November 1, 1901

Trout paced the width of the school room. He hated this room, but it could always be counted on to have large expanses of places to write words, to make his thoughts make sense when they got trapped in his head, and right then, the thoughts in his head were down right scary. He heard everything Marta told Scatter. He waited long after they both went silent until the electricity running through his body wouldn't let him sit still anymore. Marta took care of all of them, and if anything could be said about Trout Cooper, it was that he was loyal as a damn dog, but Mick wanted him to be Spot's second. Time and again he had turned down Spot's offer to be second. In his mind, Spot never asked him because he was worthy of the position, but because they'd been friends so long. To him, it was a favor, a pity title. Spot had been his closest friend since they were seven years old, of course he'd offer him the chance, and Trout never once took the offer seriously. For someone else to offer it to him... That might mean he really was more than the big quiet guy with the muscles and the heavy hit. It was tempting to take him up on it.

He'd only ever felt special or chosen one other time in his life, when a girl with dark brown eyes looked at him like he hung the sun and the moon just for her, but that ended spectacularly badly. To feel wanted, to feel like he could make something of himself without needing to be fixed was a heady tonic, one that would be hard to resist. He stopped and stared at the black board. The chalk twirled in between his middle and ring finger of his right as he tried to sort his thoughts out enough to get them down and see them while his left rubbed absently at his neck. His dark curls hung in his face and he blew them away before taking the step closer and writing the first word.

Inside man, he wrote at the top of the board with arrows dropping down pointing to Clarice/Rudy and Trout. If Mick was going to get him anyway, why not go on his own and try to get information back to the others to help them? They needed someone who knew what Mick was putting together for the gauntlet. They couldn't steal Spot away, because Mick would always find a way to draw him back in, threats, kidnappings, there was no telling how far he would take it. Spot had to be there and he had to fight. All they could do was help him through. If Trout was inside, starting his training to take over as second he could do that. Play both sides, he wrote under his own name and then Turned once, might do again, under Rudy and Clarice. He frowned, and put the chalk back against the blackboard, wincing against the squeal it made on contact and the implication of his words as he wrote, Mick will be watching, expecting betrayal, under his name, and Trusted, close circle, under Rudy and Clarice. He knew he shouldn't be disappointed, he should have been thrilled that it was looking like a bad idea, but that nagging thought that he could finally be enough all on his own, just the way he was with Dockside was still there. He wanted to make it work. He hungered for that chance.

He continued to write and draw arrows from thought to thought, letting the rest of the world melt away. He'd failed at everything he'd ever done except being a newsie and being at Spot's flank. Being part of a family was a disaster; love ended terribly; he'd been the only one to stand up to Spot when Jack came asking for help with the strike; and he'd ended up in jail with a broken arm for most of the action. He had to find a way to make this work, to finally come out of something on top. He didn't hear anything outside of the thoughts that were flowing out of his hand and onto the blackboard so quickly that he could hardly keep up, not even Mush coming to the schoolroom door and staring at the scrawling, winding mess of words with his mouth open. "H-heya, Trout," he called nervously, snapping Trout to attention. He turned, glaring at Mush. He didn't like to be pulled away and he was afraid that Mush would say something about his plans, try to talk him out of them, tell Marta, somehow get in his way. "You...uh...you seen Race?"

Trout started to shake his head no, but then thought better of it. Mush, Race and Boots were there to keep an eye on Dockside from the outside and Mush had managed to charm his way into the hearts of some of the dancing girls at the Fox. He was the best source Trout had at the moment. He looked back at his friend, to see his dark eyes trying to make sense of Trout's lines and arrows. He didn't even think of it, he just grabbed Mush by his vest front and dragged him closer to the blackboard, slamming him into it and holding him there by the back of his neck, smashing his face against the cold slate. "Trout! Lemme go!" he yelped. "I didn't do nothing!" Trout grunted in frustration and grabbed Mush by his chin, turning his face up so he was nearly eye level with Rudy and Clarice's names. "I don't know nothing new! I don't know what you want! Lemme go!"

He got up into Mush's face and glared, taking a deep breath. Race knew his secret and Marta knew. Soon enough everyone would know anyway, and he'd rather it be on his terms. "Y-y-you t-t-t-t-t-t-t...". He stopped and shoved his hair back pointing at Rudy and Clarice's names in frustration. "T-t-t-t-te...t-t-telllll mmmmmmme." He pointed again and Mush looked back and for between his face and where his finger was pointing in bewilderment. The confused Manhattanite waited too long and Trout, already too frustrated to function slammed him back again so hard that his eyes went unfocused for a moment. "That!" he barked, pointing at the names.

"I don't know!" Mush yelled back.

Before Mush could yelp out anything else or Trout could abuse him anymore, a low quiet voice cut between them. "This is what Mick does, Trout. You haven't even seen him with your own eyes and he's changing you." He glanced back at her and every muscle in his body tightened. She didn't understand what he was looking for, she couldn't. She looked up at his diagram on the black board and shook her auburn head slowly. "Imagine the monster you could become if it was you that could go and be in there. He could take all that anger that I've spent years trying to calm and turn you into a loose canon. A man who would beat one of his friends senseless for information." She raised a brow at Mush and then turned the fiery intensity of her eyes back on Trout. "But that's not you, that's not the boy I raised. Put him down." Trout shook his head and turned his attention back to Mush. He had to make him understand.

'He tell me,' he signed.

Marta's hand rested on his shoulder. "Most people will tell you what you need if you just ask. Let. Him. Go."

Race rushed in the room, having heard the voices. "Trout! Damnit!" He clawed at Trout's arm, but the big Brooklynite flicked him away. "Goddamnit, put him down! What the fuck is going on with you?"

Marta was staring at the board with her hazel eyes wide. They darted from word to word. "You really think he would let you near us if you went in there? We'd never see you again, and if we did, you wouldn't be you anymore. You'd just be another goon, just like the one who broke your arm. Is that what you want? You chose us over school before when you were given a chance. Would you really choose this" she threw her arm out towards the black board, "over family? If you would, you should get going now. You're already too far gone; he's already in your head and I can't trust you if he's in your head." He let Mush go, his grip loosening until the shorter boy could easily push away and Marta took away her hand from his shoulder and side stepped so she was in front of him. "He promises lots of things; he promised Scat too, but he doesn't deliver. He'll string you along for years until you don't know any other way to live. You think you can survive like that?" Trout shook his head. He knew he couldn't. "Good." She grabbed his chin and forced him to look her in the eye while his blazed at the intrusion. "You don't need him. You don't need Mick. You're fine as you are." Her hand loosened, softly touching his face. "What do you want Mush to tell you?"

"Ask him yourself, jackass!" Race hissed, pacing out his anger a few feet away and rubbing the bruise on his upper arm from the hit that sent him flying backwards.

Mush gave him a gentle shove, "He did, but I...I dunno what he said." His soft brown eyes looked at Trout apologetically as Trout's insides felt like they might shrivel up like raisins.

"What'ya mean you dunno what he said? I heard him talk, plain as day, earlier! He can talk, he's a liar. Just looking for sympathy!" Race yelled and Trout drew a sharp breath in, feeling two feet tall instead of six.

Marta put her hand out to stop Mush from elaborating, seeing that it might shatter Trout to hear it explained. "Tell me," she coaxed. He shook his head, staring at the floor. He couldn't, not in front of Race. "Trout, what were you trying to figure out?" He raised his eyes to meet hers and flicked them back up to the names on the blackboard. She followed his gaze. She'd been so preoccupied by the parts of his chart under his name, she hadn't even seen the other side. "You beautiful, brilliant bastard," she whispered taking a step towards it. "Clarice. She helped me once, she might do it again." She spun around and grabbed Mush by his collar, "Is a woman named Clarice still there? She was a dancer, brown hair and eyes."

Mush nodded fervently, clawing at her hand. Trout had to feel bad for him, he volunteered to help and all they were doing was manhandling him. "The Madame is called Clarice! I promise! She's in charge of the dancing girls!" Trout reached out and put his hand on top of Marta's prying her grip away, not daring to look at Mush, instead latching his gaze onto Marta's. She glared back at him for a moment and then let go easily. Mush straightened his clothes while Trout and Marta stared at each other, each searching the other's face for understanding. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" she murmured. He nodded, pointing at her and then at Clarice's name on the blackboard and making the sign for "meet." She might not have understood many of his signs, but that one looked enough like two people meeting that she nodded in agreement and turned back to Mush. "Can your girls get you to her without drawing Mick's attention?"

He looked at them both mistrustingly, "Yeah, I guess."

"I need to see Clarice. I need to talk to her, away from Dockside, away from Brooklyn. I don't care if we have to meet in New Jersey! Let her pick the place and the day, just so long as it's before Spot's gauntlet. Go, right now! Please, Mush!"

Mush sighed and put his hat back on his head, but Trout stopped him and signed, 'sorry,' without looking up. Mush clapped him on the arm, "I get it. Its ok, but keep ya hands off from now on." Trout nodded and chanced a glance up to see the sad half smile that Mush flashed him before heading out the door.

Marta squeezed his arm and went back to the kitchen to see if the supper she started before he brought Scat in was salvageable, leaving Trout and Racetrack alone together. Race was silent as Trout erased the side of the board that had him going into Dockside, but then he spoke as Trout was about to leave. "You and me go back farther than anyone else I got left, and you didn't tell me something so big?"

'Not now,' Trout signed and Race and frowned deeply at the dismissal. Trout looked up at him wearily, "Y-y-you un-nah knnnnnnnnnnow?" Race was wincing at the stutters and false starts and Trout stepped closer, towering over the second real friend he ever made, knowing that confronting exactly what he was hiding all this time wouldn't really help, it would just make Race feel bad for how he acted. But Trout felt bad, too. Couldn't Race understand that it was never about him? Until Spot was gone, he'd spoken to Spot, Carlos and JoAnna. He never wanted it out. When he was silent, he could convince people that he was just as quick as them, but the second they heard him, they assumed he was delayed, deformed, and not right. Race spoke so easily and so much; he'd never understand. Besides that, he never felt strange around Race. Race made him feel like the way he was was fine. Thinking about it and not being able to explain himself piled up and his mouth took over. He stopped trying to fix the words. He stopped fighting his mouth or his brain or whatever it was that made him the way he was, and let the words come as they were. A random tumble of syllables rolled out with all of the musicality of real language and Race's deep, dark eyes grew wide. Trout got going and he couldn't stop. Years of dammed up words rolled out one after the other with no one to understand them. The words consumed him until Marta's arms wrapped around him from behind, squeezing tightly.

"Racetrack, beat it," she ordered quietly against his shoulder blade, but Race was frozen in place. Trout had to pull an arm free from her embrace to shut himself up with a hand over his mouth. His lungs didn't want air, but he forced it in and out and she waited until he was quiet but breathing heavily to let him go. "Go to the kitchen and sit at the table." She paused for a minute. "I don't have time to clean it up, so no throwing shit around. Just sit and wait while I go write a note for the undertakers. We need to get Scat taken care of."

"I gotta walk anyway. I'll go," Race mumbled and shoved his hat low over his eyes. He left without another look at Trout and didn't speak to him for the rest of the week while they waited for the meeting that Clarice agreed to in the Bronx. He hadn't been so lonely since he was on his own. Everyone was afraid he'd snap, no one but Nips and Pickle would talk to him. Marta was hardly talking to anyone, going through the motions and getting her job done. Scat was taken away and buried in a pauper's grave on Randall's Island with nothing but a number to show where he was.

November 9, 1901

Finally, the day of the meeting came and Marta and Trout made their way to the Bronx. They stood outside of Keenan's Bar for a long time, both one edge. "I don't know about this," Marta said. "I've been here before. This is Barkers Bailey's hangout." Trout gave her an incredulous look that made her smile. "Same reason as now, looking for a way to stop Mick. Back then his second was a good guy, but I know he passed. I'm not sure Barkers is any more stable than Mick. Same animal, different colored spots." She twisted her hair nervously. Lately, she spent so much time fiddling with it that she didn't even bother putting it up anymore. Trout held out his elbow like a gentleman and tugged her across the street. Just like Carlos told him she did at Moriarty's, she froze in the doorway, but he pulled her in with some gentle coaxing. She scanned the tables, fidgeting nervously. "Everyone knows Mick and Barkers hate each other. If Mush sent us into a trap..."

"It ain't a trap," a snappish female voice interrupted. "Mick and Barkers do hate each other, which is why Mick started sending a broken, used up whore as a gift to Barkers when he wants something and not a sweet young dancer." She stood, with some difficulty and glared at them. Marta's nails dug into his arm. "It's what makes it perfect. Rudy can easily make up business that requires him to come and Mick doesn't think a thing of it when he brings me. Barkers hates Mick so much that he doesn't give a shit if we use the place to plot Mick's death, so long as his name don't come up if we fuck it all up in the end. And he lets us use the table...nearly free of charge." The brunette limped towards them with an uneven gate, using a thick cane to steady herself. She barely looked like she could stand on her own, but something about her rubbed Trout the wrong way and he moved in front of Marta. Clarice chuckled humorlessly, "Down boy. I've never done this woman a stitch of harm and I never intend to." She stared at him, looked him up and down appraisingly like a piece of meat and smirked. "Big, protective, silent, and a looker under all that mess on your head...you must be the other one. If you were smart you'd be in hiding with your pals in Manhattan...anywhere but right here. It's not safe for you."

"Nnnnnot hhhh...hhhhide," he rumbled barely above a whisper. "Nnnnnot ssss...sssss...sssssi'ent."

He fully expected her to laugh, he had already steeled himself against it, knowing that his vulnerability was on display and that any gang member worth his or her salt would exploit that to see what he was really made of. But she didn't. Instead, her gaze turned appreciative. "That's good. You'll need that to get through to him. Mick is doing everything he can to tear that boy to pieces; he'll need someone he can trust."

"Spot?" Marta yelped. "How is he? Have you seen him?"

Clarice grimaced like she was in pain. "Come sit with me." She gestured towards the table she got up from and followed them back over in her stiff, uneven gait. "He's making it; I saw him yesterday. He's starting to look a little worse for wear...what with Mick going in there to torture Darcy in front of him. I don't know much, any trust Mick had in me was broken the day I kicked a whiskey bottle." She stared deeply into Marta's eyes and Marta paled. She knew exactly how much Clarice sacrificed. "But from what I've seen and overheard, there are rough days to come and if you want any chance of saving that boy, you need to listen good."

A/N: Hi everyone! Phew, its been awhile! I never meant to let this story go so long, but Trout...I dunno, he went on a vacation or something. He did not want to play. Anyway, I got him talking again and here we are! I promise not to let it go so long next time! Hope you enjoy and didn't completely forget the plotline while I was gone! Please read and review.