xxx

“I’m sure you say that to all the ladies,” Coco waved her hand in front of her face, like it didn’t matter to her much why he’d shown up or why he hadn’t just called. But she found it kind of endearing. Chivalrous in a way. That he’d go out of his way for something as mundane as returning something to a girl he didn’t even know. She headed over to him and nodded  up at him. “Alright, sweetie. Let’s see what I forgot at your place. Usually when this happens it’s a pair of panties or handcuffs, but I’m fairly certain I left with those.” She nods her head towards his car, telling him that she was ready for him to lead the way. 

“Like to think I’d remember it if you didn’t.” His lips press together in a barely hidden smile, his voice and facial expressions more under his control when he’s not intoxicated. Which is only half the reason it’s not a state he’s found himself in, at least not in years. And not one he plans on being in again any time soon, despite the weight pressing down on his shoulders. He’ll find a way to live what he’s done or he won’t, but despite what he’s said to her about it he doesn’t think she needs or wants those details. Just her bag back, and he turns to lead the way to his car. It’s sitting int he passenger seat, and if there’s anything other than lipstick in it than he doesn’t need or want to know. “Pretty sure this isn’t mine.”

“I think I’m afraid to know the answer to that.”

She smiles when he tells her she left something at his place. She’s surprised he was able to figure out whose it was. Like maybe some other girl could have brought him home and left it there while she was flirting with him. But she didn’t feel like teasing him. Didn’t feel like playing games because if he was telling the truth, then he was her to say thank you for bringing him home and that sort of manners was something she wasn’t used to. “Yeah? You sure it’s not just an excuse to see me again? I know I’m hot shit, but I seem to remember leaving you my phone number too.” she says, the flirting coming natural. It helped that she thought he was cute. Not in her league, not out of her league, but definitely the two of them weren’t in the same league at all. 

That confidence he remembers at least, and if too much of their conversation is blurry, there’s a distinct impression of her left in his memory that she doesn’t fail to live up to. But he’s sober enough that his skin’s staying the same shade this time, his expressions under his own control instead of the product of too much whiskey.  “I know.” He nods his head, though why he kept her number, he couldn’t say. Though standing in front of her with a clearer mind, the gratitude is in part because of how she speaks to him, a far cry from the devil he sold his soul to. It might be a reason never to speak to her again, as though he needed more, but the thought doesn’t settle when he doesn’t expect he’ll see her again after this. “But it was on the way.”

“Must have, because every other day I’m a cold hearted bitch and there are plenty of people in this city that’ll confirm that for you.” She shrugs because it’s true, but it’s nothing that’s every really concerned her. She’s straightforward and bold, something that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. He doesn’t know that about her, so she’s no problem being upfront with him that he shouldn’t think anything nice about her. Shouldn’t think she’s some sort of good Samaritan just because she took him home when he was drunk. “Good,” she tells him, nodding her approval that his head’s getting all healed up. She bites her bottom lip and swings her arm a second. “So…you taking me up on wanting my phone number or you really just come to say thank you in person?” 

“I’ll have to take your word for it.” He still won’t agree with that assessment of herself, regardless of what she says. Maybe it’s just whatever remains of his idealism, and the possibility that he has any left is almost a surprise in itself. He’s all but sold his soul to the devil, and if it was easy to draw his personal and moral lines before this, he thinks things have only gotten more complicated since the night he met her. He’s just more sober now, desperately clinging to the few things he still holds sacred just to hold to his sanity.  “No. I mean, mostly the second.” He manages a quick smile and a motion back at his car. “But I think you left something at my place.”

“If it was a bad thing, I’d not be calling you a Boy Scout,” she tells him, shaking her head as he ducks his. Still a gentleman and not someone she usually converses with. The type of people she surrounds herself with are usually more vulgar, dirtier, less put together and less likely to turn pink in the cheeks when she makes light of what she does and what she enjoys. He’s from a different world and she wonders again what he’s doing here and what the wrong place at the wrong time happened to be. She’s not followed up on that night with anyone, really. Hadn’t had a need to and she thought if it was something important, Gwen would have sent something out to all of them with instructions. “No need to thank me, sweetie. I can play decent human being every so often.” She smirks at him and tips her head to look at the bruise that used to be on his. “Your head’s looking better.” 

The words make him smile, put him a little more at ease than he was a moment ago. Though it’s hard to believe it’s only so often. She didn’t know him, didn’t owe him anything, and it’s hard not to be appreciative of some momentary kindness from a stranger after the day he’d had. He isn’t sure he’s in any better standing now, but the choice is made, and whatever he’s signed himself up for, right now they only choice is to live with it. “So I just caught you on a good night?” He lifts his head, hand rising just on instinct to where that lump had been, but the swelling’s gone down and at the very worst there might be some yellow discoloration. That wasn’t the worst damage he’s ever taken, or the worst that day had left him with. “Thanks. It’s feeling better too.”

She turns to look over her shoulder at whoever it was approaching her. It honestly surprises her who she finds standing there. Deacon the paramedic. He’d gotten drunk off his ass and she’d taken him home, got him on his couch, smiled at his littler sister and thought she’d never see him again. It’d been the last he’d been on her mind because she was used to it. Even if she would have slept with him, she was used to it. People coming in and out of her life that easily. So it surprises her when he shows up because 7 Sins didn’t seem like a place for him. “Ah, Boy Scout,” she smiles at him to show it’s just a teasing statement. “You get lost, Baby Bo? I didn’t picture you coming to this side of town.” 

“I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that you remember me or not.” He can’t say if it surprises him or not either. He’s not sure how memorable he tried to make himself, and he’s not wholly sure he wants to know. There’s more than one reason he doesn’t drink, ever. He doesn’t welcome those blank spaces in his mind. But he finds immediately after that it might make it easier for him to explain himself now, because his reasoning for being here sounds less intelligent than it did on the drive over. In his defense the hospital was close enough that it was simply a stop along his way, but he still ducks his head. “I think I owe you a thank you. A sober one, at least.”

End of shift and time for Coco to go home, she didn’t really feel like sticking around at 7 Sins for the remainder of the nights. Not in a drinking mood for once and the intense police presence in the city made trying to get home afterwards an unnecessary chore. Tonight, she’d driven into work. Sobriety it was, then. But the idea of going home and having a relaxing evening is squashed when she notices the piece of paper under her windshield wiper. Scoffing, she rounds her car and pulls it out from beneath the wiper. “A parking ticket? For real? Damn cops are getting desperate around here.” She crumpled it up, stuffing it into her purse with no intention of paying it. 

Deacon blames his own unfamiliarity with places like this for just how long he hesitates. The only time he’s been to a strip club in likely a dozen years has been on a call, and if he won’t call himself nervous, there are too many blank spaces in his memory for him to find it an easy thing to get out of his car. A woman he owes that he can only half remember, though she was kind enough to leave him a number and apparently a makeup bag. Maggie had a lot to say about that, and he tries not to feel any residual embarrassment now. Harder to manage when he sees the woman in questioning exiting the building. It has him moving quicker to exit his own car, before he can change his mind again. “They’re rude like that."

Jackson nods. Older than most of the kids they try to help. She’s Syndicate age, but she’s untrained. But a power like that… it would be foolish to pass it up if they had a chance to train her how to use it. There’s the thought and consideration that the man may not know what he’s asking for. May not know who he’s signing his sister up to join. He could keep him in the dark, swear her to secrecy, but if their relationship is anything like him and his siblings – that’d never work. If someone tried to swear him to secrecy against Eli, the first thing he’d do would be to go tell Eli what an asshole tried to make him do. 

“You know what we do,” he says quietly, voice low because there may be people listening, though he trusts Eli is out there keeping an eye on for anyone eavesdropping as well. “I can’t promise we won’t involve her.” He looks over at the man, to see his reaction, before he adds with a more gentle, understanding tone than he’s shown the man before. “But what I can promise you, is that she won’t be a prisoner and she won’t be alone. Our family values are a little warped, but that’s what she’d be to us.”

He lets it sink in for a moment before continue. “Our terms are that if we help her, you help us. We won’t use you often, but this city’s not going to be the same after this and I’m not losing any of my family to it. So I need all the resources I can get. Now you get to be one of them.” 

The words are almost a lie, though he doesn’t say as much. He has only the vaguest understanding what the man in front of him does, and only some general suspicion what he hopes to accomplish by it. He doesn’t say as much, because he isn’t sure he wants it spelled out so explicitly for him, especially not in a public setting. If he doesn't fear eavesdropping, there still existed the possibility that any hesitancy on his part in that briefing room might’ve been read as sympathies.

He doesn’t truly know if he has any. Not where the man in front of him is concerned, but he wonders if that’ll change when it’s his sister committing violence on the television. This time on purpose. Not because she can’t control it, but because she can, and that’s the price her freedom demands. She’ll have to kill to keep it, and whatever he’s managed to tell himself up until this point, it leaves him torn now, faced with the idea that he’ll be party to destroying Maggie. If he were the only one left with filthy hands just to keep her safe, it wouldn’t be a question.

He still nods his head, a quiet “I understand,” following the words. He knows what he’s committing himself to, just how many of his morals he'll be forced to butcher. He’d like to think he can survive it. He’s lived through worse, after all. And it gives him some small sliver of hope, that she won’t be a prisoner. He’s not sure he believes him, but maybe when she has a handle on what she can do, they can both leave Los Angeles.

Jackson just watches the man with a knowing look on his face. He waits until the noted is voiced before he nods his head. It was settled, then. At least in Jackson’s mind. An agreement between them that if the man broke it again, he’d kill him. There was no real attachment there. Some promise he’d made him for pulling a bullet out of Naomi’s chest and if that was what bound them together, it earned him one favor and one favor only. And this was it. That they were sitting here talking about his sister. 

At the description the man gives, Jackson’s quiet, tilting his head to the side as he thinks of all the possibilities. It could be something psychic. Some sort of mind control on a grand level? But if people got aggressive and she wasn’t controlling it, it sounded like an emotionally fueled power. It’d be interesting to see and as soon as he has the thoughts, he thinks it’s be hard to witness without being affected by it. If she had no control whatsoever…

“She has no control over it?” Jackson asks, his tone slipping into something more clinical and serious, the arrogance gone and simply just a conversation now. He was interested. Curious. Mostly because she would be considered one of the dangerous ones. Without control, she wreaked devastation. With it, she could be powerful. Immensely powerful, by the sounds of the scale of destruction she’d caused in that mall he mentioned. 

“How old is she?” he asks, wanting to get all the details. “And when did it manifest?” 

The silence might be more uncomfortable than his threats, because at least those he knows how to respond to. This is something different, a different tension tightening his shoulders and leaving him uneasy standing next to him. He’s good at keeping it hidden, his face expressionless. It’s not quite hope, because he doesn’t know that he wants his sister anywhere near this man. But the alternative seems somehow worse, and he can feel the pressure of that trying to make him bend his spine. If he’s told ‘no’ today, or if he takes a bullet instead, he doesn’t know where they go from here.

Somewhere less populated, maybe. It seems cruel to even suggest, and it’s desperately unfair when he’s always wanted more for Maggie. He wanted her to live whatever life she wanted, whatever dreams she wanted fulfilled, and he wonders how many he’s only killing now. She might not thank him for this. She might only hate him, and he’ll accept that if he has to.

The man asks if she has control, and there’s no point lying. even if it might affect the outcome. “No. None.” If she did, no one would be getting hurt, but he doesn’t volunteer it. Swearing that his sister’s a sweet girl might not be one of the virtues he’s looking for.

“The first time was about two years ago. She’s twenty-three now.”

“Not me you should have lied for,” Jackson responds, shaking his head. There’s less anger at the words than he’d imagined there would be. Mostly because he can see the value in telling the truth to the police if the man had actually done it. It wasn’t a completely idiotic tactic. But also because the words make him doubt if the man in front of him was really the one to do it. He seemed like the type to fall on the sword for that coward partner of his. “Gave the face of the man who’s going to help your sister to the same people who want to put a bag over her head and make her disappear.”

There’s the thought he should tell him that’s who they were wiping out in those apartment buildings. That as far as Jackson knew, no one that wasn’t associated with the Initiative had died that night. The media painted them all as innocent victims and Jackson and the Syndicate as the villains. And while it wasn’t entirely untrue, that night it wasn’t about right and wrong. It was about survival. It was about being able to claim this city was safer for those with mutated DNA beneath their skin and this man’s sister was one of those people. 

“You must have caught me on a good day today,” he said, rocking on his feet slightly and looking towards the side of them, inspecting a couple walking by. They looked harmless enough and further up the way, there was a patrolman walking out of eyesight. If he came around again, Jackson would be more on edge. “I’m going to let it slide. But next time, you’re going to lie. And you’re going to do it for your sister, not for me. You don’t want to give the Initiative anything. The less they have, the safer she is.” 

Licking his lips, he turned to look at the man. “What can she do?” he asked, because he needed to know that before anything. 

The wound on his temple’s healing, and this time there’s no gun pointed at his face helping to motivate his answers. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it doesn't’ stop him from responding with blunt honesty, because he can’t forget that the man next to him is the one that left him in that position in the first place. He might’ve lied if he’d been the only witness. But he wasn’t, and that had tied his hands. “And lying, dodging questions, or refusing to answer is a quick and easy way to make the police decide I’m an accomplice. In which case I’d either still be in custody or under surveillance. I don’t see how that helps her any either.”

There’s no point pretending her life isn’t the only one that’s important to him now, and it’s that thought that has him biting down on his tongue when the orders follow. He’s not stupid enough to mistake them for anything else, but it fuels a frustration in his chest, because he was wrong. It feels like there’s still a gun to his head. “Noted.”

But he asks what she’s capable of, and maybe that’s a yes. Even if he can’t swear if that’s a good thing or not. “I’m not sure. At least not what you’d call it. From what I can tell, it makes everyone around her hyper aggressive. Fighting, screaming, assaulting each other. The first time it happened she was in a mall. The aftermath was...” He trails off, unable to find a way to finish the sentence when it’s just another brand of devastation he’s played witness to.

And there’s the bitter thought that the man in front of him might’ve been proud of it. Maybe all he’s doing is offering his sister up as a weapon. It’s not a life he wants for her. But it might be a life, something more than she’s living now. On the verge of running at every opportunity, threatened by those men with black bags that he keeps mentioning, and he doesn’t doubt that he’s more intimately acquainted than Deacon is.

“I doubt it, but who knows.”

“Gave my word,” Jackson says. If nothing else, he has that to go on. He reaches for one of the strings on the collar of his hoodie and pops the end into his mouth, chewing on it so he was the picture of casual standing next to him. He was aware there were police patrolling and he was also aware this could still be a trap. That the man could just be getting him into position before Initiative comes swooping down. He remembers, however, that Eli is out there watching the whole thing play out. 

Snorting a little, he shakes his head. “Before we get down to business,” he says. “Do I have you to thank for my face being all over the city?” he asks, turning to eye him. He knows what he told people he’d do if the man answered yes. He knows what he thinks he’ll do and he knows what he should probably do. The three don’t really match. He’s come to terms with it. He’s dealt with it and he’s laid low for a while he waited for the news to get tired of displaying the drawings. 

He won’t discuss anything further until the question is answered though. And it’s not going to lead to a bullet straight in the man’s head. It’s also not going to lead to Jackson turning and walking away. If anything, if that answer is yes, he’ll tell him what a stupid move that was on his part. That it’ll do more than just screw Jackson and the Syndicate over. That trying to be a good Samaritan with the Initiative only turned their eye towards him. 

The man doesn’t answer him, but the question he gets in return isn’t anything he can truly be surprised at. It still does little to change his posture or expression, whether that’s fear or just a sense of exhaustion pressing down on his chest. He’s been held at gunpoint, questioned by the cops, force to play surgeon on a dead woman, and he’s swallowed it all because there’s something here he believes his sister needs. Patience and understanding he can offer in spades, but he can’t teach her what she needs to know to survive in this world. And her survival is more important than his own life. Probably that of his partner’s too, but he can’t convince himself to play traitor now.

But it does keep him from telling him what he really thinks about that. The man has himself to thank for his face on the news. The things he’s done, the crimes he’s committed, and Deacon can only guess at half of them. And he almost wishes he’d worn a mask so he hadn’t been stuck trying to find ways to lie to a police sketch artist in the name of a killer he fully believes would’ve put a bullet in his head. He knows he’s not staring at a friend right now.

“Probably.” The answer’s blunt, and if it’s a stupid thing to tell him, he’s never been good at lying to begin with. But he spares him his reasoning, the distinct thought in his mind that they’d make little difference at this point. If it’s about to get him killed, he still can’t convince himself to let the man turn that gun on his partner. “You didn’t give me a lot of reasons to lie for you.”

There wasn’t a day where the pier wasn’t busy. Perhaps today, more than others, because the city was still on edge. Some were afraid to leave their homes, afraid to go out into public places. He didn’t blame them, but he didn’t pity them. Now they knew what it felt like. Afraid of a place they’d call home. The security was heightened, cops patrolling and Jackson did a good job of blending in, walking in a way that was casual enough, slow enough as to not draw attention. He was also in clothes that seemed far too casual for his usual style. Gym shorts, a hoodie with the hood pulled up to hide his features. 

Somewhere out there, Eli was watching. They didn’t walk together, because if Jackson did get spotted, he didn’t want someone putting Eli’s face into association. He wanted that to stay a quiet thing for as long as possible. He trusted his brother to have his back, probably more than anyone in the moment, even if Eli was pissed at him. There’d been a shift in their dynamic after their fight in the bar and he wondered whether it was something to help them move on, or just another setback in getting them on the right track. 

It didn’t matter in the moment. In times like this, they were still brothers and this was still what they did. He kept that in mind as he stepped up next to the paramedic staring off into the water. A man who could possibly be setting him up, or simply had found himself in the right place at the right time. Jackson was ready to help his sister, although he had a few questions for him about how his face got to the police. “Surprised you showed,” he said calmly, the picture of casual next to the man. 

He’s aware of the man coming to stand next to him, and the feeling of dread that seems to follow. He can’t swear it’s nothing personal, not when he thinks there was some measure of brutality looking back at him the very first time he met him. And he’d done nothing to earn it then. He can’t say he’d done much to earn it the second time, except his job, but he understood it. The man next to him was a criminal, and he doesn’t need to know the extent of it to know that much is true. More importantly, he can’t even swear he’s a good person.

Right now it doesn’t matter. He’s dealt with those misgivings, and he’ll keep choking them down if he has to. Maggie is what’s important to him, and he doesn’t flinch away or try to call the police. There’s no one else waiting for him but him alone, and if it gets him killed than it’s his mistake. “I could say the same.”

He glances over at him, and if anything he wonders if he’s just here to clean up loose ends. “What happens now?” It might be an indirect way of asking if he plans to kill him, but it’s not in his nature to show that much fear. If he gets shot, or killed in some other way that’s almost unimaginable in the moment, it’s the risk he took coming out here. It’s one he’d take again, because that small hope that there’s some form of salvation here for his sister is better than nothing at all. And it’s best that she doesn’t know this is happening, no promises made on his behalf or even warnings that might make her try and stop him. It has to be done, so here he is.

He was. Enough that it had put him at a bar, even if he hadn’t gone back sense. Memories were hazy, his cheeks turning red when he recalled half the words leaving his own tongue, but the only thing he would agree with was that it wasn’t him. Not solely because of regret, but because he’d made a choice a long time ago to be a different kind of man.

One that follows through on his promises, even if he’s terrified of what might come after. He’s selling his soul and maybe his sister’s too, but the alternative still seems worse. Eventually she’ll lose control. He knows and she knows it, even if they won’t say it. So he’s left standing on a pier waiting for the devil to show, pretending there’s anything out in the vastness of the pacific ocean that matters more to him than his sister’s life..

If anything, the words are endearing. She’s no doubt he didn’t mean them the way they could be interpreted, especially not the way that has his cheeks turning pink again. If anything, it just has her smiling at him because he’s had too much to drink and she knows what his morning is going to look like. Full of regret, aspirin and a bad taste in his mouth that no amount of gum is going to be able to erase. It wasn’t her responsibility, she could absolutely let him keep drinking his night away. 

“Oh, it definitely came out wrong,” she tells him, patting his shoulder again to tell him that it was alright, despite whatever he thought he was implying. “But I’ll forgive you because you’re toasted. Not even slightly toasted, you are nearing black out status quickly, sweetie. You’re not a drinker, are you?” Her tone is light and playful even as she says the words. There’s no judgement there and even if the words get him upset or remind him that this isn’t who he is, she says them anyway. There’s not a worry about offending him because chances are tomorrow he’ll forget he even sat down next to her and had any of these conversations. She’ll just be another face in fuzzy bar memory. 

The words are amusing and not offensive at all. She knows what people think of strippers, hold them on a level that’s something less than human. It’s the nature of the profession and while she accepts that some people will just have those thoughts, she finds satisfaction in the thought that when they look at her, they see something less than themselves. But in reality, they’re looking at something far, far greater. Her DNA sets her apart and they don’t know half of the time what they’re dealing with. She doesn’t think he actually looks at her in those terms, because he hadn’t flinched when she’d told him what he did and for that, she appreciates that his cheeks turn pink. “Although if you wanted me to, I could give you a time and place of the show.” 

The words have him ducking his head, trying to stifle a laugh he can’t name the source of. It might be solely because she’s being kind, or because she’s right. He is drunk, drunker than he can remember being in years, and he doesn’t know if that’s funny or sad right now. But every second it’s harder to remember how he got here, only that he is. Struggling to stay on his bar stool while he tries not to blush at every word leaving the mouth of the woman next to him. A task he’s currently failing at, and he thinks it would be easier if he had even a slightly better grasp of sobriety.

Somewhere in there is a question, one that has him shaking his head. It’s a mistake when it leaves the world spinning around him, fist struggling to keep his head propped up. That feels like a losing battle too, but at least the world seems softer now. Whatever baggage he dragged in here with him, it feels farther away, and he hates that for a moment he understands why people drink. Tomorrow he’ll remember why it isn’t worth it.

“Not even a little,” he tells her. He hasn’t had this much to drink in years, and if he can remember why, it’s safer not to focus on it. Death and heartache and all those emotions that he’s trying to leave in the bottom of a glass, and they struggle to crawl back up his throat.

If his smile starts to fade at even the thought, she’s a good distraction. One that tosses out an offer in the next moment that swiftly derails the dark path he might be headed down in the next moment. And it’s hard to tell anymore if his skin’s so warm because he thinks she’s hitting on him, or because he’s completely trashed. “That doesn’t sound like me either.”