he walked out of the building, they had only just found the body.
---
Years ago, there had been a content beat cop with streets like old friends and a gun that was more a family heirloom than a weapon.
And then, years ago, his pocket watch had stopped one bullet, but not the other four that went into his wife.
---
Jeb came home to a cluttered and utterly silent apartment. It wasn’t that unusual, all things considered - his father worked odd hours. Coming home was more or less something he seemed to do because it was something normal they could cling to. His father knew Jeb had his own life outside of school, even if he didn’t quite know what it was. Jeb knew his father lived for his work. Occasionally he’d wonder if the man lived for anything else.
Spending most of the day with DG had been…nice. She was funny, smart, and pretty. She’d been able to tell when to back off of a subject and when to rush him with question after question. But there was still something off about spending time with her, as if she were wearing some sort of mask like the ones they sold at her store.
Jeb shook his head and fetched the lovingly tattered police manual he had memorized from cover to cover. He'd barely made it five pages in when there was a knock on the door. Ahamo, of all people, was on the other side.
"You want to be a cop, right?" Ahamo asked as soon as the door thudded against the boxes that sprawled across the apartment. Jeb nodded cautiously, and Ahamo nodded, pulling something out of the inside pocket of his coat. When he handed the papers to Jeb, the younger man stared at them.
"But this is-"
"Ambrose killed DeMilo," Ahamo said quietly. "He's turned reckless and I honestly don't think he's safe to be around anymore. Not even for us."
Jeb looked Ahamo straight in the eye. "You're betraying him."
"Where do you think your father's gone to, Jeb?" Ahamo asked, and didn't give Jeb enough time to answer. "Who do you think is really the bad guy now? The only good guys I see here are you and your father, Jeb, and I need to trust you to do the right thing."
"You're a police officer, why don't you do it?" Jeb asked, something clawing at his throat as he thought about the situation. "If you're already willing to betray your nephew-"
"He's not my nephew anymore," Ahamo hissed. "He's a killer. He started out with good intentions - we all know he did - but he's so absorbed in it now that if someone doesn't take him down, we're going to have something very big and very bad on our hands soon."
Jeb looked at the papers in his hand. "You're betraying him for the greater good, then."
"I'm helping the police because it's the right thing to do," Ahamo said, as if he were correcting his own thoughts more than anything else.
Jeb barely restrained a sigh. "You and your family are going to need to get out of town." So would Jeb, but that was another matter. "I think you'd better leave now."
"You're not even going to ask about your father?" Ahamo asked, sounding genuinely shocked.
Jeb stared him down. "If he was in trouble you wouldn't have come to me, because you know I'd find out." He stepped in to grab his coat one more time. "Besides, he can take care of himself."
---
There was a man and a woman waiting for him when he stepped off the train, the man smoking like he was dying, eyes glancing around, and the woman nothing but poise and elegance, long black hair tied up in something he could only think of as regal. "Mr. Mystic?" He nodded. She smiled, but the blond man next to her seemed to only become more tense. "My name is Azkadellia. I was sent here with a proposition for you."
It was hard for him to not glare and simply get back on the train, maybe head for the next stop on the line no matter where it was. "I'm clean now."
"But you were the mayor of a successful, decent-sized town before you were thrown out of office," she said a bit too cheerfully for his tastes. "You also have a bit of an acquaintance with the seedier side of people, if I'm not mistaken."
"I'm not going to be pushed around just because you know things," he said, hand twitching inside its glove. "I'm here to get a job and go on with my life, not-"
"That's why we're here, Mr. Mystic." She smiled, and held out a hand. "To offer you a very, very interesting job. It's an opportunity I guarantee you'd never expected to have when you stepped onto the train."
He hesitated, but shook it. "Well. I'm willing to listen."
The man's shoulders relaxed just slightly, and Azkadellia began to speak.
---
Almost done.
He could do it. Everything was fitting into place, all the gears and cogs he'd set in place twirling right where he needed them to, the world ticking away at the pace he wanted. He was almost done with all of it.
And then you'll see if you can live with yourself.
---
Cain jerked awake when the blindfold was tugged away from his eyes, the fabric sliding across his temples as he hissed at the sudden burst of light.
"Oh, one moment," a painfully familiar voice said, and the light was dimmed enough for comfort. He sounded too much like Glitch, and that was exactly why he stared at the man wearing Glitch's face better than any mask. Dark red suit, white shirt, black tie, and a hesitant look on his face. "Hi, Cain."
He sounded too much like Glitch. Cain let out a deep breath. "Go away."
"I'll leave if you really want," Ambrose said, sounding surprisingly sincere as he shrugged out of the dark maroon suit and let it fall onto the table. He tugged off the tie, too, and then he almost looked like Glitch too. "Honestly, I was hoping you'd shout at me."
"I'm too tired to shout at you," Cain said, and hoped it'd be the end of the conversation. "I haven't done anything but be talked at and drugged all day, and the rope isn't exactly luxurious."
Ambrose laughed. "It's rope, Cain. Rope's never luxurious."
"That's not the point here, Gli...Ambrose." Cain looked away, not even wanting to see Ambrose, and the man turned his own head as well, undoing the first button on his shirt. The move caught Cain's attention when he finally realized Ambrose had started undressing just about as soon as Cain had woken up. "Are you stripping?"
"I'm undressing," Ambrose agreed.
Cain waited for more explanation, but Ambrose just kept unbuttoning his shirt, eyes intent on the task and not Cain. He cleared his throat. "Want to tell me why?"
"Maybe. Depends on why you want to-"
"Pretend I just asked why," Cain sighed, and Ambrose smiled.
"Well," he said. "There's a few reasons. The first reason's that I haven't ever been particularly fond of ties, or anything else tied around my throat." His shirt was unbuttoned, and he just let it hang, sitting down on the table and leaning over to pull off his chairs. "I was also thinking about taking a nap in here, actually."
Cain just looked at him.
"What?"
"What time is it outside?" Cain asked.
"Two twenty-six in the morning, why?" Ambrose answered immediately, and Cain had to wonder if the man counted every tick of that coin of his in his head.
"Most people would just go to bed at this time." Cain frowned when Ambrose started on his socks. "Actually, most sane people are already asleep by now." Ambrose smirked a bit at that, and Cain ignored the idea that he was mad as a hatter. He'd already tried processing it and it hadn't worked out very well. There was too much calculation in everything he did.
"Most people aren't me," Ambrose finally said, and pulled his socks together in a neat bundle. "Want me to untie you?"
Cain stared at him. "You're just going to untie me? Just like that?"
Ambrose made a slight huffing noise. "Well not anymore. Sometimes you just need to say 'yes' when you get the option, Cain, and not wonder about the circumstances."
"I think I'll stick to thinking things through before agreeing to them," Cain said, shifting under the ropes when Ambrose rolled his arms out of the suspenders. "But I really would appreciate it if you untied me-"
"Can I kiss you?" Ambrose suddenly asked, and Cain's voice squeaked to a stop. Ambrose hopped off the table. "I'd normally just kiss you, but you can't really fight or protest or anything since I have you tied to a chair."
For some reason the thought he has me tied to a chair wasn't nearly as bad as it had been before right then. Cain blamed the fact that it was hard to remember that the 'he' involved was the guy looking at him like the night sky on a particularly clear day.
"Please?" Ambrose whispered above the incessant ticking that followed him everywhere.
"Get rid of the coin, and you can kiss me," Cain finally said. Ambrose looked like he'd been sucker-punched. "I'm not kissing you depending on what side flips up next. I'm kissing you. Just put the thing under a cushion or something."
Ambrose's hand was almost unnervingly slow when he pulled the coin out, and then walked over to the couch Cain could only assume was the designated Napping Target and shoved it under the cushions. He seemed to stare at the couch for a moment, his shoulders tense enough to snap.
Cain took a deep breath, not quite sure what was such a relief to get away from the noise. "Thank y-"
Ambrose took four steps and was immediately kissing him, mouth frantic and hot and so much like Glitch that Cain was having trouble remembering the man was a murderous crime lord. It was even more trouble when Glitch threw a leg over Cain and straddled him, fabric sliding against his bare skin as Glitch seemed to pray at his lips. Cain jerked in the chair, trying to touch him despite the ropes that seemed to be chiding him like hospital nurses while Glitch's mouth moved on to his jaw line, nipping and soothing with small kisses, making a strangely contented noise against his skin.
He tried to breathe. "You got your kiss," Cain said, voice high but steady as Ambrose moved onto his neck, one hand sliding from his shoulder and down his arm while the other simply rested on his naked hip, inconspicuous and full of potential.
"Please, Cain," Glitch whispered into his ear.
The hand moved approximately one and a third inches inward.
"Okay," Cain said very, very quickly, and Ambrose didn't give him time to even reconsider. He could feel the bastard grinning into his mouth when Cain whimpered at the hand dropping off his leg and leaving his body entirely too starved for attention, and Glitch - no, Ambrose, Glitch could never be this vicious - was leaving his lips just as neglected.
Ambrose kneeled in front of him, smiling far too happily. "I really wish I could just have you pushed up against a wall instead," he said almost wistfully, and before Cain could snap at him to either untie him already or to do just about anything, really, there were hands holding his hips down and a mouth around his cock, which definitely shut him up. Some things really didn't have sensical words that could be said about or during them, and this was definitely one of them, so Cain settled on nearly giving himself a concussion when he slammed his head backwards when Glitch started to get particularly ambitious with his tongue. It was like some sort of coordinated attack on him - hands were clenched on his hips, soothing but demanding, and his mouth was furnace-hot, tongue making precision strikes in all the right spots to make Cain fall apart.
"Oh god I want to touch you," Cain muttered, smacking his head against the chair yet again as Glitch just got better and better at destroying any sense of self-control he had. He wanted to strangle him, to kiss him, to be fucked into the ticking couch and then get cuddled for an hour before he punched Ambrose in the face.
Cain had no idea what Glitch did, but whatever it was it felt like the best apocalypse ever and he couldn't even warn Glitch before he came, managing to buck hard enough that the other man was hacking when he pulled off and there were finger-shaped bruises on Cain's hips.
He stared at Glitch for a while afterwards, chest heaving while Glitch crawled back over to rest his head on Cain's knee, looking disturbingly like a cat who'd...well. Cain cleared his throat. "You-"
"Thank you," Glitch sighed, and kissed the inside of his knee. He barely caught sight of the hand slipping in the front of his pants. "So much."
"Please let me touch you," Cain groaned, but it seemed like it was over as soon as the words left his mouth, Glitch biting his lower lip hard enough to bleed and sagging forward. It didn't matter though. Cain still needed to get his hands on some part of Glitch. Any part.
Ambrose let out a sigh. "I'll untie you, but you can't leave yet."
"Is Jeb safe?" Cain demanded.
"Both DG and Ahamo said he got home safe and sound," Ambrose agreed, and finally slunk over and started untying Cain. "I've had a very busy day, but other than that everything's fine." His legs were loose, but Cain was fairly sure he'd be incapable of walking for a while. Luckily, it didn't seem like Ambrose was about to give him the option of trying, because he hoisted Cain on one shoulder and shuffled them towards the couch.
He propped Cain up on the far side of the couch, and grabbed his coin from under the cushion, putting it on the table for all the world to hear its ticking. Then, Ambrose finally finished the job he'd started as soon as he'd walked in and grabbed a couple blankets out of a cupboard, just as naked as Cain.
"There'll be clothing in the morning," Ambrose said simply. Cain ended up on the edge of the sofa, Ambrose squished up against the side and not seeming to mind terribly as they stared each other in the face. He shut his eyes. "I." Ambrose took a breath and seemed to shrink even further into the couch's cushions. "I've had a bad week."
Cain was tempted to call him on the ridiculous hypocrisy of confessing that to a man who'd spent an entire day tied naked to a chair, but only god knew what was going on in Ambrose's head, so he simply pulled the covers tight over his shoulders, arms weak but working. "Tomorrow will be better," he said.
"No it won't," Ambrose said quietly, and slept.
---
Cain woke up in the middle of the night when he felt Ambrose pressing up against him, curling up and actually looking kind of adorable. He was sweating a little, brow creased and whimpering slightly.
He wrapped an arm around Ambrose, carefully avoiding the angry scar on his back, and Ambrose's eyes snapped open.
"You want to talk about it?" Cain asked, and politely ignored how vulnerable the other man looked.
He expected a quick negative answer and for Ambrose to simply brush it off, saying it was just a nightmare or something, but instead the other man spoke, quietly and slowly.
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone when all this started." He turned his head into the couch, avoiding Cain's eyes as best he could. "I...it was a shakedown. I gave him his money, asked what all of this was really about and why he was doing all of this, asked him for a reason that I was handing over money we couldn't afford to lose, and he shoved me against a wall and sliced me, and sometimes I can still feel the knife going down, slow and mean, and I shoved him, I just shoved him and he went into the soldering and-"
"You didn't mean to kill him," Cain said. It didn't change the fact that Ambrose had killed plenty of other people and certainly didn't change the fact he practically committed a felony every time he blinked, but Cain hugged him anyway. Ambrose was tense and he stayed tense until Cain finally let go.
Ambrose sighed, and turned away. "Goodnight, Cain," he said, and sounded like he was already half-asleep. Cain wondered how awake Ambrose really had been for the past few minutes.
"Night," Cain said, and watched Ambrose fall.
---
The door to Finaqua crashed inwards at nine in the morning, and there wasn't a soul in sight. The liquor was stocked, the trappings and tables were still set up from the previous night. The bandstand still had the band's instruments next to the chairs, even.
The Lieutenant frowned, but the adrenaline in him (this was Finaqua after all) forced him another step forwards. "Just because you can't see anyone doesn't mean they aren't there," he said quietly, and a few of the men closer to him nodded, looking even more nervous than they had before.
Inching about, they covered the entire floor, finally getting to the bar. The axes came out hesitantly, but as soon as the Lieutenant said, "Do it," voice firm and grave, they swung. Glass and liquor flew through the air, tossing stardust across the ceiling as they broke the mirror behind the bar with the swings, finally moving into the stock room and starting on the beer. Chop after chop after chop, it all went down, the Lieutenant looking on, grim and satisfied. It wasn't atonement for DeMilo's murder, not by a long shot, but it was a start.
As the axes continued to swing, he swept out of the room to explore the back rooms, three men with him. They were all empty, of course. Of course Ambrose or any of the Royals were nowhere to be seen.
"Lieutenant," one of the men said quietly, and he turned to see the man press lightly on a portion of the wall, and it swung inwards slightly, greased to silence. After a sharp nod from the Lieutenant, the man slunk in. He made a strange noise, and that was enough to get the rest of them running in, gun ready.
The sight of Detective Wyatt Cain sitting handcuffed to a sofa with a few blankets tossed over him and his clothes lying politely folded just a few feet away on a table, gun, hat, and holster included, was definitely not what any of them had been expecting. Nor was the only slightly pissed-off expression on the detective's face.
"The key to the handcuffs is under my hat," he stated, and the same cop who'd found the door immediately moved forward to free him from the comfortable-looking couch.
The Lieutenant caught sight of the chair still sitting in the middle of the room with ropes hanging from it. Cain looked like he had some sort of rope burns on him, not to mention some bruising. "You alright?" he asked, and received a curt nod from Cain, who wrapped the blankets around himself and moved over to his clothing. His movements were weak and there was a slight hitch to his steps.
"I had an eventful couple of days," Cain stated, using the blankets as a screen between himself and the others as he got dressed. The Lieutenant could have sworn he heard a muttered, "and very eventful morning," but nothing was really matching up right then.
"Why'd he spare you?" the Lieutenant asked as Cain moved on to step into his pants. "Every other cop whose run into Ambrose has died."
"He said he respected me," Cain said, voice sounding dead. "I'm guessing he was surprised someone figured out what he was doing."
It seemed far too easy, but the Lieutenant wasn't about to pry into the life of a man who'd probably been tortured for two days. "You should be proud of your son, detective," the Lieutenant said instead.
"I'm always proud of him," Cain stated.
"Well, he led us straight to Finaqua," he said, smiling proudly. "I don't know where he got all the information he did, but he gave us everything, from leases to contracts with the water company to some of the written agreements between Ambrose and his clients."
A piece of paper dropped out of the folds of Cain's shirt, and the man picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket, finally dropping the blankets when his shirt was fully buttoned. "Jeb's always been resourceful."
"I can only hope my Mikey grows up to be like him, I have to say," the Lieutenant said, smiling while Cain was ice cold, finally strapping on his gun, shrugging into his coat with a slight wince, and putting on his hat, finally looking like the man he was instead of the man who'd been a prisoner for two days.
"They're all long gone," Cain said simply, leaning slightly on the table.
"We noticed," the Lieutenant agreed. "Everyone's taking care of the liquor as we speak."
"Good," Cain said firmly, and headed for the door.
"Wait! Detective!" Cain just kept on walking until the Lieutenant grabbed his arm. "Where are you going?"
"To find them," Cain stated, as if it was completely obvious that he was going to keep on hunting the crime lord down until the day he died.
---
Cain felt like he couldn't breathe. Everything was quietly going to hell and it seemed like everything was ghosts and whispers and darkness, even in the painfully bright morning sun. The thud and crash of axes still echoed up to him in his mind, and he stared at the rubble left from Glitch's shop.
There was absolutely nothing left but ash and broken brick, tiny flecks of metal burnt and warped beyond repair. For some reason the thought that his watch had probably gone down with the building stuck in his mind.
He pulled out the piece of paper he'd crinkled in his haste to avoid the Lieutenant and his men seeing it, sitting on the curb in front of what was left of Glitch's two-story building, and read the creased and bumped piece of paper.
Cain,
You're the good guy, and you'll always stay the good guy. I really am sorry about almost everything, and I'm sure you can guess what I'm not going to be apologizing for. I don't think you understand how amazing you are, and that's fine. There was a scribbled out portion afterwards that he couldn't make out, but he figured if Ambrose didn't want him to read it, Cain would trust him for once and leave it alone.
I did my best to keep you out of all the big trouble that could come down on you if anyone found out about things. The handcuff trick really was for your own good. I told you to go live as normal a life as you could manage to, and I meant that. Take care of your son.
I made sure the new guy's going to be mostly harmless. There's going to be a power vacuum for a few months, and I'm hoping you can fill it with some actual legal and honest law. You really are the best thing this city could ever hope for.
We're taking a train out of the city. I'll find a way to give you your watch back.
I'm glad I met you.
Glitch
Cain shoved the paper back into his pocket, hailed a taxi, and headed straight for the train station, solely because of who had really signed it.
---
On? Off? On? Make up your mind. He sat on the bench, looking up at the window where his family was sitting, neat and smiling and safe.
It was the safe part that had him sitting outside of the train, because he knew that his own efforts to keep them safe had just ended in their own downfall into the highest rank of the underworld. He knew they all still had their masks in the bottom of their trunks and they all remembered the same protocol that had ruled them for...god, he couldn't even remember. Even with his coin ticking away in the pocket of his coat, he only knew hours and minutes and seconds, never days, never weeks, never months or years. He lived by the second, and he wasn't quite sure if he hated it or not.
When a man sat next to him, Ambrose barely restrained himself from grabbing one of the knives he'd sworn to take off as soon as they stepped off the train. He was balding, an older man with a kind smile and a leather mitten over one hand. "Mr. Mystic." Ambrose nodded in greeting.
Mystic smiled at him. "You sure about this? Leaving your empire in my hands?"
"It's not an empire," Ambrose said simply. "You'll be working with a third of what I had, since Finaqua got taken down. You're going to be building everything up from the ashes." He paused. "There's an open lot in the city, by the way. A building burned down, and the lease actually seemed to transfer to you."
"How surprising," Mystic said, smile intelligent and amused. Ambrose couldn't help but like the guy.
He took a deep breath. "There's a detective named-"
"Wyatt Cain, I know." The man shifted in his seat, and Ambrose couldn't blame him. The bench was painfully uncomfortable. "He's a good man. I'll trust him to be good."
Ambrose nodded. The train whistled. "I guess that's me."
"If you want it to be," Mystic agreed, and Ambrose looked at him, trying to figure out what exactly the man was saying. He shifted again, this time to face Ambrose as directly as possible. "None of you really have to leave. I can understand you pushing them out the door and into a new life, but you've already given up more than a lot of people could believe. Do what you want for once, not what you should. Not what you can indulge in."
It seemed like the world had gone quiet. The train whistled again, a conductor walking past as everything slowed down. Mr. Mystic put his hat back on his head and stood with a nod of respect, walking over to the ticket counter, as if he'd realized Ambrose needed time. He could see DG laughing with her sister on the train, Zero uncomfortable but reassured by Azkadellia's hand on his arm. He could hear the traffic outside the station, the children inside the station.
Ambrose pulled the ever-so-breakable piece of clockwork and glass out of his pocket.
You can't do this, his mind taunted. It's the only thing that's kept you from offing yourself for years now.
"I didn't mean to kill you," he said simply, eyes as fixed on the coin as they had been when Raynz had burned to death and fallen to the concrete floor of the shop, trying to look at anything but what he'd done. And it was head up when you did what you had to do.
Ambrose pulled out the knife, and twirled it through the air one last time, watching it fly towards the glass canopy of the grand train station. "I never had to."
The knife slashed through the air.
---
Paying a cab driver had never taken so long. Crowds had never been as obnoxiously packed before he'd tried to get into the train station. He didn't know what train to look for, and didn't even know where they'd be headed. For all Cain knew they'd been gone for hours, but he looked anyway.
He looked for a very, very long time.
Finally, a balding man stood up from one of the benches that faced the trains, and looked him straight in the eye. "Are you Wyatt Cain?" Cain nodded quickly, and before he could even ask, the man spoke over his thoughts. "Ambrose isn't here. He left."
Cain felt himself wilt a little, which was stupid really. Of course he was gone. He'd said he was leaving, and Cain couldn't honestly remember a time when Ambrose hadn't done exactly what he'd said he was planning to. "Thank you for-"
"Come sit down," the man said, and Cain found himself obeying, following the man over to a bench, only to stare at the seat.
Ambrose's coin sat neatly on the furthest wooden slat in the seat, stabbed through the center with a knife.
"Oh, that?" The man smiled at him. "It was rather peculiar to see a man toss a coin in the air and pin it about five inches away from his own leg, but Ambrose isn't exactly normal, as far as I've seen."
"Who are you?" Cain demanded, and the man held out his right hand, shaking hands with Cain.
"Mr. Mystic, at your service," the man said, lips quirking a bit wryly. "Ambrose put me in charge of everything for some reason, so it's nice to meet my imminent doom." The idea that Ambrose had planned all of this was bizarre, but strangely fitting in a way that was both infuriating and perfectly logical, just like the mastermind. "He said you're a good man, and I believe him."
Cain shook his head. "I try to be, at least," he said.
Mystic looked at him for a while, giving him a calculating look that was somehow friendly at the same time. "He walked."
Cain's brow creased. "He what?"
"He didn't take a train. He walked out. I don't know where he went, I don't know what he said to his family and that Raw character that joined them, I just know that he thanked me and walked out of the station," Mystic stated, gesturing absently towards the exit.
"Did he say anything else?" Cain asked.
"Well, he was talking to himself for a while before he stabbed that clock-coin contraption of his, but that was it." The man looked Cain straight in the eye. "If he wants you to find him, you will, Cain."
Cain nodded, and stood up. After a moment, he sat back down and grabbed both knife and broken glass coin, pocketing them next to Glitch's letter. "Thank you."
Mystic smiled at him, standing up. "Be seeing you then, Detective," he said, full of humor and life, and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Cain alone to try and find Glitch, regardless of whether or not the man wanted to be found.
After four months, he stopped expecting to see him every time he looked up.
And after nine months, he almost stopped looking.
To the end...
Title: Hell's Around The Corner (But The Trip Ain't Free)
Rating: NC-17.
Disclaimer: I don't even own the Tin Man DVD, how pathetic is that?
Warnings: Character death, murder, violence, profanity, disturbing imagery, porn, a lack of morality and a whooole lot of other Bad Things that I'm probably forgetting. This fic remains quietly vicious.
Summary: When Cain moved to the city, he was intent on taking down the crime lord that controlled it. But the crime lord has other ideas. And that's when everything goes to hell.
Part 1: You Might Get An Example Before The Real Deal (but it sure ain’t with no Virgil)
Part 2: You Can Always Pay More (but if you don’t have two coins? You’re fucked)
Hell’s Around The Corner
(But The Trip Ain’t Free)
Sometimes You Can Leave (but don’t you dare look back)
“Get me someone. Something. Anything!” Antoine DeMilo slammed his fist into his desk while the terrified police in front of him stared at him and did nothing.
They were scared, but nowhere near his own personal brand of scared. He’d had war declared on him by a crime lord that had killed people in as tight a lock-up as DeMilo or anyone else could muster up. The man made other mobsters check under their beds at night, for Christ’s sake.
There had been skirmishes before, of course, but why this particular time had ended up with an all-out war, he still didn’t know. He still didn’t even know if he wanted to know. They’d shaken down Glitch’s spot plenty of times before and while yes, it more often than not got people killed, it didn’t let loose the hounds like this, didn’t leave dead police officers tied up in the lobby with notes and booze and so many implications…
"We don't have a thing, sir," one of his detectives said - and where the hell was Cain, anyway?! The only man who had a clue about what the hell he should be doing about Ambrose was off gallivanting somewhere and leaving him choking for air and hope in the office. He needed Cain. Cain would know what to do, would know what weakness to hit, know how to manage a peace deal with the psychopath.
DeMilo didn't know how the hell Wyatt Cain had managed to figure out Ambrose so damn fast, even solve his liquor supply system, but apparently the man broke under pressure or something. Where the hell had he gone?
He jerked out of his thoughts when yet another one of his men bustled in, sweating as he slapped a piece of paper on DeMilo’s desk. “It’s Glitch’s.” At DeMilo’s irritated stare, the man swallowed. “The shop’s burning down.”
Antoine lurched out from behind his desk, grabbed his coat, and ran for one of the cars to watch the building smolder and fall. Firetrucks were doing their best to put the blaze out, and were mostly succeeding, but the flames kept coming and coming, the second story crashing to the ground.
"Was Glitch in there?" DeMilo asked one of the firemen, who looked frazzled and irritated but waited long enough to glare and look a bit sad at the same time.
"Buddy, by the time we got here, anything in there was long gone."
---
Cain jerked awake at the sound of someone saying his name. He was blindfolded, tied to a chair, and naked. Considering the last thing he could remember was Dellia knocking him out after Glitch...no, Ambrose.
His shoulders slumped slightly. After Ambrose.
"Mr. Cain," a voice said, polite and hesitant. It didn't sound like Gale, so he was guessing it was either the Queen or Dellia. Or maybe it was someone else that Ambrose had foisted him off to. The woman cleared her throat. "Mr. Cain, rest assured that you are not the only one in an awkward position here."
"Who are you?" Cain asked. There was the long, sad noise of a chair being dragged across the floor, and then the swish of a skirt as the woman sat down.
"My name is Lavender," she said softly. "I'm Ambrose's aunt, Ahamo's wife, and the mother of Azkadellia and DG." She hesitated for a moment. "I'm the reason all of this started, and I wanted to apologize for that."
Cain bit out a laugh without even meaning too. "Ma'am, I doubt you turned Ambrose into a crime lord." He didn't want to hear other people taking the blame for Ambrose's actions, didn't want to hear how he was doing bad things for good reasons, didn't want any justification for wanting to forgive him.
"I didn't," she said stiffly. "But it was our family that drove him to it. He's a watchmaker, a tinker, not a crime lord." She let out a light sigh. "Or he was, at least."
He didn't want to know. He put the words on repeat in his head. He didn't want to know. Glitch was Ambrose, and that was the end of it.
Lavender could apparently read him easy enough, and let out a light laugh. "It's interesting."
"What is?" Cain asked, not even caring what answer he really got.
"When you first came to town, we held a conference," she began, voice amused. "Most of us were for getting rid of you, although our ideas of how to do it varied. And Ambrose flipped that coin of his and let himself decide that he wanted to see if you could see gray instead of just black and white." The silence stretched on, uncomfortable and strangely shameful. "I suppose he found his answer. Would you agree?"
Cain let his head fall forward, let out a long breath. "I guess so."
She made a satisfied noise, which definitely wasn't what Cain had been expecting. "I'm glad," she said simply. Even if he couldn't see her, his head jerked up almost painfully fast, and it earned him a light laugh. "I don't expect you to understand, detective. I'm just glad that there's someone Ambrose can't conquer. Someone who still knows right from wrong down to their soul."
He shook his head. "I don't think that applies to me, ma'am."
"Doesn't it?" she asked lightly, and it seemed that something shifted in the room. "Would you like to know, Mr. Cain?"
No.
"Yes," he whispered, and hated himself.
---
Ambrose sits in the back room of his shop, twenty-five and sunnier than summer as he glances behind him at his aunt. "It's hard to get the glass around it without hurting the clockwork," he says with a smile, and she smiles back. "I'll get it done for you, though."
"It was just a bet, Ambrose," she laughs, leaning back in a leather chair they use for nothing but sitting. "There's no rush." Besides, she's always known he can do anything he puts his mind to. Ambrose is unique like that - if there's something he decides to do, he can do it, given enough time. Sometimes it's maddening when he picks up a new project, considering how hard it is to pry him away from it long enough for him to actually tend the shop.
They make and mend car parts, fix pots and pans, specialize in watches, and have a side business in tailoring and costuming. Ambrose does almost all of the work, Lavender and her girls working on the clothing front as Ahamo works nights as a police officer. They're hard-working and happy about it. They're a family.
He's melting even more sand when the knock comes on the front door. Ambrose casts a pleading look to his aunt, and with a light laugh she stands up and heads for the front. The CLOSED sign is prominent enough that she's not quite certain what they need, but she opens up anyway.
There are three pale men, one of them bald and wearing a coat the buttery color of untanned leather. He smiles at her. "I'm here to speak to the owner."
Lavender Queen is used to this. As much progress as women have made, it's still a challenge for many of the men from previous generations to accept it. "I'm the owner. How can I help you?"
Even while she holds the door, he practically shoves her to the side to walk in, the two men just steps behind him. "I don't normally make house calls myself, but I figured this was a special enough occasion for it," he says. He's too close to her, and keeps getting closer. "You haven't been paying your dues. This is your warning."
"What dues?" a voice calls from the doorway, and she turns to see Ambrose leaning against the doorway, looking full of innocent confusion in his brown pants and white shirt, suspenders already hanging down the sides of his legs. "We own this building. I should know, considering I take care of the finances."
The man raises the skin where his eyebrow would be, sending a condescending glance at Ambrose. "The dues to make sure you still have a building to own, mister...?"
"Ambrose," he says, polite but frowning, and steps over with his hand held out. The man looks at the hand and turns back to Lavender without touching it.
"We'll be coming tomorrow. One hundred dollars for this month and the ones you've missed."
"One hundred dollars?!" Ambrose shouts out.
"But I won't be here tomorrow," Lavender pleads. They don't have one hundred dollars to spare, considering how tight getting by has made them, but the man doesn't seem like he heard her.
"Then we'll make the money up by taking some of the things in your store," the man says, shrugging and walking towards the door.
"Wait!" Ambrose shouts out. Lavender is pressed against the wall and glaring at the man and his lackeys, already knowing that there's nothing she can do to change this, but Ambrose doesn't know when to quit. He jogs towards the man and grabs his shoulder. The lackeys move for him, but the man holds up a hand, frowning and looking generally irritated. "Isn't there any way to make you reconsider? We've never done anything wrong! We're good people. We wouldn't even tell anyone you did this if you-"
"I'm assuming you're one of those children who never got the 'bad things happen to good people' idea set in their head," the man says, and swept Ambrose's hand off his shoulder with a single gloved finger. "Understand me, boy. Bad things seem worse when they happen to good people, because they don't think they deserve it. Do you honestly believe you're the only store paying dues?"
"We're not paying you," Ambrose says.
The man smiles in a way that is nothing but painful. "We'll see how it goes tomorrow, then."
Ambrose is going to say something again, but Lavender shouts out his name and he turns, finally breaking up something that could only turn horrifying if it goes on any longer. The man doesn't even say goodbye when he and his goons walk out, and neither of them wanted him to.
Lavender says everything she needs to in her eyes, and her nephew hugs her tight. "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything tomorrow, okay? You'll be back by dinnertime."
She lets out a light laugh. "It's only a daytrip, Ambrose. We can cancel it-"
"It's been planned for four months," Ambrose points out wryly. "And Ahamo's getting twitchy feet. You need to get out of the city."
Ambrose has argument after completely logical argument, just like always, and manages to share them all in a way that leaves Lavender almost forgetting the entire event ever happened. She packs up her things and helps her girls pack theirs up as well. When the morning comes, Ambrose is downstairs working on that tiny contraption of his, soaked with sweat but all smiles as it spins on the counter in front of DG's wide eyes.
"Have a good trip," Ambrose calls cheerily when they walk out the door.
The last thing Lavender says to her nephew is a reminder about the garbage men leaving a note about tomorrow's pickup being late.
Their trip is wonderful, a picnic by the lake where the girls run wild, acting ten years younger in the fresh air, and Lavender and Ahamo lean against each other in a gazebo pretending to read every time their daughters get in sight. The weather stays at a wonderful seventy-two degrees, clouds almost unbelievably beautiful as they swim above their heads.
It's absolute heaven.
When they get back, Ahamo escorts the girls upstairs for bedtime already since they stayed longer than planned. Lavender is still smiling when she walks into the back room and sees her nephew bleeding on the floor, breathing hard as he looks at the bald man's scalded body, the bloody knife next to the man's hand, and that see-through clock he's been working on, resting right next to Ambrose's cheek.
Ambrose survives, but Lavender knows something important died in him.
He buys them a suburban house and takes over the shop on his own when the police investigation shuts down the store. Nobody can pin anything on Ambrose, and he's a good enough liar that even Lavender's convinced he didn't kill that man, that the man sliced Ambrose's back open and managed to stumbled into some of the deadlier items in the store without Ambrose even touching him. There are valves in the house that they experiment with, and discover they cut off the water to a significant portion of the city.
One of the lackeys shows up at the house, and Lavender doesn't ask what happened to him, either, simply stitches Ambrose's back up once again and wishes she could manage to put his soul back together.
Things keep changing, until the lackeys don't disappear. They take off their hats when she enters the room. They defer to anything Ambrose says. They guard the house when Ambrose isn't there, to the point that Lavender refuses to look out of any windows simply to avoid seeing the black car she knows will be sitting on the other side of the street.
He moves back to the shop, opens it again under the name Glitch, and Lavender wants to kiss Glitch the first time she goes into the shop. The fact he invited her to tell her about how he organized his people into making a speakeasy and he wants her opinion on it when it opens tomorrow night dampens her mood, though. But he's smiling, and even laughing sometimes, so she smiles and nods and tells him, "Of course I'll be there," because she's already missed one important night in her nephew's life, and she never intends to let it happen again.
---
He knew Lavender was watching him, utterly silent as Cain tried to swallow the story. He fought believing it, tried to think Ambrose had always been bad, tried to ignore the pang in his heart at the idea that Glitch was everything Ambrose used to be.
"That doesn't change anything," Cain told her, and hoped she could understand he really meant 'anything' and not just his own opinion. When she nodded, he guessed she actually had.
"I never expected it to," she said simply, and stood up with that same swish noise as she'd sat with. "But you're the one who needs to know it."
"Me? Why me?" he asked.
The only thing that answered him was the door shutting gently against the doorframe, and the polite click of the lock.
---
DeMilo walked back up to his office, trying to ignore the pounding headache he was developing. Stress, definitely stress, and even the headache was stressing him more. His chair creaked comfortingly under him when he dropped into it, pulling open one of the lower drawers and pulling out a bottle of scotch, pouring the liquid into his coffee cup.
He leaned back, took a swig, and rubbed at his temples. The fire had been refreshing, slightly comforting even, to see, but that only got rid of one problem. One of many, many problems. The most pressing of which was the knife he finally felt against his back.
DeMilo froze, liquor-filled mug trapped midair as he tried to find out who was behind him without turning around.
"You know what I was asking myself last night, Antoine?" a man asked, light and distantly familiar. "I asked myself why haven't I killed Antoine DeMilo yet? You'd never believe the answer. I barely believe it, honestly."
DeMilo swallowed the lump in his throat, and carefully set the mug back on his desk. As soon as his hand had left the desk, his chair swiveled around violently and he found himself looking at a man wearing a dark gray suit and an ominously familiar black mask, tossing a knife from one hand to the other. "Ambrose." Ambrose stopped juggling the knife just long enough to toss off a salute so tiny it was almost offensive. DeMilo would have bet money that the bastard had been aiming for just that. DeMilo offered him a shaky smile. "Hey, I know you've got this declaration of war gig going on, but what's the big deal, really? What's so big-"
"Wyatt Cain was in Glitch's shop when you and your men attacked." Ambrose stopped shifting the knife from hand to hand, twisting it around the fingers of his left hand instead, never even looking at the blade. "The detective's out of bounds, Antoine."
DeMilo gaped at him. "Hey, I never knew there were limits to begin with! If you want to make up a treaty or something with me, believe me, I am all for that idea."
"It seemed like common sense," Ambrose sighed. "He's a good guy. Good guys don't get involved with stuff like this."
DeMilo just stared at him, trying to figure out how off his rocker the crime lord really was.
The knife sped up, and it was hard for DeMilo to keep his eyes off it. "Now. Last night, when I actually wondered about why I kept on letting you live, I realized that I was keeping you alive because of hope." He let out a light laugh. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"I. I've always been a fan of hope," DeMilo said, hoarse. "What were you hoping for? I have connections..." He stopped when he remembered who he was talking to, and specifically that the man he was talking to was giving him a very obvious 'you must be shitting me' look.
"I was hoping you'd do a good job, Antoine," Ambrose said, and stopped the knife mid-twirl. His lips quirked into a sad smile. "You haven't."
"I can do better, though," DeMilo said hastily. "People can change. I can change. I can be good." God, he felt like he was begging the schoolmaster to not hit him or something equally perverse. This had to be a nightmare of some sort. Besides, why the hell would Ambrose himself come out in the open to kill him?
There was a knock on DeMilo's office door, and he nearly fainted with relief. But DeMilo was born to swindle people, and he leveled a firm stare at Ambrose. "You might want to leave now."
Ambrose was actually grinning now. "Or what, you snap your fingers and bullets rain from the sky?"
"Or I arrest you and walk you to the electric chair myself," DeMilo smirked.
Ambrose shook his head, and called, "Come on in."
It took DeMilo a moment to recognize the officer that walked in. Blond, huge sideburns, it was Ahamo, the man who'd been working at Glitch's. His eyes widened as he took in the scene, and to DeMilo's shock he actually stepped in and closed the door behind him, snapping the lock in place behind him.
"What are you doing?!" both DeMilo and Ahamo shouted at the same time.
"I'm taking out the trash, that's all," Ambrose said dryly while DeMilo glared and pleaded with Ahamo with his eyes. Pleaded with him to do anything other than stand there and frown.
"That was my job," Ahamo said, voice slow and composed.
"Go home to the family. I'll be home after this," Ambrose said, and even though Ahamo didn't look an inch happy about the situation, he nodded.
"What side?"
"Head."
Ahamo nodded, and walked back out.
DeMilo gaped at him. "How fucking insane are you?"
"As crazy as I need to be," Ambrose replied, and pulled the mask off, casually flinging it onto the desk, right next to DeMilo's coffee mug of alcohol.
It took DeMilo a while to swallow the fact he was staring at Glitch's face. Ambrose seemed completely fine with it, simply watching him right back, as if he was used to this happening.
"Your store burnt down," DeMilo said weakly.
"I was the one who burned it."
DeMilo nodded, looking back over at the pitch-black mask sitting on his oak desk. "You're gonna kill me, aren't you."
"I'll give you the choice of poison or knife," Ambrose stated. He smiled slightly. "Poison would look like a heart attack. Knife...well. That's rather obvious, don't you think?"
DeMilo was surprised by the actual display of kindness hidden behind the words. He could go out relatively painlessly, at the cost of their knowledge of his murder, or he could choose Ambrose's capture over his own form of death. He smirked. "Me or you, eh?" DeMilo shook his head. "No way in hell I can make that kind of a decision. How dirty are your hands-"
The knife was fast and sickeningly efficient as it plunged into Antoine DeMilo's throat, the man barely getting out a squeak that turned into a gurgle before he was dead.
Ambrose wiped the knife on DeMilo's shirt, and hesitated for a moment before stabbing the blade through the top of his desk, leaving the knife upright, proud, and vicious, a sign that at least this battle was over. His hand stuttered for a moment above the mask, but after a glance back at DeMilo's still warm corpse, he grabbed it and put it in one of the wide coat pockets of his brown overcoat.
"They're dirty enough," he said quietly, and after closing Antoine's eyes for him, walked out the office's door.
When he walked out of the building, they had only just found the body.
---
Years ago, there had been a content beat cop with streets like old friends and a gun that was more a family heirloom than a weapon.
And then, years ago, his pocket watch had stopped one bullet, but not the other four that went into his wife.
---
Jeb came home to a cluttered and utterly silent apartment. It wasn’t that unusual, all things considered - his father worked odd hours. Coming home was more or less something he seemed to do because it was something normal they could cling to. His father knew Jeb had his own life outside of school, even if he didn’t quite know what it was. Jeb knew his father lived for his work. Occasionally he’d wonder if the man lived for anything else.
Spending most of the day with DG had been…nice. She was funny, smart, and pretty. She’d been able to tell when to back off of a subject and when to rush him with question after question. But there was still something off about spending time with her, as if she were wearing some sort of mask like the ones they sold at her store.
Jeb shook his head and fetched the lovingly tattered police manual he had memorized from cover to cover. He'd barely made it five pages in when there was a knock on the door. Ahamo, of all people, was on the other side.
"You want to be a cop, right?" Ahamo asked as soon as the door thudded against the boxes that sprawled across the apartment. Jeb nodded cautiously, and Ahamo nodded, pulling something out of the inside pocket of his coat. When he handed the papers to Jeb, the younger man stared at them.
"But this is-"
"Ambrose killed DeMilo," Ahamo said quietly. "He's turned reckless and I honestly don't think he's safe to be around anymore. Not even for us."
Jeb looked Ahamo straight in the eye. "You're betraying him."
"Where do you think your father's gone to, Jeb?" Ahamo asked, and didn't give Jeb enough time to answer. "Who do you think is really the bad guy now? The only good guys I see here are you and your father, Jeb, and I need to trust you to do the right thing."
"You're a police officer, why don't you do it?" Jeb asked, something clawing at his throat as he thought about the situation. "If you're already willing to betray your nephew-"
"He's not my nephew anymore," Ahamo hissed. "He's a killer. He started out with good intentions - we all know he did - but he's so absorbed in it now that if someone doesn't take him down, we're going to have something very big and very bad on our hands soon."
Jeb looked at the papers in his hand. "You're betraying him for the greater good, then."
"I'm helping the police because it's the right thing to do," Ahamo said, as if he were correcting his own thoughts more than anything else.
Jeb barely restrained a sigh. "You and your family are going to need to get out of town." So would Jeb, but that was another matter. "I think you'd better leave now."
"You're not even going to ask about your father?" Ahamo asked, sounding genuinely shocked.
Jeb stared him down. "If he was in trouble you wouldn't have come to me, because you know I'd find out." He stepped in to grab his coat one more time. "Besides, he can take care of himself."
---
There was a man and a woman waiting for him when he stepped off the train, the man smoking like he was dying, eyes glancing around, and the woman nothing but poise and elegance, long black hair tied up in something he could only think of as regal. "Mr. Mystic?" He nodded. She smiled, but the blond man next to her seemed to only become more tense. "My name is Azkadellia. I was sent here with a proposition for you."
It was hard for him to not glare and simply get back on the train, maybe head for the next stop on the line no matter where it was. "I'm clean now."
"But you were the mayor of a successful, decent-sized town before you were thrown out of office," she said a bit too cheerfully for his tastes. "You also have a bit of an acquaintance with the seedier side of people, if I'm not mistaken."
"I'm not going to be pushed around just because you know things," he said, hand twitching inside its glove. "I'm here to get a job and go on with my life, not-"
"That's why we're here, Mr. Mystic." She smiled, and held out a hand. "To offer you a very, very interesting job. It's an opportunity I guarantee you'd never expected to have when you stepped onto the train."
He hesitated, but shook it. "Well. I'm willing to listen."
The man's shoulders relaxed just slightly, and Azkadellia began to speak.
---
Almost done.
He could do it. Everything was fitting into place, all the gears and cogs he'd set in place twirling right where he needed them to, the world ticking away at the pace he wanted. He was almost done with all of it.
And then you'll see if you can live with yourself.
---
Cain jerked awake when the blindfold was tugged away from his eyes, the fabric sliding across his temples as he hissed at the sudden burst of light.
"Oh, one moment," a painfully familiar voice said, and the light was dimmed enough for comfort. He sounded too much like Glitch, and that was exactly why he stared at the man wearing Glitch's face better than any mask. Dark red suit, white shirt, black tie, and a hesitant look on his face. "Hi, Cain."
He sounded too much like Glitch. Cain let out a deep breath. "Go away."
"I'll leave if you really want," Ambrose said, sounding surprisingly sincere as he shrugged out of the dark maroon suit and let it fall onto the table. He tugged off the tie, too, and then he almost looked like Glitch too. "Honestly, I was hoping you'd shout at me."
"I'm too tired to shout at you," Cain said, and hoped it'd be the end of the conversation. "I haven't done anything but be talked at and drugged all day, and the rope isn't exactly luxurious."
Ambrose laughed. "It's rope, Cain. Rope's never luxurious."
"That's not the point here, Gli...Ambrose." Cain looked away, not even wanting to see Ambrose, and the man turned his own head as well, undoing the first button on his shirt. The move caught Cain's attention when he finally realized Ambrose had started undressing just about as soon as Cain had woken up. "Are you stripping?"
"I'm undressing," Ambrose agreed.
Cain waited for more explanation, but Ambrose just kept unbuttoning his shirt, eyes intent on the task and not Cain. He cleared his throat. "Want to tell me why?"
"Maybe. Depends on why you want to-"
"Pretend I just asked why," Cain sighed, and Ambrose smiled.
"Well," he said. "There's a few reasons. The first reason's that I haven't ever been particularly fond of ties, or anything else tied around my throat." His shirt was unbuttoned, and he just let it hang, sitting down on the table and leaning over to pull off his chairs. "I was also thinking about taking a nap in here, actually."
Cain just looked at him.
"What?"
"What time is it outside?" Cain asked.
"Two twenty-six in the morning, why?" Ambrose answered immediately, and Cain had to wonder if the man counted every tick of that coin of his in his head.
"Most people would just go to bed at this time." Cain frowned when Ambrose started on his socks. "Actually, most sane people are already asleep by now." Ambrose smirked a bit at that, and Cain ignored the idea that he was mad as a hatter. He'd already tried processing it and it hadn't worked out very well. There was too much calculation in everything he did.
"Most people aren't me," Ambrose finally said, and pulled his socks together in a neat bundle. "Want me to untie you?"
Cain stared at him. "You're just going to untie me? Just like that?"
Ambrose made a slight huffing noise. "Well not anymore. Sometimes you just need to say 'yes' when you get the option, Cain, and not wonder about the circumstances."
"I think I'll stick to thinking things through before agreeing to them," Cain said, shifting under the ropes when Ambrose rolled his arms out of the suspenders. "But I really would appreciate it if you untied me-"
"Can I kiss you?" Ambrose suddenly asked, and Cain's voice squeaked to a stop. Ambrose hopped off the table. "I'd normally just kiss you, but you can't really fight or protest or anything since I have you tied to a chair."
For some reason the thought he has me tied to a chair wasn't nearly as bad as it had been before right then. Cain blamed the fact that it was hard to remember that the 'he' involved was the guy looking at him like the night sky on a particularly clear day.
"Please?" Ambrose whispered above the incessant ticking that followed him everywhere.
"Get rid of the coin, and you can kiss me," Cain finally said. Ambrose looked like he'd been sucker-punched. "I'm not kissing you depending on what side flips up next. I'm kissing you. Just put the thing under a cushion or something."
Ambrose's hand was almost unnervingly slow when he pulled the coin out, and then walked over to the couch Cain could only assume was the designated Napping Target and shoved it under the cushions. He seemed to stare at the couch for a moment, his shoulders tense enough to snap.
Cain took a deep breath, not quite sure what was such a relief to get away from the noise. "Thank y-"
Ambrose took four steps and was immediately kissing him, mouth frantic and hot and so much like Glitch that Cain was having trouble remembering the man was a murderous crime lord. It was even more trouble when Glitch threw a leg over Cain and straddled him, fabric sliding against his bare skin as Glitch seemed to pray at his lips. Cain jerked in the chair, trying to touch him despite the ropes that seemed to be chiding him like hospital nurses while Glitch's mouth moved on to his jaw line, nipping and soothing with small kisses, making a strangely contented noise against his skin.
He tried to breathe. "You got your kiss," Cain said, voice high but steady as Ambrose moved onto his neck, one hand sliding from his shoulder and down his arm while the other simply rested on his naked hip, inconspicuous and full of potential.
"Please, Cain," Glitch whispered into his ear.
The hand moved approximately one and a third inches inward.
"Okay," Cain said very, very quickly, and Ambrose didn't give him time to even reconsider. He could feel the bastard grinning into his mouth when Cain whimpered at the hand dropping off his leg and leaving his body entirely too starved for attention, and Glitch - no, Ambrose, Glitch could never be this vicious - was leaving his lips just as neglected.
Ambrose kneeled in front of him, smiling far too happily. "I really wish I could just have you pushed up against a wall instead," he said almost wistfully, and before Cain could snap at him to either untie him already or to do just about anything, really, there were hands holding his hips down and a mouth around his cock, which definitely shut him up. Some things really didn't have sensical words that could be said about or during them, and this was definitely one of them, so Cain settled on nearly giving himself a concussion when he slammed his head backwards when Glitch started to get particularly ambitious with his tongue. It was like some sort of coordinated attack on him - hands were clenched on his hips, soothing but demanding, and his mouth was furnace-hot, tongue making precision strikes in all the right spots to make Cain fall apart.
"Oh god I want to touch you," Cain muttered, smacking his head against the chair yet again as Glitch just got better and better at destroying any sense of self-control he had. He wanted to strangle him, to kiss him, to be fucked into the ticking couch and then get cuddled for an hour before he punched Ambrose in the face.
Cain had no idea what Glitch did, but whatever it was it felt like the best apocalypse ever and he couldn't even warn Glitch before he came, managing to buck hard enough that the other man was hacking when he pulled off and there were finger-shaped bruises on Cain's hips.
He stared at Glitch for a while afterwards, chest heaving while Glitch crawled back over to rest his head on Cain's knee, looking disturbingly like a cat who'd...well. Cain cleared his throat. "You-"
"Thank you," Glitch sighed, and kissed the inside of his knee. He barely caught sight of the hand slipping in the front of his pants. "So much."
"Please let me touch you," Cain groaned, but it seemed like it was over as soon as the words left his mouth, Glitch biting his lower lip hard enough to bleed and sagging forward. It didn't matter though. Cain still needed to get his hands on some part of Glitch. Any part.
Ambrose let out a sigh. "I'll untie you, but you can't leave yet."
"Is Jeb safe?" Cain demanded.
"Both DG and Ahamo said he got home safe and sound," Ambrose agreed, and finally slunk over and started untying Cain. "I've had a very busy day, but other than that everything's fine." His legs were loose, but Cain was fairly sure he'd be incapable of walking for a while. Luckily, it didn't seem like Ambrose was about to give him the option of trying, because he hoisted Cain on one shoulder and shuffled them towards the couch.
He propped Cain up on the far side of the couch, and grabbed his coin from under the cushion, putting it on the table for all the world to hear its ticking. Then, Ambrose finally finished the job he'd started as soon as he'd walked in and grabbed a couple blankets out of a cupboard, just as naked as Cain.
"There'll be clothing in the morning," Ambrose said simply. Cain ended up on the edge of the sofa, Ambrose squished up against the side and not seeming to mind terribly as they stared each other in the face. He shut his eyes. "I." Ambrose took a breath and seemed to shrink even further into the couch's cushions. "I've had a bad week."
Cain was tempted to call him on the ridiculous hypocrisy of confessing that to a man who'd spent an entire day tied naked to a chair, but only god knew what was going on in Ambrose's head, so he simply pulled the covers tight over his shoulders, arms weak but working. "Tomorrow will be better," he said.
"No it won't," Ambrose said quietly, and slept.
---
Cain woke up in the middle of the night when he felt Ambrose pressing up against him, curling up and actually looking kind of adorable. He was sweating a little, brow creased and whimpering slightly.
He wrapped an arm around Ambrose, carefully avoiding the angry scar on his back, and Ambrose's eyes snapped open.
"You want to talk about it?" Cain asked, and politely ignored how vulnerable the other man looked.
He expected a quick negative answer and for Ambrose to simply brush it off, saying it was just a nightmare or something, but instead the other man spoke, quietly and slowly.
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone when all this started." He turned his head into the couch, avoiding Cain's eyes as best he could. "I...it was a shakedown. I gave him his money, asked what all of this was really about and why he was doing all of this, asked him for a reason that I was handing over money we couldn't afford to lose, and he shoved me against a wall and sliced me, and sometimes I can still feel the knife going down, slow and mean, and I shoved him, I just shoved him and he went into the soldering and-"
"You didn't mean to kill him," Cain said. It didn't change the fact that Ambrose had killed plenty of other people and certainly didn't change the fact he practically committed a felony every time he blinked, but Cain hugged him anyway. Ambrose was tense and he stayed tense until Cain finally let go.
Ambrose sighed, and turned away. "Goodnight, Cain," he said, and sounded like he was already half-asleep. Cain wondered how awake Ambrose really had been for the past few minutes.
"Night," Cain said, and watched Ambrose fall.
---
The door to Finaqua crashed inwards at nine in the morning, and there wasn't a soul in sight. The liquor was stocked, the trappings and tables were still set up from the previous night. The bandstand still had the band's instruments next to the chairs, even.
The Lieutenant frowned, but the adrenaline in him (this was Finaqua after all) forced him another step forwards. "Just because you can't see anyone doesn't mean they aren't there," he said quietly, and a few of the men closer to him nodded, looking even more nervous than they had before.
Inching about, they covered the entire floor, finally getting to the bar. The axes came out hesitantly, but as soon as the Lieutenant said, "Do it," voice firm and grave, they swung. Glass and liquor flew through the air, tossing stardust across the ceiling as they broke the mirror behind the bar with the swings, finally moving into the stock room and starting on the beer. Chop after chop after chop, it all went down, the Lieutenant looking on, grim and satisfied. It wasn't atonement for DeMilo's murder, not by a long shot, but it was a start.
As the axes continued to swing, he swept out of the room to explore the back rooms, three men with him. They were all empty, of course. Of course Ambrose or any of the Royals were nowhere to be seen.
"Lieutenant," one of the men said quietly, and he turned to see the man press lightly on a portion of the wall, and it swung inwards slightly, greased to silence. After a sharp nod from the Lieutenant, the man slunk in. He made a strange noise, and that was enough to get the rest of them running in, gun ready.
The sight of Detective Wyatt Cain sitting handcuffed to a sofa with a few blankets tossed over him and his clothes lying politely folded just a few feet away on a table, gun, hat, and holster included, was definitely not what any of them had been expecting. Nor was the only slightly pissed-off expression on the detective's face.
"The key to the handcuffs is under my hat," he stated, and the same cop who'd found the door immediately moved forward to free him from the comfortable-looking couch.
The Lieutenant caught sight of the chair still sitting in the middle of the room with ropes hanging from it. Cain looked like he had some sort of rope burns on him, not to mention some bruising. "You alright?" he asked, and received a curt nod from Cain, who wrapped the blankets around himself and moved over to his clothing. His movements were weak and there was a slight hitch to his steps.
"I had an eventful couple of days," Cain stated, using the blankets as a screen between himself and the others as he got dressed. The Lieutenant could have sworn he heard a muttered, "and very eventful morning," but nothing was really matching up right then.
"Why'd he spare you?" the Lieutenant asked as Cain moved on to step into his pants. "Every other cop whose run into Ambrose has died."
"He said he respected me," Cain said, voice sounding dead. "I'm guessing he was surprised someone figured out what he was doing."
It seemed far too easy, but the Lieutenant wasn't about to pry into the life of a man who'd probably been tortured for two days. "You should be proud of your son, detective," the Lieutenant said instead.
"I'm always proud of him," Cain stated.
"Well, he led us straight to Finaqua," he said, smiling proudly. "I don't know where he got all the information he did, but he gave us everything, from leases to contracts with the water company to some of the written agreements between Ambrose and his clients."
A piece of paper dropped out of the folds of Cain's shirt, and the man picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket, finally dropping the blankets when his shirt was fully buttoned. "Jeb's always been resourceful."
"I can only hope my Mikey grows up to be like him, I have to say," the Lieutenant said, smiling while Cain was ice cold, finally strapping on his gun, shrugging into his coat with a slight wince, and putting on his hat, finally looking like the man he was instead of the man who'd been a prisoner for two days.
"They're all long gone," Cain said simply, leaning slightly on the table.
"We noticed," the Lieutenant agreed. "Everyone's taking care of the liquor as we speak."
"Good," Cain said firmly, and headed for the door.
"Wait! Detective!" Cain just kept on walking until the Lieutenant grabbed his arm. "Where are you going?"
"To find them," Cain stated, as if it was completely obvious that he was going to keep on hunting the crime lord down until the day he died.
---
Cain felt like he couldn't breathe. Everything was quietly going to hell and it seemed like everything was ghosts and whispers and darkness, even in the painfully bright morning sun. The thud and crash of axes still echoed up to him in his mind, and he stared at the rubble left from Glitch's shop.
There was absolutely nothing left but ash and broken brick, tiny flecks of metal burnt and warped beyond repair. For some reason the thought that his watch had probably gone down with the building stuck in his mind.
He pulled out the piece of paper he'd crinkled in his haste to avoid the Lieutenant and his men seeing it, sitting on the curb in front of what was left of Glitch's two-story building, and read the creased and bumped piece of paper.
Cain,
You're the good guy, and you'll always stay the good guy. I really am sorry about almost everything, and I'm sure you can guess what I'm not going to be apologizing for. I don't think you understand how amazing you are, and that's fine. There was a scribbled out portion afterwards that he couldn't make out, but he figured if Ambrose didn't want him to read it, Cain would trust him for once and leave it alone.
I did my best to keep you out of all the big trouble that could come down on you if anyone found out about things. The handcuff trick really was for your own good. I told you to go live as normal a life as you could manage to, and I meant that. Take care of your son.
I made sure the new guy's going to be mostly harmless. There's going to be a power vacuum for a few months, and I'm hoping you can fill it with some actual legal and honest law. You really are the best thing this city could ever hope for.
We're taking a train out of the city. I'll find a way to give you your watch back.
I'm glad I met you.
Glitch
Cain shoved the paper back into his pocket, hailed a taxi, and headed straight for the train station, solely because of who had really signed it.
---
On? Off? On? Make up your mind. He sat on the bench, looking up at the window where his family was sitting, neat and smiling and safe.
It was the safe part that had him sitting outside of the train, because he knew that his own efforts to keep them safe had just ended in their own downfall into the highest rank of the underworld. He knew they all still had their masks in the bottom of their trunks and they all remembered the same protocol that had ruled them for...god, he couldn't even remember. Even with his coin ticking away in the pocket of his coat, he only knew hours and minutes and seconds, never days, never weeks, never months or years. He lived by the second, and he wasn't quite sure if he hated it or not.
When a man sat next to him, Ambrose barely restrained himself from grabbing one of the knives he'd sworn to take off as soon as they stepped off the train. He was balding, an older man with a kind smile and a leather mitten over one hand. "Mr. Mystic." Ambrose nodded in greeting.
Mystic smiled at him. "You sure about this? Leaving your empire in my hands?"
"It's not an empire," Ambrose said simply. "You'll be working with a third of what I had, since Finaqua got taken down. You're going to be building everything up from the ashes." He paused. "There's an open lot in the city, by the way. A building burned down, and the lease actually seemed to transfer to you."
"How surprising," Mystic said, smile intelligent and amused. Ambrose couldn't help but like the guy.
He took a deep breath. "There's a detective named-"
"Wyatt Cain, I know." The man shifted in his seat, and Ambrose couldn't blame him. The bench was painfully uncomfortable. "He's a good man. I'll trust him to be good."
Ambrose nodded. The train whistled. "I guess that's me."
"If you want it to be," Mystic agreed, and Ambrose looked at him, trying to figure out what exactly the man was saying. He shifted again, this time to face Ambrose as directly as possible. "None of you really have to leave. I can understand you pushing them out the door and into a new life, but you've already given up more than a lot of people could believe. Do what you want for once, not what you should. Not what you can indulge in."
It seemed like the world had gone quiet. The train whistled again, a conductor walking past as everything slowed down. Mr. Mystic put his hat back on his head and stood with a nod of respect, walking over to the ticket counter, as if he'd realized Ambrose needed time. He could see DG laughing with her sister on the train, Zero uncomfortable but reassured by Azkadellia's hand on his arm. He could hear the traffic outside the station, the children inside the station.
Ambrose pulled the ever-so-breakable piece of clockwork and glass out of his pocket.
You can't do this, his mind taunted. It's the only thing that's kept you from offing yourself for years now.
"I didn't mean to kill you," he said simply, eyes as fixed on the coin as they had been when Raynz had burned to death and fallen to the concrete floor of the shop, trying to look at anything but what he'd done. And it was head up when you did what you had to do.
Ambrose pulled out the knife, and twirled it through the air one last time, watching it fly towards the glass canopy of the grand train station. "I never had to."
The knife slashed through the air.
---
Paying a cab driver had never taken so long. Crowds had never been as obnoxiously packed before he'd tried to get into the train station. He didn't know what train to look for, and didn't even know where they'd be headed. For all Cain knew they'd been gone for hours, but he looked anyway.
He looked for a very, very long time.
Finally, a balding man stood up from one of the benches that faced the trains, and looked him straight in the eye. "Are you Wyatt Cain?" Cain nodded quickly, and before he could even ask, the man spoke over his thoughts. "Ambrose isn't here. He left."
Cain felt himself wilt a little, which was stupid really. Of course he was gone. He'd said he was leaving, and Cain couldn't honestly remember a time when Ambrose hadn't done exactly what he'd said he was planning to. "Thank you for-"
"Come sit down," the man said, and Cain found himself obeying, following the man over to a bench, only to stare at the seat.
Ambrose's coin sat neatly on the furthest wooden slat in the seat, stabbed through the center with a knife.
"Oh, that?" The man smiled at him. "It was rather peculiar to see a man toss a coin in the air and pin it about five inches away from his own leg, but Ambrose isn't exactly normal, as far as I've seen."
"Who are you?" Cain demanded, and the man held out his right hand, shaking hands with Cain.
"Mr. Mystic, at your service," the man said, lips quirking a bit wryly. "Ambrose put me in charge of everything for some reason, so it's nice to meet my imminent doom." The idea that Ambrose had planned all of this was bizarre, but strangely fitting in a way that was both infuriating and perfectly logical, just like the mastermind. "He said you're a good man, and I believe him."
Cain shook his head. "I try to be, at least," he said.
Mystic looked at him for a while, giving him a calculating look that was somehow friendly at the same time. "He walked."
Cain's brow creased. "He what?"
"He didn't take a train. He walked out. I don't know where he went, I don't know what he said to his family and that Raw character that joined them, I just know that he thanked me and walked out of the station," Mystic stated, gesturing absently towards the exit.
"Did he say anything else?" Cain asked.
"Well, he was talking to himself for a while before he stabbed that clock-coin contraption of his, but that was it." The man looked Cain straight in the eye. "If he wants you to find him, you will, Cain."
Cain nodded, and stood up. After a moment, he sat back down and grabbed both knife and broken glass coin, pocketing them next to Glitch's letter. "Thank you."
Mystic smiled at him, standing up. "Be seeing you then, Detective," he said, full of humor and life, and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Cain alone to try and find Glitch, regardless of whether or not the man wanted to be found.
After four months, he stopped expecting to see him every time he looked up.
And after nine months, he almost stopped looking.
To the end...