I like that you're broken, broken like me
Maybe that makes me a fool

After that night on the roof, things felt a little different between them.

They stayed in Port-au-Prince for three more days. Mostly so that Carmelita could complete all the paperwork necessary for confirming Mz. Ruby's capture, but partially so that they could recuperate from everything they'd seen that night – criminal, supernatural, and otherwise.

There was a subtle shift in Sly during that time, she could see. A looseness to how he interacted with her; an authenticity to how he spoke to her. In return, she found herself inviting him out with her more often than not, and sharing thoughts and feelings that she rarely did with any of her fellow officers. They toured the city together instead of apart, exploring shops and visiting landmarks and hunting for the best restaurants, and for the first time in a long time, the fox wasn't antsy to get back to work.

She suspected her partner was feeling much the same way, because when she told him she'd finally booked a flight to Wales the next day, he had given her a cool smile and a thumbs up – and then proceeded to hole himself up in his room for the rest of the afternoon and didn't come out even for food.

The raccoon had recovered from his close call in the swamp, but he was still wearing the torn hoodie and didn't seem to have a spare or the money for a new one. So that evening, having not seen hide nor hair of him for nearly six hours, Carmelita decided she was going to have to take matters into her own hands. Armed with a shopping bag, she strode confidently up to his room, knocked three times, and waited.

After a minute or so, the door opened a crack to reveal a pair of glittering brown eyes. The inspector was a little surprised to see no lights on behind him despite the sun having already set.

"Why is it so dark in there? You're not part bat, are you?" She teased, holding up the bag in an unspoken offering.

"If I was, I would've pranked you with echolocation by now," Sly replied as he opened the door a little wider, having relaxed at the sight of her. "The dark is nice when I'm thinking about things."

Her eyebrows jumped up. "Would I happen to be one of those things?"

"Maybe." He nodded down at what she had brought. "What's that? Food?"

"No, although I would have gotten you something if I knew you were so hungry." Carmelita handed him the bag and watched him peer into it.

His expression changed from curiosity to surprise as he slowly pulled out a brand-new hoodie. It was a slightly lighter blue than his ripped one, with yellow sleeves all the way up to the shoulders, but still just as baggy.

"I couldn't find one that was the exact same size and color as your other one," she said a little hurriedly, when he looked back up at her. "So sorry if it's not quite your style. I just thought you'd like one that didn't have a huge hole in it."

Sly held the clothing out in front of him, looking it up and down for a long minute without saying anything. Then he wrapped his arms around it and pulled it gently against his chest as if he were cradling a child.

"Thanks," he whispered, sounding genuinely stunned by her gift. "You didn't have to do that."

The fox rolled her eyes and gave him an amused smile. "Please, Ringtail, of course I did. Someone has to look after you if you won't."

He seemed unable to come up with a response to that, so she took pity on him by holding an arm out towards the hallway.

"On that note, how about I treat you to one last dinner in Haiti? Since you mentioned being hungry."

"I don't recall saying that at all, actually." In one quick movement, the raccoon slipped out of his torn hoodie, threw it back behind him into his dark room, and put the new one on. He fidgeted with the sleeves a bit as he closed the door behind him and began to follow her.

"No, but you were about three seconds away from salivating when you thought I'd brought food."

"I think you're imagining things."

"Too late for denial, Ringtail – unless you don't want to take me up on my offer?"

"Slow down, Carmelita. I never said that, either."

They spent the night out in the fanciest restaurant they could find, at her insistence, and ended up more than a little tipsy after Sly learned he was above the legal drinking age and they started sharing a bottle. Then he claimed he could hold his wine better than her, turning a playful game into a serious challenge neither was willing to back down from well after their meals were finished. The two of them stumbled out into the street afterwards with his arm slung over her shoulder and her arm secured around his waist, giggling over stupid jokes about Muggshot and Mz. Ruby as they made their way back to the hotel.

She could feel the heat of his body under his fur where he was pressed against her, and she knew she wasn't drunk enough for her own body to be as warm as it was from alcohol alone. But she also wasn't drunk enough for the courage to do anything about it, and they parted ways for the evening with nothing more than slurred goodnights and the lightest of shoulder pats.

The next morning, they were nearly late for their flight because he was suffering a hangover much worse than she was, and it took almost twenty minutes just to wake him up. The raccoon came out of his room with his suitcase packed and the hood of his new outfit over his eyes, muttering vague threats at her, anyone who interacted with them, and the sun itself.

"You brought this on yourself, you know," she gently scolded him as they found their airplane seats. "I warned you that I couldn't be beat in drinking games. I've drank coworkers twice my size under the table."

"Oh, shut up," he grumbled, still shielded from the world by his hood so that all she could see of his face was his twitching nose and grimacing mouth. "I'm already miserable enough. Stop bragging."

"I'm just saying. Hopefully you'll think twice next time before doing something like that." The inspector started rummaging through her handbag. "I've still got some Melatonin in here, I think."

"Does it cure hangovers?"

"Probably not, but it'll help once that wears off and you remember you're flying."

Sly growled something particularly nasty under his breath that she tactfully ignored and swiped the sleeping aids from her outstretched hand in the blink of an eye. Carmelita watched, unimpressed, as he swallowed a handful without actually counting them.

"Pretty sure those things can cause liver failure if you're not careful."

"Fuck off."

The venom in those words made her bristle, then gave her pause. She looked him up and down more carefully, noticing for the first time how rigid he sat in a way that had nothing to do with being hungover. It seemed different even from his aerophobia.

"Are you okay?" She asked, working very hard to keep her tone as neutral as possible.

"Peachy. Perfect. Totally –" he flinched as the plane began to move, gripping his seat just like he had the first time they'd flown together. "…fine. I'm fine. Just this damn plane."

Carmelita hesitated, and decided to take a risk. "I believe you, but…it feels like more than that. You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

The raccoon didn't answer for so long that she thought he hadn't heard her, or had fallen asleep. But as they made it into the air, and as she watched Haiti disappear into the distance through her tiny window, his voice suddenly filtered between them like a shared secret.

"Had a lot of bad dreams last night," he confessed, quiet and sullen and tired. "Bad memories, mostly. Thought alcohol would help, but all it did was make things worse."

"Oh. I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?"

He huffed a bitter laugh. "Not particularly, no."

"Then…" She remembered what had helped take his mind off of things the last time. "Do you want me to talk about something?"

The offer was enough to make him glance over at her, and she finally saw his face for the first time all morning. There were dark bags under his eyes, pronounced by his natural mask, and he looked absolutely wretched. Whatever had been plaguing him last night – and potentially yesterday, too, with the way he had disappeared for most of the day – must have been a doozy.

"Have I told you yet about the time I was assigned to protect a museum exhibit of the rarest stamps across the world?"

He shook his head mutely. Carmelita continued.

"This one was also in Paris, funnily enough. A group of stamp fanatics who fancied themselves criminals decided it would be a smart idea to try breaking into the place the night before the exhibit was supposed to open for the public. They had a decent hacker among them, but I don't think they accounted for the lasers…"

By the end of her third story, Sly had dozed off either from the hangover or from exhaustion; slumped sideways until his head was lying on her shoulder. Carmelita's words trailed off as she studied him, and eventually, carefully, she laid her cheek against his hooded forehead while he slumbered.

Sly closed his eyes as hot steam smacked into his face, barely not hot enough to singe fur but definitely enough to hurt. He was wedged within a cluster of pipes, armed with a wrench and covered in grease as he methodically tightened bolts to keep that very steam from escaping again. Through the cracks between pipes, he could see the bright sparks of a walrus welding nearby.

Doing this kind of work sucked. The raccoon was sweating buckets through his clothes and he could feel his skin crawling under all the oil and gunk in his fur. No one on the crew was small enough to get into those hard-to-reach places, though, except for him, and he wasn't about to complain out loud about it while his tail was sticking out and in easy reach of anyone who might take it personally.

All of a sudden, the lights flickered before going out completely, followed by an abrupt, eerie silence as the machinery followed suit. The walrus started cussing at her welder as the raccoon began shimmying backwards out of the pipes.

"What's going on?" He called out to her once his head was back out in the open.

"Hell if I know!" She growled back. "Bloody thing just upped and died! Whole place did!"

Before either of them could speculate about why, the walrus' radio on her hip crackled to life.

"I want all employees working in the boiler room to report to the central hub immediately," came the voice of the squid who oversaw them all, sounding absolutely irate. "No exceptions!"

Sly blinked a few times, then turned back towards his pipe sanctuary. Whatever had just happened – was happening – it definitely wasn't his problem. Before he could retreat into relative safety, however, the walrus grabbed him by the arm and started hauling him with her.

"Come on," she huffed. "That means you, too."

"But I'm not an employee."

"Doesn't matter," the walrus said flatly. "If the boss says no exceptions, then that means no exceptions."

He decided not to argue on that.

They walked further into the great mass of machinery, and it wasn't long before he could hear arguing echoing off the walls. As the two of them turned a corner into the heart of the operation, the raccoon was struck with the sight of a dozen workers grouped around a huge, smoking engine. The two of them pushed their way to the front of the grim mass to see another walrus leaning stiffly against his oversized mallet as the squid craned their head to get in his face.

"Idiot! What on earth were you thinking?!" They shouted, so agitated that the tentacles on their face wriggled in a downright disturbing display.

The hammer-wielder began to protest. "It was just one mis-swing. Accidents happen!"

"It halted production entirely!" His superior exploded, throwing up their hands to gesture at the room around them. It was true; all the machinery in here had come to a complete stop, just like it had in every other room. "Raliegh is going to realize the storm machine has stopped, and what do you think is going to happen when he does? I'm not taking the fall for your incompetence!"

Sly looked over at the broken engine. It was large, but not nearly as large as one would think for how important it was in keeping this whole charade going. Honestly, even someone like him could probably do enough damage to stall it.

The thought crossed his mind, and then he watched in sick alarm as that very same thought hit the worker who had actually screwed it up.

"Why not let him take the fall?" He asked, jabbing a thumb towards the raccoon who tried and failed to remove the vice grip still around his wrist. "If there's anyone here who will survive the boss' wrath, it's him."

The squid looked Sly up and down, eyes narrowed and tentacles twitching with contemplation. He tried again to yank out of the welder's hold, to no avail, as a bubble of panic lodged itself in his chest.

"...It's worth a shot," they finally said, pulling a cell phone out of their pocket. They dialed Raleigh's number, put it on speaker, and every worker fell silent with trepidation as they all waited.

The phone barely had the chance to ring before it was answered by a sneering voice that had everyone tensing.

"Oh, good, I was just about to call you," growled the frog on the other end of the line. "I couldn't help but notice that the storm outside has stopped. And wouldn't you know it, I received an alarm that my beautiful ship wasn't running anymore at the exact same moment. What a stunning coincidence, hmm?"

"We had a situation," the squid started to explain. "There was an accident –"

"Don't bother with your excuses! I don't want to hear them! I'll be down there within one minute and every single one of your useless laze-abouts had better be waiting for me with an explanation, or I'll tie your tentacles to the ship's anchor!"

The call went dead, leaving a loud, foreboding beep as the only sound in the room. Sly inhaled, slow and grounding.

Then he hurled all his weight into the welder's leg. Her knees buckled and she toppled over with a startled shout; her grip on his wrist loosened just enough for him to slip out of it. He took off running for the nearest exit as the others all yelled and clambered to go after him. Sly's feet pounded across the metal floor as he ran like his life depended on it.

Because it very much did.

A force slammed into him so hard he lost his breath. The raccoon fell heavily against the ground under a weight that felt like it was crushing the spirit out of him.

"Not so fast, you little shit," hissed a gruff voice in his ear. His assailant stood, grabbing Sly by the back of his shirt to haul him to his feet.

The raccoon was still fighting just to get air back into his lungs, unable to do anything as he was half-dragged back to the group of workers. They all glowered at him, but none so much as the hammer-wielder and the overseer. Two burly sets of hands wrenched his arms behind his back as he was held between two men.

"Listen, kid." The walrus who had broken the machinery stepped forward and grabbed him by the chin to make their eyes meet. "Someone has to take the fall for this, and we all know you're the only one he won't kill over it, so suck it up and take it."

Sly glared at him between gasps, and was almost tempted to spit in his face if it wouldn't have made his situation exponentially worse. He hung his head instead, forcing himself to remain calm and get his breath back while they all waited for the inevitable storm.

It didn't take long. Raleigh's furious hopping could be heard a mile away as he stomped down into the bowels of his great ship. The workers all straightened their shoulders and squared their stances, including the two holding Sly. When the frog came barreling in like a harbinger of doom, not a single sound was uttered by anyone.

Raleigh's eyes darted over his precious, sparking machinery, expression growing more and more thunderous with every second. He marched up to the squid with his teeth audibly grinding.

"Name. Now."

The overseer pointed at Sly. Every single employee did, leaving him at the center of a damning picture.

"Little whelp," Raleigh seethed, waddling up to the caught raccoon who flinched away as best he could. "Little orphan bastard."

He grabbed Sly by the collar to pull him close.

"I trust you with one job. One job, which you surely could not possibly screw up, and yet you managed to do it anyway! You've managed so greatly that you've halted my entire operation!"

Sly didn't see the slap coming. One moment he had the frog screaming full-volume an inch from his face, and the next his head jolted sideways by a blow so powerful it had him seeing stars. He gasped, then locked his jaw to keep himself from biting his tongue as Raleigh raised his hand again.

"I am going to beat you to within an inch of your life!" The promise was hissed right before another slap came, sending Sly's head snapping the opposite direction. "I'm going to keelhaul you across the length of this ship, and then I'm going to tie you to its bow until Muggshot comes for you! You will be begging for those talons to put you out of your misery by the time I'm done with you!"

The third slap rattled his entire skull. The taste of copper oozed across his tongue. He was so dizzy that it took a minute to realize that Raleigh had let go of him and had finally turned away.

"Hold him while I take care of the damage," the frog growled at his subordinates. "The sooner I fix this, the sooner we'll be back on schedule."

The rest of the workers shared uneasy looks. One was brave enough to ask the question on everyone's mind.

"Do you, uh…" She faltered when her boss' smoldering glare fell on her. "Do you want us to help?"

Raleigh gave a short bark of laughter without any amusement in it as he began undoing the cufflinks of his gloves. "Help? From you beastly buffoons? I would sooner trust an unevolved fly with my delicate work."

He handed his gloves to the squid, who held them as delicately as possible, then hopped over to start inspecting the damaged engine. A few employees clutched their tools close and shifted restlessly as he thrust his bare hands into the metal guts without regard for oil, rust, or his own safety.

"Should we…get back to work, then?" She tried again.

"No." The frog didn't even turn around. "The last thing I need is for another crucial component to break because you plonkers are scrambling to prove useful and do something monumentally stupid. No, all of you will stand right here until I'm done. Learn how to have some bloody patience."

Sly, still sagging between men, slowly blinked the stars out of his eyes and began running his tongue over his teeth, looking for looseness and only mildly relieved to find none. He swallowed blood from where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek, head hung low but still watching the Fiendish Five member as best he could with the way his ears were ringing. Terror made his tail curl tightly around his ankle, knowing that the threats spit at him were very, very likely to happen.

"Why do I even bother hiring these louts?" Raleigh muttered to himself as he pulled out parts and reconnected wires. "Can't keep my precious machines running, can't do their own jobs, can't even stop one sabotaging little stray from ruining –"

Instincts made Sly go as still as a statue when the frog cut himself off in the middle of his personal monologue. Slowly, ever so slowly, Raleigh pulled his hands away and began running them along the outer shell of the engine instead. Green fingers stained with oil tapped at a large dent in the metal. He studied that dent, then the raccoon at his mercy, and the look on his face was dangerously thoughtful.

"Would one of you be so kind as to bring that giant hammer over here for me? It appears I need to buff out a few unsightly dimples."

The walrus with said hammer approached him, visibly nervous, and offered the tool. Raleigh gripped its handle and attempted to heft it, letting out a grunt of exertion when he failed to lift it more than a few centimeters off the floor.

"Hm…" He made a dramatic show of tapping at his chin as if puzzled. "Seems I'm having a spot of trouble. Don't have quite the brutish strength that you do, chap. Would you be a sport and take care of it for me?"

His tone remained calm and even, but there wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't holding their breath. They all watched as the larger man gave an uncertain nod and began doing as instructed.

Sly only had eyes for Raleigh.

The frog leaned back on his legs, expression calculating while he stared at his employee who could wield such a heavy tool with so much ease. It took only a few minutes until the walrus was done, and he looked towards his boss with only a bit of sweat beading his brow.

"That good enough, sir?"

"Yes," Raleigh practically purred as he took two short hops to reach his squid manager's side, "I do believe I have seen enough, now."

And with that, he reached over, pulled the squid's gun out of its holster, and shot both them and the hammer wielder point-blank.

Two bodies hit the floor simultaneously. The sound of it echoed the gunshots like thunder following lightning, leaving ten workers and a raccoon paralyzed by the aftermath. Raleigh tossed the gun onto its deceased owner with a disgusted sneer.

"Let this be a lesson the next time you lazy sods see fit to pass your mistakes off onto someone else," he said, wiping his hands on one of the bodies at his feet before picking up his gloves and putting them back on as nonchalantly as if he'd just swatted a bug out of the air. "I don't tolerate mistakes, but I tolerate lying even less – especially by those who are supposed to corral the lot of you."

His eyes landed on Sly, who averted his gaze. The frog clicked his tongue in revulsion and gave a dismissive flick of his hand, and the two holding the raccoon released him without a word.

"Now, all of you – get back to work!"

Wales was just as wet as Haiti but with half the humidity. Rain greeted the two of them as they stepped off the plane into Rhoose, stayed through their road trip to Swansea, and refused to let up long after they'd found local lodgings.

It was absolutely miserable. Sly was absolutely miserable.

He tried not to snap at his partner for it, he really did, but it was difficult between the long flight, the stupid rain, and the awful reminder of where they were headed next. He'd been under Raleigh's "care" for several months before getting shipped to America to help Muggshot with his city takeover, and the memories were still strong with recent hurt. The only things keeping his mood up were the newest treasures in his backpack and the precious gift he now wore as much as possible.

The hoodie the inspector had bought for him was more colorful than his old one, and probably too flashy for a thief who wanted to stay out of sight, but it was a gift, and it was his, and he wasn't about to waste warm clothes while in Wales, anyway.

Carmelita was similarly preoccupied. The minute she got situated in her hotel room, she checked in with the local authorities – not Interpol, this time – and was already running off for an impromptu meeting with them to discuss recent sightings of the frog and how best to catch him. She had apologized to him for having to leave so soon, a first, but promised to share anything new she learned when she returned – also a first. He spent an inordinate amount of that time wondering when the inspector had gone from being a hard-ass about confidentiality to suddenly being willing to update him on the details of her case.

When she finally came back less than two hours later, it was with a dejected air that he wasn't fond of at all.

"Don't tell me these guys are too afraid to go storming the keep, too," he joked, trying to lighten her mood.

"It's nothing that dire, thank god, but none of them know where Raleigh is." The fox sat down on the two-seater beside him and began pinching the bridge of her nose.

"I thought he'd been sighted along the coastline in Wales."

"He was. Three years ago. There's been no sign of him anywhere in the country since."

Uh oh. Sly played his nervous fidgeting off as shared disappointment. "What about those emails of yours?"

"I already checked the coordinates." She simply shook her head. "Muggshot supposedly landed about a mile out in the ocean, but the officers here have already scoured the whole area over several times and come up empty, so there was probably a boat involved to hide any evidence of whatever they were ferrying. Swansea is the closest coastal city to those coordinates, which is why we're staying here until I find a better lead."

"Huh. Makes sense."

Carmelita gave him an apologetic look. "We might be here a while. Hope you don't mind that."

"I don't mind at all." His leg started bouncing. He forced it to stop. "Do you need any help with sleuthing? I bet we could figure this out in no time between the two of us."

He counted it as a personal success when she finally cracked a smile.

"Thanks, Ringtail, but it's probably going to be pretty boring. I won't subject you to that."

Sly wished she would. He really wished she would, if only to preoccupy his mind from who they were going up against next. Mz. Ruby was scary for her powers, for her premonition that could have halted his mission before it could even get off the ground. Other than that, her ghost friends and the giant snake – which he was still disturbed by whenever he thought about it – she wasn't all that intimidating. She had never been nice to him, by any stretch of the word, but she had been mostly interested in using him for heists and keeping her place clean and not paid him mind otherwise.

Muggshot was a lot scarier than her, but Sly had long-since learned how to work around him; he had simply kept his head down, done his job, and didn't piss the bulldog off. It had been a hard balancing act sometimes, but one he was well-versed in.

Raleigh, however. Raleigh was a different story entirely.

Luckily, this time he had an ace up his sleeve that would hopefully keep him safe. Or, more accurately, a few more pages of the Thievius Raccoonus.

And so, the two of them fell into a rhythm, day by day. In the morning, Carmelita would visit the local officers to compare notes and work out ideas together, while Sly used his alone time to practice the newest ability from one of his earliest ancestors. Invisibility was a tall claim, even for the Cooper family, but the raccoon approached it with the seriousness that he had with Tennessee's additions. If Slytunkhamen believed he had mastered such an unbelievable power, and every descendent since then had believed it, then Sly had no choice but to believe it as well.

The afternoons they spent together; talking about the case, talking about the new location and all its quirks, talking about themselves. She asked him questions no one had in a long time – his favorite foods, the music he most listened to, what kinds of hobbies he had. It was startling, almost embarrassing, to realize he didn't have immediate answers to most of them, but the fox had taken it in stride and simply stated that she'd be happy to help him discover those things, instead of calling him boring.

And for most evenings, the inspector shut herself in her room to pour over her notes and every conceivable scrap of information she could find to parse out more clues on Raleigh's location, while Sly went back to practicing his abilities and pretended he didn't know exactly where to find the frog.

It wasn't like he could just tell her that Raleigh was hiding out on the Isle of Wrath, after all. He didn't have an excuse for knowing that like he had with Mz. Ruby, and even though he could feel the metaphorical clock ticking away at his chance to recover more of the Thievius Raccoonus before it was too late, something in him prevented him from going off towards the island by himself.

They were a team now. Partners. He wasn't going to do this without her – not after all the hard work she had done to get this far. That would just be cruel for the sake of cruelty. And besides, he still hadn't mastered Slytunkhamen's skill yet. He couldn't be certain it was safe enough until then.

At least, that was what he told himself.

Nearly two weeks into their stay, Carmelita was very clearly at her wit's end over the wall she'd seemingly run up against, and so Sly decided to surprise her with a takeout dinner the way she had surprised him with his hoodie. He found a seafood restaurant right by the docks with food he knew she liked, ordered something for them ahead of time, and went inside when it was done with a quiet hum in his throat.

The hum died immediately as he saw two terrifyingly familiar walruses at the counter.

He froze just inside the doorway, but they didn't turn at the sound of someone entering the restaurant. It gave him enough time to swerve into the side hallway leading to the kitchen before they thought to glance his way.

Out of everyone's line of sight, Sly carefully peeked out around the corner. The two walruses were picking up their food, it seemed, as they waited patiently for the nervous employee to ring them up. Thoughts racing, he pulled out his camera, made sure the flash was off, and started taking photos. An opportunity had presented itself to solve his little dilemma and he was going to take full advantage of it.

They got their food and headed out the door without another word. Neither noticed the raccoon tail they had suddenly gained as they walked with quite a bit of purpose. Sly followed at a distance, watching the beeline the two were making towards the docks proper. He froze when they stopped, and slipped into the nearest building's shadow.

Just to be safe, he closed his eyes and attempted invisibility.

There were two tricks to it, he had been finding. The first was that he had to hold his breath for it to work, which had not been mentioned in the book at all so he was pretty sure it was just a him-thing. The second was a certain mental fortitude that took some getting used to – not just silent sure-footedness but the confidence of it, which he was also finding was the hardest part to do. Sly struggled with confidence at the best of times, but he willed all self-doubts away as much as possible and focused on simply not being.

He held his breath. Opened his eyes. Watched as one of Raleigh's men looked his way and then looked elsewhere without so much as a double-take.

The raccoon's heart jumped in his chest, amazed and overjoyed, but he didn't dare exhale or let his guard down. There was still work to be done. He started moving again when they did, dropping the invisibility so that he could breathe and then immediately pulling it back up with a quietly-caught inhale whenever one of them so much as shifted in his direction.

Further across the docks they went, passing boat after boat of all sizes, until the walruses finally stopped again at a tiny fishing boat tied up as close to the open ocean as they could reach. Sly stood out in the open, completely unseen and unmoving, as they climbed into it while passing their takeout back and forth. There was a familiar symbol on the side of the boat in place of a name, and he carefully brought his camera up to snap one more picture of it.

Raleigh's men rode off very shortly afterwards, and as soon as they were completely out of sight, the raccoon turned tail and sprinted all the way back to the hotel.

Then he doubled back to the restaurant, because he'd forgotten to pick up his order.

Carmelita sounded distant when he made his presence known outside her room and she told him to come in. The raccoon opened the door armed with food, only to stop short at the papers and photos strewn all about the carpet in front of him.

"I see you've decided to take a page out of a conspiracy theorist's handbook," he noted with great amusement, sidestepping the unorthodox obstacles to reach the fox kneeling in the center of it all. "All we need now is red yarn to connect things at random."

"I'm so close to a breakthrough, it's not even funny," she said, distracted and not even glancing up when he sat himself down next to her with the bag of food the only thing between them. "I've pulled every heist, past sighting, and background info I could get my hands on to try and find a pattern of behavior. All I need is one more clue and I'm sure I can pin Raleigh down."

Sly made a noncommittal noise as he tried to think of how to bring up what he'd "discovered" in a way that wouldn't arouse suspicion. In an effort to stall, he began pulling out boxes of food, and watched with a smirk at the way her nose twitched in response.

"Do you think he's hiding further inland somewhere?" He asked carefully.

"Not really," she admitted, finally tearing herself away from her work to take the food he was offering. "Thanks. But we can't rule out every possibility. That's just bad detective work."

"I agree. On that first part, I mean." The raccoon bit into a curry pie, mind still turning. "I think he's still around here somewhere, too."

"What makes you think that?"

"Just a hunch."

"You and your hunches."

"Hey, don't discount a raccoon's intuition," he said with a grin. "It's helped us a lot so far, hasn't it?"

Carmelita rolled her eyes and nudged him with her own smile. "Sometimes a little too well. I'm starting to think you've got insider knowledge, Ringtail."

"Nah, I just have some personal experience dealing with pompous windbags," he quickly dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Shouldn't be all that different from this guy, right?"

"He could be that, but he's also a criminal," she pointed out. "And besides, you don't know him any better than I do. He might not be anything like that at all."

Oh, how sorely he wished that were the case. Instead of saying that, though, Sly picked a page off the ground and started reading it aloud. "'Born to a wealthy aristocratic family. Began piracy at age thirty on a whim.' If that doesn't sound like a pompous windbag, then I don't know what does."

"Point taken," she said with a huff, holding out her hand so he could return the paper to her. "But you really shouldn't be looking at any of this just to prove that point. These are confidential documents."

"If you didn't want me looking at it then you shouldn't have invited me over while you had it all out. Surely you know better by now."

The inspector's tail flickered back and forth behind her, clearly peeved that he had called her on the carpet. Instead of responding, she turned back to her work.

"That frog is pushing fifty, and most of his colleagues have faded into obscurity the last few years as well…barring Muggshot. Either he's planning something big like Mz. Ruby was, or he's setting up for retirement. As someone with as fickle a mood as Raleigh, it could go either way."

"What's so special about Wales, anyway?" It was a question that had always bugged him, but one he had never dared voice. "If he's going to retire, why not do it in England or somewhere more populated?"

"Wales is where he was raised," she told him. He lifted an eyebrow in surprise. "If he's choosing to lay low for a while, for whatever reason, then it makes sense to do it on his home turf."

"Wow. You've really done your homework, huh." Sly looked at the scattered papers in a new light. "Pretty impressive detective work."

Her cheeks turned a funny shade of pink. "Thanks. It's just basic guesswork, though."

"Speaking of guesswork," he said, seeing the opportunity and pulling out his camera, "what do you make of this?"

The fox squinted at the photo on the tiny screen for a few moments. Then her eyes widened and she grabbed the camera out of his hands to take a closer look, which he let her do without any resistance.

"When and where did you take this?" She asked, nose a millimeter from the screen.

"About ten minutes ago at the docks. They were at the place I got this lovely meal from and something about them felt off, so I snapped a few quick photos and tailed them to their boat."

Carmelita jerked her head up in alarm. "Sly, you followed them? That was a dangerous thing to do! If they noticed you doing that, they might have thought you were threatening them. They could have hurt you regardless of whether they're civilians or criminals!"

"Give me some credit, Inspector." He leaned back until his back was against the end of her bed, and folded his arms behind his head. "I know how to stay unseen. And if I hadn't tailed them, then I wouldn't have seen them get on this boat you're suddenly so interested in. What's up with that, by the way?"

"This, right here. See this symbol that looks kind of like a top hat?" She pointed it out for him, and he pretended to be clueless. "That's Raleigh's personal mark. We've been found it on every piece of his tech we've managed to recover since he made his debut as a criminal."

"So it's like a calling card?"

"More of a watermark, but that works, too."

"Sweet. One more question, then – does 'the Isle of Wrath' mean anything to you?"

The inspector nearly dropped the camera at those words and swiveled to face him. "There were rumors of Raleigh being seen out there years ago, but they were dismissed with no evidence. Where did you hear that name?"

"Those guys on the boat mentioned it."

"Sly." She placed her hands on his shoulders with an excited gleam in her eye. "You just gave me exactly what I needed."

"I did?"

"Yes, you did!" For a heart-stopping moment, it looked like she was going to hug him – or worse, kiss him – but she let go of him instead and he let go of the breath he didn't realize he was holding. "I know exactly where Raleigh is, now!"

"That's great. You willing to let me tag along again?"

"Absolutely. Better pack a raincoat, Ringtail, cause our next stop is the Isle of Wrath!"

A/N: This is the longest chapter to date, which is super cool. I thought about separating it into two because of how much happens, but then I figured it was probably fine as one. Congrats to those who guessed Sir Raleigh was the next one on their list!

I've been not-so-patiently waiting to get to this update for a while, if y'all couldn't tell, cause I have SO many headcanons about Raleigh and especially his "relationship" with Sly. Personally I've always thought he was the second-most sadistic Five member right after Clockwerk, because he canonically beats his own men (or at least threatens to) for making mistakes, and is completely fine with the idea of killing a child when confronted by Sly in the game. Combine that with him not having a desperate reason for becoming a criminal, just jumping into pillaging and murder because he was bored, and you can probably see why this version of him is one Sly is rightfully terrified of.

Also! Carmelita's hoodie gift was added entirely thanks to that first beautiful fanart by Saikonohero. I loved the outfit design so much I just HAD to incorporate it into the fic somehow. Thank you so much again, dear, I will forever treasure your gorgeous art!