By Choice
Notes: Maybe if I post shorter chapters I can actually make progress here.
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Cabrera is a danger to more than just Ruvik. Sebastian stands by his first assessment of the man; easy to anger and likely off his rocker enough to not care who he's hurting. The fact that he's no longer the only psychopath around doesn't change jack shit. He remembers the photos of Laura, and knows the threat that had been implied in them. Without actually having met the man he's going to assume it was meant purposely and that Laura's life is in the balance here. Along with Valerio, the kid Leslie, and whoever else might be unlucky enough to walk by in the hospice.
Cabrera is a danger and he needs to be taken care of. Somehow.
Sebastian flips through the photos again after getting his gun and ignores the looming question of what exactly he thinks he's going to do. He focuses in on calculating angles and lines of sight instead. The front of the building is surrounded by high brick walls and that gets him off his ass and out the front door.
His shoulder holster settles comfortably on him as he moves. The weight of the handgun comfortingly familiar as he paces through the woods around the wall. Eyes up and cursing every bush of thorns and dangling spider he doesn't avoid until he stumbles across a path. Too wide and clean looking for just animals to have been using it.
It winds around a bit before leading him to exactly what Sebastian had been expecting to find. A small wooden platform up in a sturdy looking tree with rungs nailed into the tree leading up it. They're sanded smooth and don't move under his weight as he hauls himself up.
The platform is bigger when he gets up on it. The wood is still rough and new enough looking that it can't have been in place for more than a month. Situated in the vee of two thick branches, a bench seat is built into it and doubles as storage. Sebastian lifts the seat and finds it's filled with bottles of water, a Ziploc bag of unused film, and a really expensive looking set of binoculars.
"Disorganized schizophrenic my ass," Sebastian mutters. The platform's built by hand to fit the tree and looks like something a professional would do. He doubts very much that Cabrera went out and asked someone to make it for him. The pictures, the spying. Like hell Cabrera is disorganized.
Or completely on his own. This shit costs money, and Sebastian knows where it's coming from.
He takes everything with him and walks back to his car, still parked where he remembers parking it last. He dumps everything in the trunk and dials the only number that's programmed in his new phone.
"Where's Cabrera?" Sebastian asks when the line clicks through and before Kidman can even take a breath. "And don't feed me a line of bull. A crazy fucker like him can't stay hidden without someone funding him. I want him off Ruvik's back before we transfer to Beacon."
The demand rips a little bit of him away even though it's easy to say. He shoves that thought away for later. Now isn't the time for it. Not when he's on the phone with the viper he'd taken in.
Kidman lets out a tense breath but doesn't bother playing around with stupid denials. "Are you going to kill him?"
"If I have to," which is a truth that Sebastian knows isn't a compulsion. Cop, PI, whatever the fuck he is now; some people are just too rabid to let live. He'll pull the trigger if the man makes him, and he's mostly sure the man will. "I want the real files on him, Kidman. Not whatever bullshit you've been selling to me!"
"There's a photography studio in town," Kidman eventually says after a long moment of silence. There's nothing in her voice at all. No emotion that Sebastian can read and that infuriates him quickly. All the anger he didn't feel before with Ruvik coming up and aiming itself at a new target. He should hang up and get back to figuring out what he's going to do with himself now.
He should, but he doesn't. "How's Joseph?"
"Determined. He's tearing the city apart," Kidman huffs and there's a trace of amusement there that makes Sebastian's gut clench. Joseph would go to her in his search, no doubt about that. He'll bring her into it not suspecting a damn thing until it's too late, just like Sebastian did.
"Sebastian, did you give him your notes?" Kidman asks. What friendliness -vague as it was- is gone now and Sebastian isn't talking to Kidman. He's talking to Mobius.
He doesn't hesitate to think or plan. He snorts derisively over the line. "And ruin his life too? Those files were by cross to carry. Go fuck yourself Kidman, the notes are long gone."
It's empty bravado and he has no doubt that she doesn't believe him. They'll keep tabs on Joseph and work on getting her even deeper into his good graces no matter what he says. He'll make them doubt their theory though. Make them jump at shadows and look all over for the next little annoyance to pop up with those notes.
"They're not that bad, you know," Kidman says with a weary sigh. Trying to sound like the assistant he'd almost thought he'd figured out. "They value loyalty and hard work. They're not like your old workplace at all. You can make a home with us, Sebastian."
"Before or after I burn someone's little girl to death and kill their wife?" Sebastian spits out, and he revels in the anger. He wants to get in his car and drive back to Krimson, to show Kidman what it's like to choke on smoke and screams you can't block out. Kidman wisely keeps quiet so that all Sebastian can hear is the raggedness of his own breath echoing back through the phone. "Tell your bosses they're fucking lucky I'm broken and don't have any choice anymore."
"Goodbye, Sebastian," Kidman says. Firm and unyielding, giving nothing else away at all.
The line cuts out and the phone snaps in half when he throws it. Both parts skittering and scraping along the uneven stones that make up the front walk. The violent action doesn't help ease the rage in him and Sebastian closes his eyes and curses.
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It makes sense, when Sebastian stops growling curses at the ruined phone.
The studio was in the reports he'd pulled and he'd thought of checking it out before, but the owner had never pegged him as the type to willingly print off pictures of mutilated animals and sleeping coma patients.
The key word there being willingly. Sebastian wonders if the photographer is still there in his studio, or if he's dead too.
He makes his way back inside and it's not until he's in a small, sterile room that he thinks to wonder why his feet took him inside. The studio is his next stop but Sebastian follows a faint compulsion that doesn't make sense until he opens a drawer in a cabinet that looks like it came straight from a hospital.
Needles line the drawer and Sebastian has the feeling he's used them before. They feel familiar when he runs his fingers over them and picks one up. The plastic crinkles and he reaches to the right automatically. Memory trickles in as he swings open a small fridge and plucks out a clear vial of something.
Ruvik hisses out a number and Sebastian takes out the requested amount. The needle is sharp and he watches in slight wonder as it pierces the man's pale skin easily. Not through the scar tissue that lines the bend of the inner elbow, but just below it. Into the vivid blue of a vein marked with scars from a lifetime of injections.
Sebastian finds Ruvik in the upstairs library. A resting room for the man because nothing in the room really interests him. Ruvik is hunched over the ridiculous desk. Hands flat on the surface and eyes closed as he tries to stave off what's coming. Sebastian's watched this happen before while he was under deep, and he knows what to do.
He remembers the sound of Ruvik's voice talking him through it, and the motion of drawing the drug from the vial is as natural as lighting up a cigarette.
Ruvik doesn't flinch back or make a sound when Sebastian pulls his arm up and out. Pushing the ragged sleeves back to find the veins underneath. There's a hint of curiosity in the man's eyes when he opens them to watch, but that goes out fast. The pain is hitting him hard. Even with the drug to counter some of it, Ruvik isn't going to be doing or thinking of anything for the next hour or two. At least it wasn't a seizure this time.
"I'm vulnerable," Ruvik's eyes narrow in distaste at the admittance.
Sebastian backs out of the room without saying a word. The echo of those words ringing clearly in his mind as Ruvik settles back in the chair to deal with the pain. He's heard them more than once, and it hits him now exactly how vulnerable the man is. Between the migraines and the seizures it's a wonder that Ruvik manages to get anything done.
The fact that what he does get done is so very bloody and evil drains a lot of the awe that Sebastian feels at the realization. It also brings back the importance of finding Cabrera.
Ruvik's vulnerable far too much, and Cabrera will eventually take advantage. Mobius orders be damned.
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