A.N. Happy belated Valentine's Day!
So I guess I've been watching too much NCIS, because for some reason a criminal themed story just wouldn't leave my fingertips until i wrote it.
This is, I suppose, a criminal!au in which Mary is a Scottish InterPol officer and Bash is the head of a crime organization, and a hostage exchange takes place. Again, absolutely no idea what this is, and whether I'm happy with it or want to burn it at the stake like it's the Salem Witch Trials.
(Stockholm Syndrome, though. It's a thing.)
This one is kind of extremely angsty, much more so than the previous ones :( it's what happens when I listen to too much Simple Plan.
happy reading!
It's two a.m., and Bernie Rodgers is not paying attention.
(This is very, very, very dangerous.)
See, Bernie Rodgers is a security guard for the Louvre, and it's his night to man the security cameras.
But Bernie Rodgers is so, so, so tired, and the room feels warm and comforting.
It's okay, Bernie, it seems to be saying. It's okay to sleep a little.
Yeah, Bernie thinks, maybe it is.
So Bernie Rodgers nods off when he should be watching the security footage, and because of that (and a few other well-placed distractions ) Bernie Rodgers does not see his cameras short out.
He does not see the five black-clothed figures enter the Louvre.
He does not see them split up, each of them heading a different direction.
He does not see them meet up again 2.451 minutes later.
And he does not see the glint of blue eyes as the tallest of the figures flips the camera off.
(Bernie Rodgers sleeps through it all, so the next morning he is just as confused as the rest of them.)
Thirty-five miles away, Scottish InterPol officer Mary Stuart bolts awake in bed.
Francis tosses the front page of the newspaper in front of her, sending Mary's coffee flying and disturbing the piles of paperwork on her tiny desk.
"They didn't," Mary breathes, grabbing the paper and scanning it furiously.
"Oh, but they did," Francis tells her, and Mary swears loudly and harshly.
"Those bloody Illegitmates-" Mary growls. "They think they can just get away with this? That they won't get caught?"
"They haven't yet," Francis points out. "They've evaded apprehension for longer than any other crime ring."
"They're not a crime ring," Lola says, joining them and handing Mary a new coffee cup. "They don't harm civilians. They just-"
"Steal priceless works of art and deface one of the best art muesems in the world?" Mary slams the paper down again and upsets the coffee cup again. "I swear, I'm catching them."
"You'll want to start with their leader," Lola says, moving slightly to avoid the growing coffee pool. "The Prince of Bastards."
"Prince of Bastards, hm?" Mary snorts. "His ass is mine. And tell Kenna to clean my desk!"
Kenna casually flips her off as Mary stalks past her desk. "Clean it yourself, stick-in-the-mud."
When Mary gets to the Louvre, the first thing she sees is the Bastard's symbol.
It's big, and it's spray-painted black on the side of the building, and it's so delicate and detail-oriented that Mary almost admires it.
Instead, she crushes her third coffee cup that day out of anger.
"How the bloody hell," She spits out venomously at the collection of sheepish looking security guards. "Did they manage to short out every single camera, steal five priceless pieces of arts, and paint a bloody wall mural, without catching any of your attentions?"
"They're good, ma'am," One of the security guards says slowly, and Mary wants to stamp her high-heeled foot.
"Of course they're good, that's not a bloody excuse! I want to know why you didn't catch them, not what their skill level is!"
"Mary," Francis jogs up behind her and saves the security guards from having to answer. "You're gonna want to hear this."
He hands her a phone, and with one last biting look at the cowering men, she takes it.
"Hello, Agent Stuart," a male voice says cheerfully. "My name is the Bastard Prince, and I'd like to offer you a deal."
"You're not doing this, Mary," Francis says firmly. Her fiancé/partner's face is set, blue eyes determined. "I'm not letting you do this."
"You don't let me do anything, Francis," Mary snaps at him, sliding the Bastard's file into her knapsack and turning her computer off. "I don't answer to you."
"You're on French soil, and as a French officer, I refuse to allow you to go into what's obviously a trap!"
"Again, I'm a Scottish citizen. I. Don't. Answer. To. You."
"Then as the man you're going to marry," He says, and he takes her hands in his. "Don't do this. There's nothing good that comes out of this but-"
"Information, Francis," Mary says exasperatedly. "Information that we can use to lock the Illegitimates up for good and call it a night. All they're asking is medical care. For a pregnant woman."
"Who is probably completely made up," Francis argues.
"Even if she is, I'll still be on the inside. You can clip a track on my bra or something." Mary pats Francis's cheek. "I'll come back. Promise."
(She should know better than to make promises she can't keep.)
It's cold outside, a winter Paris wind nipping at Mary's arms as she waits for the Bastard to show. Her hands are shivering slightly, and she finds herself almost wishing for him to take her, just to get away from the hellish weather.
And then the Bastard Phone rings.
"Frightful weather, isn't it?" The same cheerful voice says, light and carefree.
(Mary doesn't like to admit it, but she very nearly jumped out of her shoes.)
"Calm down, Agent Stuart," Laughter colors the voice. "I didn't come here to hurt you."
The words 'But I will if I have to' go unsaid, but Mary picks up on the undertone and another shiver, this one not from the cold, goes through her body.
"I'm here," She says sharply. "But not to make small talk. Send out the girl."
"So impatient," He sighs. "How very rude."
"Criminals don't deserve courtesy. Sorry."
His voice tightens, gains a sharper edge. "Sweetheart, I'm not a criminal, and I'd encourage you to refrain from calling me one. I won't always be able to pardon such ignorance."
"Ignorance?" She spits out. "You defaced the Louvre-"
"Really?" His voice is tinged with mock curiosity. "Did you see me?"
"Of course I didn't see you," Mary makes no attempt to hide her exasperation. "You shorted out the damn cameras!"
"Then how, Agent Stuart, do you know I was there?" His breath stirs the hair on her neck, but she refuses to grant him victory by turning around.
"You left your sign everywhere-"
"Agent Stuart, this is very important," He cuts her off, tension in his voice. "How do you know I was there?"
She sighs. "I don't."
"Don't trust anything you don't know," He admonishes her. "Bastard's number one rule."
(His voice is low and honey-colored, and she sort of hates him for it.)
He sends the girl out two minutes later; she's no older than eighteen, staggering under the weight of the baby in her belly.
"Is it your kid?" Mary asks him, the phone speaker crackling under her ear.
"Nope," He pops the 'p' almost arrogantly, and Mary thinks that no criminal should ever be able to be that carefree in the middle of a hostage exchange. "Isabelle's my cousin. I don't do incest."
"Just art thievery."
"Look, Agent Stuart, I'm getting tired of your judgment," He tells her sharply. "Step two paces to the left, or deal's off."
Mary pushes down her indignation at being ordered about by a man she can't even see and obediently steps two paces to the left.
"Well, Agent," He says, and worry grows in the pit of her stomach when she picks up on a triumphant edge to his tone. "It's been real, and it's been fun, but it has not been real fun. See you in a bit!"
And before she can even move, a cloth reeking of drugs is pressed to her mouth and nose, and her world goes black.
When she wakes up, her arms are bound tightly, so tight they cut into her wrists, and there's a blindfold loosely tied around her eyes.
She blinks a little, and then sits up, her back aching from being slumped over for too long.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty," the same melodious voice say, and she can almost hear a smirk in his words. "The Compound welcomes you. You feeling okay?"
"Do you care?" She replies bitingly, and winces as pain shoots through her arms.
"It's not my style to give you back to the authorities in a body bag, so yes, I do care." A scuffling sound, and then she hears a tray of some sort scraping against the floor.
"It's water and some stuff Gil made you," He says, and he laughs when she tries to sniff it. "It's not poisoned, I promise."
"Because I normally believe promises from criminals."
"Oh, damn, are we back to the ignorant judging bit? I thought you were over being immature," He snaps at her. "Doo-doo head."
"And I'm immature?"
"Yes, you are. Thanks for acknowledging it." He pushes the tray towards her again. "So you can be immature, dehydrated, and hungry, or you can just be immature and we can call it a day."
"Very righteous for a-"
"Screw it," He mutters before she can get 'criminal' out, and he picks up what she thinks is a spoon from the tray and slides it into her mouth.
It's full of some kind of soup, tomato-based, with an abundance of seasoning. It's hot and sweet to her tongue, and, she notes cheerfully, not drugged.
"There," he says, pulling the spoon from her mouth and dropping it back on the tray. "So are you gonna eat now?"
Before she can answer, she feels the butterfly-light touch of his fingertips to the bottom of her chin, swabbing at her face.
(His fingers are twitching when they pull away, like she's shocked him.)
"You got soup on your chin," he explains. "Pet peeve."
And once again, he shoves a spoon into her mouth and doesn't let her finish speaking.
(It bothers her much less than it should.)
Every day, like clockwork, he comes down and feeds her, like she's a child, like she's helpless.
(He doesn't mean to be an asshole, but still. Mary Stuart spent the last four years proving her worth at InterPol, okay? She doesn't want to be patronized by a bloody criminal.)
"Don't you have lackeys for this?" She asks him snidely after he wipes soup dribbles from her chin for what seems like the seventy-fifth time. "Seems beneath the Prince to take care of some stupid hostage."
"Thinking like that is what fucked over the French monarchy, Agent Stuart," He tells her, sounding annoyingly smart (She doesn't need history lessons from the likes of him). "They stopped caring about the people, about the ones beneath them, and they lost the respect and loyalty of their subjects. I'm not one to repeat history, especially when it comes to colossal mistakes."
"People will come for me," She tells him, her tone braver than she actually feels. "This place is going to be swarming with Agents. They're probably already coaxing the information out of your special friend."
He exhales through his mouth, and she takes smug enjoyment in imagining the look on his face. "She's my bloody cousin, Agent. She's innocent in all of this, okay?"
Under his breath, she hears him mutter, "But that'd be just like the bastards in the legal system, wouldn't it, to punish the innocent?"
(He sounds so, so, so bitter as he says it, so angry at the world, and she feels pity in this instant, sympathy.)
(Ladies and Gentlemen, the Stockholm Syndrome begins.)
(She feels like she knows him, now, and that's so, so, so dangerous, because she knows now that he's smart and he's actually kind of funny, and his pet peeves include hair in her face, soup on her chin, and open sores on her wrists that refuse to heal.
He takes care of her, and she thinks that it's the worst thing he could've possibly done.)
"Why?" She asks him one day, when he brings her the food and water she receives daily. "Why are you like this? You don't have to be a criminal. You could be better than this life."
"I couldn't be. I'm not better than this." he replies sharply, and there's something underneath his words. "But you act like it's a sin, something to be ashamed of. It's not, sweetheart."
"Why?" She's so frustrated, because she sees the good in him, so bright and shining and brimming out of him, and she can't place it with the darkness that surrounds the cellar, surrounds this place. "Why is it so hard for you to chose good?"
"Because good never helped anybody," is his reply, and all the warmth is gone from his voice. "I hate to shatter your societal ideals, but what I do gets things done. It accomplishes things. Takes care of the people I care about. That's more than being 'good' has ever done for me."
She has no response, so she closes her eyes and leans her head back against the stone wall of the cellar.
She feels his hand brush hair out of her face, and she doesn't open her eyes because he reminds her of a fawn and she thinks he might run away if she startles him.
He comes down one evening with a stack of children's books, and he reads to her, his voice low and lulling and comforting.
He reads Green Eggs and Ham and The Giving Tree and The Girl In The Golden Bower, and when he ends that particular story she gets goosebumps.
After that, he puts the books away and tells her a different story, one with a prince who lets his princess be taken by a rogue knight.
" ' "How am I to think anything but evil of you?" The Princess said. "You have captured me and threaten everything that I care for." '" His voice grows heavy as he reads the next part. " 'And the knight answered her, "Fair maid, tell me, what is evil? I see no evil in a man protecting his family. I see no evil in a man who does what he must to survive. I do what I must to achieve my goals; how are you any better than I am?"' "
"She's better because she's remorseful," Mary comments. "She feels bad about the people she's hurt. He doesn't."
"They're an end to a means," The Prince says. "Collateral damage, to him."
"And to you?" She says, annoyance in her voice. "Is the Louvre just collateral damage? Is the whole world a playground for a reckless little boy to pull apart and put back together as he fancies?"
"Don't speak to me of collateral damage," he commands her bitingly. "My cousin's face was blown to bits in one of those government explosions, and they told us it was his own fault for getting too close, that they had to do what they had to do. My dad left my mom alone at nineteen, so he could marry an heiress and live on top, and when she showed him the pregnancy test he shrugged and wished her luck. Isabelle, " He spits the words out, angry, but his voice breaks on his cousin's name, and she can hear his pain. "Just gave birth to a baby, who has probably been forcibly taken from her and put up for adoption, and she's going through God knows what while your version of "heroes" claim it's for the greater good. Life is collateral damage, Agent Stuart."
She realizes when he stops talking to her when he gives her the soup that it's not always the princess who needs saving.
The next time he comes down, she sighs, tries to make peace and cool her temper. "You talk about your mom a lot. What's she like?"
His voice softens noticeably. "Her name's Diane, and she's perfect. Everything thing a mother should be. She doesn't know what I'm doing; I haven't seen her in a while."
"How long is 'a while'?"
"Ten years, maybe?" He laughs at her horrified expression (she tries to tell herself that the chills going through her are from the cold and not his laughter). "A life of crime doesn't lend itself to maternal guidance."
"You miss her, though."
"I try not to," he says honestly. "I don't like missing things; it's like giving up hope that you'll ever find them. You're so convinced that they're gone that you start wishing they were with you instead of looking for ways to get back to them." He looks at her sideways. "What about you? What's your fiancé like?"
Mary sighs, fingers the diamond ring on her hand. "He's exactly what he should be, which means that he's almost what I want. He's nice and he's a gentleman and he listens to me, but he's just..."
"Empty," he finishes, and she imagines that he has a bright, fierce lion look in his eyes. "He feels like the air, doesn't he? Pretty and clean, but insubstantial. Everywhere, going all directions at once."
"Exactly," she sighs. "And I don't know. It'd be nice to know that I was it, the thing he'd pick before everything else."
"You want to be true north instead of just another direction on the compass." He snorts. "Best of luck."
"How long have I been here?" She asks him.
"A little more than a month," He replies, and then laughs at her shocked expression. "What, you though the calvary'd come sooner?"
"No," She replies venomously, even though that's exactly what she thought and he knew it. "It just doesn't feel like a month, is all."
(In reality, she is for the first time scared that she isn't InterPol's priority, that they've given up on her.)
It's late, this time, and his footsteps are frantic on the stairs, shaking her from sleep and filling her with apprehensive worry.
"Time to go, Agent Stuart," He tells her, quickly undoing her wrist binds and releasing her from the wall. "Now."
"Where are we going?" She asks, confused and sleep dazed, as he pushes her to her feet.
She stumbles; she's not used to walking, and she hasn't so much as crawled for the past month (the bastard made her use the bathroom in a bloody bucket he got one of the females in the compound to bring her), so he swears violently and picks her up, running her up the stairs and into light that shines blindingly through the thin fabric of her blindfold.
She hears gasps, a cacophony of voices, and gunshots.
"What the hell are you doing?" A voice queries him, and she thinks she'd like to know the answer to that question, as well. "Tomas is right outside, and that's what you're worried about?"
"Shut the fuck up, Gil," He snarls back, and she thinks his arms tighten around her. "Don't you think InterPol will be pissed if she gets hurt?"
"You're going to die trying to get her out," Gil insists. "You're going to die,"
She thinks she feels him look down at her when he says, "I know."
It's late, late at night, and the moon shines down as she takes her first gulp of fresh air in a month.
(It tastes sour and stale, like the air she's supposed to be breathing is that of the compound.)
He reaches out and unwinds the blindfold from her eyes and she blinks, because she's been in darkness for so long, and there-
It's him.
He's got dark hair that's the perfect length and is currently hanging in his face (she wants to brush it out, because he's been doing that for her and she thinks she owes him for this), and his eyes are an unforgivable blue, the blue of molten flames and a thousand other things she can't think of right now.
"Agent Stuart," He says, and he tries to shake the dazed expression off of her face. "Mary. Listen to me. I'm going to put you down in a second, and you're going to run as fast as you can, as far away from here as is physically possible, okay? And if you can't run, you're going to crawl, you're going to fly, you're going to do whatever you need to in order to be as far as you can be from here, okay?"
She nods, but speaks anyway. "What about you?"
He grins wryly at her. "Didn't you hear Gil, Mary? I'm going to die."
And with that, he fastens his mouth on hers, kissing her furiously while setting her down.
"Go," He tells her once he pulls away.
(She can't run, so she crawls on her hands and knees across the gravel parking lot, but she's still close enough to the compound that she can see when it explodes into the night, fire and smoke and wreckage forming deadly fireworks in the skies.
In the distance, from the burning building, she hears Gil's voice scream out, and then the world goes black.)
Sebastian Du Poitiers, they tell her when she wakes up in a standard hospital in the French countryside.
His name was Sebastian Du Poitiers.
It's easy to find Diane Du Poitiers once she sets her mind to it, and when she shows up at his mother's cottage in rural France, the woman is everything he described her to be.
(The worst part, though, is that she has his eyes.)
Diane pours her a cup of tea, sits her on the couch, and tells her the story of Sebastian Du Poitiers.
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who always went by Bash, who was the product of a young secretary's infatuation.
"His father was already married," Diane tells her in heavily accented French. " And 'is wife, she 'ated me. I didn't care. I was zo in love with 'im, I thought 'e would choose me and we would raise 'Bastian togezzer."
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who didn't even get the luxury of a single mother, and instead had to watch as his father floated in and out of his life, from publicly denouncing his bastard son and his mother, to sneaking in at two in the morning and professing his love for them.
"And it 'urt 'im, so, because 'Bastian was always so protectzive of me, and 'e could not bear to see his father treat us zhat way." Diane's voice gets misty. " 'E didn't want to be anyone's second choice, you see. 'E wanted 'is father to pick us, leave his wife and her sons. And 'is father wouldn't."
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who felt that rejection so intensely that he grew into himself, changed from the happy open child he'd been to a moody, angry teenager who only loved his mother.
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who got in with the wrong crowd and couldn't get out.
"I sent 'im to zhat school," His mother tells Mary mournfully. "And 'e met zhose people zere, and 'e wanted to come home, but I wouldn't let 'im. I told 'im it was too far, too long, that 'e would get so much more from zere than 'e would from me. I wouldn't let 'im, so he got in with them."
Sebastian Du Poitiers who fell into gang life headfirst and ran into the biggest name on the streets: The Dragon.
(Also known as Tomas.)
"Zat man," Diane spits out, "Was illegitimate as well, and 'e got inside 'Bastian's head, kept 'imself there, made my son into something else. 'E called 'im the Lion, and togezzer zey got into some 'orrible things."
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who never knew that once you got in, you couldn't get out, who called his mother every weekend to tell her he loved her, to tell her that he'd made some mistakes and wanted to come home.
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was accused for a murder he didn't commit.
" It was a young girl, fifteen at ze most," Diane tells her. " And she was horribly killed, cut up and defaced. 'E told me 'e was zere and 'e tried to 'elp, but Tomas held him back, kept him from saving 'er." His mother pauses. " 'E cried like a child in my arms, and 'e told me ze blood dripped from 'er chin and 'er 'air hung in 'er eyes and 'e told me she looked so scared."
(And now she knows, why he always wiped her chin, why he brushed the hair from her face, why his touch was so loaded whenever she felt it.)
Sebastian Du Poitiers, sentenced to four lifetimes in jail, destroyed by the legal system.
Sebastian Du Poitiers, who was saved from his jail cell after two years by an organization that would use him just like everyone else, that would nurture the anger and rage in him until he assumed leadership.
(Sebastian Du Poitiers, who saw himself as life's victim and was too far gone to feel bad about it.)
(Mary leaves his mother's house crying, and Diane Du Poitiers holds her on her cottage porch just like she held her son.)
(His cousin tells the same story, of a man who life screwed over so many times, of a big brother figure who never stopped taking care of her.
"He loved with all his heart," Isabelle says quietly, rocking her son in her arms. "And he gave me everything."
Mary looks at the baby boy, Sebastian the second, and she cries for the second time.)
Later, she gives Francis his ring back.
"I understand," he says (and isn't that the best part of Francis, that he always understands?).
Because, see, she's not the same Agent Stuart that went into that hostage exchange with her head held high, and she's not the same Agent Stuart that couldn't crawl far enough away.
She hands in her badge the same day Isabelle moves in with her, because now she's just Mary, and if this is Stockholm Syndrome, then so be it.
(They scour the wreckage of the building, but they never find his remains, so they tell her that he's more than likely still alive somewhere, hiding, keeping his head down until he can come back.)
(She likes to think that he's waiting for the day he can come back to her.)
(And two years later, the phone she could never bear to give back to the authorities starts ringing.
"Hey, there, Mary," he says, and she wants to cry because she hasn't heard his voice in so very long. "My name's Sebastian, and I think I'd like to see you again.")
A.N. Reviews are welcome and encouraged, as are prompts, because when I'm left to my own devices and Tumblr, I give you angsty pieces like this.