Author's Note: I wanted to give Penance a ThunderCats shirt just so I could make a cheap joke about the phrase "wily kit", but I forgot that ThunderCats didn't air until 1985. Hell, now that I think about it that would've been an even neater thing to reference, given the comparison of Lion-O's "age-without-experience" to Penance's "experience-without-age".
Eh, it's not worth the anachronism...
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"Triple Point"
Greater Philadelphia Area – 1984
One might ask how a half-naked kid— disheveled to hell, with his hair and boxers still sopping wet with oily river water— is supposed to go about his business without getting a bunch of very strange looks and, most likely, a quick pick-up by the police.
The answer, of course, is that he'd need clothes. Pronto.
But of course you can't just walk up to some random house, knock on the door and ask the resident for a fresh set of clothing, can you?
Actually...
He descended from the opposite side of the bridge into a dense bed of foliage, and as he pressed through this he found himself behind a neighborhood street, peeking over the backyard fences of some simple houses. He moved along this fence until he found a house with the right laundry on the line: boys' shirts and shorts.
It'd be a simple matter to run up and help himself to what he needed, but that wasn't how Penance did things.
He was no thief.
That said, he was a liar, naturally.
And so 'plan A' was a little audacious: go right up to the front door, pretend to be the victim of bullying by older kids—stripped and pushed into the river— then politely request some shabby knock-around clothing.
What's the worst that could happen?
Penance's own mental list got up to about 20 different worst-case possibilities before the door opened, but as he predicted it was just a housewife that greeted him, and she was aghast at his current state and his little sob-story. He could hear a very impatient toddler screeching from the kitchen, but the woman took enough time to see that Penance got at least something to wear.
"Ah, my Joey's out at camp 'till tomorrow," she explained as she led him to her laundry room. "But he's got his share of fouled-up clothes." She dug through a mountainous, chaotic pile of loose clothes over by the corner of her small laundry room. "Ah, here: he helped Frank paint the garage last month and just ruined these; I'm sure he won't mind."
She handed the boy a faded He-Man shirt, its sleeves marred with powder-blue paint stains, and a pair of worn jean shorts, which at least partially concealed their stains.
"Thanks a lot!" Penance beamed at the woman with an overly-eager, sunny smile, showing off way too much of his front teeth in that awkward way some kids grin.
"You sure I don't need to call your parents?" She asked. "Or the cops, even? Damn hellions we've got in this neighborhood, doing a think like that to a small kid!"
"It's okay," Penance shook his head. "My parents are working, and I don't have far to walk to get home. Honest."
He had a habit of saying that sometimes, especially when he wasn't.
"Mmm," the woman waved a dismissive hand. "Well, I gotta get back to feeding the li'l rugrat." They walked back to the front door, and then the woman motioned to the kitchen. "You want a piece of cinnamon toast before you go? Riley's having a 'Cheerios-only' kind of day, looks like."
He arched his brow, gently swallowing a sudden rush of saliva. He gave her a noncommittal shrug and an affirmative grunt.
A few seconds later he was seated in the woman's small kitchen, watching her little redheaded toddler smash fistfuls of Cheerio's together and laugh uproariously at the results. Penance, meanwhile, tried to focus on eating his buttery slices of cinnamon toast in more than one massive bite. His eyes were drawn to an empty seat across from him, where a bunched-up newspaper lay in careless abandon.
"Is that The Pennsylvania Inquirer?"
The woman, busily washing dishes in the sink, gave him a little chuckle.
"The Philadelphia Inquirer, you mean?"
"Oh... yeah..."
The woman looked over her shoulder and watched Penance rifle through the pages.
"Looking for the funnies, are you?" She smirked.
"Obituaries."
Penance spoke without thought or emotion, raptly scanning the small text on the obits page. When he felt the woman's eyes on him he looked up to find her staring at him with a peculiar glance.
"My, uh, gram-gram died the other day," he explained. "My parents said that she'd be in the paper; so I wanted to see."
"Oh," the woman nodded, half-satisfied with his answer. "Well, then. I am sorry for your loss..."
"Me, too..."
Penance's finger touched down on the name he was looking for.
Right now he had two prime advantages, and they wouldn't last long. They were advantages that, for all his history, he'd never had before. For one: Black Hat thought that Penance was somewhere that he wasn't, and he wouldn't be looking for him.
And for two?
Penance knew exactly where Black Hat was going to be, and when.
Martha lived most of her life in Baltimore, but she and Penance had spoken enough for him to know she wasn't a native: her family was from Philadelphia, and they had very long and old roots in the city. So long and so old, in fact, that she wouldn't be buried in Baltimore.
She'd be buried in the city of Brotherly Love.
He knew Martha enough to know that. And he knew Black Hat enough to know that he'd be attending her funeral. That was the last bit of perverse salt he would rub into Penance's wounds: the fact that he'd be there when she was laid to rest, but Penance wouldn't be.
This time, however, the boy would be there.
And if his plan worked, Martha's body wouldn't be the only one laid to rest.
Penance looked up at the glass in front of him, staring at a lone, oversized ice cube floating in the water. His heart felt as solid as that cube. Just as cold, to boot.
All to match his resolve.
It had been very pleasant reminiscing about how he'd first met and befriended Gilbarta. Back then he was willing to kill in order to foster a relationship.
To be honest he didn't know if he was willing to kill in order to keep his relationship with Whip.
But to save her?
Well, for that he was willing to die.
X
X
X
He lurched his mustang into the circular driveway and then made for the back of the red bricked house, stalking past rows of immaculately potted plants and delicately-trimmed cypresses. At the patio he found Medici sitting by his pool, idly rocking back and forth in a wrought iron chair, a glass of wine dark as venous blood genteelly perched in one hand.
"Felt you barreling down the turnpike not fifteen minutes ago, Black Hat." The man held up a second, empty wine glass. "Surprised your car didn't disintegrate beneath you. Or did you just leave a smoldering engine in my driveway?"
Noirbarret walked past the man, staring out at the pool. He drew a long breath.
"It's not the engine that's smoking..."
"But something in the 'reptilian brain', yes?" Medici poured a glass of wine for Noirbarret from a bottle caked in dust, its label faded with age. "Well, you haven't got your umbrella with you right now, so I suppose it's not 'rain' that brings you here."
He handed the glass to Noirbarret, arching his bushy eyebrows and looking up at the man with a whimsical glint in his cinnamon eyes.
"What, may I ask, does bring you down to Salem, my boy?"
Noirbarret stared at the blood red wine with a cold scowl. He inhaled the vapors off the glass, his eyes never losing their stony, empty stare.
"Ah, I forgot," Medici said. "You said you were giving up—"
Noirbarret downed the glass in one mighty swig, then absently wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, like a sailor mopping up grog from his beard.
"—drinking," Medici finished, shaking his head.
Noirbarret took a small refill from Medici, again sniffing at the glass, and again he found no satisfaction from its vapors. He ground his teeth together like sandpaper. Without warning he violently threw the glass to one side, letting it shatter on the ground beside the table.
Medici— in the middle of a long, satisfying sip from his own glass— rolled his eyes at Noirbarret's display.
"Yes, well, I suppose '61 was something of an off-year at Latour..."
Noirbarret collapsed in the seat across from the older man, splayed out in a disorganized heap.
"An 'off-year'?" He muttered. "Well, something's off..."
Medici nodded.
"You do feel it, then, don't you? That certain... 'tug'..."
At that moment a man in a mover's uniform came out from the house. He walked up to Medici with an old blackwood box in his hands.
"You said this wasn't going to the same address as the rest, sir?"
Medici nodded.
"That one goes to a certain 'Nash Antiques'. I've got the address on a table in the library."
Noirbarret watched the mover reenter the house. He looked back at Medici.
"You are shoving off, then? Where are you headed?"
Medici delicately scratched at the bridge of his aquiline nose, drawing a slow sigh.
"You needn't ask, Black Hat. I'm sure you can feel—"
"I feel," Noirbarret growled, "satisfied. Completely. Like I always do... after I've..."
"I take it your fox hunt was successful?"
Noirbarret looked to one side, his eyes still empty and cold.
"It's different now, yes?" Medici finished his glass of wine. "You feel no peace, no pleasure, no satisfaction, here. You feel only that pull to the north—"
"I'm satisfied!" Noirbarret repeated. "I always am, after..."
The older man rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward.
"Do you know why I like dive bars, Black Hat? Why I'll occasionally sit in filth and squalor, helping myself to a warm glass of rotgut instead of an exquisite Bordeaux each day? It has to do with 'satisfaction'. Namely the fact that no one man, no matter his age or experience, can be truly 'satisfied' by this world, even with all the treasures it has to offer. A mortal man might think otherwise, the same way a small child feels they can be fully 'satisfied' collecting pretty stones on the shore all day. A man's idea of what brings pleasure and joy grows complex with age, like wine. But like wine no man's pleasures can avoid that slow, eventual souring to vinegar."
Noirbarret rolled his eyes at the elder man's monologue; he pulled the bloodstained handkerchief from his pocket as Medici droned on.
"Now, whether you admit it or not, the call of the Gathering is stirring in your bones as we speak, same as mine. And it's doubtlessly affecting whatever 'satisfaction' you think you should feel right now. But that's not the terrifying thought, is it?"
Noirbarret delicately traced his finger around the crusty stain of Penance's blood in the handkerchief. He looked up at Medici.
"What is, then?" He asked.
"The terrifying thought," Medici whispered, "is the possibility that even without that pull you'd still feel the same. That the truth might be this: your pleasures are simply souring to vinegar, naturally, and there's nothing you can do to preserve them."
Noirbarret stood, again approaching the pool. He looked down at the rippling water, watching the jets do their work.
"Water takes the path of least resistance, you know." Medici looked over his shoulder at the younger man. "That's something to think about."
Noirbarret stared down at the blood-encrusted kerchief, black eyes lost in thought.
"You got another wine glass?" He whispered.
Medici scoffed, getting to his feet and moving back toward the house.
"Maybe a sippy cup. That's all I'll trust you with, now. Certainly not any more leaded crystal..."
While the man retrieved another glass Noirbarret considered the crusty bloodstain on the kerchief. He set his nose to it, inhaling from it deeply, but he found as little pleasure from the iron rot as he did the wine. Again he looked down at the pool water.
"The path of least resistance..." he muttered.
Maybe Medici was right; maybe something was wrong.
Maybe...
Noirbarret shook his head, snapping back from that 'terrifying' thought.
But the thought was there, and he couldn't quite un-think it.
Slowly, gently, he held the bloodstained kerchief out over the water. He stared at it for the longest time and then, like a reluctant junkie dropping their syringe, or an alcoholic releasing their hold on a bottle, he let it fall, daintily fluttering down into the pool water. Noirbarret watched the bloodstain slowly leech out of the fabric, disappearing into the water in wispy tendrils of crimson.
Maybe the path of least resistance was the better path. For now, at least.
And maybe it was time to let the singing in his bones take over from the obsessions in his head.
He considered his further 'business'— that little French-braided black whelp— and when he thought about her, and his plans for her, he could only feel one thing: disinterest.
Maybe it wasn't so important, in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe the 'grand scheme' really was changing...
Medici returned with another— cheaper— glass and he poured Noirbarret another small serving of wine. Noirbarret swirled the glass, looking away from Medici as he spoke.
"I think I may head north," he muttered.
"Oh?" The older man feigned surprise, sarcastically widening his eyes. "And where to?"
"You know where," Noirbarret sipped at the wine in his glass.
Medici chuckled.
"Well, it'll be an easier move for you, I'm sure. You always did travel 'lighter' than a man of wealth and taste like myself. When do you plan to make the move?"
"Immediately," Noirbarret took another sip of wine. "Or almost immediately. I've got one more point of business, here, before I start packing."
"What's that?"
"I have a funeral to attend," Noirbarret explained.
"We're all going to have those to attend in spades, soon enough." Medici motioned to Noirbarret's glass. "How's the wine?"
The younger man polished off his serving, slowly exhaling through his nose.
"Not vinegar, at least..."
X
X
X
She took a small 'dry run' gander at the beer and wine section, but the acne-covered attendant at the gas station counter gave her a ripe stink-eye in response. So she went with a soda, instead.
More's the pity, because she could really use a drink about now.
Whip sauntered out of the gas station, an ice-cold glass bottle pressed to her neck, and she rolled her head around a few times. That dumb little shit was precise with his knitting: Whip wouldn't even bruise, she didn't think. Not to say it still didn't hurt.
And in more ways than one.
She stared at the road ahead, looking further down the line into New Jersey, and then back up the road about a half-mile; the top of the bridge was still visible, but only barely.
Another mile down the road and it would disappear from view.
A lot of things would 'disappear', at that.
She walked around to the side of the store and rested her back on the wall, staring at the top of that bridge with a cold face. She took a long swig from her soda, all the while turning thoughts over in her head.
Thought number one, of course, was 'to hell with the shit'. It's what found her walking away from Philly. Just like he asked her to. Just like he wanted.
"He doesn't want my help," Whip growled into her soda, "then he doesn't get it!"
That was simple. It was obvious. It was more than fair. She didn't ask to be hunted by some psychotic immortal asshole. She didn't ask to have her whole life uprooted by some wannabe-martyr little shit, either.
She pulled the bottle from her lips.
"'Life'," she scoffed, shaking her head.
Well, whatever it was she had, he'd been nothing but a complication to it from the start.
So fuck him.
It was that simple.
She was done trying to offer help where it wasn't appreciated.
And he could rot, for all she cared.
Of course he could.
And this brought her to thought number two. It was a simple little thing, just a brief flash of an image in her head: a body stretched out on a tile floor, limbs akimbo, head twisted about at a strange angle.
And a torn shower curtain wrapped about the figure like a body bag.
She pulled the bottle from her lips, her eyes trembling with some unquantifiable mixture of hate and hurt. But the hurt she now felt was entirely separate from being sneak-attacked and choked out by a little kid.
And the hate she held... that wasn't for him, either.
A semi-truck shifted hard on the road beside the gas station, belching up a mess of smoky exhaust as its engine roared to tackle the gradient in the road. Whip watched that foul, noxious gas rise in the air, radiating out into the sky as a lithe, carefree streak. It was strangely beautiful to watch, even though the vapors involved were decidedly ugly.
She wasn't so free as a bird, no matter how much she might ever wish it, but for just a moment she thought about disappearing into the air, as fluid and ethereal as a cloud of smoke, no ties to the cold earth beneath her feet.
She thought about going off on the wind, to wherever she might want to be.
And after less than a minute of silent contemplation she realized there was only one place she really wanted to be, at the moment. She walked around to the front of the store, trashed her empty soda bottle, and again turned to face the top of the bridge.
Only now there was something more to see in that view.
A state trooper's car sat on the side of the road near the edge of the gas station parking lot. Two troopers stood to one side of it, both of them consulting a piece of paper. The pair looked across the lot at Whip, one of them nodding his head as he tapped his partner on the shoulder.
The girl's blood froze solid in her veins, and then her heart jackhammered inside her chest, turning that cold blood white hot. She kept herself from panicking and discreetly turned around, moving around the side of the store as quick as she could on her suddenly rubber-like legs. She rounded the corner, ready to take a quick breath and break into a run.
If she didn't bump right into a third state trooper waiting for her, that is.
Whip tried pulling back, holding her arms up protectively, but the trooper gripped her wrists in a gentle but firm hold.
"Woah, there, missy," the man said. "And just where are we going, hmm?"
