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littleperilstories · 1 year

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The Prince of Thieves: I Never Thought We'd Be Here Again

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Warnings: death mention, angst, family estrangement

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Word count: 3007 || Approx reading time: 11 mins

I Never Thought We'd Be Here Again

Teaser: “Will!” I go to fling my arms around him, only to stop short. He flinches away from me, like I’m trying to hurt him…like I’m trying to kill him. Inside me, something shudders and cracks.

Colette

Will is unrecognizable—skin and bone, battered and bruised, pale and silent—when I find him and Geoff.

When I find only him and Geoff. No Jamie, no Bree Cooper.

What the fuck?

God, what if they’re dead? I stopped that meaty, nasty-faced constable from shooting Jamie in the head, but I had to dash not long after.

What if they both got shot?

One look at Will and Geoff tells me that they’re thinking the same thing, and neither of them is taking it well. Geoff, at least, is composed, but he is the palest I have ever seen him. His hands are trembling.

Geoff’s hands are trembling.

“Will!” I go to fling my arms around him, only to stop short.

He flinches away from me, like I’m trying to hurt him…like I’m trying to kill him. Inside me, something shudders and cracks.

They’re both on the ground, resting. Will doesn’t say anything, just looks away from me, just holds his head in his hands. I look to Geoff, mouthing my question. How is he?

Shaking his head, Geoff presses a hand against the side of his chest, miming a grimace of pain. Hurt here somewhere, he silently replies.

And Jamie?

Geoff opens his mouth to keep up our noiseless conversation when Will’s head shoots up. “Fucking stop it, both of you.”

If I weren’t fighting the surge of panic that is threatening to send me into a fit of tears, I’d laugh. “Stop what?”

“I can tell you’re talking to each other. Just fucking say it out loud.”

My shard of amusement disintegrates as quickly as it struck. His voice is not the same as I remember.

“Where’s Jamie?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. It’s a struggle.

“He stayed behind to give that fucker back.” Geoff’s voice is tight. “It looked like he ran, but…”

A freezing wind hisses around us, bringing with it the sharp chill of late autumn rain. “But you’re not sure?”

Geoff shakes his head. “He wasn’t there anymore when I looked back. That girl ran to find him. Haven’t seen either of them.” He takes a long breath and shoves his hand into his coat pockets.

“She what?” After she fucking ran away from me, out into the thick of things—she went out, and then went back?

Geoff just nods. Maybe he’s about to say more, but Will interrupts.

“We have to look for them,” he whispers.

Of course we do. Of course we fucking do. I can’t say that, though. We have to look for Jamie and Bree, but we can’t. Will can’t. Not if he’s hurt, and certainly not since every one of those blue-coated motherfuckers will recognize his face with a single glance. “We have to get somewhere safe.”

Geoff’s eyes close. He knows I’m right, and he won’t argue. The pain he’s in, though—not the same as whatever’s wrong with Will—is carved into every inch of his being. Deep grooves up and down his skin, invisible and yet just as present as Will and me.

“Home,” Will says, “maybe he went there—”

“It’s trashed,” I say, before he gets his hopes up. It kills me, it kills me, to see his face fall. “They found it. Tore it apart.”

Will drops his head again, hiding his face, and he chokes back a sob.

We have to get to safety, yes, but…the last place Will felt safe—maybe the last place any of us felt truly safe—is gone.

“Jamie won’t know where to look for us,” Will says. He’s looking up again, and his eyes are vaguely fixed in my direction, but his gaze is unfocused. Dizzy. Maybe he’s not as present as I thought. Maybe he’s not really here at all.

He’ll find us, I want to say, but I don’t dare. I don’t know if it’s true. Jamie had his own plan of where to go, and I have mine, but we didn’t share them with one another.

Just in case.

The answer—the only option—the only place I can think of to go—is already unfurled in my mind, but I don’t want it. Even though I knew this was a possibility and dreaded it, I’m still not ready.

“Town’s gonna be crawling.” Geoff, too, sounds distant, but closer to earth than Will. “Where we—”

“What if he’s hurt?” Will clambers to his feet, the movement sudden, and in an instant, Geoff and I are both on alert, because this is Will, and Will might bolt, and if he does, he’ll end up right back where he was if he’s not careful. “We have to—”

He’s about to sprint off—there’s a moment of tensing muscles, leaning forward, heaving in a breath.

Grunting in pain, he stops, one hand moving up to press against his ribcage.

Shit. Geoff wasn’t kidding.

“I have a place we can go.”

Despite my dread, despite my secret hope that another choice would present itself, the words are out of my mouth the moment I see Will reach for his side with that awful grimace on his face. We have nowhere else, and I can’t let him stay in pain—out here—in the cold—in the rain—with constables out looking for him—

Geoff meets my gaze. The grief I find there is almost too much to bear.

“Come on.” I hold out my hands, palms up and shaking. Geoff is the first to clasp his fingers into mine.

Will stares at my hand, but he doesn’t seem to see it.

“We’ll find out what happened,” I say, and even though I’m screaming on the inside, my voice somehow obeys my command to stay gentle. “But we can’t stay here.”

The enormous white shirt is slicked against Will’s skin from the rain. It drags in sodden folds over his battered form, limp and surely uncomfortable, as he finally meets my gaze. As he slowly lifts his arm. As he reaches over to take my hand.

“Where?” he croaks.

I swallow the painful lump in my throat. “My family’s house.”

Geoff freezes, and Will’s glassy eyes widen. “What?”

“My family’s house.” God, I’ve dreaded this day for so long, and standing in the pouring rain with an injured Will, a silently distraught Geoff, and the other two missing and maybe dead is not helping. Will is staring at me in confusion, his thought plain as day on his face: You have a family?

“Won’t that…” Geoff pauses. Whatever he wants to say, it seems to pain him. “Won’t that put them in danger, too?”

I wrench my hand away from his. “Fuck, Geoff! Do you think I’m stupid?” Anger explodes out of me, so much anger that I’ve been trying to keep reined in for weeks now. No, fucking years. “Do you really think—”

“If they found the townhouse, they found the lease!” he snaps back. “And then we’ll be right back in the same—”

“Good god, you idiot, you think I put my real name on that thing?”

Geoff jerks back, and I know I’ve hurt him. Because I’ve always been Colette Haris to him, long before I was Spider, and he probably never stopped to think about who I was when I was born. Maybe he assumed I was honest with him from the start.

“They won’t find my family,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, “because the lease says Colette Haris, and Colette Haris doesn’t exist, so they can’t track her anywhere.”

Geoff and Will are silent.

“My last name is Meunier,” I say quietly. I wonder if they can hear me over the sound of the rain. “My family lives in town, and that’s where we’re going. No one’s going to find us there.” As long as my father and stepmother don’t throw us out on sight. I don’t voice that particular concern. “So get your asses moving.” I swallow hard. “Ready?”

It’s too much to hope for a real answer from Will, I think. He’s staring at me like I’m a stranger, and his meek confusion, the lack of the rage that was in his gaze only a few minutes ago, hurts my heart.

“Ready.” Geoff holds out his hand this time, and I take it. Squeeze. We’re in this together. All of us. Always have been.

No matter what happens…always will.

Instead of scaling the wall to Verie’s room, I stand on the grass and hurl stones at her windowpane. Several minutes pass before she opens up.

“What are you doing?” She’s hard to hear—mumbling sleepily and obviously trying to keep her voice low. It occurs to me how early it still is in the day. Even though it feels like a lifetime has passed since we left the hunting cabin this morning.

“What the fuck is going on?” I hear Geoff mutter from somewhere behind me. There’s impatience in his voice, an emotion he doesn’t usually let slip out, endlessly stoic as he is. I ignore him.

She rubs her eyes, hair dripping gracefully over her shoulder as she leans further out the window. “Lettie, why are you…”

“I need to come inside.”

“So come up,” she mumbles, yawning. “You know how to—”

“No. Through the door. Let me in.”

That wakes her up. Verie’s jaw drops, and her mussed golden curls bounce as she draws back, stunned. “Lettie, do you mean it?”

“Quickly,” I say. “Please.” Inhaling sharply, trying not to think about how much what I’m about to say will sting, I grind out, “I need help.”

At these words, these words she surely never expected to hear from me, she goes still as stone. “What’s going…” Her voice fades, and then she nods. “I’ll be right down.”

I’m shaking when I cross the threshold of my old home—because it’s been so long since I’ve been here, in the doorway, in the foyer, yes, but also because Geoff and Will are following me inside.

Verie gapes at both of them, eyes like blue china cups, drinking in the sight of them with fear and awe and confusion. Geoff is almost twice her size.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Her gaze drifts up to Geoff’s face, astonishment fading to worry. Slowly, it shifts to Will, and it darkens to unbridled horror. When I follow along, I see the way his hand is braced against the wall like he’s going to crumble to the floor at any moment, the way his eyes remain downcast, meeting no one else’s.

“I don’t understand,” Verity whispers, and the old fear strikes me hard. Perhaps this is the time she’ll finally say no and tell me to get out for real.

To leave and never come back.

“I don’t have anywhere else.” I can’t remember if I’ve already said this; my mind is too muddled. “We… We have nowhere. Our home is gone.”

She blinks, giving a little gasp as if something I’ve said has cut her deeply, but she only glances at me for an instant. She can’t, it seems, wrench her attention away from Will—watching the tear that streaks down his bruised cheek and drips from his chin.

“What happened to you?”

For the first time, Will looks up from the floor. His fingers twitch, turning white as he presses more strongly against the wall.

“Verity, darling, what’s all the—”

My stepmother, Justine, breezes into the foyer, her lilting voice light and a touch bemused, until she spots the four of us and her words collapse into nothingness.

“Colette?”

I take a step backwards, my heart pounding.

“Colette, is it really you?”

When I open my mouth, nothing comes out.

“Mother…” Verity hasn’t moved. “Lettie needs our help.”

I can see it on my stepmother’s face, the war unfolding there: Colette’s returned at long last against How dare Colette return after all this time?

Will’s hand slips, and he lurches sideways, bracing himself now with his shoulder, and a new wave of pain washes over his face.

“You’re hurt, aren’t you?” I watch in disbelief as my little sister turns away from her mother, turns her very back on her, and reaches for Will’s hand. He doesn’t acknowledge her. “It’s going to be all right. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

“Verity…” Justine looks over us, taking in my thinly veiled panic and Geoff’s sorrowful face and the beat-up mess that is Will—then looks back at me. “What if…”

She’s going to tell us to go. I just know it. Get them out. Before your father walks in.

Verity’s still staring at Will, but my stepmother won’t take her eyes off me.

“I’ll heat some water.”

A gasp—no, a sob—spills out of me, shrill and brimming with the breath I had been holding, brimming with relief, brimming with astonishment that neither of them intend to turn us away.

“What’s your name?” Verity gently pulls Will away from the wall.

His eyes flick to me, so scared, so confused, so uncertain. Almost like he’s asking for permission: Should I give my name? I nod. If we’re trusting my family, may as well trust them fully. “Will.”

“Will, I’m Verie. You’re safe here, all right?” She tugs him further into the house, and I realize that if I don’t follow them, they will disappear. They’ll disappear—Will’s going to be out of sight again—and I won’t need to panic about where they are or what’s happening where I can’t see.

We’re safe.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened to you, okay, Will? But we’re going to help you. Don’t be frightened. Sit here, just for a…”

Her soft voice fades, soothing and calm and mature as a voice could be, and I realize that in the six years I’ve been gone, my sister changed—grew up—more than I believed possible.

Geoff pauses before he follows them. “Lettie?”

“Don’t even fucking start.” He’s supposed to be upset over the mess we’re in, or showering me in gratitude for saving all our asses, not making fun of me. “Let’s go ins—”

In the doorway, eyes solemn and shining with tears, looms a figure I truly believed I’d never behold again.

“Fath…”

I can’t even finish the word.

Somewhere, as if from a great distance, as if from across an ocean, I hear Verity say evenly, only a touch of apprehension in her voice, “Father, wait. Let me explain first.”

To Geoff, I blurt, “I’ll go back out. No one knows my face. I’ll look for Jamie. Be back soon.”

I don’t wait for him to argue. I just bolt out the door.

A coward—I’m such a goddamn coward. Again and again the word beats against the inside of my skull, cruel in its persistence. Too cowardly to get close to Will, to wrap my arms around him and tell him things will be all right—I let Verie, who met him mere minutes ago, do that. Too cowardly to speak a word to Justine—I simply stood there and stared. Too cowardly to even look my father in the eye.

I ran, leaving Geoff—Geoff of all people—to face him on his own.

Good god, what am I doing?

Too late to turn back now. Too fucking late for a lot of things.

The woods are quiet when I arrive back at the treeline. The smell of sulphur has faded, but the sense of dread has not. It cloaks the ground like moss, creeps along the earth, makes me shudder.

Please don’t be dead, Jamie.

The eeriness of the damp, misty woods, the stillness, the silence… They weigh on me like stones. Every step sinks my feet into the soft ground, and I can’t help but think of how many footsteps I am leaving behind in my wake.

I stumble over something soft and slippery—a jacket, abandoned and soggy from the rain.

The jacket, I realize, of someone who works for the constabulary. It isn’t blue, but the design is one I’ve seen very recently. My throat constricts.

Up ahead: a dark mound, too small to be a body. I have to bite back a sob when I stumble forward and see what it is: just more material, but that doesn’t mean it’s good news.

That shawl—the one I gave to Bree Cooper—soaked and dark with blood. Whose blood? Hers? Jamie’s? A constable’s?

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Something happened—something bad—

Instinct, panic, desperation, whatever it might be, has me rifling through the jacket’s pockets. Something. There has to be something in here that will give me a clue as to what happened that made Bree drop my crimson-stained shawl in the mud. Anything.

Anything.

My fingers collide with a folded stack of papers, drenched but just stiff enough to pull out and unfold.

Work papers for one of the prison staff, a medic, to get him in and out of the gates with ease. Left behind to turn to mush in the rain. I squint at the running black ink, only just able to make out the name.

Allan Armstrong Dale.

On the back, his address and next of kin. Other useless information I do not need.

But his address.

Perhaps this man is dead; perhaps that’s why his uniform is here and not on his miserable fucking body.

But perhaps he lives.

Perhaps he saw what happened.

I can’t go home to my family, to Will and Geoff, without news of Jamie.

I will find this Allan Armstrong Dale, see if he survived the altercation that happened here. If he did, if he is at his home recovering while Jamie bleeds out or lies cold or wallows in chains like Will did for so long, I will find out. And if he refuses to tell me what I want to know, I will wait patiently until he does—wait patiently for him to speak, with my blade pressed against his throat.

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