fearful symmetry

Chapter IV

Madilyn spends, perhaps, more time than is strictly necessary cleaning up Wick's mess. The man himself has passed out again on the couch, and without his cold, empty gaze on her it's a lot easier to pretend like her world isn't about to erupt. She scrubs the carpet, shampoos it, vacuums until it's cleaner than it's been in years, and all the while ignores the way urgency pounds at the back of her skull.

Unfortunately, however, "cleaning up blood" is on the laundry list of random things she excels at, so despite the sheer quantity Wick had left all over the living room and the hallway, the process doesn't take nearly as long as she'd like. All too soon the blood is gone - even though somehow there's still leftover glitter - and she's left without an excuse to pick up the phone. It's just sitting on the kitchen counter, mocking her. She considers throwing it down the garbage disposal just for the hell of it.

Ugh, she thinks, managing to quell the urge just in time to keep from acting on it, instead sweeping the stupid thing off the counter and into her pocket before heading into her bedroom to change into actual clothes, rather than the bloodstained, sweat-soaked loungewear she'd spent a sleepless, watchful night in.

Afterwards, she gathers Winnie from her room and, without thinking about it too hard, takes her out to the backyard. They spend most of the morning just playing, swinging on the monkey bars on the playset and sliding down the slide, jumping rope and playing hopscotch and holding cartwheel competitions. Between the two of them, Winnie is the undefeated Cartwheeling Champion; Madilyn - whose personal record for Most Consecutive Cartwheels Without Puking is one-hundred-and-twenty-three, on a dare from one of the other kids in the Den which involved winning first lockpicking rights to the pantry that week - doesn't consider this so much letting her win as building her confidence.

Winnie doesn't ask about Wick again, but Madilyn can see her glancing through the dining room windows every now and again, trying to catch a glimpse of him sleeping. Winnie is not often exposed to people other than Madilyn or Natalie or the neighbors, which the parenting books would probably say isn't great for her development, but none of those parenting books were written by people with the kind of enemies Madilyn has.

Or, she thinks sardonically of the Bowery King, the kind of friends. She knows Wick is simply a novelty to Winnie, as all new people are, but Madilyn loathes him all the more for it, for being a source of fascination to her daughter when his very presence here could get her killed, or worse.

Still, Winnie doesn't push, perhaps sensing her mother's irritation even if she doesn't understand it, for which Madilyn is more grateful than she can say. She's running out of innocent explanations for the bloody, half-dead assassin on their couch.

They stop for lunch a little after noon - sandwiches and lemonade, a traditional favorite, even if Winnie does always complain she makes the lemonade too sour - and by then the anxiety pulsing under Madilyn's skin is too powerful to ignore. With a sigh, she drags out the sprinkler from behind the shed and slathers Winnie in so much sunscreen she looks like a ghost, before turning her loose. Winnie shrieks with delight as the cold water soaks her instantly to the bone.

"Are you gonna play too, Mommy?" Winnie calls.

"In a minute," Madilyn replies, settling herself on one of the worn sun chairs. "Mommy needs to make a phone call first." She's put it off long enough; these last few hours have been a way to snatch just a bit more normalcy from the gaping maw of her past, which now threatens to consume them all - a last reprieve with her daughter before everything goes inevitably to hell.

But I have promises to keep, Madilyn thinks, and miles to go before I sleep. She withdraws the phone from her pocket and turns it over and over in her hand contemplatively, watching her own fingers tremble with an almost clinical air..

"Who are you calling?" Winnie asks in that idle way of children who don't care so much about the answer as they do asking the question. The parenting books say it's more about interaction, and building their conversational skills. It's why Winnie's many (many, many) questions never really irritate her.

Her tolerance is also partially a spite thing, another casual screw you to her foster father and the rest of the Den, who were quick with a backhand if you asked too many questions or said the wrong thing or breathed too loudly. Madilyn has resolved, among other things, to be a good mom if it kills her, if for no other reason than that Erik would hate it.

"A friend," Madilyn lies.

"What friend?"

"He's from all the way in New York City. Remember how Mommy told you she used to work there before you were born?"

"Yeah, in the Big Apple!" Winnie crows, just before giving a very impressive leap for a five year old over the sprinkler head. She lands on the other side only to slip in the fresh mud and land on her bottom with a splat. Madilyn thinks most kids would have been at least a little stunned, but Winnie only giggles madly and flexes her muddy fingers, thrilled about the mess.

"Yep, the Big Apple," she says, laughing despite herself.

"Is Mr. John from there too?" Winnie asks.

It probably had been too much to hope that she'd lose interest in him entirely. "Yes," Madilyn says. "I'm calling my friend to make sure he gets back home okay." This, at least, is not technically a lie. One of the first things she plans on addressing with the Bowery King is getting John Wick the hell out of her life as quickly as possible.

Thankfully, Winnie has distracted herself by inspecting the wet ground around her for worms, and doesn't pursue that line of inquiry any further. Madilyn keeps a careful eye on her as she flips the phone open - Winnie had tried to eat one last time, for reasons known only to her since she's just about the pickiest kid on the planet in any other context. She won't eat fruit without essentially being bribed, but earthworms are fine.

She's the weirdest little kid, sometimes. Madilyn is shaken to the core for love of her.

It's that love that navigates to the contacts page of the cell phone and presses dial, that keeps it pressed to her ear as it rings. And rings. And rings.

She's about to hang up and try again later when the dial tone cuts out with a soft click. A beat later, a quiet inhale echoes down the line. "Well," greets the familiar baritone of the elusive, reclusive Bowery King, "it's about damn time. I was beginning to think Wick got himself killed before he could find you."

Madilyn is instantly transported back to five years ago, when she'd trembled in her sodden clothes, a squalling Winifred tucked under her left arm, a bloody Marker extended in her right. The weight of his gaze had seemed to bore straight through her, and his answer had been a gavel going down, either to accept her offering to help her flee the city or cast her back out into the darkness and Kincaid. Luckily for her, he'd chosen the first option.

But everything, even good fortune, comes with a price.

"Your Highness," Madilyn responds dryly, ignoring the quick-fire pace of her heart as best she can. "It's been a while."

"Too long, Miss Moone," he replies. There's a strange, unfamiliar shallowness to his breathing. What was it Wick had said? The High Table took exception. She shudders.

"How's our mutual friend?" the King continues. She doesn't have to ask who he's talking about.

"More of an ass than I remember," Madilyn says, and nothing else. His responding laugh booms in her ear.

"I bet you told him that to his face, didn't you? Now that I would have paid to see," he chuckles. "I'm guessing he told you about some of the unfortunate predicament he's found himself in."

"He told me enough," Madilyn replies. "You sent him with my Marker. Why?"

"Well aren't you straight to the point?" he says. "You and Wick got that in common."

Madilyn doesn't reply, only waits, watching Winnie shake her hair like a dog to rid herself of excess water. The effectiveness of this is somewhat in question since she's still standing directly in front of the sprinkler.

"You manage to keep that kid alive all these years?"

There's another single silent beat, but this time it's charged, electric. "Why?" Madilyn asks again. This time it comes out like a hiss, like a growl.

"Easy, easy, Moone," says the King, all dripping with mockery. "I know better than to take from the dragon's hoard."

Dragon's hoard. She tilts her head, curious despite herself at the idea. The creature within her does feel like a dragon from Winnie's storybooks, sometimes - certainly she's felt rage enough to breathe fire, certainly she's possessive enough, greedy enough. Or maybe it's not greed that made her the best at stealing but instinct, something much deeper within her that was wired that way, can't do anything else.

"Then what do you want?" She refrains from snapping only because he has the ability to make her life deeply unpleasant, and in fact is already doing so without trying very hard.

"I heard a fascinating rumor, after you left," the Bowery King drawls, "that Kincaid's baby girl wasn't the only thing you took from him that dark and stormy night."

No, she thinks, feeling herself pale with shock. How could he know?

Her fist clenches so tightly around the phone she knows her knuckles have gone white. "I don't know what you mean," she lies, very calmly.

"Kincaid never said nothing to nobody, of course," he continues as though she hadn't spoken, "he knows he'd never survive admitting he lost it, but you do hear things, you know, when you got eyes and ears and pigeons all over the city."

Again, she doesn't answer, but if there's one thing the Bowery King loves as much as being dramatic, it's the sound of his own voice. "I heard that you practically snatched his soul out from under him."

That's not a bad way to put it, she supposes - it's a shame she has to deny it. "I'm not in the business of stealing souls, Your Highness. I leave that sort of thing to men like Wick."

"In almost thirty years, nobody's ever been brave enough to take a potshot at that bastard," he says, ignoring her again and chuckling as though at a private joke. "And you just swept in and took it, and his kid. You're ballsier than most, I'll give you that - I just hope you had enough sense to bleed whoever put you up to it dry."

She flinches instinctively, as though it's somehow possible to physically recoil from a memory. The Bowery King doesn't know her motivation behind anything that had happened that night five years ago, and had only gotten involved when she'd dragged herself to his doorstep asking for a way out. His statements, while not incorrect, do not paint an accurate picture of the whole story, but one thing he's right about is how unprecedented - with good reason - her actions had been at the time.

Henry Kincaid can be accurately summed up as an accountant - but the truth of him reaches much deeper than that. He runs the books for just about every major player in the Underworld, and it falls to him to keep the blood-soaked, vice-infested ledgers sparkling clean and running smoothly. He's a launderer, financial adviser, auditor and even bookie all in one, and in a world where wealth is power, he's untouchable.

Or at least, she thinks with a private note of dark satisfaction, he was.

Still, it's not like she's about to just admit to it. "And just what is it you think I took?"

He gives a beleaguered, rattling sigh. "Henry Kincaid kept leverage on every member of the High Table," he says very slowly, like he's talking to an idiot. "Blackmail, bribes, hidden funds, hush money, private account numbers, the works. He made himself a cozy little nest egg at the top of the food chain. Most of the Table would think twice before moving against him with the kind of dirt he's got." He pauses significantly, then continues. "Lucky for Kincaid, nobody knows he doesn't have it anymore. Rumor has it a certain Blackbird swiped it from him."

Madilyn bends down, gripping her hair. She can't believe he knows - more pressingly, she can't believe he's just sat on this information for five years without using it. He could have demanded it from her at literally any time. Why wait?

She thinks of everything Wick had told her, about how both D'Antonios are dead, about Tarasov and excommunicado and Wick's dead wife. She thinks about the shaky rasp of the Bowery King's breath in her ear, and wonders if that isn't the answer. And then she thinks about Winnie.

Always, always Winnie.

The lie springs to her lips as easily as breathing, so quickly and fluidly she can half-convince herself it's true. "You're right, I stole it," she allows herself to concede, and it's... complicated but not the part of this story that's false, "but I don't have it anymore. I lost it in the river - it must have fallen out of my bag when I was trying to get the kid out of the car. I didn't know it was missing until later."

There's a long, long silence. Winnie has gone back to entertaining herself with cartwheels, flinging mud everywhere in the process. Her curls are soaked to her scalp, the water turning them russet-red like streaks of old blood.

Her hair had looked much the same after Madilyn had pulled them both out of the Hudson. Her skin, however, had been blue, her eyes closed, her little chest still. She'd screamed for hours after Madilyn had managed, by accident or miracle or sheer dumb luck, to expel the water from her lungs. To this day she's never heard a sweeter sound.

"Now that's just too bad," the Bowery King says, drawing her from her thoughts. There's a casual note in his voice, but something dark and cold lurks just underneath it. "Because having information like that would have made my little skirmish with the High Table a hell of a lot easier."

"I'm sorry to disappoint," Madilyn says. Her mouth has gone dry with an old emotion she can't quite place. Maybe it's dread.

"I'm sorry too," he replies, "because I still got a lot of work to do here. If you can't help me get that leverage I need, I'm guessing I'm gonna have to go straight to the source."

Something deep within her goes abruptly still. "What do you mean?"

"I'm thinking Kincaid would be mighty grateful to any Good Samaritan who let him know his daughter is still alive. I figure he'd give me just about anything I wanted in exchange for that information. Wouldn't be as good as having what you took from him, of course, but I'd be able to work with it."

Madilyn's ears start to ring, sharply and suddenly. There's a strange, drawn-out beat where the world goes fuzzy and white at the edges, where she can't hear or see or move or think. When she comes back to herself seconds or hours later she realizes that she's doubled over in her seat like she's been gut-punched and is similarly unable to catch her breath.

"Moone? You still with me?" The Bowery King's voice rings hollowly down the line.

Calm down, she thinks, even as her heart threatens to stop in her chest, you have always known he could do this. This has always been a possibility.

There's a difference, though, between thinking about it objectively and experiencing it firsthand, and the chasm between those two things is expansive enough to drown her.

"You bastard," she manages on a ragged exhale.

"You think I want to deal with Kincaid if I don't have to?" the Bowery King says. "I'd much rather do things the easy way. Think long and hard here, Moone. Are you sure you don't have the information I want? Absolutely sure?" The condescension in his voice is scathing.

"I might," she says after a long moment, teeth gritted so hard her jaw aches, "have what you're looking for."

For all the good it will do you, she thinks, clenching her hands into fists.

"Now that's very good to hear," says the Bowery King. The smug, pleased grin in his voice is impossible to miss. Fortunately, he's smart enough not to draw it out; now that he's gotten the answer he'd wanted, his tone shifts into something more businesslike. "What kind of state is Mr. Wick in?"

It's a testament to the kind of scrapes Wick must consistently get himself into that the Bowery King feels the need to ask this without knowing the situation that had led him to her door last night in the first place. "Not a great one."

He hmms. "Try to keep him alive, as best you can, then come back to New York with him as soon as he's well enough to travel. I might need your particular skill set for what's coming."

She'd thought this conversation couldn't possibly go any worse - it's nice to know she can still be surprised. "What?" she snarls. "I'll send the information back with him, if that's what you want, but I'm not going back to New York."

"You'll damn well do whatever I say you will until I've Marked that your debt's paid," he snaps back. "The way I see it, I got five years worth of interest to collect on. Or," he says, deceptively casual, "I can just have Wick put a bullet in your head and bring the leverage and the kid back to New York, that way you never have to come back, how's that?"

The threat is enough to stop the breath in her lungs. She'd meant what she'd told Wick, this morning - if he really wanted to kill her, he could do it and no amount of her struggling would even slow him down. And then Winnie would be handed back to Kincaid, or worse, and everything, everything would have been for nothing.

It can't be allowed to happen. But the concept of New York is just as daunting, or nearly, in her mind.

"Please don't do this," she says softly. Madilyn has begged, that she can remember, on exactly two other occasions in her entire life. The words taste like bile in her throat, but she forces them out anyway. "If you need a thief, I can give you names. You don't need me. Don't," she pauses, breathes, swallows back a scream, "don't ask me to go back there."

"Everything has a price, Moone," the Bowery King says coldly, echoing her earlier thoughts. "Even death."

She doesn't trust herself to reply for fear she'll start screaming and won't be able to stop. It's all she can do to just keep breathing.

"Are you okay, Mommy?" Madilyn jumps, startled in a way she rarely is - in her distraction she hadn't noticed Winnie make her way across the yard to stand in front of her until she'd spoken. Her thumb is in her mouth, a sign that all the activity of the day is getting to her. Madilyn glances at her watch and realizes it's almost an hour past her scheduled afternoon nap. She's going to be an absolute terror at bedtime tonight.

"I'm fine, Lamb," Madilyn whispers, pulling the phone slightly away from her ear. "Come here." She pulls Winnie into her lap, heedless of how wet and muddy she is, and holds her close, rests her head on hers. She wishes she could pull her daughter into herself, shelter her within her ribcage so that no one could reach her. The grasping, possessive impulse is an unhealthy one - Madilyn knows that, she does. She just can't do anything about it.

"Keep this phone on you," the Bowery King continues. "I'll call again soon."

She still doesn't reply - there's nothing else for her to say. It's just as well, because in the next instant the line goes unceremoniously dead. Madilyn closes the phone, tucks it away, leans back with Winnie in her arms.

She doesn't move for a long, long time.


Eventually, lulled by the excitement of her morning and the cheerful warmth of the sun above them, Winnie dozes off in her lap. Madilyn should wake her, she knows, or at least take her inside to clean her up before putting her down for the rest of her nap in her own bed.

But Wick is inside and now more than ever she wants him nowhere near her daughter, so she does neither of those things, instead reclining the chair as far back as it will go before extricating herself from Winnie's hold and laying her down on it. Madilyn drags the tattered patio umbrella over to her so that she won't be completely exposed to the scorching Nevada sun, and then stands there for a moment, just watching her.

Anger, thick and hot as a fever, pulses beneath her skin so thickly she's nearly sick with it. She wants to rip something apart, to scream at the top of her lungs, to hit something until her knuckles shatter. The feeling is familiar and so is burying it deep until it's nothing but a buzzing in her chest, deeper still until she feels nothing at all.

In this as in everything, she reaches for mental collection of poetry, which she tends to recite like prayers when any excess of emotion threatens to bubble out of her. Neruda, she decides, mentally running through his familiar collection of sonnets, timing her breathing with the meter of the lines. "Walking Around" feels particularly apt, in tone if not in theme - It would be fine to go through the streets with a green knife, letting out yells until I died of cold, she thinks, fighting an urge to do just that.

But this is an old exercise, and she's very good at it. All the highest and lowest points in her life are touched, studded, engraved with poetry, the words as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. It's the one thing the Den had never been able to take from her. Erik had tried, loathing any coping mechanism his charges put to use that made it easier for them to defy him or better endure his more creative punishments, but he'd ultimately been unsuccessful.

Sighing, she turns to the shed on the back corner of the property, and resolutely does not think of the impending doom looming like a mushroom cloud on the horizon of her life. When it reaches her, it will bring death with it, but for now, her hatred and her wrath and her sheer, heartrending horror are walled off behind glass - to acknowledge but not to feel.

When she'd first bought the house, she'd converted the unconventionally large shed into a tiny workout space of sorts, where she can exercise and store her more elaborate training equipment, like the balance beam and the high bars and the springboards. She can and does spend hours out here at a time exercising while Winnie naps or colors on the back porch or swings on the swingset.

Today, however, she just drags out the mats and one of the high bars to the narrow dirt track by the back fence she'd cleared out years ago. It's still incredibly hot out, but there's a strong crossbreeze and thick clouds coming in from the west, so she doesn't imagine it will remain that way for very long - and anyway, it doesn't matter, because putting herself through her paces is the only way she's going to be able to think.

Just because Madilyn had never wanted to go back to her old life doesn't mean she'd let herself forget the skills she'd learned there, and anyway, she wouldn't know how to do so even if she'd wanted to. Her routines, which had been designed to build muscle and keep her flexible from the time she was old enough to speak, are as much a part of her bodily processes as the heart that pumps blood through her veins.

She's taught Winnie some, too, as she's grown, but it's… that's a process, because Madilyn has to learn to teach differently than the way she'd been taught, which involved methods that her foster father called highly effective but that the authors of her parenting books would call horrific abuse. Mostly she just teaches Winnie basic stretches and tumbling techniques and waits for her to grow a little more, and for her own heart to stop pounding in her chest whenever she thinks about Winnie ending up like her: a cold, broken shell of a thing that doesn't know how to do anything but take.

It's okay, though, because there are other things Madilyn can teach her - how to escape from a stranger's grip, where and how hard to hit in order to get free, when to stay quiet and when to scream for help, how to move through a room without making a sound. They're working on "magic" right now, which is what Winnie calls the little tricks Madilyn knows how to do, like making something appear in her hand, or disappear with a twist of her fingers. Winnie's not very good at it yet, since her fine motor control is still developing, but she's making progress.

Now Madilyn wonders if she shouldn't be teaching her more about how to fight, about weapons, about the damage her teeth and nails can do if applied with the necessary amount of force, about how to run and run and run without looking back.

But then she thinks about the glitter that had streaked her face yesterday and wants to be sick. No, she can't do it - Winnie needs to be a child, not the thing Madilyn is capable of twisting her into, not someone who jumps at shadows, not the thing that lurks within them.

Madilyn had promised as much, after all.

Gritting her teeth, she stretches, dusts her hands with chalk and strips off her shirt, leaving her only in a dark sports bra and leggings, and then hoists herself up onto the bar in one easy swing. She curls around it and lets the momentum spin her a few times, orienting herself, and then relaxes, flipping herself up and over, up and over, one-handed and cross-armed and then no hands at all, only catching herself at the last second before crashing to the mat. She loses herself and time and the world like this, loses her sense of self, of the crushing heat and the breath in her lungs and the danger at her door. There is only Madilyn, and the bar, and what she has to do to stay connected to it.

Well, that, and also the inescapable, echoing thought that she wants to kill the Bowery King. It won't leave her alone, won't leave her mind no matter how many turns she takes on the bar, and it's bewildering, despite everything. She's not a killer.

Alright, she so she is, but that's not usually how she resolves her problems. Murder has always been circumstantial, a last resort to escape or defend herself, never premeditated. And obviously she can't kill the Bowery King. Even if, by some miracle, she got the opportunity to try, he's got scores of people under his command - she'd never get close enough to land the blow, and that's without taking his new best friend the Boogeyman into account.

So. Murdering him is out of the question, no matter how badly she wants to do it. But he knows too much, has too much power over her, and if something happens Winnie will be left completely defenseless. If Madilyn wasn't in the way, he'd hand her back over to Kincaid without a second thought in the interest of earning himself an ally, no matter what he'd claimed about not wanting to deal with him directly.

I need to make sure that can't happen, she thinks as she flips herself up into a perfect handstand on the bar, on leg bent, the other stretched to the sky. Somehow, I've got to get leverage.

She wonders if there's any dirt on the Bowery King buried in the data she'd stolen from Kincaid. Surely there must be - someone as high up on the food chain as he is has to have funneled money through Kincaid at some point, nearly all the bosses do. She wonders if that's part of why the Bowery King had asked for it.

It's a pointless thing to wonder, considering. He's in for a nasty surprise the moment he plugs in the thumb drive, disguised as a pendant in the shape of a springing tiger, she'd stolen - but she'll be damned if she lets him know that. He can go to hell, and his plans and threats with him.

Sic the Baba Yaga on me, will you? she thinks with a sneer, twisting around and resuming her routine.

She doesn't stop for what feels like ages, until she can't ignore the burning in her arms or the heave of her lungs or the sweat dripping down her body any longer. Her endurance tends to be stronger than this, but she's been awake for going on thirty hours now, and her entire body still aches from her fight with Wick. She knows she's finally hit her limit when she comes back down from a complicated flip only for her stinging, sweaty palms to slip off the bar, causing her to slam against the mat below her with a heavy thud. The impact drives the breath from her lungs for dizzying moments. Her vision spirals, the clouds overhead spinning endlessly.

Where is my halcyon blue? The grudging sky is overcast, she thinks, dazed.

For a while she just lays there, trying to regain her equilibrium, trying not to think. Her muscles twitch and jump from exertion. A breeze cools her soaked skin, easing the sting of the relentless sunlight overhead. She's so very, very tired.

I don't want to go back, she thinks. It's a plaintive, aimless thought, desperate in its emptiness.

She's almost succeeded in regulating her breathing when the sound of a dog barking nearby snaps her back to alertness. Madilyn rockets upright so quickly she makes herself dizzy, gaze locked on the open gate at the back corner of the house where the source of the barking stands, panting and wagging its tail. She's somehow not surprised at all to realize it's a grey Pitbull.

"Mommy, look, a doggy!" She jerks sharply at the sound of Winnie's voice - how long she's been awake, Madilyn has no idea, but now she's as alert as ever and racing towards the dog excitedly.

"Winnie, wait!" she calls, scrambling up to intercept her, certain for a horror-filled moment she's about to watch the dog rip her daughter's throat open.

But he only yips once and wags his tail harder, plopping down to sit on the ground as Winnie approaches. Thankfully, she seems to recall what Madilyn had drilled into her about confronting unfamiliar dogs - she holds her hand out for him to sniff, patiently allowing him to get acquainted with her scent. The dog examines it for only a moment before licking at her fingers in an approximation of canine acceptance, and Winnie giggles.

Maybe he only attacks on command, Madilyn thinks, nearly lightheaded with relief as she skids to a stop next to them.

"He doesn't have a collar," Winnie says, scratching behind his ears. His back foot thumps on the ground in apparent pleasure. "That means we can keep him, right?"

"Nice try, kiddo," Madilyn replies dryly. "I think this dog belongs to Mr. John."

"He does."

The words are so quiet Madilyn almost doesn't hear them, but the distinctive rasp gets her attention, makes her whip around to see Wick standing in the back doorway, watching them. He's leaning heavily on the frame, looking no better or worse than he had this morning. His eyes are locked on the dog, who at once bolts like a dark streak of lightning in his direction, whining and wagging his tail. Wick kneels down with a slight wince of pain to meet him, giving him several brisk pats and rubs while the dog licks his face a frankly excessive - and gross - number of times. The sight of John Wick displaying tenderness of any kind is so bizarre that Madilyn almost wonders if she'd knocked herself out when she fell and is now dreaming.

"What's his name?" Winnie asks, taking a couple of eager steps in their direction before Madilyn scoops her up to prevent her from getting there.

Wick looks up at her with a typically inscrutable expression - but if Madilyn didn't know better, she might have said he was surprised that Winnie had spoken to him. "He doesn't have one," he says, which is the first thing about this entire situation that doesn't surprise her.

Winnie scowls. "How come?"

"Winnie," Madilyn says. Just because Winnie's questions don't bother her doesn't mean they won't bother Wick, and anyway she doesn't want her interacting with him. But Wick, for his part, only shrugs.

"Never found a good one."

Winnie tilts her head, considering this. "Can I do it?"

"Winifred," Madilyn says again. "You can't name other people's pets for them."

"It's alright," Wick says, but Madilyn bristles anyway when he turns back to Winnie. "If you think of a good name, let me know."

"Okay!" she says brightly, then changes the subject in that abrupt way only children can. "Do you wanna play in the sprinkler with me and Mommy?"

Madilyn might, in the haze of her mortification, be imagining the way his lips twitch at one corner. "Maybe another time."

"We're done in the sprinkler for today anyway, Lamb," Madilyn says abruptly, moving toward the door and deliberately not making eye contact with Wick. He seems to get the message and moves out of her way so she can pass.

"How come?" Winnie says again, leaning her head back on Madilyn's shoulder. Madilyn gathers what little cheerfulness she can scrape together before answering.

"Because we don't want you to burn to a crunchy crisp," she says, tapping her on the nose. "We can't have all of you turning red as your hair, people will think you're a tomato and try to put you on a sandwich."

Winnie scrunches her nose. "No they won't!"

"Yes they will, I've seen it happen. It's not pretty."

"Mommy, stop lying!" She's giggling, though, and the subject of the sprinkler is forgotten. Winnie endures her bath and change of clothes with only minimal fussing about the temperature of the water or the fabric of the t-shirt Madilyn picks out, and afterwards settles easily enough at the play table in her bedroom with her crayons and a Disney princess coloring book.

When Madilyn emerges back into the living room, it's to see that Wick has seated himself once more on the sofa, the nameless dog curled against him with his head in his lap. She grimaces, but it's not like the couch can get dirtier at this point, so she swallows back her irritation and moves into the kitchen.

"That thing better be housetrained," is all she says, pouring herself a massive glass of water and gulping it down in huge swallows. She's exhausted and sweaty and she wants today to not have happened.

"He is," Wick says.

"How did he even find you?"

Wick shrugs. "He's a good dog," he says, like that answers the question.

"If he bites Winnie, I'll kill him," Madilyn replies, scowling.

"He doesn't bite," Wick says, and there's a sharp, dark note in his voice that makes her turn to face him. His eyes are burning, apparently at her threat - she's stunned to discover there's something that can make the Baba Yaga feel after all.

"I find that hard to believe," she says.

"Because he's a Pitbull?"

"Because he's your dog."

Wick watches her. "He's not an attack dog. He's just a pet."

Madilyn is about to express further disbelief when she recalls the conclusions she'd come to this morning. Oh, she thinks, the dog must have belonged to his wife. It would explain Wick's attachment and the dog's apparent lack of any actual purpose.

She turns back again, washing her glass just so she has something to do with her hands, when he speaks again. "You called the Bowery King."

It's not a question, but she answers anyway. "Yep."

When she doesn't elaborate, he presses on. "What did he want?"

"What men like him always want," she says, and nothing else.

"That's not an answer."

How does that feel, Wick? she wants to sneer. Evasiveness isn't so fun when you're on the receiving end, huh?

"It sure isn't," she says brightly, mood lifted exponentially at the thought.

"Moone," he says. She can't tell if it's a plea or a warning and she's inclined to ignore it, except she sort of wants to gauge his reaction to the truth.

"He wants what I stole from Kincaid," she murmurs.

When she looks back at him, his brow is furrowed in confusion. "What, the kid?"

So he really doesn't know about the pendant. That's good information to have. "No."

There's a shooting-star of annoyance across his expression before it goes blank again. It's incredibly gratifying.

"It also turns out I am your nurse after all," she continues. "His Highness has decided it's my job to keep you alive and then go back to New York with you when you're all better, isn't that nice?" She tries not to think too hard about her own words, or else she might do something stupid, like be sick all over the floor.

"You don't want to go back there," he says, and this is a warning. She lets out a semi-hysterical laugh in response.

"I really, really don't," she says. "But what I want doesn't matter."

He watches her for a long, long time. Madilyn is struck with sudden awareness that she's standing before him in only leggings and a sports bra, that a lot of skin and scars are on display. His eyes never wander from her face, but all at once she feels so vulnerable she wants to claw her own skin off. How can he be in almost the exact same state of undress and still look as composed and untouchable as though he was in one of his suits?

"I'm sorry," he says finally. There's no emotion behind it, it's a flat statement of fact, but she knows immediately, without knowing how she knows, that he's sincere.

"Go to hell," she replies.

Her response doesn't seem to shock or annoy him. He only inclines his head at her and sinks back against the couch again, closing his eyes and stroking his dog.

They don't speak again for the rest of the day.


A/N: Here it is y'all! Updates will be pretty sporadic from here on out, but rest assured I am posting as fast as my schedule will allow! I hope you enjoyed!

Special thanks to everyone who read and reviewed! You guys are the fuel in my fire!

Sincerely,

Starcrier.