「 and my heart is gold 」

                 She doesn’t hear him. She doesn’t hear the knocking, her name called out loud. There is nothing to hear but her own cries and the sound of her heart beating erratically. Blood pumps in her ears and they ring, but she doesn’t care. She is a mess, but she doesn’t care. She’ll make herself sick with all this crying… she doesn’t care. Her eyes are screwed shut as she tries to forget, as she tries to stop – just… stop. But she can’t. 

                It’s not until he’s in front of her, until he’s touching her, that her eyes open. Rebecca stares at him, eyes red and cheeks wet, bloody smears across her jaw and down her chest, her hair in disarray. She stares at him, and she wants to let him hold her, to feel his arms around her shoulders and bury her nose in his neck but then she thinks of Marcus, of her husband, of the father of her children – and he’s gone. He’s gone and there’s nothing she can do about it.

               She loves Ben, but she loved Marcus first and she can feel her heart breaking, a part of it dying with the man who’d been her everything for so very long. She looks at Ben, and the words leave her lips without resistance, low and gravelly, her voice raw with her throat tight from the screams she’d thrown. “                         get out.”

Part of him is angry at her for doing this to herself, but he pushes that part of himself down because he knows her. He knows that her temper flares can become destructive on a regular day, so it comes as no shock to find her in such a disheveled state. His second hand left her hair so they were both on her face and he brushed the wetness away with his thumbs. He’s seen her teary before, but never like this and his heart aches for her because he knows that nothing he could say or do would help her right now.  Not when he wasn’t the man she currently wanted.

Ben shook his head at her words. Leaving her alone right now while she was like this didn’t sit well with him and even if she did make him leave, he’d be calling Ariadne or Jabba or even Vivianne to come down here instead. Ben raked his eyes over her form before his gaze eventually landed on her hands, probably the most damaged from the wreckage she had caused. Without a word, he stood and left her to go into the kitchen. He grabbed a tea towel, wetting it under the cold tap water and draining it a little bit. When he returned, it was with the wet rag and a bottle of whiskey.

He twisted the cap off the bottle, talking a quick sip before placing it down beside her. “Have a drink, love.” Ben murmured quietly before sitting on the other side of her, tilted slightly towards her. He took one of her hands gently in his and began washing the blood away carefully. “If you still want me to leave after I’ve got the blood off, then I will. But you shouldn’t be alone right now, Becca.”

Alice sat on the couch, in the dark, curled up into a little ball. She wasn’t wearing makeup, something that was absolutely unheard of for her, and she hadn’t actually gotten dressed since she heard the news about Bree. She had been a wreck, barely able to pull herself together for the stage let alone for keep it together while she was in the comfort of her own apartment, so when Ben came through the door she barely lifted er head and didn’t bother to hide the tears. He’d found her after she’d been kidnapped, he’d seen her at her worst, so she wasn’t worried about her appearance with him. Not that she would have been with anyone else. Bree was dead, and that was all that mattered.   

“Come in.” Her voice was quiet as she laid her head back down and moved her feet so he had a place to sit. She kept her eyes closed until she felt his weight sink into the cushions next to her, only then did she sit up and crawl into her best friend’s arms. “How are you?”

Seeing her like this takes him straight back to after she had been kidnapped by Jabba and there’s a pain in his gut over it as well as a guilt because he was working alongside that man now and sleeping with the woman who ordered it. Sometimes he felt it so strongly that he would shut himself up inside of his apartment for a few days and make contact with none of them unless he had a job to do. But here, now, it wasn’t the time for him to be wallowing in his own self pity. Instead, he moved over to the couch, opening his arms for her and tightening them around her once she leaned into him. “I’m fine. We aren’t talking about me right now, though.” Ben held her close against his side, leaning down and pressing a kiss on top of her head. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. If you want to cry, I’ll hold you until after you’re done or if you just want to sit here for a little while. But after that, you’re gonna have a shower and get some fresh clothes on while I make you some food, alright?”

Alice: Please come now.

Ben: I'm so sorry Ali.

Ben: Are you alright?

         Reclined in his bed, sheets drawn up to her chest and shoulders bare, Rebecca blinked at him owlishly, her lower lip tugging between her teeth as she cleared her throat and tussled her hair. “In my defence, you bought it for me… and you weren’t home. You should know better than to leave me alone with chocolate.” As she spoke, her eyes wandered appreciatively over his exposed arms, a smirk curving her lips, and her bare legs moved beneath the sheets. “So technically, you did that. It’s your fault.”

Ben snorted at her explanation. “I bought it for you to eat while we watched a movie so I didn’t feel bad about not sharing my skittles, but now I hold no remorse.” He shook his head at her, tossing the shirt into the dirty laundry basket before popping the DVD into it’s player. Returning to the bed, he crawled up to hover above her, hands and legs on either side of her body. “It’s not my fault if you are a grot, darling. And you are so banned from wearing my shirts while eating chocolate.” Leaning forward, he pressed a swift kiss to her lips before rolling on to his side of the bed and pulling the sheets until they covered him as well.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what exactly it was that they had formed a friendship over. When he had come to the Reds a lot of them hadn’t trusted him or his motives, but Ariadne had known exactly why he had been there. She knew what he and Rebecca had been doing for months already and because of that, it had become easy to trust her, to be able to confide in her when he needed to.  Over time she had become someone he just really enjoyed being able to hang out with on a regular basis. Ben had always been a bit of a bleeding heart, so being in love with someone and not being able to talk about it was not an easy task for him to take on. He didn’t want to talk to Vivianne or Jabba about such a thing, he couldn’t very well tell Alice despite the fact that he desperately wanted to. Ariadne provided just a bit of relief, even if Rebecca didn’t end up being the topic of their conversation.

“Excellent.”

“I see I can’t hide a thing from you. I’m actually here to murder everyone affiliated with your boss. I’m afraid you’re on the list as well.” Did he have a terrible dark and twisted sense of humor? Yes. Otherwise, he’d never be a cop, right? And the only reason he did not care if no one laughed at his jokes was that it (their reaction) amused him too much for him to stop. 

“You really want to waste your one birthday wish on me? I’m touched son, I really am,” he cleared his throat, and smiled. All things considered, he was kind of touched. “Alright, so, I may have agreed to an arrangement with your boss. As you can bet I’m not a single bit happy about it,” so she better not take advantage of this because his morals could easily make him walk back to jail, but this time, with a bunch of bribed judge and the Red Queen too. 

He hummed, disapproving of that sort of things, although, he appreciated the honesty. There was nothing he hated more than people lying to his face for the simple reason that he could almost always tell. 

“That’s why I’m here. My aim back when I was chief was not so much to dismantle the mob than it was to get rid of bribery in the first place.” He had to admit this much, he never knew she was the kind of people he should have fired.

He scoffed at him before tilting his head, musing over a rather morbid thought. “You know, it would actually be really ironic if you did. Imagine dying on your birthday. Like you’re meant to be celebrating life and being alive and all that jazz and then you’re dead. It’s almost poetic. Plus it would look pleasing on a tombstone.” It really was a morbid though, and maybe it was something that he had inherited from his father. 

“Eh, never really cared too much for birthday wishes, so I might as well.” He teased him slightly, smiling in return. “No, but I really do want to know.” Ben furrowed his brow as Ethan began to explain. A deal with Rebecca? His Rebecca? That was strangely ominous and could either be a very good thing or bad. “Wait a minute...are you telling me that she got you out of jail? My boss? Rebecca Heart? Got you out of jail?” He couldn’t be serious, neither of them could be. Last he checked, Ethan couln’t stand anything remotely mob related let alone of of it’s leaders. 

He’s in a bit of a state of shock for a moment, mouth opening and closing in an almost fish like manor before snapping it shut again. It was not expected, not in the slightest, but a smile slowly spread across his face. He would certainly be thanking her later at length.

Reigning himself in a little bit, he blinked before nodding his head. “Yeah well, this goes a little beyond bribery. This new chief, she’s not working with the law or with us, she’s on our own terms and is after the person most important to us.” She pursed his lips and shrugged before putting his hands into his pockets. “It’s not right.”

It was a dog eat dog world out there, and Lacey had foolishly tried to play a game she didn’t know how to play, consequently losing the things that had mattered to her most. Insecurities and fear had warped her ability to make decisions; her head wasn’t clear, neither was her heart. “Well, that’s a shame, Holmes.” No matter what, Lacey would not try to justify herself to him, even if the guilt did keep her up at night. “Is anyone ever really original, though?” It was a shame, though, losing who she had considered family - and still did, because she really liked Ben’s company. But it was too late to turn back the clock. 

Looking at her like this, he felt guilty. He knew exactly how it felt to be the outsider, to have people not trust you because they thought of you as some sort of traitor. When the ex-underboss of the Spades had thought he was relaying information to the police, things had been bad and he had the scar from when they had slit his throat to prove it. But he hadn’t one anything wrong, he was the one who had been betrayed by them. This was not the same circumstances as what he had been under. “I’m sorry, Keating. This is just the way it has to be.” An maybe he’s just being petty because she had hurt his girlfriend, but it wasn’t something he could so easily forgive. “I suppose not really. Even most songs are redone now.”

— She didn’t know that life, but she nodded as if she did. Akira hated pranks, she despised them as much as she did people scaring her. Hiding behind walls to make her jump out of her skin. Putting plastic wrap on the toilet seat. It was all the same to Akira and it would, in almost all cases, resolve in Akira crying and attacking whoever was doing it. She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at the mention of Amber, but pretended it was directed towards his last comment. “Mhm, of course. How could I forget you attract friends with your beauty and not your personality.” She laughed at his theatrics, for once, genuinely, “risks are always fun Ben, always.”

Ben rolled his eyes right back at Akira, shaking his head in amusement before he moved off his chair, sitting down on the floor with her and crossing his legs. He reached out a hand to bury it in brown fur, scratching behind Obi’s ear as the dog wagged it’s tail. “I don’t know how you could possibly forget. Clearly I was a supermodel in a past life. That’s where my beauty must have come from and all my friends just flock to it.” He laughed even if he was too old now to be making dumb jokes as he did. He was thirty now an should really know better, but he was still a child at heart. “That’s true. I think taking risks had always been a bit of a weakness of mine.”

“I did, just recently, in fact. I used to live in New York but my parents and I moved here for work.” She explained, though careful not to give away too much information. “Really? Chocolate is about all I ever eat, in any form. I can’t believe there are actually people that exist who don’t like it. It’s astounding.”

“That’s pretty cool. I’ve been to New York a couple of times in my travels, it’s certainly one of my favourite cities in America.” Ben crossed his arms, head tilting slightly. “What kind of work do you do?” He grinned slightly at her statement. It wasn’t the first time he had heard that, it was usually the reaction her got when he said he didn’t like chocolate as well as a smack upside the head from friends. “Ah, we’re a rare breed.”

      “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves telling lies. The nicest things I’ve ever said is that I’m not going to kill you.”

“Only because the boss lady would be cranky if you did. It doesn’t count.”

Alice’s grin never faltered, even as Ben’s face turned into one of mock disgust. “You love it, shut up.” She playfully stuck the tip of her tongue out at him, her nose crinkling as she thought about what he said for a moment. “Ew, no. I’m still twenty one and no one can tell me otherwise.” She nodded stubbornly, her features turning back from displeasure to happiness as he took the bag and cane from her. “Please do it! It can even be your Halloween costume. Hello, two in one present.”

“Nope, hate it. And I hate you. You are so rude and mean to me and if you poke that tongue out at me again, I am going to cut it out.” He teased right back at her, nose crinkled up in fake annoyance even though he was secretly entertained by her antics. “Nope. You are like basically half to fifty and only really five years younger than me so yeah.” He nodded his head. “Alright then, that’s my Halloween costume down.” He finally looked inside the bag, sifting through its contents. “Oh my god, Alice. Really? You got a seal at the zoo named after me?” He pulled her into a tight hug. “I love you, you know?”

Dahlia reached out and gave a light shake of his hand. “It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you, Ben.” She flashed her most charming and delighted smile. She had to admit, he was right. Junk food was a guilty pleasure. To make up for all the unhealthy food that she ate, Dahlia tried her best to excercise to avoid any of the nasty consequences that came with consuming so much sugar and salt. But she also happened to be so, so lazy. “It’s my one true weakness. If all else fails, my enemies will take me down with chocolate.”

“And it’s absolutely wonderful to meet you too, Dahlia. I don’t think I’ve seen you in Wonderland before. Did you just finish school and move here?” He tilted his head questioningly, popping another chip into his mouth as he waited for her answer. “You know, funnily enough, I don’t really like chocolate. I only really like it when it’s in ice cream. Or cake form, because cake can’t be hated. But I don’t really like actually blocks of chocolate.” Junk food was always a huge yes on his list, but chocolate? Never been a fan, which was something all of his past lovers had appreciated when they got a whole box of chocolate to themselves.

“Doesn’t mean that the few time I spend with women is not well spent. Believe me, you don’t want to see me with a woman,” he smiled sweetly, as if to suggest the worst (which was exactly what he meant to do) and nodded as if to agree with his son on not mentioning this ever again.

“You really think I’d be alone if I wanted to arrest her? I’m not suicidal, son,” no, he was not here to arrest Rebecca. “I need to speak with her. Obviously, it’s none of your business if you haven’t heard about it,” if he had a choice, no, he would not tell Ben about what it was that he and Rebecca were doing. 

“At the time? So you admit that some other time, you’ve been smoking pot?” His face grew more serious as he looked at his son, “you haven’t touched anything worse than that, have you now?” If that were the case, you could bet that he was going to lecture his sorry arse. 

“Huh uh? Enough mystery, what do you mean by that?” Probably that she had shot Rebecca, but you could never be sure. 

“Yeah, okay, we are absolutely not talking about this anymore nor will we ever again any time in the future.” Ben grimaced at the smile on his father’s face, as if they had been talking about  they best burgers they’d ever had or something of the like. It was interesting in the least to know that even after 30 years, Ethan still had the ability to scar him.

“I don’t know, for all I know being stuck in a cell for so long could have made you crazy homicidal. Or suicidal. Or anything of the like.” While he joked, internally he was just glad that Ethan wasn’t here to do anything to his people, to his girl. “Awe come on, you can tell me. It is my birthday after all, and I think that grants me privileges like being able to know secret business.” He nodded his head as if it was some super obvious answer. 

“No, because I am 100% sure it was planted seeing as wee isn’t really my thing.” He shrugged his shoulders before stilling slightly, hands pushing down into the pockets of his pants. “Not anymore I don’t. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t touched anything worse than just pot though.” He didn’t really want to lie to his father and wasn’t good enough at it to get away with it anyway.