So now, at this point in the story, we cover how Lord Fiske AKA Monkey Fist handles being back in the world following Bates and his loyal monkey ninjas freeing him from Yono's realm, and he struggles big time. Absolutely no cake walk on the way.

Chapter Two

Extra Hands

"Milord!" Bates jumped to his feet and rushed to kneel before his master's side, the monkey ninjas screeching and joining him in a circle. Fiske lay on his stomach like a newborn struggling to move on its own, his naked body quivering uncontrollably, his hyperventilation audible and erratic. Bates was worried how the man would react if he tried to touch him in any way. He repeated softly, "Milord?"

Monty's shaking ceased only to restart again but in gentler motions, to let him know he'd heard. "B-Bates," he responded, recognizing his former valet's voice. He lifted his head in the other's direction, unable to raise his head entirely to look at him in the eyes. "Bates, where am I?"

"You're home," Bates answered, finally laying a hand on the man's naked shoulder, helping him to a kneeling position. "What happened to you?"

Fiske finally looked up at him. His eyes, once vivid with knowledge and pride, were watery with fragility. Whatever happened to him, it had affected him very much that Bates had the distinct feeling he might end his obsessive pursuit of the Mystical Monkey Power - unless he was wrong as he'd been proven before.

"Bates," Fiske said softly, bringing a hand - still covered with hair and mutated like a monkey - to grasp Bates' arm covered by his coat, "it was terrible..." His eyes lowered then, his head bowing as if ashamed of himself. "Terrible," he repeated, followed by a wracking of his form. "I'm so cold."

Bates shrugged off his coat and draped it over Monty's shoulders, looking up at the clearly worried monkey ninjas who did not know what to do at the present. They had to get him inside now where he was safe - but this was only just the beginning. Lord Fiske dealt with dark forces beyond comprehension, and now Bates knew he could not leave him alone this time.

"Help me get him inside," he said to the monkeys as he helped his master stand, who wobbled on his legs and held onto him. "Oh, steady, milord."

The trek through the gardens and back into the castle was an adventure of its own. Bates hadn't helped Fiske through like this since he was first learning to walk, but he supposed being in stone and in another world could do this to a man or woman - and he dreaded even asking Lord Fiske about it as he saw what it had done to him.

There was so much to catch up on, and so many distressing matters to work out. How was he going to tell the man his castle had been abandoned but its contents left to him, his loyal valet who returned to him from a peaceful life because his faithful monkey minions had dragged him back to retrieve him? And once word got out that he was alive and well, he had to appear before court to answer to his crimes as Monkey Fist - and he would have to answer the important question as to WHERE he had been for the last seven years.

Those questions would have to wait until morning, Bates reasoned. As he said before, he would not leave Monty alone to deal with all of this.

"I can walk now," Fiske said suddenly, and for a moment, Bates was torn between believing him and letting him go, or continue to support him just to be on the safe side. At the man's icy gaze, he backed away at arm's length but kept his hand on Fiske's just to hold him while he stood on both feet, his free hand keeping the coat around him clasped. Bates couldn't believe it; he could walk, so no use in being the caregiver.

Bates saw how he was still shivering, and there was only one thing to come to mind that he turned to two of the monkey ninjas beside him while a handful of the others remained beside their master. "Get a bath ready," he said in a low voice, but he didn't speak their language. The duo nodded and hurried ahead of them for the stairs, making Lord Fiske frown.

"Where are they going?"

"Is a bath too much of a trouble, to warm you up?"

"Hmm...I suppose it's not a bad idea."

He was getting some of his old self back, but the dullness in his eyes showed that the road was much longer to take. "I'm afraid so much has changed while you were gone, milord," the former valet said, though he felt embarrassed. Just how do you begin conversation with a man who dabbled in powers beyond himself and paid the price for it?

They were halfway through the journey up the grand staircase when Monty turned his face halfway and regarded him stoically. "I gathered," he snapped, suddenly changing in an instant. Yes, the man he remembered indeed. "But I have endured enough to last a lifetime that tonight I don't want to talk of such matters."

"As you wish, milord. I did not mean to push too hard."

Fiske said nothing else, and his footsteps increased so he was almost ahead of the man who used to serve him and his family for so long - whose family had served before him. Years of loyalty down the drain after what he tried to do to Dr. James Possible's space station in Middleton, and the decision was solidified in that Bates didn't want to be involved in Monkey Fist's brutal ways. Who could ever forget how their parting had turned out?

"Well, I don't suppose I can rely on you any longer. And all these years, you choose to leave."

"Because, milord, it's evident you no longer need me. Your monkey companions were more than helpful in that regard."

"But now I come back only for them to abandon me!"

"It was no surprise to me that they come back and see that the Ultimate Monkey Master would be Ronald Stoppable. I was there when I witnessed it, from the mistake made mentioned in the text as well as the fact they left you to be captured. Something told me that they had more common sense than you."

"How DARE you speak to me like this!"

"Because all these years I watched over you, cared for you as if you were my own, and look how far you have fallen, milord! I swore from my youngest age that I would never abandon the Fiske family, even when it was your turn to inherit...but I don't know you anymore. I tried my best to be there for you, to support you in every way I could. It seems this is how it ends."

"So it does seem. Very well. Good-bye, Bates, and who knows if we shall ever cross paths again."

"Would it be too much to at least keep in touch, given there is still a part of me that still genuinely cares about you, whether you realize it or not?"

"I don't suppose so, but it changes nothing."

Fiske did not say much, after so many years, and to say it hurt was an understatement. The man whom he'd delivered from his dying mother as a baby disregarded him because he let his depraved desires get the best of him. Sometimes Bates blamed his father, the late Edward Fiske, but it was Monty himself who wanted to be better than the man who created him, the one who avoided the one thing left of his beloved wife. Monty never knew his mother, but carried the knowledge she would have become an archaeologist herself had her own father not taken that from her and forced her into a marriage she didn't want - but she did fall in love with her husband. Five years of trying to have a child and finally got the wish - but complications in the pregnancy caused the belief that another child would not be borne, and the birth itself was beyond difficult, resulting in one loss and the other living. The mother gave up her life for the sake of her infant son's.

Bates had been the father young Monty never had, yet when he became a man and became engrossed in his research, inherited everything his father left him, he changed altogether that the valet did not see it entirely until it was too late.

He heard the sound of water running by the time they reached the master bedroom, particularly its adjoined bathroom. The monkey ninjas ooked and remained behind, watching as Bates took his former master in, in time to meet the two monkeys who had prepared it.

"Lili, Gia," Fiske acknowledged dully, inclining his head forward once. They bowed their heads in return before turning off the faucet and adding some lavender bubbles to soothe the senses. Sighing and not caring that Bates was still there, he slid off the coat from his body. The other man had to advert his eyes to the side but still keep his attention at the same time. Fiske was looking down at himself as if trying to see if anything that shouldn't be there was present, running his hands over himself and keeping his back to Bates.

"Milord?"

"What is it?" the man asked irritably, turning his face halfway to regard him that it made Bates flinch. The old days had rolled back into place. He took a step back even though he wasn't afraid.

"Is there anything I can do before I...leave you alone?"

Monty's voice made him do just what he said. "Look at me, Bates," he snapped. When the former valet looked at his face, doing his best to not look at any part of his body, he did cringe when the man turned all the way around. Blue eyes burned through him like fire. "You leave me for three years until I take the greatest risk of my life and cost my own soul, for seven years to come in spending with a demon in his realm - and you come back with my loyal monkey minions and think you can make up for it all?"

~o~

The man who left him following his return from Middleton and his second arrest had the nerve to appear back in his life, thought that by saving him from the Yono, things would get better for him from now on. Here he was, in his own castle which he had left to Bates in his will, after almost a decade. An eternity in hell with that monster, and now he was here as if nothing had changed.

But he would not be a fool and think nothing was different. He had a lot of questions to ask Bates, but tonight he felt...

Monty Fiske halted his thoughts there and looked over the man who had served him all his life and his family before him. The betrayal at leaving him when he needed him the most was inexcusable, but it was understandable why Bates had to go his own way. It still had not made him trusting of the man he once thought he could count on, who had to leave him alone out of cowardice, but he'd made do without Bates and relied on his loyal monkeys. They had stuck around and searched long and hard to bring him back...and they had found Bates, used him as the key. He supposed he owed them his debt of gratitude.

That did not mean he and Bates had to deal with each other before any hope of reconciliation - if any - could come to. "No," his former valet stated, locking him in the eyes. "I thought you were indeed dead as I heard no word for seven years, and it was days ago that the final word was drawn up. The lawyers and I are still drawing up the final papers. I truly had no idea about the...incident in Japan, until your monkeys filled me in."

He raised an eyebrow, his modest state forgotten. "I see...so you came back because of them," he stated. It was all coming together: Bates did not completely come back of his own free will; the monkey ninjas found him when he came to the castle, perhaps with the intent of attempting to reconnect with the past, unaware they were still remaining. Why hadn't no one encountered them before when they touched his ancestral home?

"I really did try to find you, Lord Fiske, but you vanished, and seven years went by. We all believed you were dead."

"Well, you couldn't have known," was all he could say. "I suppose I can explain everything to you tomorrow. But tonight -" He exhaled and felt the steam reach his back and moisten his skin. "- I ought to be alone."

At least Bates still respected him in this sense. "Of course, milord. Call me or the monkeys if you need any of us."

Monty frowned at him. Bates was...staying here? Now that he, the lord of this estate even though everything had been left to this man before him, was back into being? He wanted to say that he could take care of himself, that his monkey ninjas would be able to handle him - but on second thought, let's just see how tonight and tomorrow would play out before he made the decision. After Bates saved him, he shouldn't toss him away like that.

When did he start to actually care about others besides himself?! It horrified him to no end, because no one ever understood what he strived to become.

He cringed when his hands both burned, and he looked down to see them glow brightly on the backs of his fur-covered appendages, biting back a cry of fear before he closed his eyes and dropped his hands to his sides, clenching them into fists.

Yono had followed him here.

Oh, God, not this: his groin tightened and ached, the last thing he expected besides the Destroyer's emblem in his flesh. He didn't...want to think...about...

There was a knock on the door, snapping him to life and growling through his teeth. "WHAT?!"

Bates answered timidly from the other side. "I'm sorry, but can I bring you your favorite tea?" It had been a long time since he'd done that for Lord Fiske, who blinked in surprise.

"Oh...yes, thank you." He turned from the door and made his way to the bath Gia and Lili, two of the few females in the pack, made for him. He hissed in delight at the feel of the hot water - the first replenishment he had in an eternity, ravishing his senses in and out - around his feet before he lowered himself in and let himself be covered up to the chest. Lavender calmed him down as it was also used to heal any injuries...

...but the same could not be said for internal wounds.

He wanted to just sleep it off, forget the tea, forget tomorrow's troubles - forget just everything. But he feared if he fell asleep -

Monty yelped when he found himself sliding under the water, the substance filling his nose and mouth - his lungs were on fire right away - and darkness clouded his senses...as well as THAT voice...

You can't escape me, Monty.

Lord Fiske's mental recovery depicted in here as well as in "The Monkey King Takes His Queen" is certainly beyond walking on hot coals; he's got a load of trouble to face, such as legal and social - that includes avoiding prison time and maybe getting back to work at the museum, but the Yono is the greatest challenge for him to face.

Special thanks also goes to VampireNaomi for the portrayal of Bates and Fiske's relationship in here and the majority of the saga.

Him sliding under the tub water was inspired by one of the best scenes in the original "Nightmare on Elm Street", in which leading girl Nancy falls asleep and is pulled under by Freddy Krueger, but she pulls out of it.