0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
I took this prompt and ran with it. Like OMG… I ran. I ran so far away. I just ran! I ran all night and day— (is shot)
I also took liberties with their ages a bit. Malik is 2 years older than Altair and Altair is only 1 year older than Kadar. (begs forgiveness) But this IS AU.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
BACK STORY;
I wrote this with these ideas in mind…
Malik and Altair are Syrian, Malik's parents immigrated to the US from separate cities to attend college where they met, fell in love and married. A year later Malik was born, and three years after that Kadar. When Malik is fifteen their mother passes from a brain hemorrhage after a blow to the head while shopping. (Which she'd dismissed because it really wasn't a very hard blow at all.) Their father doesn't take her loss well at all and falls into a severe depression leaving Malik to practically raise and support him and his younger brother. Despite his grades, his lack of faithful attendance gets Malik held back a year where he meets Altair.
Altair's mother was born in the US, got pregnant at a young age and ran away out of shame. He was raised by her, living in cheap tenements and halfway houses until he was nine years old, when she died of ovarian cancer. He was adopted at age ten by a police officer and his wife and their four other children.
Altair ends up going to the same high school as Malik and Kadar because of this.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask.
Giovanni Auditore and his brother own and run a successful private bank in downtown Chicago. While vacationing in Italy he meets and falls in love with Maria and after extending his vacation by almost six months, she and Giovanni get married and spend the first three years of their marriage between Italy and Chicago. When their first son Federico is born they settle down in Chicago and spend most of their time in one another's presence.
Ethan Miles comes from a low income family in Ohio. He moved first to Columbus in search of work, where instead he ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and abandoning her. He moves to Chicago to escape the responsibility, but ten and a half months later she shows up at his door and dumps a newborn on him. They try unsuccessfully to 'make it work' but in the end she leaves him to care for his infant son. He's not a very good father, he never wanted kids, and even though he loves Desmond, his selfishness and impatience shows in the almost spiteful way he treats his son some times. Pounding home lessons Desmond is much too young to learn.
When Desmond is ten years old Ethan manages to get a job as a janitor in the Audutore's bank and frequently has to hide his son in the janitor's break room on weekends when he works. Desmond though, is a terribly curious child, and often leaves the break room to wander around.
One day he gets stuck in an elevator, where he meets Giovanni's second son Ezio, who had also been running around and the two of them end up becoming very good friends.
Giovanni works things around and manages to get Desmond accepted to the private school Ezio attends, and because his family's happiness and wellbeing means so much to him, he even pays for it too.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Chapter 1; The Boy
He'd seen the same thing happen before. Dozens of times actually, and most usually it ended in a morgue over a cold, dead body.
Altair had not wanted to be a private investigator. At age ten he'd been adopted into a family of policemen and former Marines. Being a cop or a soldier was his dream from that moment on. Growing up in Chicago made very little else an interest to him, aside from music. Dear God did he like music, but that was beside the point.
At eighteen he'd enlisted, right out of high school, and at nineteen he'd been discharged from duty because of a nasty little mishap in the Middle East on his first tour involving two fellow translators, a thug, a car bomb and a lot of ego. After that police work was out of the question. Altair suffered from, PTSD. It made him too paranoid, introverted and trigger happy, he couldn't bear to let himself close to a gun again.
That had been almost three years ago, and after his return Altair's adoptive father had hit him with a heavy dose of humility, promptly throwing him out of the family home, leaving him to fend for himself on the streets for a year and a half.
Malik, bless him, after a bitter feud that lasted almost two years, had recently done something Altair hadn't believed him capable of.
He'd forgiven him, and offered him a small office/apartment in the building he owned and ran his print shop from, and somehow, through twisting and who knew what favors he'd had to call in, he'd managed to help Altair get his PI's license.
And over the last year Altair had seen things through his work with the police that reminded him too keenly of the short term he and the other man had shared overseas.
While Malik prayed, the rhythmic chanting almost like a song across the hall, Altair stared out the window and tried to will the memories of chattering gunfire and smoke from his mind, tried to forget the stench of scorched flesh and the screams of anguish from Malik's dying little brother as he'd bled out, despite the medic's best efforts.
And his newest case?
Well, that didn't help matters at all.
A kidnapping, one of many in the last few months, this time two twelve-year-old boys had been snatched while they walked to school.
The boys' respective parents had done the unthinkable when they'd received phone calls from the kidnappers. "We want a million in small bills delivered to this occasion by five thirty tomorrow, or you'll never see these kids alive again."
What had the parents done?
They'd emptied their bank accounts and attempted to deal with this without fuss, without bringing in the police and angering the bastards.
Five thirty came around, Giovanni Auditore and Ethan Miles waited, and sure enough, a man appeared, his face hooded, eyes dark, and took the two cases of cash, tossing to the two worried fathers a single key to a shabby hotel near Chicago Midway Airport—
That lead to a completely empty room wherein they found two Polaroid photos of their sons, bound and gagged with knives to their throats.
"A million each…"
Airport security cameras showed no sign of the kids. And the hotel's security video was conveniently missing.
The families informed the police, the police did their jobs… And now, two days later, without further word from the kidnappers, and no leads whatsoever, the 'Rescue' had been switched to 'Recovery' and the police were dredging the river, diving in the lake off the docks.
And Giovanni Auditore had given Altair a phone call.
Well, he would have talked to Altair, if Altair hadn't been out shopping at the moment. As it was Malik answered the phone, took a note and left it pinned to Altair's door with a kitchen knife.
The next day he met with the two families and stared at photos of the boys; Ezio, a cocky looking little kid in a soccer uniform, grinning impishly at the camera, his hair sticking up in a breeze that must have been blowing when the photo was taken. And Desmond, a skinny little kid with a grin too wide for his face and what looked like, from the way his hands were blurred in the photo, a mild case of ADHD.
Maria, Giovanni's wife, spoke only Italian, and spent most of the meeting sobbing into her husband's shoulder. Giovanni's face was full of regret, his eyes puffy and red as he told Altair everything he knew, begging him to please find his son.
Ethan Miles, on the other hand, was a single father, his son's mother having left him when the boy was still in diapers. He worked in the Auditore's private bank as a janitor, and although he wasn't close with Ezio's family, their sons had been friends. Ezio helping Desmond with his math, Desmond helping with Ezio's spelling. Playing video games, watching movies, running around in the park; things young boys did.
Ethan Miles was a calm man, Altair for some reason pictured him as an alcoholic who didn't really spend much time with his son. The man's eyes almost dead looking, he also happened to be a realist.
When Giovanni had to take his wife out of the room to calm her, Ethan said in a quiet voice, face turned to the floor; "I know this isn't going to end well. It never does… J-just promise me." He looked up then and there was a fierce almost painful light in his eyes. "Promise me you'll make those bastards pay."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Altair had contacts in the city. Friends he'd made in the time he'd lived on the streets after his father had kicked him out, as well as family friends that despite what had happened, still held a place for him in their hearts.
Within four hours of meeting with the Auditore parents and Ethan Miles he had a lead.
A homeless man who Altair knew as Marvin, had talked to a woman who'd been collecting cans on the very street the two boys were snatched from, and after a beer and a Subway sandwich, he instructed the younger man where to find her.
When Altair approached the woman she was sitting beside some garbage cans with a plush cat in her lap, cradling it and singing to it as if it were a baby.
"That's a nice cat… What's its name?"
The woman looked up at him with a deadpan expression on her dirty face. "It's a toy you nimrod…" And she went back to singing to it.
"Oh… Sorry." He scratched under the collar of his shirt and cleared his throat; "Listen, Marvin told me you were gathering up some cans two streets over, near the river, last week."
"Maybe… My memory isn't so good anymore, and the letters on street signs always did laugh at me, so I try not to look at them." She tucked the cat into a rather large purse on her arm and climbed to her feet. "You a cop or something?" She raised a dark eyebrow at him.
"No, Ma'am… I'm a Private Investigator." He walked cautiously forward, movements slow as he pulled the two photos of the boys from his pocket. "You haven't seen either of these boys, have you?"
She took one look at the photos and smiled. Cooing like a new mother. "Oh, yes, I remember THAT ONE!" She pointed to Ezio's photo then started digging around in her purse.
Altair stepped back warily.
She pulled out a plastic baggy with two half eaten cookies inside. "He passes by here on his way to school, always gives me his lunch!" She patted the cookies and hid them quickly back in her purse. "He's such a nice boy… Is he sick? I haven't seen him, or his little friend in a long time." She rubbed her stomach.
Altair felt his chest ache; "Where did you see him?"
She carefully shuffled to the mouth of the alley, peering out as if something might see her, squinted around left and right, then with a happy little 'AH!' She pointed to the left toward the corner.
"He and the other boy stopped there after giving me the sandwich and the cookies…" She paused, her face scrunching up as if deep in thought and turned to Altair with wide eyes. "A man was there already. Dressed a lot like you, only in black… Then a van pulled to the corner and picked them and the man up… That man wasn't supposed to do that was he…" She mumbled to herself for a few seconds, giving a quick twitch of her head on her neck. "Oh, dear… I'm in trouble now, aren't I?" She looked up at Altair with fearful eyes a hand to each cheek.
"No, no… You're actually being a big help… Would you mind telling the police what you told me?"
She shifted away from him for a few seconds. "Not the bad police… If they're blue like you, then I will… But the red ones give me the willies."
He paused, blinking at her, and nodded, pulling out his cell phone and dialing quickly.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Barely three hours later the woman, she swore she didn't remember her name but they could call her whatever they wanted because they were blue and not red, had told the police exactly what she'd seen… And then she was promptly taken to the hospital and admitted because the ID in her purse matched with a missing persons report filed almost a year ago, and it turns out she had a mild case of schizophrenia.
And despite the fact Altair knew in his heart she was telling the truth, despite the fact most of the cops knew she was telling the truth, they couldn't qualify her as a reliable source because of her illness without hard proof.
So, Altair talked with the officers who'd heard her statement, and they went in search of the other end of her lead, 'to disprove it' they'd assured, though at the same time they hoped.
Sure enough, a street view camera mounted on the front of a jewelry store half a block away caught the hazy outline in the upper right corner of its feed, of exactly what the woman had said she'd seen.
An indistinct form in black standing on the street corner as the two boys appeared and waited for the light on the opposite side of the street to indicate it was safe to walk.
A van pulled up, the back door opened and two men hopped out, one grabbing Ezio, the other Desmond. Within three seconds the boys were gone.
More security cameras, more seemingly useless footage, and then; four blocks to the east, that same van making an illegal right hand turn. And then they'd hit pay dirt.
Seven consecutive cameras with crystal clear footage of the driver, the passenger, and even Ezio's little hand as he struggled in the back of the van.
It was obvious it was Ezio, because there were only so many kids in Chicago who wore watches that were that fucking expensive.
The van headed east to the very hotel the threatening photos of the two boys had been found.
But, now they had faces…
And with faces, came names.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
It took less than twenty-four hours for a hit.
Twenty-four hours and Altair was in a police cruiser with a young man, barely two years his senior heading to pick up one of the kidnappers. It was quick work. Simply walking up behind him in a Starbucks and slapping him in cuffs.
Twenty minutes later he was in a private room with two rather unsavory cops Altair found himself shying away from.
Of course, he shied away from most people truthfully, everyone except Malik, or Malik's girlfriend Hadiya, and that was only because the woman made excellent traditional foods, especially wharich ayeneb, just the smell was somehow able to coax him from his room long enough to sit hunched over his food, eating quickly and quietly to Malik's right. She was a smart woman, but she seemed to want the two of them to get along more than anything, and Altair didn't want to crush that dream by telling her that he couldn't, that looking at Malik sometimes made him want to drop to his knees and die.
Altair felt like that now, watching the two burly cops in the interrogation room shouting and showing photos to the man sitting there, his head dropped onto the tabletop, saying over and over that he hadn't seen the boys since he'd driven the van, and if they wanted to find them they had to talk to Rodrigo.
Rodrigo was the one to orchestrate it all, Rodrigo that rat, had lied to them all.
"It was supposed to be quick! Grab the kids, get the money, leave them in the hotel!" The man finally broke down. "W-we weren't even supposed to talk to the little brats! Just keep the paper bags over their heads and wait until we had the confirmation that the cash was in hand!" He stomped and banged his head violently on the table top; "FUCK! He lied to us all!"
Barely two minutes later the man was sobbing as he wrote a rather detailed confession and accepted a plea bargain in front of his state appointed attorney. He'd go away for five years, as payment for his confession, and would be on five more years parole instead of five more in prison as a thank you for naming his accomplices.
By midnight, four of the six men were behind bars, and Altair was walking quickly down the street to the bus stop to catch the eleven fifty-five home, then the twelve-forty-five back because he was NOT eating those shit doughnuts at the precinct, nor was he drinking that sludge they called coffee.
He'd been spoiled on Hadiya's cooking over the last year, even if it was cold leftovers in the fridge, or a kabob she'd put in the microwave for him it would be better than doughnuts and 'coffee'.
Hell, he'd even be happy with some of her bread and a damn juice box.
And that's when hands shot out of the alley to his left, am arm going around his neck, the other stabbing him quickly in the shoulder with a hypodermic.
He cursed and flailed, jabbing his attacker twice in the ribs with his elbow, and even as his hands started going numb and his vision blurring, he grabbed fingers, bending them backward, satisfied darkly inside when the bones snapped like dry twigs. Another twist, forcing the man's arm behind his back, POP, a quick little jab to the elbow and the bone shattered.
He managed to stumble three steps toward the street before he went down. First to his knees, then to his face.
His cheek cracked against the concrete, and his vision became quickly distorted, colors dancing.
Blue and red and yellow and white…
Tires screeched, and a man jumped out, running forward. Voices distorted as if through water.
"He broke… arm! MY ARM!"
Someone kicked him solidly in the ribs, and he rolled a few feet, coming to stop on his back staring up into a streetlight, blinking dazedly as his pupils dilated.
"Are you sure…guy?"
"YES… Stupid… damn PI Auditore hired… I'm gonna kill… fucking kid!"
A shadow loomed over him, thin, and wreathed in eerily vivid crimson, and then a boot crashed down on his face and everything went black.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0