notes: assemblea = italian for 'assembly'. this chapter has many typos and tense mistakes, which i'll fix. later. super sorry, guys!
cameos: zeus from hercules.
chapter five: the assemblea
Darkness, it seems, is alive. Now, of course, you might all roll your eyes and nod and say, "Yes, yes, it's been described as such many, many times, in fiction and words and stories and every other depressed individual out there."
But no, no, don't you roll your eyes at me, insolent humans. You have never felt it; you, who sit on your computer and tap tap tap away on your keyboard. You, who parties all night and drink your liver away. You, who only knows of the brighter side of life, who was born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You, who will never understand this churning, churning, roiling feeling that settles in the guts.
Oh, but I suppose I can't stick that label on each and every one of you. You humans are so different, each experience the same but vastly complex, and no one lives the same life as the one next to you. I suppose perhaps some of you might understand, and I suppose others might never understand.
Well, I'll try to explain to you, and it'll be up to you whether or not you perceive yourself to be able to comprehend this. It's not like I really care, except that I do, but I don't, and I like humans because you're so differently the same that it drives me mad, sometimes.
You humans drive me mad, because I am Loneliness, and I drive you mad.
The VIP lounge above The Crimson Rose is static without the pain, a room of silent statues with cold, pumping hearts.
Only one moves in this angry silence. Jack leans back on his place on the leather couch, and he sighs and pulls a pack of Marlboros from his right pocket and a lighter from his other.
"Want one?" he asks Bunnymund, who shoots him a glare of daggers. Jack shrugs. "Your loss."
He lights the cigarette, and the spark seems to unfreeze the atmosphere, though it remains no less chilly.
"Tooth," Jack murmurs around the stick. "Tooth, calm the fuck down. You can't do anything about it now. Rapunzel can take care of herself."
Toothiana, in a floor-length dark blue gown and crystals glimmering at her throat, sighs out a breath that sounds as if it's been dragged through a sheet of knives, and Jack almost hears the ice cracking around her joints. "She's the head of our drug trade," Toothiana hisses, and she runs a hand through hair that's dyed an ocean green.
"Her men aren't fuckheads, Tooth," Jack counters. "They'll be able to run without her for a while, but ultimately we'll have to find someone to take her place until she comes back. But what's shit about this is that the Assemblea is coming up, and by now all the gangs of Stella Morta will know about this. It makes us look weak, and we can't afford that."
"The King said that we'll just maintain a strong front," Toothiana says. She paces around the room, and the men's eyes follow her as she walks. Then, she stops, whirls to them, and says, "Who was the fucker who tipped off the police?"
"Anonymous," Bunnymund says, and he flops down next Jack. "We traced it back to a phone call, but the voice is unidentifiable and it was made from a public phone."
"She can take care of herself," Jack repeats. He blows a smoke ring into the air, heavy-lidded eyes following the trail as it evaporates.
"She's never been chucked into prison before, though," Toothiana snaps. "And by the way, how the fuck did the police know about the west safe house?"
"We don't know, Tooth!" Bunnymund snarls, and he rises and stares her down. He stands taller than her, broad and strong, but Toothiana holds her ground. "There was probably someone tracking her."
"The police aren't that smart!" Toothiana says, and her voice drops to a dangerous whisper. "I want to find out how she was tracked, and I want the culprit brought before me. Bunny, this is your job, and that's an order."
Bunnymund bristles, grey eyes burning with fury. But then, he hisses through his teeth and says, "Fine."
"By the way," Jack pipes up, "I have a Hyena bound and gagged in the basement. He's in charge of Scar's human trafficking, so you might want him for a little while because he'll probably know most of Scar's contacts."
Toothiana pulls away and cracks a dead smile. "Perfect," she says sweetly, "I need to blow off some steam."
"Why are you looking so fancy anyway?" Bunnymund asks disdainfully, taking a swig of vodka, because that's all he drinks. "You look like some dandy little fairy princess. It's gross."
"Fuck you, Bunny," Toothiana says mildly. "I'm not called the Tooth Fairy for nothing. And you watch your tone with me; I'm your superior."
"But I've also known you since we were in diapers, so your position means nothing to me," Bunnymund mutters into his bottle.
Toothiana smacks the back of his head and picks up her dress. "I'll be in the other room. Jack, go to the west safe house and retrieve Rapunzel's phone and get what you can from it. Bunny, don't be a deadweight and do something useful."
After Toothiana disappears, Bunnymund sighs and throws his empty bottle onto the table. "How many teeth do you think she'll collect after she's done with the Hyena?"
"Ten," Jack says immediately. He leans forward, blue eyes glittering with a challenge.
"No way," Bunnymund snickers, "I say twenty."
"Is that a bet?"
"Yup, one hundred in cash."
Jack smirks, a jagged gash on his face. "You're on."
On May sixth, the day of the Assemblea, Stella Morta is in lockdown. Clubs close early, restaurants shut at five, shopping centres don't even open, and people hurry along the streets with heads bowed and skirting around alleys.
Gang politics is hard to understand for most normal people. The values they hold and the morals they abide by are not the same as the rest of their civilian counterparts. But then again, ethics are different in each person, obligations overshadowed by circumstances, because what the hell is 'THIEVES WILL BE PERSECUTED' when your stomach hasn't been filled in days?
Central Stella Morta, in an area that's only a few buildings big, is a neutral zone for all gangs. And that's where the biennial inter-gang meetings take place, called the Assemblea. It's one of the most important events, where leaders from all over the city gather in one room and, surprisingly, manage to refrain from killing each other for four hours.
The building used to be the city's performing centre, now jokingly called Heaven's Gate by the citizens, a world of ballets and operas and musicals. Ten years ago, it shut down due to a bombing incident that was blamed on Ange Noir, but who claimed otherwise. The bombing killed three dancers in the middle of the ending scene for The Nutcracker, paralysed an audience member, and injured everyone else. On that day, the Stella Morta police department openly declared war on street gangs. And the street gangs laughed in response, because what have the so-called heroes of the city done so far except chase red herrings and flounder like fish on land?
The tower clock chimes six o'clock, and the sky is clear and cloudless, screeching bats passing overhead and night falling like a veil on unfocused eyes. All through the day, dark figures had been gathering at Heaven's Gates, in twos and threes, or in groups as huge as ten. Now, with the signal starting, all is silent, and the citizens hurry home, because there's a gathering taking place, and it's out of their league, because no one wants to be out on the streets when all the Kings of Stella Morta assemble together.
But in Apartment Block Alpha, room 9B, Elsa Queen is just on the verge of a breakdown because her younger sister isn't home yet because she, like any other citizen of Stella Morta, is aware that May sixth is Assemblea day.
She clutches her phone, dread settling in a dirty pool in her stomach. She's texted Anna ten times, called her around thirty, and there's still no pickup.
The apartment seems even bigger without Anna, and Elsa wants to cry when the final chimes of six o'clock fades away, because that means that the streets will be overrun by gang members protecting the bosses inside Heaven's Gate. And for god's sake, they lived close to it, far too close.
The police, of course, had tried many times over the years to storm the Assemblea, but it had ended up with so many deaths on both sides that eventually they had stopped. The Assemblea continued, and the police nursed their wounded pride.
Elsa had been there, one time. It was just after she and Anna had moved into their apartment, and she was unaware of the importance of May sixth. She had almost walked into the middle of a gunfight before a police officer had shoved her inside a building and held her there, pressed to the ground, hearts beating in a wild fugue, for the bloodbath to finish. And when she walked out, holding onto the police officer for dear life, the scene was something she wished to erase from her mind, because every time she closes her eyes, she just sees serrated flesh and dead bodies and the coppery tang of blood.
"Hey! You've reached my, er, Anna's Queen's, voicemail, so like, just leave a message after the beep!"
Elsa just barely manages to stop herself from throwing her phone at the wall. Instead, she pushes her face into a pillow and screams.
Tears prick her eyes like tiny needle points, and Elsa forcefully rubs them away.
"This is Rapunzel's voicemail so just say your shit or call me back later."
Elsa's sobs sound small, even to her. Because she misses Rapunzel so, so, much, and there's a part of her that's angry about how Rapunzel lied, but another part that sort of understands, and yet another part that just wishes Rapunzel was here with her now.
"Fuck you, Rapunzel," Elsa whispers through her tears, and she presses fingers made of glass to her eyes, and relishes into the sparks of galaxies that appear once she does.
She isn't really sure how she feels about Rapunzel being a Red Crown. There's no time to feel, no time to think, in a city like Stella Morta. Elsa has no reason to hate gangs, but she has no reason to like them either. For her, gangs are a part of this city, integrated into its culture since its founding. She's lived her life perfectly fine without them, and she would rather keep it that way.
But Rapunzel has changed everything, and Anna spends more and more time out on the streets, and Elsa doesn't know how to control her life that is spiralling out of control.
Not for the first time, Elsa feels the absence of her parents gnawing a hole in her mind, because her parents would know what to do. Her parents would be able to explain to her that things like this is just a part of life, and that Elsa should accept them and continue on her way to doing whatever she wants.
But her parents aren't here, and Elsa is left alone with black thoughts and silence (and me).
In all of Jack's experience with the Assemblea, never has he remembered it to be so tense. And that's saying a lot.
The Kings sit like the Knights of the Round Table, an ironic comparison, because they are all anything but knightly. Perhaps twenty figures, both male and female, are seated at an equal distance from each other on a table that's damaged and chipped with the marks of fingernails and knives. It's even, worn down by the constant rubbing against it over the years. Behind these figureheads of Stella Morta's organized crime, shadowy guards flank them, pressed to the wall, but tense and still and alert, with fingers poised on guns and hooked onto daggers.
The head of the Red Crowns sits closest to the entrance. His huge, hulking figure creates a silhouette of steel and jaw-clenched fury. Nicholas St. North towers over all his fellow Kings, an immobile rock of power and strength. At his shoulder is his second-in-command, Toothiana, standing like a toy soldier, stiff and alert. And finally, pacing the shadows along with others of his rank, Red Crown's third-in-command, Jack Frost, stalks like a lion with blood in his eyes and a smirk wrapped around a lit cigarette.
The Assemblea is in chaos, every King or Queen aggravating one another as is customary at each meeting, but this time, there is an undercurrent of hatred underneath, because all the gangs have suffered a bad year. Police have amped up on their promise to rid the city of all crime, and everyone was feeling its effects.
"Silence!" North roars. His voice, like a shockwave, settles the leaders, and they glare at one another before turning to face him. "What I would like to know," North continues on, voice rumbling like far-off thunder, "is, first of all, which one of you cowards tipped off the police on my head of drug trade."
"Don't be ridiculous, Red King," Scar hisses. The man leans forward, darkness throwing the mutilations on his face into a terrible light; they run, crisscrossing like pink rivers. "You know that none of us would ever go that far."
Because you are the strongest out of us all goes unspoken in the room, settling onto their spines like heavy cloaks.
"It was probably undercover police," Zeus says. The Iron King sits opposite North, and the two men stare at one another before Zeus looks away and continues. "They found one of my warehouses a few weeks ago that way."
"Well, the focus of this Assemblea is to find a way to dog the cops," Facilier cuts in. The leader of Ange Noir looks decidedly bored, playing with his cigar, but his eyes have death carved into them. "Not that it'll succeed. What makes you think any of us are going to work together? We want dead half the people in this room as it is."
Jack only half listens to the meeting; his job is to keep an eye on the other guards and protect his King. Understanding gang politics, while it is important that he has at least a basic knowledge of it, is not part of his job.
As he scans the room, his gaze falls upon a girl who stands behind Facilier. She is annoyingly familiar, and he struggles to remember where she is from. Strawberry-blonde hair frames her face elegantly, falling in waves down her back. Freckles sprinkle her cheeks, and her eyes are a light, clear green.
Usually, Jack is up to date with all the positions of rival gangs and who fills them. This girl must be new to the position of third-in-command, though, and it's rare for Jack to find out so late.
She stands poised, elegant and proud. There is a certain coldness to her face that belies her initial friendly demeanour, and the way she manages to stand still for so long suggests a patient strength that Jack hardly ever sees. In his mind, he marks her as dangerous, because she is an unknown, and unknowns are always dangerous.
"The Summer Witch, Anna, no last name," Toothiana murmurs from the corners of her lips; it's lost in the many other whispers of conversation around the room. "She was promoted to the position of third only a few months ago."
"Third-in-command in Ange Noir?" Jack mutters back in disbelief. "How old is she?"
"Eighteen or so?" Toothiana shrugs. "We don't know much about her, just that she has an older sister named Elsa, but Elsa's a civilian."
A sudden giggle stops their conversation, prompting heads to turn to a figure half-shrouded in darkness. North's lips curl immediately, and he says in a long-suffering voice, "What do you want to say, Pitch? Spit it out now or shut up."
(Pitch Black.
Ah, now he's a strange one. Possibly the strangest human being I've ever met.
Let me start at a certain point. Are you still listening?
His name isn't really Pitch Black. Of course, what kind of parents would name their child so morbidly? That's his title, his metaphorical crown placed upon his head by the followers, along with the label of the Nightmare King.
Pitch Black embraces loneliness and fear in a way I've rarely encountered before. Sometimes, I get ones like him. Those who love me, those who truly, truly love the darkness.
But I've never met one who loves it like him.
Remember before, when I said that darkness is alive? I said it's alive because of people like him. He thrives in darkness, lives off the fear of his victims. He is called the Nightmare King because, like many other gang members, he is a torturer, but his method of torturing is far more insane than anything else I've come across. He's a manipulator, sneaks into your mind and finds out your fears and then eats them for breakfast, cackling over you as you drain away beneath him.
You might even say he is a human version of me.
But I disagree, because you haven't even seen my true power. Pitch Black has nothing on me, but uses my strength and converts it into his own. He's a parasite, of sorts. A slimy little leech who believes that he is the most terrifying thing this city has ever seen.
He's a child, and I hate him, just like humans hate me, and I hate you.)
"You're all fools," Pitch sneers. His angular face looms out, a shark nosing the surface of the water. "Enemies sit amongst you all, but you're too blind to see it. Fools, all of you."
Jack rests his hand on his gun when Pitch stands up, and around him, he sees the other guards do the same. Toothiana shifts slightly, fingers on her own weapon, amethyst eyes narrowed.
Pitch is widely considered to be insane amongst the gossipmongers of gangs, spread by people like Hermes (the little shit). It's always a risk, inviting him to the Assemblea, because one day, if he decides he wouldn't mind dying, he could open fire on all the Kings at will and laugh as the life bleeds from his veins.
But Pitch only sweeps to the entrance and says, "My time here is wasted. I'll be leaving early, if that's fine with you, O Mighty Red King?"
And, still sniggering, Pitch disappears in a swirl of black.
Not five minutes pass when there is a loud crack, and then the roof above them caves in.
At eight o'clock in the evening, Anna still hasn't returned home, and Elsa is about to cry all over again, because she doesn't even know where Anna might be.
At two minutes past eight, her phone rings. Elsa pounces on it, barely registering that it's from an unknown number.
"Anna?" Elsa shouts into her phone.
"Are you the medic?" a voice yells at her on the other line. "Are you the medic who's friends with Rapunzel? The one who helped me the other night? Listen, I need your help–"
Elsa hangs up and stares at her phone. It rings again.
"Goddammit, don't hang up! I have your sister with me and she's hurt and just fucking come down to the building opposite Heaven's Gate–"
The phone dies, and Elsa just manages to wobble onto her feet before she takes her medical kit and sprints out.
author's note:
thank you for all your support so far :)
updated: 5 March 2014