Lula is out at the venue, doing final checks. Merritt is upstairs perfecting himself. Jack is out having the gas canisters refilled, since it was his desperate need for a final rehearsal which emptied them. Danny has been out all morning, paying a subtle visit to one of this evening's VIP guests, ensuring their attendance, and is now on his way back.
It's only the last of these Dylan cares about. The last of these has him waiting at the trattoria back door, sitting on a pile of upturned vegetable crates waiting for late collection. He's been waiting a while but it's fine. Sort of peaceful, in fact, listening to the noise from inside, the normality. There's comfort in other people's obliviousness. It helps him to believe that his decision to compartmentalize the preparations has paid off, that Dylan truly is the only one alive who knows every piece of it and every pin and stitch to hold the pieces together. Relaxing, too, to know all of that, to see it ahead, and be surrounded by a city that does not, could not possibly, suspect.
Actually, that's part of the reason he's waiting for Danny.
Since he arrived last night, Danny has avoided Dylan. Not in any obvious way, naturally, but he's always been the first to leave a room, to slip out when others were absorbed in details or, in Jack's case, sleeping. He devoted himself, and volunteered the devotion of everybody else, to making sure Merritt didn't see a single frame of Italian television last night. He also devoted himself to hating the compartmentalization of the plan heart and soul, and to questioning it at every possible turn. More than once Dylan could have risen to it. But resistance was wise, and he knew that. He has resisted. An argument is exactly what Danny wants – to be right, to stand over Dylan, to minimize his own recent mistakes – and exactly what they can't afford right now.
As things stand – shakily – something is going to give. And so, Dylan waits. The word 'ambush' is maybe a little dramatic but… But when Danny rounds the corner, into the shade, he is checking back over his shoulder, one last confirmation that he wasn't followed as he sweeps down his hood. He sees Dylan too late, already spotted. There's a visible stutter in his walk, fighting the urge to freeze like a rabbit or run like a deer, forcing himself to continue on. Dramatic maybe, but an ambush is what it is.
"How are the Guilianis?" Dylan calls.
"Considering a long walk in the piazza as a family later tonight."
"That'll be nice for them. There's bound to be something interesting going on."
Danny twitches the barest attempt at a smile and tries to walk on by. Dylan lets him try it. He doesn't even need to look at him, instead turning his face up to a shaft of sunlight, eyes closed. Danny goes nowhere; he stops in the doorway and Dylan tries not to congratulate himself too heartily. Derision begins gently, trying to needle, to wheedle in, "You seem very calm."
"It's the duck thing." Dylan has yet to open his eyes. "All under the surface."
"Swans. The saying is about swans."
"Ducks do it too. Sit down a second, Danny." Believe Dylan when he tells you, it was in no way intentional that the next stack of crates along the wall is a little shorter than his own. Don't ask if it's true or not, just do him a favour and believe it. It's for the best anyway; when Danny moves past him again Dylan feels not only the weight of the man himself displacing air, but the weight dragging along behind him. He's better off closer to the ground. Dylan gives him a second to settle, then asks, "What happened?"
Too much of a pause. "What did you do with her phone? I need to see it. She says the passcode is me. Name, initials, some variant on-"
"It's a four digit number. And your birthday's the fifteenth."
"How do you even know that?"
"We met because I put a tarot card in your shoe without you noticing and that's what you choose to question?" This is when Dylan looks round. In a perfect world he'd get eye contact, but he doesn't have a perfect world, he has Atlas, and gets nothing. "I made it so this is just you and me for a reason. Tell me what happened."
Dramatic, but this was an ambush; the moment Danny throws up his hands and surrenders is very clear. There's a sort of click, a change of gears, from defence to defeat. Once that decision is made there is no need to rush him; when a truth can no longer be hidden, it demands to be told, and must be, too suddenly painful to be put away again.
"Rebecca knows. I know Merritt said she's not a danger, that she won't actually act but… I can't explain it." A pause there; the feeling is unfamiliar. This is the first time Danny has admitted to himself, "I can't explain it. It's like she's got a script."
"You say she knows. Knows what, Danny? Specifics."
"Us. The show, everything, the Eye. All of it."
Dylan shakes his head. Without doubt or hesitation, "That's not possible."
"I know," and Danny sounds just as certain. "But she… it was unnerving."
"Go on. Go on and use the word 'scared'. You'll feel better, I promise."
All Danny's spines flare out again, all the old prickled rage, the defences. He's back to his usual self and probably won't realize for a good hour or more, he really does feel better than he did a second ago. He rises, back straightening, hackles up, the twitchy hands coming up to tear the pieces out of the air he can't tear out of Dylan. They grab at words which are still eluding him when a too-small car engine rumbles at the corner. Danny turns his head to see, mumbling, "Yes, the powder-blue clown car is totally inconspicuous. Good pick, Dylan."
Dylan might have told him about the minimal choice on last minute rentals and the theory of incongruity, that this minute bubble of a car is so unlikely to contain anything even within range of Jack Wilder or any Horseman that the sight would be dismissed by any onlooker as a trick of the eye, except for Danny's using that damn C-word. By the time the shudder has rolled down his back and dispersed, it's too late to say anything. A flash of smug, this one tiny victory, and Danny is restored to the height of his powers. In light of this, Dylan can let it go.
Jack is, by now, easing himself out from behind the wheel, all elbows and angles. Stretching the cricks out of his neck, "Dylan, never make me drive this thing again, or drive anything in this city. That was the longest hour of my life not spent in an interrogation r-"
"Oh, please, you slept through your interview with me," Dylan fires back. "Did you get the gas?"
Jack reaches back in, head and shoulders snaking and tilting, to get it from the passenger seat. He hands a canister to Danny and holds onto one. "You guys look sort of serious…"
It isn't like him. Not that Dylan would ever call any of his own team 'easily distracted' but generally Jack's not difficult to get around. The mention of interrogation rooms had seemed like a gift, too easy, a road it would be all too simple to lead him down. So it's no insult to Jack, to say that his sudden insight is worrying. Dylan oughtn't let it show, but catches himself too late. Jack sees his own signals echoed, and his wordless fears deepen.
"We were just discussing your counting," Danny cuts in, smiling. Dylan flinches; that sounded like support. That sounded like Danny saving him when he was about to make things worse than they already were. He watches, wide-eyed and suspicious, waiting for the knife to twist. But it never does or, at least, not in Dylan's chest anyway. Entirely focussed on Jack, Danny continues, "Did you watch any of those Sesame Street videos I linked you to? You might not feel it's important, but to Lula, you spending ninety seconds with a purple felt vampire could be the difference between life and death."
"I'd say The Count is more lilac than purple," Dylan says, still so shocked he can barely manage above a mumble. He speaks mostly to acknowledge Danny, and in a minor way to fill the gap while anger is superseding any concerns Jack may have been allowing to preoccupy him, the brief gap where all eyes are on the younger teammate while he grits his teeth, tries to fight it back. Dylan and Danny watch with the cool reserve of scientists in a lead bunker, waiting to see if the bomb will go off.
Eventually, biting every word like a bullet, "Dylan, tell Daniel when was the last time I messed up the count."
"This morning?"
"That was your fault, you were talking to me."
"Somebody might have to talk to you tonight."
Muttered frustration, another flare of rage, so intense that Jack's riveted audience draw back as one. They're almost a little disappointed to watch him swallow it. "Nobody better talk to me again. Not about this." They're sitting so close they can hear his teeth grind. "I'm serious. Not ever." Jack shifts the weight of the gas canister in his arms so that he can charge past them, straight inside without having to awkwardly elbow his way through the door.
In sync, and each with the same half-smiling sigh, Danny and Dylan both rise to follow him into the stairwell. But while they're still outside, and out of earshot, "Are you happy now? Now that you've finally picked a fight with somebody who didn't deserve it, are you happy?"
"Way more than I know I should be."
It might be irrelevant to mention just now, but as they turn around, the back seat of the rental car begins to jolt. And there is one perfect moment where any of the three Horsemen might glance over his shoulder and see, whether through the door or the first floor window, the diamond-patterned Doc Marten come shooting out between the cushions when they finally give way.
But when Jack feels them in the stairwell behind him, and flings back the only ammunition he's got, "Hey, guess what I saw while I was out – a clown," he's not referring to Quinn's amateur escapology. Dylan freezes at the landing beneath him. Jack holds down his grin same as he did the fear and rage not moments ago. "Should have seen it, Dylan, huge big feet, big hands, white face, whole nine yards."
"…But just the one, right?"
Somewhere distant, way beyond the horizons of Dylan's thinking just now, Danny starts up a stream, "Okay, I seem to miss all the conversations which explain what clowns have got to do with anything. If I were a less secure guy I'd think this was on me, this was a joke at my expense, but-"
"Jack, I can hear you thinking up all the stories, like you're going to tell me there's a convention or something and the city's infested, but this is important. How many? It wasn't a pair? They travel in pairs."
"What, like that's union rules or something?"
"The ones you need to worry about travel in pairs. How many?"
"Just one, alright?! It's clowns, Dylan, you can relax. I kind of like them."
Danny mutters, "I don't."
"You're you, though."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, man, you're just… You're not the clown type."
"Please, what exactly is the c-?" The bickering picks up where it left off. The reactions all around it are comic-book-clear; Jack is starting to look distinctly harried, Danny is defending himself, thinking he's the only one out of the loop, and Dylan is drawn away in his own thoughts and considerations. Again, maybe it has no immediate bearing on the situation, but it ought to be noted they are all within sight of the third floor window and if any of them would look, they'd see Quinn just beaching it's exhausted upper half out through the car's sunroof, the dramatic heaving of its chest, arms flung out to its sides.
"Do you even want to be the clown type?" Jack groans. He's at the top of the stairs now, waiting for someone to let him into the apartment.
"Not especially."
Dylan nods approvingly at Danny's admission, slaps one of his two very free hands between his shoulder blades. A good answer. It could have been stronger, more definite, could have been a solid No, but given the circumstances and the needling, sniping nature of the ongoing argument, Dylan will take a smug equivocation where he can get it. A nice, negative answer; sometimes Danny makes it very hard to stay proud of him, generally because he's so damn proud of himself, but this isn't one of those times.
Before he unlocks the door, Dylan takes the second canister from Danny and puts it in the crook of Jack's hanging arm. "You know those have to go over to Lula, right?"
"What? Why'd you let me get all the way up here?"
"You tell me," Dylan shrugs, "You were in front. Way out in front, actually."
"Sort of stomping," Danny joins.
"More of a flounce than a stomp, wouldn't you say?"
"I could get behind 'flounce', yes."
"Guys, come on!" When the door opens, Jack tries to follow them inside. The valve on the top of each canister strikes the doorway, barring him. He backs up just one step to turn sideways and finds the door closed before he can move forward again. For as much as a minute he stands right where he is, expecting someone to come back, something to give. A minute is about as long as it takes for them to explain to Merritt what happened, and for Merritt to laugh. When he hears that, and his arms are already starting to ache, Jack turns and starts down the stairs again.