In Fair Verona

Chapter Ten

A/N: We're in double digits, with only three more chapters to go after this one. So that's a thing.

"Honeys, I'm home," Carlos announces from the door.

The three of them nearly fall out of their seats, his presence too abrupt, his voice more gravel than sound.

James yelps, "You're back early," trying to cover the lightning flash of fear that caught them all off guard. He's splayed out on the ratty couch, picking the chords of their shared guitar. His easy confidence with music is enthralling, drawing Kendall's attention away from everything else he's tried to do tonight, right up until now.

"Yep." Carlos staggers in the door, blue wig hanging lopsidedly off his head, chest bare and glittering in the low flicker of candlelight. He's wearing a smile that isn't a smile, the uptick of his lips twisted with pain.

"What's wrong?" Logan asks immediately, his doctor-instincts kicking into overdrive. He abandons the stack of papers he's been diligently working on by candlelight, several sheets drifting lazily to the floor in the wake of Logan's rush to reach Carlos. "Are you hurt?"

"Only a little," Carlos replies, easing himself onto the couch. He's got his tight leather skirt from the cabaret squeezing all his curves, hindering his every movement, and Kendall can't once remember Carlos ever wearing the stupid thing home. He strains over James's lap, trying to see, needing to figure out why Carlos is curling in on himself like that, like maybe it hurts to breathe. "Maybe a lot."

Logan jabs his fingers into Carlos's side, a tactile examination that is received with grunts and a handful of un-Carlos-like expletives. He twists, and Kendall can see, now.

He's witness to every gruesome detail.

Carlos clutches his side, but the garish blue-brown of bruises is spreading beneath his fingers, growing larger and darker by the second. Or maybe that's Kendall's vision, growing hazy at the edges.

"What. Happened?" He growls.

"I wouldn't go outside right now. In case you guys were thinking about it."

"That's not an answer."

"I was dancing. Then I wasn't dancing. Kendall-" Carlos's fake smile drops, his dark eyes leaden with sadness. "You haven't heard yet."

Cryptic isn't usually Carlos's gig.

"Heard what?" He asks, heart sinking to his stomach.

Logan's fingers are prodding carefully against Carlos's ribs, double checking for breaks. A furrow is so deeply etched between his eyebrows that Kendall distantly wonders if it will be permanent. He doesn't concentrate too hard on that, though; only on the breaths leaving his mouth soft but sharp, panic nearly overwhelming him. James's hand lands steady around his shoulders, and even that doesn't help, the edge of rage and fear barely dimmed.

"Heard what?" He repeats more harshly.

"Kendall." Carlos gives him a look that is parts mournful and ironic, like this is news he's always expected to deliver. "There are riots on the streets. They carried into the club, and I got swept up into it. That's how I heard. That's how this happened. Logan-"

And that's when Kendall knows that what he has to say is about Camille. There is no one in the entire world that Logan cares about, other than the three of them, in this room.

He grits his teeth and asks, "Is she hurt?"

Logan takes a minute longer to catch on, but when he does, his eyes grow dark and weary. "Camille? Does she need a doctor?"

"No," Carlos says, and that's all the explanation they need. It does not stop him from telling the story in full detail. At some point Logan returns to his paper work, mechanically, his pen scratching over paper and wood.

When Carlos finishes the story, all he says is, "I told you staying in this town was a bad idea."

He is utterly calm, completely serene, dry-eyed and unexceptional, except for that furrow between his eyebrows.

"You think everything's a bad idea," Carlos replies with a grunt.

James nods. "You really do."

James looks close to tears, but he has never had a problem getting in touch with how he feels. Kendall, though. Kendall is different.

Kendall is numb.

He thinks of Camille in her sundress, cross-legged on the top of a rusted out Volkswagen that afternoon, her hair dancing in the wind, her eyes and her champagne glass sparkling. He hears her laugh in his memory, and then he pushes all that sentimentality away.

He says, "I'm going to kill Dak."

There is not a single person in the room who doesn't believe him.

"Did you hear about Camille Roberts?" People murmur in the street.

They mythologize her, this soldier-girl, make her into a traitor and a hero and everything in between.

"She was in love with that boy, the one who killed her-"

"-turned down his proposal."

"-pro-Council propaganda, deserved to die-"

They turn her into something she's not.

She wasn't.

Kendall can't wrap his head around which tense he's supposed to use, can't get past the part where Camille stopped. Has stopped. Full stop.

"She was protecting a boy-"

"She was standing up for what's right-"

"-infighting in Hawk's army-"

He hears all these things on his way to L'Amour, the comforting weight of his gun under his arm, the dull beat of James's sword hitting his stupid leather pants a drumbeat as he and Carlos and Logan trail in his footsteps.

The riots have died down, a temporary rebellion, quelled by Hawk's men, and Griffin's people combined. Still, here and there, the sound of breaking glass pierces the night, and Carlos, for his part, winces like the perpetrators will come right for him.

He's still wearing a skirt, Logan's arms wrapped under his armpits like a human crutch. It's too dangerous for him to be outside right now, but Kendall can't bring himself to care. He's got one goal, and one goal only; Dak.

"Kendall, stop," James begs, his legs longer than the other guys', his grip firm at Kendall's elbow.

"Let me go," Kendall tries to tug free, but instead James grabs for his hands, steadying them.

"No, stop! You don't do this." James forces him to meet his gaze. "You're not a killer."

Kendall leans into his touch, just for a second, and then he says, "You don't know what I am," and pulls free. He sights the faded red wall of L'Amour in the distance, the ocean a dull sparkle behind it in the pale moonlight.

He outpaces James and his friends by blocks, ignoring their calling after him. At the weapons-check, he ignores the expectant man at his plywood desk, marching straight past him until Lucy yells, "Oh hell no."

Kendall nods her way, "I need to talk to you."

He can feel the portly, sweaty man who runs the desk looming behind him, ready to break his neck if even twitches his wrist.

Lucy glares, her dark eyes flashing lightning. "I'm not your confessional. I owe you nothing."

"You owe me this," Kendall replies, even if she doesn't. All the overlarge tips and fights he helped her shove out the doors don't actually mean she owes him anything. Breathing heavily, he thinks of all the times James sat at the bar counter, chatting Lucy up with the overzealous desperation of a puppy. She's not the kind of person who caves just because someone asks nicely, and this, how he barged into the bar, has definitely made her cross. She bites out, "Give up the gun, Knight."

"And then we'll talk," he says, stubbornly.

Lucy frowns.

"For Camille," he prods.

Ducking her head, Lucy's dark hair obscures her face from view. She grunts, "Fine."

Obediently, Kendall surrenders his gun to the giant of a man, who returns to his desk and his gross magazines with a hissed warning to watch himself and a nasty look for emphasis.

James, Logan, and Carlos topple into the bar seconds later, but by then Kendall's already seated across from Lucy. Their voices are hushed as they bicker back and forth. He confirms Carlos's story, wishing it wasn't true even as she allows that it is.

Camille is really gone. Hawk's men collected her body nearly an hour before.

Kendall had figured as much. He'd seen her guns, her knives in their holsters, abandoned at the bottom of the desk man's open drawer. Still, he takes the information like a punch, rolling with the pain until he's back to feeling nothing but a storm of anger.

He sees his friends lurking on the edges of his vision, but they don't interrupt, and he doesn't acknowledge them. When Lucy finishes her quiet, impassioned explanation, Kendall prompts, "And where did Dak go afterwards?"

"Back to the Wall? Where do all of Hawk's people run away to lick their wounds?" Lucy doesn't sound all that impressed with any of the city's business. She crosses her arms over the bar and says, "Watch it. I know that look. It screams bad decisions."

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing," Lucy retorts. "But you're a nice guy. Your friends are nice guys. Get the hell out of the city, Knight. Before you do something dumb."

"Something dumb is his middle name," James says, finally stepping in. He wraps his arms around Kendall's shoulders, squeezing.

He thinks of what Lucy just told him, what Dak called Camille – his faghag. There was a public execution of three men last week. Kendall had been too busy at the studio to go and watch the mandatory event, but. He'd heard about it. He'd heard what people called those men after.

And he sees the way Lucy watches James. Kendall shoves him back so hard he stumbles into Logan. When he spins on his bar stool, he sees the hurt in James's eyes, but he doesn't apologize. He says, "I'm going to the Wall."

"Knight," Lucy warns.

"Kendall," James tries, Carlos and Logan echoing him.

He ignores them all. The only thing he can think of, every time he closes his eyes, is Camille; her guns and her sundress, and the pale white of her throat the last time he saw her laugh.

He doesn't go to the Wall. Not immediately, because Carlos, James, and Logan guide him home with all the mindfulness of babysitters. James stays up with him on the couch long after the other two have fallen asleep, stroking his fingers through Kendall's hair and muttering soothing, sweet things into his scalp.

They don't worry about Logan or Carlos catching them at it, because Logan himself gave into sobs shortly before he fell asleep, burying his sorrow in the crook of Carlos's armpit. They're tangled together now, snoring sweetly, but Logan still wears his furrowed expression like a scar.

Kendall thinks of what Camille said about loving him. He thinks about how he's always known, despite Logan's ass-hattery, that he loves her. Only now he has nothing left to love but a corpse.

It's tragic.

Kendall won't let it stand.

But first he needs to allay James's fears, and he thinks he knows how to do that.

He says, "You can sing for Gustavo," hating how empty his voice sounds.

James starts. "What?"

"You can sing for Gustavo. That's why I met with Camille this morning. She forged a paper claiming you were let into the city explicitly for the radio."

Kendall found it tucked into one of the bricks outside their apartment when they came back from the bar. He didn't have to open the envelope to know what was inside; Camille's curlicue writing was heartbreakingly familiar.

James says, "Gustavo's met me before."

"I know. That's why you're going to have to wear a disguise." He smiles mirthlessly. "I was going to take you tomorrow. I still can, if you want."

Shoulders slumping, James says softly, "It can wait. All of that…it can wait."

Kendall breathes the scent of him, grazing his fingers against the side of James's face, careful not to scratch him with blunt nails. James leans into his touch, sighing like nothing has ever felt so good in his entire life. He says, "Kendall? Do you blame me?"

"For what?"

"What Dak said. What we are?"

Kendall bristles. "Never."

"Stop. Think about it. If it wasn't for us, Camille might be-"

"Dak Zevon," he spits, "Doesn't even know there is an us. He's a drunk and a monster, and he didn't need a reason to do –" Kendall's voice breaks. "To do what he did."

James watches him, too careful, too gentle. He says, "Still. Do you blame me?"

"No," Kendall says. Then, "Yes. I know I shouldn't love you, so why do I keep doing it?"

For the umpteenth time that night, James looks close to tears, but still, he doesn't cry. Maybe it's the hard splat of water against their living room window that distracts him from it, or maybe it's simply the fact that he is stronger and braver than Kendall has ever been.

Raindrops glitter against the window, and James goes to it, gorgeous, exposed, still. Kendall follows him up from the couch and wraps his arms around James's back. If what Kendall said hurt, then James is trying too nobly to understand, he knows.

"Hey," he mumbles. "I'm sorry."

James turns to face him, the ghost of a smirk curving his lips. His face is cloaked in the shadows of the slowly approaching gray dawn. He looks handsome. He looks dangerous. "It's not your fault."

"What are you looking at?"

Kendall glances out the window, and all he sees is a solid wall of blue, all aglow, run through with the occasional streak of slate gray.

"You can see it if you squint," James explains, so Kendall does, and sure enough, those streaks are moving overhead so quickly that Kendall can barely keep track of one before another has supplanted it. Clouds, quicker than the tide, turning from black to gray.

"You do this a lot? Watch the sky?"

James shrugs. "I watch a lot of things. I watch you." He winces. "Oh, that sounds creepy."

Kendall cracks a grin, laughter like tangible delight moving his lips before he remembers that he never wants to laugh again. "Kind of. But it's nice to hear."

Seriously, James says, "If we go to sleep, will you still be here in the morning?"

"Of course," Kendall lies. He touches James's face again, brushes his lips against the corner of his mouth, pressing their bodies together.

"Kendall, please," James says, catching his lips in a hot, wild kiss. "Don't do anything stupid."

Kendall shrugs, faking a grin. He feels unhinged, lost, like he's drowning. He won't let any of that touch James.

"It's like you said. Something stupid is my middle name."

James laughs, short and hurt. He says, "I hope not."

After disentangling himself from James's long limbs in the overcast light of a coming dawn, he makes his way to the wall, past street vagrants and squatters, Jo's flock in their brown robes and a patrol of Hawk's men. His footsteps thud against the cracked, wet pavement, which turns to tightly packed mud the closer he gets to the Wall; the stench of the refugees is overwhelming here, like sulfur and human waste.

According to the stories, it gets worse out there with every passing day.

Kendall isn't sure what he plans to do once he mounts the Wall and reaches Dak's posting. He's got a vision of Dak, with his spiky brown hair, hard eyes, and flashy insignia engraved in his mind's eye, and hate pulses inside of him every time he thinks upon it.

He does not know if he is capable of killing. But he can hear Camille's laugh echoing in the air, and he thinks that he must be, for her.

His entire body is made of pain.

Quietly, dressed in a black shirt and tight jeans, soaked through with the rain reaped from those passing clouds, he picks his way through town. The shadows of early morning are stretching longer and longer, the sun about to touch the horizon, but everything is muted and dark.

Verona is painted in chiaroscuro colors.

Kendall doesn't have to climb to the brick alcoves at the very tippy top of the Wall, where the soldiers hide from the storms when they're not taunting those who entreaty for entrance to Verona's gates. Instead Kendall finds him sulking on the stairs nearest the point of ingress, playing listlessly with his old pistol. The span of chain link stretched out in front of him is empty, the refs, for the most part, tucked safely away in hastily thrown together tents, poor shelters that at the very least block Kendall and Dak from view.

Dak's got the look of someone who has been reprimanded over and over again, nursing a black eye and a hangover on top of his boss's displeasure. Camille was one of Hawk's top soldiers; if Dak got reamed out, Kendall wouldn't be surprised, but he won't waste pity on this piece of filth murderer.

Kendall takes a deep, gasping breath. Then another. And again.

He thinks of James.

He thinks of Camille.

He draws his gun. "Zevon!"

"Oh look. It's Roberts' girlfriend," Dak says without any sting. He climbs to his feet with the creaky, slow movements of an old man. "Come to avenge her, I suppose?"

"A fair fight," Kendall agrees. "Have you heard of those?"

"Roberts got what she deserved," Dak says. He fumbles his gun out of his belt, and Kendall realizes he's still drunk.

It pauses his hand.

But only for a moment.

Dak says, "What's the matter, you fucking faggot? Too much of a coward?"

The barrel of his revolver is the only thing Kendall can concentrate on, and he walks into it, presses the gun straight against his forehead and ignores the way that Dak's hand trembles. "Am I? Am I a coward, Dak? Fucking am I?"

There's something in Kendall's eyes that he can see, reflected back in Dak's. It's psychosis, pure crazy, this grief for Camille that is manifested in the worst, most terrifying way. He feels like he has nothing to lose, like the rest of the world is very, very far away.

"The hell is wrong with you, man?" Dak demands, backing away. His finger twitches on the trigger of his gun, but he doesn't pull it.

Kendall does. He aims without thinking, shooting straight and true. The Virgen de Guadalupe watches with sad eyes, staring out from the grip at angles as rain rolls like tears down her face. The recoil shakes his grip, but he's practiced with this gun since he stole it off a dead man, and it is a familiar kind of whiplash.

One, two, three nine millimeter bullets arc through Dak's chest. His finger never once moves on his own trigger; even as his body jerks away. He's a puppet with his strings cut, falling to his knees in the mud.

There's light in his eyes.

Then there isn't.

And just like that, Kendall is a killer.

He breathes the misty rain, the splattered mud, and the stench of the refugee camps. He breathes, and he breathes, and he tries so hard to keep breathing.

Dak's body is smaller than it should be, his skin pale and flecked with mud. Both of his eyes look bruised in death, purple blue and staring sightlessly at the sky. Rain pelts down from the clouds, diluting the spreading stain of blood across his chest.

The fence rattles in the wind, a tiny, dark figure curling his fingers around the metal.

"Did you see-" Kendall swallows. He gestures to Dak's body. "Did you see who did this?" He asks of a wide-eyed child on the other side of the chain link fence.

The kid says, "You did," and that's when Kendall knows he's fucked.

He thinks of going home, except that will be the first place that Hawk's men look. He lurks under the pillars of the boardwalk for hours, wondering if James is trying to find him, wondering if James has heard about Dak.

What will James think of him now, Kendall wonders? Will he be able to forgive this?

God, he thinks. This is what it's like to have no one to turn to.

Only, there is one place. At mid-noon, Mercedes's sliding door is squeezed tightly shut against the rain, but after a rock nearly cracks the glass, she ushers him on up with a pinched expression.

She says, "Everyone is looking for you."

Her white dress sticks to her body, nearly sheer against her skin. Kendall barely notices. He says, "I figured."

"Hawk thinks you killed Dak Zevon. He thinks-" Mercedes pauses, carefully rearranging her wet skirts, a physical representation of her thoughts falling into place. "He thinks you killed Camille. That the whole thing was a setup, because you never liked Dak."

Outrage lances up Kendall's spine, his nerve endings electrified. Mercedes watches the firestorm manifest itself on his face and continues, "The rumor mill in this place is ridiculous."

Clenching his hands into fists, Kendall falls back against the softness of Mercedes's sheets. Her room remains a sanctuary, with sheer, billowing curtains and the sweet music of wind chimes, but the tranquility can't cool Kendall's head, his heart, or his frantic, thundering pulse. "I didn't kill Camille."

"I know that. Daddy knows that." She pauses. "Kendall, you went after Dak, didn't you?"

"Yes." Defiantly, he demands, "Do you blame me?"

Mercedes's dark eyes are sad and sweet. "No. I hope made him suffer."

"Hawk's going to crucify me, isn't he?"

She sighs. "I don't know. He won't listen. He's got – history with Daddy. The peace in this city only exists because they let each other alone. Hawk manages the Militia and Daddy manages the studios and the Council, and. Hawk won't listen," she repeats emphatically. "He thinks Daddy hired you for this. That he's trying to interfere with Militia business."

"Your father's the most powerful man in the city, can't he-"

"My father's one of the most powerful men in the city, Kendall. One of them. Those words make all the difference." Mercedes perches beside him, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It's the only real outward sign that she's upset. Her face betrays nothing. "The city's a mess. After the riot at the carnival and these violent outbreaks, the Board's looking for someone to hang."

Kendall's throat tightens, the spectral rope he never stops fearing a tangible whisper against his skin. He swallows, but there's not enough air.

Mercedes's room is a deathtrap, a cage. All he wants is out.

Her hand lands gently against his shoulder, the concern in her cocoa-colored eyes sincere. Kendall leans into her touch, because…because maybe it's narcissistic and vain, but Kendall enjoys being needed. Even knowing it is wrong, knowing his heart beats for someone else, he wants her to hold him.

He wants comfort.

"Daddy's on your side. Obviously. He's fighting for you. But right now, all anyone knows is that Dak and Camille belonged to Hawk, and you're his number one target." She thumbs against his clavicle, rubbing soothing circles against skin and bone. "If you miss the noose, they are going to escort you out of this city, and you're never going to be able to get back in. Not without a pardon from Hawk."

"You don't think he's going to give me one."

Mercedes chooses her words carefully, glancing around her room the way she always does when they're discussing something serious, like she's convinced spies are hiding behind her bureau. "He's not the kind of man who likes to apologize. If you give him the chance to exile you…No. He won't let you come back."

"So what do I do?"

"Preempt it. Leave."

"What?"

"Like I said, the city's a mess. Hawk's tied up in strategy meetings all day. If you go before he manages to issue charges, voluntarily, chances are he'll leave you alone. He'll have to. And then – stay away. For a month. Maybe two. Daddy will get him to see reason. Eventually."

"Mercedes-"

"I mean it, Green Eyes. Get out. Leave. I'd go with you if I could."

Kendall doesn't give her enough credit, not nearly. He thinks it's funny, how they're all looking for a way to run.

"You wouldn't," a voice says at the door. "Not my baby girl."

"Sir!" Kendall bounds up off the bed, springing to his feet. "You're here."

"I live here," Griffin allows. He's wearing a black robe and the fuzziest slippers Kendall has seen since before the decline of the human race. "My daughter is telling you our plans?"

"Your-" Kendall glances between him and Mercedes. "You helped think this up?"

"Anything for my future son-in-law," Griffin says icily. He looks less enamored of Kendall than he's ever seen. "You've caused me a lot of trouble. I don't love trouble."

"I know. Sir. I'm sorry, I didn't – but." He stops himself from making excuses, from saying that he had nothing to do with Camille's death, or Dak's. As much as he wanted to be responsible for the latter. "I don't want to leave here. I don't want to leave J- my friends."

Neither Mercedes nor Griffin miss the screw up. Mercedes doesn't mention it, though. Griffin has no such qualms. "You're too close to those boys. Some distance will do you good."

"Sir-"

His eyes narrow. "You are engaged to my daughter. You're here through the grace of my will. You'd argue that?"

Kendall's head falls. "No."

"You will leave within the hour, for one of my properties outside of Verona. You will not return until you are called for."

"The hour-" Kendall protests. "I need to get my stuff. I need to say goodbye-"

"You will do no such thing."

"Respectfully, sir," Kendall says, his voice growing harder and louder. He blinks and sees Dak's blood, and James's face, and hears Camille's laughter. "Respectfully. You don't have a say in that."

Griffin's gaze grows colder still. He says, "One hour."

"One hour," Kendall agrees, knowing all the while that James will never, ever let him go.