Note: Thanks to Leviathan for the wonderful beta.
Kelly follows his brooding partner out of the bar. If it were any other cat, he'd have offered him a drink. Several stiff ones. But the man walking silently out the door ahead of him isn't any other cat—he's Scotty.
He knows he's going to be shot down, but he has to make the effort. "Scotty…"
"Leave it, man." His partner's facial muscles get that tight look about them, his mouth in a flat line like some kinda statue. Kelly stows it. When Scotty gets like that, Kelly might as well be trying to get answers from the Oracle of Delphi. At least they say that used to give answers, once upon a time. Not his partner, though. Not when he gets that wall up, that Private–No Trespassing look on his face. Kelly's mom may have died young, but she didn't raise no fool; he knows better than to try.
Instead of going back to the hotel room, Scotty turns out into the street and starts walking. Feeling a little like an annoying tag-a-long kid brother, Kelly trails after him. It's clear his partner doesn't want to talk, but Kelly can live with that. Scotty hasn't actually told him to get lost yet, which is as good as an engraved invitation.
The night air is warm-clammy, like a sweaty hand on one's body, laden with the dampness of the ubiquitous, stifling Hong Kong humidity. The slick asphalt shines, reflecting the lights from the closed store windows, and he can't tell whether the streets are damp from rainfall or whether it's condensation from the waterlogged air that always sticks their clothes to them and lies upon them like a muffling, heavy blanket. Kelly follows Scotty along the silver-glistening sidewalk. He matches his partner's stride, purposeful as always, the tap-tap-tap of their footsteps bouncing off the buildings in the silence of the sleeping city. Their firm tread, Kelly knows, is enough to scare off any hunters of the night, the predators that cling to the underbelly of big cities everywhere and emerge after dark, lurking in the shadows for their next victim.
Scotty, Kelly thinks, doesn't walk like a victim. Nor does Kelly, striding at Scotty's side, feigning confidence, for all the world as if he knows where the hell he's going.
He's pretty sure Scotty hasn't a clue, either.
He steals another glance at the set, serious face, half-hidden in shadow, and wonders what the hell's going on in Scotty's head. Seeing him in this state, hurrying along silently, blindly, purposefully, going nowhere, is giving Kelly an attack of the weirds. The girl, he thinks, it must be the girl. Doesn't matter what line of bull Scotty fed him, he must have fallen for that girl or he wouldn't be in this bad a state. But no—Kelly comes up short—Scotty's said unequivocally that he hasn't, and Kelly knows his partner wouldn't flat-out lie to him. To himself, maybe?
He keeps pace with Scotty, knowing better than to probe, or ask him again. His partner's redoubled his pace, almost at a run now, and Kelly's fractional height advantage is keeping him from jogging, barely. They come to a red light, but Scotty hardly hesitates before surging across the road, picking up more and more speed. Kelly refrains from muttering that he'll get them killed; there's not a living soul around and virtually no traffic, and if Scotty notices he's there, he may ask him to leave.
They turn a corner into a main thoroughfare, the neon lights of the closed business establishments laying fleeting patches of color across the grim, dark face. The progression of blue, yellow, green, violet, chasing across his partner's features in faster and faster succession, isn't nearly enough for Kelly to make out the details of Scotty's expression, to try and figure out what's got him so uptight. All he can see is a face rigidly set, lips tightly pressed together, eyes front, a man on a military exercise. If it isn't that the girl got under his skin, then… then it really is just that Sir Galahad over there, puffing away next to him like a freight train, is crushed that he couldn't pull off a King Arthur-type rescue. It's not as though Kelly didn't have a ringside seat: Scotty wanted to save her – to whisk her away from this life of sin, or whatever they call it nowadays. And instead he's had it shoved in his face, the hard, sad truth that some people can't be saved.
Kelly will never, ever tell Scotty, but the fact remains he can't fault Angel's logic. She's figured out where it's at, that's all. What did Captain Marvel over there think he was going to save her for, take her home to? Some people aren't cut out for a white picket fence and kids; they do what they have to do until they're too old to do it any more, and that's all.
Scotty ought to know that by now.
Hell, Kelly knows that, and he only listened to their conversation with one ear—he was busy holding two guns on two sets of gangsters, thanks for asking—but he can tell that Angel, like him, knows the score. She knows that even if they did get her back to the US and dry her out, detox her, whatever the hell they call it, pretty girls with pretty voices are a dime a dozen in any big city, and she'd end up competing with a vastly larger pool of potential singer-mistresses to seedy nightclub owners, not to mention that, unlike Ramon, not too many white or Latin guys stateside would get together with a Negro girl. Oh, Kelly gets where she's coming from, but good luck getting Scotty to see it. Where do washed-up has-beens go? Nowhere a knight in shining armor would understand.
Kelly notices he's definitely running now, jogging alongside Scotty, who's in a runner's stance, pounding the pavement, face still set, exhaling a little huff at every step. Kelly tucks his elbows in, resigning himself to a late-night workout on top of a damned exhausting day. It wouldn't be so bad if he could talk to Scotty, get through the ten-foot wall of silence he's built around himself. He doesn't put up that damned wall often, but Kelly hates it every single time. He doesn't like it when Scotty goes away like this. Leaves him alone. It's kinda cold, and damned unsettling. It feels even worse after the scare Kelly's had, not knowing whether they already hurt Scotty, or even if he'd find his captured partner alive or…
He dismisses the useless instant of remembered fear. If the girl really is the cause of Scotty's funk, he wishes he could convince his partner that Angel will be okay, really; far better for her to be an American abroad, where her talent is a rare commodity, than to end up a homeless hooker in some big city back home. But of course, there's no convincing Scotty of that, this Galahad of his who wanted to lift her up, and Kelly kind of resents the woman—just a dumb, funky loser—for not being strong enough to at least give it a try. Hell, Kelly tries, every day of his life, just so's not to break that pure and idealistic heart. He knows how it hurts Scotty when he can't help someone.
I come from a long line of losers. Whenever I see one, it hurts.
Like a Roman candle, the phrase goes off in Kelly's mind, knocking him off-balance with its implications – Scotty said it before he ever failed to rescue the girl, before she ever rejected his offer. Whatever's eating him, it started before the final failure.
Whenever I see one, it hurts. Kelly's head swivels to focus an intent regard upon the man beside him: the fleeting, silvery glow picks out the occasional plane and angle of his face, but the rest is inky black, all in shadow. He's rigid, pounding along, staring straight ahead, breathing hard, sheened with sweat. What are you running from, Jack? Running to? In the dark, Kelly can't tell whether Scotty's focused, or driven, but he'd give his nonexistent collection of lucky box tops to be able to lift that load, to bear it for him, to help him find whatever he's running towards, to drive away whatever demon he's running from.
It hurts. How 'bout them apples? Scotty never says that kind of thing in the middle of a mission – hell, from torture to gunshot wounds, he hasn't admitted that anything hurts in all the years Kelly's known him. What gives?
And that inexplicable phrase, I come from a long line of losers. Kelly tries to think like a detective, no easy feat while jogging along in this humidity.'Loser' must refer to being an addict, because he knows Scotty isn't shallow enough to think of his mother, or his sister for that matter, as 'losers' just because they aren't rich. Hell, he's never met a woman he admired more than Mom. And Jo is an honor student… A long line, Scotty said, like it meant his whole family. Kelly's never met Russell, Scotty's brother, but he knows he's some kind of professional, and the father's a military man, can't have had anything to do with drugs… so where the hell did that come from? Perhaps—although he doesn't like to think it—his partner has an older relative, an aunt or uncle maybe, who's a drug addict. It happens, even in the best of families… (Not Scotty's, something in him denies it. He's too good for that.) Kelly won't ask Scotty straight out, of course. He won't pry; he'd never pry. Not when prying would get his head bit off. Kelly feels himself warming with a sly, internal smile. He's not a super-spy with a secret decoder ring for nothing. He does have some James Bond tricks up his sleeve. Why pry when you can write and ask Mom?
He can't tell how much later it is that his left knee starts to twinge. It's been building for a while; he's mostly been able to ignore it, but now each thud against the sidewalk sends a sickening jolt up his leg. Normally, he'd just tell Scotty, "Hey, ease up a bit there, Captain Marvel," or "I know you're a track star, but the talent scouts went home an hour ago," or any one of a dozen quips, but he doesn't know who this silent stranger is or what he's done with his partner, so he shuts up and keeps going, trying to suppress the involuntary grunt as he pounds the pavement.
They turn another corner into a residential street, and are suddenly confronted with a glaringly lit, dragon-encrusted, stucco-ornamented architectural monstrosity. There are fuchsia and orange accent lights on the balcony, rearing horses on the rooftop, stone lions and dragons and dancing-girls everywhere there is to put statues, bonsai and plastic flowers and gilt and lacquered gates, and to top it off, Look-how-Rich-I-Am floodlights, so as not to deprive the 0.00246% of the population awake at this insane hour of the opportunity of admiring the owner's opulence.
"Hey—" Troubles pushed aside by the amusing vulgarity, Kelly turns to catch Scotty's eye, to say something funny about what passes for taste in some people's heads—
—but then Scotty's jogging form happens to turn towards the bright bulbs; the glaring light floods across him full-face, and reveals what the darkness concealed. Confusion and sorrow fill his partner's lost, sad eyes, making the hardened agent's set features seem incongruously young and vulnerable, like a kid with his brave face on.
It's not an expression he's ever seen on Scotty's face before. Aw, man. Kelly closes his fool mouth with a snap, looking away in shock, feeling like he just intruded on something private. No way can Scotty have wanted him to see this. He shouldn't have tagged along, he thinks guiltily. He shouldn't be here.
And yet, something keeps him from leaving.
Jogging past the architectural monstrosity with no comment, he keeps pace with Scotty, even though his knee is really starting to give him trouble. He thinks he's been holding up pretty well, until he hits another broken curb. He pitches forward, tries to tuck and roll to one side to protect his left leg, miscalculates, and ends up pinwheeling over and over in a spectacular fall.
He lies still for a moment, dragging in air, then gets his elbows under him, struggling to a seated position, leaning back on his hands. He has to get up, to get going. He gets one knee under him, deciding whether to bend the bad one and rise on the good one, or spare himself the pain and risk putting his weight on the…
A pair of feet walk back to him, and he looks up at Scotty, standing over him, breathing hard. For a moment, the silent, impassive mask, underlain with that little-boy-lost look, stares down at Kelly, with no trace of the man he knows, and he's flat-out scared. To cover, he snaps, "Well, don't just stand there, Help the Aged!"
Scotty blinks, and Kelly can almost hear an audible click as the distracted eyes focus, the set expression fades, and Scotty's face settles into its usual mild lines. "How's—" Scotty's voice is scratchy, and he clears his throat— "the view from down there?"
Kelly looks up at his partner standing over him, limp with the realization that his Scotty is back. He can see his gentle, easygoing partner now in the blessedly familiar, smiling eyes, and the wash of heartfelt relief brings resentment in its wake. "You know, if I'd known all it would take to get you out of your funk was a few pratfalls, I'd have saved myself the cross-country run and done it hours ago."
Scotty tut-tuts softly. "You don't got the depth of comic talent, man."
"I'll give you comic talent." He struggles to rise. "Soon as I can move, I'm gonna give you that punch in the mouth I owe ya."
Scotty extends a hand. Kelly reaches out, about to take it, then is again confronted with the problem of which knee to give precedence. Deciding to bend the good one, he takes a firm grip on the bad one and reaches for Scotty's hand…
…which is no longer there, mainly because its owner is now kneeling before him. "Now what?" Scotty says lightly, but his face is preoccupied as he removes Kelly's hand and palpates the sides of the joint with careful fingers. "I told you those sex tips in Playboy are only for guys under twenty, man."
"Always thinking the worst, Jack," Kelly hisses as Scotty takes his ankle in one hand, braces the back of his injured knee with the other, and carefully extends the leg, "how do you know I wasn't injured in the line of duty?"
It's the wrong thing to say, because he sees the realization hit home. It flares in Scotty's eyes for a second, then he carefully tamps it down and goes back to his gentle examination. "Your leg falling asleep does not count as an injury, Mr. Heroics."
"Ah, you sure know how to hurt a guy."
"You're doing a dandy job of it yourself. Got yourself a nice swelling there. Win some kind of prize. How long were you stuffed into that barrel, anyway?"
"Dunno, two, three hours maybe."
His trainer grimaces, tuts. "Did you change position at all?"
"Have you," Kelly retorts, feeling slightly peeved, "ever tried to share living quarters with a great big scuba tank, being tossed around like a piece of flotsam? Or jetsam, and what is the difference between flotsam and jetsam anyway…"
"I'll take that as a no."
"Oh, I suppose you're going to hold it against me."
"Only thing I'm gonna hold against you is some ice for that knee. Find out if you managed to re-inflame that tendon while you were playing Superman. I told you after the match in Victoria. What part of 'don't stress the left knee' was unclear to your wonderful, wonderful mind?"
The tone is strange. "You can't seriously be blaming me for this!"
"If you'd stayed put—"
"You were the one who called me!"
"They had a gun to my head! Calling you was health insurance! But I never expected you to throw yourself to the wolves like that!"
"Oh, sorry, next time I'll just leave you to the wolves. Lions, tigers, I hear there's some bloodthirsty llamas out there too…"
"Llamas are vegetarian, man," Scotty blurts, then looks into Kelly's eyes. "I thought you were gonna think up a plan to rescue me, not get captured right along with me! And man, I know you got nutty logic and all, y'know, but I don't think getting captured was on your To-Do list!"
"What was I supposed to do? I didn't know where you were being held. I didn't know what kind of time limit they had or what they were gonna do to you." He notices the fleeting grimace, and it unnerves him. "But you're okay, right?"
"Oh, 'course, man."
Kelly sits up, pain forgotten. "There's something. What is it?"
"Nothing! I'm fine!"
"Make with the words, man. What had you rattled just now?"
"Nothing. They didn't get to do anything…" But Kelly doesn't back down, and Scotty looks uncomfortable. "Well, y'see, in the interests of international cooperation, they… they had this bright idea, see, that you might cooperate faster if they, if they cut off an ear and sent it to you. Apparently it's part of their long and rich cultural tradition of kidnapping in the Orient…."
Kelly stares, appalled. Then—Scotty's ears are obviously fine, after all—he finds a lopsided grin. "So whose ear did they cut off?"
Scotty's smile is sudden and genuine. "Nobody's, as it turns out, the hand of Providence having intervened, yes indeedy."
"See, see, the Lord watches over the righteous. And the foolhardy."
"Including suicidal superheroes who go around stuffing… who stuff themselves into barrels." Scotty frowns again. "What were you thinking?"
"I don't know! It was a reflex, all right?"
"Uh, man, reflex is when you, y'know, you got to the doctor's and they hit your knee, see, or when you get burned and you pull your hand away from the stove, stuff like that. But going and welding yourself into a barrel, then arranging to have it thrown off a ferry into open water… that kinda qualifies as premeditated."
"First you say I wasn't thinking, then you say it was premeditated. Make up your mind, Jack!"
"How about if it got lost at sea? Could you have gotten yourself out without a can opener?"
"They wouldn't have let what they thought was their payload get lost at—"
"Could you have opened it from the inside, or just stayed trapped in there," there's a faint tremor in Scotty's voice, "till the air ran out?"
"What do you take me for? Of course I could have opened it!"
"And climbed out, with your legs asleep?"
"…I'm not exactly sure."
"Oh, I like that. He's not sure—"
"Come on, man—"
"Or if—" Scotty's voice is shaking in earnest now. "If they'd turned it upside down by accident, blood rushing to your brain and you wouldn't have had room to turn around, and you'd have stayed upside down for God-knows-how long, given yourself an aneurysm, or maybe landed on your fool neck, or permanently injured your back, or—"
"Jeez, you've been thinking about this!"
"Darn tootin', Einstein! Of course I've been—"
"You wanted me to wait till they cut your ear off?"
"No, I wanted you to engage in a rescue attempt that maybe wouldn't end up in you getting killed, which kinda, y'know, defeats the point? We're supposed to be keeping each other alive here, in case you hadn't noticed!"
"Well, we did just fine on that score, I thought." Kelly makes a show of taking his own pulse. "Still tickin'." He reaches over and places two fingers on Scotty's wrist where it lies on his knee. "Still tick…"
"Knock it off." Scotty bats Kelly's hand away.
"Dobbsie, what's with you?"
"Nothin', man!"
"Don't give me—"
Scotty's voice is rising in anger. "What if they'd decided to just fill you full of holes as soon as you popped up out of that barrel like a go-go girl out of a birthday cake? The wonderfulness of your plan cover that?"
Kelly's still trying to keep calm, light. "Aw, now you're criticizing my plan—"
"I never asked you to go be some kinda human sacrifice!" his partner yells.
"Hey, tough luck, Jack!" Kelly snaps right back. "You know how you're feeling? Right now? How do you think I felt! Huh? How do you think I felt? I had to do something, they had you, ah, in, in a straitjacket—"
"You didn't know tha—"
"They had you cuffed to—"
"You didn't know th—"
"Goddammit!" Kelly roars, voice ragged. "They had you!"
Scotty rocks back on his heels, thunderstruck.
Kelly's unaccountably embarrassed. He didn't mean to sound like that, didn't mean to sound so desperate and set his jaw and narrow his eyes and generally make an utter fool of himself. Too late now, though, and he waits for the verdict in Scotty's face, completely blank.
Eventually, Scotty's gaze turns outwards. His eyes are wide with stunned, wondering realization, underlain with fear and regret. "So," he says carefully, "whenever I'm in danger, you're gonna do your best to get yourself killed?"
"Ah, I wouldn't have gotten killed. They wouldn't have shot me, not when I was their only link to the heroin." Kelly assays a bright smile. "See, there is method in my madness."
"Always with the mangled quotes." Scotty's voice is no longer angry, just with a soul-deep sadness that Kelly would do anything to erase. "And if they'd decided to torture you to find out where it was?"
"Then we'd have been in trouble," Kelly is honest enough to admit.
There's a resigned realization in Scotty's next words. "But we'd have been in it together, hm?"
"That was kind of the point, Woody." Kelly flops back onto the sidewalk.
Scotty gives him a Look, and Kelly knows he's been caught out. It's true, and he knows Scotty can read it in his face: he really didn't have much in mind except to get to Scotty, to see him again, to reassure himself that he was unhurt, to be with him. It was a most unprofessional imperative, and Kelly knows it now, and he can see that Scotty knows it, as well. Sheepishly, he sets his jaw in preparation for being read the riot act.
But surprisingly, there's a wry kind of acceptance in Scotty's regard. His tone is gentler, almost wheedling when he speaks again. "Look, man, it's not that I wasn't happy to see you and all, but could you please keep the heroics kinda, you know, just a little less than blatantly suicidal?"
"It wasn't…"
Scotty's tone is desperate. "It was too dangerous, Jack. Too risky."
"Hey, risk is our business…" Kelly begins, then trails off as he reads the response to that in his partner's face.
And what do you think it would have done to me, if the stunt had gone wrong and you'd died?
It sobers Kelly, and he reaches out to touch the hand still on his knee, allowing a touch of gravitas to inform his light, soft words. "Hey, man, it's in the Espionage Partnership Contract. When you get captured, your partner's gotta come for you. When you're captured, you expect me to fulfill my contractual obligation and get you out of there. And when I'm captured, not that I ever will be thanks to my exceptional brilliance," Scotty snorts in what may be a chuckle, "I'll have every right to expect you to fulfill your contractual obligations and come for me."
His partner seems mollified. "No argument there, Cicero, but I don't want you getting killed to do it!"
Kelly assumes a mock-solemn expression and places a hand over his heart. "I promise not to get killed."
Scotty's eyes are dead serious. "I'll hold you to that."
"Deal." Kelly locks gazes with him in a promise, until he's sure that they're okay. "Is that what's been buggin' you, man?"
Scotty's eyes flit away. "Sure. What else?"
His face is suddenly impassive, shuttered, and Kelly knows there are still some secrets Scotty won't be revealing tonight. Which is okay; there's some things he's been through that he wouldn't be too happy Scotty knowing, either. He hands him an easy out. "She's gonna be okay, you know."
"Hm?" The moment it takes Scotty to register that it's Angel to whom Kelly's referring is all the proof Kelly needs that there really is another secret in there. Well, it doesn't matter. If Scotty doesn't want him to know it, it means he doesn't need to know. And hey, if it ever has to come out, it's not like there's anything in the universe Scotty has to be ashamed to tell him.
"Sure," Kelly says. "How many blues singers are there in Hong Kong? She'll get picked up like that." He snaps his fingers, the sound flat and hollow in the humid air.
There's a long silence, but Scotty's expression opens up again. For the first time, Kelly feels Scotty's handing him a part of the load he's been wanting to help him carry. Finally, he speaks, and Kelly recognizes the quote from Hamlet. "The pity of it, Horatio, the pity of it."
"You did your best."
"I know." A pause. "So did you."
"Man, I always do my best. I'm an Eagle Scout."
Scotty doesn't rise to the bait, and after a moment, he breathes, "She made her choice."
"Yeah."
Scotty looks into the distance, gazing at something only he can see, and Kelly holds his peace. "Everybody makes their choices, in the end."
"True, true." Kelly lightens his tone. "So I can choose to have you carry me back to the hotel?"
"What are you, three years old? –Don't answer that." Scotty rises and reaches for Kelly, hauling him carefully to his feet. "Gonna play Wounded Hero on me because your legs fell asleep?"
Kelly stumbles, his lower leg completely numb now. Scotty grabs him, steadies him. "Admit it, you'd have been at a loss without my dashing rescue."
"How can you do any dashing on sleepy legs?"
They take a slow step forward, Kelly leaning on Scotty, more heavily than he'd like. "My man, I am full of vim and vigor, the essence of Life itself."
"Dandy, so you don't need any help, then?"
"I didn't say that."
Scotty's smile is all gentleness, and all him. "I think we need a shining steed."
"I saw a taxi-rank a couple streets back. Oh, and there's this spiffing piece of Hong Kong architecture I've simply got to show you, Alphonse…"