Final chapter! Left a couple things open, and introduced a little bit of Alma's mindset, probably to lead into another oneshot I have planned, for her and Dylan. I also have another Danley oneshot in the works, going off of her comments about him posting on her website...Anyhow, you guys can think of this as being in between act 2 and 3 in the movie, I think that fits timewise, although AU, of course, when it comes to Thaddeus Bradley, etc. Thanks so much for making this fic awesome and fun to write! I love all the reviews and comments! See you soon!
There was not much Alma Dray hated more than paperwork. Condescending males and sauerkraut made the list, and that was about it. And here she was, in Las Vegas, party central of America, if not the world, and she was at a desk doing paperwork. Not even a nice desk topped with a shiny plaque bearing her name and equipped with a comfortable chair; no, she was at a standard-issue gray chunk of metal shaped to look like a desk, on a rickety foldable chair. Filling out the third in what was turning out to be a long line and thick stack of forms, for compilation of her report to Interpol.
The aforementioned report would have been more aptly named "Fictional Narrative Composed of Lie After Lie In An Attempt To Protect Interested Parties Whom I May or May Not Have A Thing For".
She had concocted a longwinded tale in which the Horsemen had been proven innocent of any wrongdoing thus far, having been coerced under threat of harm by one Thaddeus Bradley, who had proven those threats by abducting and torturing one of the members, blackmailing the remaining members further, and subsequently being arrested in the act. On and on it went, but that was basically the bottom line, and she wished she could leave it at a lame summation like that. She also wished she could be partaking of the bottle of whiskey she'd seen Rhodes smuggle into his office down the hall.
"Merde," she breathed, running a hand through her hair and mussing up her already-untidy bun even further. He was another story altogether. Always adorably disheveled, hilariously frustrated with something or other, and always attractive, magnetic in some way that eluded her. And those eyes…
Alma slapped a palm against her cheek, shaking her head and returning to her paperwork. The sooner it was done, the sooner she could return to Paris and her desk, the calm life she had led before. But even as she typed, her eyes strayed to the deck of cards shoved haphazardly to one side of her working space, the top card crooked atop the rest, invitingly.
An aching in her bones was the first feeling to return, her wrist throbbing the most, and then the thirst, and then sound, the sound of a man's voice, reciting what sounded like instructions.
Trying furiously to open her eyes, Henley succeeded in blinking very feebly, regretting it when the harsh fluorescent lighting above stabbed into her pupils. Struggling to pull a weak forearm across her eyes, she must have made a whimper of pain or something, because suddenly Danny was there, leaning over her, blocking the light as he brought his face within eight inches of hers.
She groaned, mustering the strength to fully fling the arm across her face. "No makeup…look terrible." It came out in a croaked mumble, dehydrated as she was, but Danny only smiled crookedly, pouring water from the bedside stand's pitcher into a glass. "You must be back, if you're whining that you're not stage-ready."
Gently, he coaxed her into a more upright sitting position and the wrist away from her face, an arm curving firmly behind her back to support her as his other arm tilted the glass to her lips. Henley drank a few tentative sips, closing her eyes and nodding in thanks, clearing her throat and trying not to blush at the close contact. Instead, her eyes adjusted finally to the light, her gaze roamed the hospital room she appeared to be in. "Where am I?"
Danny set the glass aside, seating himself in the bedside chair although he longed to relinquish control, to climb in the bed beside her and cradle her and make sure she was okay after all. "Hospital. We got you admitted privately, with the help of Merritt and Jack. Your, uh, your name's Molly, while we're in here, by the way, so as not to confuse the very nice nurse we have been, uh, dealing with." As he spoke, Henley had been analyzing the thick brace enclosing her injured wrist, raising the limb experimentally and wincing as he fell silent. "Which reminds me, she's probably due in here to give you some more morphine or something…" As he reached for the call button, Henley's frail grasp stopped his arm's progress. "Danny…"
He cleared his throat, pulling his arm back and rising from the chair, beginning to pace. "Yeah, Hen?"
She looked down, her eyes scrunching up in pleasure as she grinned. "I love that nickname."
His small smile finally met his eyes, and he stopped pacing, instead pulling out a deck of cards and starting to shuffle it absently. The movement triggered her memory.
"Were you reading to me, before I woke up?" Her puzzled expression was adorable as Danny nodded. "Well, actually, I was listing off instructions to card trick after card trick. I read once that even when unconscious, people can hear and the memory can retain and I figured why not take this down-time to further progress your sadly-lacking skills in the arena of cards-"
She raised a pale hand in supplication, and he cut himself off, and several of the cards slipped from his grasp. She raised a brow; she'd never seen that happen except when he was extremely flustered, and a high blush usually accompanied the faltering. Indeed, his cheeks were pink, and he avoided even looking in her direction as he gathered the cards back into his hands, putting the deck away into an inner pocket of his jacket and retrieving two coins, which he began flicking along his fingers, seating himself again. It was one of the very first tricks he had mastered, and it helped him think; Tressler had always been hilariously intrigued and would stare at him doing it on flights.
Henley simply watched him, and the silence grew between them, awkward on his end, relaxed on her end. She'd forgotten what she was saying, content simply to watch Danny perform, as had always been the case.
At length, she spoke quietly. "What exactly happened, Danny?"
His fingers faltered again at the mention of his name, and he looked up at her for a second before continuing his trick. "Well, you got yourself out of a cage." She stared at him hard, and he continued quietly. "You barely made it out and started to pass out, so I got you to the surface, did a little, um, CPR, and then we…well, vanished. Left Bradley in the dust, so to speak, surrounded by a ton of officers of the law. Heard he's arrested, manacled by a ton of charges even he can't deny, when a file of evidence happened to appear in an FBI agent's inbox."
Henley looked unseeingly at her blankets, absentmindedly tracing the fabric with her fingers, opening and closing her palms and wishing she had her gloves on. "The cage, it was made by L-corp. Shoddy material. Had several weaknesses, but I was sorta out of it…I remember prying at the hinges…I did it, then?"
Danny stood suddenly, reaching into his back pocket and retrieving a small bundle. As he did so, he murmured soothingly. "Yep. No point in dwelling, we all got out okay, Hen. I mean statistically everything about the past week has been a longshot on our part and a pure miracle that I am genius enough to find flaws in the rules of physics and counter them with illusion and…well, anyways, I brought a pair of these for you…" He plopped the small bundle on her blanketed knees, and she saw it was a pair of her favorite leather gloves, folded in on each other neatly. She swallowed thickly, seeing them, and looked up at Danny with tears forming in her eyes as she pulled them on gratefully. "Thanks."
"No problem." He sat back down, no coins or cards in his hands now, simply crossing one leg over the other and watching her. Her eyes rose a moment later, eyes full of emotion, and she whispered his name, reaching out a leather-clad hand. He quickly leaned forward to grab it, but as she opened her mouth, all she got out was "Thanks for coming-" before the door swung open and the rest of the horsemen piled into the small room. Merritt still had a hand to his ear, looking as if he'd been pressed against the door for some time, and quickly lower the offending appendage, shoving it behind his back. Jack was unabashedly grinning, staring at their entwined hands, which they quickly pulled back against their respective chests, coughing and clearing throats simultaneously.
"What was that about coming?" Merritt asked, examining the nails of his other hand closely.
Danny's eyes were wide as saucers, his cheeks pinkening as he started to rapidly rattle off some excuse, while Henley decided not to give in to Merritt, and tossed her hair haughtily. "What, you want in too, Merritt?" The mentalist's jaw dropped, and Henley could have sworn she saw some drool emitted.
Henley had always been treated like the princess of the Horsemen, which, she supposed she was, until Merritt began participating in Tranny Tuesday like he always threatened when she rejected his joking advances, and she truly felt the part now. Danny was coaxing jello down her throat, Jack had run to the drugstore to get her some makeup, and Merritt had pleaded with her to allow him to brush her hair. She'd refused, and sent him out into the hall to get some juicy gossip on all of the nursing staff with his skills. When the door had closed on his jovial wave, she had exhaled in relief, brushing away the offer of more jello, which tasted more like red-colored hair gel, settling back against her pillows.
"If you want me to leave, I can go book you into a suite at the hotel-" Danny was rising, jerking a thumb towards the doorway.
"No, stay." She scooted to one side of her bed, and patted the space she had made. "Sit."
Danny approached cautiously, afraid he would be hit with a conjured ruler or something random, and settled on the edge of the bed.
"Thank you for diving into a mucky lake in the middle of the night to try to break me out of a cage," Henley began. "Of course, I had it all under control, I mean who of the two of us is the escape artist here-" When Danny opened his mouth to protest, she reached out a finger and pressed it against his lips to keep him silent. "But back to my thanks. I'm sure Bradley thought he had one up on you guys, and I'm so grateful you figured out his crap and found me. Thank you, Danny." She moved her hand to his sweater-clad shoulder, squeezing gratefully.
He nodded his acknowledgement, eyes traveling to her injured wrist. "Hen, what happened…?"
She bit her lip, shivering as she remembered the hulking bodyguard and his threats of violence, accompanied so constantly by leers. "It…doesn't matter. They're all jailed and stuff, right?" He nodded again, and she clasped her gloved hands together abruptly, making a little squelching noise at the leather on leather contact. "Right, well, we have a final act to prepare for, don't we? Where are those blueprints?"
He moved to the second bedside chair to reach into the messenger bag he usually had on him, retrieving a tablet and swiping a couple times, bringing up some schematics of 5 Pointz in New York. "We've gotta make sure we set up Jack's vanishing act correctly, too, do you remember what I told you about that…" As he spoke, he moved back to the bed, and at Henley's insistence, laid alongside her, an arm across the pillow behind her head, as he laid the tablet in her lap and starting pointing at different areas of the screen.
When Jack arrived with a bag of ragtag cosmetics, and the number of a helpful makeup counter girl tucked into his back pocket, he wasn't surprised to see their position, and laid the purchases down on a chair before muttering something about lunch and heading back out. Merritt ducked in excitedly with a story about a female nurse consorting with another female nurse, deciding to shelf the tale with one last wolf-whistle before closing the door quietly.
Neither the illusionist nor escape artist noticed much of either of their partners' interruptions, and the tablet wasn't holding their attention either after long. Henley had not been interested in planning their act after all, and just as Danny was earnestly describing the wiring of the holograph projector, she had leant up and caught his lips with hers, her bound hand reaching up to bring his face closer; that had ended any further discussion.
thank you. ~Bon