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The assassin smiled broadly, holding out a little pill.
“Guaranteed to make all your problems disappear,” he announced triumphantly, then cast an appraising glance at his watch. “At least, for the next four to six hours.”
According to Daniel ‘two-foot’ Boyde.
He’d suggested his little scheme at a pivotal stage in the fox’s development: a moment of supreme importance, in which he’d tossed the rulebook aside and let sheer impulse guide him.
This had resulted in an unlikely, yet predictable bout of nobility—but it had also opened a crack. Just a tiny crack in that armor he kept polished, routinely disabling him from having any fun.
Gabriel had dedicated a significant portion of his life to battering at that armor.
He could not ignore the crack.
“And you’re sure Julian said it was okay?” Devon asked again, approaching with a look of trepidation. He’d insisted the psychic be consulted, it had been a condition of his consent.
Gabriel waved his phone, not meeting the fox’s eyes.
“It’s fine,” he said dismissively. “Now are we doing this?”
He’d procured two pills. The other was for himself.
The fox had already made him hide the knives, hide the passports, lock the keys in the safe, and incinerate the slip of paper with the combination. He’d also been tasked with ordering a pizza.
Devon flashed a helpless look around the room, coming up empty. “Yeah, I guess.”
He took one of the pills and popped it into his mouth, the assassin took the other. They lifted a glass of water, clinked it with a silent cheers, and swallowed it down.
Then they proceeded to wait.
“I don’t feel anything,” Devon said, after only a few seconds.
“I’m sure it takes a minute,” Gabriel answered calmly.
The fox nodded quickly, fighting back a rising panic. He was already regretting the decision, feet bouncing at the speed of light. It got to the point that he was going to damage the floorboards.
I’m glad we did this at his house instead of mine.
Gabriel studied him a moment, then headed towards the kitchen. “Shall I make us some tea?” he called.
“Yeah,” Devon answered, wringing his fingers, “tea would be nice.”
This will be good for him.
The assassin warmed with an inward smile as he rummaged around the cabinets, thinking himself to be the most thoughtful of friends. He’d been given an unexpected bribe, and he’d passed along the favor. He had discovered a way to remove that debilitating stress from the fox’s mind.
He was some kind of marvel, a testament to all Carter’s unflinching pride. He was barely feeling the effects himself. He was too strong for that. He was but a facilitator of little miracles.
Finding the perfect work-life balance.
He hummed a wordless tune as he brewed the tea, setting the cups on a needless tray. When he walked back outside, the fox was perched on the lamp that hung above the dining room table.
“I still don’t feel anything,” he said without expression.
Gabriel froze with the tea.
This might have been a mistake.
* * *
IT HAD TAKEN A WHILE to coax him down. A while longer to steady him.
For one of the strongest men the assassin had ever known, the fox had a slight tendency towards panic. The chandelier was not the only perch he’d tried to acquire; Gabriel had twice been forced to untangle him from the bannisters. The shower curtain had been even worse.
When he descended the basement steps in an effort to ‘rescue’ some of his children’s ancient toys, the assassin had begun to seriously worry, but they’d gotten him leveled out in the end.
They were enjoying themselves now. Tea had been upgraded to whiskey.
“We should have days like this all the time,” Devon declared, stretching his legs across the coffee table and swishing what remained in his glass. His hair was still damp from an impromptu romp in the yard, and there were inexplicable drops of melted wax affixed to his fingers, but he was smiling—finally smiling. His friend had been half-convinced he was never going to see that again. “I’m serious, we’ve been working too long underneath the castle. It’s time to live it up like kings.”
Gabriel shook his head with a grin. “You wouldn’t have survived my childhood,” he murmured.
He hadn’t felt the same euphoric burst of chemicals his friend had promised, but he was still having a fine time. The two had finished the pizza and had feasted on whatever was in the Wardell’s seldom-used pantry. They’d then retired to the office to indulge in the finer things. Two cigars had been produced from some unknown cupboard, though they sat unused in the center of the table. A fire had been prepared in the hearth, though neither could remember how to get it to light.
The whiskey was the key. As the drugs had settled and loosened their tongues, it had been the whiskey that steadied those trembling hands, soothed the violent waves of adrenaline.
The low-simmering panic was gone. The hysteria had gone with it.
The images left behind were another story.
“You know what I keep thinking?” Devon asked quietly, breaking a long silence. “If I hadn’t been with Jules, he would have gone by himself. He would have been alone in the intersection when the truck hit, and we both know how that would have ended. If he’d waited for a partner, I would have sent him with Avery.” He paused a moment, drank. “Avery couldn’t have moved the car.”
He’d thought of it almost immediately—sitting in fluorescent purgatory on the floor of the ICU. Since he was sixteen years old, he’d been trained to think the angles, to work the numbers. As much as he wanted to turn off his brain, it was impossible not to do it again.
Two scenarios: in both of them, his best friend would have ended up dead.
Gabriel flashed him a silent look, fingers wrapped around a glass. He was familiar with that expression. He’d worn it many times himself. He knew how those hindsights could be paralyzing if allowed to take root. Some people never got over them, they just started smiling a little less.
He stared unseeing for a moment, then shook his head.
“That’s the most self-centered thing you’ve ever said.”
A moment of silence passed between them. Devon stared at him in astonishment, unable to speak. Then without any warning, he burst out laughing—clinging to the sides of his drink. It was louder than he was able to control, loud enough to chase those lingering shadows from his face.
“You’re an asshole,” he panted, when he finally surfaced once again, unable to catch his breath. “I can’t believe you just said that. You’re such an asshole.”
Gabriel frowned at his empty glass. “I would have moved the car.”
He broke down again, letting it wash over him. Turns out, there was a bit of hysteria after all.
“I’m serious,” he insisted once he’d quieted, collapsing in his chair. His cheeks were aching like it was the first time he’d properly smiled in days. “How is it possible? How are we friends?”
The assassin reached for the bottle. “Just lucky, I guess.”
They filled their glasses to the brim, and tipped them with a clink.
They stayed like that for a while, passing the bottle back and forth, settling easily into a companionable silence. For the first time in longer than either of them could remember, problems that chased them had been temporarily sated, and they’d found themselves in an ironic gap of calm.
Julian was safe in the hospital, and the men who’d put him there were either dead or behind bars. They hadn’t committed a daylight murder. They weren’t missing any nuclear arms.
It was the lull between waves, but they’d take it.
“You’re good at that,” Devon finally murmured, speaking almost to himself. “Helping people out of their own heads, walking them through things. Rae said you put Alexander Hastings in charge of the transfers.” He nodded to himself, taking another drink. “That was a good call.”
Gabriel’s eyes flew over in surprise, then dropped quickly to the ground. A touch of color warmed his cheeks, but he said nothing in return—merely raised the whiskey to his lips.
“Save your compliments, Wardell. Everyone knows you’re after my job.”
Devon chuckled with laughter, dipping his finger into the glass.
“It’s your job, huh?” he repeated, eyes twinkling in the soft light. He sat there for a moment, quiet and contemplative, then flashed Gabriel a sudden look. “Can I ask you something serious?”
Gabriel froze where he sat, pulse quickening in surprise. “Uh...yeah, I guess.”
He would remember that moment later. He would blame it on the drugs.
Devon regarded him in silence, his gaze clear and intent.
“Would you stay, if Carter asked you?”
There is was—right there in the open.
It was almost funny. Over the last few days, Gabriel had heard a dozen people ask the same question. It had been all over the office, ever since the news slipped out that Carter was coming into town. He’d caught snatches of it in the hallway, in the elevator, in the lockers. He’d heard people ask Devon directly—but not a single person had summoned the courage to bring it up to him.
Truth be told, he was a little relieved. Because he wasn’t entirely sure of his answer.
He offered a careless shrug. “I’m really good at it—”
“That wasn’t my question,” Devon interrupted, staring intently, “and those are two different things. Wanting it, and being good at it.” He went silent for a moment, tracing his finger around the glass. “You have to need it,” he decided, murmuring under his breath. “You have to need to do it.”
Gabriel stared in silence, feeling like he’d fallen back in time.
Oddly enough, it was a phrase Cromfield had been fond of saying himself. That raw hunger was one of the first things he looked for, when trying to recruit a double-agent. It needed to satisfy some fundamental part of them. They needed to crave the adrenaline, the heart-stopping thrill.
If it weren’t for that damn sense of morality, Devon would have been at the top of his list.
“Do you like it?” the fox asked suddenly, coming back to himself. Those bright eyes cleared again, fixing upon Gabriel. “We’ve been doing this for so long...do you still like it?”
The assassin looked back without speaking, uncertain what to say. A flush of embarrassment stained his cheeks, and for a horrible moment, he was unable to see past it. Why was it always these most basic of questions that he failed to answer? Why could that famously quick tongue of his never summon a reply? Because the truth of the matter was, he didn’t know if he’d ever liked it. The truth of the matter was, it was never something he would have chosen for himself.
It had been one of the reasons he’d disliked the fox so much in the beginning—that and his inconvenient attraction to a certain dark-haired girl. So many years they’d spent training, refining. So many years, they’d spent honing their craft. It was something Devon took pride in—wore like some kind of banner, checking those primal boxes, drawing him back again and again. It was something different for Gabriel. The higher he climbed, the higher those walls climbed with him—keeping him prisoner, preventing him from every walking away. This would all occur to his later. At the time, he knew just one thing for certain: no one had ever asked him that question, not in his entire life.
Do I actually like this?
A few seconds went past, then a few seconds more.
“I don’t know,” he finally answered, speaking quietly to the carpet. “Sometimes I worry that I’m not sure how to tell.” He said the words lightly, paired them with a quick smile. But there wasn’t much that escaped the man sitting next to him—not even when he’d consumed conservatively half a bottle of Irish single malt. “It’s the role that feels most comfortable, it’s what I do best. If that was taken away, I don’t know exactly what I’d—” He caught himself swiftly, feeling like he was standing somewhere very high. A breath caught in his throat, he lifted the bottle. “I like it all right.”
Devon stared without blinking, locked in silent wonder on his face. A moment came and passed before he nodded slowly, revealing himself to be not quite as drunk as Gabriel had believed.
“That was...Shakespearean, Alden.”
The assassin snorted with laughter, shoving him with a grin.
“I’m serious,” the fox continued gravely, “like your own little play...”
They lapsed once more into silence, smiling occasionally and absentmindedly draining the bottle. A new dusting of snow had settled over the neighborhood, gentle flurries of it were blowing against the window. They kept glancing over their shoulders, feeling inexplicably cozy.
After a few seconds, they turned around their chairs to watch.
Strangely enough, it was that part of the day they would always remember. Not the horror that had started it, not the calamitous way it would end. It was those quiet moments in the middle, when nothing was being asked of them, and nothing was being required. When they could just sit together and stare at the world outside the window, just like anyone else living on that block.
“I never thanked you,” Gabriel said abruptly, glancing to the side, “for covering for me, after the safe house caught fire.” Their eyes met for a moment. “Thank you, Devon. I mean it.”
The fox froze in surprise—quite possibly because that precise sequence of words had never once come from the assassin’s mouth. Then he nodded dismissively, lowering his eyes to the floor.
Then his face clouded. He tensed just a little, like someone bracing for a blow.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said quietly, eyes flickering behind strands of dark hair. “The night before that meeting, Natasha showed me a memory.” He drew in a tight breath, like he’d already tried to forget. “It was a memory of yours, as a kid. You were with...him.”
Funny, now he has a hard time saying it.
Gabriel stared back in silence, not a hint of emotion in his eyes.
“I just...I could never begin to...” Devon flashed a quick glance, not encouraged by the assassin’s expression. “I just wanted you to know that I’d seen it. It didn’t feel right, I guess. You not knowing.” His eyes flicked up again. “So that’s it then,” he concluded helplessly. “Now, you know.”
He nodded a little, almost approvingly. Then he paled in sudden horror.
“But don’t get mad at Natasha!” he cried, clapping a drunken hand over his mouth. “Holy cr—I shouldn’t have told you! Why did I tell you? Everyone’s right, I shouldn’t be a spy!”
His voice cracked in panic, and Gabriel started to smile.
“Alden, please,” he pleaded, even less encouraged by the smile, “listen to me, she was only trying to help. And it did—it helped! When you think of it like that, it was actually kind of sweet—”
“Dev, she told me.”
The fox stopped on a dime. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
Devon slumped back in his chair, running a hand over his face.
“Oh, thank goodness,” he muttered looking like he’d been through a great ordeal. A delicate shudder rippled across his shoulders. “It wasn’t sweet, by the way. It’s going to give me nightmares.”
Gabriel’s head tilted with a dry smile. “I’m sorry, princess. That must have been tough.”
Devon paused, drunkenly considered. “Okay that might have been insensitive,” he admitted with an apologetic grimace. “I’d blame the drugs again, but honestly, it’s just been a strange week...”
The assassin chuckled, and the moment was forgotten.
They lifted their glasses in unison, taking a long drink.
Strangely enough, it brought them both to Kraigan.
Of all the confounding things that had been happening, the man’s cryptic riddles were at the core. The snarl they’d been unable to untangle. The bump of friction in their lull between waves. It was a chronic irritation, sometimes even a distress. And yet there was something cloyingly engaging about it. Even when they knew better. Even when the better parts of them wanted to walk away.
Although no one would dare say it aloud, it was one of the few qualities that he and Rae actually shared: that irresistible, irrepressible love of the game. Although no one would dare even think it—it was the same infectious charisma that had drawn to many people to their father’s cause.
A treasure hunt, a list of clues...
Gabriel stared into the fireplace, his eyes dancing.
“A tiger, huh?” he finally murmured, like they’d been talking about it the whole time.
The drugs might have been wearing off, but the alcohol had him buzzing. More than buzzing, it had him smiling. It had him starting to make plans.
Devon nodded wordlessly, staring at a fixed point out the window. The tips of his fingers tapped together, faster than the human eye could see. It was a rather strange way to pivot the conversation, but he didn’t notice. He’d been thinking the same thing himself.
“The idiot,” he finally muttered.
“Such an idiot,” Gabriel agreed, nodding soundly.
They sat there for a while, watching snow climb up the mailbox. They sat there until the fox’s legs started bouncing, until the assassin’s lips started to twitch.
They sat a few seconds longer, then Gabriel lifted his eyes.
“You up for a trip to the zoo?”
* * *
IT WASN’T UNTIL THEY left the warmth of the cottage behind and stepped into the blinding cold, Gabriel realized what probably should have been obvious from the start: he was drunk, very drunk.
And his friend was much worse.
“Has the road always been so tilted?” the fox asked, cocking his head to match. He was almost immediately distracted, noticing his own footprints. “Oh, these are fun.”
The assassin froze where he stood, sensing they’d made a mistake.
“Maybe we should postpone,” he suggested hesitantly, “come back fresh in the morning.”
He was rewarded with a judgmental nod from the elderly woman who’d taken to haunting the benches in the park across the street. Even in the height of winter, she couldn’t seem to break the habit. A layer of snow had gathered to her ankles. There wasn’t a pigeon in sight.
Devon kicked at the snow, brightening in childlike delight. “We should take this inside.”
Case in point.
“Yeah, okay—” Gabriel grabbed onto him before he could fall into the road. “Let’s leave the ice outside and get you some water. We can order some more pizza, turn on a movie.”
Or we could go to the zoo, a voice countered almost immediately, the same voice that preceded most of his dastardly plans. Lots of fun to be had at the zoo...
“Quiet, you,” he whispered, perhaps feeling some lingering effects of those drugs after all. It had started creeping up slowly, Devon was pocketing the ice. “We’ve been through this before.”
You could take a cab—that makes it responsible.
His eyes widened, like in a spell.
“That makes it responsible,” he repeated in a breath.
The fox looked at him curiously.
“What?”
“Nothing!” he exclaimed with a start, slapping another handful of powder from the man’s fingers. He was already eyeing the pinecones instead. “Stop badgering me—let’s go inside.”
That’s really what you want? To go inside?
That voice was relentless, pricking at the corners of his mind.
To eat pizza and watch ‘the game?’
“It’s the drugs,” he chanted to himself. “Just ignore it—it’s the drugs.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. It was a process made infinitely more difficult when his friend started loudly pontificating on all the ways they might get their hands on a tiger.
Most of them involved fireworks. Most of them sounded like a great deal of fun.
He would need to take little Danny Boyde to task the next time he saw them. Pills like this should come with a warning—what was the half-life on this thing?! He would take him to task, that was the sensible thing. And he’d find a way to silence that wicked little voice in his—
What could even be playing now? Curling?
He stopped in his tracks, searching for the line, and finding himself well past it. He stood there for a moment, breath clouding in front of him. Then he swung a sudden look to the fox.
“You wanna go to the zoo?” he asked, like a comic book action hero.
Devon nodded happily.
The old woman across the street smacked her head.
“Then let’s go to the zoo,” the assassin declared, steering them in the opposite direction.
It might have been cold, but that didn’t mean they needed jackets. They would be in a taxi for most of the time anyway. And when they weren’t in a taxi, they’d be in a tiger pit.
For the first time, a thrill of anticipation stirred in the pit of Gabriel’s stomach—making him quicken his stride as the streetlamps clicked on above. He hadn’t the faintest idea how any of that was going to happen. While he’d spent an unlikely amount of time sparring with tigers, those were all relatively tame. Governed by human instinct, human limits. They wouldn’t actually try to eat him.
These ones might not feel the same.
There was a hitch in his stride, and he cast another look at Devon.
“When we get to the tigers, maybe you should be the one who goes inside.”
The fox nodded again, it was just as quickly forgotten.
At some point, over the course of their endless afternoon, the sun had relinquished its feeble hold on the city and began to plummet unnoticed behind the clouds. The forested strip that ran between the gang’s houses was kept well-lit, but as soon as they rounded the corner, the night struck in earnest—plunging them into a quick-rising darkness. One that did nothing but add to their fun.
I don’t know what I was thinking—we should always do these things drunk.
They rounded the corner in a fit of enthusiasm, prepared to walk all the way to the zoo on foot if they must, when they suddenly collided with a pair of heavily-shadowed figures.
There was a momentary scuffle, then a voice piped out of the dark.
“Uncle Gabriel?”
An electric glow lit the air between them, and the assassin saw two sets of eyes shining back in the darkness. Both were studying him curiously, he suddenly wondered the last thing he had said.
It turned out not to matter.
Devon pointed with a loud, “Don’t we know them?”
Gabriel’s eyes snapped shut, as the words echoed between them. He grabbed the back of the fox’s shirt a second later, stopping his incessant tilting and keeping him on his feet.
“Benjamin-Alexander,” he slurred the words together, ignoring the look of confusion that passed between them. “Where are you going so late?” He straightened to his full height, trying to assert a sense of authority. “Best to start things off with a question,” he added in a low murmur, eyes leaping between them as he continued narrating out loud. “Keep them on their toes.”
He was silent then, waiting. The boys stared incredulously back.
A few seconds went past.
“Your family is so freaking weird,” Alexander announced without warning, glancing at the cheetah beside him. “We don’t say that often enough. And we say it a lot, Fodder.”
Benji ignored this, looking his uncles up and down.
“What happened to you guys?” he asked in bewilderment. They’d learned to give each other a bit of latitude, but it was clear a line that had been crossed. “And where are your shoes?”
Gabriel stood there a moment, then cast a swift look at Devon—following the angle of his body, all the way down to his bare feet. His eyes narrowed, and his lips pursed with a scowl.
He’s not taking this seriously. Bare feet would never have been allowed in the tiger pit.
“I buried them somewhere back there,” Devon answered distractedly, glancing over his nephew to a shuttered bakery a few streets down the road. “Do you think they have doughnuts?” he asked in nearly the same breath. “Angel got me back into doughnuts.”
Benji cast a look over his shoulder, turning back with a frown.
“I think they’re closed,” he answered shortly. “Now, what is going on here? Are you guys under some kind of hypnosis? Do I need to call Aunt Rae—”
“Don’t call her,” Devon blurted at top-speed. The others looked slowly towards him, and his cheeks flushed a violent red. “I mean...you don’t need to trouble her with something like this.”
The assassin regarded him coolly, while Alexander chuckled under his breath. “This is so much better than the movie...”
Benji pursed his lips, holding back a smile. “All right, I won’t call her. But only if you tell me what’s happening.” His eyes lit up with mischief, jumping between each one. “Come on—where are you going?”
In hindsight, it was probably the worst of the night’s ideas—rising to the top of a very long and sordid list. It was certainly the part that would be the most difficult to explain to their wives.
At the time, they could see nothing past the convenience.
They probably have money for a cab. And shoes.
The men shared a quick look before Gabriel finally answered.
“If you must know...we’re going to the zoo.”
THE END
