Rudy shoved her away from the flat where Clarice lay dying and into his apartment, "Get a grip, Marta!" he hissed with a pointed glare and slammed the door behind her. She screamed against the gag in her mouth and threw her body against the door over and over until the shock and horror over what she saw was overtaken by overwhelming sadness and she slid down the door and buried her face in her upper arms, crying hysterically. Spot was broken inside, even more than he was before and there was no telling if he could be saved even if they got him out. Clarice, her closest ally in this, was dead. It was a tantrum that would rival that of most small children.
A metallic clank and a kick at her shoe pulled her attention out of the tempest of confusion in her head. The blonde girl in front of her had bruises on her face and a split lip. The telltale sign of being Mick's conquest covered her chest and Marta could still feel the ache of those bruises even after all the years since they faded. He liked to bite deep and hard, just to the safe side of breaking the skin and the ones on the girls alabaster skin were the same deep purple as her skirt. "You done throwing your little shit fit?" the girl asked in a voice that would be sweet if it weren't for the vein of bitterness that she long since stopped trying to hide. Her face was pointy and sharp, but not unpleasing. "I must say, I expected something a bit more impressive with the way everyone around here talks about you. I expected the Queen of Brooklyn…" Marta was off the ground with the bindings on her wrists pulled tightly against the tiny blonde's throat before she could utter a squeak of protest. She laughed hoarsely. "That's more like it. That looks more like the girl who is going to take Mick down. Now, lemme go so I can untie you." Marta hesitantly did as she was asked and the tiny blond loosened the ropes around her wrists and untied the handkerchief around her mouth.
"So, you're Darcy. The 'underwear girl' I've heard so much about." She said once she turned back around and took another look at the girl, she couldn't help the raise of her eyebrow.
Darcy's face only flushed for a moment before she twisted it into a haughty scowl. "I sure am, and you don't like Mick's little pet name for you."
"I sure don't," Marta mocked darkly, rubbing her wrists. "Never have, never will." She watched the little blonde carefully, unsure of whether of not to trust her. "Never thought Mick's personal mistress would be helping me take him down."
"You ever think to ask how he got his personal mistress?" Darcy asked icily.
Marta's hands raised to her hips, not liking this pipsqueak of a rat-faced girl sassing her. "I never thought to ask many things about Donovan Mickelson. I figured charming, beautiful and a few aces short of a deck covered him pretty well."
"Add manipulative and abusive in there are you've got him pretty well pegged," Darcy agreed, trying not to smile. She was actually almost pretty when she smiled, when all the weight of Mick's crimes against her lifted. "He stole me from my mother when my father tried to leave Dockside. If Pop tries to leave, Mick threatens to kill me and take one of my three little sisters to replace me with. If I do anything he don't like, he threatens to kill my father and put all of my sisters to work at the Fox. My pop and I want him gone, out of our lives for good." For such a tiny thing, she stood tall and seemed to grow a few inches when she spoke about her sisters.
"Three sisters, four little girls," Marta mused, absently pulling her braid over her shoulder. She met eyes with Darcy, "You're Rudy's daughter. You're the reason he let me win."
Darcy nodded resolutely, her lip pouting out bit as her jaw clenched. "I sure am, and I'm helping. You don't get to say no." Marta drew a sharp breath in at the statement, but Darcy paid her no mind and kept talking, rattling on nervously. "Spot thinks I'm a traitor…and maybe I am, but I did it for my sisters. I have to keep them away from Mick and I have to prove to Spot that I'm not what he thinks I am."
Marta sighed, she was no stranger to lovestruck little girls chasing after Spot. HIs arrogance and his power brought them knocking at the lodging house door in droves, but he wasn't much of one for friendships, let alone relationships, because that would mean he had to let them in, and he didn't let people outside of her, Trout and Nips in very often. "Good luck with that, Kid," she sighed. "Spot isn't much for second chances, but I am. So long as you and I want the same things, you're ok in my book."
"I want my sisters to not know the things that I do about men," she said in a shaking voice. "I don't ever want them to be afraid of being touched or wonder what they will tell their man if they ever fall in love." Her face hardened again even though tears shown in her eyes. "My sisters are not toys to be broken."
Marta stared deep in to her light, watercolor eyes, searching for any sign of a lie or betrayal before reaching out for the girl's hand, noticing the small flinch as their skin touched. "Good enough for me, Sweets." She noticed the gas can at Darcy's feet. "What's that for?"
"Dusk is falling; they can't fight in the dark. Mick has lamps in all of the apartments. So what's the plan, what do I do?"
"Plans, stupid fucking plans, what are we on here? Plan F? No, we're done with plans. Brooklyn's at its best flying by the seat of its pants, with the element of surprise…" Marta's eyes got big as the way out, the way out for all of them, came crashing into her head with resounding ferocity. "Oh, holy shit…Can you get more of that?"
"More kerosene? No, probably not. Its not like the others wouldn't notice me sending out for more lamp oil. No one's supposed to leave the building until Mick or my pop says so. What are you thinking?"
"You said it and Clarice said it. We're burning Dockside to the ground." She pulled her hair over her shoulder and fiddled with it as she worked out the details in her head. "I'll send some of my lookouts to the Fox and the brownstone, but we need someone to light the fire here and douse the place without getting caught by Mick's guys."
Darcy grinned. "Oh, I can root out some boys loyal to my dad willing to douse the place and drop a cigarette butt or two. I can also get the fire escape guard changed to guys that will make sure we get out."
"Go let let my boys know whats going on. Send Nips downstairs and have him put on the fire escape. He's good at looking like he belongs wherever he is. Send Racetrack to wait on the street for the rooftop boys. Lord knows, he can talk, maybe he can talk his way into getting us more lamp oil without paying for it. Keep Trout with Spot." She took a deep breath, thinking about the feral person she saw in that apartment, smeared with blood and dead eyed. "You be careful around him, he would attack me or Trout in the state he's in and he knows you wronged him. Only go near him if Trout lets you. Trout will keep Spot moving in the right direction until he settles out. Then get downstairs and rally the good apples, they need to keep the bad ones in line and drop the cigarette when Rudy calls the clear from the last of the boys apartments; when its Rudy's turn."
"Spot…is he?"
"No," Marta answered flatly. "He's so far from all right. Mick got to him so he's not…" She couldn't finish the sentence, because she didn't know how to explain it. He wasn't himself didn't even begin to explain what she saw in that flat. "And someone cut him, his face looks like a filleted mackerel."
Darcy ran to the corner to an old carpet bag and filled the pockets of her once fine purple skirt with a familiar flask, a spool of thread and a packet of needles. At Marta's questioning look, she blushed, "I'm not just Mick's girl," she said the word with disdain, "I'm also the one who puts the Dockside boys back together when they need it. Thats how I know everything. Boys don't change as they get older; when they fall and scrape their knees, they want a mama there to kiss their booboos. You give them a shot of whiskey and patch them up and they'll tell you just about anything." Marta couldn't help but be impressed. She watched as Darcy's haughty expression softened. "I know these boys better than anyone, and most of them are good guys, guys like your Ted, who for one stupid reason or another got stuck here. Once you get here, Mick don't let go so easy. They just want to be free."
She nodded and Darcy shot her a tight smile before tentatively opening the door and looking for Rudy. He waved them out. "Be quick, he's going to want to see you before Spot gets to me. He wants you properly subdued when the kid gets to my apartment, because he'll watch my fight…and you will too," he whispered as Darcy slipped into the door across the hall.
Marta's hackles were up, every hair on her neck and arms stood on end. "Oh, I'll show him what I look like 'properly subdued' all right," she growled and sprinted up the stairs until she was standing where she and the boys landed when they dropped in through the hole in the roof. She again put her cupped hands to her mouth and blew a mourning dove's call and waited for the thud of Haystack landing on the rooftop and crawling over to her. "Stack, I need you boys, all of you up here and any birds you can round up along the way, to gather kerosene and matches. I need some here, delivered to Nips, he'll be on the fire escape soon, and then some to the Fox and the Brownstone. We're having us a Dockside bonfire tonight, my friend" she whispered loudly, but with a grin. Stack grinned back at her. "Wait for the fire escape guard to change, then meet Racetrack in the alley. Split the boys up and take down those buildings, you got it?"
"Got it Kiss! I bet Mush's girl at the Fox will help us too!" She laughed under her breath at that, of course Mush found a girl. Haystack starts to head back to the edge, but came back suddenly, his young face worried. "How is he?"
"He'll be better the sooner we get him out of here. Focus on the mission Stack." He nodded and put on a face too business-like and grown for an eleven year old. He was so light that falling through the roof wasn't even a concern for him as he ran and easily made the hop to the other rooftop to spread the word. She booked it back down the stairs and into Rudy's apartment and got her shackles and gag put back in place to wait for her audience with Mick.
The second clear from Rudy made her heart sink and he opened the door. "It's time," he said quietly. She nodded and stood, waiting for the two people she least wanted to face enter the apartment.
Spot entered first. He looked tired, bowed and broken, but much more himself than the last time she saw him. He looked at her wearily and she was surprised to find herself looking up a bit to meet his eyes. Look away, she signed, begging him not to watch what Mick would do to her. His brow furrowed and his head dipped lower. "Don't do this, Kisser," he said, his voice so low that it was little more than a vibration rumbling through the quiet room. She shrugged her shoulders, she had no choice. She had to keep Mick thinking he had her to use as leverage. "Marta, don't let him…" She covered his mouth with her hands and shook her head, but he shoved them away, that desperate look returning. "I ain't Scat, I don't need you to do this." She falteringly reached for him again and for once, he didn't duck away. He let her fingers brush down his cheek lightly. Look away, she repeated and followed it with I'm sorry. He looked away from her, stewing in his head, but couldn't say anything else to her. Next door in Mick's apartment came the screams and thuds that both Spot and Rudy were heartbreakingly familiar with. Marta looked between the two men, their faces mirroring the feeling of shame and helplessness.
Finally Rudy pulled himself out of his thoughts, "Better get going on this, Kid. When he's done with…that, he'll expect us to be mid fight." Marta flew at him, slamming her hands into his face, screaming against the fabric in her mouth. She pushed his chest and plunked down on the floor, so angry that a man who would ensure the freedom of some orphan he'd never seen before but would allow that to go on under his nose for years. "There ya go, Spot, she gave ya a head start," she heard him say, his voice thin with defeat. She had to take her own advice and look away, she couldn't watch them fight. Instead she thought of Racetrack dropping off a gas can that he nicked from a nearby tenements superintendent's closet. And Mush gathering the girls from the upstairs rooms at the Fox and having them help him set the place on fire. She imagined, even though the girl's pathetic cries didn't let her believe it, that Darcy was helping Stack stake down the Brownstone where she'd been held for five years. She was invested enough in her daydreams that she didn't hear the screams stop and the door of the apartment slamming against the wall made her jump.
Mick looked Spot over with a magnanimous sneer, "You just get prettier every time I see you, Spot. I'm not sure which I prefer, the bloody wild animal or the hastily pieced together monster. What do you think, your Highness. Surely the Queen of Brooklyn has an opinion on the subject." She swiftly elbowed him in the gut tipping them both over the back of the crate they sat on. He easily flipped her underneath him and pinned her to the floor She glared at him and huffed, and he laughed at her heartily. "Oh, I do like you this way, I should have thought of silencing you ten years ago, perhaps we would have gotten on better, instead of being kept apart all this time." He waved to Rudy to get on with it. She closed her eyes, she couldn't let herself focus on the abusive affection being paid to her neck and shoulder, the biting, tearing, sucking and groaning just below her ear. His probing fingers and groping hands weren't any more gentle than his lips and she was glad for the gag because any squeak would take Spot's attention off of Rudy, and until they were ready to book, he had to focus on the fight. But one bite went past her threshold to contain, she felt the tickle of blood ooze down her neck and let out a yelp. Spot was off of Rudy and onto Mick in a heart beat. Mick was ready though, it was exactly what he'd wanted. He threw the teen across the room and shoved Marta to the floor, pulled a knife from his boot, slamming it into her braid, pinning her by her hair to the floor.. "Touch me again, and she's gone, Kid," he bellowed, showing the full monster he could be. This was the person that beat Niko to a pulp at her gauntlet. The similarites, the multifaceted nature of the two men in the room gutted her. He really couldn't have picked a better protege.
In the tussle, the gag slid down and she was able to shimmy it over her chin. She had to act before there was yet another repeat of history. "Mick," she purred. "Leave him. He's just a kid. Let them finish. You finish over here." Spot's eyes grew large and she tried not to look, but couldn't keep away as Mick looked down at her. He dove back into her neck. She met eyes with Spot and mouthed, "RUN." She looked to the window raising her eyebrows. "GO," she mouthed, seeing Trout's eyes looking up over the ledge. She fell into making the illusion real for Mick, but where he was head over heels into the fantasy, she was listening to the shouts downstairs, smelling the first wisps of smoke. She watched as he got lost, watched Rudy slip out, watched Trout wave at Spot frantically through the window. She nodded at him, released him, and he backed slowly out of the room, walking like his boots were full of lead. She waited until they were alone, until she couldn't hear anyone moving on the eighth floor anymore to speak. To lift the smoke and mirrors. "Your world is about to come crashing down around you," she purred, not wanting to pull him out too violently.
"It's adorable that you still think you are going to accomplish anything by being here," he chuckled, not raising his head from her skin. Her shirt was ripped open, her chemise torn and he was going lower.
She smirked, even flat on her back she had the upper hand. "I warned you about being a self righteous prick. You're nothing but a manipulative asshole who gets his jollies torturing other people. You bent me, I'll give you that, but I have and always have had people behind me pushing me back upright. Even I thought you won when you took Scat, when you turned him on me, but he was never the only one there. I have a family behind me, holding me up, which is exactly why I will win this. Because you have nothing."
"I think the men downstairs would object to being called nothing," he replied smarmily, running his index finger down her jawline and popping the buttons off the opening of her trousers.
"I think the eight to twelve of them left who are loyal to you are too busy trying to breathe to really care too much about what one woman calls them." The first thick curls of smoke were starting to climb the staircase and weave their way through the eighth floor corridor. The heat from the flames below was pressing up through the floorboards and his confusion pulled a derisive laugh from her. "Can't you feel it? Your little Tenement of Dreams is on fire, Mr Mickelson ." She grinned at him brilliantly. He looked up at the haze that was creeping up on them and ran to the stairwell and stared down at the flames licking up and the men already collapsed below, before very slowly returning to stand over her. "Rudy has the rest of them down in the street in case you try to run. They'll be waiting to take you out. I have your second, I have your mistress, I have your protege and I had your madame by my side until she sacrificed herself to make sure you thought you were winning. She was wrong about one thing though, I'm not your weakness. You are. You're cocky, just like every goddamned, idiotic street boy on a power trip before you. You were just bested by a housekeeper, a kid and a whore and we set your whole twisted, sick Dockside world on fire. I have boys dousing the Fox and your house in kerosene as we speak. Your empire is dead and your reign over my city is over."
He dropped over her, straddling her again. "I don't lose," he said absently.
"There's a first time for everything, Toots."
"No." He turned his too light, dusty, worn blue eyes on her, and saw the same ferocity he turned in both Niko and Spot in her presence before. "If I'm going down, I'm having what I've waited ten years for."
The smoke was getting thick, and she pretended that it was the reason for the tears prickling at the backs of her eyes and the thick feeling in her throat that wouldn't let her swallow and not her absolute dread that the last thing she would be in this world was a second time victim of Donovan Mickelson. This was the cost of everyone else's freedom, her life. Clarice was brave enough to do it, Darcy was brave enough to get herself beat to a pulp while her father and her friend listened in the next room. It was her turn. Like Clarice said, she couldn't do it alone. "Then do it," she gritted out. She coughed heavily as smoke burned her nose and lungs and sweat beaded under her breasts and in her hairline as the heat under the floor continued to build. He shoved her chemise up but as his hand slid down into her pants a swish of purple velvet behind his head caught her attention and cut off her cry of protest. There was a metallic flash and a crack and her world went black.
She opened her eyes slowly and thought it was snowing, white flurries fell down on her face, but the sky was wrong for snow. Instead of the woolen grey blanket of snow clouds, the sky boiled, brown and orange, moving and rolling over the top of her. She wished for a clear night, with a velvety winter sky to stare at. The sounds of people yelling and some sort of strange crackling sound wafting through the air. Her head pounded listening to it all. She stared serenely up at the buildings rising around her and tried to make sense of it all. "Hey, boys, her eyes are open," Darcy's bittersweet voice yelped.
Spot's carved and stitched face came into view as she slowly rolled herself up to sitting. "I'm pretty sure I told you to run," she croaked.
"Yeah, well, you always said I was better at giving orders than taking them," Spot sassed with a pained smirk, wincing against the stitches.
She looked at Trout, "What's your excuse?"
Racetrack and Mush. Bad Influences, he wrote with a wry grin and she couldn't help but laugh until she noticed that his palms were stained with blood. Her hand shot out and grabbed his, knocking his paper and pencil to the ground.
"Tell me this is Spot's, or yours…or anyone's besides whose I think it is," she demanded in a rasping, frantic whisper. "What happened Trout?" He looked sharply away, his face paling.
"Darcy hit him with Clarice's cane," Spot answered, his voice soft and tired, "and I'll be damned if she didn't have the hilt of that knife weighted so it packed a harder punch, and he fell forward and knocked skulls with you and you was out." He watched Trout carefully, they both did, as he sucked into himself and away from them. "I grabbed Darcy and hauled her out. Trout was trying to get the knife Mick had your hair pinned down with out of the floor without cutting your hair off when he came to."
"My hair?" She reached for her braid and found her hair cut off and hanging above her shoulders. Her breath drew in sharply and she tried to stop herself from bawling over something so silly after they day they all endured, but she couldn't help it. Her long hair was her middle finger to the Reverend Mother who cut it off over and over in an attempt to break her as a child. Having it shorn off again was a swift kick to her already tattered and bloodied self worth. Trout looked at her shoes, his blue eyes unable to meet hers as he reached into his pocket and pulled out her braid and held it out to her. She took the shiny rope and stroked it, fingering the jute tie at the end. She smiled sadly at it, her lip trembling. "Thank you, she whispered.
"He kicked Trout away from you and was gonna…" the meaning of the pregnant, uncomfortable pause was not lost on anyone. Mick made his intentions with her clear from the beginning to anyone who would listen about it. She looked down, noticing that she now wore the shirt that Nips entered the tenement wearing. She was thankful that the boys thought of her modesty while she was out. "And I dunno I just snapped, pulled the knife out of the cane and took Mick out. Put the knife in his back." At that, Trout finally looked struck and hustled to the end of the alleyway where he emptied the meager contents of his stomach. "He didn't do it. He just pulled Mick offa you."
"But he's dead? Really dead?" she asked shakily.
"Really dead, and so are most of the guys who would try to keep the gang going," Darcy wheezed quietly as she stood. "We's free, Marta, really free." Marta's eyes were burning again, she couldn't seem to get her emotions under control. Darcy smiled as she watched the older girl struggle for composure. "I'm gonna go find my pops." Spot watched her walk away with a look Marta hadn't seen on his face before and couldn't help the smile of wonderment that graced her bruised and sooty face.
"So thats what it takes to get your attention?" she asked, smiling through her sniffles, grateful for the distraction. "A bad attitude, a snotty mouth and no one else to talk to for two weeks? I'll have to let the sweet little factory girls from next door who come over looking for a date with bad boy Spot Conlon know what the criteria is next time they come a'knocking. Knowing they have no chance will be an easier let down than the one you give them the next day." She looked up at him, batting her eyelashes and smiling.
He grinned and blushed deeply. "Shaddup, Marta."
A/N: A big thank you to Joker is Poker with a J for planting the idea of burning them to the ground in my head in one of her reviews! I honestly never planned the ending of this, I never knew how it was going to turn out, because I tend to freak myself if I plan things out, the constrictive nature of having a plan just squiggs me out and I abandon ship. I really hope I did it justice. Hopefully I didn't let you down! Helloooo to new reviewer coveredinbees! I'm so honored to have you as a reviewer as I've been slobbering all over your story Guilt since you started it! And to livelearnlovesing, my ever faithful reviewer, gosh it makes my day to see your reviews, to know that you're still hanging in there! Joker, MUAH! Wet sloppy mouth kisses to you, my penpal/soulmate.