Once again, in this chapter, I own Zander and nobody else.
Mizuki breaks out of his OoC-ness in this chapter, but Doyle...gets worse.
The problem should be resolved by the end of the chapter. Or, worse case scenario, technically between this and the next one.
Again, readers of Ships in the Night, my generic history, will see why. Those who haven't read it: Zander is willing to try to explain.
Assume that in this story, the Saturdays know (and remember, in Doyle's case) the nature of Zander's relationship to Doyle from Ships. And that they know the nature of the laws Zander's father had been researching back then. And so on and so forth.
Just because I don't feel like fitting an explanation into the flow of this story. The same may not be true of my other...*ahem* Alternate Timelines that also draw on the generic history. In fact, it frequently won't be. Doyle will be surprised to learn those details in other stories.
What the Saturdays don't know in this one (at least not yet) is that Doyle had been tested alongside Zander.
One more thing.
Way back when, the Secret Saturdays wikia had an entry about Doyle and Drew's parents being Gypsies. That rumor has never been verified to my knowledge, and the entry appears to have since been removed, but the notion has managed to keep a grip on my fanfics. So...
First Theft
"I'm sorry about this," Drew said. "Professor Mizuki isn't usually like this. I don't know why he—"
Another roar interrupted her, as Mizuki hauled himself onto the ledge.
Drew turned to face him, sword in hand. Doyle managed to push himself onto his feet. Drew glanced at her brother; his eyes had changed again.
"Hold still, you traitorous vermin!"
Zander's face drained of all color. Tell me he didn't say what I think he did, he thought at Paul.
"Be glad to," Paul whispered, "but then I'd be lying." His expression mirrored Zander's.
Doyle's expression flickered, and Mizuki actually recoiled. In that moment of hesitation, Arthur managed to get a bead on him, and shot the Hibagon with the Force Blaster.
Miranda tried to shake off her fear. "I had no idea Doyle was so chivalrous," she muttered to Doc. She chuckled nervously.
"Neither did I," he replied.
Zander shook his head. "It isn't chivalry," he told them. "Not exactly. It—he doesn't like seeing anyone accused or treated poorly for some trait they have no control over...like bloodline. At least not since it happened to him." He glared at the Hibagon.
"I never accused—" Mizuki growled.
"Really?" Arthur replied. "'As far as I'm concerned, you're in league with her.' Weren't those your exact words, professor gorilla? And why, exactly, would you think that, except for some crazy reason like, say, Miranda's related to your thief?"
Mizuki blinked. He stared at Arthur for a moment, and blinked again. "I—I did say that, didn't I?" He looked around at the Scientists' fearful expressions, and hung his head. "I'm sorry. I was—"
"Doyle!" Drew's cry cut Mizuki's apology short. "Doyle, come on, sweetie, focus." She took his head in her hands and turned him to face her. "Focus, Doyle. Look at me. No, you look at me."
"What's wrong?" Doc asked.
"I don't know," Drew said. "It looks like he's going into shock, but..."
Doc rushed over to see. The description was certainly close, though there were a few oddities. The younger man's eyes were pinning, rapidly contracting and dilating like a bird's, and staring at nothing. His skin was pale and slick with sweat, and his breathing was shallow.
But quiet, Doc thought. Almost like he's still controlling it, actually. Like he's trying not to be noticed. Doyle was trembling so badly, it was a wonder he was still standing, and Doc called Fisk over to help him force Doyle to sit down before the younger man fell back down.
Doyle flinched at their touch, and he clenched his fists so hard that blood began to seep through his gloves where his fingers pressed into his palms.
Drew caught sight of the blood trickling past his fingers. "Zak!" she called out. "Get some bandages, now!" Zak ran off to comply. Drew tried to pry Doyle's hands open, to pull his gloves off to get at the wounds.
Zander's eyes flicked down to Doyle's hands, then back to his expression. Come on, bro, he pleaded, the fight's over. Snap out of it, already!
"What did Mizuki do to him?" Doc whispered. He turned to confront the Hibagon. Mizuki may have been ready to apologize to Miranda, but this was something else.
But when he turned, he saw that Mizuki was just as astonished as the rest. And just as alarmed.
Mizuki is not to blame, Zander thought at Doc and Drew, causing them to jump. He preferred that only a select few knew of his skills, and he used this trick so rarely that it was hard to get used to. Not...directly. His actions have triggered a memory.
"All right, everyone," Doc said. "Back up. Move it, people, give him some air." He waved his arms at the group. After most of the Scientists had moved away, Doc caught Zander's eye, and nodded slightly to indicate he heard.
A very specific memory, Zander continued, returning the nod, and a very unpleasant one.
"Obviously an understatement," Doc muttered.
"Then you should be able to wake him up," Drew said. She flicked her gaze to Zander, then quickly back. She continued to try to get Doyle to focus on her; she didn't dare look away for long. "Can't you?"
No, Zander replied. He seems to realize that it's only a memory; he is trying to resist acting on it. But if I interfere... He shook his head. We cannot afford to distract him. Not while his instincts shriek at him to lash out at the least little threat. He frowned. But maybe...
Drew managed to peel one glove off, and began to work on the other. To press so hard that he cut his palms...that was never a good sign. It especially worried her that he'd managed it through the gloves, almost as much as his behavior worried her.
She was so focused on the task that she did not notice that the gloves had not even been marked.
Check his wrists, Zander said.
His...wrists? Drew wondered. He couldn't mean— Dread filled her as she pulled off the other glove.
No, nothing like that. Drew gave a start; Zander wasn't one for reading private thoughts, and she hadn't realized she had been that 'loud.' Zander's 'voice' held a smile, a mild reassurance that the truth wasn't quite the horror she imagined. His instinct to survive is too strong for that, Zander continued. No, check the backs of his wrists.
Drew glanced at Zander, then turned one of Doyle's arms over.
Doyle whimpered, quietly, and pulled his hands away.
But not before Drew saw the thick white line. And on the other wrist, a similar mark. She frowned, staring for a moment at where she'd held his hand. "Doyle..." She looked back up at him. "Where did you get those scars?"
Finally, Doyle seemed to focus on her.
"After mom and d-dad were killed," he said quietly, stumbling over the words, "s-some of the vil–villages I'd been in. S-some of them believed that all Ro-romani are th-thieves."
Drew's eyes widened.
"Romani?" Doc repeated softly. "You mean gypsies? Drew, what is he talking about?"
One of the scientists made a derisive noise, startling Doc. He'd forgotten anyone else was around. "Well, that's because they—"
"Breathe one more word of that sentence," Zander said to the one who'd spoken, "and I will have to hurt you."
In spite of Zander's weak frame, the one who'd spoken decided there was wisdom in silence. It was no secret that Zander had friends among the Romani.
"Go on," Drew prompted.
Doyle nodded. "I—I re-remember dad tell–telling us, some pe–people don't like Ro-ro-" He swallowed. "Romani, but I hadn't kn-known it would be-be that bad." He made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I d-don't think I ever fla–flaunted it, b-but I hadn't known to t-try to h-hide it. I di-didn't know that's why they—" He broke off, clearly trying to choke back another sob.
Drew took one of his hands between hers, trying to comfort him. "What did they do to you?" she whispered. She continued to watch his face; though he appeared to be looking at her, he didn't—quite—seem aware of his surroundings. Zander's doing, possibly. And his eyes still looked so strange.
"S-some of the v-villagers believed the..." Doyle swallowed. "The best way to d-deal with a th-thief was to—was to cut—was to—"
"To cut—" Doc glanced at the scars. His face paled. "Cut off your hands?"
Doyle tensed up, and he clenched his fists again; his hand closed tightly over Drew's.
Drew gasped at the pain, but resisted the urge to yank her hand away. It felt like something—several somethings—sharp, not nails, but claws, dug into her arm where his fingers pressed down. She tried to hold very still, hardly daring to breathe.
After a moment, Doyle relaxed his hold a bit. He nodded. "S-someone gave me money, to-to buy f-food. The m-man I wanted to-to buy from had-hadn't seen me s-steal anything. And-and I hadn't stolen an-any-anything, ever. B-but he de-decided I must be a th-thief, and that he had-had to p-punish me." He began to tremble more violently.
Zak returned with the bandages. Fisk covered the boy's mouth before he could ask what happened.
"If there hadn't been someone with him that day," Zander said, continuing where Doyle left off, "near enough to come running when he started screaming...he would have lost his hands...and probably his life."
Doyle's shaking subsided, and he looked around. Actually looked. His expression, and his eyes, turned to normal. "Um..." He drew himself inward. "Why is...why is everybody staring at me?" he whispered.
Doc and Drew shared a puzzled glance, then Doc looked at Doyle. "You...kind of zoned out there for a while. You had everybody freaked out about it." He crouched to peer at the younger man. "Are you okay? Do you—do remember what happened?"
Doyle shook his head. "I remember Mizuki yelling at Dr. Grey about that theft, and then..." He shook his head again. "Everything's kind of fuzzy after that. I think I picked a fight with him."
"Not exactly," Mizuki replied. "Technically, I picked the fight. I had lost my temper. You'd stopped me from taking my anger out on Miranda, so I tried to take it out on you, instead." He managed a smile. "You fight well...for a human."
"Yeah, well, us lunatics have to, if we expect to survive," Doyle said. He caught Paul's eye. "Especially when fighting homicidal gorillas."
Paul tried to disguise his laugh as a cough.
"Are you okay now?" Doc persisted.
"I'm—I'm not sure." Doyle tried to stand up, and had to brace himself against a wall when he started shaking again. "I think—I think I'd like to go lay down."
He waved off their help, and made his way into the airship.
Drew stared after him.
Arthur cleared his throat. "So, uh, Slim," he said to Zander. "How did you know about any of that? And don't say 'I'm psychic'." He made quote marks with his fingers.
Zander smiled. "I know about it, because it happened when Doyle was under my family's protection."
Drew gasped. She looked at Zander. "How..." She cleared her throat to try again. "How old was he?"
Zander shrugged. "We couldn't be sure; he was a scrawny little thing back then. I think we guesstimated around five or six. But he could've been undersized, like me."
"Do you happen to remember when it was?" she asked.
Zander told her the date.
She shook her head. "Seven. Almost. You wouldn't know it to look at him now, but he was always small for his age. But even so..."
"It doesn't matter how old he was," Doc said. He growled. "Bad enough if it were an adult, but for them to do that to a child!"
"Now you know," Drew said, "why I've never told anyone about my heritage."
Doc nodded. "I'd wondered. I—I'd heard stories. I'd heard some of the nasty rumors people spread, but I had no idea it was that bad. And what they did to him... I'd thought that barbaric custom was done with centuries ago."
Drew didn't reply; she simply took the bandages from a dumbfounded Zak, and went up to go check on her brother.
"You actually remember the date?" Arthur asked.
"How could I not?" Zander sighed. "That was the day he finally decided he couldn't trust anyone."
"Anyone?" Doc repeated. "Except your family, you mean." Zander shook his head.
"It was the only way," Zander whispered. "We'd tried... He knew he was important to dad. He knew dad wouldn't want anyone hurting him. He understood that, even if he didn't understand why." He let out a deep breath. "I'm not trying to make excuses, but it was the only way to get him moving, to convince him to go back out into the village, and to stop looking at the servants like even they might pounce on him the instant he turned around!"
Doc's eyes widened. "You promised him nobody would hurt him," he said.
"I didn't think anyone would," Zander replied. "I thought... Well, dad was important to the village. Money talks, that sort of thing." He shrugged. "Dad was richer than the whole village combined, and that gave him a lot of influence. We thought if the villagers got used to seeing Doyle with one of the household, or our friends, wearing dad's emblem, maybe they'd realize Doyle was under our protection. And we thought none of them would want to make dad mad at them. And that's what I told him." He closed his eyes, squeezing back tears. "We were wrong. All it took was one of the servants taking his eyes off Doyle for a second and..."
"But you were trying to help him," Doc protested. "He should still have trusted you."
"What child would trust someone who breaks a promise like that?" Zander asked.
"But—" Doc paused. "You didn't break that promise, Zander. I don't care if are psychic, you couldn't have known they would do that. It wasn't your fault that—"
"Don't tell me it wasn't my fault," Zander snarled. "Try explaining that to the seven-year-old that I made that promise to. Explain it to the seven-year-old who'd been stuck in bed for a month! Sick from infection, week from the blood loss, unable to so much as sit up for more than five minutes. And even when he could get up, he was still all but helpless, but too afraid to accept our help." He shook with anger. "When you convince the child that Doyle was that some people can be trusted...when you can convince that child that not everybody is an enemy, that he doesn't have to be afraid of the world, then you can go on about how none of it was my fault. But until you've convinced that child, I don't want to hear it!"
Doc stood quiet through the tirade. He thought he could understand where Zander was coming from. Zander had inherited his father's strong sense of justice, and this attack would have been a serious violation of that. But that wasn't all. Zander and his father were well known for taking in and rehabilitating abandoned and abused animals. Never mind that Doyle was human; that this happened while he was under their protection must have felt like a personal failure. Like they'd contributed to that injustice.
And the child that Doyle had been, with everything he'd gone through, would not have understood. To him, Zander and his father would have been just as untrustworthy as the people who'd hurt him.
Especially after Zander had failed to keep his promise.
Doc sighed. "I think...I'm going to go check on Doyle."
He overheard Mizuki talking to Zander as he left. "I really should apologize," Mizuki was saying, "but it may not be wise to return to the topic..."
Zander agreed, and tried to change the subject to the nature of Mizuki's research.
—
A strange sight met Doc on the airship.
Doyle was half-crouched in bed, staring at Drew. Doc glanced at his expression. That deer-in-the-headlights look, again. Though there was something odd about how he held himself, how he gripped the mattress and blankets. Doc remembered the way he'd moved in that fight, and revised his assessment. More like a wolf, or one of the great cats. But not a hunter; a cub, and definitely afraid.
And Drew wasn't moving. She looked right back at Doyle, afraid to meet his gaze directly, but not daring to look away. "He was laying down when I came in," she muttered to Doc. "I tried not to startle him, but..."
So she'd picked up the same idea. That memory must have shaken Doyle worse that it had seemed, and it had rattled him plenty that they could tell. Doc decided he'd love to wrap his hands around the throat of whoever had done that to him.
Doc wasn't aware of having moved, but Doyle's attention suddenly fixed on him, and the younger man cringed. Then Doyle's gaze began darting around the room, resting briefly on him or Drew, then darting around again.
Looking for escape routes? Doc wondered. It was hard to say; Doyle's gaze didn't rest on any one thing long enough for them to be sure he was looking at it, but if he was spooked, maybe that was the idea. If he thought someone was threatening him, he certainly wouldn't want them to know which way he planned to run.
Then Komodo barged in. The lizard took one look around the room, made his way straight over and onto the bed—where he knew he wasn't allowed—thrust his head between Doyle's arms so his back was pressed against Doyle.
And started purring?
Though the lizard had remained visible the entire time, Doyle had noted his entrance, and then ignored him.
As Komodo purred louder, Doyle appeared to relax a little. After Komodo got so loud that Drew and Doc had to resist covering their ears, Doyle stopped staring at them. He looked down at his hands for a moment before unclenching them, and shifted into a more normal position.
Drew risked looking away to trade another puzzled glance with her husband.
When Doyle finally spoke, his voice was rough. "I don't like talking about my childhood."
Komodo started whining to be petted, and Doyle complied.
"How did you—" Drew began.
"I thought you said you couldn't—" Doc said at the same time.
Doyle smiled, but he did not look up at them. "I said it was fuzzy, not gone." He shrugged. "And anyway, Zander filled me in on anything I...wasn't too clear about."
Drew slumped. She took only bare comfort in the arms Doc wrapped around her. "We could help you," she whispered. "If you would tell us anything—"
Doyle shook his head. "I can't tell you. Drew, I would give anything to remember even half of it." His laugh had a bitter note to it. "Even if it was just to realize what a colossal mistake that would be."
Doc was startled. "You don't remember your childhood?"
"Not much."
Doc hesitated. He was entering very dangerous territory. "And what about...the rest? What you do remember?"
"I would give—" Doyle took a deep breath and let it out slowly "—everything..." He finally looked up at them, and they were not surprised to see the tears. "To forget."
Less than a minute passed, though it felt like hours, before Doc spoke again. "Not that I can blame you, not if that's typical of what you remember. But you do realize that talking can help, don't you? We could help you to...to lay the bad memories to rest, and to recover the good ones."
Doyle looked at him with a doubtful expression. "'Good' ones? Like what, my mother rocking me to sleep?"
Doc shook his head. "I don't know that you'd remember that far back, not from before—" Dangerous territory. He cleared his throat. "Uh...before you were separated. It happens, but it's rare, with how young you were. But after..." He shrugged. "You know Zander was trying to look out for you, even if you didn't understand it then. Couldn't some of your time with him have been a good memory? And how do you know there weren't others?"
Doyle still looked doubtful.
"We just want you to know," Drew said, "that if you're ever ready to try, we're here for you. We'll listen."
"They'll listen," Doc corrected. Drew glared at him, and he grinned. "I'll try to listen. I can't promise my full attention, especially not if you suddenly feel talkative in the middle of a mission, at some crucial point when we can't afford distractions..."
Komodo walked over and smacked Doc with his tail before going outside.
Drew sat down where Komodo had left, and began wrapping Doyle's hands in the bandages. She saw the tears in the blankets and mattress out of the corner of her eye, but decided she wouldn't yell at Komodo for it this time. "Mr. Comedy besides the point," she said, "I'd like it if you'd at least think about it. And please let us know?"
"I—I'll think about it."
Doc's radio crackled to life. Arthur was calling for them. "Speaking of distractions," Doc groaned.
Doyle sighed. "Why don't you two go on back? Sounds like they need you."
Drew remained seated; she just watched Doyle, not saying anything, until he looked at her.
"I'm fine now," he said. "I'm just...going to close my eyes for a while."
"Are you sure?" Drew asked.
"I'm sure."
Drew was reluctant, but she finally allowed him to persuade her to leave.
As they approached the group, Doc looked Drew up and down. "And now is when I ask the question that you would have killed me over, if I'd asked it earlier."
Drew lifted an eyebrow. "Is it that dangerous a question?"
"It could have been," Doc replied, "if I'd tried to ask it before you'd looked in on him." He took her hand, the one that Doyle had grabbed earlier. "Are you all right?"
She pulled her hand back to look at the scratches.
Neither of them noticed Paul watching them, tense, and listening very carefully to her reply. Neither noticed that he had his hand on a weapon.
"I caught myself on a tree the other day, is all," Drew finally said. "I didn't think I'd hurt myself that bad, but when he grabbed me..." She shrugged. "It's nothing. I'll mend."
Paul breathed a sigh of relief, and removed his hand from the weapon.
None of them, Paul included, noticed Zak watching all of them with a very thoughtful expression.
What did Mizuki see, or sense, that made him back off?
Will this memory, or another like it, spell trouble for the Saturdays? Will Doyle be able to remember more of his childhood?
Why was Paul holding a weapon while eavesdropping? And what did Zak make of...well, any of it?
And just what was the deal with that tiny robot?
Find out (or not), next time, on Ultimate Heist.