It's a new chapter! Liz is still at the Faradays', and Dana contemplates getting the heck out of dodge.
Beta'ed by the lovely WtchCool.
- o – o -
Chapter fifteen: Today I'll Stay and Pick A Side
Liz spent the rest of the evening and most of the next morning hiding in her best friend's apartment, with the probable intent of staying there until something more suitable could be arranged. School had been cancelled indefinitely, due to the upswing in gang violence. Most of the schools were safe, but the administrators weren't going to count on the neutrality of stray bullets. The gang leaders might want to leave schools and playgrounds alone to keep the city (relatively) peaceful, but their weapons had made no such promises to protect the children.
Trip, while not entirely happy with his best friend hiding out at the Sycamore Boulevard apartment, was still more enthusiastic than his mother. Dana Faraday was a practical woman who liked thinking things through logically (unless she was watching The Good Wife or a romcom or something, in which case logic was cheerfully thrown out the window), and liked order in her world. Having a criminal's daughter—one who'd been beaten by said criminal—was a danger to that order. Trip, on the other hand, suffered from what "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" called Superman Syndrome.
In his case, Trip had the pathological need to save people, including his future-smuggler/criminal best friend. Especially his best friend. Liz had often told him that his skull was too thick for something like common sense to get through, but she appreciated that in this case. She didn't have anywhere else to run, because Noodle lived in a hostel, and Kazzie was too loyal to her father at the moment. (Well, he was loyal to the family, but Scales was still alive, so Liz couldn't count on Kazzie extending her the same loyalty just yet. Not that she wanted her father dead, of course, it was just…)
The ten-year-old former vigilante was currently sitting on the countertop in the kitchen, nursing a mug of coffee as he watched his mother make breakfast. Jack was helping her, and Trip wasn't sure if he should be disgusted or a little encouraged by how the lawyer and his mother were acting around each other. For the average ten-year-old, disgust was the typical response. Encouragement, on the other hand… Trip sighed into his coffee and mentally tossed out his plan of ever getting his father back. Well, not as his father, anyways. Jack wouldn't be too bad as a stepfather, Trip supposed. (Jack was a hell of a lot more sensible and better with children than Travis was anyways.)
"Trip, would you please sit at the table like a normal person?" Dana asked, catching sight of her son. "And no backflips off the counter!" Trip smiled at her, and, for the first time in nearly a year, did as he was asked. He simply slid off the counter and padded over to the kitchen table, without spilling a drop of coffee.
"You're a strange bloke," a light, girlish voice commented from the kitchen doorway. The two Faradays and Jack looked up in surprise. Elizabeth Raoul was in the doorway, holding her stuffed alligator under one arm and an empty mug in her free hand. Her nose was still crooked, but her face was no longer covered in blood. She'd even gotten a clean shirt on, although judging by the logo on the front, the nine-year-old had borrowed it from Trip's closet.
"Hi Lizzy," Trip said. "You want some coffee?"
Dana had half a mind to reprimand her son for being so casual around a girl who'd been beaten by her own father, before realizing that normality was probably the best thing for Liz at the moment. She had to hide a smile in Jack's shoulder when Liz made the appropriate retching noises and declined the offer of coffee. At least there was one normal child under the roof. Well, mostly normal.
Half an hour later, the two children had retreated to Trip's room with their breakfasts, after Dana had extracted promises from them to return their dishes to the kitchen immediately after they were finished. And given that they were talking to a lawyer, the promises were impossible to wriggle out of any time soon. Dana was a stickler for dirty dishes being where they were supposed to be—in the kitchen waiting to be washed, and not in someone's bedroom to attract flies and other disgusting little bugs.
Trip spent ten minutes watching Liz pick at her food with a glum expression before he broke the silence. "Why are you being so…boring?" he asked. "Normally, you're the one who's suggesting we do stupid things, and I'm the one who's dragging my feet on going along with it."
"Like robbing an ARK convoy in the dead of night, via sports cars loaded with NOx?" Liz asked quietly. She flicked a piece of scrambled egg to the other side of the plate, watching it bounce off the edge of a piece of toast, which was getting soggy.
"You actually did that?" Trip asked, staring at her. He'd thought Liz was crazy, but…
"It's from a movie," the nine-year-old sighed. "Where do you think I get me ideas?"
"I hadn't thought of that," Trip replied, leaning back in his chair. "Okay, fine, whatever. But why are you so glum? It's not like you can't manipulate things back to normal, can't you?"
Liz glared at him, emphasizing her blackened, swollen eyes and now-permanently crooked nose. Trip winced at the reminder. "This is wot 'appened when I manipulated t'ings," she replied softly, accent thick. "Me dad's go' a spine, an' I don't 'ave me dad anymore."
Trip raised an eyebrow at that. This wasn't going to end well, was it?
- o – o -
Scales was not the type of man who drank often, if he did at all. Most of the alcohol he kept in the house was for disinfecting the various wounds that came with being a smuggler, or for getting some of his people drunk if they needed a bullet pulled out of various body parts. (He didn't drink like they did when that happened, but he had a higher pain tolerance than most people on the planet.)
That being said, when he woke up with a roaring headache and the feeling that someone had been using his skull to break open a bank vault, he knew why. Hangovers weren't pleasant. Someone, probably Kazzie, had left a bottle of Gatorade and a small cup of pills on his bedside table. Scales drank the Gatorade and ignored the pills. He knew why he'd gotten so drunk, and didn't feel the need to get rid of the headache any time soon—he deserved it, after all.
And then he saw the note, and wondered how long he'd be able to milk the hangover to avoid this particular meeting. Peter Fleming had asked (ordered, Scales muttered mentally, because it would take a fool to not understand that Fleming controlled everything) him to come to a private meeting to discuss a mutual business opportunity.
Given that his chief of police, that tosser Marty Voyt, was being tried for Chess' crimes—and the recent torture and murder of Mick Reese—Scales could guess what the meeting was about. Scales just wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist, at least until his headache went away on its own. Of course, he'd brought the circumstances leading up to his drunken state upon himself, so…
Scales was not a man who broke his promises easily. When he'd married Lydia, he'd promised her that he would never raise a hand to any children they had, for any reason. Lydia, understanding his reasons, had agreed that it was probably a wise precaution. And last night, he'd broken that promise and more. His daughter, his only child, had come into the kitchen, no doubt in search of a snack. Not thinking clearly—probably out of anger, or something equally stupid—he'd smacked her around like his foster father had smacked him around.
Given that he hadn't seen her since waking up, Scales had to assume she'd run away, possibly to the Faraday's apartment. He wasn't going to check, and he wasn't going to ask any of his people to check. The smuggler didn't like what he'd done, and he was afraid of losing control again. No child deserved that.
He groaned and buried his face in his hands as someone knocked on his bedroom door. His headache was going to kill him, and he was still avoiding the Tylenol and Vitamin C that would make it go away faster.
Kazzie came into the room, carrying a garment bag folded over one arm and a mug of coffee in the other. He had a disapproving look on his face that Scales knew, for a fact, the man used on his children—although Kazzie had probably picked it up from his wife. If Kazzie could be scary, Mrs. Kaczanowiczk was downright terrifying. Not that Scales minded, though…
"If you're going to yell at me," Scales said in a low voice, trying not to wince, "will you please jus' ge' it o'er with?" He accepted the mug of coffee from Kazzie, noting that the coffee had a good deal more bitter than he was used to. That was probably the hangover talking.
"No, I'm not going to yell at you," Kazzie said in an unpleasantly sweet tone, "my wife has already reserved that honor." Scales blanched and wondered if hiding in a foreign country would be a feasible solution. Probably not, considering Kazzie's wife. "Anyways, get dressed. Kwan, that prick, said you agreed to the meet with Fleming. I'll kill him later."
That was only if Kazzie got to the man first, Scales thought darkly as he showered and changed into the suit his right-hand man had brought up. Half an hour later, he was at the back door to a tailor shop, a ball of dread settled firmly in his gut. Somehow, he knew beyond a doubt this wasn't going to end well.
"Would you like to know why your daughter and her broken nose and black eyes are on the front page of the Palm City Herald?"
That little ball of dread was now about the size of a football, and Scales had to quash the urge to rip Fleming limb from limb.
- o – o -
Dana paced around her living room, shooting dark looks at the paper on the coffee table every so often. She was just glad that Trip and Liz were preoccupied on the roof, doing something with an old computer Gerry had given them. The three pre-teens were building a laser, or at least trying to. (Dana wouldn't really put it past them to build one, but she also wasn't going to encourage them.)
The reason for her annoyance with the paper was the headline. Somehow, the Herald had gotten a photograph of Liz's broken nose and bruised face, and was running it as the main story. It had been picked up by almost every major publication in Palm City. Scales' only saving grace, as far as Dana had read, was that no reporter had been able to find Scales or Liz (although the papers were calling her Lissa, for some reason) for a direct comment on the situation. Everything was speculation, although most of them were pointing to child abuse. That was…worrisome. Dana knew that Liz was still loyal to her father—stupidly so, Dana thought privately—and wouldn't let anyone say anything against him.
The public defender sighed and flopped down on the leather sofa with a sigh, kicking her feet up on the cushions so she could stretch out. She fished around in the pile of magazines and newspapers on her coffee table for the remote control, intent on watching something stupid or with romance… or The Good Wife.
Dana's plan was interrupted by the voices of two children, arguing loudly. By the sounds of it, Liz was calling Trip an idiot, and Trip was loudly insisting that his father was still alive.
"Because a comic book character told him so" was Trip's argument. Dana wondered if the school's suggestion that she find her son some good counseling wasn't such a bad idea after all. Or maybe a good lesson in logic. Just because the Cape told him something didn't mean it was true, after all. There was something about the vigilante that made her uneasy…
The two children continued past her to the kitchen, still arguing about the merits of information gained from a vigilante who thought he was a comic book character. So far, the argument didn't seem to be agreeing with either child.
The next time the Cape dropped by, Dana thought, she was going to force him to take the mask off. That, or she was going to sit on him and take it off. The secrecy and his never looking her in the eye was…beyond worrisome, as far as things went.
Dana gave up on trying to find the remote and decided to listen to the messages on her answering machine. This was going to be a long day, and she was too lazy to go turn the TV on manually.
-Mrs. Faraday, this is Dominic Raoul. I know we've met only once, but I know my daughter would run to your home if she were ever in trouble and couldn't come to me for…whatever reason.-
Dana stared at her answering machine in shock, wondering if what she was hearing was correct.
-I don't care if she's there or not, but please… Just… Let her know that I have never meant to hurt her. If she never wants to speak to me again, or see me again, I'll understand—but let me know so that I can at least provide for her upbringing.-
There was a slight note of hesitation in his voice. To Dana, it meant that Scales was about to do something monumentally stupid, or he was casting about for a lie. Her clients had the same pause in their voices when they went to trial.
-In any event, I would consider it a personal favor if you would take me girl out of t'is city. Fleming is planning to have someone kill Marty Voyt and his family. Y' might no' 'ave seen the news yet, but Fleming's arrested 'is chief of police an' is framing 'im for Chess' crimes. 'E's tried t' 'ire me to kill Voyt in the event of the chief's escape, but I refused… As a result, you an' your kid may be in danger, an' so is me daughter if she's wiv you. Don't tell me if she's t'ere, I don't trust meself around 'er just yet, but protect her. For me. Please.-
Dana stared at the answering machine for a good long while after the message cut off. She'd replayed it several times just to be sure she'd heard everything. She had. Scales was begging her, literally begging her to protect his daughter and get out of the city with her family. Now, more than ever, she needed to apply logic to this.
For logic, she needed Jack…or her husband.
Dana turned to face the window with a scowl. She had to face the Cape, and get her answers.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Think I should stop making Peter the bad guy? Drop a line and let me know.
Also, I've been informed that changing the title of the last chapter to "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To" would be more fitting. What do you think?