#and then he’s on the phone talking to his partner abt reporting the thing as stolen
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I'm Gonna Be The Anti-Hero (So I Can Save You When The Time Comes)
"You have to choose now. Beat me senseless and uphold your 'law', or go back to being the Ryan Murphy we've all come to know and love."
That seemingly earnest plea rang in Ryan's ears like a bomb going off as he tried to sleep. It wasn't exactly warm in the alleyway, but he didn't have the means to afford a secret vigilante base (yet; he'd have to look into that in the future) and, well, there was nowhere else he could go. Well, no, that wasn't true. He could always just go back to his own house. But that would go against his pride.
Where he really couldn't go back to was the clubhouse. Not anymore.
He had been about to tug his hat and mask off in shame, to denounce the crime-fighting lifestyle. "I choose to be your friend"... those words had been on the tip of his tongue. Even now, his heart ached with an infuriating ferocity when he thought back to it. But then.
The crunch of footsteps on the pavement behind him had snapped Ryan to attention, and he'd whirled around to see Neil sneaking up behind him with a bottle of chloroform. All at once, Ryan had understood what was really happening here. Kevin's words had just been a distraction so they could apprehend him. And then what did they plan on doing with him? Handing him over to the cops?
Well, he wasn't going to wait around to find out. In one swift motion, he knocked the bottle out of Neil's hands and pinned him to the wall with a hand around his neck.
"You…" he growled, being sure to use his vigilante voice after having momentarily slipped out of it before. "You traitor!"
"R-Ryan, wait," Neil gasped, hands scrabbling to pry Ryan's hand off of him. Ryan loosened his grip, something he wished he could say he regretted doing now, but instead he felt he would regret it more if he hadn't. "We still want to be your friend! Weren't you listening to Kevin just now?"
"I meant what I said, Ryan," Kevin put in, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. Ryan flinched away from the touch.
"Yeah, the chloroform was just, you know…" Neil gave him a nervous smile and shrugged, apparently trying to seem casual even as his throat jumped beneath Ryan's gloved hand. "A backup plan."
Even now, replaying the confrontation in his mind, Ryan wondered if he should have believed them. If he just went along with what they were saying, took his mask off and went home with them, wouldn't that be so much easier? Whether or not they really liked or respected or trusted him, at least they were going to pretend they did. He could pretend too, couldn't he?
No. I'm not going to play along anymore. His hands curled into fists, just as they had a few hours prior as he faced down his so-called friends.
"If you value your own wellbeing, get away from here and don't come back." He released his hold on Neil and stepped back, looking between him and Kevin with a glare. They lingered in place, looking back at Ryan with wide, frightened eyes. "Now! Get out of here and leave me alone!"
"But Ryan--" Neil began, stepping toward him with his now empty hands extended.
"Don't," Kevin told him quietly, holding an arm out in front of Neil. He leveled his gaze at Ryan--not quite a glare; the anger in his eyes was too heavily outweighed by sadness. "He's already made his decision. Haven't you, Ryan?"
Have I made my decision? Even now, Ryan wasn't sure he had. It felt more like the decision had been made for him. But if this was really how these people felt about him… that he had to give up part of who he was in order to keep being their friend… well, then it wasn't much of a decision in the first place, was it?
In the end, despite having told them to leave a moment ago, it was Ryan who turned and ran from that alley. He didn't want to spend any longer looking at the expressions of hurt and betrayal etched deep across his friends' faces. Not that it made any difference, because those expressions were engraved in his mind now; he saw them every time he closed his eyes, and he could tell that he was going to be seeing them for some time yet. But only in his head. He wasn't going to see them again in person, not if he could help it. Even if that thought made the persistent ache in his heart grow even sharper, he couldn't go back.
Now, as he sat with his back against the wall of another alleyway on the other side of town, eyes clenched shut in a futile attempt to get a decent night's rest, his mask was still on. And it would be staying on for the foreseeable future.
*
Mere seconds after Ryan rounded a corner and disappeared from view, Kevin groaned and shook his head.
"Oh man, what am I saying? He didn't make his decision yet."
"He didn't?" Neil asked skeptically, rubbing his neck. It wasn't even particularly sore, but it was the principle of the thing. "His mind seemed pretty made up to me."
"No, see, I told him to either beat me up or go back to being our friend," Kevin explained. "And he didn't beat us up, so…"
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Neil muttered. (Never mind that Ryan's hand had been around his neck a minute ago. They'd pretty much all screwed each other over at some point; it was probably only fair. That was just how friendships worked, wasn't it?) "Should we go after him, then?"
Kevin didn't respond immediately. He stared down the alleyway to the street where Ryan had taken off. It probably wouldn't be too hard to chase him down if they went after him now, but the longer they deliberated, the more opportunity he had to outrun them. And what would they do when they caught him? Guilt stirred in Neil's gut as his gaze drifted down to the discarded bottle of chloroform. He knelt down and picked it up, then turned the bottle over in his hands. Should I apologize?
Almost like he could tell what Neil was thinking--probably because he was thinking a very similar thing--Kevin laid a hand on Neil's shoulder and gave a slight, hesitant shake of his head.
"Let him run off if he wants," he said. When Neil's concerned frown deepened, he added: "Don't worry, he'll come back soon enough. Our bond can't be broken just like that."
"Right," Neil sighed. He wished he could have Kevin's confidence… although, from the way he didn't quite meet Neil's gaze, he had to wonder if Kevin was really that confident either or just pretending. Either way… "And when he does come back, let's not chloroform him. I think that part was a mistake."
Even as he said that, Neil tucked the bottle back into his pocket. He didn't want to have to use it, really. He didn't take any pleasure from the idea of forcefully knocking Ryan out. He just…
Well, after reading those news reports, he hadn't expected Kevin to be able to talk Ryan down so easily. If Neil had listened a little more closely to the exchange, been at an angle where he could watch Ryan's expression change, then maybe he would have thought better of the chloroforming part of the plan. But what was done was done. And now… now Neil had to wonder if the same trick would work twice. If they did run into Ryan again and he wasn't so friendly, would they be able to get him to come home with them without using force?
"It won't come to that," Neil told himself, as if muttering self-directed reassurances under his breath would lighten the weight of the bottle in his pocket. "It's like Kevin said. We're still friends. Ryan's gonna come back."
*
Ryan didn't come back.
On some level, that was exactly what Kevin had expected. He tried to keep up a positive attitude, for Neil's sake if nothing else--he'd given up too quickly before and been proven wrong, after all, so there was always still a chance--but after two whole weeks with no word from their friend, it was hard to imagine Ryan just strolling back into their clubhouse any day now like nothing was wrong.
At least they knew for a fact that Ryan was still okay, physically speaking. The newspaper articles about vicious attacks by the "crazed vigilante" just kept coming. As much as those articles made him cringe, their continued presence in the paper was kind of a relief, too. He read enough comics to know that crime-fighting could be pretty dangerous, and if anything bad happened to Ryan… well, he didn't want to think about it.
To make things worse, it seemed that people had taken to throwing bricks at them. This only came to Kevin's attention when Neil held up one brick with a note attached to it and proclaimed that it was "another brick from those people who keep throwing bricks at us!" Without acknowledging Kevin's bewildered response to that remark, Neil jumped into reading the note, which announced the addition of a…
"Hmm," Neil said, tilting his head as he read over the note. "It looks like they crossed out the words 'fourth member' and changed it to 'replacement member of your team'."
"Replacement?" Kevin echoed, immediately wary. He got up from the couch and walked over to read the note over Neil's shoulder.
"I know, that's weird, right?" Neil muttered. "Who could possibly replace Ryan?"
Before they could read any further, an unfamiliar voice rang out from behind them. "'Sup, bros, I'm that new rocker kid!"
They turned to see a guy in a hulkamania t-shirt grinning smugly back at them, hands in a finger-gun position. Kevin and Neil exchanged an uneasy look. This didn't bode well…
*
So, Cynthia, remember that filmmaking studio I was telling u abt? They partnered me up w/ this pair of total frados. We're gonna have a fishing sesh now even though fishing is totally midtown. So not deck.
While Spencer was typing out this text message, being sure to select only the most infuriatingly nonsensical slang terms, the foliage above him rustled. He rolled his eyes and swatted a falling leaf away from his hair without taking his eyes off his phone screen. Okay, now to take some gnarly selfies… He leaned back and, after selecting an appropriately pretentious black-and-white filter, held his phone out in front of him and started snapping photos. He tilted his head to one side, then the other… Hmm, what angle makes me look smartest? He stuck his tongue out in contemplation, all the while making sure to keep his vape in the frame.
Just as he pressed the "send" button, a sudden flash of motion in his periphery made him jump. He turned to gawk at the masked man who had just appeared as if out of thin air--although, Spencer quickly realized, he'd probably jumped out of the tree that Spencer had been leaning against a moment ago. Huh, that was weird. Spencer took a puff of his vape and blew the smoke in the masked man's face.
"Hey, what's with the costume, bro?" he asked. "Are you wearing that ironically or what?"
"Vaping in the middle of the woods," the stranger growled in response. "Do you have any idea how much damage that can do to the ecosystem?"
"Woah, chillax, dude," Spencer laughed, holding up a hand in a gesture of surrender (but, like, only ironically, because raising a hand to indicate surrender was so mainstream). "Hang on, let me get some pics of you in that--waugh!!"
He broke off into a yelp as the masked man grabbed him by the collar and tugged him behind the treeline, well out of those lame filmmakers' line of sight. In a series of terrifyingly quick movements, the masked stranger wrenched the vape pen from Spencer's hand, clocked him over the head with it, and then kneed him in the groin. Spencer doubled over with a moan.
"D-dude… so not cool…"
The masked man harrumphed. Without another word, he grabbed Spencer's head in his hands and gave it a forceful twist sideways. The last thought to go through Spencer's brain before it permanently shut down was that the forest twisting around backwards like that would make a sick album cover.
*
Through some miraculous twist of fate, Spencer apparently wandered off during their walk through the woods and never showed back up. Evidently he'd decided that he didn't want to hang out with Kevin and Neil any more than they wanted to hang out with him--a small mercy if they'd ever seen one. That was one problem solved without them even having to come up with a solution.
But the main problem, the real problem, still wasn't solved--that problem being that they had a hole in the team that the studio saw the need to fill in the first place. And that hole did need, desperately, to be filled. But not with an annoying hipster. With the missing original member of the group.
Another few weeks went by. Autumn turned to winter. Soon there was snow on the ground, and the overnight temperatures were low enough to implant a freezing panic whenever the newspapers went a few days in a row with no reports of vigilante attacks.
"Say, Neil… you designed Ryan's vigilante costume, right?" Kevin asked one frost-covered morning, his hands clenched tight enough to rip the front page of that day's paper.
"Yeah, I helped put it together. Why?"
"You think it's warm enough?"
"Oh, uh, it's pretty well-insulated." Neil smiled, but there was a strained twitch to his expression that made it obvious that he knew why Kevin was asking. As if to banish those thoughts from both their minds, he forced his smile a little wider while twisting his hands anxiously under the table. "Ryan's gonna be fine. And if it gets too cold, then he knows where to go, right?"
"Yeah, of course. Back here."
Kevin didn't bother saying what they were both already thinking: that if Ryan wanted to come back to their clubhouse, back to them, then he already would have.
*
Ryan held his breath as he crouched atop the apartment building's fire escape. If he exhaled, then his breath would puff out in front of him and give away his location. His body already ached from having to stay frozen in that position for as long as he had, and the cold was only making matters worse. He was deeply grateful for his gloves; he didn't think he'd be able to stand gripping the frost-coated metal with bare hands.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the door to the apartment beneath him opened and his target stepped out onto their balcony. The target--a middle-aged woman with graying hair dyed pink--leaned over the balcony railing with a heavy sigh and reached into the pocket of her winter coat. A moment later, a puff of smoke filled the air around her--not just her breath made visible by the frigid December air, but cigarette smoke. Not technically illegal out here, but it should have been. What if there happened to be a plant or animal out on this balcony? There wasn't any that he could see, but… in any case, it went against Ryan's sense of justice, which many would argue was as incomprehensible as everything else about him.
With the agility of a cat in an acrobatics competition, Ryan leapt off the fire escape and dropped through the air, cape fluttering behind him, to the smoker's level. He came down on her feet-first. A loud, squawking cough erupted from the smoker as Ryan planted a kick to her back. The force sent her falling against and nearly over the rail; Ryan caught her by the hood of her coat and flung her back toward the door.
"Smoking in public," he spat. "Disgraceful. You're a hazard to everyone around you."
The cigarette dropped from the woman's dangling jaw as she gaped at him. It went out as soon as it landed on the snow-dusted balcony, but Ryan stamped on it and ground it beneath his heel anyway for good measure.
"Wha… you…" Her gaze flickered over Ryan, landing on his mask. "Oh, christ, are you that vigilante who's been going around beating people to death over nothing?"
"No!" he snapped, inadvertently using his natural voice. Upon realizing his mistake, he flushed with embarrassment, cleared his throat, and tried again in the proper gravelly tone. "Not over nothing. I make sure every criminal in this city receives their punishment."
With that, he lunged toward the smoker with his hand tightened into a karate-chop position. He made short work of her, as he did with all his targets. Within seconds, she was sprawled unconscious on the ground, with several bones twisted out of place. (Can't you see how crazy this has all gotten?) Was it harsh? Of course. (We're afraid of you.) Harsher than was strictly necessary, even? Maybe. (You're a horrible fascist.) But it was what he was meant to do, and… well, there wasn't much severe crime in Plymouth, so he had to make do with fighting what was presented to him.
The smoker had left the door to her apartment open behind her. Ryan dragged her back inside before taking off. Didn't want to just leave her exposed to the elements.
After that, he had to get out of there as fast as possible, which in this case meant descending the fire escape three steps at a time. Although he didn't think anyone had seen him, you could never be too careful with big buildings like this. There was always a chance someone could have seen and called the cops. Ryan had dealt with the police around twelve times too many in the past month, and it hadn't always gone well--he could begrudgingly admit that he probably owed his life to being held up in a jail cell over a couple of the colder nights recently, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
While he was running through the apartment complex's courtyard, muscles coiling in preparation to jump the fence, a high-pitched laugh from nearby caught his attention. Ryan froze up, a chill running through him. He turned to see a strange man in a bowler hat leaning against a tree, twirling his mustache.
"My, how marvelous," the stranger crooned. "You certainly gave that miscreant a run for her money."
Ryan approached the stranger with narrowed eyes. "Who are you?" he inquired, trying not to let any apprehension reveal itself through his growl.
"Why, you haven't heard of me?" The stranger raised his hand and snapped his fingers, only to pause and frown when nothing happened. "…Ah, right, the background music is only rigged up for when I'm in my lair. Well, anyway! I'm the Misery Meister, and I believe my goal in life is remarkably aligned with yours. What do you say to the two of us teaming up?"
"Teaming up?" But vigilantes work alone, don't they? Then again, maybe not all of them did; Ryan had never actually met another crime-fighter before. He decided to err on the side of caution with his next question: "What's in it for me?"
"Oh, all sorts of useful things… room and board, for example. I've been watching you for some time now, Mr. Murphy, and you don't have a proper home base, do you?" The Misery Meister laughed, in a tone somewhere between a giggle and a cackle, at the way Ryan squirmed at that question. "That won't do if you plan to keep up this crime-fighting business all through the winter. You could freeze to death without a lair to go back to at night, you know."
As if to accentuate that point, he raised his hand--also gloved, Ryan noticed; he felt a faint twinge of kinship toward this strange person--and gave a wriggle of his fingers. A bluish-white glow began forming in the Misery Meister's palm, and the temperature of the surrounding air suddenly dropped a few degrees. Ryan shuddered.
"If you work with me, I can keep you safe and secure up on Misery Mountain." As he said this, the meister closed his hand, and the ball of ice energy disappeared. "In return, you can… hmm, do a few favours for me. Simple things that I'm sure you can manage. Does that sound like a fair arrangement?"
Ryan paused to consider the offer. He knew all too well the dangers his current lifestyle posed, from bad weather to the police--even now, as he thought this over, he was tensely surveying the area to make sure there were no flashing red and blue lights coming his way--to the possibility that one day he'd encounter a more serious criminal who could hold their own against him in a fight. Teaming up with someone with… ice powers, it seemed?… and apparently a secure place of dwelling could certainly help him out. And, he rationalized, if this Misery Meister fellow turned out to be untrustworthy, Ryan could always just stop working with him.
"Alright," he decided, extending his hand for a shake. "Partners in crime-fighting."
It was only once they were already en route to the Misery Meister's mountaintop hideout that Ryan realized the meister had never actually mentioned crime-fighting. But he had to be another vigilante, right? After all, who else would dress and act like that, and have supernatural powers?
*
The truth was that this arrangement had very little to do with Ryan's abilities or his innate potential as a human being or anything ridiculous like that. It was just that, after spending weeks remotely monitoring everyone in the area, it was clear that this so-called vigilante was the most consistently miserable person in Plymouth county. That made him the perfect specimen to extract DNA anticultures from in order to concoct an anti-happiness elixir. Naturally, someone as powerful as the Misery Meister had other ways of obtaining DNA samples. But if he could obtain those samples while also getting a capable bodyguard/servant to carry out his evil bidding, well, that was just a convenient bonus.
He made sure to start Ryan off slow so as not to scare him off right away. Housekeeping, shooing away hapless trespassers, finding new traffic signs for him to spray paint--things like that, that anyone could do. If Ryan was bothered by being assigned such simple tasks, he did a good job hiding it. Clearly he was more desperate for a place to call home, not to mention some direction in life, than he'd let on.
A few days into their arrangement, one of his monitors started going off. "What?" he gasped. "Somebody's happy in Plymouth?!" Sure enough, the words "happiness alert" blinked on the green-tinted screen beneath live footage of two young men--around Ryan's age, by the looks of it, but that didn't seem relevant or noteworthy--one of whom was petting a dog. It didn't take long to discern that the dog was the source of the young men's happiness. Which meant there was an easy way to deal with it…
"Ryan, come in here," he called, tapping his finger against the little bell he'd installed on his desk to summon his servant. "There's an errand I want you to go on."
Ryan entered quickly, obedient as always. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, as he always did when addressed by name, but he had yet to come up with any monikers that he would rather be called. "What is it, sir?"
The Misery Meister motioned to his monitor. "Look at this. The dog is making these boys happy. I want you to remove it."
To his surprise, when Ryan leaned in to look at the monitor, he stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. His lips moved, apparently mouthing a name, or multiple names. The Misery Meister raised his eyebrows, intrigued. Ryan didn't know these people, did he? …Ah, but if he does, that could be a new opportunity to spread even more misery…
"Sir, you want me to…" Ryan looked at the monitor and visibly gulped before looking back at the Misery Meister with a poorly hidden grimace. "You want me to kill Roc--I mean, the dog?"
"Kill it? Oh, I didn't even think of that! Should I have you kill it? …No, that's not necessary," he decided. "Just capture it and bring it back here."
"Capture it. Right." There was an audible waver to Ryan's deep, gravelly voice that made the Misery Meister wonder, not for the first time, if maybe that wasn't his natural voice. Still, Ryan clenched his jaw and gave a stiff nod. "Yes, sir. I can do that."
*
Ryan didn't stop thinking about what he saw on the monitor for the rest of the day. Watching the men who he had considered his dear friends smiling and laughing amongst themselves… admittedly, some part of him was glad for them. But later that day, as he replayed the footage in his head with some details slightly distorted by memory, a painful twinge of jealousy stirred in Ryan's gut. It was accompanied by a residual pang of betrayal--a startlingly poignant sensation even a month after the fact.
Look at them, carrying on like that. Like everything was normal… well, maybe everything was finally normal for them now. After all, I was the weird one, wasn't I? With me out of the way, things are probably better for them.
With that thought, the roiling mix of emotions swirling within him calcified into a hard, cold bitterness thick enough to choke on. Yes, it all seemed so obvious now. He had made his choice to leave his former friends behind, and now both himself and those "friends" were doing better than ever. Maybe having ever become friends with those two was a mistake. Clearly they didn't need him, and he certainly didn't need them, either.
*
What Ryan didn't see, looking at low-res footage on a computer with the volume muted, was that the happiness detected by the monitor was diluted by melancholy. In fact, just a few short minutes before the happiness alert started going off, Neil had been on the verge of tears.
He'd been trying to figure out a holiday cookie recipe, but even though he was following the recipe to the letter, the results just weren't turning out how they were supposed to. He could only assume that Ryan had some sort of secret ingredient to make them taste right. Even though it had been several weeks already, his first thought upon coming to this realization was, Oh, then I'll just ask Ryan what that ingredient is. Of course that wasn't how secret ingredients worked, so Ryan probably wouldn't have told him even if he had been around--heck, if Ryan was around, then he could be the one doing the baking like usual and they wouldn't be in this situation.
But none of that would cross Neil's mind until later. In the moment, upon having that thought, he poked his head out of the kitchen and opened his mouth to call Ryan's name, only for it to die on his tongue when he remembered that his friend wasn't around anymore.
"Oh, hey, Neil," Kevin greeted him from his position on the couch. "Everything going okay in there?"
"Not really," Neil admitted. He wiped his flour-coated hands off on his pants and moved to sit down next to Kevin. He noticed there was a newspaper on the end table--unsurprising; Kevin had been very vigilant about keeping up with the news lately. Neil picked up the paper and thumbed through it. "Any more reports of vigilante attacks?"
"Not today."
That was the answer he'd expected. It had been a few days now without any reports of vigilante activity, and at this point they were both pretty worried. Although Kevin's countenance was outwardly calm now, Neil had seen him pacing around the living room muttering to himself earlier. That was what had prompted Neil to try baking something in the first place--an attempt to cheer them up and get their minds off things.
"Well, at least…" Kevin added after a moment in a quieter, more weary voice, "There's nothing in the obituaries, either."
Neil grimaced and looked away so Kevin wouldn't see him tearing up. That effort was probably undone, though, by the warble that he couldn't keep out of his voice as he rattled off the same empty assurance that the two of them had been repeating back and forth to themselves and each other for a month now. "Right, so… there's no reason to think anything bad happened to him. He's fine."
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment, with the only sound being the faint rustling of the newspaper as Kevin picked it back up and started looking through it again, as if searching for any relevant news he'd missed the first time around. Neil realized after a minute that he'd left a batch of cookies in the oven and they were going to burn, but he didn't bother getting up to take them out. They probably weren't going to turn out very good, anyway. Just like how their last webisode, the one about fishing, hadn't turned out very good. The studio had said it was boring because nothing interesting happened in it. If Ryan had still been onboard their team, he could have come up with a way to add conflict to the narrative, but without him… it seemed like nothing Neil or Kevin did was turning out properly.
However, as soon as the oven's timer beeped, there came the scuffle of paws against the kitchen floor, followed by the sound of the oven opening and the clatter of the tray being removed. Neil gasped in delight as Rocky trotted up to them, tail wagging, with the tray of cookies in her mouth.
"Hey, there's a good girl!" Kevin reached down to scratch her behind the ears while Neil took the tray and set it atop the end table.
"Let's see how they turned out," said Neil. He was admittedly still skeptical that this batch would have turned out any better than his previous seven attempts (he'd been at this baking thing all day; was it any wonder he was getting a little frustrated?) but Rocky showing up to help like this felt like a good sign. She tended not to get involved with lost causes, which might have been why she didn't usually help them out with their webisodes.
And to his pleasant surprise, when he bit into a cookie, he found that it tasted… if not exactly like the ones Ryan made, then at least the closest to it that he'd gotten all day. Similar enough that he could close his eyes and imagine that it was Ryan who had made them, and that he was sitting right there next to them, and they'd all apologized to each other and everything was fine. As quickly as that illusion faded when Neil opened his eyes, it lingered just long enough to implant a genuine comforting warmth within him. For what must have been the first time in weeks, he smiled.
"It's a good thing we've still got Rocky, huh?" Kevin murmured, vocalizing what Neil had just been thinking. As if to punctuate that statement, the dog jumped up and licked his cheek, prompting a little huff of laughter from Kevin and subsequently from Neil as well.
"Heh, yeah, we can always count on her to lift our spirits!" Neil reached over to give her a pat on the head, eliciting a happy bark in response. "Things don't seem so bad when she's around."
Things were still bad, of course, and this moment of semi-cheerful respite wouldn't last long. But when their beloved dog was jumping up on the couch to clamber onto Kevin's lap even though she was much too big to fit there comfortably, it was hard not to laugh. It was hard not to be happy, even if it was just for a minute.
*
Freshly fallen snow crunched beneath Ryan's boots as he made his way through the forest at a quick pace. According to the monitor in the lair, his target was currently in this area. Out on a walk, no doubt. He tried to ignore the acidic sting of guilt that rose higher in him with every step. In his pocket, his hand curled around the drugged hot dog he was supposed to use to capture the target. He wouldn't use it, he decided. Not unless he had to. Unlike some people--the image of a bottle of chloroform flashed through his mind, and his scowl deepened--he would only stoop to such tactics as a last resort.
It wasn't long until he heard a set of all-too-familiar voices coming through the trees up ahead. Despite going into this mission knowing full well that he was going to encounter his old friends, hearing them in person from what couldn't have been more than a few metres away froze Ryan in his tracks. Holding his breath, he ducked behind the closest tree as their voices grew closer.
"What about that one?"
"That's a rock."
They were out looking for a tree, he realized. Yes, just as he thought--carrying on just fine without him. Keeping his back pressed flat against the tree, Ryan cautiously turned his head as far as he could to catch a glimpse of them without revealing his presence. His heart was pounding all the while. While his vigilante outfit had served him well for prowling the streets late at night, it didn't do much for stealth in broad daylight against all this snow. Luckily, they passed him by without noticing. Their canine companion, however, paused to raise its head and sniff curiously.
The dog. The target. An it, not a she. Yes, that was how he forced himself to think of it, the terms he had to conceptualize this mission with. If he stopped lying to himself for even a second, if he let himself acknowledge that these were his friends and their dog--that this was Rocky, and his mission was to steal her from Kevin and Neil… then he wouldn't be able to go through with it. But he had to do this.
(Why did he have to do it? What was he trying to prove? Hadn't he told himself a few short days ago that he didn't have to keep working for the Misery Meister if he didn't like it? Ryan didn't want to think about those questions, either. He just wanted to get this mission over with and get back to the lair.)
While his former friends were busy picking out a tree, Ryan stepped out of hiding and made a soft clicking sound with his tongue. Rocky immediately perked up and ran over to him, tail wagging. The dog's utter lack of apprehension at approaching him only made the vice of guilt squeeze tighter around his heart. But she must not understand, he told himself. Despite being a fervent animal rights activist (at least according to the unauthorized biography that Kevin had written about them with the claim that he was going to show it to his grandkids one day) Ryan had to imagine there was some discrepancy in the intelligence of humans compared to animals. Rocky probably didn't understand why he had left, and she surely didn't know his intentions for showing up again now. If only his human friends shared the same willingness to approach him, maybe he wouldn't have had to leave…
He banished those thoughts with a shake of his head. This wasn't the time to stew in resentment towards either himself or his friends. But he could use Rocky's naive trust to his advantage.
"Come on, girl," he whispered, patting his knee. "Follow me."
Rocky barked out her agreement loudly enough to make Ryan wince.
"Ah, no, don't bark," he told her in a whisper. "Quiet, okay? Good girl."
He realized with a twinge of discomfort as Rocky obediently shut her muzzle and set off after him that this was the first time in days (or was it weeks?) that he had intentionally used his natural voice. At this point, a normal person's throat would be irrevocably wrecked from constantly keeping up that intimidating vigilante growl. But he slipped back into his original voice all too easily. It was like his very biology wanted him to drop the vigilante act. It's not an act, though, he reminded himself. It's who I am. Anyone who can't accept that isn't really my friend.
Although Rocky initially trotted after Ryan without hesitation, she slowed to a stop once he got a few metres away. When he realized that the sound of her pawsteps behind him had stopped, he turned to see her sitting in place, tilting her head to look back the way they came.
"No, we're going this way."
She whined and thumped her tail against the ground. Ryan sighed and shook his head. He walked over and looped his hand through Rocky's collar, then gave a gentle tug to urge her forward. She didn't budge; he tugged harder on the collar, but all that accomplished was making her whine louder.
"I know, girl," Ryan murmured, running a hand over her back. He wished he could take his gloves off so he could feel the soft silkiness of her fur, but that would be unprofessional… maybe back at the lair. "But Neil and Kevin can't come with us. I know you think you need them, that they're your friends, but…" His hand clenched tighter around her collar, and he stuffed his other hand back in his pocket, where it wrapped around the drugged hot dog. "They're not our friends. We don't need them. Let's just get out of here, and I can introduce you to someone who really understands what's important."
Rocky blinked and tilted her head, the picture of confusion. It would be cute--well, it was cute, but he'd be able to appreciate that cuteness better under different circumstances. As it was, the dog's puzzled expression only served to tighten the noose of guilt around his throat.
"Come on," he whispered one final time, with a desperate plea hidden just below the surface of his words: Don't make me drug you. Don't make me stoop to their level.
In the end, Rocky took one last reluctant glance at the clearing behind them and then followed after Ryan. Whether that was because of anything he said or just because she smelled food in his pocket, he couldn't say. Either way, he arrived back at Misery Mountain with the dog in tow, and the Misery Meister ushered her into a kennel and praised Ryan for completing his mission.
*
Ryan tried to ignore the persistent stirring of unease within him as he watched the news report displayed in the Misery Meister's flickering magic screen. While his employer cackled with delight next to him, he couldn't bring himself to smile at the sight of his former friends in such an obvious state of stress and anxiety.
"One trillion dollars for the return of our dog…"
"What do you think, Ryan?" the Misery Meister asked, laying a hand on Ryan's shoulder. "Quite the pathetic display, isn't it? Those 'new kids on the rock' will never see their beloved mutt again!"
"Right…" Ryan tore his eyes away from the screen and glanced over his shoulder at the caged dog behind them. Yes, it was a cage, not a kennel. He could acknowledge that much, even if it made him uncomfortable.
He had no idea what the Misery Meister planned on doing with Rocky, if anything--as much as his employer liked to loudly announce his plans to himself when he was alone, he was highly secretive about everything when asked directly. But it would be okay, Ryan told himself, although he had trouble believing it. Rocky was still being fed--mostly by him--and he would stick his hand through the bars of the cage to pet her whenever the Misery Meister wasn't looking. And if the meister's plan did involve hurting her at some point… well, Ryan wouldn't let any harm, direct or otherwise, come to the dog. Even if protecting Rocky would lead to him being exiled from the temporary home he'd managed to secure for himself, even if he wound up back on the streets… that would be worth it, right? Or would it?
Ryan wished he could be more certain of where his priorities lay. As it was, he was kept awake at night by all the questions plaguing his mind like a swarm of hornets.
On the screen, the news report concluded with Neil looking into the camera and delivering a speech.
"We've already lost one good friend this year. We really don't want to lose another. Ryan Murphy, if you're out there watching this, please come home. We miss you a lot, too. And if you know where Rocky is, then please bring her home too. Thank you."
Ryan flinched at the mention of his name. He stole a glance at the Misery Meister to see if he had registered it, but his master's icy smile gave nothing away. Neil's wide, plaintive eyes stared back at him from the screen. His speech sounded every bit as heartfelt as Kevin's speech to Ryan in the alleyway had sounded all those weeks ago. And if that speech hadn't been earnest after all, why believe the sentiment behind this one either?
Still, on some level he couldn't help but hope that Rocky would miraculously escape and find her way home somehow. He couldn't be the one to let her out of her cage, because the Misery Meister would know it was him and probably punish him for it. And despite all the promises he made to himself about moral codes and priorities, Ryan couldn't afford to go back to life on the streets and risk freezing to death overnight. This arrangement only sat worse with him with each passing day, but there weren't any feasible alternatives.
It was almost a relief when, a little less than a week after capturing Rocky, the Misery Meister announced that there were a pair of intruders on the mountain. Ryan didn't need to see the footage on the monitor to guess exactly who those intruders were. So they really do care about her, he thought, and inwardly smiled--an expression he didn't dare make outwardly, at least not in front of his master. Maybe that means they really care about me, too… no, now's not the time to be thinking about that.
"Dispose of them for me, will you?"
He nodded, obedient as the dog he had so easily captured a few days prior. "Of course. Right away, sir."
*
"Man, my head hurts," Kevin groaned, rubbing at his temples with a grimace.
A few steps ahead of him, Neil muttered his agreement. "Yeah, that was a pretty rough landing. But at least we're here."
According to Frosty, the spell of channeling their happiness would have worked better with an additional person. With only two of them, he had to drain an increased amount of happiness from each of them, leaving them feeling weak and dizzy. Kevin almost felt like the happiness was still leaking out of him--either that or it was internal bleeding. Hopefully not the latter. Either way, not a great condition to be in while heading into the lair of a potentially dangerous villain. But it was too late to turn back now.
While they made their way up the twisting mountain path to a building that looked like a large warehouse with a lighthouse-esque spire, they stopped to grab a couple of makeshift weapons off the ground. Kevin selected a stone that fit comfortably in his hand, while Neil picked out a branch. Kevin was worried that it was a bit too small to make a good weapon, but Neil assured him that it was deceptively sharp. Once they got to the building, they paused outside the door and exchanged an apprehensive look. What now? It couldn't be as easy as just marching in there and getting their dog back. If they had learned anything from the past few weeks, it was that things could be difficult and have lasting consequences. Still, they had to try. Kevin gave a stiff nod: No way around it. Let's do this. Neil returned the nod with a grim expression that looked jarringly out-of-place on his face, and together they pushed the door open.
The building looked about the way you'd expect a villain's lair to look. A cursory glance around revealed various electronics including a control panel with a flashing red light, but no sign of Rocky. Kevin was about to ask whether they should split up to look for her when a rough, gravelly snarl rang out from across the room.
"Get out of here, intruders, before I make you leave."
Kevin's head snapped up to stare in slack-jawed disbelief at the figure standing in the nearest doorway. Fog of indeterminate origin swirled around his feet as he marched towards them, posture tense but stride confident, masked face set into a scowl. If it weren't for the familiarity of the costume, not to mention the ponytail swishing behind him as he walked, Kevin might not have even recognized him. An unparsable mix of emotions jolted through his system--shock, amazement, confusion, relief, terror.
At his side, Neil gulped and raised a shaky hand to point at the approaching man. "H-hey, isn't that…?"
"Yeah. It is." Kevin addressed the vigilante through gritted teeth. "What are you doing here, Ryan?"
"I'll have you know that I work here," Ryan growled. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Yeah, we do," Neil retorted with an accusatory jab of his finger, "Especially if you're the one who kidnapped our dog!"
Ryan came to a stop a few feet ahead of them, close enough that Neil's outstretched finger nearly brushed against the front of his vigilante costume, and crossed his arms. "Rocky followed me here willingly. She must have finally figured out the same thing I did: that you two aren't her real friends."
His voice audibly wavered on that line, although he quickly caught himself. Neil slowly lowered his hand away from Ryan's chest and took a couple steps back. Kevin moved to stand in front of Neil, assuming a defensive fighting stance that he hoped he wouldn't have to use.
"Ryan, seriously, listen to us," Kevin said slowly, doing everything in his power to maintain outward composure even though his heart was hammering hard enough that he wouldn't be surprised if Neil and Ryan could hear it. "We've been really worried about you. We've missed you, a lot. All we want is for you to go back to being our friend."
"And, uh, I'm sorry about the chloroform thing," Neil interjected. "I shouldn't have… I mean, listen, I thought you might be dangerous. I just wanted you to come back with us, whatever that took. We still want that, Ryan, more than anything."
A high-pitched note of pleading crept into Neil's voice at the end there; Kevin thought he could see the beginnings of tears glistening in his friend's eyes. He placed a steadying hand on Neil's shoulder as they watched Ryan's reaction. For a moment, Ryan just stood still and stared back at them, his expression unreadable behind the goggle portion of his mask. He slowly raised a hand toward the mask, as though he was going to take it off, and for a moment hope reignited… but then he paused, lowered his head, and dropped his arms to his sides with his hands clenched into fists.
"I'm sorry. I can't do that."
*
There was no way around it. Ryan had to fight them. He went into this confrontation, such as it was, knowing he had to fight them. They were traitors, liars who never really cared about him, discarded fragments of his worthless former life… even just looking at them now, listening to their pleas, ignited a seething resentment in his chest. How could they still pretend to genuinely care about him?
(Unless of course they weren't pretending, and they really meant it, and he was the one in the wrong and he could fix everything here and now by agreeing to go back home with them… No. No, he couldn't start thinking like that. Even if Neil and Kevin really did want to be his friends again, it was too late for that. Ryan had his orders.)
"This is your final warning," he growled. His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword--a weapon whose existence he frequently forgot about altogether, because he'd never encountered a tough enough opponent to warrant drawing a blade. "Leave this place now."
I don't want to have to hurt you, he didn't say. Part of him wondered whether the Misery Meister was monitoring this exchange. If so, he was probably already annoyed with Ryan for letting these trespassers remain unharmed for this long.
"Sorry, but that's not how we operate," Kevin said sharply. He tossed a small object in the air and caught it like a baseball as he spoke--a stone, Ryan realized. Was he planning on using that as a weapon? "We're not leaving without our dog, and we're not afraid to fight to get to her."
"Yeah," Neil added, jabbing his own makeshift weapon--a thin stick, practically a twig--in the air for emphasis. "We're not messing around here!"
Under his breath, Ryan let out a huff of incredulous laughter, although under these circumstances he didn't find it very funny. If he'd been in their position, he'd have at least brought a full-sized brick to fight with. But he wasn't in their position; he was positioned across from them in what was about to become a battlefield. There was no way around this. Ryan took a deep breath, unsheathed his sword, and sprung toward them.
Neil intercepted his first strike with the branch he wielded. The sword sliced through Neil's makeshift weapon like the twig it was, and could have easily sliced his hand off if Ryan had let the momentum carry the blade any further. It still wound up grazing him. Neil yelped and stumbled back, clutching his bloodied hand, while Kevin lunged forward to throw a punch. Ryan swerved to avoid the attack, then raised his sword above Kevin's head and let it hover there for a second. It would be so easy to kill them if he wanted. And then he would never have to worry about them again. Wouldn't that be easier? Wouldn't that be better?
"No," Ryan whispered aloud, his hands almost involuntarily weakening their grip on his blade. "No, I don't want that."
No sooner had those words left his mouth than something sharp poked into his shoulder. With an indignant yelp, he looked behind him to find that Neil had jabbed him with what remained of his stick. The moment Ryan turned to swat the stick away, something hard connected with the back of his head--the rock. Not a very strong hit, but it was enough to momentarily stun him. He stumbled forward, directly into the path of another jab from Neil's branch. This one struck his cheek, and it actually stung. Ryan rubbed at his cheek with a grimace and then took another swing with his sword. This time Kevin knocked the blade aside with the stone. Ryan let the sword clatter out of his grasp and made no move to pick it up; likewise, neither of his opponents made any move to grab it for themselves. Instead Kevin hit him with a punch to the jaw, nowhere near as hard as he could have, and Neil jabbed him with the broken twig again.
Ryan groaned, out of frustration with himself rather than from pain. Obviously none of them wanted to be doing this, so…
"Why don't you just leave?" he asked through gritted teeth. "Rocky is fine. You don't have to worry about her. Just get out of here before I get serious."
"Oh, only getting serious now, are we?"
Ryan froze, a shiver running down his spine, at the sound of his master's lilting tone. The Misery Meister stepped out from behind a piece of machinery, watching the tableau before him with steepled fingers and a manic grin. Looking at his employer's countenance, Ryan was once again reminded of himself. Was this how he appeared to others? Well, of course it was--that was how he tried to appear most of the time. But did it delight people, or did it actually scare them in an unpleasant way? Ryan had always thought that he was only spooky in a fun way, but now he had to wonder…
"I see you've met my servant here," the Misery Meister went on, laying his hands on Ryan's shoulders and flashing Neil and Kevin a menacing grin. "It's such a shame he's not on your side anymore. Well, Ryan?" He traced a finger across Ryan's face to tilt his chin up; Ryan shuddered at the touch. "Are you going to take care of these intruders, or do I have to finish the job myself?"
"I told them to leave," Ryan mumbled. He looked back at his friends--former friends, he reminded himself, but that bit of mental recitation did nothing to ease the tension that permeated his body and calcified into a knife in his heart. "Sir, can't they just have the dog? We're not doing anything with her anyway, so--"
"What? Of course not!" the Misery Meister gasped, reeling back and laying a hand over his heart. "That would increase the total amount of happiness in the world. I would sooner die than let that happen!" Then something flashed in his eyes, and a wicked grin spread over his face. "Speaking of dying… heh, yes, I know just how to deal with these little pests…"
A chilling spike of dread jabbed through Ryan with those words. He grabbed his master by the sleeve and shook his head vehemently, lips drawing back in a grimace.
"S-sir, what are--no, no, you can't," he stammered, his vigilante voice dropping away in this moment of panic. "You can't kill them!"
"Oh, can't I?"
Still grinning, the Misery Meister reached into his pocket and drew out a sleek pistol. The weapon gleamed as he leveled it at Kevin and Neil, who gasped and recoiled at the sight of it. Ryan's eyes widened behind his mask. No! The Misery Meister was making some villainous speech now--yes, villainous, he was so clearly a villain, how could I have been so willfully ignorant?!--but Ryan didn't hear a word his master was saying. His senses were laser-focused on that gun, and the hand wrapped around it, ready at any moment to--
The Misery Meister's finger twitched against the trigger. Too quickly to formulate a single thought, let alone consider all the potential consequences, Ryan moved on pure instinct. He grabbed the Misery Meister's arm and wrenched it to the side as hard and fast as he could. A loud crack rang out in unison with the echoing bang of a barely misfired gunshot, and the Misery Meister shrieked.
"Why, you… you just broke my arm!"
Ryan offered no snappy comeback to that remark the way Kevin or Neil might have. There was no room for words in his mind; in that moment, it was reduced to a void of rage. He moved on instinct, with all the force and swiftness that the meister would have had him attack his friends with: a karate chop to the neck, a punch to the stomach, a kick in the shins to knock him off balance. At some point the gun went off again; a loud metal clang indicated that this time the bullet found its mark in the spray-painted stop sign hung up on the wall. He didn't let up for a second. Soon he had the Misery Meister backed into a corner, bloodied and gasping. The glint of fear in his eyes gave Ryan a vindictive thrill as he drew back for one final decisive strike. That's what you get for threatening my friends.
Then the Misery Meister pressed his wrists together, and a flash of blinding blue filled Ryan's vision. He flinched at the sudden shock of cold, and then…
*
Neil watched the fight breathlessly, heart hammering with equal parts fear and excitement. This was just like before, he thought, when Ryan had fought off that thug who wanted to steal their ice creams--the encounter that had started this whole mess in the first place. Sure, the stakes were a whole lot higher now (that was where the fear part of the fear-and-excitement came in, because holy crap that guy has a gun we're all gonna die) but at the same time, it was like everything was coming full circle. And Ryan, he realized with a slowly forming incredulous grin, was defending them.
"You see that, Kevin?" Neil whispered. "He really does still want to be our friend!"
"Yeah…" Kevin gave a slow nod, just as wide-eyed as Neil but with a little more apprehension. "I just hope he comes out on top."
"What are you saying, of course he's gonna win!" Neil grinned and clapped Kevin on the back as a bullet whizzed by a few feet away from them and lodged itself in the "stop smiling" sign. "I mean, look at him, he's totally kicking that guy's--"
There was a flash, and the room's temperature suddenly dropped several degrees. Neil flinched and rubbed his eyes. The sight that met him when his vision cleared made his blood run cold.
Ryan was frozen mid-lunge, arm poised above his head to bring down a finishing karate chop. Frozen, in a very literal sense. His body was encased in glowing blue ice, vigilante cape hanging stiffly behind him and all.
Neil and Kevin screamed in unison, while the Misery Meister cackled. Before they could turn and run, the meister stepped out from behind Ryan's frozen form and, with his non-broken arm and nothing in the way to redirect his shot this time, fired his gun at them. Thinking fast, Neil grabbed a random object off the nearest surface--a handheld mirror--and held it up like a shield. He let out a sigh of relief as the bullet bounced off the mirror and flew back across the room…
…Directly into Ryan's back.
A shrill scream split the air; it took a moment for Neil to register that the sound came from his own mouth. The mirror slipped from his fingers, which turned suddenly numb along with the rest of him. Countless shards of shattered glass scattered in a hundred different directions when the mirror hit the floor, just like the explosion of blood-soaked flecks of ice where the bullet tore straight through Ryan's frozen body, leaving a gaping, crumbling hole in its wake.
"Ah… ahhh…" Neil raised his trembling hands slowly up his face to clutch at his hair. He took a step back and then promptly dropped to his knees as his incoherent screams crescendoed into a wail. "AAAHHHH!"
"Get ahold of yourself, man!" Kevin told him, clamping a hand on his arm. "We can help Ryan after we deal with that misery moron."
"Help him? No, we can't… can't you see?" Neil shook his head wildly, while his nails dug into his scalp hard enough to sting. An image of a dark alleyway flashed through his mind, of him standing there with a bottle of chloroform still in his hand and watching Ryan run away, making no move to go after him. Of a hidden room with pictures of Ryan's ancestors, and a lie Neil made up on the spot just to mess around, not thinking anything serious would come of it. And now… "H-he's dead! And it's all because of me, I--I killed him, Kevin!"
The bullet's force--the bullet he had redirected--had shattered the area of impact like glass. Now half of Ryan's back was gone, reduced to a pile of blood-soaked slush on the floor. The gaping crater around where the bullet had hit narrowed into a roughly fist-sized hole that went the rest of the way through him. More of that ghastly slurry of half-melted ice and human tissue dribbled out through the hole. Spreading out from the hole itself were dozens of cracks, some just hairline fractures, others wide enough that they were bleeding too… if you could call it bleeding. Bleeding, melting, whatever it was--the structural integrity was collapsing.
"My, how excellent," the Misery Meister trilled. "It seems that in your moment of brilliant self-preservation, you disposed of my traitorous servant for me!" He flashed his maniacal grin over his shoulder at the half-shattered chunk of ice that had been Ryan. "Don't worry, my brave little vigilante, your precious friends will be joining you very soon."
As he said this, the cracks in the ice spread out until there was nothing holding Ryan's body together. At that point, the frozen figure collapsed in on itself. Chunks of ice and flesh crumbled apart and came crashing down into a pile of sludge on the floor. My fault my fault he's dead and it's all my fault--
Kevin grabbed Neil tight by the shoulders and shouted something, probably another attempt at reassurance, but Neil couldn't make it out over the blood rushing in his head. All he could do was scream and cry and shake beneath the crushing weight of the realization that he had gotten his friend killed.
*
"Neil? Neil!" Kevin grabbed his friend by the shoulders and jostled him, but Neil just kept wailing and shaking his head. "Damn it… he's totally out of it."
A shrill laugh diverted his attention back to the Misery Meister, who was now walking slowly toward them, still aiming his gun. "One down, two to go," he said in a lilting, sing-song tone. "Let's see… which of you wants to join your friend first, hmm?"
Kevin gritted his teeth and glared back defiantly at the Misery Meister. His already burning rage toward the villain, now further ignited, clashed with surging panic. What are we gonna do? The mirror lay broken at Neil's feet--couldn't use that trick a second time. Kevin's gaze swept across the room and landed on Ryan's discarded sword. If he made a quick enough dash for it, maybe…
He sprinted for the weapon like an athlete trying to score a touchdown in the last five seconds of the game. Two gunshots rang out, prompting a wince from him as he ran; one bullet whizzed so close over his head that he was pretty sure it skimmed off a couple hairs. He grabbed the sword and charged straight into the path of a third bullet. This time the bullet bounced off the blade, leaving a crack in the metal which Kevin paid no mind to. He didn't have any long-term plans for this weapon, and besides, a broken blade with a jagged edge could make just as good a weapon as an intact one.
"This is for kidnapping Rocky!" he proclaimed as he slashed the blade across the Misery Meister's chest. The blade shattered upon impact, leaving him with half a sword in his hand but every bit as much rage to drive him.
The Misery Meister stumbled backward with a hiss, firing another shot as he did so. This time the bullet grazed Kevin's shoulder. He clutched at the injury with a pained hiss, while with his other hand he readjusted his grip on what remained of the sword. He couldn't let a minor injury slow him down now. One more press of the trigger followed by a click and a string of curses revealed that the Misery Meister was out of bullets. Kevin smirked. He charged forward and took another swipe, this time slashing the jagged strip of metal across his opponent's face.
"That's for making Neil cry! And this…" He drew back the blade and, with all the strength he could summon, thrust it deep into the Misery Meister's chest. "This is for Ryan!"
"My heart," the Misery Meister gasped, eyes widening as he stared down at the hilt of the blade protruding from his chest. "My heart…."
With that final pathetic declaration, his body spiraled in on itself and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Kevin coughed and waved the smoke out of his face, only to yelp at the pain that shot through his grazed shoulder when he moved that arm. It was just a surface wound, he'd been hurt worse just from playing sports, but it sure stung like a bitch. He backed away on unsteady feet, face twisting into an agonized grimace as blood seeped through his sweater and onto the hand he clutched his shoulder with. His other hand, dangling at his side, released the broken blade and let it clatter to the floor. He wouldn't be needing that thing anymore. And, well… neither would Ryan.
Silence fell over the room as Kevin trudged back over to Neil and helped him to his feet. Neil seemed to have stopped shaking and crying, but there was a glassy look in his eyes now, and he was unresponsive to Kevin's assurances that they were safe. When Kevin followed Neil's shell-shocked gaze to the crumbled pile of melting ice and flesh, his stomach heaved. The whole sickening mess was seeping into the floorboards now, leaving a glistening stain in its wake--a person, their friend, reduced to that.
"…Come on, Neil." Swallowing down the choking grief in his throat, Kevin put his arm around his friend's quivering frame and guided him across the room. "Let's get Rocky and get out of here."
As he walked past the remains, while being sure to steer Neil's head away from the sight, he could have sworn he saw a detached blue eye blinking up at him before it dissolved into red-tinted slush and disappeared.
***
-FOUR MONTHS LATER-
In the most luxurious mansion in all of Plymouth county, a young man in a finely-pressed suit reclined in a state-of-the-art gamer chair. On the widescreen monitor before him lay a virtual world with the most dazzling 3D graphics the 21st century had to offer. And it was his, all his, for he was the only kid in town who could afford such a high-end game.
"Ah, how being rich pays off," Mitch said to nobody in particular, smirking as he pressed the series of keys that would deliver a devastating finishing blow to his virtual enemies. If only he could enact the same level of violence against those who opposed him in real life… Hmm, perhaps I'll look into hiring a bodyguard.
After playing for a while (he wasn't sure how long exactly; it was so easy to lose track of time when he had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted) thirst began to claw at his throat. He reached for his glass of the finest wine in the world, only to find that it was already empty--and all his servants were busy with the dishes and laundry right now, so he couldn't summon one of them to refill it. Mitch regarded the empty glass with a scowl. Did he have to do everything for himself around here?
With great irritation, he paused the game and went over to the kitchen to grab the wine bottle off the counter. His annoyance only grew as he realized that the kitchen sink was running, but nobody was currently manning it. Did his good-for-nothing servants want to flood the place?
"That settles it," he decided. "Their pay is getting docked again this month. And if this keeps up, I'll have all the staff laid off and replaced by someone more competent!"
However, when he tried to turn the tap off, he was startled to discover that it wouldn't budge. A steady stream of icy water--far icier than the faucet's position indicated it should be--poured into the sink until it threatened to overflow. Then, when Mitch leaned over the sink to figure out what on earth was going on, a hand shot out of the sink and grabbed him by the throat.
"Gah! Wh-what--aughh!!"
He screamed and flailed, but the hand had a solid grip despite seeming to be made of water. As Mitch looked on in heart-stopping horror, another hand reached out, and then both appendages extended into arms… and then a full body, stepping gracefully out of the sink as it took solid shape. Mitch found himself face-to-face with a masked vigilante clad in a hat and cape, and gloved hands squeezing painfully tight around his neck.
"Wh-who are you?!" he managed to choke out.
"My identity is not of your concern," came the vigilante's reply, halfway between a growl and a gurgle; the voice didn't even sound human. Mitch shuddered. "But your actions are inexcusable. Die."
*
Local Deadbeat Millionaire Found Dead-- Third Mysterious Drowning This Month, the front-page newspaper headline proclaimed. Attached was a full-colour photo of the drowning victim in question, facedown in a bafflingly large and ornate kitchen sink. There was something on the counter next to the sink… Kevin squinted at the photo, holding the paper closer to his face. Was that a strand of long brown hair? It wasn't high-definition enough to tell.
"Hey, Neil, you don't think…?"
"What?" Neil glanced up from the four-leafed clover he was absentmindedly fidgeting with. The plant didn't seem to be giving him much luck so far, but it gave him something to keep his hands and by extension his mind occupied, and the bright green leaves provided a nice splash of colour against the dark clothes he'd taken to wearing since that tragic December day.
Kevin looked back at the paper and skimmed through the article. There was no mention of the hair strands by the sink; apparently the consensus was that one of the victim's servants was responsible for the murder, because the mansion had such tight security that there was no way in or out. "For it to have been an intruder, they would have had to literally come in through the sink," one member of the household staff was quoted as saying. "And as we all know, that's impossible." Kevin lowered the paper with a sigh and shook his head. He didn't know what he was doing, jumping to conclusions based on such flimsy evidence. That was supposed to be Neil's thing, wasn't it? Then again, Neil hadn't exactly been cheerful enough to fill that role lately.
"Ah, never mind. Just wondering what the guy did to piss one of his staff off enough to kill him."
"Well, at least we know we'll never have to mess with him," Neil replied with a weak little half-smile. Then he lowered his head again and went back to silently twisting the clover between his fingers.
"…Yeah, guess not."
Still, for some reason, Kevin couldn't stop thinking of the similarities between this new series of mysterious drowning cases, and the string of "mysterious" vigilante attacks that had come before. And although he wasn't usually one to get his hopes up, he couldn't help but wonder.
-- END -- [....TO BE CONTINUED??] -- [Edit: read the follow-up here!]
#told myself i was done writing nkotr fanfiction but i couldn't stop thinking about pink's au so. here ya go!#tbh i have no idea if im gonna write a follow-up to this and if i do it'll probably take a while#but anyway.... here's this!#also i know i titled it after a lyric from a different song than the one i was talking about the other day#i change my mind about things all the time okay. including how this narrative was gonna resolve (multiple times)#hey did you know that i write stuff sometimes?
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Won’t You Help Me Feel Something Again
Inspired by this prompt post, reblogged by @killian-whump , and then--SURPRISE--I added too much backstory and made it terribly painful, physically and emotionally. Thanks for that, PMS. Excellent. Title from the song “Sober Up” by AJR.
Rated T for torture, tears, death, and lots and lots of feelings.
Also on AO3, if that’s your thing.
Killian leans his head back until it hits the surface he's laying on. He never thought he would be thankful for the hard, cold feel of concrete against his back, but in this moment, he can swear that it's the greatest thing he's ever felt.
He tries to open his eyes, but it turns out to be useless. All he sees are blurs around him, the piercing brightness of the lights above him, and he slowly closes them again.
He feels something touching him—someone, a woman, with soft hands pressing lightly on his chest, his arms, his ribs, leaving throbbing pain in their wake.
It is not until he starts speaking that he notices the ringing in his ears, the blinding pain of his throat as he will the words to come.
“Please put me back,” he chokes out. “Please. If they know you helped me, they… they’ll hurt you too. Please. I can’t let you be hurt.” He may not know who she is, but he knows that, if she's here, she is in grave danger.
“Shhhh .” He can't tell if her voice is quiet, or if he simply just can't hear her, but her words are a comfort even as her fingers find a particularly painful spot on his right side, where he must have a broken rib. “You are no longer in danger, Mr. Jones. We're here to help you.”
He tries to take a deep breath, but it causes a pain so deep that everything goes white, even with his eyes still closed. “Please,” he gasps again, trying his hardest not to move at all. “Please, just go. Just leave me. It's what I deserve.”
Her hands leave his body, and even with the searing pain they were bringing, he misses them immediately.
“I'm afraid I can't do that, Mr. Jones,” she says, calling him that again, and he wants to correct her.
He's not Mr. Jones. He never has been. Liam was Mr. Jones, and Killian was always just Killian .
Mr. Jones is dead, and it's all Killian's fault.
“No,” is all he can muster, barely more than a breath, and after he feels the stab of the needle in his arm, his entire body goes numb, and he slips back into unconsciousness.
3 Months Before
His hand curls around the coffee cup in front of him, scrolling through the newspaper on the screen in front of him one last time before he sends it to the printer. The clock on the wall behind him ticks the seconds away before it strikes midnight, and before it finishes its dozen chimes, he turns to the last page. By this point in the night, he is just copy editing, hoping that his interns have caught all the big mistakes, but a final once-over of the Boston Globe has become part of his routine since he was just an intern ten years before.
The words almost stop losing meaning entirely as he scans the page from top to bottom, and he may have reached the bottom of the obituaries without actually reading a single word if he didn't see it.
Milah Gold, 46, was found dead in her private home early Sunday morning, after passing soundly in her sleep the night before. All reports have confirmed natural causes. She and her husband, former Boston crime boss Robert Gold, who is still serving three consecutive life sentences, had one son, Neal Gold, 26. No funeral arrangements have been made public.
His coffee cup falls to the floor, shattering upon impact. It had been almost ten years since he last saw her, since he told her that she needed to choose between him and her husband and she picked her husband and never saw him again, even after Gold was convicted and sent to prison four years later. But it still hurt, seeing the words on the paper.
Forgetting the lateness of the hour, he grabs his phone from his desk and quickly calls his brother, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he fetches the broom and a stack of paper towels from the supply closet outside his office.
Liam picks up on the third ring. “Fuck, Killian, do you know how late it is?”
“Why didn't you tell me about Milah?” Killian asks quicky, avoiding Liam's outburst.
“What?”
“You're a bloody Captain in the Boston Police Department, don't tell me you hadn't already heard.”
“Of course I heard! I thought you hadn't spoken to her in years, so I figured it didn't matter to you anymore.”
“‘ Didn't matter to me ’? Bloody hell, brother, do you really think I'm that shallow? You should have at least given me a heads up so I didn't have to learn it by proofing the fucking obituaries.” Much harder than necessary, Killian drops half the pile of paper towels on top of the spill, trying to soak up some of the coffee using the sole of his black boot.
“Jesus, Killian, I'm sorry.”
Sweeping it all in the dustpan, Killian dumps the paper towels and shattered pieces of ceramic into the trash can and takes a deep breath, hearing his brother do the same on the other end of the line before they both fall silent, Killian able to hear the crackle of the police radio in the background.
“Is that all you called me to ask?” Liam asks, his voice soft. He must know what's coming.
“Are you on a stake out?” Killian asks, trying to discern who else may be around for this conversation.
“Aye, but it's just with David. What's on your mind?”
“The paper reports natural causes, but is that really the truth?”
“Killian, you know I can't discuss that—” he tries, but Killian cuts him off.
“You wouldn't have asked if you didn't know it was coming.”
He hears Liam sigh and can see the way he must be scratching at his beard.
“If I hear about any of this in the papers, I'll personally come and arrest you,” Liam says after a moment, and Killian rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, of course, Liam. We've been over this all before.”
“It's being investigated. She has been sick for a while, though, you know that, so we do have reason to believe that it was actually natural causes.”
“But will you—will you let me know if you find anything? Not for the paper, of course, just so I… so I know that there was nothing I could have done to save her.”
“Killian, you can't do this to yourself. Not again, please,” his brother begs, and Killian rests his forehead on his desk.
Hell, he should have listened to Liam. If he did, maybe they wouldn't have gotten in this mess in the first place.
Maybe Liam would still be alive.
Two weeks later
Killian looks down at his phone for what feels like the thousandth time in ten minutes, sitting in the back corner of Liam's favorite coffee shop.
Nothing.
Unlocking the screen, he reads the last message he received from Liam just half an hour before.
Liam: Being followed. Need to talk abt MG. Meet me for coffee in 20.
Twenty minutes has come and gone with no sign of Liam. For the first time ever, Killian is glad he opted for decaf tea instead of his high-caffeine. He's already jittery enough without it, he can only imagine how quickly his heart would be pounding with the added assistance of a stimulant.
The bell over the door rings, and Killian's head shoots up so quickly something in his back pops. It's not Liam, no, but if there's a “next best thing,” this is it: David Nolan, his partner.
“Killian,” David breathes, trying to catch his breath as he slides into the chair across the table from him. “Where is he? I was halfway across town and got here as quickly as I could.”
All Killian can do is shrug, shake his head, and close his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck, this is not good.”
Killian unlocks his phone again, showing David the last message from his brother. “Is this the same message you got?”
David reads it over quickly, then nods up at Killian. “Same gist, at least.”
“It was him, wasn't it?” Killian asks, leaning forward on his elbows to voice his concern to David, the very worst-case-scenario scenario that has been bouncing around Killian's mind since Liam failed to show up.
“We don't know that, Killian. We can't make any assump—”
But when Killian's phone begins to ring, a picture of he and Liam from when they were younger showing up on the screen, David's words stop abruptly.
At first, neither of them move.
“Well?” David asks after the first two rings.
“But what if—”
“Just answer the damned phone, Jones.”
So he does.
“Hello?” he asks, praying to hear his brother's voice on the other end of the line.
He shouldn't be so lucky.
“Ah, Mr. Jones. How nice for you to answer. We have your brother.” The voice is most definitely not his brother's. It sounds somewhat familiar to him, but he can't place it.
“Bloody hell, what do you want? Just let him go, I can—”
The voice on the other side laughs, an eerily familiar sound that he immediately recognizes, but he knows that can't be right. He would recognize Robert Gold's laugh anywhere, but he would also recognize his voice.
“You can what , exactly, Jones? You're a newspaper editor, for Christ's sake. There is nothing you can do for me that I can't do on my own.”
As if to make matters worse, he hears Liam in the background, screaming, “Just get out, Killian! Run while you can!” followed by the solid thunk of something making contact with his face.
“Then what do you want with Liam?”
“All I want is to prove a point. This is what happens when you try to mess with the wrong people. Keep your ink-stained nose out of other people's damn business, or you're going to lose much more than just your brother.”
“Just let him go!” he tries, but he's only met with more laughter.
“Say goodbye to your brother, Captain!” he says, followed by another laugh.
“Damn it, no!” Killian cries, just as he hears,
“Good bye, Mr. Jones.”
There's the unmistakable sound of a gunshot on the other end of the line, and then silence.
“No!” Killian yells, much louder than necessary in the coffee shop, and the few people around him turn their heads to him, but he holds his head in his hands, elbows on the table. “No,” he says again, barely more than a whisper as he feels his throat begin to restrict.
“What did they say?” David asks, reaching out to rest his hand against Killian's arm. “Who was it?”
“They—they have him. They took him, and they— Jesus Christ , I think they killed him.”
“They what ?!”
“There was a gunshot, and I think—I'm pretty sure they killed him.”
Killian has no idea how the words are coming out so calmly, his entire body going numb at the thought of Liam being gone, and when his phone buzzes on the table between them, he makes no move to answer it, his eyes going wide as he stares at it.
When David realizes that Killian is not going to see what the notification is, he grabs the phone himself, and Killian watches as his eyes narrow then fly open, widening still as he sets the phone back on the table.
“Holy shit,” he mumbles, then turns his face up to Killian's for just a moment. “I have to—I have to step outside.”
This confuses Killian, intrigues him, and though he knows he shouldn't, he picks up the phone. After fifteen years of crime reporting, Killian has seen more than enough gruesome crime scene photos, and he knows that David has spent most of his time on the force as a homicide detective.
Apparently, nothing could prepare either of them for the picture of Liam that Killian received. If Killian wasn't sure that it was his brother, he never would have recognized his face, torn to bloody pieces, both of his eyes swollen, chunks of skin missing from his cheeks and his shoulders, his only recognizable feature being the bird tattoo on his shoulder, which looks like its been wiped off specifically for identification.
And there, right above his heart, at the very bottom of the picture, is the wound left behind by the bullet Killian heard on the phone.
Killian barely makes it out the door of the coffee shop before he empties the contents of his stomach in the alley just beyond the doorway.
Liam was gone. Liam, his only family since he was ten years old and his mother died, was dead.
And it was because of him.
--- --- ---
Five days later, Killian wakes up with a start, his body sticky with sweat and clinging to the sheets, exactly the same way he's woken up each time since he realized that his actions led to the death of his brother.
But this time, it's different. This time, he has realized something, and his hand fumbles around his bedside table, searching for his phone in the dark of the room.
Once he finds it, he calls David.
It takes four rings for him to answer his phone, his voice thick with sleep, and he hears his wife, Mary Margaret, in the background, trying to make sure everything is okay.
“I know who it was, David.”
“What?”
“The voice from the phone call. It's been ten years since I last saw him, but it had to be him, its the only thing that makes sense.”
“Who? Who do you think it was?”
“Not think, Dave. I know . It has to be him. The—the investigation, the laughter, the brutality, it's all him.”
“ Who , Killian?” David insists, and Killian can tell from the noise in the background that he's getting out of bed, already amped up with the knowledge that Killian might know who killed Liam.
“Gold,” Killian says, as if it makes all the sense in the world.
“Robert Gold is in jail. You know that.”
“No, no, no, not Robert Gold. His son. Milah’s son, Neal.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“He's always hated me. He blamed me for his parent's separation, even though she went back to him in the end. And it would explain how he has the same laugh as Robert Gold, if it's his son.”
David groans on the other end of the line, then sighs. “ I can't believe I'm saying this, ” he mumbles. “Meet me at the station. If you're right, Killian—and I hope you're right, I really do—then we might be able to stop this once and for all.”
After the fastest shower Killian's ever taken, just trying to wash the layer of sweat off his body, Killian pulls on jeans and one of Liam's Boston PD t-shirts, laces up his boots, and grabs his leather jacket on the way out the door.
He pushes through the door at the bottom of the steps, making sure it locked behind him before stepping away from it— one of many things he's learned from Liam over the years— but before he can make it to his car, something makes contact with the back of his head, and he is unconscious before he can hit the pavement.
--- --- ---
When Killian's eyes shoot open, all he knows is pain. His head is throbbing, the edge of his vision blurring with the pounding of his heart. He is hanging from something, chains circling his arms down to the elbows, keeping him inches from the ground. His arms are numb, and when he tries to move his shoulders, every nerve from the base of his skull down screams out in agony.
He takes in as much of a breath as he can until his muscles begin to fight back, his throat burning, his chest, his lungs.
Fuck.
Trying to keep as still as he can, he focuses on the beating of his heart, willing it to slow down, but just as he begins to have control of it, the metal doors to his left crash open, brightening the room even more and undoing any of the calm Killian was trying to settle over his body.
“Hello, Mr. Jones,” the man says, the same voice from the phone call, and Killian's hunch and greatest fear are confirmed at the same time.
Standing before him, a baseball bat slung over one shoulder, is Neal Gold, aged ten years since the last time Killian saw him, but there is no doubt about who he is.
“Neal,” he chokes out, trying his damndest to smile at the boy.
Well, he was a boy ten years ago, sixteen years old and a vendetta for Killian. He's not much of a boy anymore.
“How nice to see you again.”
The smile Never shoots back at him is much more smug than the one Killian attempts. “I can assure you, the pleasure of this situation is all mine.” Neal just stares at him, unmoving.
Killian tries to swallow, his mouth gone bone dry, but all that he finds is a burning, searing pain instead of relief.
“What do you want, Neal?” Killian asks finally, but Neal stands in front of him for a few more moments, his head cocked to the side, a terrifying smile on his face.
“What do I want?” he repeats, his eyes piercing holes into Killian's soul until he turns on his heel and begins pacing in front of where Killian is hanging. “What do I want?” he says again, this time as if he is actually asking himself the question. “Well, you see, Killian—” He swings back to face Killian, eyes blown wide with madness. “I'm assuming it's okay if I call you Killian now, enough with the formality? You always did try to insist I stop calling you 'Mr. Jones,’ but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, with you fucking my mom and tearing apart my family and all.”
When Killian doesn't answer, his jaw grinding together apparently the only movement that doesn't hurt, Neal just nods his head a few times, then begins pacing again.
“Anyway, Killian , what I want is to put you through the same pain that you put me through. But while mine has been fifteen years in the making, you will be getting yours in much, much less time than that.”
Before Killian can object, Neal shoulders the baseball bat, then swings it at his ribs, making contact with a sickening crunch.
“Neal, please,” he begs, his voice barely a whimper, but Neal just shoulders the bat again, this time hitting just below his hip bone. “Please, you don't—you don't have to do this.”
“You split up my parents!” Neal yells, articulating the last word with a blow that lands just below his ribs, and the bat clatters to the floor. “You made her leave him!” Now, he articulates his words with his fists, reaching up with this one to reach his face, and it takes only a few moments for Killian's mouth to fill with blood. “You helped send him to prison!” Right in the middle of his sternum. “And you killed her !” His fist lands exactly where the first blow from the bat did, and if his ribs didn't break before they certainly did now.
“Neal, none of that is true,” he manages, his voice nowhere near as weak as he feels, somehow. But his words come slowly, and he has to take a quick, deep breath every few words to keep from passing out. “Your parents were already separated when I met your mother. That had nothing to do with me. She already left him when we met.”
“That's not what my father said!”
“Your father beat her half to death one night. Sent her to the hospital. She was under police protection when I met her. Doing a story on your father.”
“You are a god damned liar !” Killian's not expecting Neal's fist to collide with his face again, and he has to spit some of the blood in his mouth on to the floor to continue.
“You can believe what you want, Neal, but I loved your mother, and I only wanted the best for her. But in the end, she picked you. I told her she had to decide between me and Gold, and she said she couldn't leave you. And I accepted that.”
“You still helped put my father in jail!”
“Your father would have gone to jail without my help. Everything I did was for his last conviction, the last of his life sentences. He would still be serving two without the assistance I offered the police.”
“You killed my mother!” he cries out, but instead of in anger, Killian realizes that Neal has quickly broken down and watches as a tear slides down his cheek.
“How do you figure?”
“You left her! To die of a broken heart! There was no one left to protect her, and she died! Because of you!”
Suddenly, Neal reaches under his jacket and pulls out something, though it takes a few moments for Killian to clear the haze covering his vision and realize that it's a pistol.
“Neal, no, wait, I—I told you, your mother left me , told me I had to leave her alone, never see her again—”
“Excuses!” Neal screams, his voice echoing off the thick concrete walls, and he watches in terror as he raises the pistol to Killian's temple, standing just on the edge of his periphery. “That's all you have in you, Killian. Excuses and lies !”
“Neal, no!” he cries out, and everything goes black.
--- --- ---
“Killian,” he hears, though it sounds far away, like he's drowning, listening through water.
With all the pain his body is in, nothing would really surprise him anymore.
“Killian, god damn it, come back to me!” There are hands on his chest, something pressing above his heart, a sharp pain in his ribs—
And light.
His eyes fly open, his vision suddenly much clearer than the last few times he tried to see.
But he's still not sure that it's real. Sure, every bone, every nerve, every inch of his body hurts, but the vision before him is too perfect to exist anywhere beyond his dreams.
“There he is,” she says, her golden ponytail falling down over her shoulder, and the smile that spreads across her face just proves to him that he must be dreaming.
Or worse.
But when she turns and yells out, “David! He’s back!” and he goes to move, pain shoots down his spine, a searing light that turns his vision white.
With pain like that, he can't be dreaming. Or dead.
That's good, at least. Or something like that.
She turns back to him, her green eyes bright. “I'm gonna give you something for the pain, okay?” she asks, holding up a syringe, and he nods, barely feeling the needle slip under his skin.
“Killian, Christ, are you okay?”
Killian can't help but laugh at the obscenity of this question, but he only lets out a huff before his entire body fights back. “That's a terrible question, Nolan,” he mumbles as strongly as he can, though he's fairly sure it just makes him sound weak.
“Careful, Jones, your ribs are broken,” the woman comments, half-smiling at him from behind David.
“Oh, that must be why it hurts when I laugh.”
David laughs, poising himself to clap Killian on the shoulder, changes his angle to hit his leg before he decides he's better off just to leave him untouched, holding his hands up in surrender.
“You're right. You look terrible, but you're alive.”
“Aye,” he says, trying to smile, but he's pretty sure his jaw is broken. “Though would someone do me the honor of explaining… how?”
“When you didn't show up at the station, I tried calling you a few times before I remembered that Liam had that “Find My iPhone” thing on his computer for your phone and his, but you must have dropped you when they picked you up, since it was sitting on the sidewalk next to your car.
“But then I remembered what you said about Neal Gold, so I looked at few things up about him back at the station. There were a bunch of warehouses in his name, half a dozen of them, and five of them were legitimate, housing stuff for his business, but when we raided the last one, we found a bunch of guards sitting in one of the rooms, including Neal, and then you were in the next room, hanging from the damned ceiling and I thought you were dead. But the paramedics showed up in just a few minutes, and this one here,” he says, wrapping his arm around the blonde angel standing next to him. “She worked her magic and brought you back.”
“Oh, come on, David,” she says, the apples of her cheeks reddening at his compliment. “Science is what healed him, medicine. Any paramedic could have done that.”
“Aye, maybe,” Killian tries, and this time when he smiles at her, it doesn't hurt nearly as much; whatever she gave him was starting to work. “But you did it, love. If David says you saved me, then I am forever in your debt.”
“That seems like a bit of an exaggeration there, Jones,” she says, but smiles at him again.
“Can I at least have the name of my savior?”
“Emma,” she breathes, turning around to see where David is behind her. “Emma Swan. I'm David's foster sister.”
“Well, Emma Swan,” he says, staring up at her as she continues to search his body for damage. “I am indebted to you. Now, can you tell me all that that bastard did to me?”
Four broken ribs. Three on the left, one on the right, the worst one practically shattered from the impact from the baseball bat. A severe concussion. A broken jaw. Severe internal bleeding. A fractured femur. A dislocated hip. Two dislocated—and severely bruised—shoulders. And one with a bullet lodged in the muscle.
Eleven surgeries.
Killian heals. Slowly, painfully, but he heals nonetheless.
Three times a week, David shows up after his patrol with a newspaper and a cinnamon bun from Liam's favorite bakery. They talk for as long as Killian can manage before his pain meds knock him out again, hitting all the big subjects: baseball scores, big cases, David's wife's pregnancy.
And David's visits are almost the best parts of Killian's weeks.
Almost.
The only thing better is the days when Emma stops by Killian's room after her shifts, a cup of Earl Grey tea from the cafeteria and a smile, the brightest and most glorious thing he swears he has ever seen. At first, she would just stay for a few minutes, just checking in on his healing.
But then, she starts to stay. She brings food, needing to eat after her shifts and opting to do it with him. Once—and he thinks it’s a turning point for them—she shows up after a twelve-hour overnight shift with breakfast sandwiches for both of them, then dozes off in the chair beside him as he watches game show reruns. It’s not until he turns to her to make a joke about Richard Dawson’s need to kiss everyone that he realizes she has fallen asleep, her head back against the wall and her arms crossed over her chest.
In this moment, with a soft smile spreading across her peaceful face, Killian realized that he’s falling in love with her.
--- --- ---
After five weeks, he’s allowed to leave. Sure, he’s on a lot of pain meds, he’s not allowed to drive, and he’s staying at David’s apartment, but he’s out of the bloody hospital.
It’s at least a start.
In David’s car on the way home, spread out across the back seat with Emma in the passenger seat, Killian asks the only thing that’s been on his mind for the past few weeks, too afraid— ashamed? —to even ask.
“What happened to Liam's body?” he says softly, and neither of them answer at first, making him think that he didn’t actually say it, or they just didn’t hear him.
Until he watches them look at each other, sharing a glance that Killian thinks they didn’t want him to see, especially the distressed look on Emma’s face.
“David?” he asks when neither of them move to respond, but it’s Emma that turns around and sets her hand on his arm.
“We, uh,” David tries, running his hand over his face. “He was so marred, almost beyond recognition. You—you saw the picture, Killian. And you were already in such distress, we were trying to let you heal, so we had to decide what to do and we—we had him cremated.”
Killian leans his head back against the leather headrest, closing his eyes as he lets out a long sigh.
“Good,” he breathes, and when he opens his eyes again, Emma is softly smiling at him from the passenger seat, but her smile doesn’t make it to her sad, green eyes.
The day they decide to put Liam to rest, it’s overcast. Killian feels like it must be some sort of sign, standing on the dock between David and Emma, David's arm around his shoulder and Emma's hand clasped around his own, the jar of Liam's ashes in his arm.
Liam always loved the sea, always wanted to grow old and pass away asleep on the deck of their fishing ship.
Yeah, he should be so lucky.
“Here she is,” Killian says, looking out on the water where the Jewel of the Realm is docked. “Liam's pride and joy. The Jewel of the Realm .”
Emma's hand tightens around his, leaning into his side.
“Do you want to take her out?” David asks after a moment, thankfully pulling Killian out of his head, wrapped up in the sound of the water lapping against the side of the boat.
“What?” he asks, turning towards David.
“Do you want to take the boat out on the water? Or just… get on her, I don't know how to word that?”
“No, we can… We can take her out,” he says, the words coming out slowly.
“Are you sure?” He expects the question to come from David, but it doesn't; it comes from Emma, and when he turns to her, the brightness of her eyes in contrast to the greyness of the day is the beacon of light that he needs in his day.
At that moment, he thinks she loves her more than ever before.
If only he could tell her.
“Aye,” he breathes, releasing Emma's hand to reach out and remove the lock. “It's only right.”
They do take her out, only a few hundred feet, making sure they don't lose sight of the lights above the docks through the mist, and shut off the engine.
He holds Liam in his arms, the jar growing cold against Killian's touch.
There's a metaphor in there somewhere, he knows it, about his dead brother and the life leaving him. If he could think about anything other than the last picture he saw of his brother, beaten and battered at the hands of Neal Gold, then maybe his muse would work enough to create it.
But no. All he can see beyond the lifeless horizon stretched out in front of him is that last picture that Neal sent him, Liam barely recognizable from the damage that his face and his torso took.
“You didn't deserve any of this,” he says softly, turning his eyes down to the gold jar he's cradling in his arms.
(He knows its an urn, but there's just something about that word that he hates , that makes him have to swallow the bile that rises up his throat, have to shake off the shudder that inches its way down his back.)
“You were always a much better man than I was, brother. You were the one who deserved to live, who didn't bury yourself in the past. I should never—I should never have asked you to look into her death.” He feels his breath grow shaky, unable to stop the tears that gather in his eyes, especially once the wind blows in off the water and into his face. Even if he wanted to, he's not sure that he could. “All of this is my fault,” he says finally, and the dam breaks as he falls to his knees on the deck, still holding the jar against his body as if his life depended on it.
(In this moment, it just might be the only thing tying him back to the deck. The feel of the jar in his arms, and the hands on his shoulders, one David's and one Emma's, both standing silently behind him as he is able to grieve for the first time.)
“It's all my fault,” he says again, allowing the tears to fall down his face, his sobs so deep that they cause his entire body to rock. “I'm sorry, brother. I've let you down.”
“Oh, Killian,” Emma sighs, and he realizes that she has knelt down next to him, and all he can do is turn to her, tears still running down his cheeks. She wraps her arms around him, pulling his face into her shoulder, and he feels David gently pull the jar out of his arms before hugging him from behind, also now kneeling on the deck behind him.
Most of his life, his brother has been all he had, after their father left when Killian was just a toddler and their mother died when Killian was twelve, leaving him and eighteen-year-old Liam completely alone. When he realized that he had cost Liam his life, he had convinced himself that he had lost the only family he had left.
But being here, between David and Emma on the greyest, gloomiest day he could remember, on the deck of he and Liam's ship as he said goodbye to his brother for the last time, Killian realizes that maybe, even though Liam is gone, he doesn't have to be alone anymore.
It takes a few minutes for Killian to realize that Emma and David are crying, too, grieving for his brother just as he is, and somehow, that becomes a comfort to him, allowing him to begin to calm. Killian is the first one to stand, the hardwood of the deck doing its damage on his already damaged body, and Emma and David follow suit, smiling at each other as they wipe the tears from their windburned eyes.
They had decided earlier not to put all of Liam in the water, leave some of him to rest on the Jewel , the place where he was truly the happiest, so when the wind dies down, Killian nods to both of them, unscrewing the lid and dumping some of the ashes into the wind.
“Your brother was a damned good man, Jones,” David says, none of them taking their eyes off of where the ashes were taken away by the wind, but he wraps his arm around Killian's shoulder nonetheless. “But he never would have followed through with the investigation if he hadn't believed you were right. You know that, right?”
Killian turns to face his friend, pulling his eyes away from the waves, and though the best he can do is attempt a smile, it's better than nothing. “Thank you, Dave. That—that means more to me than you may ever know.”
He may not be okay right now, and he doesn't really expect it in the near future, but at this moment he can sense it may be possible, on a distant horizon, and that's just the start he needs.
--- --- ---
Sitting at the counter in his apartment later that week, the only thing he wants to do is drink. He wants to pick up his bottle of Captain, finish it, and wake up from the nightmare his life has become. Because none of this can be real.
He just came here to grab some of his belongings, the presence of Liam still too real to be dealt with yet, but he could only go so long without his own clothing, his own belongings, his laptop, his work .
Besides, while David and Mary Margaret insisted it was fine, there were only two and a half months left until their baby is due, and it was going to need the nursery they had almost finished furnishing when David moved Killian's spare bed in.
He would have to move out of there by some point.
“Want to tell me what's on your mind?” Emma asks, and he realizes that she must have been watching him as he got lost in his own head. Again.
Turning to her, his lips pull themselves into a momentary smile, and he reaches across the counter to take her hand.
He hasn't told her how he feels, afraid that once one emotion comes out, everything that's hidden behind it will also come tumbling. But the time they have spent together can't mean nothing to her. She hasn't turned away to touches like this, has even initiated many of them on her own. Holding his hand, touching his cheek, even falling asleep with his arm around her on David's couch a few times since he came home from the hospital two weeks before.
If he ever doubted it before, he knew for certain by now that he was incredibly, terrifyingly in love with her, with the way she joked with him, unafraid of being herself even around him as he healed; with how she would pull the whole onion out of her onion ring on the first bite then slowly eat the rest of the batter; with how together she could look before going to her shift, no matter what time of day it started, and with the way you could tell she was exhausted when she came home but never ceased to take his breath away with her beauty.
“I'm going to need a new apartment,” he replies, needing to tear his eyes away from hers before he said something he would come to regret, so he turns away from her to face the living room. “The ghost of my brother can haunt the Jewel as much as he likes, but I don't think I could stand living in an apartment where he lingered around every corner.”
“There's an open apartment in my building,” she says, and he turns back around to face her just as the edge of her cheeks begin to darken with embarrassment. “Mine and David's,” she tries to correct before taking a quick sip out of the glass of water in front of her. “It's closer to your office, too.”
“If you wanted me closer to you, darling, all you had to do was ask,” he teases, but it only makes her blush grow deeper.
“You wish,” she replies, trying to sound as cool as she can, but he can tell the effect he's had on her.
So he leans across the counter between them, the edge digging painfully into one of the bruises still healing on his ribs, and smiles at her. “Perhaps I do,” he whispers, but before she can respond, he turns away from her, crossing the living room in a few long strides and entering his bedroom to collect his things.
The ride back to the apartment building is a quiet one, Killian finally deciding to check his work email as Emma drives, and then she insists on carrying his duffel bag to the elevator, arguing that too much strain on his shoulder will keep it from healing.
She's a paramedic. She would know.
He doesn't even try to argue with her, but for some reason, once they get into the elevator, the air around them changes, turning into something heated, electrical, and Killian swears if he were to reach out and touch the metal walls, sparks would fly. But he doesn't try, doesn't do anything but stare straight ahead as the numbers above the door count up to six, and follow her out the door and to David and Mary Margaret's apartment.
When Emma lets herself in, they find them sitting on the couch, Mary Margaret's head resting on a pillow in David's lap, something on the TV but looking only at each other, talking soft enough that they can't hear from the door. They both have their hands on her baby bump, and whatever they're discussing, they don't realize Emma and Killian are there until he closes the door behind him. They both snap their heads towards the door, noticeably worried for a moment until they realize who it is, but Emma just rolls her eyes and walks around them to the spare bedroom, dropping the duffel bag on the bed and spinning towards Killian as he deposits the rest of his belongings beside it.
“Want to go out to dinner?” she asks, the words tumbling out of her like a waterfall, and at first, his eyes go wide, eyebrows shooting up his forehead. It's practically the first thing she has said to him since their conversation at his apartment, and though he desperately wants to know what brought the thought about, he does not want to turn her down.
“Of course,” he says, trying not to sound too thrilled by her asking. “Just the two of us?”
Emma blushes again, pushing her blonde curls behind her ear. “Yeah. Just—just the two of us, if that's okay?”
“Of course, love. And I'm not complaining, but might I ask what brings this about?”
“They just… look so peaceful out there, and they haven't really had a moment to themselves for a while, so I want to give them that.”
Oh , he can't help but think. It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the burden he's put on her brother.
She must see the change in his face, since she steps closer to him, smiling up at him through her lashes as she sets her hand on his arm. “Not that I don't want to spend time with you.” Her voice is soft and so sincere that it can't be a lie. “That's just a bonus.”
He returns her smile, slowly reaching up to cup her cheek in his hand, running his thumb across it. “Let me get changed,” he says, and her smile widens against his palm.
“Perfect. Me, too. I'll meet you at my apartment?” she asks, and all he has to do is nod before she turns away from him, closing the door behind her. He hears her through the door as she tells David and Mary Margaret about their plans for the night, hears Mary Margaret as she tries to argue with Emma, but knows that Emma comes out victorious since there's no reason for them to turn her down.
Because she's right. Since Killian was taken to the hospital—hell, probably since Killian first told his brother his theory about Neal Gold, David hasn't had much time to spend with his wife. Late nights at the precinct are enough on their own, then add in the extra time David has been spending with Killian, first in the hospital and now that he's living in their apartment, and Killian realizes just how much the Nolan's have done for him.
How much they continue to do.
He decides that within the next few days, he'll start looking for a new apartment, maybe even looking into the one in this building, especially if things go well with Emma. Carefully buttoning up his black shirt, he realizes that maybe he should talk to David about dating his sister before he actually tries to do it. Of course, Emma is her own person, is free to date whoever she wants—he can almost hear the way she would argue with them about it—but he still feels the need to at least inform the man whose apartment he's living out of that he plans to ask out his sister. Maybe even do it tonight.
He comes out of the bedroom, his new bag of toiletries in hand, but David meets him before he can make it to the bathroom.
“Is this a date?”
He can't tell by the look in his eyes what he wants the answer to be, if it's an innocent question or an interrogation.
But since Killian doesn't know the answer himself, it's not really that big of a deal.
“I—I don't think so.”
“How do you not know?”
“She just asked about going to dinner. I didn't ask her to define what exactly she meant by it.”
“Do you want it to be a date?”
Somehow, this question seems more dangerous than the first.
Killian can't stop his hand from flying up, his fingers finding the spot behind his ear that somehow always itches when he's faced with an embarrassing situation. “I… yes, I do.”
He tries to say it as strongly as he can, only faltering at first, but when David's face fails to respond at first, he's momentarily terrified that somehow, he's chosen the wrong answer.
Until David's face breaks out into a wide grin and he wraps his arms around him in a hug, which takes Killian a second to reciprocate.
“That's excellent, Jones! She likes you, you know? And I had a feeling you liked her, too.”
“Well, you were right.”
It's only a few more minutes until Killian is standing outside the door to her apartment, two floors up from David and Mary Margaret's, his hair combed back, teeth brushed, extra deodorant applied.
When she answers the door, she's in lighter jeans than usual, and a tight black sweater, her hair up in a high ponytail.
“I'm not quite ready yet,” she says, never stopping once she opens the door to let him in, heading first for the bathroom for just a few moments before rushing out of there and into the bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable! I'll just be another minute or two.”
He tries to sit on the couch, he really does. But it does not last for more than a few moments, the adrenaline from his conversation with David still coursing through his body, and he stands up once more and begins a slow sweep of her living room. She doesn't have much in the way of decoration, just a few pictures, mostly of herself and David and a few with Mary Margaret in the mix, some with other people that she thinks must be coworkers. Against one wall, she has a shelf full of books, an odd mixture of classics, poetry books, and medical journals. He is still browsing the titles when she emerges from her room once more, her hair now hanging down over her shoulders, her lips stained a bright red, and black ankle boots on her feet.
“Ready?” she asks, coming up behind him at the bookshelf, and he turns to find her a few inches taller than normal because of her heels, close enough to him that he can see the flecks of gold in her eyes.
“Ready,” he responds, trying to hide the fact that his throat has gone dry, and she picks up her red leather jacket and leads him out the door.
She picks a restaurant not far from the apartment, a small Italian place that's not too fancy, but that serves more than just pizzas and sandwiches. After just a few minutes, the waiter comes to take their order, and she gets the seafood scampi while he settles on chicken marsala.
When the menus are gone from between them and Killian can finally focus on the way the low lights of the restaurant compliment her face, he leans across the table towards her, making sure to keep his folded hands just beyond contact with hers.
“Do you want to know something interesting?” he asks and waits for her to look back at him before he continues. “Before I left the apartment, your brother asked if we were going on a date.”
“What did you tell him?” she responds, almost too quickly, also leaning in towards him.
As cooly as he can, he shrugs. “I told him it was just dinner, a chance to give them some time to themselves.”
“Oh,” is all she says, leaning back in her chair.
He pauses for a moment, then continues. “But then he asked if I wanted it to be a date, which I thought was a little weird.”
“And?” He can almost hear the way her breath catches with the word, searching his face for some sort of answer.
He smiles, leaning as far towards her as he can without getting out of his seat. “I said I did.”
She smiles back, finally, reaching between them to cover his hands with her own. “Good,” she breathes.
“What about you?”
“Jury's still out,” she jokes, but squeezes both of his hands, her smile growing.
Dinner passes quickly, both of them revealing more about themselves than they somehow had already in the months they've known each other, definitely more than they've ever revealed on a date before, especially a first date.
But it didn't feel like a first date. After all the weeks they had been spending together, first in the hospital and then not, it feels almost as far from a first date as a first date can get.
But when they get back to her apartment and he slides his lips against hers, pressing her back against the door, tasting the white wine and tiramisu on her lips? That's about as good as a first kiss can be, both soft and passionate, and Killian uses it to tell her everything he hasn't been able to over the last few months, how grateful he is for every moment she decided to spend with him, how important she had become to his healing process.
When they finally part, the remainder of her lipstick smeared across their swollen lips, his bright blue eyes blown wide, all he can do is say her name, breathing it against her lips, against her skin.
But she breathes something very different: “Please.” It's a request for more, asking him to stay beside her, but most of all, it's a plea to take her to bed, to do something about all of the feelings they have had to ignore.
He gives her everything she wants and more, thanking her in as many ways as he can think of before slowly, finally filling her, his body crying out in more ways than one, and he lets her take control of them, as gentle as she can be as she returns what he gave her as well as she can.
He wakes up beside her in the morning, a tangled mess of sheets and pillows and bodies, and he can swear that he's never been happier in his life, even with all the horror that brought them together.
“I love you,” he whispers against her hair, pulling her closer to him, and he believes her to still be asleep until she groans, leaning into the warmth of his body and whispering it back, pulling his hand to her mouth to gently kiss it.
“Now go back to sleep.”
#cs ff#captain swan#cs fics#my writing#wordsbymeganmichael#tw: assault#hurt/comfort#ouat#ouat ff#whump#killian whump#and lots and lots of feelings#tw: character death#(yes im sorry its Liam I regret everything)
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How abt some uradeku? Maybe a few years later when all might is gone nd deku tells ochaco abt OfA ? :0
YAAAAAAAASSSS URADEKU! I’m so happy for this request. I love that ship almost more then I love Todoroki. (Which is saying something.)
Hey, Ochaco, could you meet me at my house later?
Yeah! Sure. I was just about to ask if you wanted to go to dinner tonight anyway. Do you want to go out somewhere?
Let’s eat in tonight. I have something important I need to tell you.
All right. I’ll see you later
Izuku put his phone back into the pocket of his costume and went back to looking over reports from other superheroes that had gone out on patrol. Things looked relatively calm lately, so he thought now would be a good time to tell Ochaco the truth about his quirk.
He remembered that he promised All Might that he wouldn’t tell anyone about One for All, but All Might was gone now. And he trusted Ochaco with his life. They were partners, both in life and in the field (most times, anyway) so he thought it was about time that he showed her just how much he trusted her. Telling her about his Quirk would either destory the trust she had in him, or strengthen it and being together as long as they had, it was something he could no longer avoid. He didn’t want to avoid it anymore. So he was going to do it. He was going to rip the bandaid off and see how much it hurts.
He left work early that night, to get home before Ochaco would come over. He hoped that he could make a nice dinner for her, or at least something they could both enjoy while he dropped the bombshell. He had just finished setting the table, when the door opened and Ochaco walked in. She wore her street clothes, so she had to have stopped at her apartment before she came over. Not that Izuku minded. He thought she looked beautiful no matter what she wore.
When Ochaco saw Izuku she smiled widely and hugged him. “How was work today, Deku?” she asked cheerfully.
“It was quiet, surprisingly,” he said and kissed her head. “How about you?”
“Same. For some reason villains just aren’t coming out as often anymore,” she noted and let Izuku lead her to the dining room. “So what did you want to talk about?”
Izuku cleared his throat and sat down. “Er well… It’s about my quirk. And All Might, I guess,” he said.
Ochaco tilted her head to the side. “What about him? You’re not still upset about him, are you?”
He shook his head. “It’s not about that,” he said. “What do you know about my quirk?”
“It gives you super strength,” she said. “I don’t know what you call it though.”
Izuku sighed and looked at her. “It’s called One for All,” he said. “And I wasn’t born with it. It was given to me… by All Might.”
Ochaco blinked. “What? What do you mean?”
Izuku launched into his story about what happened before he entered U.A. and met her and the other heroes that they both called friends now. He told her everything that All Might told her about One for All and how All Might gave it to him. He came clean about everything, even his childhood growing up Quirkless but still wanting to be like All Might. When he finished speaking, Ochaco was silent and Izuku couldn’t bring himself to look at her, afraid of what he was going to see.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” she asked.
“I promised All Might…” he said pathetically.
Ochaco was silent again and he heard the legs of her chair scratch against the hardwood floor of his aparment and her foot steps. He thought she was walking out. But instead she walked up to him and lifted his head to look at her. She was smiling at him.
“I’m glad you told me, Deku,” she said. “I’ll keep this secret to my grave. I promise?”
“You’re not mad at me?”
Ochaco laughed and kissed his nose. “How can I be mad at you for keeping your promise to your hero for this long?” she said. “I’m just happy that you trust me enough to tell me your secret.”
Izuku smiled and pulled her into his arms, sitting her down in his lap. He held her tight and buried his face in his shoulder, trying not to cry tears of joy at her still accepting him. Ochaco laughed and hugged him back.
“Are we going to eat or what?” she said.
Izuku shook his head. “Just let me hold you a little while longer.”
“Okay.”
#boku no hero academia#my hero academia#uraraka#izuku midoriya#izuocha#bnha one shots#bnha request#request
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Twelve Thai boys had scarcely been rescued from a flooded cave by divers and Thai Navy SEALS before the intention to shoot a movie adaptation was announced by PureFlix, the production and distribution company that focuses on faith-market releases like the God’s Not Dead series and The Case for Christ.
A day later, a second film about the events was announced, this time helmed by Jon M. Chu (director of the upcoming Crazy Rich Asians) and produced by LA-based Ivanhoe Pictures. Ivanhoe’s president announced that the company had been selected by the Thai Navy and Thailand’s government to develop the film.
It’s not uncommon for multiple movies or TV shows about the same person or real event to come out around the same time. Think of 2006, when both Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and Paul Greengrass’s United 93 came out. Or 2016, when the documentary O.J.: Made in America and the scripted TV show The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story were both released. It happens a lot.
And this rescue story, which garnered weeks of high-profile news coverage and captivated people around the world, will inspire more than just these two films. For instance, Deadline reported that Discovery Inc. ordered a documentary about the rescue mission to first air on Friday, July 13 — just days after the rescue — and the Wall Street Journal noted that books are likely on the way, too.
But these two “fiction” films attracted particular attention because of questions about how the story would be approached by the two companies, fueled partly by comments Chu made on Twitter about “whitewashing,” as well as competing efforts to obtain the rights to the story — and the realities about who owns those rights.
On Wednesday, Chu — who is Chinese-American — weighed in via Twitter, confirming his intention to make his own film in response. In his tweets, Chu suggested that Hollywood might “whitewash” the story.
“That won’t happen or we’ll give them hell,” he wrote, saying that “anyone thinking about the story better approach it right & respectfully.”
And though Chu didn’t name Pure Flix specifically in the tweets, the timing suggested it was in response to the company’s announcement about its intention to make the film.
I refuse to let Hollywood #whitewashout the Thai Cave rescue story! No way. Not on our watch. That won’t happen or we’ll give them hell. There’s a beautiful story abt human beings saving other human beings. So anyone thinking abt the story better approach it right & respectfully.
— Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) July 11, 2018
Its a bit early 2truly discuss but the biggest lesson I learned frm making #CrazyRichAsians is that we must tell our stories especially the important ones so history doesnt get it wrong.This one is too important 2 let others dictate who the real heroes are https://t.co/ZmnSBFvPI3
— Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) July 12, 2018
We have the power to not only MAKE history but be the historians that RECORD it too. So that it’s told correctly and respectfully. Couldn’t just sit here watching how others would “interpret” this important story. https://t.co/kRv5k9plDU
— Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) July 12, 2018
Reached by email for comment on Thursday, Chu’s publicist said that “his tweet is his statement.”
For his part, Pure Flix producer and founding partner Michael Scott said in a video posted to Twitter that his goal was to make an inspiring movie, but not necessarily a “Christian movie.” According to company reps, the company intends to produce the film through Pinnacle Peak, Pure Flix’s more mainstream brand.
Reached via email in Thailand, Scott explained why he was interested in the project. “This story has a personal connection for me, as my wife (who is from Thailand) knew Navy Seal Saman Kunan who died during the rescue,” Scott wrote. “I spend many months here a year, and it was incredible to see a miracle happen with these young boys and the rescuers.”
A Buddhist monk holds a prayer ceremony at the entrance of the caves a few days before the rescue Photo by Linh Pham/Getty Images
Scott reiterated that Pure Flix’s intention was not to make the movie “for one specific ‘religious’ audience … Often times people try to turn a story meant to inspire into a political statement, or with a specific agenda in mind. As we pursue this opportunity, we are considering how to keep the film authentic to what occurred and who was involved.”
Though Pure Flix has been the target of some criticism (including from me) for elements of its movies, there’s nothing in its history that would specifically suggest it would “whitewash” the rescue story. Nor is Pure Flix a “Hollywood” studio by any real definition of the term — it often produces and distributes its films itself, outside the entertainment mainstream, and its streaming service consists largely of films and TV shows that aren’t part of the entertainment produced by Hollywood’s biggest studios.
That makes Chu’s tweets a little curious. But there’s a history behind them, whether or not Pure Flix is the right target.
As Vox’s Joss Fong and Christophe Haubursin explain in this video, Hollywood has a history of not just giving Asian roles to white actors, but also using those roles to mock Asian people:
Hollywood’s best Asian roles still go to white people
The most recent instance of “whitewashing” controversy roiled in 2016, when Scarlett Johansson was cast as Motoko Kusanagi, the Japanese lead character in Ghost in the Shell adapted from Masamune Shirow’s manga. The film’s producers chose to make the main characters more white rather than casting Asian actors for the roles — a practice that seems remarkably backward in the 21st century.
Though the term “whitewashing” is usually applied to casting, Chu may also have been alluding to Hollywood’s history of making “white savior” movies, in which stories about people of color or in distant lands are supposedly made more “relatable” to an American audience by inserting a white and often American figure into the story who saves the day. That criticism was leveled, for instance, against The Great Wall, a film about Chinese people that kind of randomly inserted Matt Damon into the story, too. (The film turned out to be a dud, if an eye-popping one.)
And although a number of the divers who helped rescue the boys from the cave were white Europeans, the story is, fundamentally, a Thai story with Thai protagonists; the ex-SEAL who died in the rescue attempt was Thai as well.
So it’s likely that in saying that “we have the power to not only make history but be the historians who record it,” Chu is worried the film will center the outsiders who came to help rather than the community at the heart of the story.
But whether or not whitewashing is ultimately part of the PureFlix project, Chu’s comments did attract attention to Ivanhoe Pictures’s version of the story. And that brings another consideration into play: Who owns the rights to this story? Can there be two Thai cave rescue movies at once?
The short answer: Yes, and it’s likely they will.
David A.R. White, co-founder of PureFlix, told the Wall Street Journal that the company was pursuing life rights from some of the people involved. “You get their stories, and then it’s a matter of making sure the writer can tell the story in a dramatic and inspirational way,” he told the WSJ. “At the same time, these stories still have to be entertaining and moving.”
“My co-producer Adam Smith and I are in the initial phases of producing and gathering information,” Scott confirmed by email. “We are talking to several people about the film release and considering a partnership, if it makes sense.”
For its part, Ivanhoe Pictures is in talks with “the most senior officials in Thailand, both on provincial and national levels, about the rescue project,” according to Variety
“If it’s a newsworthy event. If the story’s fact, then nobody owns that story,” entertainment and intellectual property lawyer Stephen Rodner explained by phone. Rodner, senior counsel at Pryor Cashman in New York, has long worked with clients seeking to adapt true stories for the screen.
To put it simply, Rodner said, any newsworthy story is fair game, at least under US law. Even a public figure can’t block someone from making a movie about his or her life, though Rodner notes that “the one thing you can’t do is libel anybody in the film.”
However, the private details of an individual’s life, as well as elements of the story that were not publicly reported, are not as readily available. To gain access to those, a production company would need to find ways to make deals with individuals and entities involved in the story.
It all boils down to access. Because Ivanhoe Pictures is working with the Thai Navy and the country’s government, for instance, they may have access to people, places, and information more easily in making the film.
And at least under US law, acquiring life rights can give the filmmakers access to information that may be private. “I assume they could make a contract with the people involved and get information that nobody else has,” Rodner said. “They can also, by contract, have them not cooperate” with any other production, noting that the people under question in this case are not US citizens and thus the laws may vary some.
But “as far as making a film on a newsworthy event, anybody could do it,” Rodner noted. And there’s no way for one production to block another from happening, unless one screenplay blatantly rips off another. Publicly reported news stories are fair game to anyone.
Given the commercial value of the story, there’s a strong possibility that both films could go ahead, and maybe even be released around the same time.
Rescue workers at the cave on July 4, days before the rescue succeeded. Linh Pham/Getty Images
And that’s a smart business move. As critic Lara Zarum wrote in the Village Voice following the release of Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris, Hollywood has always had a fascination with quickly retelling tales of heroism, stretching back to the 1930s. Since 9/11, those stories have taken on a particularly triumphal and patriotic cast for Americans, in movies like Lone Survivor and American Sniper.
But, as she notes, “the acceleration of this process over the past decade means more and more people absorb these incidents not through reporting but through the prism of Hollywood convention, with all the mythologizing and smoothing-over of inconvenient bumps that implies.”
It’s possible that’s what Chu is worried about: that the movie version of the rescue story will become the version of the story in people’s minds, and that it may displace the Thai community who rallied around the rescue attempt in favor of a white savior.
For their part, PureFlix sees the film as an inspirational tale anyone could appreciate. “I believe this story demonstrates all the elements audiences long for — hope in the midst of tragedy, a miraculous story, the determination of the boys, their coach and the rescuers. It exemplifies the power of the human spirit,” Scott wrote. “This was an event every parent could identify with and that united our world as we all prayed for a miraculous outcome, and one we received.”
Making a movie takes a while, so we won’t know the results right away. But for now, the race to bend the Thai cave rescue saga into a captivating big-screen spectacle is on.
Original Source -> Competing movies about the Thai cave rescue are already in the works
via The Conservative Brief
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