Don't. Don't "let's pretend" when there's no one around.
"Dispatch, come in. This is Inspector Fox. Mz. Ruby has been successfully apprehended. Requesting back-up for retrieval and area sweep, over."
Static answered back, just like the last four times she'd tried. Frustrated, Carmelita waved her radio back and forth in the air to try to catch a better signal. She sat on a tree stump in the clearing next to the incapacitated alligator, using her other hand to shine her flashlight over the disturbed ground around her – just to make sure there weren't going to be any more unwelcome "guests" popping up for a surprise visit.
"Dispatch, are you there? Do you copy?"
More static. Fantastic.
A branch snapped. The fox whipped the light up, in high alert, only to be greeted by gray fur and blue clothes and a familiar pair of brown eyes.
"Oh my god, Sly!" She exclaimed, trying to get her hackles to drop as the raccoon stepped into the clearing. "Warn me you're coming next time; I almost shot you!"
He eyed the scorch earth and rotting bodies surrounding her and her apprehended criminal. "Looks like you had a rough go of things."
"A little bit," she admitted, "but ultimately nothing I couldn't handle. I'm just trying to get a signal to call for an extraction."
The radio blared another round of static as if to mock her. Carmelita groaned and resisted the urge to put her face in her hands. Her partner edged closer by a meter or two with his gaze locked on the mystic.
"She's unconscious for real, right?"
"What?"
"Mz. Ruby." He gestured to the criminal at her feet. "You're sure she's down for the count?"
The inspector gave him a confused look. "Of course I'm sure. If she wasn't, there'd still be zombies everywhere."
Sly quirked an eyebrow and made a dramatic show of glancing around the bedraggled clearing. She rolled her eyes with an exasperated yet fond sigh.
"There'd still be moving zombies everywhere, smartass." It was then that she noticed the stiff way he held himself, with his left hand gingerly wrapped around his right side, and she frowned. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"
"A guard showed up where I was waiting for you and got a few hits in before I put him in his place." He fiddled with his hoodie, and she realized with a start that there was a large tear in its side underneath his fingers. "Figured it'd be safer to see if you'd won yet than hang around back there."
"Good thinking, but are you sure you're okay? You look…"
Carmelita couldn't quite describe the emotion on his face. Guarded was probably the closest to being right. In fact, his entire body language was awfully closed-off for someone who'd just given her his full confidence barely fifteen minutes ago, even if it had been tinged with nervousness.
"I'm fine," the raccoon insisted. Snapped, really. He gestured to her radio before she could address it. "If that thing isn't working when it's supposed to, it means she's still messing with it somehow."
She frowned at that a moment before standing up and taking a few steps away from Mz. Ruby. Her eyes never left her partner as she brought the transceiver back up to her mouth.
"Inspector Fox to dispatch, are you there? Can you hear me?"
The receiver crackled a moment, before a voice finally answered through the static. "Copy. This is dispatch. Inspector Fox, what is your status? Over."
Carmelita heaved a giant sigh of relief. She watched as Sly found another tree stump to crouch on, staring at the unconscious alligator with the same level of intensity as he had with Muggshot.
"I've apprehended Mz. Ruby. Requesting pick-up immediately for transfer, over."
"Copy. Helicopter en route now. ETA twenty minutes. Stay where you are so we can get a clear reading on your GPS tracker."
"Copy that." She lifted her finger off the transmitter and looked at the raccoon, who was practically a statue where he sat. "How did you know that would work?"
"Your radio went screwy earlier, remember?" He replied softly. "When you were in the middle of a call and she interrupted it with her own broadcast?"
"Well, yes, I remember that, but…how did you think of that if she's unconscious?"
Sly shrugged and folded his arms. "Mostly just a hunch. She is famous for breaking both the laws of man and nature, after all. Thought it was worth a shot."
"Pretty good shot, I'd say." The fox pocketed her radio and checked her watch. "I don't know if you heard, but we have twenty minutes before Interpol arrives to get us out of here. This long night is almost over."
"Twenty minutes, huh? Thanks for the heads up."
He stood up – and began walking away. Carmelita jumped to her feet, completely caught off guard.
"Wha – where are you going? They just told us to sit tight!"
"They told you to sit tight," he said without turning around. His stride remained confident and unwavering, even as he still clutched his waist. "Not me."
"You – but –" she spared one glance at Mz. Ruby's unconscious form before bolting after her partner. "Ringtail, they're bringing a helicopter. There will be plenty of room for you. There's no need for you to walk all the way back to town!"
The raccoon stopped at the edge of the clearing. He looked back at her just as she reached him, and his expression was firm with the decision he'd made. "I'd really rather walk, if it's all the same to you."
Those words stopped her in her tracks. She stared at him, uncomprehending the idea of choosing to trek miles through a swamp when there was an easy ride to be had. "What? Why not? Is it your aerophobia?"
He eyed her for a bit, then looked up at the night sky. "Nah. Not this time."
"Then what's the problem?"
"I just don't trust Interpol."
"This again?" She was so irritated she almost missed the slightest narrowing of his eyes. Almost. "You're seriously going to skip out on me again at the last minute like you did in Mesa?"
"I'm not skipping out. I'm just getting out of your way," he replied without ever losing his mellow tone. His gaze, however, was getting harder with each passing second.
"But I'm not asking you to get out of my way! It's just a helicopter ride – you wouldn't even have to talk to anyone. I understand you don't like police officers, Sly, but this is ridiculous! What reason could you possibly have to not want a ride out of here?"
"I've got a lot of reasons, and none of them are your business, Inspector."
Carmelita took a step back, hackles raised at the way he'd suddenly just spat her title like it was a bad word. Exhaustion and frustration and that distant, nagging suspicion she'd stamped down since Mesa City swirled in her chest and overwhelmed any patience she might have otherwise had.
"What is your problem?!" She finally snapped. "Why do you have such a chip on your shoulder about law enforcement? Did you have a bad experience with an officer? Or did you have a bad experience with the law?"
Somehow, during her rant, she found herself just a few centimeters from him, and made to jab her finger at his chest. His hand intercepted it before she could touch him. It was not a gentle parry.
"Listen, Inspector Carmelita Fox." His eyes had turned piercing, and his voice was ice cold. "It's cute that you think your job is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It really is. But some of us average people don't have the overwhelming trust in police that you do. I am not getting on that helicopter with a bunch of cops I don't know, and I do not need to give you a reason that satisfies you. So how about you just drop it before one of us says something we might regret, yeah?"
Inspector Carmelita Fox was not someone willing to 'drop it' on the best of days. And right now, the doubts in her head were echoing into a terrible crescendo as they stared each other down. She felt the words leave her mouth almost without her consent.
"Are you a criminal, Sly?"
The world went quiet around them. The swamp was hushed. The air was suffocating. And her partner simply looked at her. Looked at her with a broken kind of triumph, like he had just won a battle he had not actually wanted to win.
He looked at her like he'd been expecting the accusation for a very long time, and yet had still been wounded by it.
"Would you arrest me on the spot if I said yes?" He asked, oh so very quietly. "Question me? Brutalize me until I confessed? Or would you turn a blind eye to it until you've solved your case and you don't need me anymore? Turn the other way to your so-called 'moral code' because it benefits you in the moment?"
They were nearly touching. She could see the whites of his furious eyes as he stared her down and dared her to answer. She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Sly pulled out of her space with folded arms. The anger fell away under something closed-off and numb, and he turned his head to glare bitterly at Mz. Ruby's prone form.
"I guess it doesn't matter what you'd do," he continued, even quieter now. There was heavy resignation in every line of his body. "Cause at this rate, you probably wouldn't believe me even if I said no."
His eyes locked onto the holstered pistol at her hip. It was with sick understanding that she realized he was waiting for her to pull it out and use it on him.
"I'm not – I wouldn't –" Carmelita struggled to say, sucker-punched of all her words by that realization; of the way his hands were still limp at his sides even as he seemed to have braced himself for an attack. "I'm just – Sly, I'm not like that."
He looked at her for a long time. There were a lot of things in those eyes of his, but above all else she could see that he was tired. Something like a sigh left him, and it sounded like a decision.
"I know, Carmelita. I know you're not."
Sly stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned towards the trees.
"I'll see you back at the hotel."
This time, she didn't try to stop him from leaving.
Inspector Barkley wasn't there to greet her in person again when the helicopter finally arrived, but he was waiting for her call through the pilot's secure radio line, as she was told the moment she climbed into the passenger seat. The fox answered it with only the slightest bit of hesitation; instinctually expecting a reprimand after so many past cases despite there not being any real reason for this one.
"You're doing fantastic work, inspector," her boss' voice came through clear and crisp, crackling only slightly when Mz. Ruby was carried into the back of the copter, separated from the front by a thick wall of metal. "I thought it would take you at least a month to even catch the trail of the next Fiendish Five member – and here you are bagging another in a week."
"As much as I hate to admit it, you can thank Muggshot for the quick turnaround, sir," she replied, watching the flashlights of her fellow officers bobbing up and down in the distance as they slowly flushed out the remainder of the alligator's men. It was an incredible sense of déjà vu. "I found correspondences between him and several of his associates that detailed a rendezvous with Mz. Ruby at this exact place and time."
"He's not called 'Meathead Muggshot' for nothing," the badger mumbled with a gruff laugh. "Nevertheless, you still did some fantastic sleuthing to reach this point. Not to mention shutting down her operation, and taking down the boss by yourself again. Is it true there were zombies involved?"
"Very much so. She was growing an undead army in her own backyard – I saw her raise the dead with my own eyes."
"Couple that with the list of all her past crimes, and that woman is going away for a long time." He let out a muffled yawn. "Well, I'll leave you to it. It's nearly 4 AM here and I'd like to get a little more sleep while the sun's still down. Keep up the good work."
"Will do, sir."
She hung up and leaned back in the plushy chair, mind cycling through a million different things and none of them enjoyable. The suspicion was still there but now steeped in guilt – which made no sense. He hadn't answered her question. He'd told her a week ago that he didn't have a criminal record, but that was very different from being a criminal. Not having a criminal record only meant he hadn't been caught yet.
If he was actually a criminal. Which she felt guilty about accusing him of, but there was no reason to feel guilt when it was an honest question, if maybe a little aggressive. But he hadn't answered the question, and that should've made her more suspicious, but all she could think about was how hurt he'd been. Hurt yet unsurprised.
Carmelita groaned and ran a hand through her hair as she stood up and climbed out of the helicopter. Her thoughts were just going in circles now, and they weren't going to help her for the time being. What she needed was a distraction.
So, she grabbed a handful of cuffs and went out to join her fellow officers.
Clean-up was a lot quicker than in Mesa. They didn't have an entire city's worth of ground to cover this time, and most of the guards had either felt the disconnect from their psychic boss going down or had been so terrorized by the giant snake still roaming free – or both – that they accepted arrest without any trouble.
Said snake was still at large, having disappeared deeper into the swamp if the criminals' witness accounts were to be trusted, but her fellow officers decided that was a problem for another day. She certainly didn't feel like protesting; if they wanted to wrangle a monster by the time she was already out of town and flying to another country, then that was their prerogative.
Overall, it was far easier, and it had also calmed the fox's jumbled mind by the time they'd hauled the last few people into the clearing along all the rest. Multiple helicopter trips were going to have to be made but, again, that wasn't her problem anymore.
The lemur detective who'd offered to send in the copter in the first place approached her after she finished reading rights to a group of twelve or so criminals sitting miserably on the mossy ground. He'd been just as superstitious as the rest of his team about coming here, but he'd also been the only one willing to do some aspect of his job, so she gave him a neutral nod instead of the stern frown she'd been shooting at everyone else in uniform.
"Yes?"
"Just wanted to say we appreciate you cleaning up this place," the lemur said in an accent similar to Mz. Ruby's, albeit a little lighter. "It was impressive, what you did. Sorry we couldn't be of more help."
She shook her head, not about to get snippy while in earshot of so many of Mz. Ruby's goons. "You came through when I called, and that's what matters."
"Well, I can assure you that we've got things handled from here on out."
His gaze trailed across the gathered criminals, then stopped on one turtle who glared back with open fury. Carmelita watched, curious, as her associate strode up to him with a harsh expression.
"You got something to say to me?" He demanded, staring down his snout at the other man.
The turtle wrinkled his nose and shook his head, then spit at the ground at the officer's feet. The lemur's face twisted in a snarl and he unclipped a baton from his belt. Inspector Fox's eyes went wide and she lunged forward in shock.
"Wait, don't–!"
She wasn't fast enough. The crack of wood against the turtle's head was so loud it ricocheted across the clearing, leaving a terrible ringing in the silence that followed. No one moved a muscle as the detective stood over the crumpled criminal with his baton still held high as if to follow through with another blow. The turtle moaned with his bloody face pressed into the dirt, properly cowed, and the officer finally put his weapon away. He spit at the ground, barely missing the criminal's head, and sauntered back to Carmelita as nonchalantly as if he'd just swatted a bug on his arm.
"Can you believe that?" He asked with a disbelieving scoff, ignorant of the way she stared at him. "Absolutely no respect for the law. It's a good thing you came around to help nip it in the bud before it could get any worse.
Her mouth was open, completely shell-shocked, and she looked towards his associates, but none of them seemed bothered by the blatant brutality they had just witnessed. They'd all simply gone back to work, and some even began talking jovially amongst themselves as if their coworker hadn't just committed assault.
"You okay, ma'am?"
Inspector Fox forced her jaw closed and struggled very hard not to grind her teeth together, stunned and furious and without any real power to address it. They were all Interpol, but she was the outsider here, and it had never become so apparent as in that moment.
"Just peachy," she growled. "But I think it's time I get out of this place."
"Oh, I don't blame you at all," he said, completely oblivious. "But are you sure you don't want to wait until they drop off Mz. Ruby first? It'll only be another hour, tops."
"No, thanks. I've seen enough depravity tonight."
As she climbed back into the helicopter and watched the ground shrink away beneath them, Carmelita thought about Sly being here with her, and what he might have thought about being proven right about officers for once. What he might've said about that horrible scene. What he might've done. He did not strike her as the kind of person who would have let it happen unchallenged, and those officers did not strike her as the kind of people who would have let him interfere, civilian or not. Suddenly she was very, very thankful for his absence.
They dropped her off at their headquarters – partly because it had a safe landing place for the copter, mostly because she was now very keen on not sharing where she was staying – and she took a taxi back to the hotel with the incident playing over and over in her head. The sound of it…
Would you brutalize me, Inspector?
Carmelita's hands were trembling as she made her way up to her and her partner's shared floor, and she couldn't tell if it was from anger or adrenaline, or shame, or something else entirely. Whatever it was, she forced herself to steadiness as she approached Sly's room.
"Hey Ringtail, I'm back. Can we talk?" She called with a quiet knock.
Silence greeted her, and there was no light seeping in through the crack under the door. The fox bit her lip, wondering if he was asleep, and tried again a little louder.
"Sly? Please tell me if you're in there. I – I really need to talk to you."
Still nothing. She knew he was a light enough sleeper to have heard her by now, which meant either he was deliberately ignoring her or he wasn't here. Carmelita hoped it was the latter and headed for the hotel's nearest common area.
She ended up searching the whole building, top to bottom, and came up empty-handed. Not a single sign of him anywhere. The inspector returned to the hallway with no small amount of frustration, racking her brain about where else the raccoon might be.
He'd told her he'd see her back at the hotel. It had sounded like a promise even after their argument, and even on his rudest days, he never deliberately ignored her. But if he wasn't in his room, or the lobby, or the tiny dining area, then where on earth could he possibly –
The detective turned on her heel and began to march.
Sunrise was threatening to peak over the horizon when she stepped onto the fire escape balcony outside, chasing away the stars and leaving the moon shrouded halfway between the sleeping and waking worlds. Carmelita leaned over the railing to scan the balconies below her for any glimpse of her missing partner on the off-chance her hunch was wrong. When no familiar gray fur or blue clothing presented itself, the fox heaved a sigh and turned her attention to the roof above.
You'd better be up there, Ringtail, she grumbled to herself, because I'm not about to do something incredibly illegal for nothing.
She leapt for the overhang, catching it easily and hoisting herself up no differently than if she were doing a pull-up at the gym. The only truly dangerous part of it was the way the metal creaked under the force of her, but it didn't do more than bend a few centimeters as she hauled herself onto the roof of the hotel.
No one shouted at her to get down, either, which she took as a win.
The inspector looked up, half-expecting her efforts to be in vain, but there was a dark silhouette sitting several meters away in the very center of the roof. His knees were drawn halfway up to his chest, and he clutched his backpack close like it was a life preserver.
He was staring up at the moon.
Carmelita approached him, trying not to let irritation at him for making her climb a damn roof to find him drown out the things she'd been working up the courage to say.
Sly turned his head just slightly at her presence, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye even though his attention was still on the sky.
"Back already?" He asked. His voice was distant and almost contemplative. "Didn't realize how much time had gone by."
She sank down slowly to sit next to him, watching him as he watched the moon. The ringing in her ears from that terrible act was so loud she was amazed he couldn't hear it too.
"Sly –"
"I'm sorry."
The apology halted all her thoughts. Even the ringing nearly faded in the wake of her surprise.
"You're…what?" She asked. "What do you have to be sorry for?"
"For being an asshole."
"You weren't being an asshole."
"Yes, I was. I was dodging questions and then goaded you into a fight. I was looking for a fight. I'd say that's pretty asshole-ish behavior." The raccoon picked at the hole in his hoodie. "You didn't deserve that, so…I'm sorry."
Carmelita considered that for a minute.
"…Thank you. I'm sorry, too," she said after a while. "I didn't mean to imply anything about you."
"It's fine," came the brief, expected response. "It's nothing I haven't already heard before."
"From…from police officers?"
The raccoon shrugged without looking at her. She folded her arms to warm herself against a cold that wasn't from the open air.
"I mean it, though, Sly," she continued before the quiet could settle too heavily between them. "I know you have your reasons, and it's not like you were in any danger. I shouldn't have pried."
"You were just doing your job."
"No. I was being an asshole."
He finally looked at her head-on, blinking in that way he did when he was caught off-guard. After a moment, the smallest of smiles curled across his snout.
"Yeah, you were."
This time, when they both fell silent again, it wasn't so uncomfortable. Carmelita watched as the sun slowly crested in the distance beyond the city, bathing everything in golds and purples. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, mirroring his own posture.
"I just don't understand, Sly. Please help me understand." The inspector leaned her cheek on her knee as she studied him. "If you're worried about – police brutality, or being treated poorly for not having a badge, I won't let that happen. You know I won't let it happen."
His face went through a series of subtle emotions, all of them unreadable. "I know. But you're just one person, Carmelita. It's been hard enough just learning to trust you as much as I have."
She bit her lip, surprised by how much the admission stung, but he continued before she could say anything.
"But that's the thing – I do trust you, and I want to keep trusting you. And that…in some ways, that's almost scarier than not trusting anyone at all. The last time I risked that, it…"
One hand started rubbing against his chest almost unconsciously when he looked back up at the disappearing moon, at the scars she hadn't been meant to see. She wondered if he even knew he was doing it.
"There's not a lot going for me these days," he said quietly. "Hasn't been for a long time. I can't risk losing the freedom I finally have."
"I can't imagine what that must have been like back in Mesa City," she replied just as softly. "I understand being fearful after that entire ordeal, not trusting anyone but yourself."
Her partner looked at her, carefully blank. For some reason, Carmelita got the deep-seated feeling that she had just said the wrong thing.
"Yeah." He said after a moment. "Mesa was really rough."
You're missing something, nagged a voice in her ear. But it was too late to ask as the raccoon stood up and offered her his hand. She took it and let him haul her to her feet, and they stood there a moment to watch the sunrise together.
"We should probably get down from here before someone sees us," the fox said, turning towards the side of the roof with the fire escape. "Wouldn't want to be banned."
"Or arrested," he replied with the light amusement she was used to, following her as silently as he always did. "Although that would be pretty funny. Imagine the headlines – 'Cop Who Arrested Infamous Fiendish Five Member Mz. Ruby Immediately Arrested For Standing On Hotel Roof'."
Carmelita began carefully climbing down past the overhang, chuckling despite herself. "That headline's too long, Ringtail. Try again."
"Illustrious Inspector Imprisons Immoral Invader; Caught Climbing Caravansary."
"Too much alliteration. You sound like a wannabe playwright." Her boots hit solid ground and she moved out of the way; he shimmied down a pipe and balanced himself on the balcony's railing, crouched in front of her with a shit-eating grin.
"Latin Hottie Busts Big Bad Voodoo Mama –"
"Finish that sentence and I'm locking you out here until we leave."
His laughter was the most genuine sound she'd ever heard from him. It floated across the air as an accompaniment to the beautiful sky, and it was the first thing to finally quiet the ringing in her head for good.
A/N: I love introducing a personal conflict and then resolving it the same chapter. Not really, of course, but it's a little funny to think of it that way.
Sly's the kind of person who I think can't actually bring himself to harm someone he cares about, regardless of his upbringing. Or at least, he'd do it and then feel incredibly guilty about it. If Carmelita hadn't actually found him on that roof, he probably would've slunk back to his room in the morning and tried to live with his actions, but she caught him right at the precipice and he's already let her save him twice. That apology was just as surprising for him as it was for her.