A/N
Double upload! Huzzah: see, I didn't leave you on a cliffy!
I do want to give some advanced warning this is not a cheery chapter. Important, but not cheery. Enjoy and review!
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My mouth was glued shut, eyes wide.
Nononononononononononono…
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"Hello? Who is on the other end?"
Nonononononononohelphelphelphelphelp…
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"…Kan, it's you isn't it."
Stopstopstopstopstopgoawaygoawaygoawayno!
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"Good. I'm glad you finally called."
Helpnogoawaystopnonononogononostop…
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"We have much to discuss. Report."
He'llkillmekillmekillmenononononostopstophelphelpHEL-
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"Kan."
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Hard and gripping, his voice cut through the noise in my head. Numbness set into my body.
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"Report."
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It was not a question.
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"Yes, sir."
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My mouth moved and a voice that sounded like mine told him about Reborn, about Japan, about my job, about blowing up Cesarino's robot. Grey noise buzzed in my skull as one thought looped in my mind: It's him, It's him, I'm talking to him, It's him.
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I couldn't move, as he listened, disturbingly silent.
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He sighed.
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I breathed again.
Careful, be careful.
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"So, you've been causing trouble."
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This also was not a question.
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"When I speak, you answer. You've been causing trouble again."
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His voice took on a familiar edge.
"…yes sir…" I answered faintly.
I could feel my body vibrating from tension, joints aching in protest.
I remembered him.
I knew this man. I could picture the deep wrinkles and crags of age that marked his tan face, those deep set, calculating black eyes, the meaty hands and muscly build, shirt left open at the first two buttons with the sleeves rolled to show massive, hairy forearms and 23 thin white scars criss crossing up.
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"What? Speak up!"
My tongue unglued itself, voice found itself.
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"Yes sir!"
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"Good..."
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He was thinking now, assessing. Not good. Was he wearing the gold watch?
Don't look at me, don't think of me, don't even acknowledge I exist. Don't. Don't.
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Then, he spoke.
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"Listen to me very closely, Kan, I don't want to repeat myself." He never had to.
Don't. Let me go. I'll listen. Promise. Please...
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"Yes sir."
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"I know what you've been doing."
My heart stopped, and I could feel the hairs on my arm standing up as a chill swept through me.
Oh God, no.
"I've been tracking your reports. I know."
Stop. Please, go away, someone, anyone, please!
He was silent, waiting, letting the statement, the accusation, hang between us like a smoking gun. He was aiming, deciding where to send the next bullet, what to break first, what to do to drag secrets from deep inside my gut, what would make me scream. Those hands never shook, never wavered. Terror, irrational and animalistic coursed through me as I desperately squeezed my eyes shut and pushed away the images filtering rapidly into my mind from the last time.
Please. Please. Someone...please!
"Prima è saltata, poi è scappata. Dove correrai topolino?" (1)
The cat and the mouse...no, please, please, I don't want to play this game, please!
There was a rumbling chuckle, and I bit down hard on my still tender tongue, letting the pain chase away the freezing fear encroaching on my mind. If I panicked, if I let that flood pull me under, that would be it. He would win, and I would be stretched until I broke. I had an idea of what he wanted now, of what he meant, and I wanted to be wrong. If Ricardo had a reason to ask me questions, if he had a solid goal in mind, there would be no escape. The mouse had no friends, the mouse curried no favor: the cat would never let her tail go.
I would be sent back.
For a moment I could smell the pungent scent of stale cigar smoke mixing with wood varnish and ink, a faint whiff of bleach and old blood leaking through the hidden door behind the shelves. The hotel disappeared and I was there, on the polite side of his office. I pressed a hand over the speaker and muffled a shrill scream in the skin between the thumb and pointer of my other.
No. I'm here. I'm here! I am far away from him. I am.
My mind spun away from me when he moved and the leather chair creaked.
I can't go back, I can'tIcan'tIcan'tIcan't- STOP. Stop it! Stop it! Keep it together, keep it together!
Please! Someone, anyone, please! Help me, I need, help, please!
Please, I can't, I can't, I can't, can'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan't-
Something was snapping inside, breaking deep, deep down underneath, buried. I jerked, one hand flying to my head, curling into myself and pulling the phone away from my ear as heat flew down my spine in sharp, stabbing sensations. Breath coming in short gasps, my hand buried itself in my hair as another spasm tore through me. I grit my teeth against the shattering sensation spiking across my body.
StopstopstopstopstophurtsithurtithurtsITHURTSITHURTSwhywhywhywhywhymewhywhywhymehelphelphelphelp-
Stabs of pain attacked my arms and legs radiating away from my spine along the neural pathways firing indiscriminately, sending my muscles tightly contracting and jerking, now my thigh, then my shoulders. My hands shook as hunched inwards, buckling down against the roar of sound in my ears and the trembling, shaking, spastic movements of my limbs. One voice kept surfacing from flood, and I reached for it, desperate for something to anchor myself on.
'...don't need...stupid...'
myheadmyheadmyheadwhywhywhywhywhyWHY?!
'Yo! I'm...you're kinda small for...wrong with...to go...'
whatwhatwhathappenedwhatIdon'twhywhatwhatwhatdidhedotome?!
'...be your...just like...little bird...'
Helphelphelphelphelphel-
'...Birdy, let me give you some advice: don't be a basket case.'
The noise in my head slowed, swirled around that voice like the eye of some strange storm, settling as it cut through the torrent of hysteria and pain. The sharp sensation traveling along my spine tingled and faded into something more familiar, a strange warmth chasing after it. Disoriented, my focus tunneled and pinned itself on that voice (memory?) as it continued.
'I can't stand that type. If you're gonna be some sorta "type," be stronger. 'Cause crazy don't suit you.'
...be stronger.
Crazy don't suit you...
My eyes opened a sliver. The dark of the hotel made itself known, winking lights of the skyscrapers and passing cars further grounding me as I noticed the neon signs in Japanese. This wasn't headquarters, Ricardo wasn't doing anything to me, the phone wasn't even near my ear. I felt blank, numb. My mind traced its way back to that voice, diving back into that moment, when had that been?
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Whittling, he always used to whittle, and always chess pieces.
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My breathing evened out, deepened.
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Jack didn't play chess.
'You know what you need? Hobbies. Hobbies are important. You get yourself a hobby, you won't turn into one of these maniacs. I would know.'
A cheeky smile. I was skeptical.
'...you know that makes no sense, right? Like, how the hell do you get from this to that?'
A laugh, not at me, not at anything. Wood curls falling into a bag at his feet, a fire cracking and burning, smokeless.
Always smokeless; we didn't want to be found.
'Ah, Birdy, it's all connected!'
A knife that macho was too big and sharp to be waved like some letter opener, but he didn't care. Warm, by the fire, by his side.
'What is?'
A glance, a knowing smirk.
Idiot.
'Everything, trees, birds, even us. So don't make me connected to a damn loony, got it Birdy? You keep it together, keep your cool like you do. Don't crack on me Birdy, we got a long road ahead of us. Got it?'
Blue eyes, blue like the sky before a storm, gray and stern and honest.
Wood in my hands. Ah, a knight this time. My fingers tracing the pale wood of the horses head.
'...Got it.'
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I was myself again, reeling and unsteady, still clinging to calm by my fingertips, but no longer in the yawning darkness of terror and uncontrollable pain, movement.
Don't crack, don't speak, don't move. Don't move, don't move, don't move. It'll go away, please, go away, go away, disappear. Please.
Center yourself. Come back. You're here, you're here. Look.
I did. At the city, the beds, the wall that separated me from the snoring businessman. A siren sounded outside, and the high pitched scream was a comfort. I was not alone in my fear.
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The phone was still in my hand, the door was shut. Ricardo faded out of my mind as I stared at the bar of light between the floor and door.
No one was there. No one, not Ricardo or Grenada or anyone.
He's not here. Not here. No one is here.
For a moment relief relaxed the anxious pit in my belly, and then the faint echo of Ricardo's words rang in my ears and my heart dropped. Suddenly, deep sadness mingled with fear and I shuddered, mind jumping to me, to Ricardo, to Reborn, to right now. I was alone, no one was coming, not for me. Ricardo knew that. I was the mouse in his favorite fable.
No one is coming. No siren for me. No one.
Another memory, weaker now, harder to recall.
'No one is going to come. No one ever comes. Not for us.'
'Not for us, Birdy.'
I know.
I forgot, but I remember.
I know, I know Jack.
I remember.
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Ricardo was speaking again. How long had he been speaking? I only knew what Jack had said. I tried to focus through the tangle in my head.
"...I see your plan, and I'm ending it. I don't know who told you you could cut your ties to the Vongola by screwing up, but it was a lie."
No. Stop. No more. Stop. I'm tired. I'm so tired.
Fear tried to jolt my heart, but I had burned all my reserves earlier and I had nothing left. Apathy or calm? I didn't know which was which. Maybe Jack would have known. Since when had I thought like that? Somehow, it felt like a hole that had been walled off was suddenly filling with water, like a pit at the edge of the ocean's tide filling and smoothing as wave after wave crashed over it.
Where did the knight go? What did I do with it? What happened?
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"You understand?"
What? What did he say? Understand? I don't know, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not listening. What do you want?
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"You were lied to, Kan"
Lies?...what lie?
I tried to put things together, pushing away distractions, struggling as the waves kept crashing.
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Silence lay between us as I strung his words together.
Plans, what plans...what does that mean?...I never said...oh.
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Shock.
Wait. No. Why? No. No. She wouldn't. Not after everything. She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't...
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It makes sense.
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No. No.
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Look. Look. See? It makes sense.
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...she's the only one who would notice...'Nello would rather die...
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Traitor.
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no
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The water swirled high up over my head, cold and dark. Betrayal and acceptance, acceptance because that was all that was left, the only thing I could do, the only thing that fit in with Ricardo's hints. I didn't have the strength for anger, though disappointment did thread its way through the pain and apathy. Rosemary. Rosemary. Of course, of course. Well, I should have guessed, should have thought things through.
She told him...
She told him.
About me. She talked to him.
The image of the cold tiles, the bright lights and the sweet, cloying smell of serum mixing with the strong smell of bleach hit me. Steel and leather restraints, two way mirrors, the metal cart, the chair flashed through my mind and a surge of emotion snarled to the surface.
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Traitor.
I caught my breath at the stab of fury and hatred that stole over me. Murder briefly flashed in my eyes and I sucked the killing intent that rippled off me back in quickly, shaking my head to dispel the boiling heat, the restlessness made from fear and sorrow and bitterness and pain.
How dare she?! I'll kill her, I'll kill her! Traitor! Traitor!
No. No, I wasn't like them, I wouldn't be like them. So she was a traitor? Fine. FINE. I'd let her live.
no
No. That's not enough. Not enough.
I swallowed the rage, feeling a tingle in my hands, a warning. Faint, jagged sparks of green jumped from my fists, breaking up the signal from the call. Carefully, focusing on one finger at a time, I relaxed my hold, simultaneously pushing down my gut reaction just like she taught me.
Hah. What a joke.
I took a deep breath.
You know better. You know more, you are not the same as them, you are not like before. Think. Think. You know her. Think.
Another breath and adjustment of my glasses. I pinched my arm, hard.
It's not her fault.
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The betrayal was bitter, but if I thought about it even a little bit, not unexpected. This was the mafia, Rose was a handler, and I was her charge. That was her job, it was her job to talk about me. That's why we knew each other, I knew that, I should've. No, I knew it from the start, but I forgot, because she was good, because she was CEDEF and CEDEF were experts. I forgot her role, I lost sight of the rules, I thought I was special. I was an idiot, and I almost wanted to laugh, to run from the ache behind my eyes.
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I snapped back to attentiveness when Ricardo chuckled, and froze.
Shit! Don't forget where you are! Get out of your head you dumbass before you screw yourself over!
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He kept laughing, purposeful and confident. It sounded like gravel going through a blender.
"We've invested in you, topolino, you have debts to pay. You don't leave, you don't disappear, you don't die until we're finished with you, capito?"
Anger as potent as acid spilled to the edge of my tongue, bleeding afresh as I caught a hiss between my teeth.
I know, I know, God, go away, leave me alone! GO AWAY!
I was so tired, so done. I hated him, and I hated Rosemary, and Marianna, and Grenada, and Collonello, and Iemitsu, and everyone who wouldn't leave me alone, who needed me in shreds, who cast my feet in cement and tried to pick my brain while I drowned.
A current of green jumped along my body, sparking off the metal of my glasses. I wanted to let it go, to let that rippling energy blow a hole in the wall, strike out and finish all of them. It grew, humming beginning to grow loud enough to register, and it was only the slight charred smell of my clothes that halted their progress.
Don't forget Reborn. Don't forget. THINK.
Ricardo had stopped laughing, no doubt having heard the tell tale sound of my slipping control. His voice lost some of its lilt and humor.
"If you pull another stunt like what you did in Cosorini I'll black list you and print your profile in the next bingo book."
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The spinning in my head and boiling in my heart ground to a halt, chilled to ice.
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What?
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"You get me, Kan? I'll drop you from red to black if you step out of line again, and I'll put a target on you so big hitmen around the world will take it, just for fun." There was no joke, no meanness in his voice, just stone cold fact and command.
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"Topolino, nobody leaves the mafia alive, don't you know that by now?" he mocked as he tilted back in his seat, sounding almost grandfatherly. An illusion, he was no father. "Now, why don't you give me a name, hm?"
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A name. He wanted a name. I was so close to snapping, to screaming and laughing and ripping something apart. The humming waved in and out like a generator, and I dragged my fingernails over the flesh of my thigh. No. There was nothing to gain from lashing out.
A name. Hah.
There were so many I could give, but none were what he wanted, and he wouldn't believe me even if I said them. What inspired my desire to leave? Who told me I could get out if I walked the delicate line of nuisance and traitor?
A bitter grin, all teeth and no smile took shape on my face, and in the reflection of the window I could see the traces of blood and the bare hint of green magnified by my glasses in my eyes.
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I looked like a monster.
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Ricardo's voice was growing harder but still silky, persuasive, at ease. He was a master in the art of wheedling away at resistance. Too bad; I knew what that voice could do, how cruel those hands could be. There was no real kindness, no substance, no honesty in this man.
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Idiot. I know you. I know you.
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"You're not smart enough to think these things up alone. You don't play the long game: you're impulsive, erratic, and you don't listen. So who is it?"
Beg.
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"Who told you to mess around, to gain expulsion?"
I. Don't. Talk. Not to you. Not you. NO.
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"Who told you we'd let you walk away if you blew enough jobs?"
Nobody asshole, no-bod-y.
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"Give me a name little girl. "
Nobody. No. Haha!
You get nothing. No.
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We were at an impasse, clock ticking down with no sign of either side giving way. The image in the window watched me, green dying and fading as the situation pressed down on me. A year and a half in the making and everything fell to pieces. A year and a half of going crazy, of weathering through penalties and punishments and isolation. A year and a half for nothing. Nothing. In the end, I didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of leaving.
All I wanted was to walk away before I cracked and either blew up into flames or tears. A thin veneer of apathy and deadness were capping what I really felt, and I clung to it, wanting it to stay forever. But if it did, Ricardo would never let me go.
Damn him, damn him, damn it all!
I had very little control left, and gambling it all on one trick, I let the latent fear bubble up past the deadness weighing it down. My body was too tired to be tense anymore, limbs aching from stress, mind creeping along just fast enough to handle the game.
Give the people what they want. Let them eat cake, fluffy, useless, empty cake.
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If Ricardo believed I was liar, a traitor, I'd play the part. I knew the game, I knew what he wanted me to be, what I probably was. I didn't care because it didn't matter. So what if I was a liar, so what if I was a traitor? I couldn't be anything else, and maybe I didn't want to be. Not for him, not for them.
"No one! No one. There's no name. I thought-no one. Sir." My voice was tired but shrill. The ice, the deadness was still there and I frowned. The girl in the window stared at me blankly. I glared.
Be convincing Bella! CRY.
Tears welled up. A hiccup slipped through.
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He was listening, hard. I gripped my fist tighter, dousing the current trying to surge outwards.
Come on, focus! Focus, sell it, take it! Take it, and let it end. Come on, take it and leave!
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"Hehhhh, that so?"
Come on Bella, cry. Be afraid, be nervous, let. it. in.
Eyes green with flames spilled salt water as the current settled into a sharp burning deep in my head. Everything went blurry. The deadness was cracking, my instinct to squash that pool of everything rising up fighting back.
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"Yes sir," I answered immediately, flatness creeping into my voice.
"Not lying, are you?"
"No sir."
Yes, because you want a lie, so I'll lie.
Green, ugly and beautiful, everywhere.
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"Because you know what I do to liars, don't you?"
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"Yes…sir…"
Break them, then call lies truth.
The humming was inside my ears, ringing like church bells, like a siren of my own making, a siren only I could hear.
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He let a long pause hang in the air.
I know you, asshole, I know your tricks.
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Twenty-two minutes left...
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"Good."
I could have snapped. What was good? I needed away from this phone, I needed out of this room, I needed to be gone, far, far away, some place where I could scream and cry and break my hands punching the wall. That burning in my head, in my eyes drove my heart faster, and as it fluttered and jerked, I imagined a bird caught in a trap, desperately trying to fly.
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Freedom, that's what it was. My freedom. It beat its wings once before settling in its cage and a new hollowness ate me up inside. A sharp pain in my head, and then long buried words.
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Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul...
And sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all...
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Never stops...
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At all...
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His voice was startlingly clear, like he was right there next to me.
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'Little girl, what do we live on?'
Go away.
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'Freedom! It's the American way, and it's all life's worth, it's everything!'
I don't know you. Go. Away.
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'Burn that in your tiny bird brain, capiche?'
Please. Just stop. Stop. I can't do anything more. I can't.
'And sweetest in the gale is heard, and sore must be the storm, that could abash that little bird, that kept so many warm. You listening?'
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I was crying. Real tears were falling. Ricardo was still talking, but I couldn't hear him over Jack, Jack who wasn't here even though he should've been.
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Please stop. Go away. No more.
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'Learn it, you little wretch. It's the best goddamn poem out there, Emery Dawson or something.'
Dickinson, idiot, Emily Dickinson.
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'Keep going. Just, keep going. It's okay. It's all okay. Promise...'
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I didn't want to think, I didn't want to hear anymore, but I heard it anyway, remembered anyway, the day I went back to again and again. The day that started everything.
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'We'll live a good life, little bird. You and me, we'll give the old bastards a run for the hills. We'll make more money than the world has ever seen, we'll raise hell, and then we'll disappear! Poof, like magic! That's how you do it, Birdy, that's how you do it. Make 'em want you gone, then go! They won't look, and we won't be found. I promise.'
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A sob ripped its way out.
I'm sorry Jack.
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"Kan, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, a wee bit of information I think you ought to know. You listening?"
"Yes sir."
"Good, good. You follow your orders, you do this job, and I'll let you walk. Debt paid, I'll let you go. Promise."
"..."
"Capito, Kan?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. We'll be in touch."
"Yes sir."
"Remember, no more screw ups little girl. You fail again and I will personally write up your bounty. You'll have plenty of takers."
Die.
The phone clicked off as he hung up, and slowly I lowered the handset, letting it drop into my lap.
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Seven minutes left.
Reborn's not back yet.
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I sat there, and I stared out the window at the city. Then, all at once, I squeezed the phone and let loose a massive surge of electricity. The internal mechanism fried and hissed, acrid smell of melting plastic drifting upwards.
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My hands moved without me, detaching the box, replacing the back panel, returning everything to its rightful place. I took it all to the bathroom, squeezing past my suitcase and sidestepping a grenade line. With the door shut and locked, I laid everything on the counter, mind blissfully blank.
The glass card I wrapped in toilet paper, twisting and crushing it before dropping it into the bowl and flushing. Turning on the shower, I placed the black box under the spray and watched as it smoked and burned internally, destroying the jamming mechanism. It dissolved in a disgusting mass of black and red gel on contact with the water. Under the cover of the sound and steam I let myself crumple to the floor, let the jagged flames circle and snap over my skin wildly.
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Hope is a thing with feathers.
And it perches in the soul.
It sings the tune without the words.
And never stops at all...
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I let myself wail.
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Translations:
1) First she leapt, then she ran. Where will you run little mouse?
- Referencing Joseph Jacobs "The Cat and the Mouse"
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Poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson
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Next update: 4/4/20
- I may have some trouble with that date because of online classes, but I will try. Stay safe!