Bodycount: Out of the Loop

She's sitting beside Leo D'mato's desk, rubbing her wrists. She can still feel the burning cold of the metal looped there.

She had changed from suspect to witness the second they had gotten to the parking lot of the hotel.

Veronica had screamed bloody murder at the injustice of treating a witness and victim like that.

She had her arm bandaged and the glazed appearance of being doped, but it was hard to tell, the entire world was blurred by tears and red and blue flashes of color.

Dick had been packed into a cruiser and she felt like she was falling apart in the worst possible way.

Veronica had thrown her good arm around her neck and she wondered self consciously if she smelled damningly of sex.

She couldn't believe how thankful she was when Veronica had been dragged back to the ambulance, Logan sitting in the back looking inconsolable with a medic looking at his leg.

The deputy leading her took off her handcuffs and she pushed the tears from her eyes and watched as Veronica climbed carefully into the ambulance and seemed to fall to pieces against Logan.

She had been stuffed into the back of a car and taken to the police station.

The room was a whirl of people, running with paperwork and checking their ammunition while they all looked at her like she was scum.

Leo had been nice. He was out in search of a cup of coffee for her, but she could hear the gossip swirling around her.

How hadn't she known what they had done?

Was she fucking them both?

What kind of monster could she be?

The older brother refused to talk, maybe they should put the screws to her?

God, this was so much bigger than the white collar crime Cassidy had promised was all he was involved in.

The bus crash was so much bigger than she could even get her head around.

They say he was one of Woody's kids.

She overheard and falls forward onto her knees, covering her face and sobs until a large hand drops onto her shaking shoulder and a cup of coffee, black, appears under her nose.

She hates herself for how badly she wishes it was Dick.

"Are you alright Mac? You like Mac, right?" He asks, his voice soft, and it pulls her eyes up to his face.

He's handsome and his eyes are these almost sickeningly kind things that she knows she doesn't deserve. She takes the coffee from him.

"Did they hurt you at all?"

Her fingers go to her neck, warmed by the cup, to trace against the fading teeth marks. She can feel her face get hot with the remembrance of the feel of Cassidy, he was a stain across her skin, he was everywhere and anywhere he wasn't Dick was instead.

"No." She tells him quietly and she thanks him for the coffee, but it's mostly for not pushing about the mark on her neck or the coloration of her skin.

Anytime they had hurt her she had begged for it and fucking loved it.

She was a fucking monster; she knew that because she wanted to ask when she could see Dick.

"What happened tonight, Mac?" Leo asks, turning her chair to face his.

"I don't know what happened on the roof... No one will tell me..." She responds, keeping her eyes on the black liquid, even though she's pretty sure he isn't talking about that at all.

Forensics should have gone through the room by now, they knew what happened, what she had done, who.

God, everyone knew.

"Did they coerce you, Cindy?" He asks carefully, using her legal name to drag her eyes up to his own.

He's asking if they had forced her and it turns her stomach because he looks so scared and concerned for her, and she doesn't deserve it at all. She knows, with all of herself, that they would never hurt her. She hadn't even thought it was a possibility until tonight and even then she just knew that was ridiculous.

They loved her...

"No." She tells him and it feels like the word echoes though the room. This huge word that turns her from possible victim and poor darling, scared girl into scum.

Into the devil's plaything.

A bride of fucking Dracula.

She takes a long drink from the static-y Styrofoam and the deputy waits patiently.

She drains the liquid, but doesn't get rid of the cup. She twists it in her hands, scoring little lines in its skin with her nails, and waits for the next question trying not to think about how the same nail lines are across Dick's chest and Cassidy's back, wherever he was.

That was the million dollar question they were building up to, she knew it.

Where was Cassidy Casablancas?

"Did Cassidy tell you anything about tonight?"

"He told me he had gotten a room for after the party."

"And Dick?"

"What about him?"

"Did he tell you anything? About what might happen? About what they had done?"

Find us.

Dick was simple enough, he was down the hallway in a holding cell, or maybe he was still in the interrogation room with the mustached man.

Cassidy seemed to be tears in the rain, the wind, just fucking gone.

"No, they didn't tell me anything."

She's sure they had been very careful about that now, that they had given her the gift of plausible deniability, but she didn't want it. It felt wrong, twisted her stomach and tore at her.

Stupid

She felt stupid and untrusted, and when she saw a Casablancas again she was going to punch him in the face for treating her like she was an idiot, like she was one of Dick's stupid, blonde whores.

How could everything have been so perfect and so fucked up all at once. They said they loved her, she loved them, why hadn't they, why had he told Dick and not her? What had happened to him?

It felt like a betrayal and she felt like the world's worst person because he was a villain.

He was a villain; he had told her so, on several occasions. Wanted her to be a villain with him and, God, she wanted to.

Had wanted to...

God, she didn't know anymore.

She had had fantasies of the three of them, Bond villains on that island he joked about buying her, oh the beautiful computer system she would set up for their high end villainy. Most of those fantasies had devolved pretty quickly into sex. Just like any time she had been over to their house in real life.

Cassidy would get that dark tone to his voice, that twist to his mouth and that super intelligent glint in his dark eyes and she'd be done for.

But she didn't still want that. Of course not. He was an actual villain. He had killed people, innocent people...

No, she didn't want that, she just wanted his arms around her again, his fingers in her hair, the smell of him on her skin, the taste of him on her tongue.

God, she was a monster.

She had never felt as comfortable in her body as she did with him, with them. Never had she felt that kind of wanted, for everything, because they had the same kind of humor and liked the same kind of movies and just kind of fit.

When she had found out about the switch, the fact that she wasn't who she thought she was, she had found a home in him.

Where was that home now?

"Mac?" Deputy Leo waves a hand in front of her face and brings her back to him, slamming into the now.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I was asking if you had any idea where Cassidy would go. Where does he feel safe?"

Earlier she would have said with her, but that couldn't be right, if he had felt safe with her he would have told her something about what had happened to him.

He had told Dick. He felt safe with Dick and a ridiculous part of her was jealous.

"Dick." She told him, "He feels safe with Dick."

"Well, Dick is in holding so there has to be someplace else. He's not going to come to the police station. That's crazy."

"Yeah, because he's super sane." She bites more to herself than him and almost as if on queue the power goes out.

"Don't worry, the grid is probably just overworked from all the air conditioners." Leo leans forward and puts a hand on her shoulder, "the generator will come on any second..."

It doesn't come on.

She doesn't expect it to. This is her Christmas present at work, she's sure of it.

The phones light up, the sound of pounding boots and shouts of instruction ringing out.

"D'mato!" The mustached man yells out from the dark doorway, "Get off your ass, powers out all over town, they need help at the hospital."

"What about the girl?" He asks getting up, his hand still on her shoulder. It's now that she notices the pressure in his hand, he's holding her in her seat, scared that she'll run? Maybe he's right, too, because something very strong in her wants to run.

He's coming for her and she can't believe how much she wants him to.

"Cuff her to your desk, I don't ca-" he's cut off by the crackle of the radio at his shoulder, a garbled, feminine voice talks indecipherablely and ends with a series of numbers.

"Fuck, a riot's already started. God damn it, bring her with."

Leo takes her by the wrist and pulls her along after him.

"What about the Casablancas kid?" He asks as they run out into the parking lot. The lot is emptying at an alarming rate, cars peeling out in all directions, she watches as a wagon filled with guys in riot gear goes barreling towards downtown.

"He's locked up, he'll be fine. What's his brother going to do? Break into the police station and pick the fucking lock?" He pauses at his car, looks straight at Mac, and pulls his keys out of the door, "Fuck, he is, isn't he." The mustached man curses his luck and runs back towards the station, but when Leo moves to follow he points at his car and yells about the hospital.

Reluctantly, they both get into the car, Mac in the backseat again, and speed off towards the hospital.

Once they're at the hospital he pushes her into a room with Veronica and Logan and disappears down the hallway.

She would have rather waited in the back of the police car, or maybe even been handcuffed to his desk, anywhere that isn't with Logan and Veronica.

"Mac, you're okay!" Veronica gushes out and pulls her into the world's strongest, one armed hug.

She feels dirty and when she looks past Veronica's matted hair at Logan she knows he can tell.

"You okay?" He asks, his eyes focused on the bandage on his leg.

Veronica pulls away and is looking at her with a scrutiny that would normally feel warm and loving, but feels ice cold. Like she can tell that she would rather be anywhere but here, that she would rather be at the station being rescued... God, how fucked up was she? She just wanted things to go back to the way they had been, the way they promised to be; the three of them, together.

"Did they hurt you?" Veronica's fingers run carefully across the bite mark at her neck and she pushes her hand away.

"No." She needs to shift topics immediately because she's sure that Veronica's line of questioning is barreling straight at what she had been doing in that hotel room with Dick while she had apparently been fighting for her life, "What happened on the roof? They won't tell me..."

Veronica seems to break a little, "Uh... Sorry... I need to use the bathroom..." She disappears into the small, dark room and she looks at Logan.

Alone with him, and God he knows that she was fucking Dick Casablancas while he was getting shot. She just knows he does.

"He blew up the plane."

That orange blast in the sky that Dick had distracted her from.

"The plane with Woody on it..."

"Yeah, and Keith."

"What..."

"Keith was taking the plane back with Woody..."

"Oh god-" she turns to look at the closed bathroom door and her heart lurches; she thinks she might be sick.

"He shot us both so we couldn't get close to the ledge and just...jumped off..."

"He jumped off the... Then..." Her heart felt sick, he couldn't be dead; no one believed that, the power outage was this giant, neon flashing sign to her that he was alive.

"There was no body."

"Are you alright?" She asks pointing at his leg, anything to not focus on the fact that Mr. Mars was in a million little pieces across town and she mostly just wanted to be with Cassidy and Dick far, far away from this mess.

"He didn't hit anything major, same with Veronica. A little bit of therapy and it'll be like it never happened."

"It's a good thing he missed."

"He didn't."

"What are you talking about?"

"Cassidy hasn't missed a target since he was eleven. He shot us like this on purpose. It kept us from seeing where he actually went."

They are silent for what feels like a long time before Veronica comes back out of the bathroom complaining about how terrible it's going to be to be one handed all summer, but she can see that her eyes are noticeably more red than when she went in.

There's a crash outside and the door bangs opens to reveal a panting Deputy Leo, he looks quickly around the room, spots Mac and visibly calms down.

"What happened?"

"He broke out... He broke him out... Dick's gone, the door blown wide open... I thought..."

He thought they had come for her and she hates herself for wanting it to be true. She hates them for not coming for her.

"We'll get a guard put on you, Mac; you don't need to worry about them." Veronica tells her, wrapping an arm around her.

"Veronica I... I'm..." She chokes out and buries her head in Veronica's hair and cries for so many reasons.

A/N: okay not actually the last chapter. it turned into a monster and i had to cut it in half. don't worry we should be complete by the end of the week and i can move on to finishing another story.