~~~Where God Went to Die~~~

Chapter Six

Denmark - 2035

The faint smell of fire reached Ayleen before the sound of her father's footsteps did. The pine tinted scent of the smoke always used to cheer her up, but that morning, knowing it was her father who made it, she only felt sick.

"Who was she?" Ayleen asked him the second he came through the door.

"Uh…" The raccoon looked confused. Hungover, and confused. "who's… who?"

Ayleen, ready to finally confront her father for keeping the doors to his past shut, crossed her arms defensively. She always saw people do that while angrily questioning someone. It was a stupid idea she thought, but she figured she'd seem more professional if she looked the part too. "Penelope?" Sly's face fell from one of surprise to a grim, depressed shadow. "Was she my mother? And what the hell is the deal with Tahiti?" she couldn't hold her posture anymore, neither physical nor mental, and she threw her arms up and started speaking off the top of her head. She had been running questions about her father's past life for as long as she could comprehend he had one, and everyday would grow more and more frustrated he kept her out. Finally, she had an excuse to learn more. She had leverage, the old book she stole from him. "Gods, why don't I know anything about you? I always thought my mother's name was-"

"Tahiti?" Sly interjected, looking suddenly scared.

"Yeah. You were mumbling about this Penelope lady in Tahiti… or something, or-"

Sly grabbed her by the shoulders, digging his fingers into her clothing, and stared her in her eyes. His gaze was bloodshot and twitchy, and his nostrils flared so large Ayleen thought they would crack. "What did I say? How much did I say?" When she didn't answer, he shook her harshly, stopping only to match eyes with her again. "Answer me! What did I say about Pen-" He stopped, seeing past the eyes he locked with, seeing the primal fear drowning in her mind. She had stopped breathing, and her pupils were the the size of a sand grain. Sly let go of his daughter, feeling the muscle tension in her arms refuse to put its guard down as he loosened his grip. "I…" he took a few steps back, but stopped when his tailbone smashed into the wall. He lost his balance, and quickly slid himself down to sit on the floor, grabbing his head for stability. Ayleen slowly and cautiously started breathing again, and sat on her bed, trying, but failing, to hold back her tears. "I'm sorry, Ayleen, I-"

"Dad," his daughter said miserably. "Its not fair, that you don't tell me anything about her… she was my mother, I need to know more about who you were, I don't like feeling like you're-" she stopped herself, looking her father in his fire-yellow eyes. "…someone who isn't my father." What she said may have sounded strange in retrospect, but from what little she knew of the raccoon she called her dad, Ayleen wasn't ruling out the possibility she wasn't his real daughter. She was a raccoon, but her warmer pelt color, strange fur patterns, pointed ears, and skinnier figure all contrasted with Sly pretty heavily. She wasn't implying she was kidnapped, but with what little she knew about him, and therefor herself, it was just another grim possibility.

Sly immediately pushed himself up to sit by his daughter. Ayleen was a bit hesitant, instinctively resisting as per the sting of Sly's grasp still lingered. She quickly overcame the fear, as he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a hug. She leaned into his shoulder, sobbing softly against his shirt, herself digging her fingers into his back, frustrated she was still a scared child in the eyes of who she was trying to confront, but ultimately comforted in his arms. Sly was crying too, his tears falling on the back of her neck as he stroked her hair and whispered into her ear. After a long while of crying and holding each-other, the two pulled away and sat in silence. Sly kept a gentle hand on her shoulder, rubbing circles against her back. Finally, Sly spoke up. "So… what all… did I say? Exactly?"

Ayleen doubted she was going to get an answer, but also figured that if her father, by some divine rarity, really was going to open up and be honest about his past, she needed to be forward about her feelings. "You were mumbling pretty bad. I couldn't really make out what, but Julius said you were rambling about Tahiti." Sly nodded, following the story, no doubt trying to make out the Blue Jay from his hazy memory. "Then at home, you said 'Penelope' a few times." Sly nodded calmly, but his gaze shot all over the room. "I asked you what you meant, and you got defensive… then, yanno… sad again."

Sly rubbed her back for a few more seconds, then stopped when he spoke. "So I didn't really explain anything?"

She knew what was coming next. "…Nope."

"Good."

Ayleen nodded in frustration. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she growled through teary eyes and clenched teeth.

Sly's hand shot from her back and to his lap, defensively. "Hey!"

Ayleen wiped her tears and stood up. Her father yelled something, but she couldn't hear him. She reached under her pillow and threw the heavy, leathery tome at her dad. He caught it and gave it a fearful glance before looking up at his daughter in furious, confused, horror. "Where did you get this?"

"I stole it dad. From you!" His daughter screamed. Sly stood up and eyed the book again, biting his lip so hard it cracked and started gushing dark red blood. He didn't seem to notice. "That's what you were, right? That's where you got all your cool shit from, huh?" she was screaming, but through the gruff in her voice, she couldn't feel her tears anymore, so she counted it as a good idea. "If that was what you were so ashamed of you could have-" she stopped herself when her dad took the book out of the room, slamming the door on his exit. She chased after him, dramatically throwing the door open just in time to see her father toss the book into the living room fireplace, seemingly without a second thought.

"No!" She yelled, throwing herself to her knees, helpless to the inflamed pages. All she could do was watch, as the cracked leather of the book curled and darkened under the hateful drain of the fire. The blue ink seemed to ooze out of the pages, like dormant blood finally running out the slits of a wound. Ayleen could practically smell the boiling iron. "Why did you do that?" she asked meekly, not even expecting an answer.

Her father knelt down beside her and placed an arm around her shoulder, attempting to comfort her, to no avail. "That book… That's why your mother left us." he said, sounding just as weak as his daughter.

"Why did you keep it…?"

Sly paused and shook his head. "I… I don't know… it was such a big part of me… I couldn't just… do what I just did." he spoke without remorse, without regret or frustration. If any thought carried his words, it would have been that of confusion, as to why he didn't burn the thing before.

Ayleen pulled away from his arm, half tempted to run to her room and cry. She stayed put however, and turned to face her father. "Who was she? I just need to know." she growled again.

Her father sighed, frustration taking form in his fists, as he used them to hoist himself off the ground. He didn't turn to look at her, opting instead to watch the rest of the book succumb to its ashen fate. "Her name was… it wasn't Penelope." Ayleen held her breath, thinking over the word Carmelita like it was a tangible object to be held. "It was-"

"Carmelita." They both said in unison. Sly nodded his head, still watching the book burn alongside the logs.

"She was a better person than I'll ever be… I know that." He continued.

Ayleen found the disturbingly necessary courage to speak. "Were you two…"

"Police… shewas with INTERPOL."

"I-I meant… Thieves…"

Sly shook his head. "Not her. She was better."

"...But… you were, right?"

Sly pushed a log with his foot, causing it to roll over the pile of ash the book had been deconstructed to. He sighed and rolled his head back, looking like he tried to swallow rotten food. "No."

"But in the book, you-"

Sly spun around and stared at his daughter, his red eyes swelling with tears. "I was worse."

Ayleen felt more scared than sorry for her dad, a hungover, miserable man standing in front of his burning past, horrified of having to explain himself to his daughter. Finally, she sighed, finally swallowing her need to cry. "In the book… you wrote that you killed someone…" Sly closed his eyes and scrunched his face. "You said you were avenging your father… I… you called yourself Co-"

Sly held his hands away from his chest, trying to make himself look larger than the tired, broken thing he was. "I had to!" He yelled. "And now I have to live with that!"

Ayleen grabbed the back of the couch, just needing something to dig her claws into. "Who was he? What did he do?" why did you have to? She couldn't finish her thought, as her dad yelled again.

Sly pointed to the fire. "He stole that! He-" the raccoon grunted, making a pained expression as he recognized his irony. "He hurt people in cold blood, he hated my family just because one of my ancestors took something from him!"

Ancestors? Ayleen though, alongside a thousand insults to throw at the man next to the fire.

"He murdered-" Sly stopped himself, looking horrified, the same look he had just made, and cringed at his own thoughts. Yelling loudly, he punching the brick wall next to him just to calm himself down. To Ayleen's surprise, the brick his fist collided with actually broke, and the paste holding it to the others seemed to explode into a white powder, falling on the raccoon's flanneled shoulder. He screamed "Fuck!" and ran his dusty hand through his hair, his eyes running all over the room, trying to find something that wouldn't set him off. Finally he saw Ayleen, holding herself far away form him, wrapping her tail around her legs defensive, refusing to take her cautious eyes off of him. "He… he just killed them… cold blooded…" Sly made the same scared face, seeming to swell in an old non-verbal irony, and exhaled an angry breath so hot, Ayleen could sense it beside the fire.

All she could think of to say, was: "If this is the way Mom found out who you were… I'm not surprised she left." The words felt icy cold as they left her tongue, cascading like bucket of water dropped by a helicopter on a forest fire. Sly felt that cold too, as he stood unmoving, eyes glued wide, and his bloody wrist resting in the grasp of his other hand.

"She…knew, she always…knew…" He looked to the floor, silently whispering to himself. "She was better… she didn't want to… god I miss her so much…" Was all Ayleen was able to hear.

She took in a deep breath, and studied the trees, visible outside the window grow more and more restless in the wind, thrashing with each other for their spot in the sun. She sighed, shifting her feet. "There was an address in that book, that you wrote in. Referencing some store pile of treasure… you probably stole that treasure, huh?"

Her father nodded, each breath a miserable sigh. "In Paris… yeah…"

"Did you live there? With the turtle and the hippo from the pictures?"

Sly nodded, starting to cry harder.

A sudden wave of bravery and confidence washed over Ayleen, and she decided to test the embers. "I need you to tell me about her. My mother, who she was, why she left." Tell me now, or I'll go find the turtle and the hippo and make them tell me. She finished in her head, prepared to fire it at the raccoon when he would inevitably deny her the story of her mother.

Sly, however, sparked a flame of anger in his eyes, hot enough to evaporate their waterlogged glow, and waved his good hand towards the door. "Go ask Bentley. Go ask Murray. I'm sure they'd tell you everything. He said, angrily walking towards the couch. Ayleen jumped backwards, mistaking his movements towards the couch to be aimed at her. When he sat and stared at his hand, refusing to make eye contact, or even offer the slightest resplendence of understanding towards Ayleen's case, she knew she had to leave. If her firework of a father didn't want to help her, then she would find those who did. Like a river, she would flow onwards, searching for her place, and for herself. Sly had no time for her, and she had no time for him.

She left the living room almost calmly, and grabbed a back-pack out of her closet. She didn't have a lot of money, but with the skills she had read about in the book, as well as a wall of moral to overcome, she knew she wouldn't struggle too often. She doubted she'd ever even need to steal, as a train from their hometown to France would take a little more than 14 hours, and cost only about fourteen hundred Krone. She packed just enough clothes to support her for a few days until she found the address. For good measure, she tossed in an old pocket knife Sly had gotten her as a birthday gift.

About an hour of packing later, and she was ready in gear, but not in mind. She slung the pack over her shoulders and paced in her room for a while. She traced her plan over and over in her mind, juggling with the idea that she was making a good decision. She was strong enough to keep herself safe, all alone in a foreign city, but she had never had to do anything like that before. Deep inside her, she knew she had to. If her father wouldn't help, she needed to help herself. All her life she had been kept out of his past, never knowing who her mother was.

That turtle… Bentley, he would know. She reminded herself, taking a deep breath.

He would help me find her… I believe that… I have to.

With one last silent goodbye to her room, she opened the door and made her way to the living area.

Sly was still sitting on the couch. "You said… wrote something in that book…" she started, looked down at him with an almost compassionate strength in her eyes. She was angry at Sly, but she had to ask one last question before she made off to Paris. "You called yourself Sly Cooper."

Her father nodded, still holding his hand. "That's… my real name Sly, Cooper… your real name… Ayleen Cooper." he said grimly, refusing to make eye contact. He spoke each 'Cooper' with such a hateful spit, Ayleen could feel his hatred for the title radiating off him like heat off a fire.

"Montoya… that was Mom's name, huh?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Sly nodded. "I'm so sorry Ayleen… you should have had her… not me, not a… a-"

"A Cooper?"

Sly nodded, his eyes growing dark as the fire died, the wind finally strong enough to throw ash all over the room. He didn't move. He didn't make a sound. He just stared at his bleeding fingers, thinking. "Ayleen?"

She didn't answer.

"If you're going to Paris… stop by Kinderdijk. In the Netherlands.

"Whats in the Netherlands?"

Sly still didn't look up. "An old friend. You wont have any trouble finding him…" he turned his hand over, watching his blood fall onto his lap. He clenched his fist.

Ayleen turned to the door. She knew she would come back eventually, but if Sly Cooper wasn't going to help her learn about her mother, then she would find somebody who would. The turtle, Sly's Holland friend, somebody… anybody. She needed to find her mother.

I'm not a Cooper… she thought, opening the door. I'm better.

Annotations

Seven hundred Danish Krone is maybe a little more than a hundred dollars. Not sure if the actual price for transit from Denmark to Paris is 200(ish) USD, but that's hardly the point of this story.

I imagine Sly and Ayleen live in - or near - Esbjerg, in the West of Denmark, part of the mainland.