I'm finished! Well, there's more that could be done, of course, but I'm setting this story down.

All disclaimers apply.

They plan to have Lena stay with the Kents for the week. It's not difficult—the family owes quite a bit to Lucille's charity—but she doesn't want to go. She ends up cooperating because Macon murmurs quiet promises to her.

After she's gone, they sit around the breakfast table while Leah reads a list of security measures that might have been taken to prevent people like them from doing things like this. "Well-trained guards," she says, "Getting rid of them will require either a lot of luck or a steady hand."

Macon only nods to Obidias. "Think you can handle that?"

Obidias returns the nod slowly, loading his pipe. The thought of not having eyes above doesn't even occur to most of them. Replacing Fitz is something Macon doesn't want to do; the man had an aim that rivaled Macon's. The former said he focused on his heartbeat and Leah's breathing; Macon couldn't refute him, not now, at least.

"We're far enough out, police won't be a problem." She glances at Macon. "I'm going to need you in there with me while I deal with finding him."

"Easily managed." He takes a breath. "Obidias, you need the hearse. Riddle's are hard enough to come by without having to look for a proper replacement." He exhales. "Leah and I will take the Humberette." He taps his fingers lightly against the desk. "Different locations, simply to add more security." Leah nods. "If something goes wrong, we need to meet somewhere."

"Ravenwood," Leah offers. Obidias's eyes flash.

"Fine," Macon obliges.

"Damned place better be," Obidias adds.

The day leading up to the "mission" is uneventful. Leah drinks her tea and waters her plants after the morning rush, as always. Obidias leans against the windowsill and smokes through two cigarettes. Macon loads and reloads the guns. All in all, when he sees the mill looming in the distance, and Leah looks at him with an unreadable expression before leading the way up to the mill, no part of him is concerned. Macon glances to the nearby office building—some building, it used to be populated, surely—and imagines he can see Obidias. He knows the area well enough.

They enter the building with minimal problems—two or three men are shot before they reach them—and the door is unlocked. Inside, there's a staircase and a small room. Macon rather thinks the wooden floors hide a basement, but, never the less, he allows Leah to take the small closet in the far corner.

The new prisoner makes Hiram nervous.

He shouldn't. He's been turnkey for three months now, first in the keep of a vigilante with a penchant for imprisoning anyone who looked a semblance of a challenge, and now for Silas. The job is much the same. Keep the doors locked. Make sure the captive is fed enough to stay alive, not comfortable. Call for help if anything becomes amiss.

But.

You aren't supposed to keep Light Casters. They aren't worth the trouble, especially not when they are involved like this one was.

You also aren't supposed to question Silas Ravenwood. Not in public, not in private, not in the darkest recesses of your head. Ever.

When those two come in conflict, what is Hiram supposed to do?

Don't think about it, he tells himself, as he makes his rounds, peering into the grated slot in each door to be sure each person is present and alive. The latter is more important with some than others. Just do your job. In truth, the place is nearly empty. It's not a prison anyway—it's a mill—and the more risk was involved, the further south the captives were taken. Maybe that would happen to the Light Caster. Maybe he'd be gone soon, and Hiram wouldn't have to worry about him anymore.

With a sigh, he settles down onto a rough-hewn bench he had placed in the narrow hallway and pours himself a cup of tea from a ewer on the table next to him. He took a long, deep drink. He almost didn't notice the footfall on the stairs.

Almost.

Macon taps time into his slacks while he scans the area. It isn't long before the silence treads his nerves. He turns on his heels, little circles are made in the dirt-covered floor, and follows Leah's footsteps. The sun is starting to sink, finally.

When he reaches the closet structure in the corner, he notices the narrow stairs and sighs. Down, of course, it couldn't have gone up into a nice loft, no, it had to go down into the depths. Macon doesn't mind—hell, he's been to dives scarier than this mill, but the implications are there. His Brogues tap down the wooden stairs in time to his fingers.

He almost trips on the body at the bottom of the stairs. His stomach drops at the thought of it being Fitzwilliam—or worse, he ponders, Leah—but sees only a young man who couldn't have possibly known Macon at all. He gently nudges the man with the toe of his shoe; a weak moan escapes the body. Leah, he imagines.

He looks around, finally. Instead of a chamber of sorts, there's a narrow hallway obscured by a thick bench. A door is ajar, though, at the end, and Macon's hand is on the trigger, just skirting around firing. He walks carefully enough in the dim light.

Technically, Macon wasn't wrong.

Fitzwilliam is there, in the most basic of senses. Leah holds him on the ground, limp in her arms, a shallow gash running down the side of his face. She doesn't say a word, and Macon can't make her.

"He's not dead," she finally manages. He nods briskly.

"There's not enough time to debate ethics, Leah." She laughs.

"Ethics, Macon? What could possibly be ethical about this?" Her eyes meet his, wild, before they close, and she exhales.

"Get him upstairs, at least. I'll take care of the man you've so carefully hindered." Leah hesitates. "You can't Travel with him, not down here. I can manage to drive the Humberette safely enough." She blinks. "If he has any chance of surviving, we need to reassemble at Lucille's."

She lifts the limp body with ease. Soon enough, Macon is alone with the wheezing breaths of the man down the hallway, and the tear of Traveling echoes in his ears. He takes great care to tie the man up with strips of his own shirt, sufficiently craft a gag to muffle any potential cries, shackle him where Fitzwilliam was, and throw a threadbare blanket over the body. In the darkness of the hall, nearly nothing was amiss.

Macon drives the Humberette with Obidias not far behind in the Riddle's. Prometheus continues on the steering wheel. He can almost feel Obidias's stream of swears.

It's Macon who notices something deeper is happening. It's fairly simple when Leah sits next to what looks like a corpse for three days, but the gash has healed into a scar—given it's a scar that is garish, like a beast tore into the side of his face—and the skin has taken on a paler tone. Macon hypothesizes, with such evidence, that Silas, the clever bastard he is, stole their sniper from them.

He has succeeded in stealing the green eyes and the charming heartbeat. Somehow, he wants to believe Leah loved him for more than something as arbitrary as that. Even more surprising is the fact no one at all is shocked by the theory becoming correct.

Lena doesn't return for a few more days—the Kents were obliged to watch her for another week after the successful recapture mission. When she does, she sees black eyes and faster reflexes. Fitzwilliam, himself, jokes about being a better shot. A laugh bursts from Obidias at the quip, his lips stretching into a smile around his almost constant cigarette. Leah doesn't take the development as well as Macon does; he suspects it has something to do with matters of the heart and doesn't bother her to try harder at being optimistic.

As far as Macon's concerned, the blip was far better than anticipated. Worst case, he had lost a damned good hand. Of course, Leah would have been inconsolable; she wasn't much better in this state, but her fury was easily directed to Valerian, not towards Macon. Macon gives the Humberette to Fitzwilliam as a housewarming gift, of sorts. He supposes Fitzwilliam has earned that much.

Fitzwilliam doesn't need much help acclimating to the change. He flinches slightly when the rifle recoils, partially from the now louder sound and mostly from the experience of feeling everything slightly more than before. They quickly earn enough extra funds to buy transceivers. The afternoon is passed with Lena giggling while Fitzwilliam and Macon attempt to wire the damned thing into the wall.

It's Obidias's idea to hit the bank. It's not because they need the money as much as it is to see if they can, to make a bit of history.

Fitzwilliam scoped the area earlier. He knows there's a side door that leads to an alley, and if they can simply disappear, they won't be pursued. Macon knows it's not so simple. Traveling, they can manage. There's the slight risk of someone being affiliated with Valerian—worse, with Ravenwood. Macon pushes the thought to the side, though, and takes Fitzwilliam's analysis seriously. They sit around the breakfast table again, Lena on Macon's lap, Fitzwilliam's arms resting on the back of Leah's chair, and Obidias with a notebook. From the various accounts, they've accumulated a list of security measures the bank might have taken to prevent people like them from doing things like this.

"We'll need some number of firearms."

Obidias tilts his head. "I'm a good enough shot, if you need Fitz elsewhere."

Macon glances at Fitzwilliam. "Can you keep us covered?"

He nods once. "If I can detonate a stick of dynamite, we'll get into the vault easily enough."

"After the explosion, we're going to have to work around more police."

"Leah and I can be up front," Macon suggests. "We can easily cover Fitzwilliam while he heads for the vault and back again."

Leah sips her tea and considers the options. "That's Obidias in the building opposite of the bank," she begins, counting on her fingers, "Macon and I inside covering Fitzwilliam, who deals with the vault. Barclay offered a car already, correct?"

Macon nods. "Three vehicles, total. We'll have them in different positions. Obidias, between you and I, we need to understand where the police are." Obidias nods. "We'll stick with Ravenwood, if anything goes wrong."

Two days before the heist, Fitzwilliam stumbles in at two AM. He takes a look around—the lights are off, the only sound is faint breathing—and decides the best course of action is to be quiet. He toes off his shoes and makes his way, slowly, down the hallway, manages to make it passed the room where someone is crashing on the couch. He tilts his head and hesitates.

Obidias lies rigid and still, as a corpse, but his features seem more relaxed than normal. His hands are empty, but Fitzwilliam is afraid to wake him as there's no doubt in his mind that Obidias has some sort of weapon close by, even now. He leaves him be and makes his way to the small bathroom, turning on the lights that suddenly shine too brightly.

Now he can see the bloodstains in the mirror. He starts the slow process of cleaning it off, not wanting to smell like death when he goes to sleep tonight. He's tired already. Everything is heavy, from his eyelids to his hands when they trace small circles on his face and neck. He rubs his palms until they're an irritated, sore pink, to remove the stains. Then, finally, he's satisfied.

Back in the hallway, everything is quiet. Then a noise, a loud boom, startles him. It bellows through the hallway, but it feels distant, and it takes him too long to realize it is thunder. It reminds him of Lena. He glances through the first door to his right, into Macon's room. He's not in tonight—he manned Lucille's earlier and left after that—but he still glances at his room, seeing a picture of a woman and a man gleam from the wardrobe.

Fitzwilliam continues, out of habit, to where Leah's office is. The books still line the shelves. Her plants have slowly made their way to Fitzwilliam's flat. His lips tug into a grin at the sight that awaits him. There's a coat laid over Leah's chair, the one that swivels. The blinders are down, but the window is open and that means he can hear the rain. He stops there, in the doorway, listening to Leah's breathing and the raindrops. He turns around to see her lying on her bed with her back to the door. She's wearing nothing but a long nightshirt; Fitzwilliam knows this because Leah's somehow managed to kick her blanket to the floor.

It's not easy for him to change without making noise. The fabric-against-fabric sound is hardly noticeable normally, but now Fitzwilliam feels like it's the loudest thing in the world. He almost stumbles as he steps out of his jeans. When he's down to his underwear and nightshirt, he sits down onto the bed, on the two inches Leah's left for him. He considers moving or pushing her around to make more space, but it's hard for him to bring himself to disturb her. Then, a sleepy, quiet voice comes from the dark beside him, tinged with equal parts annoyance and fondness.

"Come on, Fitz."

She moves aside just enough so they can both lie side by side, and Fitzwilliam happily does as suggested, draping an arm around Leah's waist for good measure. She's already asleep again, and, as such, cannot protest, and Fitzwilliam picks the blanket up from the floor to drape it over them. Sighs. Listens to the thunder. Waits for the rain to stop.

Leah hums to Prometheus. She's sitting behind Fitzwilliam, who keeps his eyes on the road, looking at anything but Leah or the side roads. The streets around them are almost deserted. They've chosen a good time to get to work.

"Are you okay back there?" Fitzwilliam asks, finally, adjusting the rear view mirror. When she doesn't answer, he sighs. "Don't die in there. It'll cost too much to bury you."

And, just like that, the illusion is lost. They're two criminals in a car again, and it's very serious. Fitzwilliam clenches and unclenches his fists. He almost pulls the car over to get outside and breathe. When it finally is plausible, Leah blinks and opens her mouth to retort before gesturing to the entrance of the bank. Fitzwilliam looks to the rooftops again in an attempt to see Obidias. She swallows her quip. Leah knows the area well enough from scoping it earlier in the week. Broad, marble steps lead up to the double doors with the bank's name above them, and inside, there will be a row of cashiers behind desks.

When Leah steps inside, she does feel odd. There's a great moment of clarity where she remembers agreeing to this. A minute where everything is clear and cool and her thoughts flow properly, one after the other like she supposes normal people feel all the time. She watches Fitzwilliam intently and supposes he gets the same rush. They nod to each other. Leah wants to believe that moment is the one she will replay over and over in his mind.

Macon, having taken Fitzwilliam's Humberette to have a backup getaway vehicle, arrives looking like he owns the place—dressed in a formal suit and clean-shaven. He meets Leah's eyes before he saunters up to the front desk and stares at the woman behind it.

She smiles, and Leah can hear everything from the teller's question about Macon's day to what he wanted. Macon certainly answers the latter.

"Cooperate and nobody gets hurt!" His voice echoes off the walls, and the room has suddenly gone dead quiet. Leah's fingers tap faster. "Hands in the air. This is a robbery." They never were the type to do note jobs.

Leah takes a deep breath. There's a whispering around the room; people freeze on the spot—then, Leah adjusts her cap, pulls her gun out, points it to the ceiling, presses the trigger briefly, and fires off one, two, three warning shots. Macon angles his shots for the walls, edging close to the heads of panicked civilians.

Everything happens in a rush. The clock is ticking as Macon waves Fitzwilliam over and the latter disappears deeper into the bank. He has two bags with him, one for money and one for explosives, and the equal weight of them makes him have clumsier steps. Leah locks eyes with him once as he walks by and notices how serious he looks.

Leah watches Macon herd the people together like cattle, wondering how much experience the man has with this kind of job. Leah looks for any sign of Fitzwilliam, tightens her grip on his gun. It's a matter of time before sirens will be outside, and she can't wait for the tension of waiting to be over with. She keeps her weapon in one hand, ready—not that he plans on using it before the police arrive—and uses the other to adjust her cap to secure her hair. She glances out the window to see the gleam of a scope. It flashes one, two, five times. She flashes the same number on her fingers.

Macon, having seen the message, looks at the man at his feet in a way that makes the man whimper.

They all wait.

Leah closes her eyes and, now, the sirens aren't in her imagination.

"Why isn't he hurrying?" she mutters.

"I don't—" Macon begins, but he is silenced—everything is silenced—by a dull boom as an explosion goes off deeper inside the building. Leah feels no shockwave, but the sound alone shakes her core. Bits of plaster rain from the ceiling, dust suspended in the air for one long moment between Leah taking a deep breath and glancing to the doorway Fitzwilliam disappeared behind.

She sighs and glances frantically—aware that she looks frantic—from Macon to the windows. The scope flashes again, one, two, three. Her fingers flash the response quietly, trembling.

"They're too fast," Macon states. "They expected us."

"Must have," Leah snaps, "but right now, we need to get that idiot out of here—" If Macon notices her priorities, then he doesn't mention it. His leg jumps.

"We need to make a run for it." His voice has changed slightly. The sound of cars coming to a screeching halt outside says much the same. Leah mutters an expletive.

"I know." Leah looks at Macon, hoping a glare can convey everything she doesn't have time to say. They should run. That's what anyone with their specific kind of common sense would do. But there's no way she can do that, not after the last months. Macon looks at her like she's crazy, but Leah wants him to understand it's because of Macon they're here. She mouths a name that causes Macon's hand to twitch towards the trigger. The same name is the reason he's currently carrying a small, golden book charm in his left pant pocket, as he always has.

The scope gleams again. The warning helps, stops Leah from flinching when the gunshot echoes outside, and maybe there's the sound of a body hitting the ground, too. Macon's stance softens before he gestures towards the area behind the front desk with his gun. "I'll keep them off you."

Leah flashes a smile, gets a running start, jumps across the desk, and bolts down the hallway, following the smell of smoke to her destination.

Every step she takes feels heavy. The hallway's green walls blur before her eyes as she runs into an open door, finding the room where the smoke is thickest. The lights in the ceiling have been knocked out, leaving the room only dimly lit. She can hear coughing. As the dust disperses around her, she sees a man kneeling on the floor. The black jacket belongs to Macon, but Fitzwilliam wore for today, solely. She goes to his side and pulls him up. The fact that Fitz doesn't grip her hand tightly calms him; the man still appears like he's got everything under control.

"Sorry," he coughs. Fitzwilliam's eyes dart to the vault, and Leah understands. She pulls at the door - the metal is discolored now, turned and wrought into strange angles and protrusions. The vault is heavy and only opens slowly, still resisting but ultimately damaged so much by the blast that Leah can see the green bills inside. She turns towards Fitzwilliam, whose face is lit up in a smile—"You better fill your bag pretty fast, Fitz. The cops are on us."

Fitz gets to work without any delay, and Leah helps him—grabs the small bundles and tries to think about how she'll feel when they're all back at home because right now she can't help but think about the dangers of the heist more than anything else. Fitz places a hand on her shoulder and Leah turns to see his face.

"How bad is it?"

"Macon sounded like it was going to be dodgy. I don't know if they're at the front steps now but—"

"Let's go."

Leah can't help but stare a bit as Fitzwilliam takes charge, zipping up his bag, hoisting it over his shoulder, and drawing his pistol.

They hear gunfire, dulled by the walls but still too close and as one, the two of them start running.

In the silence between gunshots, Leah feels as if she's gone deaf. She can only hear the blood rushing through her veins as she follows Fitzwilliam down the hallway, dreading what they might find on the other end. When Leah steps into the main hall, everything seems bright white in comparison to where they've come from, sunlight falling in through the windows, the walls the same shade of light grey as the marble floor. There are bullet holes in the—thankfully still closed—entrance doors, and Leah follows the rays of sunlight coming through them to the floor where their hostages are still huddled up. There're three bodies lying down, but Leah can't tell if they're exhausted or executed, if the shaking shoulders and hidden faces are a result of sobbing or convulsions. Amidst all of that is an overturned table where Macon kneels, his body a black, dark silhouette. His gun is pointed at the doors, and he does not look away for a moment even as Fitzwilliam speaks to him.

"What's happening?" Fitz inquires, stepping up to take cover beside Macon, who answers sternly.

"Someone pressed some alarm, who knows—the police are outside, though, and Obidias says we have 10 minutes, maximum, before reinforcements arrive."

"What do we do?" Leah asks, running a hand through her hair and sending a little cloud of dust out into the air. "Do we make a run for it or-"

"Split up," Macon suggests. There's a weight to his voice as he speaks, one that Leah hasn't heard before. "The Humberette is down the street to the left."

Leah clenches her grip around her pistol. They've no time to think out a plan. "We've no choice but rushing to our deaths?" she asks steadily. When she doesn't receive an answer, she curses colorfully. "Fine. I'll cover you. Fitz, can you go to the Humberette?"

"Yes. You'll—"

"Try to make it there, too," Leah says, her voice growing exasperated, "There are two cars left, right?"

Macon touches his neck, a fleeting gesture that Leah knows the meaning of. He takes a breath, then slips into a mode that looks more like he's preparing for battle, cracking his knuckles and making Fitz cringe at the sound.

"Let's go," Macon suddenly exclaims, and he fixes his jacket so he looks more respectable. "Fitz, hand me the other bag. Split the money."

Fitzwilliam hesitates only a second before doing as he is asked.

Macon nods at the pair, uttering a single low "good luck" before stepping out from behind his barricade and ramming the door, the rest of them right behind him.

Leah wants to yell, to scream her lungs out. She doesn't. As she runs, almost stumbling down the marble steps, some part of her manages to remain calm and take notice of where the weakest link in the blockade before them must be. She counts about nine policemen dressed in black and blue with matching cars parked in a semi-circles around them, but Leah has the jump on them, watching them take a moment too long to react. Before they've all aimed properly at the madmen running towards them, Leah has already unloaded her gun into the nearest person, a blonde, old, dead man whose entire body shakes as he is hit multiple times in the chest.

Leah is vaguely aware of something similar going on beside her, of the booming sound of a grenade. Fitz runs in front of him, and Leah catches only glimpses of white knuckles, wide eyes and blood trailing down her arm before she vaults across one of the vehicles, landing just next to a woman who falls down moments after, hit right between the eyes by some unseen, though not unknown, sniper. She stops there for a moment, looking at Fitzwilliam but unable to speak to him. They're both half deaf from the gunshots and the screams, but Fitz knows Leah says follow me. Then she turns away and runs for it, confident that Fitzwilliam will follow her even though—

Even though it's misplaced confidence. Seconds after she's turned around someone pushes Fitz down until he collides with the asphalt. The rough ground scrapes against his face and hands and oh, the person is Macon and they both literally dodged a bullet. Leah's long gone.

Macon pulls at his wrist and gets him back up on his feet, yells something Fitzwilliam doesn't understand and then leads him away, maybe right, Fitzwilliam doesn't know. He's lost all concept of right way or wrong way by the time the next man falls down at his feet and a bullet goes within inches of his shoulder. All he wants is go get away. Something has triggered in Macon, making the otherwise so composed man fight not only for himself, but for Fitzwilliam, too—Fitzwilliam somehow knows that if he were to stop, Macon wouldn't leave him. He's lost all track of Leah.

His heart is beating too fast and Fitz is out of breath as he gets through a narrow gap between two cars, rushing down the empty street behind the blockade. He knows Macon is right behind him and, turning around for a second, he fires once at the man pursuing them. He doesn't register whether it's a hit or a miss; he just keeps running. Down to the right, left, into the side alley—he finds a car, his Humberette, where Macon left it, and watches Macon follow him only to turn his eyes back towards the alleyway. He hesitates. "Lena, I need to grab…" His hands move to mime what he can't say. Fitz frowns. When Fitz starts the engine and pulls out, accelerating in a way that pulls on his stomach, Fitz can watch the two cars picking up pursuit of Macon rushing down the alleys.

Fitzwilliam bites his lip as he runs a red light and as they continue through a flash of alleys and tunnels, the taste of blood spreads through his mouth. He's headed out of town where he can hide in the hills, find his way to a safe house on the docks or the meeting point up the mountain—he has to make his way around the city, straying on the fringes of the map. There are police cars beside him, Fitz notices, but they're not chasing him. They're chasing an open car as it speeds down the main road, and though Fitz can only see it for a second as they head through a crossing he knows without any doubt that it is the one Leah and Obidias stole. Knows they're done for.

The sight sends everything surging inside him.

Fitz's view is blocked by buildings and fences before he can see Leah hit forested hill and come to a sudden, violent halt. His brain is more than willing to supply him with images, though.

He hates the fact that they are divided and scrambling and fleeing away from each other—most of all he wants to jump out the car and follow the police cars and shoot them down so he can help Leah and Obidias like he feels he should. Like he knows he shouldn't because it'd be suicide and like nobody in every gang he's ever heard of ever did. Because it's only the four of them and him in particular could be so stupid. As Fitz takes a turn onto a bridge, a bullet pierces through the back window of his car. It misses him, but the shock makes Fitz turn the steering wheel just a little, his fingers gripping tightly onto the metal.

Fitz slows down enough to hit the driver this time.

The man's spasms make him a danger to everyone else on the road as the car teeters close to the edge of the bridge. Fitz doesn't notice if it actually goes in, because within seconds he's dodging another shot when the other car overtakes the first and drives far closer. His hands are shaking. He hits tires, makes the police car screech and turn wildly—but something possesses the cop behind the wheel to press the gas down, to push the car further still until it hits and sends Fitz into the dashboard, giving him an up-and-close view of what it looks like when he loses control—there's some impact further down the line and that's what sends him over the edge. He's off the ground for a moment. Falling.

Then there's only water.

Later he'll remember those few minutes as a haze, as a panicked fight against glass and metal and waves and undercurrents, but he will talk about it as if it wasn't like that at all. Fitz won't mention looking back and seeing a man drowning inside the sinking police car—he will just say the he swam to the surface and headed for the coast after breaking the windows. Fitz won't say that he couldn't get out of the car before he remembered he had to see Leah—he thought of her slipping away and gripped tightly onto the door, nails pressing into the wood and metal, in order to push out. He doesn't mention the frantic fear and words can't describe the cold that crept into his bones from that kind of water. Every time he talks about it, the story starts with "I made it to the shore..."

And then he walks to Ravenwood.

He's lucky he's close to the designated meeting point. He's lucky that it's warm out and that the sun is setting, but he doesn't care about it. He's freezing, steps shaky as he stumble up the gravel path. At least he's lost the police.

Fitz keeps quiet. He walks through soft hills with sparse trees and small creeks littered with pebbles and bullets, and as Fitz grows warmer from walking, he opens his mouth as if to speak—but he seems to second-guess everything and shuts it again every time.

There's nothing.

The sky is wide and empty there, no trees obstructing it—Abraham made sure of that when he built it all that time ago. The soft earth is without tracks, a clean slate. The house, the manor, looms in the copse.

Fitz keeps standing on the edge. He realizes he hadn't even thought about getting away from the manor again and Fitz wonders what happened to the man who used to let subordinates die so he could get out of danger. He is going to go back to the Lucille's, he thinks, if maybe...

No, he can't start doing maybe's.

Leah's probably out of town already, like he said. And Obidias, too. And...

He takes a step forward, spitting blood out onto the dry grass at his feet and then he stands there and looks down upon the city. He is just tired, worn paper-thin. Not by the heist itself, not by the work or the stress, but by the loss.

Fitz turns around with the intent to go back down, to somehow make it before nightfall, when he hears the strangest sound.

The sound of a car all the way up here. A car making it's way through the creeks, getting tangled up in vines and narrowly avoiding collisions with rocks. The sound of a someone yelling like some harpy. It's coming closer. Fitz freezes out in the open like an animal.

Obidias pulls up the gravel road in a car that isn't the one he left home with. This one is black, a bit rough in some places but that doesn't matter. It could have been a bicycle for all Fitz cares because the most important thing is that it stops and Obidias steps out, Fitz in tow. The three of them look each other in the eyes. Fitz swallows hard, Leah's charcoal is smudged up her face, and Obidias is still tense. And then there's one last headlight down the street, and Leah mutters something about hoping it is Macon. The headlight follows the gravel road that takes the driver around bends and turns, leaving them temporarily out of sight on their way up which makes Fitz wonder, each time, if they're going to reappear on the other side of that outcropping or those trees. He seems to be the only one surprised by this. Leah shakes her head and Obidias lights a cigarette.

As soon as the light comes into view, Fitz understands it's the hearse with a headlight shot out. It stops ten feet in front of him. The front door opens and Macon exits; his shoulders are tense. He doesn't turn to the back seat.

Macon scowls, and he steps towards the others so they end up forming a little circle in the copse. The light illuminates a number of crimson stains and tears in his normally pristine button-up. His jacket gleams maroon in spots. A cut just below his eyebrow has been hastily sewn shut.

"Where's the girl?" Fitz asks, mouth dry.

"In the back seat," Macon explains, tired and irritated. "Silas decided it was high time for a cordial family reunion."

Leah smiles. The conversation stops there—they can talk about who got them out of the mess, but not about where to place the blame. That's for later. Right now they just stand there.

Above them is the sky, dark and glimmering with with shrouded stars.

Underneath them is a city ripe for the taking. A little shaken now, maybe. A little different after today, just as they are.

Fitzwilliam finds Leah's side quickly, lets their fingers intertwine again.

It's a nice moment. The memory of it will stay with each of them as a more permanent mark than any ink they put under their skin - it'll cut deeper, stay longer. It'll come to Obidias when he takes his gun into his hand and considers for just a moment what he could do when they all turn their backs to him. It'll be in Leah's mind when she lays down her gun, with Fitzwilliam when he feels like running and with Lena when she wakes up afraid. With Macon when he thinks about whether he is a rich man, a happy man, both, neither.

"Anyway," Macon says, straightening his torn and crimson-stained shirt, "as I said to Lena half an hour ago—let's go."