Chapter 22: Gambler Blues

When the sack was pulled off of Rock's head, he winced at the light that stung his eyes. Upon jerking his arm and attempting to use it to shield his face, he realised he was restrained with thick rope. Not only that, but someone else was restrained behind him. He and Garcia, it seemed, were tied together back to back on a table. He heard the boy moan and assumed the sack had been removed from his head, also. Rock adjusted his vision and looked at the man who was standing in front of him. It was Alejandro, the cartel runaway who now commanded others like him in the name of the New Order. He threw the sack aside and reached around behind him to grab his FN 5.7 and brandish it in an attempt to intimidate the Japanese man. Rock craned his neck and looked behind him. In front of Garcia was Hawke. They had clearly been taken hostage to lure others out of hiding. Otherwise, they would be dead already.

"Don't look so rattled," Hawke told the Lovelace boy. "You had to know I'd be coming for you eventually. You know why you're here?"

"Yes," Garcia answered. "You're using me as bait. You're hoping Roberta will come after me so that you can kill her."

"Clever boy," Hawke applauded him. Garcia struggled with his bonds briefly, noticing that he was not alone on the wooden table they had sat him on.

"Mister Rock?" he asked. "I don't understand. What use is he to you?"

"With all due respect to Rock, no use at all. It wasn't me that wanted him."

It was at this point that Alejandro pointed his gun at Rock's forehead.

"As soon as your fucking puta of a partner comes out here, I'll wring her little Chinese neck!" Alejandro snarled. "I should put a bullet in your skull right now to teach that bitch a lesson. No one kills my men, fucking nobody!"

"I'd calm down, if I were you," Hawke told his cohort.

"Why do you give a shit about this little runt?!" Alejandro asked, pushing the barrel of the gun against Rock's forehead harder. The Japanese man attempted to recoil, but he had nowhere to move to.

"I don't," Hawke admitted. "But the idea of taking the friend hostage is to keep him alive long enough for your real target to give enough of a shit and come after him. That way, you can lure her in here and take her by surprise when she tries to release him. She's going to shoot up a storm if she arrives and he's already dead. But, hey, that's none of my business." Alejandro clenched his jaw, locking eyes with his associate, but in the end he lowered the gun. Their relationship and shared leadership over the New Order was obviously very precariously balanced.

"Fucking guerrillas," Alejandro spat.

"You're making a mistake," Garcia told the former FARC soldier. "You don't know Roberta. She'll see right through you're trap and figure out a way to outsmart you."

"Is that so?" Hawke asked, going to the door of the small cabin they were in and opening it. From outside, they could hear the distant sound of gunfire. Even at this distance, Rock could have sworn he knew that sound. "Seems to me like both the Bloodhound and the crazed gunner from Lagoon Company are walking right into our hands." Garcia had to hold his temper when he heard his maid and friend referred to by her old moniker, but he composed himself well.

"You're wrong," Garcia denied him. "I know Roberta, she'll find a way to-"

"Forget it, Garcia," Rock cut him off, much to the surprise of the others. "It's over. Don't waste your breath."

"Ain't that a sight," Alejandro remarked. "Poor bastard is depressed. How about that? You losing hope already, Mister Japanese? What's got you so down?" Rock considered playing up to him or coming up with some scathing comment to put him in his place and rile him up, but he could not spare the energy. Instead, he hung his head and waited for them to leave so he could have some peace and quiet.

"You two just sit tight," Hawke told them as he went to leave. Alejandro followed him. "Not that you can go anywhere. But if you do somehow manage to free yourselves, you won't get ten feet from this cabin before my people blow your ankles off." The New Order coleaders left them and shut the door. And so, they were left alone to await the outcome of their kidnapping. If Rock's suspicion about those gunshots was correct, Revy was not far away. Hawke seemed to have confidence in the idea that Roberta would be coming here too, but Rock could not imagine her and Revy working together. The idea not only baffled him, it reminded him of every encounter they had had before, particularly the brawl in the boatyard the first time Roberta came to Roanapur. An alliance to rescue Rock and Garcia would surely lead to a repeat of that situation. It was possible the two had come out here separately, but Rock did not imagine that Roberta would make it very far alone given her physical condition. The New Order would make light work of her.

"So, that's it?" Garcia asked all of a sudden. "You're just giving up?" Rock sighed, his head still low and his eyes staring at nothing in particular.

"We can't change what happens, Garcia. There's nothing we can do. Why waste your time worrying about it?" Garcia did not reply right away. He knew something was off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"You really have changed," he said with equal parts disappointment and disdain. "The Rock who came down and spoke with me aboard the Lagoon that day would never accept a fate like this."

"That was…a long time ago," Rock said simply. "Sometimes, you just have to admit when you're beaten. It's easier than kidding yourself, right?"

"That's ridiculous!" Garcia argued, thoroughly annoyed and bemused by Rock's attitude. "You can't tell me you care so little about yourself." That was just it, he didn't care anymore. When Revy confronted him in the Yellowflag that night, she had been right. His actions that put him in danger had been a direct result of his complete disregard for his own safety. Deep down, a part of him might have even wanted to die, but on the surface he had no fear of danger anymore because he was accepting his fate. Revy should have been proud of him. He was entirely in keeping with her philosophy, that accepting one's fate as one of the walking dead would set one free and destroy any messy self-preservation instincts that complicated the ability to fend for oneself. "What about Miss Rebecca? Are you happy to watch her get herself killed trying to save you?" That, he was less sure of. He certainly had no desire to interfere with the situation or change the course of destiny, if such a thing existed. But he had been guilty of putting his friends in danger on his account before. While he had not directly been responsible this time, he could not help but feel somewhat at fault for Revy's situation should she come to harm. His complete and utter evisceration of any emotional attachment and motivation to save lives he once had had been a play to avoid doing the things he had done in the past that caused his companions to come to harm, a point they had gotten fairly sick of by now. Rock felt nauseous at the thought that the opposite had come to pass in this case.

When Rock did not respond to Garcia, the boy became impatient and continued his questioning.

"I remember another Rock, too," he began. "A twisted manipulator who would sacrifice anything to come out on top. I hear that Rock went and got himself involved with the right kinds of people for the wrong reasons. He could have replaced Mister Chang if he wished. I wonder what happened to him. He would jump at the chance to get himself out of this!"

"You wouldn't want him to be sitting here with you," Rock assured the boy. "Trust me. He's better off dead." Rock sighed under the heat and sweat dribbled down his forehead. His shirt, too, had become soaked through and it was difficult to concentrate on anything but the heat. The two of them spent most of their time in silence, the conversation having come to a swift and abrupt conclusion, and Rock did not see fit to revisit the topic they had been discussing. After all, his feelings were clear and he had no intention of reiterating them to the needlessly and irritatingly optimistic Garcia. The boy was being a bit hypocritical, to be fair. He was not the same person he had been, either. That was not due to age, it was a result of the things he had seen since the day he met Lagoon Company. Whether he liked it or not, this city had left a mark on him. That, too, could be seen as a by-product of Rock's interactions with him.

There was a noise in the corner of the room, but Rock had been dozing and his reaction was delayed. When he finally looked up, he almost screamed. He saw him there, that shadow of a man, wearing a black trench coat over his shirt and tie and a horrid red glow in his eyes. He stepped out of the darkness to confront Rock, the Gambler that lived in his very soul. Every step he took left a bloody footprint on the wooden floor. The Gambler took a drag of his cigarette and watched his doppelganger curiously. Rock just stared in disbelief at what he was seeing, struggling with his binds more and more as the Gambler came closer. A horrific smile spread across his face from ear to ear, a haunting toothy grin that made Rock go cold all of a sudden.

Rock startled awake, sweating even more than he had been before and his breathing alarmingly quick. Garcia jumped in fright.

"What's wrong?!" he asked, startled by this display. Rock took a moment to compose himself. The dream had been vivid and he would need some time to get over it. His hands shook in their bindings. As his pulse returned to normal, he still refrained from answering Garcia and the young boy did not question him further. He was happy to remain in silence after their tiff earlier. Rock was unsure how to feel. His worldview and emotional detachment were largely the same as they had been for a while, but something about Garcia's presence niggled inside him like a parasite and he could not forget about the boy's plights, as much as he wanted to. It was hard to stay distant. He remembered everything that had happened to the Lovelaces in Roanapur and it made him feel rotten inside, like his insides were decaying beneath his weary bones. He was intelligent and he knew a lot of what the family had been through was his fault.

"I'm broken, Garcia," he said finally. "I walked for too long in the twilight until that brought me to a true, dark night. I can see what I became. You don't want to know what it's like to lose yourself in this world and pull back. It's…a heavy weight to carry with you every day of your life. I know I can't take back what I've done…but you shouldn't have to suffer for the choices I've made."

Garcia had been treading a fine line between retaining his humanity and becoming numb to the world like Rock. He had become almost blind to the danger of wandering so close to the darkness. The people he associated with made it difficult to see that danger and recent events only heightened the difficulty. But he saw it, now, like a blind man given sight for the first time. It was clear as day how this world of darkness had ruined Rokuro Okajima and it seemed unlikely that the Japanese man would ever find true peace. His way to cope with the world and the mistakes he had made was to envelope himself in apathy so that consequence and empathy had no place in his heart anymore. Garcia never wanted to become like that. He had too much to live for and he loved his family too much. Visions of his home in Venezuela flooded into his mind and he could almost feel the sunlight on his face. The smell of the flowers filled his nose and the sound of his now deceased family dog, Laslow, reached his ears. He wanted to go home, to find his own peace while he still had the chance, and he could only do that if Roberta was with him. His eyes opened again and he returned to the present.

"You were right, Mister Rock," he said softly. "I need to get as far away from Roanapur as soon as I can. The darkness has touched you, like you said. I mean this in the nicest way but I never want to end up like that. So I will return home with my Roberta and the others so we can put all of this behind us." Rock listened to those words intently. When Garcia was done, a smile appeared on Rock's face. That pleased him greatly.

"Good," he breathed. "That's good, Garcia."