Author's Note: So, for this chapter I became mildly curious about how long, exactly, the phrase 'chicken butt' has been used as a joke by children (and by those with a child's mind), and I endeavored to look it up. But surely no one's put so much thought into the question as to seriously compile research on it, right?

Yeah, it's the internet: of course someone has...

watch?v=syWk7P3SPMQ

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"What Comes out of Silence"

Morrisville – 1984

He usually wasn't one to welcome the strobing flash of police lights but given the circumstances it wasn't entirely unwelcome. Flickers of red and blue pierced the trees behind him and occasional bursts of garbled voices rang out from the radios of the three police cruisers. Whatever the cops were doing over at that red-trimmed house behind the hedge it seemed serious. Serious enough that none of them would be too terribly busy looking for a certain cop-assaulting little kid named 'Penley'.

Just as well, really. That kid was an asshole, after all.

Penance smiled. He sat cross-legged on the metal bench, eyes fixed on the river stretched out before him, his ears and everything else attuned to the scene behind him. He detected Whip moving back across the street from the house before her shoes left the sidewalk.

"What's the hubbub?" He asked.

"More like a hullabaloo." Whip rounded the bench and sat down beside him. "Or does that mean the same thing?"

"What am I: an expert on synonyms?"

"You probably should be, by now." She cocked her head back behind them. "They got that place all taped off. There was a stretcher, too."

"Someone hurt?"

"And a body bag. Small body bag."

Penance grit his teeth and stared down at his crossed ankles.

"Dead kid?" He shook his head. "That's not fair, you know."

"Sometimes I hear tell they don't play by the rules and get back up again. So who knows?"

Penance smirked at this, but it was a quick and reflexive thing, soon gone under a moody haze. The boy's sullen face and dejected eyes weren't an encouraging sight to Whip, and she gave him a little nudge with her shoulder, breaking him out of his grousing.

"It ain't fair, but it ain't foreshadowing, either, you know. No way you end up on a stretcher of your own."

Penance's frown turned into a morbid little smirk.

"They do look a little comfy, at least."

The gallows humor netted him another nudge from Whip, this one far from gentle. But when he chuckled she couldn't help but join him.

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"Litters, not stretchers," he said. "Same idea, just more of a VIP thing."

The pair walked along the dirt path skirting the river, moving down the street and away from the heavy police presence.

"And you were a VIP in those Kazoo Hills?"

"Kachin Hills." Penance nodded. "And yeah, after I saved that whole village from a crazed tiger."

The girl arched her brow, looking the boy up and down.

"You... took out a tiger?"

Penance shrugged, scratching at the back of his neck.

"Well, more like 'distracted'. He couldn't maul anyone else as long as he was mauling me, and at least he left me in one piece. Technically."

"But then the villagers must've seen your li'l resurrection trick, right? That couldn't have been kosher..."

"People who see the magic at work on me usually think that it's either the work of the devil, or the work of God. Most people I've been 'outed' to usually pick the first one— almost all of 'em, in fact— but these villagers happened to pick the second. I kinda became their sacred cow."

"Hm. 'Kid', you mean." Whip smiled.

"'Kit'," a third voice added.

Penance stopped walking. Both of the people walking alongside him did likewise.

"What is it?" Whip asked.

"Nothing," Penance shook his head.

"Look, if you're still mad about the train I don't know what to say. I just—"

"No," Penance shook his head. "You were right about that, I think. It was a bad plan."

He'd come to accept that much. Something about Whip's conviction put a touch of frost in his veins, but his little 'visit' with Clara is what really froze his pipes. Her little joke about taking the train to see him kept making him think— foolishly— that she'd be taking it back out, too. And if he'd climbed aboard...

Well, wherever her train was heading it certainly wasn't to Manhattan, that's for sure.

The boy looked across the way, through the foliage. An old restaurant sat on the street across from them, buttressed against a steep rising slope. The façade was done up with folksy wooden beams and faux thatching, giving the place a certain medieval feel. Either that or a tropical vibe, he couldn't quite tell what the owner was going for.

Penance cocked his head at the place.

"Looks like they've got some space out back," he said. "See if we can hide out there for a while."

Whip tilted her head.

"You can't be hungry again, can you?"

The boy smirked, patting his stomach with one hand.

"I'm good for days now, if need be. Depends on how much I exert myself."

Whip returned the smirk, but a small twist in her freckled face betrayed hidden doubts.

"We'll be exertin' plenty, soon, don't you doubt it. An' all over that Black Hat's busted body!"

He watched the girl strut across the street, the confidence clear in her prancing footsteps. He walked toward the water, his rusty eyes fixed down on the ebbing shore.

Footsteps followed, and they came to rest beside him.

"Think she can feel it?" The man asked. "The hopelessness? The futility?"

"Mmm-hmm." Penance grunted his answer casually, no hint of feeling in his response.

"Well, she'll follow you through the gates of hell itself, if you lead her there. Trust me; I know the type."

The man crouched down at the shore and ran two fingers over the water. He flicked the liquid from his fingers, wagging them in disdain.

"Shame what they've done with the water," he mumbled. "My cousin would brag about the bass fishing in Trenton; he kept trying to call me down from the Connecticut. But that was my heart and soul, you know."

He stood, crossing his arms and scoffing.

"And when I finally got to know this river the circumstances were rather poor." He ambled along the water's edge. "Christmas of '76 was no holiday for me. But then routing those bastard Hessians the day after, in Trenton? That was better than a present under the tree."

"Was Sparrowhawk like that with you?" Penance looked up at the man, blinking at the sunlight beaming around the man's head.

"Like what?" Kingfisher asked.

"Would she follow you through the gates of hell?"

The man smiled in a way that was almost a frown. He didn't answer, but slowed his footsteps and eventually came to a stop beside a row of thick crimson trilliums. He ran a few fingers over one of the star-shaped flowers.

"'Hell' really isn't so bad," he said, "if you're not walking through it alone."

"Misery loves company." Penance smirked, his face still joyless.

Kingfisher held one hand above his eyes, screening out the sun as he gazed along the river's length.

"Well, it always pays to know what's coming at you from upstream. Washington certainly didn't see what was coming to us at Brandywine Creek in '77. Oh, the eleventh of September: that's a bad date if ever there was one. For a patriot, at least. We're outflanked and routed by the Redcoats, cut down like wheat as we ran. All pure chaos. And the local Quakers nearby, holed up in their little meeting hall, just listened to the carnage outside. Only one of 'em was brave enough to go have a peek at the battle outside."

Kingfisher smiled, allowing a small nostalgic sigh.

"If she was ever anything, she was always a brave one."

Penance's brow twitched. He looked up at the man, and Kingfisher only gave a small nod.

"Rash, too. There could be that in her. Her parents had fallen ill and passed the previous summer, and she wasn't enjoying life with the relatives. Took to acting out, you see. Anyway, during our retreat I felt the strangest sensation. At the time I thought it strange, at least. A musket ball to the back of the head is, on the whole, quite a 'strange' thing to feel, I think. She, meanwhile, met her 'end' from an artillery horse's hooves as she hid in the tall grass."

"Been there," Penance mumbled. "It kinda smarts..."

"And if all that was 'hell', well, we seemed to follow each other through it. We found each other through the buzzards' feast. I was too shocked to know what to say, and she was too shocked to say anything. Poor thing didn't utter a single word for the longest time; she just followed my trail like a duck at my heels. It was the better part of a year before she said a word, and I never learned her real name. Not that her name mattered much after that. Not any more than mine did."

"She didn't say anything for a whole year?"

Again the man smiled.

"It's not like you always need words to say something. A dedicated fisherman knows the value of quiet, in any case. It wasn't until I was teaching her about some of the local birds that she first piped up. When I got to talking about the good old kingfisher and its ways I said that it reminded me of me. And then, out of the blue, she asks me what bird—"

He stopped talking, no catch in his throat or quiver in his throat to betray the reason, but only a sudden, dignified stop as he surveyed the water. Penance didn't press him on it.

"Anyway," Kingfisher finally continued, "it just pays to know what's coming at you from upstream, because it might be more unexpected than you can imagine."

"I have to expect anything these days," Penance groused. "The water doesn't tell me a thing."

"Mmm." The man smirked. "You're more swept up in the current, I'd say. Adrift."

"And does that make you feel happy?"

"What? Just because you killed me?" Kingfisher shrugged. "Seems a petty thing to hold a grudge over, doesn't it?"

Penance crossed his arms, scowling at the man's sarcasm.

"You did spare my girl, after all." Kingfisher pointed down at the boy, wagging his finger. "She'd have given you a damn-fine fight, mind you."

"I don't doubt it," the boy whispered.

The man again turned to the water's edge and paced it, Penance following at his side.

"So what's 'upstream' for me, do you think?" The boy asked.

"If I had to guess? I see you caught: collared like a dog, jumping through flaming hoops. Suffering a most degrading work. Performing. Merciless, horrifying tricks. And all the while as mindless as a monkey..."

He stopped walking; Penance did the same.

"And when you die— eventually," Kingfisher whispered, "you won't mind it at all..."

Penance hid the chill in his bones but he couldn't hide the drained blood from his face. He had yet to fully consider what losing to Black Hat might mean from this point on— more than simple decapitation, certainly— and he'd kept it out of his thoughts on purpose. How long would Black Hat take to actually kill Penance? The boy wasn't so naïve as to think that Black Hat would not be creative. No, he would take his time.

Would it be days? Weeks?

Penance kept all this from Whip, of course. He couldn't let her know. Wouldn't, anyway. Surely she couldn't imagine such terrible things, at least. And he didn't want her to, anyway.

"Did you come here to torment me, then?" Penance asked. "Rattle your chains and spook me?"

"I don't wear chains," Kingfisher countered. "I died free, after all. And with no regrets."

The boy arched a sly brow.

"Not even coming to Achnacarry?"

Kingfisher ignored the playful lilt in Penance's voice, instead meeting the accusation with a shrug.

"To be an immortal is to be on borrowed time, like an overdue library book collecting fees. We all pay the cost at some point. I did. She did. And you will."

Penance blinked.

"Sparrowhawk?" He asked. "She died?"

Kingfisher said nothing for a while, merely limbering up one arm as he stared at the water, as if stretching before an afternoon of fly fishing. He avoided the boy's eyes when he finally did speak.

"Oh, she's in a deep, dark hole somewhere. Point of fact is that I am, too, I guess. But different holes; different 'geography'. And what passes between 'em? Well, only silence..."

When the man finally did look down at Penance the boy found his hard stare difficult to take, for some reason. There was a crooked and cruel bent to it. It was judgmental, in a way, although that might not be the right word, exactly.

'Measuring'. That might be more appropriate.

In any event his cold, serious face— along with those cryptic words Penance couldn't quite understand—meshed into a discomfort palpable enough to make the boy avert his eyes. Kingfisher crossed his arms, again returning his gaze to the water.

"Maybe I don't need to 'torment' you any further, hmm? Maybe I should just give you a word of advice."

Penance looked up and tilted his head, expectant.

"I'd hold on to that shimmering silver needle of yours, if I were you, because the way I see it you're gonna need what's inside it pretty damn desperately before this matter is over."

Penance's rapt face soured; he glared at the man with a wounded scowl. When Kingfisher smirked and started chuckling at his own joke, however, Penance found the noise infectious. Enough to lose the scowl, at least.

"You're that sure my goose is cooked, huh?" Penance said. "Well, I admire your confidence, Kingfisher."

"And I admire how that busted up little thing you call a 'nose' hasn't simply fallen off your face, yet."

The boy absently stroked the bridge of his nose, a little nostalgic smile rising up his lips. How, exactly, he could feel 'nostalgic' in re-trading old barbs with a man he killed nearly 150 years ago was an open question.

But the short answer is that he could, because he did.

"I'll straighten that up just before I go into the ground," Penance whispered. "And only just..."

"What's that?"

Whip tromped back over to the riverside path, cocking her head at the boy's mumbling. Penance turned to face her, shielding his eyes from the sun. For a moment thought he could still see Kingfisher's face in the harsh light. That or his vanishing grin, at least. An odd sight, all things considered.

Penance had often seen a bird without a grin, but not so much a grin without a bird.

"Curiouser and curiouser..."

Whip put her hands on her hips, looking something like a kindergarten teacher trying to parse the words of a student suffering from a serious head injury.

"What?" She asked.

Penance met her eyes, exposing an overly-sunny smile.

"Chicken butt," he answered.

The girl's nose wrinkled like a rabbit's. She furrowed her brow, cinnamon eyes skeptical.

"You find a stash of fortified wine and chug it while I was gone, or something?"

Penance added a chuckle to his madman's grin.

"I never drink... wine," he tittered.

Whip's left eyebrow cocked up; she shook her head, giving off a heavy sigh.

"If it's all the same to you, kid, I think maybe you should let me and your fox head do the planning from here on out."

"Galabeg wants to slink back behind that restaurant," Penance motioned to it with his head, "because she thinks they've got a nice, secluded area back up against that hill. How's she doing, so far?"

Whip grudgingly nodded.

"Fair enough. Other than the staff-only patio out back there's enough nooks and crannies out there to hunker down into. It's all untamed greens along the slope, you know, so..."

Penance crossed his arms.

"Is the restaurant Tahitian, or medieval?"

Whip tilted her head in the other direction, as if she were a dog working out a trigonometry problem.

"Is it a restaurant with a sailing theme," Penance rephrased, "or a traditional pub?"

The girl brought her head back to level, eyes beaming with understanding.

"Oh! Well, it's called the Red Sunrise Grill, and it's got lots of pretty pictures of boats on the walls, if that helps you narrow it down."

The boy wrinkled his nose, put off at the name.

"I'm guessing the owner's not much of a sailor, is he?"

"Why?"

Penance walked past Whip, moving to cross the street and circle around the restaurant.

"A sailor would know better than to call it something like that. Hell, even a fisherman would..."