#equesv

two.

They’re ruining this man’s career. However you slice it, he is becoming a laughing stock on national news, and as Henley sits in her hotel room, watching the TV, she feels guilty. He doesn’t look like a bad guy. But who knows, maybe he is. The instructions are clear. And he’s a distinct obstacle. Maybe this man will someday understand that even though it’s his job to stop them, they aren’t the criminals he should have been chasing. 

Tressler. Credit Republican. Those are the names that are hurting people. Screwing them out of money and insurance in the face of tragedy. Maybe what she and the horsemen are doing isn’t strictly right, but it is just. She believes that.

Staring at Dylan Rhodes’ picture on the screen, she has to believe that.

three.

Someone had shown up with a grocery bag of alcohol and shooters, Henley can’t remember who. Maybe Merritt. A week and a few days have passed since they pulled off the final stage of the heist and the four horsemen have been holed up in Dylan’s apartment while he works things out at the FBI. 

It’s impressive, really, that they’ve managed to go this long without getting wildly drunk. Because sure, it’s exciting to have accomplished what they did, but a confusion of adrenaline with nowhere to put it and a collective sense of cabin fever have finally culminated in a need to just party it out.

So, they all pick their poison and start drinking at 9pm (perhaps a bit early, but who’s counting?) They’re halfway into a drinking game when everyone loses track of the rules, and they all dissolve into talking and laughing, laying on each other and trading stories.

Henley’s foggy mind wanders to Dylan, wondering what it might be like if he was here. She’s finally gotten to meet him, but she wants to know him. This, she dimly realizes, might not be so easy a task.

four.

Henley spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Horsemen. It’s natural to miss them, she knows that. But there are entire days that she finds herself spending worrying about them. Is Jack eating enough? Is Merritt’s seasonal affective disorder acting up? How is Danny dealing with her leaving?

No matter what, the horsemen are her family, and they are forever on her mind.

How long has it been since anyone’s even seen Dylan?

While it was true Henley had spent more time with the others than with Dylan, it didn’t mean she didn’t know a thing or two about him. Anyone who had seen the blueprints had to see he was dedicated to say the least. But in the few months that she got to know Dylan, she saw that it was more than dedication, that Dylan was not simply a workaholic.

And the others know that. She knows that the others know that.

But worry still tugs at her heart and she resists the urge to call even though she knows he’s probably changed his number twice since she last knew what it was anyway.

five.

Things have finally started to feel normal again when the news mentions the Horsemen for the first time. And then, of course, all progress is done. Henley is backsliding something fierce, finding herself scouring the internet for information, staying awake almost around the clock watching news coverage.

She’s not sleeping enough, not eating enough, she is sick with worry and with jealousy. There’s someone new. They’re calling her Lula. Henley can’t help but love her and hate her all at once. And even though it hurts, it feels so good to see Jack, Danny, and Merritt again.

One face that she does not expect to see, however, is Dylan’s. He is never supposed to be seen. She knows that.

She is so afraid for them, and as the days go by, it only gets worse. They disappear off the gird for days at a time, and news stories spring up of Dylan getting into fights in market squares and Danny showing up at casinos in disguise. Merritt’s brother has resurfaced, and the mere sight of him makes Henley’s skin crawl. He’s dishonest, she can tell. And he’s been selling them up the river if the message boards she’s been reading are right.

The worst of it comes at the end of December. She’s half asleep when she hears reports that Dylan Shrike was nearly drowned by Tressler and his son and she’s wracking her brain for why it sounds so dissonant when it finally clicks that Dylan is Lionel Shrike’s... son. And they tried to drown him oh god...

She just cries.

six.

It’s March now. Henley knows they’re all okay, that if any of the horsemen were in jail she’d know about it, it’d be all over the news. But the hollow in her heart remains, and she fiddles with her phone in her hands. It won’t be easy. It’s not as if she can just drop in on them, see if they’ll take her back. But she has a family to return to, and she has apologies to make.

She tries the phone number, typing it in almost without realizing.

a funny thing happens his father drinks.  he calls james downstairs and talks to him.  tells him the opposite things than the doctors and nurses at the hospital told him.  that it was his fault his mom and emily had died, that they’d still be alive if he hadn’t begged to go see that magic show in the park, that it should’ve been him who died and them who made it out.  james believes him, tears spilling over his cheeks, because his dad’s never lied to him before, because of what he sees in the eyes that match his own: pain, hatred, so much rage.  he yells at james when he cries, tells him to grow up, and when he can’t, his dad hits him hard in the chest and james hides in his room the rest of the night. 

he goes back to school, pretends not to hear other kids whispering or notice the weird way teachers talk to him now.  like cops talk to criminals on tv.  like he’ll blow up if they say the wrong thing.  he starts failing his classes and that makes his dad angry and he calls james stupid and asks what the hell he thinks he’s doing and when he pushes him down he hits the coffee table and scratches his arm all up.  in the morning his dad makes pancakes and apologizes and makes sure james knows that everything that happened has to be their secret.

one day he comes home from school and finds their house in boxes.  almost everything’s packed away and separated into two piles:  the things they’re taking with them, and the things going into storage.  james sneaks as much as he can into the ‘take’ pile but there’s only so much he can do without his dad noticing and in the end the only things from his mother he manages to keep is a few books.

sitting in their new home, a grimy little townhouse further into the city that never seems to get warm, the only time james feels okay is when he digs out his shrike tapes and watches them in the middle of the night after his dad passes out.  sometimes he rewinds a trick a dozen times, trying to see what he’s missing, where the trick really begins.  sometimes he pulls out the deck of cards with half of them missing that he got for a birthday a few years ago and tries his best to follow along.  the first time he manages to duplicate a trick he makes a noise of surprise so loud he almost rouses his father and forgets for the first time in almost a year that he’s supposed to be dead. 

he’s thirteen, a week into middle school, when he gets beaten up at school for the first time.  it’s so different from when his dad hurts him because they don’t even seem mad at him.  they attack him because they enjoy it, not even because he deserves it, and that simple fact enough enrages him enough that he fights back.  he loses, of course, a diet consisting of only the occasional school lunch has done little in helping him bulk up or even keep up with his peers in terms of size, but something else happens.  he finds he likes fighting back.  that rush of righteous indignation makes him feel almost like a whole person and so he embraces it, even as it ends up with him sitting in the office day after day, a new scrape or bruise to add to his collection.  what’s better is that it provides an viable excuse for the other marks across his body.  ( well, most of them.  the place where shattered glass had dug into his back and a cigarette burn on the back of his neck wouldn’t pass as bullying souvenirs. )

it carries over, that desire to fight back.  there comes a point where it follows him home.  when he has the nerve to think that his mere existence doesn’t warrant being pushed down the stairs or bottles aimed at his head.  when he has the nerve to think asking for dinner shouldn’t be some unforgivable sin.  the beginnings of resentment sew themselves into his chest, and when a shove down the stairs results in an injury that almost paralyzes him and his father’s sale of his pain medication leaves him writhing in agony, half starved to death for a month, that resentment blossoms into hatred. 

he fights back.  he’s no match for his father, and retaliation only makes it worse, but he’s nothing if not stubborn and he’s got nothing to lose and so he seethes and lashes back, even if he always ends up a groaning mess on the floor with the taste of blood behind his teeth.

when he’s sixteen, he manages to black thomas’ eye.  the satisfaction at the pain he sees flash across his face and the dark purple mottling above his cheek the next day almost makes it worth the sickening crack of his right arm beneath his father’s boot, the scream that wrenches out of him when his foot twists, the way he has trouble moving his fingers.

the next morning, he stifles down noises as he shoves his swollen arm into the arm of a jacket and goes to the library.  he looks up splints and how to treat a bone the best he can, having long since given up hope of a doctor’s visit.  it brings tears to his eyes to put in a homemade splint that afternoon, and he’s clenched his teeth so hard he fears they may break, but the pain clears his head enough for him to make a decision.  as quickly as he can manage with one arm, he empties his schoolbag and fills it with the few clothes he owns, steals the money stashed in the pantry that his father doesn’t know he knows about, and runs. 

six weeks later, and he’s no more starved than usual.  no more beaten up than usual.  he’d planned to do magic, in the few late night desperations in which he’d planned his escape, do street shows for money, but with his arm… well it’s impossible.  and when, after the swelling and redness has gone away, his right hand picks up a tremor that sends his cards spilling over his lap or revealing the trick accidentally, he gives up that fairy tale.  ( years later, a court mandated doctor and psychiatrist will argue over the cause of said tremor:  nerve damage from the untreated break or a psychosomatic response to trauma )  it breaks something in him to do it, like he’s betraying something deeper than himself, but survival is all he knows and so he teaches himself instead to pick pockets, to convince passerby that he just needs a couple dollars for cab fare to get home before curfew or his mom and dad are going to be so worried. 

he manages to make it almost a year before that tremor in his hand gets him caught.  he gets cocky, tries to put the wallet back when he’s done with it, and ends up thrown into a holding cell.  he’ll never admit it, but pressed against the wall in the corner of a cell, he sleeps better than he has in a long time.  it takes them until morning to figure out who he is, apparently the school had filed a truancy report, then a missing persons one. 

when he asks if they’re going to force him to go back to his dad, he’s unprepared for what they tell him:  his father’s killed two people, knifed them in a barfight, is in the midst of his trial.  james thinks he should’ve seen it coming, thinks he should’ve stopped it, thinks, yet again, that it should’ve been him.  they stick him in a foster home for the time being, but adjusting after being alone for a year is nearly impossible, and all it takes is being called the son of a murderer once for him to run again.

he leaves chicago for the first time in his life then, there’s too many people looking for him, too many people too close. he hitchikes and walks and steals the occasional car or motorcycle, starts going by danny and works westward in search of new opportunities and faces that don’t know his tricks. 

he finds himself in vegas fairly quickly.  he may incapable of magic, but he’s still skilled enough with cards to cheat without detection.  he gets an ego though, gets bold enough to be noticed, and it doesn’t take long for him to go from a blip on paulie attanasio’s radar to working under his employ.  he starts off catching fellow cheaters in return for a cut of the table, but it doesn’t take long before he’s involved in the planning of bigger, better scams.  ( what can he say, he’s always had a knack for logistics ) 

they come on the radar of the fbi, and he watches dylan rhodes trick and weasel a confession out of willy mears with something like amusement, already planning his escape.  something else happens though, some robbery by a bunch of magicians, danny thinks the word with venom, and the heat vanishes for awhile.  until it comes back and he’s arrested by an agent fuller.

he turns state’s evidence without hesitation, and is put under witness protection as a result, though it only takes about a month for him to slip the marshals monitoring him.  he becomes again a nomad, never staying anywhere longer than a few weeks.