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Realistic or Modern LOVE, LOSS, REVENGE

An involuntary laugh rips its way out of Neil's lungs, bouncing off the shower house's tiles with a ring.

You want me to meet your dad?

Really, that's what Cade's thoughts default to?

It's a ridiculous notion - MacDarragh has never introduced anyone to his guardian. Not friends, not partners, and certainly not fuck buddies. It's an idea that hasn't crossed his mind because he has no need for it, yet the concept is... entertaining, in its own way. Finally succumbing to a shiver, the hitman shakes his head with a snort. As mad as he is at the gangster, he is honestly way too funny. The corners of his eyes crinkling, Neil peers down at this hilarious man staring up at him with blue irises filled with surprise, and his usual full-toothed smile sneaks its way back into the conversation (or, well, "interrogation").

Despite MacDarragh's voice still sounding light from recent laughter, the sentence he speaks is adamant in its message, "He's not my dad."

Just like Vivien isn't his sister. Words such as "father" and "sibling" are merely convenient terms to convey his legal relations, but they never have and never will describe MacDarragh's situation. And he doesn't want them to.

That man is his guardian.

"And I'm not taking you with me to "meet" him," if Neil's hands weren't still bound he'd put the appropriate quotation marks where he intends them to be, but as things stand his intonation will have to suffice. It's several prolonged seconds before the hitman speaks again, shrugging as he breaks eye contact to look off to the side, smiling at nothing in particular, "Though it might be the last opportunity for something like that to happen."

"I made a promise to that man."

--- Sometimes deals go sour.

There's blood on the grass - splatters of it on the short stalks of the well-maintained course, and a puddle spreading out from the head of a motionless man. A figure looms over the body - unharmed, untouched, unmarred save for some stray splotches of red on the white golf shoes he's wearing. Not that it matters, he has plenty of other pairs, for golf and otherwise. Only one life, though. A life Neil just preserved.

Neil is still holding the steel club turned impromptu weapon when the man kneels (his knees will get dirty) to meet the eye line of his 13-year-old self. He's not looking at him with dismay or disdain - he's smiling. A hand that commands respect without ever having known violence (not personally) ruffles his hair, and he thinks this is what being a dog must feel like. This is what Mila must have felt whenever Neil pet her and called her a good girl, and it gives him comfort to think she was as happy before she died as he is in this moment.

"Good job."

Merely a foot away, Viv is glaring at him with hatred in her dark eyes, but he really couldn't care less right now.

Does everyone remember the first time they smiled? Genuinely smiled. Surely they do, it feels like such a pivotal moment. Neil can feel the expression creep up on him to mimic the one on the man, and despite the last years of learning English, it's his mother tongue that comes to him in making such a binding promise. Like a pact.

"Када дође време."
(When the time comes.) ---

"I'm going to kill him."
 
Oh what a surprise, the hitman laughs at him again. It seems like the only time he ever hears that pretty sound is when it's at his expense.
So he sits there, no, kneels there like a dumbass while that laugh burns his ears and reds up his face. He was never a good interrogator, even back in his prime. He'd yell his voice hoarse at a suspect before he ever got close to a break.
Instead of commiseration his dad would always scoff at him and ask him what he was expecting with such a short fuse, as if Cade didn't inherit it from the bastard in the first place.
This feels like that, but ten times as personal and it will be Kaden telling him he's a disappointment instead.

With an intensity Cade hasn't seen since Finch left in a huff, MacDarragh smiles at him.

And tells him he wants to kill the man who raised him.

With Cadence's help.

---

He's not two steps out of the shower house when he sees it, all while trying to catch a breath in the shit storm his life has become.
In a moment where he's desperate for the rollercoaster to reach a coasting moment, it takes another fucking loop.

Kaden kissing Damien.

His hands ball up into fists. Air fights it's way down his tightening throat. It's so damned cold.

Finch caresses the idiot's face, holds him. And holds him.

He twists away a moment before they look in his direction, the kind of split second timing that leaves the scene seared into his brain. Behind shut eyes he sees it and it feels like something he'll see everytime he blinks.

---

Is he ever going to feel like himself again?

Suddenly rebellious his hair refuses to fall in the proper way it has for the last twenty years. Each sweep momentarily pushes it back before it flops disgracefully back into whatever lazy, wild way it likes.

He looks like a greasy weasel.

His skin feels dry, his chin (mortifyingly his neck) is catching with the beginnings of an untrimmed face. Each fingernail has a dark line under it and his cuticle are thick and disgusting. There's countless other things, like the knobby look of his spine in the mirror, but he accepted weeks ago things like that wouldn't be under his immediate controls.

He should be able to maintain his appearance.

While reheating the mansion is theoretically possible given Wilson's skill around machines, it would serve little purpose considering the rooms will only warm up by tomorrow morning. When... Something is going to happen.
Hands cold from a snowball fight and lips from from a kiss, he still has little to know clue on what their next move is. Perhaps the interrogation (happening without his supervision or detrimental assistance) will give some answers but besides another false suicide attempt, he's got nothing.

All he has is a bucket of warm, frothy water steaming in this small dorm bedroom because he wanted to bathe here instead of a sensible place like a bathroom. There's specks of dirt that have sunk to the bottom, filth collected from the handfuls of snow and in the abysmally frigid bathroom the water will go cold sooner rather than later.
The scented perfume makes it tolerable, but just barely as the water goes over his skin.

The cut on his thigh is gone. Once again his failures and pains have been erased from the naked eye and he's relieved. Or disappointed.
There's no bruising in his chest. The physical traces of the bullet wound are gone.

Moments from tossing a blanket over the lanky mirror placed in the corner so he doesn't have to stare at the homeless creature hiding in it, he freezes.
Twisting, he analyzes the profile of his face out of the corner of his eye.
Fingers slide up the back of his neck, nesting just beneath his hairline. With a thumb he pushes circles into the soft place where neck meets head.

Under the pressure something shifts.

When did she have time to do this?

So many of his memories around the accident are a muddled thing. This room itself feels like something he visited in his dreams, even when it has zero character or charm. Being here feels as familiar as being in a hotel room.

To prove it has any substance in reality he takes the headboard of the twin bed, ripping it free from the rest of the frame by loosening twin knobs at the base.
In the wood of the wall, chipping with age are blunt, orderly scratches. The tally counts sit in a row that stretches before abruptly starting again an inch above, the same markings one might have seen in a dramatic prison movie and he wonders if Damien ever did something similar to track the passing hours.

Too much height would let the vandalism show over the headboard and the dresser to the right kept it from pulling out lengthwise. The marks end squished in together, packed quarter inches apart, then eighths, sixteenths, until they can't be made without scoring into one another.

Months he was here, and it's a murky half thought he can't pull in even though a past Kaden clearly loathed this place enough to count the days into triple digits.

Any number of things could have happened to him, and he simply has no way of knowing.

Especially now that Wight's gone.
---

The fire has been stacked in a traditional way, each piece of kindling leaned against one another to form a teepee when the grand fire place isn't necessary designed for it. It has an electric starter, but when the ex cop bent low to gently blow on the gathering of twigs and crinkled leaves he found himself completely unwilling to reveal that information.
And it was hardly needed, the little embers fanned into a crackling flame while Kaden watched.

With bare hands, Damien shifts the wood just so, squatting in yet another alternative outfit that isn't his. One of the many realities of being on the run are clothes that don't fit your aesthetic and this shows more of Damien than he is familiar with. The scar running along his arm seems to change shape as the muscle beneath shifts. It's a component of Damien's appearance he is suddenly transfixed by and he observes under a mountain of frigid blankets as long as he likes. The faint tuffs of arm hair don't grow in the scar tissue as well as in the surrounding area and he wonders what the contrast and texture would feel like across his tongue.


When Damien rises to dust off his hands, Kaden sends a hand out of his dome of meager warmth to take him by the hem of his shirt. Pulling the man in, he breathes softly the pleasant aroma sifting around him.
He does smell like smoke, but of the perfume Finch shared as well. It's hidden under the old smell of these clothes, the hazy scent of forestry decay.
How can he be reminiscent of whatever awful name brand shampoo Damien must have in his tiny shower back home?

"You'll eat something," he says in lieu of anything meaningful. It isn't necessary intoned as an order, but the essence is there and he doesn't have the wherewithal to repeat it softer.
"Provided I can make anything edible."

They only used the kitchen to melt snow when the taps gave them nothing. He didn't give it a thorough search. As unlikely as it is things have gone bad in the ice box of the house, it's hard to imagine Wight would have stocked up on anything but tea and hard candies.

Somewhere deep in this sleeping house, her study doors now have towels lining the cracks at the bottom.

The lounge is the strategic place to build a fire. There's a window that must have looked out into the beautiful estate and looming city. Now it looks out on the shower house.
When Wilson and MacDarragh come up the window path, such as it is, they have time to prepare. Regretfully, he leaves his nest to meet his estranged friend and hateful nemesis in the foyer.

MacDarragh isn't bound.

"Relax," the gangster bites when he no doubt sees Kaden's plans to incapacitate his prisoner. His tone is frayed and perhaps it's from nearly attacking the bound hitman when he said he wouldn't.
Cade takes Neil's hand by the arm, holds it out. At first Kaden mistakes the shiny bracelet hugging his wrist for something required for their unusual condition.
However it's too dark and thick, covering twice as much skin as the original bracelet. There is no looseness to it and they resemble handcuffs more than anything else.

A twin cuff is on Neil's other wrist.

Wilson digs for his phone, tapping the screen.
Rapidly, MacDarragh's hands come together with a sharp twang of metal as the bracelets meet.

Cade grabs where they're joined, tugging to prove the immobility.

"I'm not fuckin' stupid," Wilson mutters. His brows are furrowed as he gnaws at his lip.
He taps the screen again and similar restraints bring the hitman's ankles together. It's almost disturbing how unnaturally Neil is forced to move, like a puppet on strings if that puppet was violently jerked in one direction.
Cade wraps an arm around him, keeping him from plummeting to the floor as he's forced into the compromising position.
It's still not one he's comfortable with regardless of the time he's spent in it, judging by the inflamed grimace on his face. Most likely his petulant rage is the only thing keeping him warm and it's pitifully not enough. His fingers have lost color, gone a bit blue. As have his toes and lips. The relative warmth of the mansion, generally speaking, is already bringing a vibrant red tint to his blushing skin. It brings out the acid in his eyes.

It's a small comfort to see him suffer, but one nonetheless.

With a final tap, the hitman's legs are free again.
"You get the heating working?"

"Damien built a fire."

Wilson snorts. "Of course he did. C'mon Neil, before you turn into an icicle."

"Did he..." Kaden begins.

Cade stops.

"He told you what we needed?" Kaden asks.

The gangster's eyes glimmer. "He has some demands, don't you, Neil?"

And Cadence leaves it at that.

Finch follows warily, the position of third wheel perplexing and the silence more so.

With little tact, the gangster rips out one of the couch cushions and tosses it in front of the fire. The flames react accordingly, whipping in the gust of wind. It's not...odd the way Wilson leads Neil in and down on the cushion. The man takes one of the many blankets, shaking it out before holding it in the fire's light. He waits in silence before deciding the thick duvet is warm enough.

The gangster has always been thorough, and if not that then determined in his work. That is once he's been told to do it. Seeing him act on his own shouldn't feel as absurd as it does and Kaden's reminded they're here now because of the old Black Dog's independent thinking.

He drapes the blanket over Neil, but not before taking his hands now bound in front. He rubs at his wrist above the manacle, tsk'ing under his breath. It's then Kaden notices the inflammed skin is most vibrant there, and even a bit hairless from the removal of tape. With a soft breath he crouches to tuck the blanket in under the hitman, quickly and without sending a defensive, accusatory stare at Kaden. He keeps it open in the front. Whether that's to let hot air in or to keep an eye on MacDarragh's hands is unclear.

Finally, he grabs a handful of dirty blond hair but doesn't pull. Just holds in his large hand.
"Give me grief and your ass can lie here hog-tied instead."
 
It's nice to finally be covered up with something warm, but that's as far as the niceness of Neil's present predicament goes.

Subjected to yet another instance of hair play (even if there's no tugging this time around), the bound hitman stares straight into the eyes of his captor/caretaker bathed in the soft glow of the fire. In any other situation, he might genuinely bask in how the contrast between the shadows of fastly approaching evening and the flame tongues makes Cade's rugged features all the more defined. There's something inherently hot about fireplaces, isn't there?

But instead of enjoying Cadence (or the pun), what Neil does is pull his lips up into the fakest smile he can manage.

"Me, give you grief?" voice filled with mock befuddlement, MacDarragh bats his eyelashes, "Why, I'm the very picture of obedience."

Barring that one instance several minutes ago when he tried to make a break for it. Neil's wrists are sore - from the duct tape, and then from getting held down while his new restraints were clicked into place despite his attempts at scrambling away from getting shackled with the very tools he himself brought. Realistically, MacDarragh knew struggling wasn't going to work, not half-frozen as he is, yet still he struggled, just like when the fucker gagged him the first time he kidnapped him.

Twice.

This has happened twice. Humiliating - that's the only way to describe it.

With a huff, MacDarragh pulls his head away from the gangster's grasp not caring if a strand of two rip, bundling himself up further into the blanket.

"On the topic of demands," he starts up again, raising his manacled arms towards the fireplace. Flexing his fingers, Neil can feel them ache with the sudden shift from cold to hot, "My first one is for some tea."

"And don't try to give me any of the Sirens' home brews or some other spiked bullshit."

A disbelieving huff answers back, "Tea? Sure sounds like you intend to get comfortable."

"Well, you all have made me feel like such a guest," peering over his shoulder at the two chucklefucks getting front-row seats to his humiliation (because Cade decided that out of all the shitty people in his life, the one he's going to stab in the back is Neil), the hitman's focus lands on Damien, "This whole thing is supposed to be mutually beneficial, right?"

Disappointingly, In lieu of engaging in further conversation, the ex-cop merely crosses his arms and walks toward the far wall. If Damien is trying not to look defensive, he's not doing a very good job - while the coward's usual panicked fight-or-flight response to MacDarragh's presence isn't happening, he definitely seems more on edge than back in the shower house. Maybe less so about what the hitman might do, and more so about what he might say. To Finch specifically.

With a flick of his hand, Blumenthal flips the light switch.

A pop pierces the air. Before it can so much as blink to life the overhead lighting explodes in a rain of fragile glass shards falling to the carpet. And all Niel can do is snicker as Damien rakes his hand over his face in exasperation.

---

His mother kept candles on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. She stored them up and deep within all wrapped up in aluminum foil, which made them needlessly inconvenient to reach during a blackout, like getting light had to be made into a task itself. For all of the women's many differences, however, Miss Kell did the same. So ever since Damien has been convinced this is simply where candles are meant to be kept in each and every household.

Even in Medusa's domain, it seems like his beliefs have once again been proven correct.

Balancing on a chair he placed beneath the cupboard, Damien looks through its contents while his borrowed shoes wait for him on the floor, as if the minor gesture of taking them off before standing up on the seat will make rifling through the mansion feel less like desecrating a corpse.

Right above the packets of tea bags and containers of loose leaf Wight has stocked up (or maybe it was Genevieve that stocked up on them for her mentor...), the ex-cop retrieves jars and sticks of wax. There are definitely flashlights somewhere in the manor, but he elects not to go looking or ask Kaden about it for now. Even so many years later, Damien still remembers his parents chastizing him for wasting battery life, just like he remembers Mike - for once young and vigorous in his memories, not just a body being shot down - saying something or another about "ambiance", pretending he knew what the word meant as his little hands strike a match dangerously close to his sleeve. Not that children have much concept of danger. Not of the tangible kind, anyway. The intangible, on the other hand... With a grin that in hindsight looked more goofy than sinister, Mike had whispered that ghost stories are best told around a fire. Whether that be a campfire in the middle of a boy scout trip or the meager flicker of a candle wick in the middle of a power outage killing the two boys with boredom didn't matter to Michael. Neither did it to Damien.

With a sigh that feels heavier than it should, the ex-cop places the candles and the memories he didn't even realize they carried onto the counter, stepping down from the chair.

Why does every item have to have ghosts attached to it?

Does Kaden feel anything similar, going through Wight's kitchen?

The room is much warmer than when the two came in here earlier to melt down some snow. Now between the oven door being purposefully left open and one of the stoves slowly melting leftover ice cubes retrieved from the freezer, the temperature within the space is damn near pleasant, yet the ex-cop finds himself shivering at the thought of the unfortunate mistress of the house. What are they going to do about her?

Eyebrows furrowed, Damien chances a glance at the silhouette of the man whose back is currently turned to him. There is a need in the ex-cop to speak up and say something. Anything. To actually express his condolences for what has happened, even if he's unsure how Kaden will react - the capo has not made a single mention of Wight.

Opening up the packet of tea he retrieved from the cupboard alongside the candles, Damien breathes in its earthy herbal aroma. Even by smell alone, it seems much fancier than the brands Eli regularly buys for herself.

"It's a horrible idea to put a bunch of laxatives in the tea MacDarragh is "demanding", right?" instead of saying any of the things he actually means to say, Damien muses out loud on the most childish and useless intrusive thought he's had in a good while. Which is really saying something, especially considering what he accidentally blurted out in the middle of a fucking snowball fight he himself initiated... not that the end result of his Freudian slip was unpleasant. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

Somehow the first thing that pops into Damien's mind is not the kiss itself, but the way Kaden had been looking at him afterwords with dark reflective eyes, numb finger following the outline of his nose of all things.

Shaking his head, the ex-cop takes several steps in the capo's direction, stopping an arm's distance away, "Anyway, think you're going to have luck making something edible?"

Peering over Finch's shoulder, he scans what the man has managed to scrounge up digging around the pantry. Apparently, the answer is root vegetables. And 'root' in the most literal sense of the word looking at those sprouting potatoes. All of that to say, even in the eyes of someone that hasn't exactly cooked for himself in years, what this kitchen has to offer in terms of product is... meager, to put it lightly. Yet, if it's Kaden whipping up something, he'll figure it out.

One way or another, Damien should really leave Finch to it - he has his own things to do after all, such as actually lighting the candles or begrudgingly steeping tea for the psychopath cozied up in front of the fireplace. However, instead the ex-cop lingers, transfixed on Kaden's hands as the man goes about setting up what he needs for prep.

There's a certain pleasantness that comes from simply observing someone do something they're good at, and the capo's cooking hobby has always been one of his most charming traits. It's still so impressive that he taught himself. Meanwhile, any and all knowledge on the subject that a young Damien might have had has been left to diminish over the years. Honestly, if it weren't for Natalia always commandeering him into helping Kim on the rare occasions he went over for dinner at the Montesanos', he may well have forgotten even the basics.

Loosely, Damien reaches out to hold onto the back of Kaden's shirt, taking one more step forward and leaning to the side to look at the man's face, "Let me help. Just tell me what you need me to do."
 
The potatoes don't only have eyes, they have roots. The onions in the crisper are pungent and he knows the moment they're cut they'll wreak havoc. One way or another, in its own special way, things are continuing as normal. Nothing has stopped.
He's aware he's being watched, the same way one is aware of sunlight, but not of the flaming ball of hydrogen and helium bound together by its own gravity waiting to collapse in on itself in billions of years. That sort of distance.
Or maybe more like an animal on display; aware of the audience but much more concerned about a hole that needs dug or a flea infested pelt that needs itching. They'll hood an animal to ease it's anxiety, a phenomenon that works oppositely in humans. The hazy darkness of the kitchen makes him feel half asleep, not in a tired way but in a distant, wishy-washy way.

The knives are dull. Back home he has- had a carbon steel sharpener. It was professional, aesthetically pleasing. It was the type of tool intimidating chefs in movies use to scrape their implements sharp, as ridiculous a concept as it is. Would using a citrus squeezer be as intimidating? What some people decide is psychologically troubling and what isn't is ludicrous.
Try as he might, he can't find so much as an edge grip sharpener here in this kitchen he doesn't know.

Damien is actually making their antisocial prisoner tea. They maintain their position of needing the man to talk, but Finch had thought the exchange to be facetious.
"I admire the creativity, but the mess would be substantial."

He braces against the marble countertop, smiling to himself. It's a ridiculous notion, nearly as preposterous as brewing the cup itself.
Far away, he's touched just above his hip. No, his clothes are touched. The rustle of the fabric he feels on his skin, nothing else.

What can Damien do for him?

"It won't be much." But it will be something to do. Taking a cloth he folds onto the counter before playing the cutting board over top. It's wood, with little nicks checkered throughout it's surface. The bacteria that can linger in wood and porous plastic make them unreliable and disgusting, but beggars and all that. He'll get Wight better ones when they is over. The onions should be cut last.

The three people he's ever looked up to are gone, or going.

"You never touch me," he says aloud.

He feels it like you feel a sneeze or a coughing fit coming. Violent and sudden, punching it out of his chest like bullets to a sternum that will never feel the same again.

He laughs.

Not a giggle or a snicker, a genuine laugh.

It begins as a pleasing sound that unfortunately crescendos into the most atrocious pig like snort. He thinks of lacing Neil's tea with laxatives and starts again, this horrible oink he makes to inhale for another bout. It's out of his control; something to do with his uvula getting caught in his throat. The only option he has is to never laugh.

He laughs.

Holding a hand over his mouth to contain the giggles, they fight to become dry sobs that will leave his throat sore for an hour. It's easy enough to think of any of the other things in his life to stop, but instead he thinks of mixing the cups and everyone getting a little and how utterly stupid it would be!
The one thing he could manipulate to any success, and in the moment it would feel quite significant.

Leaning further into the counter, he snorts some more.

"I think all four of us were supposed to die as children."

He carves out the roots.

"Or at least the three of us. I don't think I was supposed to make it this far. I know they weren't supposed to," he murmurs, knocking his chin in the direction of the lounge.

Potatoes are marginally healthier with the peel on, and yet he doesn't have water to waste on washing them. At the same time they'll be starchy if they don't get something.

"You were the only one wanted by someone, Damien. Oil and heat a pan, please, while you wait for your water to brew."

The blade cuts reasonably through the potatoe, but nowhere near the seamless glide he's accustomed to.

"Now we're all together, and presumably we're going to sleep together."

Placing the halved slices together, he begins to dice the potatoes into fine bits. The board doesn't shift, courtesy to the cloth and the clacking is marginally silenced.

"And I can't comprehend that this will be my first sleepover. Of course I've slept in other places than my own bed, but never in one room on couches with a mountain of blankets by a fire unless it was an orgy. It's...it's..."

He shakes his head.

"I doubt they have either, and I know you haven't. I knew this was going to be difficult, but I didn't expect it all to be so... disrespectful. Or nonchalant. MacDarragh wants tea. In a little while Cade's nerves and cravings will get to him and he'll be looking for something sweet to eat. By tomorrow everything will change again, but right now I'm making dinner and I can't season it with paprika because then Neil won't be the only one uncontrollably shitting and I can't believe that's something I have to think about in this tentative point in my life. It doesn't seem fair or right, but it is very funny. I think."
 
Damien's eyes are wide as he keeps staring at Kaden.

He's laughing. And it's not the controlled if pleasant chuckles the ex-cop has heard before on rare occasions. This is a real laugh, ringing out throughout the kitchen only to get broken up by snorting one wouldn't expect from the dignified capo. Each time Kaden inhales and the sound suddenly turns loud and gruff for one turbulent instant, Damien can feel the smile on his own face growing.

Kaden Finch has an adorable laugh, who would have imagined?

The ex-cop's shoulders shake as the contagious laughter of his partner crescendos into another snort, and all at once he can't help but join in.

It's not that difficult to imagine, actually, with the perspective he has now. The reality of it makes Damien glad, just like the thought that he's managed to bring the man some minor levity. Even if it is over something exceptionally silly. Even if it lasts for just a short while.

"Well, I'm hoping the sleepover won't turn into an orgy. Things are already questionable enough as is," with one final light chuckle, the ex-cop reaches over to take the cooking oil Kaden has lined up with the rest of the ingredients, going back to the stovetop.

Oil and heat a pan - that's the help that has been requested of him. Part of Damien is more than ready to argue that it is literally the most simple task and he can do more before he freezes. Which way did it go? Pour oil in the pan and then heat it up, or preheat the pan and then pour the oil? Shit... even the most simple task gives him pause. Suddenly filled with indecisiveness, Damien glances at the bottle in his hand - there are parts of the usually clear liquid that have crystallized from the cold, though it seems like it has been thawing with the room's temperature rising. That settles it then. Placing the cooking oil close by the warm kettle, he rummages around for a pan to preheat. Pretty sure this is the order Kim does this too, so it must be right. Either way, for the moment, Damien decides to stave off arguing. For the moment.

Instead, he turns on a second burner and places the pan over it, humming, "I see your point - it's neither fair nor right, but it is funny. And, I don't know... maybe occupying yourself with something, as ridiculous as that something might be, is better than the alternative."

The alternative being tearing yourself apart with grief.

Kaden has abandonment issues. It's something Damien has been aware of for a while, but glancing at the man out of his periphery, at his blurring edges in the encroaching darkness, it feels like he's only now realizing a lot about who Finch is and what leads his actions. Just like he's realizing he doesn't know how to comfort the man, as always. It hurts to think that Kaden believes he wasn't wanted - isn't wanted - and it hurts that the ex-cop can't find the correct words to rebuke this notion. Though maybe, just like earlier in the snow, a rebuttal is not what the capo needs.

Four mugs get placed on the counter with a clack. The urge to give them a rinse in case they're dusty comes to mind before Damien remembers there's no running water, so he retorts to cleaning them as best as he can with some of the few leftover pieces of paper towels.

"I was lucky to have somewhere to belong after I got thrown aside, I won't deny that. Then the person I belonged with was gone. And somehow life has twisted in on itself in such a way that I'm making tea for one of the people directly responsible for his murder. All of it is absurd," before it can bubble up to the surface in earnest, a chuckle gets stuck in Damien's throat, "I've had ample chance to kill Neil twice."

The pan should be sufficiently heated up by now. Taking the oil that has mostly returned to its regular state of clarity, the ex-cop pours out some of it, taking the handle of the pan to swirl it around and coat its surface.

Absentmindedly, he speaks in a low tone, like he's telling a ghost story even if it's around an as-of-yet-unlit candle, "I told you before that when Michael was killed I felt like I was going to die... Truth is, I did try to die. A couple of times, in jail and then in prison."

The moment that gets spoken into existence, his throat is once more unstuck and he breathes. There it is, another piece of him no one knows about that Damien has just handed over, though it feels much easier than previously. Somehow. He anticipated there to be more shame to it.

Setting the heated and oiled pan down, the ex-cop reaches into his coat's pocket. The dampness of the river still clings to some of the article's folds, despite having left it to dry for a bit in front of the fireplace earlier. All of the other clothes he took a dip with are not worth saving, though this old shitty coat he'd like to hold on to. That being said, at this point the kitchen is very much cozy enough for him to not be wearing it. Retrieving his hand, Damien shrugs the thing off and to put it on the chair's backrest. A moment later, he moves to stand next to Kaden again, setting the capo's case of poisons on the counter.

"I was going to return this to you, back at the house, and ask you to teach me what each of the syringes does," the ex-cop starts tentatively. There is hesitance in the way he doesn't move his hand away from the case immediately - Kaden has already hurt himself with this once. Nearly lethally. Not to mention he's hurt himself in other ways, because even though the cut on the man's thigh might not be there anymore Damien knows in his gut that Finch inflicted it on himself - it was the direction of the injury. And the location.

The thighs are what you go for when the wrists are too obvious.

"I am so sorry, about Wight. You have my condolences, Kaden," Damien mutters, letting go slowly, "If you need anything... Whether that be with prepping dinner or something else."
 
It's not an entirely unpleasant thing for this man to hear his laugh, particularly when he smiles so fondly at the sound. He joins, and under different circumstances Finch would itch to know whether he was laughing with him or at him.
The sweetness of Damien's voice comes out in his laugh. It comes out in the way he thoughtfully considers how to heat a pan. The man considerately rubs down four cups and Kaden has simply never had a man that makes him feel this way.

Every moment of reprieve is shadowed by guilt.

Why don't we kill Neil, he wants to ask, but imagines he already knows the answer. There's a heaviness to what Damien is weaving, so Kaden doesn't chop anymore vegetables. The pan will be too hot by the time he does finish.
It's not a surprise to hear what happened in that prison. The concept has always floated in the back of his mind, but it's never taken this much clarity. To know for sure is a thought that holds in his head. So many people have disappeared like this, and there can be no doubt now Damien has the potential to be one of those people.

A familiar case with a silver finish clacks when its set onto the table.
The oil bubbles. Somewhere Damien might have self inflicted scarring. Kaden shouldn't have left the house, and yet somehow this feels like one of the better outcomes there could have been.

Soft hair is pushed and flattened around his gentle grip on Damien's nape. He brings the man close. In the quiet stillness of a kitchen with a bubbling pan and vegetables that aren't ready, he presses a kiss to Damien's temple, near the speckles of grey hair. The kiss he doesn't hold, because it's not that kind of kiss. Yet the hand against Damien's skull remains.

The oil in the pan jumps. The potatoes will brown if they're not taken care of.

Kaden takes this man into his arms. One hand cupping Damien's head and the other across his back, he holds him close.
 
---

Some of the blankets have wolf and forest motifs, the ones that look goofy as hell if there's so much as a wrinkle in the fabric. Some are poofy duvets and even some are the heavy, grandma type blankets that insulate like a brick wall and are about as heavy.
There's feather pillows with silk cases, or stupid lumpy ones that Cade knows will go flat like a pancake after five minutes use. In one closet there's even an foamy orthopedic pillow, with a zipper case that's machine washable.

The place is gothic, big but all the little things inside are down to earth in a way he never had growing up. His parents wanted to have this kind of status, so that meant everything had to be high end and douche-y.

One wall of this place is exclusively filled with photos. Long line ups of young, narrow waisted and red lipped hotties, like it's a graduation picture at a saloon and maybe it is. Sorta.
Wight's in all of them, a new set of wrinkles added to her face and the hump in her back growing every rendition.

Sheppard's in one or two, off to the side but always next to Wight. There's a few other people, other professors and teachers (assassins) spotting the photos, coming in and out of the Siren's life until they suddenly stop around the 2000 era.
Then one or two male faces pop up amongst the sea of boobs, and they grow each year until the class is almost equal. He looks for Kaden, but it's only now he realizes how much people look exactly the same as long as they're pretty. Either half of the men in that year are Kaden are none of them are, and partially that's because he didn't know him back then.

Finch only really started looking like himself when he became the Butcher, and this would've been his infancy.

Cade squints, shifts the mountain of blankets.
Either the photo's fucked, or one of these old ladies from the 80's is missing a ring finger. In fact, most of them are. No, all of them are. Delilah, Wight and the students being the exception.

To say Finch, the modern one in his thirties, has a way of sneaking up on someone is an understatement. Only now the only thing Cade can muster up that could be taken as surprise is a soft inhale and the knowledge he's no longer alone.

And, specifically, there's food. Kaden has a plate heaping with potatoes that glisten with what he hopes is butter, but knowing this fuck it's probably olive oil. Whatever, everything he makes usually ends up tasting like the heavens themselves shit it out.

"I don't see you here," he says, now wishing he hadn't wasted his time blanket hunting when actual food was this close. His hands are full.

Finch looks at the pictures like he's looking out the window, looking past them rather than at them.
He finds one year and takes the frame, twisting it so the back faces out. Genevieve's year, if Cade had to guess.
"I was more of an intern than a genuine student."

Audibly, Cade's stomach gurgles like there's a whale in there somewhere. Finch stabs a potato, sprinkled green with what looks like parsley and cooked crispy on one side, and offers it. Without thinking Cade opens his mouth for it, and then thinking a lot, chews it up and swallows so he can get some more.
A momentary frown later, Finch prepares another helping. They made this together. The starchy, oily goodness in his mouth was made by the two of them, in-between their kissing.
He hears his cheesy mom in his head, "Made with love," she'd say, when she really should've said lard.

"It's lard," he says, coughs into his shoulder and corrects, "Good. It's good."

"Hm," Kaden says back. He's shoveling a tidy pile onto the plate. He's always been so good with this, a little bit of everything on every bite.

"Where'd everyone go?" Cade asks bluntly because there's no other damn way of saying it. This place is a casket, for a lot of reasons.

"This organization was originally founded to help girls, then to empower them. The removal of the ring finger was to signify their devotion to themselves and to never be distracted by things like marriage or love or children. Once they were old enough appearances didn't much matter, anyways."

"That sounds lonely. And stupid."

"Hm, that's what Wight thought. She never had her finger removed, even if she never did marry either way. The board could tolerate that but the school never takes in boys, no matter their circumstances. When Wight didn't remove a finger and let in boys, she was excommunicated. This estate had been operating independently ever since."

Cade swallows around the mouthful of saliva he's built up.
"Ain't that the way it goes," he offers because he's got shit else to say. He's always been a small player in this game, and smaller as time goes on. The nice house Finch went to to recuperate is actually one limb of an organization that scoops up disenfranchised girls.
Did something like that happen to Neil?

The gang elbowing their territory is actually part of an evil conglomerate. Sheppard put years of victim justice on the line for her not-son, and Ortiz self made millionaire stands to make billions after his investment in healthcare that isn't going to be distributed fairly inevitably skyrockets among the rich.

And Cade's small.
Small, hungry and wants another potato popped into his watering mouth.

He eyes the plate. Finch sets the fork down.
He turns away.
"Come, so you can eat at the fire."

Oh.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he follows. He glares at the back of Kaden's head.

"What does MacDarragh want?" Finch asks, and Cade almost doesn't hear because the idiot isn't facing him or speaking all that loudly.
Maybe he doesn't want Cade to have heard.

Digging a piece of starch out of his molars with a tongue he says, "He wants you to pull Damien's fingernails."

To his credit, Kaden doesn't stop. He doesn't even slow. He doesn't look back at Cade.
Old animal fear grips him. Those three bite fulls sit like stones. He punches the anxiety down, grinds it like one rock into a much bigger one.

"Then he'll tell me where Delilah is?"

Cade swallows again, but this time his mouth is dry.
"...Yeah. Probably."
Shifting the blankets he adds, "I wouldn't do it in front of him - don't give him the satisfaction, right?"

Over the years he's prided himself on being able to read the back of Kaden's neck.
He's thinking about it, weighing it in his head.

"Right," Kaden says, in a nothing tone. A Butcher tone.
Fuck, what has he done?
Cade grips the blanket with the dorky wolf on it, kneading it in his fist.

"He doesn't want anything else?" Finch probes.

Head down Cade mumbles, "He wants my help to..."
"...To?"
"He just wants my help. He needs some manpower. I figured we'd split up after this anyways. It's not like you want me around."

He waits for... something, he doesn't know what. For Kaden to tell him no, to say they're not splitting up, to say he means to kill Neil once this is over.

Instead he says nothing.

They walk on in this catacombs to settle in for tea and roasted potatoes.
 
---

With a touch of wicks, one candle shares its life with another, flame flickering with warmth and light. Halfway down the stick, a rogue drop of molten wax falls off heading straight for the carpet where it's going to be a pain to get out of later. It never reaches its destination - instead, it lands in Damien's expectant palm. There's a slight sting where contact is made with bare skin, but it's no worse than ripping off a bandaid and just like it the sensation is gone within seconds, hot liquid solidifying into creamy opaqueness.

The ex-cop blows out the thin candlestick, a faint trail of smoke coming off it as he places it down on top of the aluminum foil it was wrapped in originally. And that's that. Looking around, Damien can't help thinking there's an almost dream-like atmosphere to the lounge now - with several lit candles placed around it and the fireplace giving off its own ethereal glow, the corners of the room are made fuzzy by shifting shadows.

Whether this is going to be a good dream or a bad one remains to be seen. With the nightmare that is MacDarragh present, however, Damien highly doubts the former.

If he thought the bastard was getting comfortable before, he's more or less made himself at home now, reclining on the cushion and supported by several smaller couch pillows he (or Cade) must have gotten. Between the blanket wrapped around the man, a warm cup of tea in his hands, and his feet extended towards the flames, Neil is the epitome of the disrespect Kaden spoke of in the kitchen.

And he's whistling. As if the situation couldn't be any more inappropriate, MacDarragh is softly whistling some tune or another to himself waiting for his tea to cool, and the ex-cop is painfully aware of how unnerved he is becoming with each passing second. It's one thing having to deal with Neil while Kaden and Cade are around - being left alone with the guy is another matter entirely. Desperate for something to do, Damien flakes off the thin bit of wax in his palm with a thumb.

Finally taking a sip of his still-steaming beverage, MacDarragh huffs in disgust, "Are you so inept you can't even make a decent cup of tea?"

What an asshole.

Quietly, Damien keeps picking at his fingernail. Some wax managed to get stuck under it, predictably.

"This is over-steeped. It tastes bitter," unfazed by the lack of response the blonde continues, casually raising his cup, "Needs sugar."

Has Neil always been a brat? Obviously, he's acting like this to be a prick on purpose, but it does feel like a weirdly genuine part of a personality that is otherwise all smoke and mirrors. Frowning at the hitman's cuffed arm while it shakes the mug in his direction waiting for it to be taken, Damien slowly moves forward only to take a seat on the couch, "First of all, I am not your servant."

"It's my second demand-"

"Second of all," sharp green eyes zero in on the ex-cop as MacDarragh turns his head at being interrupted, and Damien has to ignore the unpleasant jolt this look sends through his system, crossing his arms, "I know this is how you prefer it. Unfortunately."

Because people can lie about a lot of things - in the hitman's case, he can lie about everything - but food and drink preferences are somewhat more difficult to conceal. And, as it happens, both MacDarragh and Blumenthal take their tea without anything. A bad smoking habit and a handful of overlapping taste preferences (possibly because of the bad smoking habit) - those are the sole things the two have in common, and even that feels like too much.

A silence settles over the sleepy lounge, broken through only by the crackling of the logs in the fireplace. MacDarragh is still looking at him, unblinking, and the ex-cop is forced to hold this man's gaze in a stare-off. Not while the fucker is manacled and their prisoner, as much as he's acting like he's the one in control.

Damien's arms tighten where he has them crossed over his chest. He is not going to be the one to cower.

Suddenly, a grin overtakes MacDarragh's expression. It almost makes the ex-cop jump up in his seat when the guy cackles with this mean, piercing sound, before turning back to face the fire, taking another big gulp of tea punctuated with a self-satisfied 'aah' at the end. Oh, so now it's not bitter...

"You might not be my servant, but Cade is his."

"What?"

Eyebrows furrowed, Damien waits for some type of explanation to whatever the hell that comment is supposed to mean, only for MacDarragh to refuse to clarify. Despite not seeing the hitman's face, he can hear the heavy bitterness in his tone, that same underlying anger and betrayal he'd displayed in the car when the gangster was cradling his bleeding knee. It's absolutely insane to call MacDarragh dejected, right? Right... And yet this too feels weirdly genuine.

"Ordered around and chipped like a pet. It's a wonder he hasn't gotten him neutered yet," another cackle leaves Neil even meaner and more spiteful. Curiously, it lacks any of his usual amusement, "Bet he wants to do the same to you."

Scoffing, Damien can't help but spit out, "Shove it, MacDarragh. You out of everyone don't get to preach, about anything."

"This isn't preaching. Unlike you, I'm not a hypocrite. I'm simply calling things out as they are. Someone around here has to."

"And the reality is the Butcher does the same type of shit I do. But in my case, you find it deplorable," Neil tilts his head and the ex-cop can picture clear as day the disgusting smirk that must be on his face still, "In his case, you've sold yourself out. Sold the memory of your friend out as well."

There is a difference. Damien has never had delusions about what Kaden has done and is capable of doing, but there is a difference between MacDarragh and Finch. One revels in the pain he causes. The other doesn't (he doesn't). Not to mention that the hitman is just trying to somehow get him to turn on Kaden, and he won't entertain such notions even if out of sheer stubbornness. That's what the ex-cop means to argue back, as useless as arguing with this psycho would be.

Yet any words he had prepared evaporate when Neil mentions Mike.

Damien is going to kill him. This piece of shit doesn't get to talk about Michael. Ever. Especially not with such an accusatory fucking tone-

A log collapses in on itself in the fireplace, sending out a shower of sparks. MacDarragh remains unperturbed by it, having gone completely still. A predator waiting. Damien diverts his gaze to the coffee table - three other cups of tea sit waiting (two made to Kaden's specifications), illuminated by a candle.

"Michael's last moments," he whispers under his breath, hoping he's being quiet enough not to be heard while also being well aware that in the silence of the lounge his voice will carry regardless. Parts of him want it to carry, as much as he knows this is the stupidest thing he could do, "You... said something about that..."

Back at the raid. The hitman had taunted him with Mike's memory then, and now he's doing the same, deliberately feeding the part of Damien he is doing his best to ignore at the moment if not outright suppress. Entertaining this line of conversation is not only counterproductive to that goal but also stupid. Frankly, he shouldn't be speaking to MacDarragh to begin with, and yet it's already too late.

Without the ex-cop having really asked a question, Neil has an answer ready, "Painful and drawn out. You can thank Moore for that one too. It went from a double homicide plan into a setup, after all."

He's not a reliable source, he could be lying.

"What were his last words?"

Did he beg for mercy? Did he leave some kind of message?

It should have been Damien facing the consequences - he got himself and his partner involved in that whole mess, and yet it was Mike that paid the ultimate price. It's unfair and nothing will ever make it not unfair. Even if the ex-cop went back on his agreement not to hurt MacDarragh, killing the guy wouldn't bring his friend back. But maybe, just maybe, at least knowing what his last words were could provide some modicum of closure in the midst of a plan 15 years in the making that has fallen apart within a matter of days.

"Oh, all very cliché," with a chuckle Neil's sing-songy voice picks up again and Damien can't decide if he feels numb or like he's going to throw up, "Apparently, he used his final breath to beg for his family to not be harmed."

This time MacDarragh turns around fully, teeth glinting. Licking his fingers, Damien quickly reaches out to hold the burning candlewick between thumb and pointer, plunging his little corner of the couch back into darkness.
 
---

Mansions, specifically the common areas, were never built with home comforts in mind. They were shameless and arrogant says to show status and prestige. As it is, the lounge area is covered in a dark oak that has yet to warm anywhere besides the mouth of the fire pit. There's two chesterfields, and two armchairs. In the corner, more decorative than actually for any guest, is an antique arm chair with a throw pillow sitting in it. Or at least, there was, before Cade snatched it.
Like an animal late to winter, he's gathered every soft thing available to him to insulate against the cold. Fortunately the one thing the estate has in mountains is blankets and Wilson has taken full advantage. He's layered what looks like twenty blankets down, and underneath that are lumpy pillows the man clearly didn't think were head worthy.
The result is a square-shaped monstrosity spanning seven by five feet, about ten or so inches off the ground when not weighted down. With abject care, Cade tucks the final sheet down under each corner, as if it has any hope of staying that way. The fire sends his shadow stretching across the floor, morphing into an inky monster.

Every once in a while, he looks at Finch. A barely there glance, made haunting by his pale eyes. His husky-blue eyes, more common in an animal than a person. The way he spies Finch from the corner of them makes him look all the more like a cowed mutt waiting for correction.

"Not too shabby," Cadence says to his passive audience, patting the center with a testing hand.

It's not that anyone stood up and told Wilson and MacDarragh they'd be sleeping on the floor; they just are. Partially it must be due to Neil being on the floor originally.
Kaden, from his drafty but far comfier position sips at the tea that's pleasantly surprised him. Damien flanks him, as far from Neil and interactivity as he can be. The dark cloud in his eyes wasn't there when Kaden left him. Now it's muddled further, turning into a fog that erases the character from the man's face. Not for the first time, Kaden looks at Blumenthal's hands.

Within moments Cade had washed down his tea, licking his lips and letting Damien know though it wasn't something he liked usually, he'd liked this. Not asking for seconds was based more on perceived judgement than the possibility he was lying, Kaden thought.

"C'mon." Wilson waves his accomplice over, shuffling aside. "Try it out."
When Neil doesn't move fast enough, he takes where his cuffs meet and brings him in. Less like a bully shoving their weight around, and more like a lifeguard pulling someone in shark infested waters onto the raft.

Cade puts himself on Neil's right side, between him and Kaden.

"How is it?" Finch inquires, inhaling the soft aroma of tea without a second thought.

Cade swallows. He looks at Neil with his too-pale eyes. "It's good enough for one night. Right?"

It's not too late.

Damien's head is drooping, not down in sleep but back against the couch like he's lost not only the strength to keep his head level but the coordination to do it. Where up is, where down is, it's gone.
When he hugged the ex-cop, the man had a moment's hesitation before sinking into Kaden's body like he was coming home. It was a long moment. Damien had been distracted. Finch had his case of poisons back.

This could be a missing evening for him, and that's all. A black space. Whatever hateful thing Neil barbed him with might slip into the tar of nothingness with everything else.
MacDarragh.
He sits draped in his blankets, rosey and toasty warm, belly full and eyes gleaming. In his head, his addled, teeming head are answers he needs.

Before it can land topside down on the floor, Kaden takes the plate from Damien's lap. Stretching, he sets it down on the coffee table along with his own half eaten plate. Well, less than half eaten.

"He didn't eat much," Cade muses loudly. With the back of his hand he rubs at his chin.
"Dami?"

Blumenthal responds to the sound of his butchered name with the fluttering of his eyes and a confused, wandering glance across the room.
It's then the anxiety bunching the craggy slopes of Cade's shoulders stiffen and every muscle is clearly defined, bulbus and gross.

"Kpin or Klonopin is a benzodiazepine medication, not unlike Rohypnol," Kaden recites, setting his cup aside, "It dissolves very quickly in liquid and has little to no taste. He'll feel this, more or less, but he won't be able to fight me off. He's likely not to remember much by tomorrow either, which suits me."

Like a mother bear, Cade has crowded into Neil's space. He glances at Damien, sitting in the dark.

Kaden glares at his right hand man, and the assassin that stole him with kisses and evil smiles. Nothing else.

With a breath Finch takes the needle nosed pliers from his pocket. The pinchers are notched with tiny, hateful little teeth. Despite the use MacDarragh has no doubt gotten from them, the crevices nevertheless remain spotless. Ready to grab hold and tear again.
Finch takes one of Damien's hands - it had slipped off his thigh to dangle between his legs.
Its a heavy weight when he takes it into his own lap.

"How many, MacDarragh? You wanted three, correct?" After a pause where he stares through Cade's crazy-eyes he adds, "And a tooth."
 
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Neil is halfway into begrudgingly popping a potato in his mouth when Kaden takes out the pliers - the same plier the hitman intended to use on Cade to pull out his tooth back at the hotel only to find that, frustratingly, he couldn't.

And not from a lack of ability or experience.

Hand still hanging in the air holding onto the pleasantly crispy slice, he glances at the gangster out of the corner of his eye. The man has gone completely rigid with tension next to him. Really, he's been on edge since Finch and he returned to the lounge together, but now with Damien going lax he has grown stiff and Neil swears the glimmer in his wide eyes can only be described as mortification... or maybe guilt.

Just like that, all at once MacDarragh doesn't need to ask what kind of bullshit Kaden is going on about. He can make an educated guess.

This fucking idiot. Momentarily, Neil's eyes turn severe as he watches Cade, narrowing into a glare.

Fine. If this is how Wolf wants to play.

The hitman pulls away from where the gangster has crowded in on him on the makeshift bed the prick dragged him onto like things between them are all fine and dandy. Instead, he moves closer to the table. Closer to where, on the other side, Kaden and a drugged-out Damien sit. Earlier he was trying to get Blumenthal to hurt Finch as part of his plan, but the other way around should prove to be just as entertaining. And evidently easier to accomplish - honestly, he should have expected this from the beginning. MacDarragh's expression morphs into a grin as he holds onto the capo's gaze.

The potato melts when he finally bites into it. For something so simple and made with what he can only guess were subpart ingredients in subpar conditions, it's annoyingly good. It goes down smoothly as he swallows, "This is underseasoned. And overcooked."

Just like the now empty cup of tea was bitter.

Neil's captors didn't give him any utensils. Rubbing his now oily fingers, he places his elbows on the table, propping his chin onto the back of one of his hands while he hums in consideration looking Damien's fingers, as if he's deep in thought. Well, the result of said deep thought was only ever going to be one conclusion, "You might be in the habit of half-assing things, but I am not. I want all of them."

"And a tooth."

Damien shifts. Or maybe his moving is just a result of how Finch is holding onto his arm. One way or another, the ex-cop's body slouches in Kaden's direction, leaning into the man's shoulder. Grey eyes reflecting ambient candlelight are transfixed on his own limb that the Butcher is cradling in his lap under the threat of violence, and Neil has to wonder if the poor schmuck has any idea what is going on. Probably not. The most his mind must think this is is a bad dream.

MacDarragh has to actively suppress a cackle.

I told you so. He can't wait to say that to Damien's face when the idiot's faculties finally return and he's missing parts of himself.
 
Kaden's attention flickers from face to face. Wilson is shrunk down, doing an impressive performance of pretending he's anywhere but here. He became two sizes smaller under MacDarragh's punishing glare and hasn't recovered since.

Neil, predictably, is stoked back into good spirits that are never that far away. Like the prospect of suffering is a far more sustaining meal, he hunkers in to be fed by Kaden. His joined hands under his chin make him look small and unassuming, endearing only if you were the cursed woman who birthed him.

A big kitten to go with the stupid dog.

Damien's exhales are making a warm spot on the back of Kaden's arm. He looks down to assess the hand that, far from manicured, are not in the least bit lacking aesthetically.
Flipping the hand over the open palm framed in by half shut fingers isn't scarred from Neil's knife. Squinting in this half light, he can nearly see red irritation. A superficial burn from a hot potato or something else he came into contact with.

"Funny," he considers, studying the soft skin against the hard metal. The pliers tease under a pinky nail.

He waits, and relives that same feeling he had in Neil's apartment. Somehow it feels far more personal, far more depraved.

Wilson doesn't say a damn thing.

"Cade never actually mentioned a tooth in your original deal, Neil."

The steak knife from Kaden's plate is stabbed into Neil's hand, straight through the coffee table. More chips of wood fly than splatters of blood.

Cade struggles to his feet, but whether that's to attack or run seems to be a mystery to both of them. Kicking Cade in the head confirms it is indeed thick and possibly made out of stone. His body rolls with the force, head thrown back.

"I expect this fucking B rated horror nonsense from him," he says with a point to Neil. The dazed face Cade has makes this outburst questionably pointless. "Not from you!"

And not because Wilson's a moralistic person. Kaden has never had such illusions.
Cade trembles on his hands and knees, twin stripes leaking from his nose to outline all his teeth pink.

"If you had told me Neil wanted me to pull my own nails out - I would have done it! If you had told me Neil wanted Damien to do it to me, I would've believed it!"

Far from scolded properly, Kaden nevertheless turns to the far more dangerous of the pair; the one handcuffed and literally pinned to the table. Finch grabs the knife handle, forcing it down where Neil has worked through the pain to lift it.

Not to save Cade, but to kill Kaden himself. The man would gnaw a limb off if it meant winning. Blood has managed to work itself around the knife, a tear finding it's way down Neil's hand. Like drops of liquid mercury, silver scuttles through it.

Kneeling to be eye level he says, "And I've lost patience for your theatrics."
 
He could have dodged it.

A pained grunt leaves Neil through clenched teeth, though he swears it's more out of anger than hurt from the blade slotted in between his metacarpal bones. With every muscle spasm (voluntary or involuntary) as he tries to force it out, he can feel the metal rubbing against meat and cartilage.

Yes, he could have dodged it, and it pisses him off that he didn't. The hitman saw the arc of the knife coming with the shift in Finch's disposition, and if it wasn't for the cuffs forcibly keeping his hands together, he would have moved away. He wouldn't have ended up pinned to a coffee table, kept in place like some fucking insect in an entomology exhibition as he's forced to suffer through a pathetic scolding that belongs in the mouth of a disappointed parent rather than a kingpin. Ex-kingpin. Who the hell does this guy think he is!?

As if he wouldn't have hesitated to mutilate Blumenthal if he hadn't caught Neil and Cade out on a stupid tooth discrepancy.

Just like he didn't hesitate to kick Cade in the head.

Neil's eyes go wide as they follow the trajectory the gangster takes stumbling back. Wolf lands on the floor with a thump, trembling. And bleeding. Finch dared to do this. In many ways, this is the events at the hitman's apartment happening all over again.

A firm push on the knife produces not only a small gush of blood but also a second grunt from MacDarragh, forcing him to focus back on Finch. The capo is keeping him immobile - restrained as he is, Neil doesn't have a free hand to wrestle the knife out of his opponent's grasp. He can't move. It's infuriating to the point he thinks he can feel the blood boiling in his veins. Or maybe it's the bits of silver wiggling around, making their way to suffuse his wound.

If Kaden keeps holding onto the knife, will the robots in his system simply heal him around it?

When MacDarragh snarls, it's with bared teeth. Fucker might be keeping him pinned with a firm hold, but that same firm hold provides the perfect resistance to what he's about to do.

It happens slowly, and then all at once. The knife digs further into his flesh inch by inch as he pulls away from it; then with one final sharp tug, Neil cuts through his own palm. A spray of blood covers the expensive wooden and one of the portions of roasted potatoes, drops of red dispersing to contaminate the rest. Trying to suppress his panting at the electrifying pain shooting up his limb, the hitman does his best to ignore how one half of his hand is hanging limply away from the other half. He ignores the way it starts to tingle as the bioelectronics get to work suturing him back up.

Instead not wasting any time, he moves to interpose himself between Wolf and Finch.

"Cade," speaking over his shoulder, Neil addresses the man who (as much as he is still mad at) has covered his back in the past; has surrendered for him; has died and then come back with him.

The phone.

Cade should still have the phone he operated the cuffs with earlier, and if he can get the hitman free then MacDarragh can finally rid himself of Finch. Can rid both of them of Finch.
 
Slowly, and then all at once the flesh and sinew rip away and Neil is free.
For whatever good it does him.

Rather than go for the knife, he scurries to Cadence. The big man is shifting back, putting wrinkles in the bed he made and blowing a red snot bubble on each exhale. His eyes dart from Kaden to Neil.

"I saved your life," Kaden stabs with venom. He takes the handle from the coffee table. With a foot, he leverages the blade free with another crunching cackle from the ruined wood finish.
"You were a lonely, miserable piece of shit and I took you in. I took care of you."

Cade loses years as all that bravado slips down into the bottomless pit of his self esteem. Even with the blood, the bald head and tattoo, he looks young. Young, like when they met. His lower lip trembles. He gulps down a breath.

He looks so much like his brother.

"I gave you everything I could, I trusted you, and this is how you repay me? By running off with the first man who possesses a passing resemblance?" Passing resemblance in cruelty and intensity. Lord knows he doesn't mean physically.
Neil's hand is shiny where the fire shines over it. It's monsterous where the shadows distort the malformation into something unworldly.

"Please." It's a breathless whisper from Cade, a croak nearly lost in the groan of the house as it settles. This place is a living tomb.
The man is kneading the blanket with his shaking hands, massaging droplets of blood in.

"I protected you from Delilah. If you truly do regret that then listen to MacDarragh," he offers with an open hand, the one that doesn't have the knife.
"You'll kill me, and they'll be no one to stand between you and everyone else. If the High Rise wasn't already after you, they'll never stop. And Neil? Look at his back. If there was anyone who overcompensates more than you, Cadence, it's this man."

He narrows his eyes at the hitman. "He can't protect you. And he will never love you."

That hasn't stopped the man from tucking behind Neil. It's a ridiculous image; the pitbull hiding behind the feral cat. Wilson looks at MacDarragh's hand, and when they flick up to Kaden they sheen.

"Come here," Finch orders through his teeth, stabbing a finger to the floor. His frantic eyes follow, as if there's something to see.
Reluctantly, the mountain of useless sniveling muscle shifts.

"Crawl."

Cade blinks. He slinks down, slowly and then all at once. Again, his lip starts shaking and he pins it down under his upper teeth. Shame keeps his eyes down as he takes the first four legged step, and then the next. The palms of what must be substantially sweaty hands make meaty slaps as they leave the nest and meet wood.

He gathers himself at Kaden's feet in a puddle, sitting back on his haunches.
Finch sighs then, more aware than ever of Damien lying inert behind him. Wilson jerks like he's been burned when Kaden brushes a knuckle against the prickles of his head. He sniffles again, looking so sharply away his face is hidden in his shoulder. Whether he's sucking up blood or snot is debatable.

"I know you better than anyone. You just wanted my attention," Kaden soothes. "If that meant endangering both Damien and Neil, then so be it."

Sweeping his hair back and straightening his clothes, Kaden sucks in stuffy room temperature air and tries not to think about how differently this evening could have been.
"He's beautiful on his hands and knees. You like him for that, Neil. I'm sure you think it makes you look big."
 
Cade shuffles.

Neil is still snarling at Finch while the capo spews his bullshit, giving his stupid commands. The muscles in his arms tense as he flexes them, eager to be released even as the cuffs remain unbudging around his wrists. Unbudging, for now. In a second he'll be free. He can silence this obnoxious fucker. The lazy trails of blood dripping down his hand are slowing down second by second. The phone. The phone.

Cade shuffles, moving out from behind him.

"Cade-" what Neil means to be an impatient growl turns into a gasp of surprise as his eyes widen. He doesn't even reach out to stop Cadence. As much as he should stop him.

The man doesn't shuffle. He crawls, and MacDarragh is left to wordlessly stare as the human pet wearing Wolf's face makes its way toward the Butcher. Like an obedient little servant. Doubtlessly self-satisfied, its master reaches down to caress its head, and all of a sudden Neil feels the urge to look away. He doesn't know why. It's not like he hasn't stomached much worse before. Somehow, this is different. Which is why he forces himself to keep looking. Few things make Neil's skin crawl, but seeing Wolf like this... It feels fundamentally wrong. Some emotion he doesn't have the words (or more so the experience) to describe clutches down on his chest in a vice grip.

To call the display pathetic would be the understatement of the century.

When a laughing fit overtakes Neil's body, he isn't looking at Cade anymore. Half-lidded, his eyes hold Kaden's. The hitman's body shakes with mirth, bound and bloodied hands holding onto his abdomen like it hurts to cackle so much. In many ways, it does hurt.

In between fighting for air, he finds it in himself to speak, "Does the illusion of control make you feel better, Finch?"

Because this is what this is. Sans mommy and sans his title as a big scary mob boss, this is what the Butcher has resorted to. It disgusts MacDarragh that Finch would imply the two have even passing commonalities - unlike him, the hitman stands up on his own. After all, it's obviously not Neil that's looking down on Cade to make himself feel big. And he makes sure the fucker is well aware of this fact as he straightens out with a final chuckle, holding his position.

"You know nothing about me, you sad little wretch," speaking in a sing-songy voice that doesn't match his sentiment, MacDarragh rolls his shoulders like he can feel the injuries that stripe his back - that have striped his back for most of his life, "The scars I wear I wear with pride."

"And you could be the same way, Cade," in a blink, his eyes find the gangster, intonation rising as he desperately tries to get through to the man, "He didn't save your life. He conditioned you. He held you back from what you could have been, molding you into this for his own sake. People like him only ever do anything to further their own interests, no matter how stupid. Or selfish."

Just like Vivien.

"Even the guy that gave up years of rotting away and planning some bullshit catharsis got shafted. Do you like how exploitable his goodwill is, Finch?" grinning, Neil nods his chin in Damien's direction. The ex-cop's body remains motionless staring out at the scene without being able to do or probably even understand anything, eyes unfocused and lips half-open to drool in his drugged-out state. In the flicker of candlelight, it almost looks like he's mumbling something.

"Are you going to be happy crawling on all fours for the rest of your life, Cade? Are you going to be happy getting cucked and used and humiliated?" inhaling, MacDarragh has to hold himself back from shouting, "If you were lonely before he found you, you're just going to be even more alone with him."

"You're above this. You're a bad motherfucker, Wolf," the smile on Neil's face aches as he relentlessly maintains it. There's a ball of anxiety that has been growing in his stomach since he slipped on the comfortable mask laughter provides, yet even it can't soothe the unpleasant emotion weighing him down.

Stand, that's what he wants to tell Cade. Command him into defending himself for once, the idiot. It makes MacDarragh irrationally angry to worry that the gangster will not listen to him, to the point he doesn't even try to give the command. Finch he will listen to, but not him. Because the Butcher has broken him down.

"I know what you can be, better than even you do. I can help you."

And this is the first part of helping.

"Let Cade go," voice even, the last bit of Neil's mangled hand reopens as he squeezes his fist shut to address Kaden, "Let Cade go, and I'll tell you what you want to know."
 
When Neil's laughter starts up, canny and dramatic, Cade's shoulders come up to guard against it.

And then Neil surprises him. The rant he doesn't expect, not from a man like him. If Finch was fifteen years younger he might be inspired.
Finch twists the knife hilt in his hand. A smearing of blood makes it stick. If he focuses on the skin there he can feel it tingle and itch.

"Very moving, Neil," Finch lavishes, and he'd clap if he wasn't holding the knife. "I didn't think you had much depth. You sound like Damien."

And I sound like you.

"I never said Cade wasn't dangerous in his own right, but he's not above anything or anyone. He will always be happiest following someone else on all fours. It's just how he was made, with shit for brains. And he knows it, even if he bucks every now and then. As soon as I was gone, rather than take over the remnants of the Black Dogs he went to Vivien to be saddled again. He blew up the tower to get back at me. He lied just now to get back at me. He likes you because you remind him of me. Everything he does is for someone else. He hates himself for it, but he only feels worthwhile being used like an old rag. And that's not going to last forever, Cadence. Soon they'll be nothing left of you for anyone to want, even if it's just to kick you around. If Neil's not disgusted by you now, he'll lose patience for the blubbering mess you become afterwards. I never would have, and never have. I like how easily you cry."
Slow, Wilson looks up at him, through his brows which in another moment would have given him an unhinged, feral expression.

"Is what you know worth it, MacDarragh?" Kaden asks, and then smiles in a thin, strained way. "And here I was looking forward to breaking that giddy persona you wear with a hammer and nail."

Cade finds the coherence to look hurt. He half raises a hand, either to grab at Kaden or argue but nothing comes. It takes its place back with the other, planted between his thighs.
Rapidly he licks his upper lip, leaving an odd clear mark in the sheet of blood covering his muzzle.

Finch takes him by the chin, an aborted jump making Cade lean into his hand rather than lose balance and fall back. Just a fraction of his weight pushes hard on Kaden, but his head still tilts back when he lifts his chin. Or rather, implies a lift. Wilson follows the guiding force.

The sky blue irises are pushed into tiny rings by dilated pupils.
A heavy breath stills Wilson's shoulders and warms Kaden's palm. The conflict and red faced embarrassment fight to show on his face, each shift an attempt to tear himself free as well as a confused dare to make him stay, force him to stay. Volatile until he's under a boot, and then too ashamed to stay there unless he's soundly kicked.

Finch didn't make him that way.

Kaden smashes his fist down across Cade's face. That was all it would have taken, if he could have done that every couple days. And then smoothed it over with a hand squeezing his throat and some words whispered into his ear. Kindness had been the mistake, equality had been the mistake. The man wanted his attention, well, now he has it.
The gangster twists away, choking back a groan. A deep rich one, smothered behind teeth. No fresh blood falls, but a spatter of spit and Kaden only knows it's saliva and not tears based on the reddish hue.

"Okay," Finch says, "he can go. But I'll take my collar and leash back."

Wilson has a sixth sense for pain, as well as the Butcher's foul mood. Always has and always will. He backpedals before Kaden has taken up the pliers again, but not nearly far enough. Damien's eyes watch Kaden, another foggy pair of animal eyes asking him why.
This is just a bad dream.

This is the end of it, and the regret of it all is in Cade's face. Not entirely for the agony that will come, but for the ties he's cut. The poor confused thing. What kind of peace will he find, set free to flounder? Or, much worse, leashed to Neil?

When Finch reaches the end of the line with Delilah, will she cut him free too? When it's the last thing in the entire world he wants? He supposes she already has. A year ago.

It's with no great pleasure he slips the pliers inside Cade's hanging mouth. A wet sob pushes past the metal. A hand grips at his pants.
A soft garbled, "Please- please don't," that's ripped out with the tooth.

Wilson expresses pain in the same manner he laughs - strong silence while he gathers the air. Hands clapped over his mouth, blood oozes between his fingers. The fire pops. He shakes with silent sobs.
Between the claws of the pliers is the tooth, bits of bloody gum attached.
The first ragged breath comes in suckling through the blood and like that, the flood gates open. His voice box chugs into work with a vengeance. Cade wails.

He holds his mouth, curling in on himself, each tearful sob intermittent by childish huffing to gather more air.

Kaden tosses the tooth to Neil. "He's yours, then."
 
The walls are moving. They shift and undulate like something is slithering within - maggots crawling right beneath the surface of meat. In the low candlelight, the room has the color of flesh. It makes Damien feel like he's in the stomach of some great, terrible beast being slowly digested. His skin feels like it's moving too, crawling, yet he can't so much as lift a drowsy arm to try and scrape the sensation away.

Instead, all he can do is listen and watch.

Kaden's and Cade's forms shift in rhythm with the walls' pulsations. They morph and change with each passing second, melding into grotesque forms.

Please- please don't-

Time slows. Once more Kaden's face folds in on itself before it freezes. One moment the ex-cop is looking at the familiar profile of his partner, the next the capo melts and reforms until he's someone else entirely. But no less familiar. Horrifyingly.

Green eyes and blonde hair. Her lips are a bright red, like fresh viscera.

Damien struggles to speak. His tongue is heavy, sluggish. Disgustingly, it feels like an actual slug as it presses against his teeth. A foreign muscle in his mouth.

Genevieve wrenches out the tooth with her sharp manicured nails.

"Don't-" too little too late. The ex-cop's slurred speech is a barely audible whimper. And even if it wasn't, it would get drowned out by the wailing anyway.

A ragged voice fills the space with its pain. The sobs seep into the walls, soak into wood and mortar, and Damien knows they will become a part of the very foundation of this building. Every home is a living being - it has its own character and idiosyncrasies. And traumas. You can hear them in the way a place creaks while it settles. A home remembers.

Does Michael's home remember? The home Damien remembers fondly - even when both of them had their own apartments, some months he more or less lived with his friend.

It's a uniquely cruel joke that that wasn't the case when death came knocking.

He's spent so much time uselessly wishing he could have been there. To help. Or to die. Or even just to see, to be a fly on the wall so he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life tormented by questions. Right now the ex-convict is not a fly on the wall, though. He's a fly caught in a web, utterly helpless.

Genevieve throws the tooth to MacDarragh. The hitman catches it in his hand, carefully inspects it before letting it drop to the floor. His face doesn't change, and it doesn't need to to make Damien sick to his stomach. The bastard is grinning, cigarette held between his lips as he watches the weeping figure with vicious delight. Languidly stepping forward, MacDarragh crouches next to the figure to inspect the Siren's handiwork. Neil pulls something out of the pocket of the figure and not a moment later he is rubbing at his wrists, standing back up.

When he opens his mouth to gleefully instruct the woman on what she is to do next, he's breathing out smoke and disease, a forked snake tongue sneaking its way out to hiss.

"Please don't hurt them," a tiny voice whispers in between sobs. If Damien could jolt in shock, he would.

It feels like the whisper is right in his ear. When the ex-cop feels like his heart should be racing, his lungs panting for air, neither of those things happen. The relaxed state his limbs have been plunged into doesn't match his panic, and the only thing he can think about is himself a night ago, paralyzed in his own bed. Stuck in his body.

The figure on the floor shivers, shoulders wracked as it gasps for air. The flesh on its back bubbles like it's boiling, destroys itself then regrows. A cry becomes stuck in Damien's throat once the thing finally lifts its head.

Amber brown eyes that haunt his every waking and sleeping moment peer out at the ex-cop, framed in by strands of wavy tawny blonde hair that go down past chin-light. It's too long. Michael's hair wasn't this long when he died. The horrific realization dawns on Damien that this isn't the Mike he's imagined dying over and over again. The face streaked with tears that gazes at him now is younger. This is the kid that told horror stories around a fire even though secretly he was the most afraid, the kid that went to sell girl scout cookies with him and Eli after others called Damien a sissy for it, the kid that was always by his side.

"Don't hurt them," Mike repeats firmly. He was always the better person. Even in his final moments afraid as he must be, he's thinking of others rather than himself.

He used his final breath to beg for his family to not be harmed. Did that include Damien? Even though he was responsible for this? Or was he only talking about his mom?

"Don't hurt her," Michael speaks once more, pleading, "Do whatever you want, I'll hand over everything I have, just don't hurt her."

Ah.

It's not often that the ex-cop has seen his best friend angry. Genuinely angry. But when Kell points a finger in his direction, wiping away traces of tears with the back of his other hand, he knows he's angry by the stern glint in his usually jovial eyes. And he should be angry, "I didn't want any part in this anyway, I wanted to quit. He did this. It's not fair."

And that's the truth, isn't it? It should have been Damien, not Michael suffering like this.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry-" he struggles to mumble, like sorry is going to change anything. But it's the only thing he can offer. He's sorry for not saving his friend, sorry for not being there. Sorry for not dying with him.

MacDarragh reaches down to grab Mike and all at once the boy's face dissolves back into formless flesh. Damien wants to shout as the hitman begins to pull on the figure. Are they leaving? Where are they going?

Neil is putting the final touches on whatever his malicious plan might be, making some sort of arrangement with the Siren. Or, well, not the Siren. It's Kaden again. At least he assumes it's Kaden - the man's face is hidden behind a wolf mask, like the one the capo wore at the gala. It's only when the muzzle moves as he speaks that Damien realizes that's not a mask. This is too much, isn't it? The barrier between his dreams and reality is wearing woefully thin. How long is he going to fight off the unbearable weight tugging down on his eyelids?

The wolf and the snake talk, yet none of their words make sense to the ex-cop. He just blinks at the scene in incomprehension once, twice, before finally his eyes close for good and he can surround himself in an empty void. As he slips away, he prays with his whole being it remains empty.
 
----

"Fuckin' shit," she says when her blade skids away taking a chunk more than it should.
What she'd planned to be the head is now on the floor between her feet and isn't that just dandy.

Raul's made another fat bodied bird. It's dwarfed in his hands as he smooths down the rough edges with finer and finer grades of sandpaper. The boulder of a man is extra careful around it's tiny rounded beak.

"Why do you make so many of those?" She says because it's something she's somehow never asked. Her own knobby lump will never be a work of art, so she busies her brain by driving the knife along the wood and skinning a strip off. It peels like an apple. Hmph, maybe she should just make an apple.
Raul's attention remains burned into the perfect shaping of tail feathers.

"I'd make other things." He holds the bird up to the light. The warm light burns into the greying of his beard, turning the scraps of dark brown an overwhelming golden silver. It fills in the shadows of his face, the lines of age. They're most prominent around his brows, and soft eyes that aren't soft anymore.
"You get rid of so many people, get comfortable with it, too. Feels right to balance it out by making things. I throw money at charities for children, but this I do with my own hands. I'm good at making birds. I make birds."

The hospital bed is inviting. To call it a hospital bed is putting it short; its the bed to king all beds. The mattress from heaven.
Her throbbing head and puffy eyes... The moment her head hit the pillow she'd be gone.
Raul follows her gaze to the princess bed. He rests his elbows on his thighs, enormous hands coming together to hold his carving.

"One for each dead guy?" She offers, "You'll jumpstart an avian flu at this rate."

Smiling, he shakes his head. "Del, please."

Instead of the bed, they're sitting in the visiting chairs. Unlike most plastic things that are made to encourage people to leave after the expected twenty minute visit to say adios to a failing parent, these are soft. This is primarily a children's hospital after all. The visitors never leave.
So the chairs are devishly comfortable, soft enough to suck you in and never let go. The whole point of not getting into bed and being hooked up to everything was the hope she'd get back up again. This is the exact opposite of a place she wanted to turn the last page on. She's still got her boots on, but all she has is a carving knife. In her dreams she was usually alone for this bit, so that's nothing to sneeze at.

A mutilating piece of her bird is sliced off to join the shavings on the floor. What she planned to be the head looks more like the butt and she knows now she really has fucked it all up irreversibly.
Squeezing it between two hands, she imagines gluing everything back into place like it's just a bit of broken porcelain.

"I'll treat him right," Raul insists.

Shaking her head even before he started she says, "No, you won't. You'll want to and you won't."

One of his hands cups both of hers, and the little bird between them.

"This..." He whispers, and wood dust from his fingers make her hands itch.
He lowers his voice when he's pissed or to stave off tears, sometimes both. Again, she can't look at him.

"...is going to change me."

"Don't be so dramatic."

"I've known you longer than I haven't. Maybe this will mean twice the birds, or maybe it'll mean I stop making anything at all..."

Not from lack of killing. They both know that ship has sailed.

"But they'll be nothing to fight over after," he says very very quietly. The huge hand covering hers squeezes.
She wants to hit him, and the horrible thing is he would let her. The first and maybe second, anyways. The slap he used to jar her brains out of her head still hurts, and so do the rug burns from being squished to the floor in a two person dog pile.

Dipping between her fingers he touches the ball of wood.
"You kept him from me for so long. I didn't know what to think, only that I'd never have all of you-"

"Oh, yeah, because I fell in love with a little fucking kid! He's my heart and soul and if NY didn't frown on it, I'd've been married to him a long ass time ago."

Without skipping a beat Raul retorts, "Because you lied about him. What was I supposed to think? Cheating on me made the most sense, why else hide a child than out of shame? Things could have been different!"

Then she does hit him. It doesn't have the steam it should and she blames that on the general weakness a dying woman has at her disposal.
It's a rocky punch that he jerks away from, rolling his jaw. A tongue feeling the inside of his mouth makes his cheek bulge weirdly.

"If you thought that then you didn't know me at all."

"How could I ever know?!" He explodes, but only the way Ortiz does. A slightly raised voice, face to the ceiling like he's appealing to some god, hands out imploringly.
"You hide everything! You lie about everything! I'm in love with a...a..."

His accent comes out remarkably American when he mutters, "Fantasma."
He huffs, shoulders slumping. "A see-through floating dead person, but it goes 'boo'. Hm?"

"A ghost..."

Fantasma.

He nods. As if remembering the punch he rubs at his chin through the bristling hairs of his beard.
"When you called me months ago asking for help I thought you were finally letting me in. All this time I've hated that kid for having more of you than I ever did and he didn't even know. I won't keep him in a box, and if I do it'll be a nice box."

"You're just saying that so I can die happy. I don't have a chance with Bonnie and Clyde off who knows where."

The irony and poetry of it all hasn't escaped her, but she's not in the mood.
The rambunctious fucker got her in the end, indirectly but still. Taylor's skilled but easily distracted mercenary reporting radio silence means he's either dead (good for Cade, round of applause), or one tripped on a banana peel and they've fallen skin to skin again to steam up another hotel room. Again, good for Cade.
No one's found Finch yet either. Ortiz would tell her if they had. If they found Malcom, he wouldn't say a thing so there's no point asking.
Brows furrowed, Raul's bottom lip juts out in a grimace that says neither deserve any kind of applause.

"I guess I could be lying, to give you some kind of peace. Realistically, I won't give Blumenthal the time of day. I already got a bird for him. Bonnie and Clyde have overstayed their welcome, too."

"Lots of birds."

"You have no idea."

She's the only one who has every idea.

"Don't lie to me," she begs.

"I'll beat him," he admits, holding her hand. Persistently he digs into her grip for the wood. Her hand clamps down on it like a bear trap.
"I won't want to but I will. It'll be bad, as bad as it was when he was sent to Medusa's. Maybe worse."

That's at least the truth.

She opens her hand and he takes what she should have shared decades ago.

"And after that?" Now that her hands are empty she can finally lean back into this chair she'll never leave.
Raul takes his paring knife. With considerate but relentless cuts he molds a little thing into being. It'll be smaller than the others, with all the mistakes she made. She cut off more than she needed, all in the wrong places.

"Nothing," he answers. "We'll never be more than that."
 
---

Car beams barely illuminate rapidly changing scenes of snow-covered leafless greenery as MacDarragh leaves behind the serenity of the countryside for the approaching din of the city, making the same pointless trip in the span of a single day. At least this time around he's not in the trunk - that has to be some form of consolation. He's in the driver's seat of his own car, as is his rightful place... Though the hitman doesn't feel very in control of where he's going.

He hasn't said a word since leaving Medusa's manor; hasn't turned on the radio like he usually would either. And for his part, Cade has also remained as quiet as a mouse - honestly, the way he's curled in on himself in the passenger seat, puffy eyes looking anywhere but at Neil makes the man appear precisely like some tiny gnawing mammal caught in a trap bleeding out. Well, not that he's bleeding at all anymore. At one point the idea of retrieving the med kit from the trunk half-formed in Neil's mind before he realized such a thing would be utterly useless. Cade's damaged gums would repair themselves on their own, taking both the pain and blood away, leaving the gangster with merely a hole in his bottom row of teeth he's going to be reminded of every time his tongue absentmindedly reaches for a phantom tooth.

Even with the tracker gone, the Butcher's influence persists, and definitely not solely in a physical sense. That man is like an especially stubborn thorn, one around which the skin has already regrown so in order to get it out you first need to tear open a new wound. And if it wouldn't just heal right back, maybe MacDarragh would do just that.

He would replace the sensation of Finch's punch with his own.

In the deathly silence that has settled over the interior of the vehicle, there is an audible squeak when Neil's grip on the wheel tightens. It sounds over the gentle background hum of the car's AC circulating warm air around the two men. As if Neil doesn't already feel hot under the collar.

Yet it is true that the anger seething within him has to contest with an intense if paradoxical need to gloat.

He leans back into his seat as he drives. In the evening gloom, the hitman doesn't avert his eyes to look at Wolf, merely keeps a beat on the blurry presence of the man out of his periphery. Cadence supposedly went to Finch and Blumenthal because he stood a "better chance" with them, what with Viv gunning for his ass. It's deliciously ironic that now his ex-boss has more or less forced the gangster to go back to TreaTech, and though MacDarragh would love to blame the calculating bitch that is the Butcher for everything that has happened, he knows all too well that this shitty fucking position is one of Cade's own making.

And not only has he dragged himself down - he's dragged Neil down with him. Again.

Or rather, Neil has allowed himself to get dragged down. Again.

The bracelet/collar that he so hates yet needs (that both of them need) is gone. That had been Kaden's parting gift. He lets Cade go in return for his own "collar and leash", and then he agrees for Neil to take the car and immediately leave in return for the thing they're reliant on to live. Not an exchange the hitman would have agreed to, but he was too busy trying to get Cade to get the hell up off the floor to notice the device was already long removed and in the process of being tossed into the fireplace.

What a drag and a half. Things would have been much better for everyone involved if he had just taken care of the three chucklefucks back at the docks. Instead, they just keep creating problems for him.

When the car comes to a stop, it's not in front of the TreaTech corporate building. It's not in front of Neil's apartment complex either, though it is a residential building that Neil is familiar with for the sole purpose that having to break into it eventually was something he foresaw years ago. The lights are off in the windows.

Before an even deader silence than the one before can settle over the vehicle's interior, Neil's arm strikes out to grasp Cade's nape, turning the man's head to finally hold his gaze, "Go to the front door and wait for me to unlock it. I don't imagine you're keen on having a seizure again, so best follow along."

Releasing his hold on the gangster, MacDarragh wastes no time getting out, his thumb running along the thin surface of the car key in his hand as he walks, veering off to the side of the building around to its back. There's a slim chance that Rory won't be here. After all, the guy has his own place, though based on what Neil has noted observing the slimy rat he prefers going to his mom's house instead. Probably because she's the only person that can tolerate his bullshit. Hell, she's probably the one that inflated his ego when it came down to his bullshit in the first place.

Exhaling sharply, the hitman wills his growing agitation away for the moment, pushing the end of his key into the beading of the frost-edged window he has come to stand in front of. Inch by inch, he starts removing it to sneak his way inside. It's not the most elegant or fast method, but when at last he pushes the metal into the bottom of the pane and carefully holds the glass as it pops open, the only thing that matters is that it's done its job. Quietly setting the dismantled window on the snowy ground, MacDarragh crawls through the opening into Rory's home (well, Rory's mom's home).

Pocketing the car key, his eyes dart off to the left - just down the hallway should be boy-genius' room. Wouldn't that be a fun awakening for the kid, getting ambushed twice in such a narrow timeframe? MacDarragh needs to make sure Rory won't call Vivien at the first sight of Cade and him.

Turning right, the hitman heads to unlock the front door, stepping lightly.
 
He was maybe twelve at the time. Well past the time you know there's differences between girls and boys, and not just because one wears dresses and the others don't.
The lady teaching what passed as a seminar in the church basement had the patience of a snail but eyes that said she didn't take shit from anyone over five.

They were twice that and then some.

Taking a plastic cup from the water cooler she told everyone to spit into it. Everyone giggled and traded smiles, that exceptionally rare and unique experience of doing something gross and impulsive lining up with what a grown up expected.
Determined to do a good job, Cade had contributed quite the generous deposit. He could still remember grinning to his friend for both approval and to share the joy of this unusual moment.

Once she had the cup, warm and frothy from it's go around she held it out for everyone to see.
Leaning forward in their seats the boys went, 'Ooh!' while the girls, predictably, went 'Ew!'

After a good long look the nicest woman in the world smiled at their laughing morbid faces and asked, "Who'd like to drink out of this?"

Even the boys, obligated to poke every dead thing with a stick and try a nose booger at least once, didn't volunteer.
Cade's friend had elbowed him in the ribs whispering about how he'd like to dump it into the hair of a girl sitting on the opposite side of the ring.

"No one, right?" She dropped the cup lower, paraded it around the group.

"When you let someone have you and your body, it's like they spit into your heart."

The smiles, more or less fell away. As sudden as it happened this was serious now, a time to nod and be quiet so this part didn't last forever.
She laid her eyes into each kid, like she and her cup of loogy were branding this lesson into everyone's brains.

"After a while you fill up and no one will want you," she said, not without genuine sympathy. Suspicious apprehension too, like she knew, even all the way back then. "You'll be good for nothing but the trash."

And that's exactly where that cup went, with a tidy hand brush.

Little Cadence, dumb as a rock when it came to literal, easy to understand bullshit wouldn't get this convoluted spit metaphor for a long time.
Not until now, actually, sitting side saddle on his way back into New York as a grown fucking man on the verge of not tears but something hot and aching nevertheless.

Yeah, he 'got' it but now he got it.

Torn out of these thoughts by a sudden grab at his neck, Cade comes eye to eye with MacDarragh. Gritting his teeth, that sudden burst of fuck-off smolders into ash as the once familiar and reliable snarl felt not only cattywampus but wrong. Like going in for a handshake and offering a stump.

So he is stuck outside like a yowling cat put on the porch. An actually stone cat is there to keep him company, looking all the more lonely parked on the steps of a door that have an automatic flap for dogs.
It even has a layer of dirty bristles along it's stretched out back for guests to wipe their foot on.

Step on me, it's bowed head says, it's what I'm good for.

With a firm kick he launches it off the steps and into the snowbank so deep it won't be found until April.
Taking both longer than he expected and faster than he would've liked, the wreath hanging from the front rattles and the door opens
He welcomes himself inside, out of the cold but not into comfort.

"Where are we?" He ventures, stepping on ice he already knows is well and truly cracked.
MacDarragh's answer, as almost all of them ever are, is a damn surprise. Cheap linoleum flooring, kitchen and dining room rolled into one socially uncomfortable abomination puts this house not exactly low on the pay bracket (it had stairs) but not high enough for someone like Rory.

The fridge is jarringly new, clashing with the flimsy wooden table and plastic chairs. There is a crator next to it, obviously where someone tore out an oven to make room for the collosal thing.
On the door it has a digital screen to show what is inside, and next to that a list of what is about to expire.

Fortunately it opens like a regular fridge and doesn't initiate a ten second launch into the stratosphere. Of course there isn't any beer, no, that would've been too nice a break.
There is Pepsi, though and even though it is diet that's good enough.

He cracks it open, daring Neil to say a fucking word.

The sugar sparkles in his mouth, biting in a spot even the sun had never seen. He coughs once, then sets the can down on the floral tablecloth covering what passed as a dining table.

"I'll get him," he decides, scanning the next room over. The living room. Baby gates choke it off from the rest.
Under the glow of a Christmas tree three Yorkies stare at the two strange men in their kitchen. The lights sparkle in their black eyes, noses pressed to the plastic mesh of the gates. They don't make a peep.

"Useless fuck like him has to sleep in the basement," he mumbles, striking forward. It's a ballsy move shoving Neil aside, and the way it makes his stomach twist at the thought means he has to do it.
It's not a hard shove, but Cade's left ass cheek weighs more than Neil and getting checked by a shoulder clears him out of the way in a hurry. The same satisfaction a scrawny kid gets slamming a foam hammer down on a mechanical mole is the one he gets.

He hasn't been able to look Neil in the eye willingly - look at any damn part of him aside his shoes actually - and that doesn't change now.
This time he doesn't even snarl when he's grasped and squeezed again. One moment he's puff chested and the next he's being yanked back by the neck, throat too swollen shut to beg. Neil's hands are still cold from cat burglar'ing his way inside, and its an instant jolt to the system.

"He's yours," Finch had said like he was giving away something cheap and especially underwhelming. A curse, but more an inconvenience. A guaranteed chance at experiencing buyer's remorse, at least. Trash, basically.
"He's yours, then." It was the 'then' that made it special.

He's shoved aside and Neil goes ahead.

After a moment to breathe through the adrenaline and everything else, he follows.

Rory does in fact sleep in the basement, where its several degrees colder and despite it being a dry season it's humid. Instinctively Cade expects an overgrown car bed and glow in the dark star stickers on the ceiling. Maybe that's somewhere down the hall on the main level, but it isn't here.

The hum of both the humidifier and a sizable PC fill the space (and half the basement). The dual monitors are black with sleep, but like it's tossing and turning the tower itself casts light across the opposite wall in flickering bursts.
If Cade had gone rat hunting himself he would've tripped toes first into the workshop planted slap in the middle of the room. As it is he stares in confusion and disbelief as Neil takes a random detour around, like he's afraid the ground is going to split open.
But no. Rory believes in Cade's organization system; keep everything everywhere so it's easy to find.
The hitman's either been here before (no longer a disturbing thought, just how it is) or he's able to see in the dark.

The kid is tucked into the final corner of the room, a last thought in terms of a bedroom. What passes for walls are just piles of laundry. The dark figuring is sleeping on what looks like a cot, and the sprawled out look to the gangly fuck makes it look damn near comfortable.

This is Cade's second night without sleep. He's feeling it, the same way you feel a high coming on. Dazed, floaty, impulsive and if the requirements are met, a bit weepy.
Neil muddles with the dark when he crouches down to cover what has to be a mouth. If Neil also found a knife to press to his throat that would explain the aborted squeal and shift, followed by nothing.

Here they go.

---

The lights on don't improve Rory's basement dwelling that much. It's a cold light, showing off the kid's borderline horder issue as well as his disturbing dependency on Redbulls. Instead of Christmas lights, used underwear hang off every available surface, sharing space with precision tools and old computer equipment.
Between the bundles of wire, computer paraphernalia taken apart until they're pieces, a bulbus screen from the 90's, if an I.T guy saw this place he'd turn around and run.

"So this is just going to be a regular thing now?" Rory asks, scratching his cheek where the wrinkles of the pillow have left red imprints.
On second thought, Cade's glad he wasn't the one to wake the fool up.
The kid's hand sleepily journies around his face, into the blistered and scabbed corner of his mouth. What Cade assumed was the remains of a pizza party chips away before Rory stops and fresh bloody pus drips down his swollen lip.

Rory covers his mouth, looks at both of them and lets his hand drop with a defeated sigh.
"You lost your collars again?" Said half like a question, half like an observation. Maybe a titch the way he might ask one of the Yorkies upstairs, but not in a demeaning way. You lost your binky and it's my responsibility to find it for you, kinda way. That kind of tedium.

He picks at the Garfield orange blanket, pulling aside some thread. With another sigh he reaches under the cot, freezing when that makes his unexpected visitors a bit jumpy.
"Putting pants on guys," he explains bringing out exactly that. Like a prude he puts them on under the blanket, despite how difficult it is and how much longer it takes.

"You didn't see my mom?" He asks, glancing at the stairs behind them in a quiet way.
Cade shakes his head.

"Must still be out," Rory says, getting the lip of his pants up over the flatness of his ass. "She'll be back soon." Not a warning, said too much to himself and far too reassuringly.

Zipping up, he stands and then doesn't seem to quite know what to do with himself. Granted, Cade hasn't known that for the last couple hours either.
Rory tongues at the open blister weeping at his mouth and Cade gags, pretty shamelessly too.

"Can I go to my computer or are you going to hit me again?" He takes a tone that, while it isn't the mocking one from before still isn't something you should use with Neil.
"Might wanna do some tests, too. That means, yeah, there could be some poking and prodding. Sorry, but that's the way it is unless you wanna go to Vivien and get someone else. Good luck."

He brushes past Neil, climbing over his cot and knocking over a tower of clothes to avoid him. Mumbling he plucks the socks and underwear from his desk, tossing them into some other derelict corner.
"Best employee she has... made history for her, she and I. Spiteful shrew... Just used me. Never mattered to her. Wasn't my fault it happened."
 
Rory isn't actually asking permission to go to his computer unaccosted, but Neil grins with narrowed eyes before sweeping his hand in the desk's direction regardless, with all of the theatrics the gesture requires and then some. Like a maître d' showing a guest to their table reservation. If that maître d' was a man just about reaching the end of his rope before doing violence onto said guest, and if the table was an overcrowded desk in the middle of the human equivalent of a rat's nest.

Some clothes from the pile kid-genius knocks over land on Neil's shoe and he has to hold back a disgruntled expression as he pushes aside a washed out graphic shirt with his foot.

"I won't hurt you over something small like that. Feel free to run your tests as well," keeping up a sing-song voice to match his casual disposition, Neil retreats his arm back at his side, fingers rubbing against fingers dusting off nonexistent crumbs. Stepping over the heap now splayed out on the floor, the hitman leans down towards Rory, still talking as nonchalantly as ever, "But if you do anything fishy, I will hit you again. And this time you won't be getting back up."

MacDarragh pauses to let the threat linger in the air before straightening back out. Quickly, his eyes sweep over the interior of the basement for the umpteenth time since he and Cade entered. The hitman could swear he spotted a chair here on one of the previous times he's come around uninvited, though currently it must be hidden underneath a pile of laundry. Or computer parts. Rory's always been a greasy creep, yet this seems a bit much even for him. That, combined with the cold sores breakout at the corner of his mouth, point to one thing - kid must be stressed out of his mind.

And Neil proceeds to do absolutely nothing to improve his situation, "Of course you never mattered to her. Your work matters to her. But no one is indispensable."

The trick is to fool people into believing they are indispensable.

Neil is good at that, or he had to become good at that when he was promoted to a police captain position. He didn't work well with a partner, but that didn't stop him from knowing how to lead people. And, most importantly, to be liked while doing it, which doesn't even require being especially competent. You simply listen and learn other's little quirks and soon enough you can make them feel like they're something special instead of the reality of existing as an identical cog in a machine. However, that's something Vivien has never understood. Likability is not a word in her vocabulary. The bitch simply demands respect like she's entitled to it - has done so since their guardian named her his successor and she grinned at her adoptive sibling like somehow this proved she was the favorite child. Neil hadn't even been sure she was capable of genuine glee before that very moment. Well, he became intimately aware just how much joy Viv took in walking all over him in the years to follow, doubly so after their guardian fell ill.

It's what lost her the hitman's loyalty to the High-Rise. And now she might lose her golden goose too, though in Rory's case he's had a backhand to the face coming for a long time.

"Whose fault is it if not yours? Who are you going to blame?" keeping up a measured intonation, MacDarragh's fist clenches and unclenches with every second word, like his grasp is missing a stress toy to squeeze the life out of, "At one point you have to start taking responsibility when your dumbass decisions start catching up with you."

With one last squeeze, his nails dig into the soft flesh of his palm. Neil doesn't know if he's saying all of this useless shit to Rory or to Cade. Or to himself.

How the fuck did he end up here?

With a frustrated huff MacDarragh gives up on the pursuit of hunting down a chair, stepping back over the fallen pile of clothes and waltzing right into Cade's personal space. Wolf is yet to look him in the eye of his own volition. He's also continued to be uncharacteristically quiet, and there is almost an expectation in Neil to hear some joke or silly comment or dumb question.

Or an invitation to fight out all of the bullshit hanging in the air between them.

Anything really. But it never comes. Maybe in some ways that's better because if Cade were to open his mouth it feels like they'd have to talk about that and him and them.

Roughly latching onto the gangster's forearm, he leads him to the cot.

"Sit," MacDarragh doesn't wait for the man to follow through as he more or less pushes him onto the unmade bed, "You go first."

As in, you get poked and prodded first. Mimicking the look Cade gave him earlier when he robbed Rory's mom of a Pepsi (without even getting rid of the evidence - throwing the can in the trash was something Neil had to do), MacDarragh dares the man to so much as utter a word of protest.

When no such thing comes, he brusquely turns around to head for the pathetic little bathroom Rory has in his basement, opening up its rickety door with his left hand and turning on the light with a hum of electricity. Neil hasn't touched anything with his right hand since he used it to cover up Rory's mouth and ended up unfortunately touching the guy's breakout. He can still feel the unevenness of the rash against his skin, so it's a small blessing when he gets to wash the sensation off, turning on the tap and rolling up his sleeves.

"So," the hitman calls out through the open door, lathering up his hands with soap, "Do you have some extra replacement collars lying around for us, or what exactly are you planning on doing?"

MacDarragh washes his hands the way a surgeon would - diligently from the tip of the fingers to his elbows, and if he had toothpicks he'd clean under his fingernails too. It's how he was taught as a child, so the movements are very much mindless muscle memory. That's what allows him to focus his attention fully on listening out for Rory's answer, as well as any other noises coming from the other room. There's almost a worry that him taking his eyes off of things for even a second will have things going tits up yet again. That's what happened last time Cade and Rory were left alone, after all. Neil can trust only himself.

Shit... when did he become this paranoid? Sure, he's always been one to stand on alert, yet it strikes the hitman that he's been agitated for about 3 days straight. Maybe it has something to do with the fact he hasn't slept for 2 nights straight, but this is far from the longest stretch of time he's gone without so much as a nap.

No. This is about the fact that all of his plans have fallen apart around him. Every. Single. Fucking. One. And he's going to murder someone the next time something doesn't go his way.

"How big of a gasket has Viv blown while I was gone? What's the situation back at TreaTech?"
 
Rory gives his mouse a throttle. The computer starts up with a huff. The monitors blink on a moment later, like sleepy eyes.
A black screensaver, three or so folders in the corner. The organization that isn't on the desks and tabletops are there instead.

"Back so soon?" a voice, feminine and friendly like a 50's housewife bleeps out. Cade stiffens, looking to the stairs preparing some sort of explanation for the middle-aged woman that's about to round the corner.
Only it comes from the computer, not upstairs.
"Are you still upset, Rory? I can do that thing you like...if you want?"

MacDarragh doesn't so much as peek around the door, as he stalks. Eyes sharp, searching the room.
The mouse skids on its pad as Rory rapidly taps away. The kid drops his headset multiple times before getting the foamy mic but in a chokehold and spitting hoarsely, "Mute."

The voice was familiar, the way a cartoon voiced by a famous actor is familiar. It was distorted from it true sound, twisted into something while friendly is completely disingenuous. At the same time it sounded real; someone doing a bang up job of being a super personable Siri.

Cade scratches at his arm. His tongue prods at the cavity in his mouth.
Rory goes back to clicking. No one brings up the digital girlfriend.

"They're not as bad as they should be," Rory says instead and with a practiced kick, hooks a chair over by its leg with his ankle. He sits on the pile of clothing laying there.
"Or as I think they should be. She didn't shut anything down. Made sure everything was backed up, sent the cleaning staff home and called in people who don't talk and know how to tear up rugs and put in new ones really quickly. As far as I know she's given people in development and marketing hazard pay, but..."

He picks up one of the Redbulls, shaking it around before draining whatever was left inside.
"If it wasn't for every press company hounding her I know without a doubt half those employees would miraculously quit and move far far away and never be heard from again. If you get my meaning and...and of course you do. You..."

Kill people, is probably the unfinished bit there but this sweaty kid can't bring himself to finish it. The brat that had enjoyed teasing and taunting who he must have thought was just security and muscle is gone. Things were probably fun then, and murder happened in movies and the closest personal relationship to kidnapping was in hour long podcasts on Spotify. Fact is the kid looked ten times as frail and wiry while Neil spent some steam scaring the shit out of him. Probably involuntarily, Rory had made a quiet, "Meep" sound when MacDarragh threatened to hit him again.

So sheepishly he glances at Cade, not in an accusing was, in a nothing way. Just looking at him, so Cade looks back. They cornered him into it. They were going to lobotomize him. Try as he might (he won't) he can't give two shits for the fact the poor accountants and whoever else had to see some dead people. They're fucking rich now apparently; Taylor giving out handouts like bread to a herd of vicious ducks. He'd say meat to hungry dogs, but press and the law probably don't threaten her.
Probably nothing does.
So ducks. Everyone that bothers her is a duck that needs to sign a NDA and promise not to sue.

And her prime gold goose, looking pale, greasy and sweaty, hasn't gotten enough crumbs.

"I didn't know she was going to do what she did," Rory says, turning in his seat the way dentists do to face him head on. Cade must give him one hell of a look because whatever little mad scientist enthusiasm there was to poke at him dies right there.
"I thought..." the disillusioned kid experiencing a quarter life crisis lulls. Cade sits there, and to his annoyance can't wait him out.

"Listen," he snaps, not wanting to be a complete asshole but finding it pretty damn hard to avoid.
Neil just...plopped him down on an undergraduate's bed to be fucked with. Like he'd left him in Rory's rat lab, all over again.
"It's been a long day and I really can't give a fuck. You were an idiot, she used you. When you're a stupid waste of dick meat that's what happens."

They catch each other staring at the other guy's mouth. A tongue swipe across teeth bulges out Rory's cheek.
The tests are anticlimactically tame, not unlike being in a actual doctor's office. Rory has Cade touch his thumb to the tip of each finger, catch a falling yardstick, etc. There's no saws, needles or clinical white masks.
MacDarragh can't spend forever in the bathroom so he eventually comes out to stare in callous disregard at how underwhelming it all is. Kaden taught Cade how to speak fluent asshole; he knows this is punishment. Hell, it's not even that. Its a tiny fuck-you, goodbye. A you-made-your-bed-now-sleep type thing.
As if Cade can't suffer some mental and physical exercises. Bastard.
It's around this thought that Rory gets the great idea to touch his tattoo; tolerable, excusable even. Less so when he does honestly poke him there. Even less when Rory's dark hair and pale face shift into something that's reminiscent of Finch.
Fortunately he pricks Cade with a sewing pin without so much as a how-do-you-do. Rory snaps back into the shape of Rory. Feeling oddly calm, he yanks the kid in by a handful of his shirt, stands so he can have some respectful distance from the pus city on his mouth. The floor oozes a little under his feet.
Rory shivers, pulls and bounces back a little bit like a yo-yo.
The drop of blood beads on Cade's arm, but there isn't enough to drop before the little puncture is sealed up again.

Too embarrassed to ask why he's here, he opts to give Rory a little shake instead.
No sooner after it comes to him.
"Do you have collars or not?"

Wordlessly, Rory nods. He gingerly pushes his clammy hand against Cade's in a laughable attempt to dislodge him, then falls back into a pile of laundry when Cade obliges.
The only reason Cade has for not taking the ridiculous dog collar shakily offered and using it to make Rory a noose is how big the damn thing is. It wouldn't fit on the anemic looking weasels upstairs, but whereas the last band at least pretended to be something other than a humiliating crutch this one couldn't be more painful if a bell was attached. Or a leash.

Seeing the dubious and probably dangerous glint in Cade's face, Rory whines, "I'm in my mom's basement! You're lucky I have anything at all."

Feeling at the D ring hooked into the leather, he jerks his head in MacDarragh's direction. The collar is studded, not with spikes but rounded baubles of metal. There's a thick pack wired in the middle, doctored like the previous collars but in an ugly and DIY kinda way. "Got one for him?"

Rory nods comically, tripping over himself with uh-huhs and yeahs.

Okay.

There's freedom in having that squared away, as pathetic as it is.
Pocketing the literal and metaphorical bane and savior of his existence, Cade remembers he's standing, wavers on his feet and leaves. He doesn't shoulder check Neil this time, doesn't need a physical reminder of what the guy thinks of him.
He just, leaves, up those rickety steps.
 
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Neil's hands are wet. A few drops of water drip onto the basement floor and he briefly considers drying them on one of the many pieces of clothing lying around, but those are filthy and if he didn't want to use the towel hanging in the bathroom he sure as hell doesn't want to use dubiously old laundry. It's an exaggeration, of course, but it almost makes him feel like doing so would end up giving him something worse than herpes. Some deep ick he doesn't have the words for.

It's with this general feeling of disgust that he stares at Rory riffling through his equipment trying to find a second collar, all the while beads of sweat are running down the nape of the kid's neck where he can undoubtedly feel the hitman's gaze piercing through. Neil is zeroed in on it, like a hawk.

He doesn't turn to watch Cade's form retreating back up the stairs.

He listens, though, the steps slow and overly loud as the man leaves the basement. Maybe that's just a trick of perception - the only thing to contest the creaking of the gangster's ascend is the soft hum of Rory's PC, after all.

That familiar yet unfamiliar voice that'd come from it moments earlier replays in MacDarragh's head. He swears he can hear it still somewhere in the buzz of electronics. That annoying fucking voice-

Ridiculously, his brain doesn't pick up on the item placed right in the middle of his field of vision immediately. It's only after Rory gives the ugly, bulky collar a light shake that Neil snaps back to the present and apparently even a slightly sharper inhale from him is able to make kid-genius flinch. Man, he's always thought the guy was a pathetic creep, but he had at lest some semblance of high-ish regard (yeah, that's the right word; or as right as it's going to get) for the whole mad scientist shtick. It was annoying, sure, but at least it was something he could relate to on a base level. The theatrics of it, the enjoyment in it.

Now the kid just seems lost, hunkered down in his mom's basement, apparently chatting with a bot that vaguely sounds like his boss if you stripped her of all of the bitchy personality that makes her her. He should make fun of the idiot. He wants to.

Distantly, Neil wonders what he looks like right now, having broken into the basement of this idiot's mom's house seeking... help...

Wolf's footsteps are moving above, accompanied by a couple of yips from the Yorkies seeing an unaccompanied stranger. Neil scoffs.

"She never cared for you. She's never going to care for you," what is meant to sound like ridicule comes out way too mean and meaningful to be actual ridicule. It comes out angry, and once more MacDarragh is unsure who these words are meant for. If maybe somehow they are indirectly meant for Cade - because he can't talk to the fucker directly right now - the gangster has long left the basement anyway.

The hitman's lips twist into a harsh grimace. Reaching out to grab the collar, he doesn't take it from Rory immediately. Instead, with a harsh tug, the hitman pulls Vivien's golden goose forward only to snarl right in his irritating greasy little face. He doesn't care about cold sores or whatever when he hisses out, "We were never here, Rory. And if I find out you told Vivien - the actual flesh and blood one and not the fake one that talks to you while you jerk off into a sock - if I find out you told her anything to the contrary, I'm going to make you wish you were never born."

Not that he could know if Rory told Vivien anything. Even if he did, it would be too late. MacDarragh threatens the rat anyway. Illusion of control, illusion of control.

When the fuck did he lose control?

Was it the day Cade dug him out of the collapsing tower or was it years ago, when Vivien took over TreaTech and made it her purpose to fuck him over, to bar him from seeing their guardian without supervision. Even before that... has he ever really had any control, over anything? Shit, this is the type of moronic, useless garbage that would make Finch say he "sounds like Damien". Somehow, in the middle of all of the shit happening, that idea cuts deeper than it should.

With a pull of a still-wet hand MacDarragh wrenches the collar out of the scientist's grasp so harshly he hopes the leather leaves a mark. It certainly squeaks in his tightening grip as he rushes up the stairs, not caring for the noise that he's making despite Rory's mom supposedly being back soon. If the kid has any common sense behind that panicked weaselly stare of his he won't be phoning Viv but his mother instead, telling her that maybe she should stay out for a little while longer. No particular reason why, of course.

Cade has just stepped out from the front door when Neil catches up. Jaw clenched, he stares at the man's nape (he's been staring at a few too many people looking away from him recently), and all he can think about is the gangster leaping out of a skyscraper to run away from him. He's had others run away from him in terror, but never in this context. He's never allowed it to be in this context, precisely because it's such a stupid context and Neil has to wonder how the fuck he landed himself in it.

And, as if he didn't have more than enough problems already, he has to wonder why the fuck Cadence is being all mopey. He wishes he knew. He probably knows, but that doesn't make it any less understandable. It just makes him angrier. The hitman steps out onto the porch, muscles in his arms tensing.

It happens suddenly.

The collar doesn't fit Cade's neck too snugly as Neil loops it around it from behind, but with a relentless grip he pulls it until the gangster is pressed firmly to his chest, leather digging into jugular just enough to put him on the receiving end of the suffocation play he seems to enjoy so much. There is some pleasure to be derived from the surprised sound that leaves Wolf's throat at the movement. MacDarragh can say it's payback for the kidnapping(s), for all the decisions Wolf has made that he can pretend are the reason for upending his life like this hasn't been building up for years in one form or another.

This just feels like a particularly shitty form.

The bristles of Cade's hair rub against the side of his face when he leans to hiss in his ear, frustrated breath coming out in a puff of condensation in the cold air, "Where do you think you're going, Cadence? What the fuck happened to "I'm not leaving you again", huh?"

It's ridiculous to be holding Cade back on the porch of Rory's mom's house. Their business here is done, and he can't logically know that Cade is leaving, but he knows that Cade is leaving. Fucker didn't even look at him as a goodbye. Acting like somehow he's the only one that's gotten the short end of the stick in all of this, fuck!

I debased myself for your sake, you asshole.

Three times. That's what Neil wants to say. In front of increasingly embarrassing people. Instead, he tightens the hold on the collar to cut off more of Cade's airflow despite having just asked him questions.

Even in this position, Neil can see how the movement distort the faded ink of the tattoo adorning the man's neck. He likes that tattoo. Has liked it since day one. In some ways, it's the first thing that stood out seeing Cade at the bar. At this point he's touched it many times, yet ever once has he gotten a reaction like the one Rory just did.

Reaching around to wrap his fingers around one of Cade's wrists, Neil moves to twist it, "What the fuck is up with that tattoo?"
 
The circumstances to his situation are unique, but they're not anything he hasn't experienced before. In fact, taking your first deep breath after leaving a situation, house or bad company has gotta be a pretty common thing.
Squeezing back tears might be exclusively what little kids do, but he feels them making his eyes hot regardless.

Has he ever felt this shitty? A used condom at least did it's purpose and did it well, probably. What does that make him?
He isn't even halfway down the porch when he's hooked, like a failing performer being yanked off stage to spare everyone the shit show.

Suffocation can be something a person fights for minutes, but Neil knows exactly what he's doing, just how to hold him. There's no darkness, not yet, instead colors go bright and creamy and warm in blots and splotches. The storm mutes to a buzzing, humming in his ear like cicada in summer.

So he fights it because he can't just take it. Finch was right about him and if anything's changed it's that Cade doesn't fight tooth and nail to prove how big and tough he is.
He struggles, sure, but it's to say he did.

"Where do you think you're going, Cadence? What the fuck happened to "I'm not leaving you again'."

That hits him in the crotch at the same time it sours in his chest. Maybe it's the pitch of that voice electroshocking his brain via his ear, or maybe it's the solid frame along his back. Neil could do whatever he wanted to him, he really could, and every possible scenario makes it all worse.
Had Kaden noticed?
If the too-much-pain of losing a tooth hadn't extinguished every thought in his brain he wouldn't have been able to stand without everyone seeing.

Wouldn't that have been funny; Neil arguing Cade's independence and fighting for his freedom and he sees that? It'd be so fuckin' funny.
So naturally, Cade starts crying. You'd think his brain would be preoccupied with not dying, but its not. It's really not.
Disgusting freak. Rory's blistering lip comes to mind, oozing and inflammed and who would ever love him except his own mother?

The tears are itchy and hot, so he turns his face from the nightmarish horror of it all and consequentially tightens the noose, the literal dog collar around his neck. The pressure in his skull builds at the same time he starts drifting from the feelings in his body altogether. Just a passenger.
The leather biting into his skin, the cold bits of metal scolding him. Neil holding one end tight like a leash. All viewed from a distance.

Yeah, he's a fuckup and no one will ever want to be around him, but that all feels far away.

Now it is getting dark, pulsating around the edges of his vision and filling in and it's okay.
He doesn't notice his hand's been grabbed until it's twisted. Just discomfort, with the promise of pain.
And he wishes he could see Neil, see how mean he looks. He wishes this wasn't happening, but he'll think about it forever.
The collar shrinks the moan into a snotty breath, eyes rolling back as he shifts his feet, finds his balance on shaky legs he can't feel.

Tighter, tighter, tight...

He hangs there in comatose, a moment of death stretched out forever until all at once the collar relaxes it's teeth and the world comes back like a punch across his face.
Neil said something, a while back, and he's too embarrassed to ask him to repeat so he's one second away from telling him to fuck off instead when his brain catches up with his ears.

"Take a wild fuckin' guess," he spits hoarsely with as much venom as he can because anger has always been easier. What if someone drives by? What if Rory's mom comes home now? Fuck.
The collar buckles tink to this cryptic response, sharp and shiny like a question that doesn't care much about the answer. This time he does struggle, for real because he can't do this. Not after tonight. The noose tightens up again and Neil twists his wrist and the pain corrals him in, pitifully not enough and too much.

It builds like a pot of boiling water, if the pot exploded once it reached its peak.
Well, Cade has. Neil has.
The force of the struggle starts with an accidental hip thrust and ends with Cade tripping over what he generously wants to say is ice but is probably air and landing on his ass in the crusty snow covered porch.

Breathing ragged, head rushing he snaps, "You can't fucking fix me!"

He grabs a handful of scratchy snow to throw it ineffectively into Neil's shins. It makes a dry wap kind of sound.
Despite their condition, his wrist throbs in a hot, swollen way that makes it feel bigger than the one that wasn't twisted to hell. His throat too, each swallow a grating thing. Neil towers over him, flickering Christmas lights turning him red...green...red...green...
Angrily he rubs at his eyes.
"He threw me away and I just came crawling back! He shot me. I'm that fucking stupid, Neil. Finch is right. Everything he said about me is true."

He sniffles, not a cute one but a snotty one.

"I'm stupider than Rory, man," he says with a thumb to the door where it's wreath is hanging on for dear life. "Fucking Rory!"

He wishes that cat statue was still here to give a good kick to.
Instead he cups some snow but it's just to press to his heated face, which is about as helpful as dowsing out a forest fire with a squirt gun. It's another 'worst night of his life' and he and his body are walking in opposite directions and he hates himself for it.
"But at least he's just a kid with a crush. I...I dunno what I have. It's not love, I know that. It's so much worse than that. So just...fuck off!" He barks, tossing the snowy handful aside to point down the porch steps as if he won't have to fuck off himself eventually. But...not right away.
"I can't fight right now. And you're going to leave afterwards anyway so just go already! You saw, you bought second hand garbage. Good for you, you have a heart, but I don't need your useless pity. I can't believe there's something worse than Damien's pity, but there is and it's pity from a narcissistic chucklehead with a superiority complex! You fucking imposter."
 
'Narcissistic chucklehead with a superiority complex' is creative but far from the worst thing Neil has been called before, especially from someone lying on the ground in front of him crying their eyes out. Being called an imposter, on the other hand? Now that is a new one. Sure, 'liar' or 'fraud' have been lobbed at him and he's never considered them insults (the opposite, really), but somehow this feels different.

Maybe it's the fact that it's coming from Cade. Maybe it's the fact that the word 'imposter' brings with itself certain connotations, and not even necessarily about deceiving others - about wearing someone else's skin, about stealing an identity.

It makes Neil scoffs, a mean disbelieving sound.

... If everything Finch said is true like Wolf claims, is it true then that what draws him to him is some resemblance to the Butcher? Is that it? Did he expect him to be like his bitch ex-boss only to find out he's not exactly like him? And somehow he's being sulky over that?

No, that's not what the gangster means. Neil realizes that logically, yet once the idea gets birthed in his head it immediately sinks it's sharp teeth deep into the gray matter of his brain. Because it's not entirly false, isn't it? Neural pathways spark with the irritation, and fingers dig into palms to form fists as anger and something else - something worse - twist in his chest. A painful, burning sensation. Not unlike getting shot.

"Изиграо си ме будалу..." the words spill out of Neil's mouth nearly thoughtlessly as his eyes stare down at the heap that is the man fallen ass-first onto the porch, illuminated by Christmas lights. They stare at the tattoo on his neck, a permanent brand of ownership apparently Finch put there. Because of course Finch has his grubby fingerprints all over this part of Cadence too - the part that earned him his nickname. Neil liked that tattoo.

Jебати!

MacDarragh isn't the type to be a backup choice, not the type to play second fiddle. Not to anyone, not ever! Except maybe for Vivien, his beloathed "sister". Years the two spent undermining one another to win over their guardians approval, yet that is past history, old if not forgotten grudges. What fucking right does the Butcher have to make him feel like she did back then?

What right does Cade have to make him feel like this?

The hitman snarls. Harshly the sole of his shoe presses right in the middle of Wolf's chest, like back in the showerhouse, though this time it's not to steal the man's body warmth for his own. There is a subtle, barely contained strain in MacDarragh's voice as he utters, "You of all people are telling me you can't fight right now? Would you like to just lie down there and have me walk all over you then?"

Would Neil like that?

In the rhythmically interchanging red-green lights Cade's wet eyes glisten with hurt, but with something else too. MacDarragh can feel the man squirm underneath his foot and that only makes him reaffirm the pressure, yet not enough to have the gangster lying back fully. Merely enough to keep him in place. Neil has always enjoyed domineering over others. There is a vicious satisfaction that comes from putting something into submission, especially if that something is a challenge. However, that's when it comes down to fighting. This, on the other hand? Much like Cadence, he doesn't know what this is. He doesn't know if he would like it.

Inhaling, Neil raises his chin. When he speaks it's in near contemplation, "I could beat you so badly you forget he ever touched you. Forget he ever existed."

At least that he knows he would certainly like - posses this man fully, body and mind, by replacing every single fucking sensation Finch has caused him with one of his own. But better. Then the tattoo will be a mere decoration.
The pressure he's keeping on Cade's chest releases slightly, only for Neil to slide his foot down the man's abdomen. Then further down. He doesn't break eye contact, "Let's make some things very clear."

Raising his left hand, the hitman's pinky unfurls from his fist, "You don't get to tell me what I can or cannot do."

If he wanted to he could fucking "fix" him, whatever that's supposed to mean. Shit, if he wanted to he could make him worse. Much, much worse.

Next his index finger unfurls too, "You don't get to tell me when I'm leaving or not."

There is the thought that maybe he should cut his loses and run. After all, he still could leave the city, alone, now that Rory has procured a replacement collar. But the assumption Cade is making when he is the fucker than left him originally pisses MacDarragh off so much he would stick around even out of sheer spite. Plus, he bought this guy out not just for shits and giggles, despite the gangster's preposterous and dramatic assertion that he has a heart or whatever, "I'll remind you I had demands, Cadence. Ones you decided to conveniently ignore."

Lastly and proudly, his middle finger stands to join the other two as the snarl from earlier returns to permeate his words, "And don't ever- EVER compare me to Damien."

"You think this is pity? Don't be ridiculous. You're the one that pities himself, Mr "I'm secondhand garbage". Идиот," it's so frustrating. Cade truly is the stupidest man he's ever met. He's not stupid, but he's also the stupidest. Bending at his knee a fraction, Neil leans further to loom over the gangster, "How about you think with your head for once. The one on your shoulders, not the one downstairs. When the fuck have I ever pitied you?"
 
It's a fucking nightmare.

Not in the way most of this December has gone; that's been a disaster, but not a nightmare.
This, though, it fits that description to a 'T'. Cade's not naked in front of a roomful of people while his teeth fall out, but it isn't too far off.

The snow drags across his hand like little razors as he resists the weight on his chest, then gives into it. He knows Neil doesn't like that, and he hasn't decided if he should be enticing him or not. He trapped between wanting to please him, and hating him for what he does to Cade and wanting to end this for good, even if that just leaves him alone. And he's not good alone.
MacDarragh's drags lower, swiping muddy snow down his chest, stomach...there.
He squeezes down the sound that's clawing through his belly to pour out, and feels so hot even sitting in snow.
The cat Cade kicked into the snowbank comes to mind, back bowed to have its spine stepped on.
Logically he knows there'd be a point in the beating where pain would just be pain, that he'd beg and cry for it to stop as long as he was conscious and coherent enough to do it. He knows that, but the way Neil describes blotting out Kaden's footprints by kicking in his own makes Cade's skin tingle.
What the fuck did he ever do to deserve this?

MacDarragh's native language sprinkles into this blood chilling speech and Cade knows he isn't going to die because Neil wouldn't lecture him if he was going to kill him, but it feels like he's feeling at that edge again. Groping in the dark for the end of his life.

His breath comes in small and quick, like a rodent's. He thinks he's stopped crying, only to feel the wind bite into a fresh track. Neil's eyes disappear in the green, then pop back against the red like they glow all on their own.

"When?" He asks, and his voice feels small. Neil gives him time to breathe, time for the panic and fucked feelings this man stabs into him with every smile to wane. The haze clears like smoke.
He sits up, but he doesn't know what to do about the boot being where it shouldn't be; if he moves it first he can act like he isn't a pathetic piece of shit but this'll never happen again.
He'll never be this high, this low.

Thus the thesis to this whole jumbled thing comes into focus.

"That's what this whole thing has been about!" He cries, and the heat and the heart make his voice shrill and stupid.
"Why else have you stayed around this long?! Unless you find this whole thing funny to watch, I don't get it. You're going to stand there with your fucking-" he sighs hard at his lap, and feels a little bit more of himself chip away, even though it's funny, "...And act like you still want me after everything? Especially to help with your dad- guardian?"
 
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