Charades
By Jixie 1/2019
The Great Mouse Detective © Walt Disney Pictures
- Special thanks to beta reader aJennyAnn
It was hard to tell what delighted Ratigan more: the fact that Clyde's attempt to mug such an easy mark had gone so spectacularly wrong... or the tiny feral beast who was beating the ever-loving tar out of the sorry henchmouse.
"Oh Clyde," he said, voice dripping with sweet insincerity. "You beautiful mouse, you. Look at what you've gone and found me." Ratigan clasped his hands together for effect. "Isn't it just adorable."
"Please, help me!" The flunky struggled to free himself from the bat's claws with one hand, the other arm raised to shield his head and face. All the while his assailant whaled on him, using a crutch as an improvised club.
Ratigan would make no such effort. If that mouse couldn't trounce a child half his size and with a broken leg, well, then he got what he deserved. Instead, he stood by and watched, in part because it was highly entertaining and in part to observe his newfound prize.
Fierce, unrelenting, a savage from the uncivilized woods far outside the city. A bat, for cripes sake, a rare creature to find living on the earth alongside mice. Ratigan almost couldn't believe his luck- no other crimelord out there had a bat in their roster. Yet here it was, his for the taking, just waiting for him to break and train. With firm guidance, he would mold this wild thing into a devoted servant, a 'man Friday' of his very own.
The bat was so focused on dispensing a sound tail-whooping that the rat went unnoticed. Having seen enough, Ratigan finally snatched the beast from off of Clyde, pinning it's wings in his powerful arms. He held fast despite all the shrieking and spitting, writhing and kicking, and inevitable biting. A satisfied grin crept across his face as the bat viciously bit his arms over and over.
Ratigan was positively delighted.
'Master Criminal' was an umbrella term. Ratigan wore many different hats in the course of that role. It wasn't enough to successfully execute a scheme, or to concoct a clever new plot, or continually evade the law.
He had to be a true renaissance rodent. Commanding and intelligent, ruthless and charming. An expert in reading others, deduction, and physical prowess. A master manipulator. And oh, how he was exceedingly talented in that field. He knew when to push, when to pull... when to reward, to threaten, and to punish.
Most of his flunkies were easy pawns: stupid, aimless, greedy, and any combination thereof. The bat had them all beat. He was so desperate for the most basic things. Physical needs, of course, but even more he craved stability, and approval. It was comically easy for Ratigan to earn his loyalty... so much so, that he almost- almost- felt shamed by it. Where was the challenge?
The feral child would challenge him in other ways, though.
For one thing, he didn't speak a lick of English.
'Charades' quickly became another skill Ratigan mastered, along with 'language teacher'.
The bat was chattering in his bizarre native tongue, a sort of warbling, trilling, chirping affair. It resembled a haunting wordless song more than it did actual words, and for all his boundless intellect, Ratigan could make neither heads nor tails of it. What was more, he didn't actually give a damn.
He'd pieced together the events that left the bat grounded, but the gruesome mangled leg was still a mystery. Growing frustrated as the conversation went nowhere, the bat started gesturing. Holding his right hand flat, palm up, and the left hand vertical to it, he formed a right angle. Then abruptly smacked his left hand down. "CLKKH!" he added as a sound-effect.
"Ah, yes. It's called a 'Mousetrap'. 'Mouse'... 'Trap'."
The sound he made vaguely resembled the word. There was an 'm' at the start and a 'tr' in the middle and the rest was mumbled nonsense. Ratigan patiently practiced with him as he examined the compound fracture. Bone had punctured the skin and the whole thing was a festering mess. He'd set the break that first day and aggressively cleaned the wound with bromine, but it was worsening despite the intervention.
Another challenge was that the bat had endless energy and no outlet for it. Which made sense... flying was a tremendous physical endeavor, and his metabolism functioned accordingly, even if his wing did not. So instead, he ceaselessly twitched and squirmed and shuffled around.
"For the love of- would you stop fidgeting for two seconds?"
With a sigh of disgust, Ratigan gave up and grabbed his thigh just above the knee and held it still. Honestly he didn't even need to look at it, he could tell by the smell that gangrene had set in.
"It's gone putrid, I'm afraid. That leg will have to go."
This earned him a blank stare.
The rat pantomimed a sawing motion above the wound. "Sz-sz-sz-sz," was the best onomatopoeia he could come up with.
"Sz-sz-sz-sz," the bat repeated, blissfully ignorant of what was to come.
Grief or rage, Ratigan had expected. What he found instead was deep shock.
"How is our fidgety little friend today, hmm?"
The bat didn't even look up at him. Still somewhat disoriented from the chloroform, he stared with a look of dull surprise at his missing right leg, eyes glazed and jaw slack.
The old sawbones had done a physical exam beforehand, and the findings told an unhappy- but not surprising- story. Pre-adolescent. Infested with parasites. Irreparable damage to the tendons and ligaments in his bad wing, with evidence that someone had attempted to mend it. The surgeon estimated that he'd been flightless for around two years, which raised more questions.
Ratigan leaned forward, examining the surgeons handiwork. "I know, I know. It's such a shame."
It was incredibly rare that anyone ever got the jump on him, as Ratigan practically never had his guard down, but the bat was in such a deep stupor until suddenly he wasn't. He pitched forward and buried dagger-like teeth into the rat's neck. Straight for the jugular, just like the wild creature it was. Ratigan found himself equally furious and pleased.
A heavy blow to the windpipe forced the bat to let go, flailing as he gagged and gasped. Ratigan clamped one hand over his leaking artery and brought a brutal fist down onto the bat's head with the other.
For that brief moment their lives nearly took a completely different turn.
Ratigan would have bled to death, but thankfully, the surgeon was still around. She patched him up and he was good as new. He'd never give the chance to be tested like that again, but the bat would never make another attempt. They'd reached a mutual understanding that day, the two of them, transcending the language barrier.
The name was completely unintentional. By the time the bat understood enough English to carry a semblance of conversation, he answered to 'Fidget'. Ratigan hadn't even been aware that he was describing him that way so consistently... but Ratigan didn't really care what name he responded to so long as he did.
Science had demonstrated there was a hierarchy amongst the different families of beasts. Naturally, mammals were superior to birds. Lizards were lesser than birds, and fish beneath lizards, and so forth. Bats were in a nebulous gray area: although physically mammals, their nature was closer to avian.
His 'conversations'- such as they were- provided an entertaining look into the bat's mind. To his amusement, Ratigan found that they viewed mice just as lowly as mice viewed them. As far as Fidget was concerned, the earth was made up entirely of filth and guano, and every land-bound creature crawled around on the ground like worms. Ratigan tried to explain that soil was mostly inorganic material like sand, clay, and minerals, mixed with plant litter.
Fidget had nodded enthusiastically. "Ehya, ground filth." As if somehow Ratigan had proved his point.
But it was enlightening to Ratigan, because he realized how losing a leg was a relatively minor inconvenience to Fidget compared to the incredible trauma of the loss of flight. In fact, after a few days of distress, Fidget had bounced back as though nothing had happened. If anything, his body was no longer fighting a massive infection, and he was feistier than before.
Feisty, and intensely curious. He explored every inch of Ratigan's hideout, touching and examining and tasting everything he came across. Never before had Ratigan needed to utter the phrase "Don't put that in your mouth!", and now he was sure he'd repeated a hundred times. Oh yes, Fidget challenged him in many new and unusual ways.
The only thing that slowed the bat down was that for the first month he was healing and couldn't use a prosthetic. Ratigan decided to keep it that way, for the time being. It wasn't as if Fidget knew there were other options. It was convenient for him to take the bat's crutch away at times, and the humiliation of being forced to crawl turned out to be a more effective punishment than beatings. Obviously, it wouldn't do once Ratigan put him to work, but that was a ways off. Fidget was too young, too green, and still couldn't understand half of what anyone told him. Also, he kept biting things and putting them in his mouth.
The things he excelled at, though, showed incredible promise. And Ratigan had grand plans to put that echolocation to good use.
"What call you?" Fidget asked one day, completely out of the blue.
Ratigan raised an eyebrow. "You know my name."
"Ffh." That's not what he'd meant. The bat pointed at Bartholomew. "Mouse." Then to himself. "Bat." Then to Ratigan. "What you?"
"Mouse."
Fidget cackled. "Not mouse, big too much."
Ever so casually, Ratigan strolled over and grasped the bat's left arm in his hands. He applied increasing pressure until he was on the cusp of snapping it.
"Iiiiiiieeeeeee! Stop! Stop!" Fidget was panicked and shrieking but after a few seconds realized his error. "M-mouse! Ratigan him mouse!"
Ratigan released him, and the bat reeled backwards, protectively clutching his arm against his chest.
"That's correct. I am a mouse, a 'too much big' mouse."
"Mouse," he said, as he trembled and ducked his head in submission.
Clyde had taken such a ribbing from his cohorts after being whipped by the tiny bat. Once Fidget was down a leg, the mockery only got worse. Still, he wasn't about to go for a rematch.
Ratigan watched as Clyde skulked and tried to subtly watch Fidget puttering about. There was a look on the mouse's face that said he was contemplating revenge.
"If I were you," Ratigan commented, "I would lace his drink with sedatives, then make your move."
The henchmouse snickered and seemed to fancy the idea. After a few moments, realization crept into his eyes. Why on Earth would Ratigan want him to attack the crimelord's new pet?
"So what, so then you can save him from me? It'd be a sure way t' win his undying devotion, by my reckonin'."
Ratigan shrugged and let out a cold-hearted laugh. He had to hand it to him: Clyde was greedy, but not stupid.
After the first few months, the newness had begun to wear off, and Ratigan more or less pushed the bat off onto Mick Sidney.
By then Fidget had a fairly solid grasp of the language, although he spoke in broken, stilted English. Ratigan allowed him do little jobs: carrying messages, running errands, polishing crystals and silver, serving tea... It was becoming increasing obvious Ratigan would eventually have to teach him to read and write, a prospect he wasn't enthusiastic about.
"I want you take Fidget under your metaphorical wing," he explained to Mick.
The henchmouse nodded even as he wrung his hands. "O-of course, boss. It's just that, the missus would kill me if I brought a bat into the home. Could, er, if it's all right with you sir, could he stay here?"
Ratigan glowered at him but reluctantly agreed. Putting Fidget in Mick's care meant that he'd undoubtedly grow attached to the mouse, and living with the family of mice would only intensify that bond. Such a relationship could put the bat's loyalty to Ratigan at risk. Fidget's presence could get tiresome- while his other flunkies camped out from time to time, they didn't live there- but he'd settled in to some degree and was no longer constantly poking his snout into every nook and crevice. ...and he'd outgrown the inane biting behavior.
"Fine. Do give my regards to Mina and your nephews."
"You see it!?"
Fidget rushed past him, practically throwing himself at the fence in excitement. He shoved his head and arms through the gap between the slats, pointing frantically.
"See it! That- the mouse leg gone! Same to me!"
Ratigan sighed and glanced down at the harbor, where he quickly spotted the dock-worker in question.
"Him have- him- the stick-!" Fidget was too wound up to piece the words together. He started trilling in his native tongue, then stammered and tried again in English. "See it, the stick?"
"Yes, it's called a peg leg."
He yanked himself out from the fence and all too boldly grabbed hold of Ratigan's jacket.
"I can have it? The stick peg?"
Ratigan stared down at him, face slightly pinched.
"Of course you can, Fidget. But you must earn it."
The bat grinned wildly. "Ehya! You too good, Ratigan boss! I can earn it."
What a gullible idiot, Ratigan thought to himself, grateful to being strung along and taken advantage of. Fidget didn't even question the fact that Ratigan clearly knew about this all along and intentionally withheld the information. He had to admit, though... 'gullible idiot' was his favorite type of loyal minion.
They'd had to abandon the hideout in a rush, leaving Inky the shrew, Gus, Mulligan, and Thurmond's boys to burn the place down before the police could collect anything. It may have been overkill, to be honest, as Inky was quite the devoted little pyromaniac. What was it about the smallest beasts?
He had a reserve, though. He always did.
They took only what they could carry with them. Ratigan strolled into the abandoned luggage trunk, set the over-stuffed sack of fine crystals on a table, and gestured for his flunkies to do the same. He watched as they brought in records and documents, jewels and gemstones, rare aged cheeses.
This was where keeping Fidget on a crutch backfired. The bat was stronger than the mice that towered over him, but only had one arm free to carry anything. He dropped the basket of gold coins on the table and gave Ratigan a mournful look.
"Our home is gone."
"Our safehouse is gone. It wasn't a home. Everyone else has their own home, Fidget, you only lived there because no one cares about you. I let you stay out of the kindness of my heart, even though you're useless."
In another lifetime, it would take Dawson years to undo that insidious bit of programming and convince Fidget that there was no 'kindness' in Ratigan's actions.
He refused to look Ratigan in the eye. "Not useless. Good to kick mouses' tail, and relay message for you, and serving the tea."
This earned a laugh. "Alright, yes. You are quite adept at kicking tail, I'll give you that."
Ratigan threw the sheet over Yancy's corpse in disgust. Why they even brought the body back, he didn't know.
Now that Fidget was proficient with the peg leg, he'd started going with Mick on easy, low-risk jobs. This one had found them running afoul of a terrier, the most vile of all dog breeds. They were fortunate there had only been two casualties. Mulligan's body couldn't be retrieved... the dog still had it.
It was never a good time to lose reliable mice, but now, so soon after they'd had to abandon their last hideout... it was especially bad timing.
"Damnation and hellfire," Ratigan hissed under his breath, too quiet for anyone to hear.
Except for Fidget, that was. The bat's ears swiveled in his direction, and seconds later his head followed, snapping to the side. He stared wide-eyed at Ratigan.
"What you say!"
"Nothing," he replied. "I said nothing, do you understand?"
Fidget nodded, but he was still obviously scandalized. "Poor Yancy. Poor Mulligan."
"They knew the risks," Mick said.
Fidget looked at him knowingly.
"Some day, the beetle you eat him. Another day, the beetle-worm eat you."
Sage words indeed. All invertebrates were 'beetles' according to Fidget, and by 'beetle-worm' surely he meant maggots.
"To put it another way: 'kill or be killed'," Ratigan said. "That is the law of the wild."
Which wasn't what he'd meant at all. If anything, the bat's proverb was more accurately rendered as 'you win some, you lose some'. Fidget, however, was more offended by the implication that murder was a necessary part of woodland life. "Not to kill. Only the beetle, to eat."
"All beasts must kill to survive. Even herbivores kill the plants they eat. You may not think much of a beetle's life, but the owl that tried to eat you felt the same way about bats."
Fidget's ears pinned back against his skull.
"You are true," he admitted. Then he gave Ratigan a questioning look. "What is this 'erby-vore'?"
"Craping!"
The rope snapped, zipping through the pulley. Ratigan stood at the edge of the windowsill, watching the basket fall the whole two stories, bouncing and flipping over when it hit the ground. Gems, jewelry, and gold coins scattered across the floor.
He stepped back, and smacked Fidget upside the head. "Do not use such vulgar language." Then he paused. "Besides, it's 'crap', which means dung. 'Craping' is the present participle, the act of making said dung."
Fidget giggled. Really, Ratigan had no one to blame but himself. He should have kept his mouth shut, but he just had to correct the bat.
"Yes, yes, 'ha ha', it's a riot." He turned to Mick. "Well, what are you standing there for? Get the others and retrieve the goods. Instruct Gus and Frankie to re-string the pulley, and then-"
He was interrupted by a snort and snicker. Fidget bit his tongue, trying very hard not to laugh. He lasted a few seconds and started cackling. "Ratigan- Ratigan talking about making the guano!" Soon he was practically doubled over with laughter, as if it were the funniest damned joke he'd ever heard.
Ratigan heaved a sigh, pinching the bridge of his muzzle.
"'Ha ha', Fidget, 'ha ha'." His voice was heavy with a sarcasm that he wasn't sure Fidget really got. The sharp kick to the ribs, however, that was perfectly clear. "That's enough."
He yelped and curled up slightly in pain, but still gasped, giggling in short bursts.
For a moment Ratigan contemplated throwing him off the ledge. It would not be the last time he entertained such thoughts.
In less than a year Fidget was more or less fluent, and well on his way to literacy. Reading was easier than writing, and every time they were out, Mick or Ratigan would point out human signs and have him read them.
"Doctor... Tib- Tibbald's. Live-r. Liver? Tonic."
"Very good," Ratigan said. He pointed to another sign.
They were on the harbor, there to get the layout of the land for a heist he was planning, but something else had caught Ratigan's eye.
"Or- orrrr-an-"
"Oranges," he snapped suddenly, reaching out the grab the bat's shoulder. "Fidget, can you swim?"
"Yessir. What is it?"
Quietly, he gestured towards two human boys, throwing a sack into the river. Whatever was in there was writhing and thrashing. The boys scampered off before anyone caught them. "Could you use your echolocation to see what's in that sack?"
"If we were closer..."
They raced to the edge of the dock, and Fidget laid down with his head hanging over, then exhaled sharply and rapidly several times in succession. It was curious to watch, as Ratigan knew he was making a sound, but it was too high for even a rodent's keen hearing.
"Cat pups," Fidget said, sitting up.
"Kittens," Ratigan corrected and then grinned. "I have an idea. Let's go for a little swim, shall we?"
He freed a rope from one of the posts and tossed it in. They slid down and swam out to the half-sunk, thrashing and bubbling sack. Together, they pulled it over to where the rope hung in the water.
They were barely able to drag it back up. Even Ratigan's terrific strength was no match for the sopping wet dead-weight. Back on the dock, he ripped the cloth open with his teeth.
They were too young, far too young. Of the five, three had already drowned. Ratigan carefully examined the two survivors. Eyes and ears still closed, they squirmed, blind and helpless, mewling pitifully.
"This one," he said, picking her up. "Alright, then. Let's go. We'll have to return later to do our scouting."
He started off, but Fidget stood, staring. "Gonna leave the rest?"
"Ah, you're right." A powerful, well aimed kick sent the torn-open sack back over the edge.
Fidget was horrified.
"There was a live one in it!"
"Not for long," Ratigan replied.
Ratigan had always thought he was incapable of love.
That- love- really was the difference between Felicia and all the other exotic beasts in his collection. They had their uses, of course, and he preferred having them over not having them...
But he loved Felicia.
The others were tools. Felicia was a weapon- his greatest weapon.
He'd gone out and acquired a bell, and with decidedly Pavlovian training, started teaching her that it was the 'dinner bell'... even before her eyes had opened. Unlike Inky, who'd needed to be beaten into submission; or Fidget, who'd needed to be tamed; or, eventually, Lizard William, who would need to be bribed;... Felicia was groomed from day one. Ratigan treated the kitten more like a child than anything. A doted-on, spoilt child.
Fidget was relaying the story of the orphaned kittens, and how they'd rescued two from drowning, only for Ratigan to kick the rejected one back into the Thames. Like a game of 'whisper down the lane', this story would be exaggerated with each version told and re-told to new recruits. Eventually that single kitten would morph into countless scores of orphans and widows. Ratigan himself delighted in the hyperbole.
"It was a cat though," Mick said, genuinely confused by Fidget's concern. "Trust me, kid, the only good cat is a dead cat."
The more 'real' jobs he participated in, the more apparent it became that Fidget was relatively 'soft'. Distress over the dead kitten was just the start. As often as he finished fights, he rarely started them. For a long time he was squeamish over witnessing murder. Fidget wouldn't directly take a life, not with his own hands- although paradoxically, he'd become okay with delivering poor souls to Felicia, figuring their deaths were on the cat and not himself. Over the years he'd grow more callous, but even then...
Much, much later, this weakness would save young Olivia Flaversham's life. Most of Ratigan's other henchmice would've taken the initiative and simply thrown her off the dirigible, rather than try to convince someone else to do the dirty deed.
Ratigan allowed it. It was useful to have those he knew would reliably kill for him, and those who wouldn't. Hell, he'd just had to end Frankie's miserable life, after the mouse got impatient and murdered the wife of Earl Marshal Dower- who he was supposed to kidnap and bring back to Ratigan alive.
Here and now, Fidget was still troubled by Ratigan's monstrous, casual killing. It may have been a cat, but it had also been helpless, and innocent, and they'd already gone through the trouble of rescuing it, and...
It was almost poetic, how only now it dawned on him that maybe- just maybe- his fickle, cold-hearted master could discard him just as easily.
Ratigan could see it in his eyes, slowly discovering this idea and coming to grips with it. Fidget had taken any abuse Ratigan threw at him in stride, respectful of the danger but never really fearing the villainous rat. He glanced nervously and realized he was being watched, that new-found fear written all over his face.
Ratigan was positively delighted.