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Lying low on a sun-baked rooftop, squinting into his scope, Ray watches the heist turn sour. The cops arrive too fast, alerted by some silent alarm, and Ryan and Gavin are still cracking the vault when the bullets start flying. Michael and Geoff get pinned down between two cars, unable to get to their escape route, and unwilling to leave the men inside. It's all Ray can do to cover them, firing round after round down into the street to lessen the hail of fire the LSPD are pouring into the parked cars.
Geoff is shouting into his mic, calling Ryan out to help them, telling Gavin to either finish the hack or leave it.
'I don't care which, this fucker's blown, but you need to call it!'
'I've got it, Geoff! I'm grabbing what I can!' Gavin says, voice high and sharp as it always is when things go south in a hurry.
'Jack, get to the backup point,' Geoff orders, trying to fire back at the cops but being forced down again by bullets hissing past his head.
'I'll be there in 30 seconds,' Jack says, and Ray can hear the roar of a powerful engine as she races to the secondary extraction point. There's no way they can leave from the front of the bank, so going out of the service door is Gavin's only chance. Getting the others there will be more of a struggle.
'Heads down, incoming!' Ryan says, and a moment later a rocket shatters what's left of the bank's windows, streaking across the street.
A patrol car goes up like a bonfire, the blast rattling Ray's teeth, and he shakes his head to clear it.
'Go, go!' Michael says, and Ray sees him shove Geoff down the block towards the bank, both of them taking the chance to run for it before the cops recover.
Ray sees the cops shaking off the shock, taking aim at them, and starts firing as fast as he can, sloppy shots to try and take out a dozen officers before they can get their guns up.
Geoff and Michael almost make it.
'Ryan!' Geoff shouts, when they're still twenty yards from the bank and the bullets are whizzing far too close, raising puffs of brick dust and concrete from the walls behind them.
Ryan doesn't reply, but a second rocket comes screaming out of the bank. A newly-arrived SWAT van goes sky-high in a fiery cloud, flipping in the air and crashing into the front of the building where Ray is perched.
The impact shakes him, his shot goes wild, and he can only watch in horror as he misses. The powerful round goes low and wide, and slams straight into Michael's right leg as he runs. His shin is obliterated, bone and muscle torn away, and when he goes to put his foot down on his next stride he collapses onto the sidewalk.
There's a second of silence, then all Ray can hear is Michael screaming.
'Michael!' Geoff shouts, horrified, grabbing the screaming lad and dragging him bodily towards the bank, leaving his foot behind. Ryan fires wildly into the street, rocket after rocket as fast as he can reload, and Ray can only watch the world go up in flames, feeling the intense heat on his face as though from a distance. He still has his rifle against his shoulder, still has his eye to the scope, but he couldn't shoot if his life depended on it. His fingers have gone numb.
He doesn't move until he hears doors slamming and Jack swearing over the horrible, thin wail that Michael makes as they get him in the van.
'Get us to Caleb! Go!' Geoff says, and then it's a jumble of words as he and Gavin and Ryan talk to Michael, fumbling for their emergency first-aid kit to stem the bleeding, telling Michael it'll be okay when all of them know damn well it won't.
Ray tears out his earpiece when Michael cries out again, unable to bear listening to what he's done. There's nothing left of the police response on the street, Ryan saw to that, but he can't stay on the roof forever. Cops are like ants. More will come.
He packs his rifle mechanically, gets shakily to his feet and almost falls down the fire escape on his way back to his bike.
~
It takes longer than he'd like to get to Caleb's backstreet clinic. He can't just show up with his sniper rifle in broad daylight, so he takes a detour to stash it away. By the time he roars up the road on his bike, the van is already gone again, Jack no doubt taking it somewhere to destroy the evidence.
The duty nurse calmly tells him that Michael is in surgery, and points him to the private waiting room.
Gavin turns away as he comes in, not looking at him, but Geoff and Ryan get up to meet him. They know it was him. Of course they do. He was the only one with a big enough gun to do that much damage.
'What're you doing here?' Ryan asks, standing like a wall in the middle of the room, his arms folded.
'Is he okay?' Ray asks, feeling his chest ache at the sight of Ryan standing against him. He deserves it, he knows, but he still isn't used to seeing Ryan as a threat.
'No, he's not okay,' Ryan says flatly. 'You blew his fucking leg off.'
Ray flinches at the words. He knew, of course he knew, he's an old hand with a rifle, knows exactly how big a hole a .50 leaves in someone. He just hadn't wanted to believe it, even when he watched it happen. Not when it's Michael. A ruined limb is about the best that he could have hoped for, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like a best case scenario.
'I don't think you should be here,' Geoff says, his voice steady, carefully controlled. Ray knows him well enough to hear fear and anger underneath, and he wants to curl in on himself.
'Geoff, please,' he starts, quiet and desperate. He can't take Geoff's anger on top of his own self-loathing.
'Leave. You aren't welcome in the penthouse. Don't be there when I get home.'
It's an order, spoken with the iron will that runs the Fake AH, and Ray knows it's over. His eyes flick to Ryan, but the man has nothing to say, just watches him impassively, backing up Geoff's command as he always does.
Geoff holds out his hand, and Ray stares at it for a moment, confused, before the awful truth hits him. Geoff wants his key.
His hands shake, setting the keys jangling as he pulls the chain out of his pocket. He fumbles the silver elevator key off the ring and presses it into Geoff's hand, feeling warm skin scorch the tips of his fingers for an instant before he pulls away.
As soon as it's done, Geoff turns his back on Ray, going to sit beside Gavin, leaving Ryan's implacable figure to enforce his order.
Ray can't find anything to say. He turns, heart aching, eyes burning, and leaves.
~
He crashes his bike a mile away from the clinic, eyes too blurred and hands too shaky. He's lucky, goes over the handle bars and lands on grass, but it still knocks the breath out of him. He lies on his back, squinting in the blinding afternoon sun, and gasps for air for a long time, feeling like his ribs are on fire.
No one comes to see if he's okay. This is Los Santos. People don't care for anyone but their own, and he has no one left.
By the time he rolls painfully onto his side and looks at his bike, the sun is starting to set. He can tell at a glance that his bike is trashed, front forks warped by the impact with the curb, oil leaking in a dark puddle underneath. He can't bring himself to be angry about it. It's just karma.
He gets slowly to his feet and limps away, trying not to hold his ribs. This isn't such a bad neighbourhood, but it's never smart to seem obviously hurt. He doesn't have much left to lose, but he also doesn't have a crew to back him up.
Almost everything he owns is at the penthouse downtown, but he can't go back there. He can't get another vehicle out of the shared garage. He can't go to any of the Fake AH safehouses. He can't even access his bank account - his wallet is still beside his bed. He never carries ID on a heist. He has his phone and fifty dollars folded in his back pocket, and that's all.
It's not far to the empty building where he stashed his rifle, so he makes his slow, painful way there. It's a little harder to break back in through the high, small window with his ribs hurting and his whole body bruised, but he manages eventually.
It's quiet inside, old industrial carpet muffling his feet as he drops down. There's no power, so it's hot and dark. Ray goes to the back office, checks his rifle is still behind the pile of broken computer parts and old papers where he left it.
He's glad of the gloom, not sure he'd want to look at his beautiful pink rifle in light of what he's done. He finds the case by feel, then slides down the wall nearby, sitting hunched around his burning ribs and the deeper ache in his heart. In the warm darkness, exhausted and sore in body and soul, it doesn't take him long to fall asleep.
~
Waking up is a new kind of hell. His bruised muscles have set solid overnight, and it takes him a long time to stretch out, groaning through his teeth. His ribs still hurt worst of all, and he can't tell if they're cracked or just bruised. They probably aren't broken, and beyond that he can't really bring himself to care.
He wonders, as he works his limbs into some semblance of functionality, whether Michael is alright. Whether he's even alive. He made it into surgery, and it was only a leg, but things can go very wrong very quickly. If the last twenty-four hours have taught Ray anything, it's that things will always go wrong.
He spends most of the day lying on the floor, staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles. He's aware that such lethargy isn't normal, even for him, but he hurts too much to care. He shot Michael. He might have killed him. Even if Michael lives, he's definitely lost a leg. Ray has lost his crew, his friends, his home, his purpose. Why the fuck shouldn't he lie on the filthy floor of an abandoned office? It's that or try to put a bullet in his head, which is harder than it sounds with a long-barrelled rifle. It's too much effort to try.
In the evening, going a little crazy from staring at the same damn thing, he staggers back to the window and climbs stiffly out. He goes down the block to the grocery for a bottle of water, his thick tongue and pounding head reminding him that he hasn't drunk anything since before the heist the previous day. He drinks the water and saves the bottle. Last time he'd checked, the office building still had running water in the restroom. He's got no better plans, and when his money runs out it'll be better than nothing.
There's a Carl's Jr. just a few yards further down the road, and he walks towards it, not really hungry, but with the water in his empty stomach he feels queasy and unsettled. He drops $1.45 of his meagre funds on a small hamburger, eating it slowly and methodically, sitting on the wall of the parking lot.
He's inescapably reminded of the bad old days in Liberty City, before he realised people would pay him to shoot stuff. He never expected to find himself here again, and it puts a horrible little smile on his face as he chucks his screwed-up trash into an open dumpster across the lot.
He shuffles back to his pathetic new "home" and climbs inside to sleep.
~
On the second day, he thinks about calling someone. He's willing to bear Geoff's cruel words, willing to beg, just so long as he can find out if Michael's alive. He takes out his phone, and laughs hollowly to himself when he finds the battery dead. Karma isn't done with him yet. He tosses the phone aside and curls up again, hurting more than he can bear.
Ray has contacts, has his rifle. Even if the Fake AH have blacklisted him in Los Santos, he can find work elsewhere. He's basically back where he was before Geoff first hired him, except that this time he can't bring himself to look for work. He thought about it, and his hands started shaking at the thought of firing his rifle again. He's not ready, might not be ready for a long time, and in the meantime he's got his quiet, dry floor, a little less than fifty dollars, and all the pain and weariness in the world. He can live on that for a long while, he knows. He's done it before.
~
He's been there for five days when Ryan kicks the office door in.
Ray startles at the noise, but when he sees Ryan he slumps down again, turning his face away. Ryan's wearing the mask. Michael must be dead. Most likely he's come to put a bullet in Ray in revenge. Ray kind of hopes Ryan still holds enough remembered affection for him not to torture him first, but beyond that he doesn't really care.
He doesn't resist when Ryan grabs his dirty hoodie and hauls him up, dragging him outside. He vaguely thinks that isn't good - there was plenty of privacy inside for a swift bullet to the head. If Ryan's taking him somewhere else, it's going to be bad. He thinks about struggling, but doesn't.
Fuck it, he killed Michael. Whatever Ryan does to him is just karma.
Ryan stuffs him into the backseat of a car Ray doesn't recognise. Probably something Ryan jacked on a whim. Ray watches him get in the front and start the car, dull eyed and silent. He has nothing to say, and apparently neither does Ryan. There's nothing but the rumble of the engine. Ray wonders if there are child-locks on the back doors, wonders if he could escape before they get to wherever they're going, but he doesn't try. Ryan must know he's not going to try. Why else wouldn't he tie Ray up, or put him in the trunk?
I guess he knows I know what I deserve, Ray thinks. He puts his head back and closes his eyes.
~
He must have slept for a little while, because when Ryan grabs him again he's disorientated, not sure of where he is. He gets a brief, blurred impression of a white-walled garage before Ryan shoves him into an elevator, puts a key in the control panel and hits the top button. The rapid ascent makes Ray's stomach churn, and he's sick and confused even before the elevator doors open on the familiar penthouse.
Gavin and Jack are sitting on the couches, and both of them look deeply concerned at the sight of him.
Ray feels like he might cry, his eyes hot, his chest aching. What the fuck is Ryan doing bringing him back here? Is this a murder party for the whole crew?
Ryan pushes him down the corridor before he can say anything, taking him to Michael's room and pushing him inside.
Ray stumbles, falls to his knees on the soft carpet, and doesn't bother looking up. He can't stand it.
'What the fuck, Ryan?' Michael says. 'What did you do to him?'
Ray can't believe what he's hearing, but he looks up anyway, daring to hope.
Michael is lying propped up in his own bed, tired and pale, but very much alive. A small forest of orange pill bottles has grown up on his bedside table, alongside bottles of gatorade and juice. There's a horrible dip in the comforter where his right leg ought to be, but he still looks like himself.
'I didn't do anything. I found him like this,' Ryan says shortly, muffled by the mask.
Ray can't meet Michael's eye, looks away when Michael looks at his face. He clears his throat, dry and tight after days of not talking.
'I'm so sorry,' he says roughly, looking at the carpet under his knees.
'Get the fuck off my floor,' Michael says.
It's so close to Geoff's order to leave that Ray flinches. Did Michael want him brought back just to exile Ray himself? He gets up slowly, aware of Ryan still lurking at his back. He glances at Michael, and finds him pointing at a chair beside the bed, not at the door.
Ray hesitantly sits down, staring at the flat comforter where Michael's leg should be.
'Where've you been, man?' Michael asks.
Ray doesn't answer fast enough, so Ryan chimes in.
'He was in an empty office in Chamberlain Hills. Looked like he'd been sleeping rough in there.'
'Why, Ray?'
'My wallet's here,' Ray says vaguely.
'I'm gonna kick Geoff's ass,' Michael says. 'He threw you out without even your fucking bank card and ID?'
'I doubt it was calculated,' Ray says, feeling strangely compelled to defend Geoff's actions. The man had every right to eject him from the crew. 'I had fifty bucks and a rifle. I could have found something.'
'Yeah, but you didn't. You look like shit.'
Ray shrugs. 'I fucking shot you,' he says, trying to keep his voice even and failing.
'Yeah you did. I don't think you meant it, though. Did you?'
Michael makes it sound so light, like it's a joke that they can laugh about.
'No. The building shook when the SWAT van hit it. I missed.'
'Figured,' Michael says. 'One in a million bad fucking luck.' There's a moment of silence, then; 'Hey, asshole, are you gonna look at me?'
Ray forces his gaze up, trying not to cringe as Michael's wide brown eyes rake over him. It's hard to look at him, but so, so good to see him alive.
'You look worse than I do,' Michael says, and he looks worried. Worried about Ray, what the fuck?! He's not the one lying in bed with one limb fewer than he ought to have.
'I'm okay. I'm really sorry.'
'Quit apologising! God, you've been punishing yourself all week, haven't you? And Geoff and Ryan's fucking idiocy didn't exactly help.'
'I think he expected me to kill him,' Ryan says thoughtfully. 'Didn't fight me, either.'
'Well you're wearing the fucking mask, what else was he gonna think?' Michael says hotly. 'If Geoff fucking blacklisted me, then you turned up looking like that I'd think you were gonna kill me too.'
'You'd fight, though.'
'Hell yeah I would. I'll fight you right now. I'll fight anyone. I'll fight myself,' Michael says, and sobers slightly. 'Kinda gonna have to if I want to walk again any time soon.'
Ray winces at that, and Michael punches his arm.
'You stop that shit right now. No guilt, no apologies, and definitely no attempted suicide by Ryan, asshole!'
'I'm sorry,' Ray says, without thinking.
'Jesus Christ, what did I just say?' Michael says, but he's smiling. 'Get your ass in the shower and change your clothes, okay? You smell like a hobo.'
'My stuff's still here?' Ray asks. He wouldn't put it past Geoff to have had it all burned.
'Yeah it is. Geoff didn't get that far before I got lucid enough to shout at him.'
'He was so scared for you,' Ray says.
'So were you. So was everyone. Doesn't mean he gets to throw you on the street. It was a fucking accident!'
Ray feels the ache in his heart ease, just a little. He stands up, slow and careful, but Michael notices the way he's holding his ribs.
'You're moving weird. What happened? Ryan, you said you didn't do anything!'
'I didn't!' Ryan insists.
'No, it was me,' Ray says. 'I wrecked my bike when I left Caleb's. Couldn't keep it together.'
'Yeah, Jack found it,' Ryan says, sounding guilty. 'It's in pieces in the garage. She was worried, but Geoff wouldn't let her look for you. Said if you weren't at the scene you must be fine.'
'Oh my god,' Michael says, angry red suffusing his face. 'What the fuck is wrong with him? What the fuck is wrong with you, Ryan? You didn't look for him either! If Gav hadn't tracked his phone for me we never would've found him.'
Ryan looks at the floor. Ray knows he's looking like a kicked puppy under the impassive mask. 'I know. It was easier to be angry.'
Ray nods. He gets it, he really does. He would have given a lot to be angry at Geoff in the last few days, but he could never quite manage it.
'It's just bruised ribs, I think,' he says. 'I'm okay.'
Michael reaches out and yanks at Ray's clothes, pushing up his hoodie and t-shirt. Ray hasn't looked at his own body, living in the same clothes and not washing, and even he's surprised by the massive expanse of dark bruising that covers his left side.
'Jesus. Fucking. Christ,' Michael says, slowly and deliberately. 'Here's the plan, okay? You're going to wash up and get some takeout or something, because you fucking stink and I don't think you've been eating. Then you're going to get an x-ray, because that looks fucking terrible. Then you can watch me scream at Geoff for being a massive asshole and listen to his heartfelt apology to you. And then you're going to keep me company until I can start getting a prosthetic leg sorted out, so I don't go crazy or have to murder Gavin. Okay?'
Ray smiles for the first time in days. So many things are messed up, but Michael is still Michael.
'Yeah, I can do that.'