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He takes a drag of the cig slowly, holding the smoke in his chest for a moment before exhaling it. The cacophony of last night’s festivities has faded to a handful of hair-of-the-dog stragglers, everyone else too passed out to continue. The Blackwarren is nearly quiet, for the first time in a long time.
Of course, the party happens the night he isn’t here. It doesn’t surprise him. Once, he would’ve thought he was sent away these nights to protect his already weak hearing; An act of kindness. Now, he knows better than to assume the flea-ridden rats of the gang are capable of such a thing.
Checking his pocketwatch, it’s half past four in the morning. Argus’ job ended two and a half hours ago, but he couldn’t get away from the noble house for an hour past that, and it’s already an hour’s walk from Hightown to Darktown, depending on how fast you’re going. He’s tired, his feet ache, and he’s sick of the stuffy formal wear he had to don to attend that gala.
He reaches up and flicks a tiny lever on the contraption wrapped around his ear, and the sounds of rattish snoring and clinking glasses cuts out nearly entirely. Now, he has plausible deniability to ignore anyone trying to bother him before he can get some rest.
Avoiding the bottles, sticky patches of various liquids (blood, various alcohol, other things he’d like to ignore), bodies, and miscellaneous weapons is a challenge in itself, and requires no small amount of dexterity. Dexterity was always Fiona’s area of expertise, but he somehow manages to find a clean enough path to get where he needs to go. Some sleepy, drunken hands try to grab at his ankles, but a brief kick at them is enough for them to get the hint.
He takes another drag his cigarette as he descends the steps into the darkness that is the so-called “residential” area of the Blackwarren, which is to say it’s intended for sleep and is the only space with any form of defendable privacy in the whole nest. There are rooms with shoddy locks, doors that don’t close or open all the way, and the air seems to be permanently damp. He walks through the hall, more passed out partygoers on the floor here, too, though these ones are out cold.
He heads down another half-level, towards where the “offices” are, as the rooms get gradually more secure. He fishes his key out of his pocket and jams it into his bedroom’s lock, jiggling it a bit to get it to click right and let him in.
Thankfully, nobody had had the bright idea of trying to break in while he was out (this time), and he can easily get his suit off and into something more comfortable. He folds the faux-expensive suit carefully, tucking it away in a box behind a pile of books under his bed. He removes the metal box from around his ear, careful to disconnect the cord that leads into his skull, and places it on his nightstand, before promptly falling atop the unmade bed, yanking a sheet over himself and falling asleep.
His dream is exactly what it has been for weeks; he and Fiona, out on the job, perched up in some rafters above a storehouse. Her gaze is calculated as always, elegant and balanced on the metal beam like she was born half feline. Argus isn’t anywhere as graceful, but he’s closer to the wall, anyways, to ensure he won’t fall. He hears footsteps approaching from the other end of the building and alerts Fiona with a hand signal. She acknowledges, grinning at him, before blowing him a kiss and making her way closer to the entrance.
The dream skips here, and suddenly they’re sprinting through streets. He knows that they’re being chased by the people he’d heard earlier, and that there had been too many of them and a handful of city guards, too, when it was supposed to be a small handful of businessmen and nobody more. They swerve quickly into an alleyway. Fiona, ever the acrobat, is quick to find a way up onto the rooftops. Argus, being heavier and less adept at climbing, elects to just sprint forwards, ending up on the other side of the alley before their pursuers enter the other end.
He pauses, looking up to Fiona, and she signs ‘See you home’ from her perch. He nods, affirmative, and they both keep on their respective paths. It was the last time he saw her.
He wakes up abruptly, gasping, and looks to the empty bed on the other side of the room. Empty as it has been for weeks.
He doesn’t have to get off the bed to reach into his jacket and pull out a cigarette, lighting it with a match from the bedside table. Fiona never let him smoke in the room; she couldn’t stand the smell. But, she isn’t here, and he has nothing to stop him now.
He doesn’t even know if Fiona’s still alive; after she was caught, there’s no small list of crimes they could’ve tied back to her, especially some of her earlier ones, before she got better at leaving no evidence. That’s if they didn’t just kill her outright. She could be dead and discarded, or rotting in a prison cell somewhere, and he has no way of knowing. He can’t risk getting so close to the city guard to find out, and Rickiter, the good-for-nothing bastard, refuses to let anyone else try.
He doesn’t know exactly how long he stays for, but eventually, the vibrations of someone hitting his door break him out of his reverie. Speak of the devil, and he’ll send his mice to summon you to his office.
He’s half tempted to leave the hearing aid on the nightstand, just to piss the rat-faced fuck off. But he knows that’d only cause himself more strife, so he shouts at the person on the other side of the door that he’ll go to Rickiter in a second, and the vibrations stop. He reattaches the hearing aid, letting the uncomfortable feeling of noise returning to his ears settle as he dresses himself. He puts on his go-jacket, too, an oversized, warm thing with a dozen pockets full of anything he’d need for a few hours out on the streets (money, cigarettes, a few small knives, a spare charger, a couple tiny healing potions, his mum’s locket, Fiona’s signet ring, amongst other things) He’d taken up the habit of wearing it even without the intention of leaving, just in case, because you never know when you’re going to need to leave quickly. Especially when it comes to talking to this skaven in particular.
Leaving the room, he spots the door opposite his open, and inside he can see the two boys Rickiter picked off the streets of Redtown. Presumably to eventually replace Fiona, he assumes, and maybe him too, given how one is apparently some sort of dancer, and the other is a stocky thing with a flute pressed to his lip. Dexterity and brawn, a familiar story. The sound of the flute is gentle and airy against his ears, a sound he’d once have stopped entirely to listen to attentively, but now can’t find the energy to bother.
The dancer is up on the tips of his toes, balancing by some miracle and apparent years of practice, using a light-emitting cantrip to make tiny fairy lights dance along his arms as he spins. He knows their names; was introduced to them when they moved in, and forgetting something like that was never something he was able to do. Memory is his strong suit, what he’s kept around for, and those little details always stuck around for far longer than he ever wants them to. He knows their names and he won’t use them, won’t acknowledge their presence.
He keeps walking. Rickiter’s office is only a little way down the hall, all things considered, and he knocks once on the door before opening it immediately. The sound of the gentle flute doesn’t fade, his modified heightened hearing picking it up easily, and it carries on even past the thick wooden door of the office.
The pale skaven is as he always is; snow-white fur never dirtied, black leather jacket with a red silk interior, sitting at a desk stolen from some noble house he’d burnt down, reading through a paper in front of him. Argus is nearly surprised there isn’t some creature dissected on the desk. His memory fills in the gaps of every time there has been, because of course it does, and he keeps his face flat and expressionless despite the shiver that crawls up his spine.
He knows Rickiter would just revel in his discomfort, so he won’t give him the satisfaction. He wonders if the skaven finds the lack of response just as entertaining; the idea of training someone, who used to be so naïve and empathetic, to show such apathy, must appeal to his sadism at least a little.
“You didn’t report back.” Never any pleasantries, with this one. Not unless he’s trying to rub salt in a wound, where he’ll pretend all is fine and dandy when he knows you’ve just twisted your ankle then had to run on it anyways, and really should go sit down and get your weight off it. Then, menial ‘how are you?’s or ‘how’s the weather outside?’s are all he seems to ask.
“Didn’t get back ‘til five. Didn’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.”
The rat looks thoroughly unamused, glancing up at him for barely a second before returning to reading the paper in front of him. Always so busy. There’s always something more important to be doing than talking to you. “Yes, well, you know how important my looks are to this job. Now, tell me what happened.”
Argus puts his hands behind his back, a habit he’s developed when talking to Rickiter. He habitually signs when he speaks, most of the time, especially around the few people he needs to speak to when his hearing aid is unusable. Rickiter, unfortunately, falls on that list, but something about using the same language he used with Fiona, or his mother, with this overgrown bleached sewer rat, rubs him the wrong way.
Besides, putting his hands behind his back makes him look like some sort of soldier with proper posture, and that probably sates Rickiter’s need to be obeyed at least a little. Egotistical prick.
“Exactly what we expected,” he says, shrugging lightly. “Rich assholes moseying about the party, assuming the walls don’t have ears.”
Rickiter doesn’t look up at him, but his paw makes a ‘go on’ gesture. Argus resists the urge to just stay silent, if only to get a rise out of him. Invoking his anger has never ended well for anyone, certainly not those who work under him, but Argus is far beyond to point of caring about that fact. If he wanted loyal, respectful underlings, he should try to make sure all his underlings are actually safe, and not rotting in a cell somewhere.
He pauses for just a second too long, and continues speaking just as he can tell the other’s patience is waning. “I didn’t get to hear much especially useful information, mostly things to file away for future reference. Apparently, some scandal between two Houses occurred, so that was all anyone was interested in talking about. Made it difficult to hear anything worthwhile.”
The rat exhales in a way that generally indicates irritation, though any expression of normal emotion should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to Rickiter. “And what did you learn?”
Argus knows that Ratty McRatface wants him to just repeat, verbatim, the useful information he heard. Thanks to his far-above-average memory capabilities, he can simply repeat whole conversations word-for-word months after they happened, if need be. Like a human recording stone. It’s part of why Rickiter keeps him around, even with his attitude and inability to sneak, steal or naturally hear. Should his head get dunked in water, or a drink spilled on his head, or anything at all damage the little contraption on his ear, he won’t be able to hear anything quieter than a banshee scream until it’s fixed.
Way back when Argus first joined the gang, Rickiter had made some rudimentary version of the hearing aid that let him barely pick up the sound of someone speaking loudly, but even that was so much better than what had been. Over time, the sound got better, louder, clearer, until it got to where it is now, with him being able to hear a mouse at sixty feet without strain.
Between the unnaturally good hearing and the naturally encyclopedic memory, and mixed with his fortunate face and ability to pretend to be well-mannered, Argus is an awfully effective reconnaissance spy. At least, Rickiter thinks so. Sent into a noble gathering as a butler or, in some cases, a travelling nobleman from far away, and it’s honestly miraculous what he can learn.
Argus knows that Rickiter wants this meeting done as soon as possible. He also knows that Rickiter is an early riser, and the fact that he let Argus sleep as long as he did before sending someone after him is a sign of some sort of twisted kindness. It’s nearing on eleven in the morning, and Argus is on about six hours of sleep after a twenty three hour day. He should also want this meeting over quickly and painlessly, and yet…
“A nobleman had an affair with a gardener, I believe, but when his wife found out, she—”
A four-foot-tall rat is by no means bigger than Argus, nor should it have the capacity to be anything other than slightly humorous. This one, however, has long ago mastered the art of intimidating people much bigger than it. And Argus may talk a big game about hating the guy, he knows that ultimately, Rickiter can and will find a replacement for him if need be, and the process of being replaced will not be pleasant for him. The glare Rickiter levels on him communicates that very simply, and the faint sounds of the flute in the other room pause. He can hear the boys start to talk for a moment, entirely unaware, and Rickiter continues to glare. He can’t hear outside the office, not like Argus can.
Argus ultimately doesn’t want to die yet. And if he did, certainly not by any method of Rickiter’s.
He clears his throat, blinking a few times to break the intense eye contact without showing such weakness as actually looking away. “A couple odd convoys, poorly-guarded holiday homes, a handful of future business deals and a few looking for some jobs to be done on the down-low.” He fishes through his jacket pocket once Rickiter removes the glare, pulling out a folded piece of paper with that information and all the associated details on it. He’d written it on the walk home, knowing that if Rickiter caught him before he got some rest that he’d want to get out of it as quick as possible.
He tosses it onto the desk, knowing the other would immediately know what it was. He usually does it even if he’s not trying to get out of a conversation, just in the event his hearing aid runs out of battery and he can’t communicate all the details through signs. “Nobody special turned up, nothing else of note happened, nobody found out anything about me, cover was safe the whole night.”
Rickiter skims over the paper, nodding slightly before putting it down. “What took you so long to get back?”
He huffs, tension broken, fear bleeding into last night’s forgotten annoyance. “Drunk chatty noblemen and some guards with integrity. Wanted to walk me to my hotel to make sure I got there safe, since I’m a rich man in a strange city without my own guards. Had to make sure they wouldn’t see me leave immediately after they did. Then, chatty woman on the street.”
If Argus had not already tested his patience earlier, he knows Rickiter would find his strife amusing. As is, he doesn’t respond besides an acknowledging nod before returning to skimming the document from before. “Anything else to report, then?”
“No.”
“Nothing happened to—” Same question nearly every time they speak. Of course, if Argus was an inventor and somebody else went around using one of his best inventions day-in, day-out, he’d be concerned about it too. But Rickiter could at least pretend to value him beyond the hearing aid and memory.
“No. It’s fine. I’ll charge it this evening.”
A flash of irritation ripples through the rat’s body language, gripping his quill tighter and tensing his shoulders. “Do not cut me off.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Am I excused?”
A nod and a wave of the hand is all he’s given. He takes what he gets, spinning on his heel before marching straight back to his room, turning the hearing aid off the second the flute starts up again, accompanied by laughter. He doesn’t know the first thing about how the thing works in terms of it’s charging up (Purely technological? Magic? Bit of both?), but he attaches it to the little device that gives it it’s power before he curls right back up in bed.
-
“I don’t get it,” Fiona says, looking up at the letters on the side of the building. “It’s just noise.”
“Exactly,” Argus replies simply, adjusting his sleeve cuffs as he walks towards the entrance. “It’s fifty people all playing different instruments, entirely in sync with one another. Isn’t it impressive?”
“It’s fifty people blowing into metal for an hour.” she deadpans, unimpressed still, but walking beside him all the same. She’s wearing a silky dress (given to her for infiltration jobs she never goes on, unless with him), and she looks stunning. She even put her hair up in curls, framing her face. It’s so unlike how she usually dresses, in ever-dirtied baggy pants and cut-up tops, that she almost looks like another person entirely.
“Just an hour, and then we can go do whatever you like, Toms,” He puts a layer of molasses-thick sweetness in his tone, teasing, flashing her a playful grin.
She grumbles to herself a little, adjusting the dress a little, but doesn’t show too much displeasure on her face as they approach the ticket box. “Uh huh. You’re lucky I love you.”
“I know.”
-
It’s nearly four in the evening when he wakes again. Blinking away the image of Fiona dashing away on rooftops, he gets up slowly. Heading out to the now-alive-again Blackwarren isn’t something he’s ever particularly eager to do, but he needs to eat something, so he reattaches the hearing aid, grabs his go-jacket and heads out.
It’s noisy again. He hates it, all the sounds filling up his over-sensitive hearing like the world’s worst static. He turns the dial on the thing all the way down, and it helps, barely. The thing isn’t really geared for the day-to-day constant influx of living in a space with a hundred (or more) others. He walks quick and with purpose towards the bar, which backs into a crude kitchen. The barkeep spots him on approach and spots the glare on his face even sooner, which naturally means—
“Why, Argus! You’ve finally graced us with your presence!” Loud, over-the-top, and sets every other overgrown rat in the vicinity into ‘play’ mode. “Tell, Argus, how was that meeting?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Ha! That good, ay?” comes from one of the patrons at the bar. “C’mon, boy—”
“Just give me the damn rations.” He ignores the patron entirely, glaring at the barkeep with as much Rickiter’s-apprentice he can muster. The rats never seem to know when to quit, but occasionally, a reminder of who Argus might go tattling to can smooth over an interaction.
Occasionally.
“Now, now,” the barkeep’s scratchy voice mockingly soothes, “We just want to know how it went. Why such hostility?”
What Argus thinks is, I should flay you alive and use your coat as a rug. Saying that would certainly get the barkeep to back off some, especially given it wouldn’t be Argus’ first time laying hands on a member of the gang who pushed a step too far, and they can’t prove that he wouldn’t. More importantly, they all know someone within the warren who most definitely would.
Argus is not that someone, though. And he will not become that someone.
“Hangover.” He’s not a drinker. “Do your job and give me the damned rations already. I’ve got work to do.” He’s going to go right back to sleep once he’s done eating. The barkeep doesn’t know that.
The barkeep rolls his beady eyes, which is more a gesture of the head than anything, but begins to get the food. The patron, however, doesn’t let up. “Boss put you to work already, ay?”
His fists itch. “You know how he is.” It’s not like he would get in trouble for hitting this guy. He’s not anybody important. Any other Knife would’ve thrown a hit by now.
“Don’t we all. Don’t you just want to tell him where he can shove his scalpels?”
The usual goading. Rickiter’s known well for his experiments and, moreso, his responses to insubordination. Some of the bar rats find it amusing to try to convince him to piss him off, just to see what would happen to him. Never seen Rickiter cut up a human, he supposes. He himself doesn’t know if the pale skaven actually has before, and he’s not interested in finding out.
The rations are dropped in front of him. Hardtack is the bulk of it, because its awful and simple to make, and the rest is stale nuts and chewy fruits. He really should start buying his own meals, outside the warren, but they hardly pay him enough to have clothes on his back, let alone decent food.
The good thing is he has the food now, so he can leave the bar. But, of course, it’s never that simple, and as he turns on his heel, he feels a paw wrap around his forearm.
Far closer than it should’ve been, abruptly louder than he was braced for, “I’m not done talking to you, boy,”, in the scratchy tone only a seething skaven can achieve. The hairs on the back of Argus’ neck rise. Some of the people and rats around pause what they’re doing, conversations fall silent, waiting to see a fight break out.
He yanks his arm free, turning as he walks backwards so he can face the patron. “I told you,” in a voice that shakes with barely-smothered anger, “I’ve got work to do.”
The patron’s fur is a few shades darker than mouse-brown. Usually, the darker the fur, the stronger the skaven. There are exceptions, his mentor being a blaring example, but that’s the status quo. This skaven is a few drinks in, wobbly on his feet, anger exacerbated by the alcohol. He’s looking for a fight, and there are goosebumps under Argus’ jacket where he’d been grabbed. This guy isn’t anybody important. A grunt, face in the crowd. Nobody anybody would miss.
Argus was not the one to throw the first hit. The patron over swung, missing entirely, and immediately Argus is overwhelmed by the sound of cheers as the warren realizes a fight is starting. Between the sounds, the already hardly contained anger, and the crawling skin from being grabbed, the decision is made. He stuffs the rations into his pocket, finds steady footing and brings his arms up.
The skaven’s balance is completely off, his tail swinging wildly trying to compensate. One solid jab in the shoulder sends him tumbling backwards into the bar.
He watches the patron recover, his head physically wobbling with the spinning sensation that comes with being drunk and fighting. He knows he should disengage. He knows he’s only giving everyone else what they want, that a win in a fistfight is a loss in the long run.
He knows that.
The drunkard struggles to stumble back up. He falls a few times in the process.
Argus can scarcely recall a time he’s crossed through the bar without being antagonized by him or someone like him.
He steps forward and grabs a fistful of fur on the scruff of his neck. He won’t keep this fight going. But gods help him, he’ll send a message, even if it won’t stick for any longer than a handful of hours before the next bastard tries their luck.
He smashes the skaven’s face into the bar he was trying to push himself off. The barkeep makes a protesting sound, which goes entirely unheard by the roar of the crowd. He spots the patron’s tankard, a metal thing, and Argus is a little disappointed it isn’t glass. Glass would smash nicely. Metal won’t.
Using the grip he still has on the scruff, he yanks the skaven’s face off the bar and forcefully drops him to the ground. His skull makes that hollow thud sound that tends to happen when heads hit the floor. Argus breathes deeply, still overwhelmed. The crowd expects him to keep going. In the past, maybe he would’ve. Maybe he would’ve kept going far beyond what the crowd expected. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He takes a few steps back, forcing his legs to stay steady, forcing the anger and frustration down. He turns and storms towards the exit, the crowd parting to stay out of his way, the patron left groaning on the ground.
-
The air of a city isn’t exactly fresh, but it’s better than a rat’s den.
Hours later, Argus is calmer. He’s wandering the border streets between Darktown and Redtown, near-dead cigarette in hand, clearing his head and avoiding guards, as he has been for hours. Pretending he’s a normal, everyday citizen of Nithris.
He hears them before he sees them, of course. He recognizes the slight accent of the dancer, “What’s the hold up?” in a teasing tone, “well?”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your…” the musicians voice, quieter. Argus finds his feet taking him towards the source of the voices, listening to the only-slightly-hushed conversation. “Yes! Be in awe of me! Your lord and saviour!” is said far too loud to have any imitation of stealthiness.
He doesn’t approach the boys but watches from a shadowy corner as they sing their little song and manage to get into the house. The guards finish their round of the street. Faintly, Argus can hear the boys talking from inside the house, though he doesn’t care to discern the exact words. A simple break-in job, by the sound of it, collecting valuables.
Nothing interesting, really. So, Argus waits for the watchmen to be fully out of sight before he begins to move on.
He doesn’t intend to return to the Blackwarren until the early hours, when there would be the least number of rats scurrying about, and he’d be able to get back to his room without being bothered. He continues his aimless path down the curling streets of Nithris.
He's a few blocks away when he hears the explosion. The ground seems to shake for a moment, and he spins to see what just happened—
The house the boys were in had gone up in flames, the first hints of smoke beginning to curl into the sky.
He’s already at the end of the street again before he realizes he’s moved. The smell of smoke and fire is everywhere now, and he can see the house—completely and entirely engulfed in light, the embers making the walls seem to glow, smoke and flames pouring out the shattered windows. There are a few scattered people around, morbidly observing, but the kids aren’t anywhere to be seen on the street...
There’s a nearly deafening BOOM! as the ceiling crumbles and crashes down, sending a wave of embers and sparks flying onto the street. Argus hesitates, for a moment, before walking quickly forward—where are those kids? Did they get out? Looking at the crumbling, flaming walls and collapsed ceiling, he dreads to think what would’ve happened if they didn’t.
There’s a movement in the doorway.
A weak, burnt hand reaches out of it. Then another, and a boy drags himself out of the inferno, coughing and wheezing and sobbing.
Argus reaches him just as he’s managed to get fully out of the house, laying on the paved road as he desperately tries to regain his breath, coughing out smoke from burnt lungs. Burns and scrapes cover him, bruises and smoke cling to his skin. He falls limp just as Argus falls to his knees next to him, desperate to help but having no idea where to start.
He glances at the doorway the boy had somehow gotten himself out of, stares into the blazing fire. He strains his ears to hear anything beyond crackling timber, and realizes there would be no more kids managing to drag themselves out of that house tonight.
At his knees, even unconscious, wheezing and hacking breaths continue. Argus hasn’t the first idea how to help, beyond emptying the tiny healing potion from his pocket down the boy’s burnt throat. Beyond this, with all the other injuries, he can’t help. But, he does know someone with medical experience. And so, he scoops up the boy, and rushes back to the Blackwarren, ignoring the onlookers and the city watch barking orders at people. Later, maybe they’d wonder where the man had taken the dying boy, but for now, they didn’t think to stop him, too busy staring at the burning timber that was once a home.
--
“Why the fuck not?” He demands, hitting his fist against the rat’s far-too-fancy desk.
Rickiter doesn’t react to the outburst, sitting entirely unphased. “We can’t afford to be sending people to the city watch’s home turf, Argus. Don’t be stupid.”
“She’s in there! What if—”
“Do. Not. Raise your voice at me, boy,” Rickiter’s voice is seething, but his body language remains unphased. If Argus wasn’t wearing his hearing aids, he wouldn’t know anything was amiss. “I gave it to you, I took you in when you were nothing, I made you something. As I did with Fiona. She made her mistake, and you know where it got her. I encourage you not to do the same. I will not be as forgiving as the city watch, do you understand?”
Anger and resentment bubbles under Argus’ skin, threatening to boil over, daring him to leap across this desk and show the rodent exactly what he thought of that thin-veiled threat. And he would’ve, too, if he hadn’t heard that faint sound of a dying bell, glanced over to the shelf…
He meets the pixie’s hollow eyes, it’s wings removed and framed in glass beside their owner’s cage, and watches the life drain out of it, dark green pooling at the bottom of the jar.
He blinks, snapping himself out of the trance, and glances back to Rickiter, who has his answer.
--
Argus sits down, impatient, bouncing his leg and staring at the door of the lab. Within the minute, he’s back to pacing the hall. Anyone else is wise enough to avoid it on a normal day, but especially now, with Argus borderline prowling, it’s as dead as—
…
It’s been hours. Or, at least, it feels like it. Rickiter hadn’t appreciated him bursting into his office, but upon seeing the seconds-from-death body in his arms, had dropped what he was writing and hurried him to the laboratory. He’d placed the kid—barely fifteen, christ, he shouldn’t have even been in that house, let alone the gang—on Rickiter’s surgery table, ignored the prickling memories of what happened to everyone else who had been on that table, before being promptly kicked out.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette, cursing quietly as he realizes he’s just about out. He uses a lamp in the hall to light it.
He tried to reassure himself; Rickiter was cruel, yes, but the kid was one of his investments. His projects. He wouldn’t let him just die. That was one thing Argus could count on Rickiter for; defying the laws of nature in ways that would surely go against even the most twisted of religious creeds.
Argus forces the memories of flutes and laughter from his mind, ignores the growing dread at what was taking so damn long. Surely, either he could save the kid, or he’d be dead by now.
He swallows the frustration and continues pacing, waiting. Waiting. Waiting…
Argus is about to go knocking on the door, demanding to know what’s going on in there, when the door opens. The skaven doesn’t say anything, and his hands are covered in blood and soot, and he’s already going back into the laboratory. Argus follows quickly, shutting the door behind him, and takes in the scene on the table.
Rickiter’s saying something, but Argus doesn’t hear a word of it as he tries to comprehend where the dozens of tubes, cords and wires disappear into the boy’s chest, which rises and falls in shaky, stuttering motions. Argus may not be one of the gang’s assassins, but he knows the sounds of a death rattle, and it grates against his ears as the boy’s unconscious form pitifully tries to inhale and exhale.
There’s bandages pressed over the wounds where the cords enter, so Argus can’t see exactly what the damage is, but the rest of the scene and Argus’ memory of carrying him here filled in the blanks. His pants lay partly cut away and bandage is around each of his thighs, one of his feet is wrapped and splinted, his hands and arms are covered in what he assumes is a burn cream, his entire face is red and scratched up, smudged with soot.
It’s a miracle he’s this stable, on death’s doorstep as he is.
“Boy,” Rickiter snaps. Argus realizes a moment too late he was probably speaking for a reason, and probably shouldn’t have tuned him out like that. He tears his eyes away from the body on the table, and stares at Rickiter with wide eyes.
“Is he gonna make it?” He asks, trying to ignore the pit growing in his gut. There’s the image of the ceiling caving in and sending embers everywhere, and the distinct lack of the flute that always followed the dancer around. He can almost hear it, an echo of a memory.
Rickiter makes an irritated face for a second, swiping at some of the blood on his paw and only serves to make more of a mess of his usually snow-white fur. “If he makes it through tonight, we’ll see,” His voice is contained, like he’s trying not to snap at Argus for not listening, but there’s something else he can’t place. “There’s damage to the lungs, couple broken ribs, irritation to the eyes, a broken ankle, not mentioning the bruises, minor cuts and all the burns. Hard to say how severe the damage to the head, eyes or ears is while he’s unconscious.”
It’s all said in that tone that Argus can’t quite place, irritation mixed with something else. But he’s distracted before he can work it out, stepping forward to comb a hand carefully through the boy’s hair, removing some of the dirtiness from the curls.
“Now,” Rickiter begins, voice full of distain, “Tell me what the hell happened.”
Argus sighs, his entire palm now covered in varying shades of black, red and brown, “I don’t know, exactly. They were breaking into a place to get late fee, next thing anyone knows the entire place is ablaze. Some sort of explosion from inside. This one crawled out, the other didn’t.” He can feel the heat of the boy’s skin still, and moves to get a bucket of water and a rag.
Rickiter’s brow furrows, mulling over the information as he watches Argus wrings the rag out and begins to carefully wipe the boy’s face, removing the layer of filth on it. There are a couple of minor cuts the dirt had been hiding, but nothing that needed tending to.
“An explosion?” Rickiter asks once the boy’s face is looking cleaner and Argus goes to start on his neck. He’d been writing something down, and it had been silent aside from the rattling of the boy’s breaths, so the sound of his voice nearly startles Argus.
“An explosion. Loud bang followed by fire.”
Rickiter gives him a look, but he ignores it. He wipes the side of the boy’s neck, careful not to apply too much pressure to it.
“An explosion, in Redtown?” Rickiter prompts. Argus understands what he’s getting at, now.
“Yeah. I mean, there was a bit of a crowd, couple cops trying to get things under control. Just seems like a freak accident.”
Rickiter nods once, but continues to question, “Was it just an accident?”
“I don’t know,” Argus snaps, getting sick of the questions he can’t answer. The only people who knew why that house went up in flames were either dead or unconscious, and Argus wasn’t either of them. In his anger, though, he accidentally applied just a tiny bit of pressure on the rag, and the boy’s throat, and the response was immediate.
Awful, desperate hacking sounds, and Argus backs up as Rickiter drops the clipboard and hurries over, paws immediately going to boy’s chest, onto the tubes and wires. Argus doesn’t question it, because Rickiter knows more than he does about all this medical stuff. The boy keeps coughing, though it slows, and it’s only when he’s nearly settled does he spot the look on Rickiter’s ratty face.
He’s… enjoying this.
Argus has known about the skaven’s sadistic streak for years. It’s hard to not know; the pixies alone tell enough tales, not mentioning his other victims. Argus considers himself lucky to have only been under his scalpel once, and he was pointedly unconscious for the entire process. He’s seen dozens of small beasts and beings get cut up for nothing more than morbid curiosity. He’s seen how Rickiter refuses others basic necessities just to see them struggle, watched him cut deep emotional wounds just to watch them try to bite their tongue and hold back tears.
Rickiter is cruel, yes, and he would not allow this boy to die. Because he needs him, for one, but because that would be no fun for him. There’s no pain in just dying, or at least none he could observe.
He’s known, and yet somehow it never occurred to him that he’d do the same to the kid.
The boy’s hacking silences, and Argus just watches his old mentor with a sense of horror. It takes him a moment as a result to realize the coughing wasn’t the only thing that silenced—there’s that shuddering rattle and then it’s quiet once more, aside from the sounds of Rickiter’s machines.
“What—” Argus begins, but Rickiter’s already moving, hitting a button on one of his machines that seems to do something, as the kid’s body jolts. He doesn’t start breathing again. The skaven curses under his breath. “What’s happening?”
The rat doesn’t answer, just grunts, moving the bandages off the kid’s chest just barely to see underneath—and he curses again, and without looking in Argus’ direction, “Go to the cooler in the corner and get some ice,” as though that made any sense right now. The hell was some ice going to do to restart the boy’s breathing?
“Ice?” Argus questions, anger seeping into his tone. It’s going too fast—the body on the table, the odd tone of voice when the skaven had listed his injuries, the rattling breaths followed by dead silence. He opens his mouth to speak again but is cut off.
“Yes, ice,” Rickiter snaps, glaring. Just this morning, Argus would’ve cringed away from it, but this time is different. The boy isn’t breathing.
Another kid, dead under Rickiter’s so-called ‘care’.
“The fuck is ice going to do?” Argus bites back, gesturing at the kid’s still chest. “Fucking look at him! He’s dead, and it’s your fau—”
There’s hardly a second to react before the skaven has lunged over the table and buried his paw in his fringe, and next thing he knows pain explodes in his face as Rickiter slams it down into the space just beside the kid’s legs, dangerously close to the edge of the table. He stumbles down, tripping on his own feet as his hands fly to his broken nose.
Rickiter doesn’t let him fall, yanking him up again by the hair and pulling him over the table, holding his bloodied face far too close for comfort and seething, “You dumb, insolent whelp, how many times do I have to tell you the same fucking thing? Do. Not. Question. Me.” Each word is punctuated with a tightening in his hair, searing pain across his scalp as hairs break and rip. “Now, do as I say if you want the boy to have a modicum of a chance of survival, do you understand me?”
Argus’s vision is blurred, his breathing erratic as he tries to balance himself and stop the flow of blood from his face. There’s a ringing in his ears that makes it difficult to understand what the skaven is saying, but he catches enough to desperately nod within the confines of the paw in his hair. He can feel a headache building behind his eyes.
He’s released, and promptly falls to his knees beside the operating table, trying to steady his breathing and block the gushing blood coming from his nose with his shirt. He faintly hears another insult from the skaven, before he dashes off to go get that ice. By the time he’s back, Argus is barely recovered, and it occurs to him that it’s taking a bit too long to reorient himself.
The ringing in his ears isn’t going away. He reaches a hand up to the aid on his ear, blindly trying to turn it down or off to get it to stop. He manages to find the switch, but it doesn’t do anything—his hearing and the ringing stay, even as the dial is turned all the way down and he shouldn’t be able to hear a single thing.
“Boy.” Rickiter’s right next to him, voice low and tense. “Do you understand me?”
Argus opens his eyes, looking up at the skaven and seeing the remote in his hand. “What--” He breathes, headache pounding behind his eyes, vision swimming. “What did you—”
The skaven makes a show of pressing a button on the remote, and immediately the ringing dials up to a near-deafening level, the headache spreading to his entire skull. Argus doubles over, clutching his head desperately as he bites down a scream.
The pain is all-encompassing, and even if it’s only affecting his head, it feels like it’s weighing every other part of him down. He can’t think, breathe or move, forgetting everything outside of it. All his years of perfect recollection seem wiped away in an instant with the skull-splitting ringing, like someone’s taken a hammer to his skull repeatedly.
He can barely feel as the skaven puts his paw on the back of his skull, barely registers the hissed, “Do. You. Understand?”.
“Okay, okay, okay, yesyesyesyes I understand, please stop please--” He pleads, nearly sobbing with relief when the pressure on his skull ceases almost entirely, leaving just an echo of the previous agony.
He’s left heaving for air on the floor of Rickiter’s laboratory, arms shaking and vision slowly returning to normal. He takes a moment before he turns back to the skaven, trying to figure out what the hell that was, and finds the skaven’s resentful stare glaring down at him, paw still on the back of his head.
They just stare at each other for a moment, no words spoken, body of a cut-up, burnt fifteen year old boy on the table next to them. Remote in the skaven’s hand, bloody shirt in the human’s.
Argus opens his mouth, about to ask, “What the fuck was that?”, and Rickiter simply lifts the remote as though to use it again. Argus flinches away, and the overgrown rodent has the audacity to look satisfied with that response.
Most of Argus’ instincts tell him to keep his mouth shut and scurry out of the room now, anything to stop that migraine from being set off again. He doesn’t know how or when Rickiter managed to make something that caused such an agony, much less…
…the hearing aid, he realizes dully, as Rickiter stands back up and starts tending to the body again. The hearing aid that Rickiter had installed all those years ago. The one that should be turned off now, but wouldn’t, and responded to that remote…
His survival instincts tell him to get the hell out of there, out of the room with the sociopath and the dead kid.
His anger, though, it only grows, the knowledge that Rickiter gave himself this ability for who knows how long—maybe since he first put the hearing aid in Argus’ head, all those years ago—without his consent.. that part is so much louder, and Argus was never good at ignoring it in the first place.
He lunges at the skaven, taking him to the ground. There’s a snap! and a scratchy shout, but Argus has the element of surprise. He quickly snatches the remote from where it had been dropped in the scuffle, and tosses it just barely out of reach.
The vermin recover quickly, already nearly up, so Argus does the most logical thing and hits him across the snout. In return, he gets a sharp claw scratching into his side, digging in and drawing blood. The skaven writhes, trying to move out from under the human as he gears up to keep hitting the bastard—years on years of mistreatment coming out in the moment, prepared to beat the pale bastard to a pulp and then some.
He gets a few hits in before the skaven gets his bearings well enough to block a hit and take the opportunity to dig his claws into Argus’ ribcage properly, sharpened talons slicing skin like butter, digging in and in until he had enough of a grip to shove Argus off of him from the inside.
Argus goes crashing onto his shoulder, and since he’d grabbed the skaven’s wrist in a futile attempt to prevent him from digging into his chest any further, he can’t react in time to protect his head from hitting the floor, before Rickiter’s yanking his paw out of his ribs with the sound of bone cracking.
His vision blacks out. It hurts like a bitch, getting your rib broken from the inside, and his head has been dealt three too many blows in quick succession. Argus growls, and Rickiter growls back, meaner and crueller, knelt beside him. They’re both breathing heavy, blood is pooling on the floor and covering clothes, skin and fur. Argus can just barely see the skaven’s broken leg and busted nose, and between the pain and anger and exhaustion, he thinks it’s a little funny to see they match now.
That’s about the last thing he thinks before he realizes, while he’d been trying to recover on the floor, Rickiter had gotten the remote.
“Wai—” He begins, desperate, fear running down his spine like the ice on the table above. The button is hit.
In some sort of mercy, Argus doesn’t have the time to process the pain of the little device tucked between his skin and skull starting it’s hellish process of trying to split his head in two before he loses consciousness, falling entirely limp at the skaven’s feet.
--
The boy on the bed stirs, brows furrowing and taking a big inhale. He chokes on it quickly, devolving into a coughing fit.
There’s a paw on his back, patting lightly to help. Once the boy settles, the paw leaves, and a moment later a glass of water is pressed to his lip. “Drink,” his father murmurs, “it will help.”
He obeys, slowly sipping at the water provided. His limbs feel heavy, and he can’t sit up all the way on his own, supported by his father’s shoulder and a gentle paw. Once it’s done, his father helps him lay back down, and its then he notices the bandages wrapped around most of his body, the dull ache underneath them.
“W’ere’s Gui…” He whispers, losing his voice as soon as he got it.
“Shh,” his father murmurs, more of a white blob than a real thing in his vision, “Just rest, Marlo. Go back to sleep.”
Marlo makes a small noise, glancing around the room for any sign of his brother. Sleep takes him before he can spot him.