CHINA DOLL IX-- KING'S PAWN
"Sikes... freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.
She staggered and fell; nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief... and holding it up in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her maker.
It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down."
--Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
They apperated in the hallway. Sirius could hear his heart beat wildly as he flung open the door. His conscience was still on edge, his intuition blaring to him that in introducing Jonathan Whimsy, he was letting a demon loose. Jonathan Whimsy strode quietly into Apartment 2A. Vix glanced up briefly and then stepped aside, her face burning in ill-concealed fury. Remus looked even more ill in the moonlight, his face giving off a feverish glow. Whimsy crossed the room purposefully and knelt down by his side, a wicked smile stretched across his face. He bent down, staring at the ripped ear, at the cuts and bruises, the finger marks across his neck, and at the bloody shoulder.
"Well?" Vix snapped, before Sirius could stop her.
Whimsy didn't look the least surprised to see her. "Miss Su," he sleeked, giving his best mock-courteous smile.
"Mr. Whimsy?" she raised an eyebrow, open hostility on her face.
"I thought you might like to know," he gave her an appraising look. "It was I who contacted the police about your involvement in the Seiji homicide. Just a little... retribution... for some deeds of your brother."
Vix's face darkened, and she took a step forward, "Damn you!"
Whimsy's smile only widened at the barb,"I've been hearing that allot lately." Turning back to Remus his eyebrows knitted in concentration, "His shoulder's burnt. What burnt him?"
"Nothing," Vix replied before Sirius could fabricate a plausible explanation. "He was in a fist fight."
"What happened to his shoulder?" Whimsy turned this time to Sirius, sensing intutivly that something was being kept from him.
Vix spoke up; "He was stabbed."
Whimsy's face narrowed in concentration. "Can I see the knife?"
Vix picked the penknife up from the floor and handed it, none to gently, to Whimsy. Sirius could see the cogs turning in the old man's head, feel the facts all be placed systematically in line, saw the smile spread across his face as he reached the inevitable conclusion. He knew. God damn, he knew.
"He has a few broken ribs, cuts, bruises, espically around the neck. Half of his ear is ripped off, which I cannot repair. And of course, the burn." Still smiling to himself, Whimsy reached inside the pocket of his coat. Even in mid-July, he needed the thick layer of wool. Sirius felt his heart sink as Whimsy pulled out his wand. There went their cover; here was when the animonity would end and the questions begin. Within two hours they would be on national TV…
Vix's eyes narrowed in suspicion, though he would rather deal with her doubts than Remus's corpse. "Curio," Whimsy murmered, as the bruises began to contract in on themselves and then dissapear with faint pops. The cuts however were not as cooperative and more than one of them gave a little yowl before Whimsy poked it closed. When he finally reached the shoulder, Whimsy was biting his lip in concentration. Slowly, manically, as if this was the only thing that mattered to him in the world, Whimsy began to rotate the wand in tiny circles over Remus's inflamed shoulder. "Escapius," at his word, a small thin column of smoke began to rise from the wound, rise and fill their lungs with its sickly sweet stench. Sirius had smelled this only one time before, thirteen years ago on that fateful Halloween night. The night when he had found James's house burnt to the ground. Sirius dissolved into a fit of coughing as the smell of burnt flesh filled his nostrils. Raising his eyebrow slightly at Sirius's reaction, Whimsy spoke the fateful word: "Envirate."
Remus opened his eyes.
"Holy shit," Vix murmured in outright shock.
Whimsy got up, never taking his gaze from Remus. "Highly advanced acupuncture, Miss Su."
"Acupuncture my ass," she growled, suddenly turning to Sirius. "What is going on?"
Sirius glanced from Whimsy still entranced with Moony to Remus, rubbing his shoulder and purposely avoiding Vix's gaze. Vix turned her angry eyes to Sirius, and once again he saw in them something that made him stumble. Once again, after fourteen years, he saw her...
"Its a long story," Remus unconscious mere seconds earlier stood up, catching himself on Whimsy's arm when his legs gave out from under him.
Vix just gaped, her face turning from confusion to fury in less than a heartbeat. "You lied to me!"
Sirius collapsed in a ratty wicker chair, his face in his hands. "You wouldn't have believed it," he said, his voice muffled by his fingers, his nostrils filled with the stench of his own sweat.
Vix bit her lip in anger; "You didn't even try me!"
"What if--" Sirius began, jerking his head up. "What if I told you that everything you read in those damn books were real? The psyches, the vampires, the dementors..." he trailed off afraid his voice would betray the emotion he was feeling. "I was never any good at this sort of discussion..." Sirius turned to Remus. "I always left that to you, or James. Oh God, James..."
Only once before had Remus ever seen Sirius cry.
"Who the hell is James?" Vix screamed, cornering Sirius. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I believe what you're seeing is called remorse, Miss Su," Whimsy said with a slick self-satisfied smile on his face.
"Shut up," Remus yelled, shutting his mind against the onslaught of fury and pent up emotion. "You don't know what you're talking about. None of them do."
"Happy Halloween," Sirius muttered to someone thirteen years dead and beyond his reach. "That's the last thing he ever said to me, Remus. Happy fucking Halloween."
"What?" Vix turned to Remus sensing the tension in the air, her voice a not rising above a mere whisper.
"I haven't asked you why your brother is a murderer, or why your father smuggles drugs," Remus said softly, gazing into her dark eyes. "And I can't tell you this, I have to let the dead rest in peace. You'll have to trust me that it's not personal. You have to trust me." He extended his hand.
Vix stared back at his their gazes locked and melded into one continuous motion, her anxiety and confusion mixing with his longing and fear. The mutual sorrow finding its counterpart on the other's shore, and with that recognition the two ships in the night raised their lanterns and heralded a greeting. It wasn't much, those fragile seconds of eye contact where not even a word was exchanged, but it was a beginning. Somewhere, sometime, somehow it was said that anything important happened in the mere passage of a heartbeat. Hestitatly, palms trembling, Vix reached out and grabbed his hand. It was the first time he had seen her honestly smile.
----
When Nsia stepped out of the prowler, Orien was already sitting up. "Damn him," he growled, rubbing his broken face with his bloody hand. Nsia made no reply except to pull a Kleenex out of the pocket of her skirt. Orien looked at it distastefully but let her try to clean off his face. "He's going to die."
"You as good as killed him," Nsia replied quietly remembering the fingers around the neck, the ripped bloody ear. You would have killed him.
Orien turned to her, a sick smile of triumph spreading across his face. "Their landlady ratted, she owed father a favor. 218 Ho Chi Mien. Apartment 2A. Vix will be there."
"She's all you think about," Nsia hissed softly, stroking his bloody hair.
"She killed Sho Seiji," Orien whispered. "She betrayed us."
"Betrayed you," Nsia answered quickly.
"Us," Orien replied, his words hasty and fevered. "I am you. You are me, we are one. You would never betray me Nsia, never. You're mine, forever, and ever and ever and ever..." his voice trailed of as he began to repeat the nonsense to himself.
Trying in vain to pin it on drugs, the fight, anything. Nsia looked in growing horror as Orien curled up in her lap. She began to stroke his hair soothingly as he repeated "ever" over and over, forever and always, drawing her deeper into his web of insanity and possession. "Orien," Nsia said quietly, trying to keep all trace of fear out of her voice. "Orien..."
He leapt up, the look of infantile excitement on his face like that of a small child. "I'm going for father. Go to her Nsia, go now and tell Vix to stay. Then I'll come and we'll blow them all to dust."
Nsia jerked her head up abruptly, trying to make sense out of his incoherent musings. "What?"
"You'll get her to stay in one place. Reassure her; tell her I'm coming to make amends. Then she'll die, I'll come and kill her." he said it all with a huge smile on his face, making the prospect even more unnerving.
"No I'm won't," Nsia spat, backing away. Let Orien do what he wanted, as long as she could watch his mindless violence from a distance.
"Yes you will," he said, the puerile grin fading.
Nsia felt her mind reel with the prospect of what he was asking her to do, "No I'm not. Ask me to do anything else, not this."
Orien took a threatening step forward his pupils dilating, and in one lithe motion he caught her by the chin and looking once towards the empty street dragged her into the shadows not illuminated by the flickering grace of the moon, away from the electric musings of the streetlamps. Not relaxing a single tense muscle, he jerked her so their gazes were locked, the panic glaring from the whites of her eyes. "Yes you will, Nsia."
Trying to breathe against his savage stranglehold she gritted her teeth, "There's only one way you can make me do this."
His hand tightening around her neck he gave a small smile, "I know." His anger burning like liquid metal against her skin he let her go, the punch connecting with her bruised jaw as she crumpled to the pavement. Then in and instant, he was gone, in the prowler and out of sight. He wouldn't go for Naoto; she knew that for sure. He'd drive around aimlessly and then decide to go do Vix in himself. Her next news story would be the murder of three British citizens in the ghettos of Hong Kong. There would be an uproar, an international crisis, as every force in Hong Kong would try to twist the incident for their own political gain. They'd need a scapegoat, someone innocent would get blamed, or maybe not, maybe for once they'd pick the right killers. Maybe they'd pick Orien; maybe they'd pick her.
Once again she saw the Brit's ear in his mouth, the blood dribbling down his chin like spaghetti sauce, blood now smeared across her own chest. She saw him two months ago, alert, sane and very much alive, and she saw him two minutes previous his face vacant and infantile. Did he know what he was doing? Did any of them? And then in her ears, she heard that blood-wrenching howl.
----
"Vix?"
As she opened the door, Vix found herself faced with the last person she expected to see, "Nsia Mbambe?"
"He's coming, Vix." Nsia stood, her face barely highlighted by the pale moonlight filtering in through the apartment's window.
"What?" Vix looked up at her in shocked confusion.
"Orien," Nsia said the urgency in her voice bit with an undercurrent of fear. "He's coming for you. All of you. Go now."
"Dissapperate," the word meant nothing to Vix as it issued from Whimsy's lips.
Once again Remus held out his arm. "Hold onto me, Vix."
"What?" she blinked at the absurdity of his request, but it was Nsia who pushed her forwards.
"Do it," she whispered as Vix wrapped her arms around Remus's waist.
"Thank you," she murmured to Nsia, feeling a mixture of confusion and embarrassment.
Nsia gave her the tinest of smiles, but when she spoke it was not without a touch of bitterness, "Just go."
Then the world dissolved.
----
When Orien got there, Nsia was waiting.
He slammed the door with a crash. Nsia didn't move, her eyes focused on the dead blot as it slid into place. Locking them in together. Forever. "Where are they?"
"Gone." Nsia looked up to him and in the silver moonlight he could see the paths of tears down her face. He stared at her, his shock slowly evolving into comprehension. He took a step towards her; his black eyes focused on her own. Another step. Another. Another. And still, she made no struggle, no noise. He was so close she could hear the rasping of his breath, feel the beating of his heart, so close she could feel his body heat radiate towards her as it had done on so many occasions previous. Radiate towards her and engulf her struggling soul. "I love you," she whispered as he began the shower of blows. Whispered all through the blows until she could whisper no more.
----
Remus felt the world rearrange itself around him, he blinked and opened his eyes to see where Whimsy had taken them. It was an office, gray and square with none of the sweeping classy contours of Whimsy's. Taking a tenative step forward, Remus breathed a sigh of relief when the carpet didn't squeal. In fact there was an obvious lack of anything magical in the office at all. It was for the most part nondescript, with the characteristic wooden desk and the small white cube that muggles were so fond of, the coputer. The office opened out onto a view of the South China Sea with a high floor-length window. Outside the window, it was now night, the nearly full moon bouncing silver rays off the inky black ocean. But there were no photographs of sultry jazz vocalists in this room, only pictures of an idyllic family, pictures of a little girl-- Vix.
Su Naoto.
Though he had never seen the man in his life, the tiny gray-haired figure standing up from behind his desk was unmistakable. Naoto couldn't have been more than four and a half feet tall, but every modicum of his body gave off a stench of power, if not rivaling, then surpassing Whimsy's. "Jonathan," Naoto hissed, taking a step towards the four of them.
"Naoto," Whimsy asserted, greeting his adversity with a curt nod. Despite their obvious animosty, Remus could sense a feeling of mutual respect branched between the two.
There was a click and with a growing sense of helplessness, Remus realized that Naoto had pulled a gun. Pulled a gin and pointed it at Vix. "You've corrupted my daughter Whimsy."
Whimsy gave his condescendingly superior smirk. "I'm afraid you started that process, Naoto."
"You've convinced her to kill Sho Seiji, thus shun everything her father's been trying to build for her," Naoto said, speaking more to Vix than Whimsy. Then he spat as if the accusing itself dirtied him. But somehow, his tone remained level, the subtle anger underneath covered up with all the skill of a master.
"Father no--" Vix broke away from Remus, but a snap from Naoto cut her would-be explanation short.
"Silence!" And then with his face like stone he cocked the safety. "You've killed your pawn Whimsy."
Grabbing his wand, Remus yelled the first spell that his lips could form. Damn their stupid cover, damn the fact that he had left it behind, damn it all except for the fact that he wouldn't prove useless again. Unlike Hogwarts, he couldn't let this second chance slip away. "Gravatuus!" It was the curse Whimsy had used at Vix's diner 24 hours and 2000 breaths ago. Gravatuus was an illegal Muggle-freezing hex, all but useless in the current situation, but he could only hope it would slow Naoto down enough to...
Naoto wasn't moving.
Naoto was a muggle.
"Stupefy," The last thing Remus saw before it all went black was Whimsy's deceptively charming smile.