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The entire fucking mission is a disaster.
Reynolds swears as Piece heaves him down the street, doing her best to shield his splinted shin from the panicking crowd. Two blocks over tallboys loose incendiary bolts as the Watch opens fire, picking off any Hatters stupid enough to try pressing them back.
And Smith is somewhere in the fray, hopefully alive and not on fire.
“Get goin’, gal,” Reynolds snaps, trying to yank his arm free. “You’ve done enough. I can find him from here.”
Piece only tightens her grip and stumps on, gaze blank and straight ahead. Reynolds yanks again, almost cuffing her in his attempt to get off her shoulders, and she simply swings him into a fireman’s carry with barely a break in stride.
“Fuckin’ Void,” he wheezes. He’s watched Piece reduce other Whalers to a frothing rage with her mute disregard; it’s a lot less amusing now he’s the recipient. “You contumacious little shitblock. Leave me on Manning and then you’re gone.”
Her empty expression drops like a loosed mask; Piece nods at once and looks away. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “But your leg.”
“I don’t need remindin’,” Reynolds bites at her. He and Smith had been assigned to kill two men in the ward today. He doesn’t know if Smith’s succeeded, and thanks to the Watch-Hatter riots Reynolds doesn’t know if he has either. This close. He was this close.
There’s always hoping the tallboys lit Jernigan up. Fucker and his lead-weighted cane.
Piece takes a narrow side alley to Manning Avenue. Even the thin strip of street visible ahead is burnt and smoking. As she nears the end Reynolds sees the blue of Watch street barricades and hears the oncoming clank of stilt-walkers. There are bodies piled against the barricades, some dangling over the tops in charred near-escape.
“Fuck,” he mutters. Just their luck to meet here. At least the barricades were set at a hasty slant; they can slip behind it from the alley if they move quickly.
Piece puts Reynolds down and eases him against the wall to keep the pressure off his shin. Reynolds knocks her hand from his arm as she tries to steady him.
“Alright, I’m here and you’ve done your thing. Now get.”
He straightens from adjusting his splint to see Piece’s drawn her knuckledusters from her apron and raises a threatening finger, making her jump. “Nuh-uh. I said gone, gal. Back to base with you.”
Piece blinks at him. “Putting these on for safety, Reynolds. I’m not staying. Void and sea, I swear.”
Her word is inviolate, but Reynolds’ still set on telling her she’d better beat it when Smith appears behind them with a whmpph of smoke.
“Riots fucked it up,” Reynolds says, before Smith can ask. “You do any better?”
“It is done,” Smith says simply, and looks to Piece. Takes in her dress, her apron, her black and white sash-turned-headcloth. “What are you doing here?”
“I was shadowing a target, but she got trampled in the riot. Jernigan yelled for help and I found Reynolds.”
“Killed a whole patrol between us, more like,” Reynolds grouses. “Fuck if I’m ever fightin’ you.”
“You should leave, Piece,” says Smith, checking for the tallboys’ line of sight. “You’re at a disadvantage here.”
Her face is reluctant, but she nods. “I’ll see y—”
An incendiary bolt hits the upper floors of the building beside them and blasts the air overhead with flame. Even at a distance and through the mask Reynolds feels his skin try to leap off at the heat. Piece cries out in her native creole; Smith hauls her and Reynolds out of the burning alley and behind the street barricade. Burning oil splashes and pools in the street, licking up a neat stack of oil tanks. They explode just as Smith drops Piece and Reynolds behind cover. For a brief moment, it literally rains fire.
“Why the fuck do they even keep those around?” demands Reynolds, slapping out burning droplets on his front. Smith props Piece up against the barricade, one arm raised to shield her bare head, and tugs her hands from her face.
“Piece. Piece. Are you injured?”
“I’m okay,” she croaks, shaking. Her face and forearms are blazed pink. “Y-yeah, I’m okay. Yeah. That was—a lot hotter than I thought it’d be.”
“It’s an incendiary bolt, what do you expect,” grits Reynolds. “Outsider’s glowing piss, now they know where we are—”
The next bolt strikes the barricade itself, knocking one of the panels loose. Oil spews bright and scalding into the street, spews up again as a second bolt hits. One jet splashes off the road and douses Smith’s back in fire.
“Fuckin’—!”
Reynolds flings himself forward but Piece beats him to it, tackling Smith flat to smother the flames. Within a matter of moments the fire is out; she yanks him up into a sitting position and looks his back up and down, yanking on his coat to see if the oil burnt through.
The leather holds. “I-I’m fine, Piece,” says Smith, winded and shaky but otherwise calm. “I’m fine.”
She looks at Reynolds as if to check him too, gaze unblinking, and even with the heat and smoke griming up his lenses he can see there’s something very wrong with her expression. If there was any life behind it Reynolds would call it abject terror, but she’s as empty as an Overseer’s mask.
“You alright there, gal?”
Piece hauls Smith to Reynolds, heaves Reynolds up, and shoves him in Smith’s arms like a sack of potatoes.
“Watch him and get going.” She gives them a light push. Tugs the sash from her head, loops it in her hand, heads for the gap in the barricade.
And then she charges the tallboys.
What—
Three steps out and Piece snatches something from the ground as she runs, flash of black and white, whirling her sash like a sling. A snap and whirr of impossible speed; the nearest tallboy jerks as something cracks off his shoulder. A second ricochet, a third, clank-clank of steel as the stilt-walkers advance, and Piece is still running no sword no mask no nothing by the unholy Void no she’s actually going to fight them
get going
and Outsider’s balls this is not happening she’s buying them time and Smith the fuck are you doin’ get out there and help her they can’t miss her from that close they ain’t gonna miss from that close don’t you get it don’t you get it the dumb kid’s gonna get killed for us and—
“—et back here gal dammit those fuckers’ll hurt you—”
The second tallboy fires.
The bolt arcs harsh and bright through the air and his chest seizes and Piece, she’s not fast enough, she’s not quick enough, she’ll be caught in the splash-zone and she’ll blister and burn and he’ll never get the ash out of his clothes and she’ll scream and scream and scream—
The street erupts in flame.
“Piecemeal!”
She’s still running.
Fire blazes at her shoulder and flashes at her skirts, smokes off her sleeves and kicks up at her steps, but she’s still running. She reaches the first tallboy, scurries nimble-quick up his leg like a sailor. Swings onto the tanks, snaps his raised arm at the elbow, seizes his head, wrenches hard, breaks his neck so violently she tears off his helmet. She grabs his bow even as his body goes slack and yanks an arrow from his quiver.
And Reynolds has never seen it for himself, but he’s heard stories, and he knows she’s strong. Strong enough to fling Overseers with their music boxes out windows, strong enough to run watchmen through with harpoons. Strong enough to draw a tallboy’s compound bow and burn a man alive.
Her incendiary bolt arcs blinding white and hits the second tallboy in the chest.
The oil tanks explode; Piece doesn’t dally to watch. She slides down the stilts as neatly as she climbed them, but her knees buckle when she hits the ground, forcing her to clutch the bow for support. Reynolds curses and shoves himself away from Smith to stumble past the barricade.
“Reynolds—”
“Some help you were back there. The fuck d’you stay for?”
Pained silence. “You’re injured, Reynolds,” says Smith finally. “You shouldn’t be walking on that.”
“I don’t need your—” He overbalances and keels over, and only just avoids breaking his nose when Smith catches him. “Fuck it. Just get us over—”
The world blurs and goes dark; then they're just behind Piece. Unsurprisingly, she’s already looking at them; she’s always had an uncanny knack for knowing where someone will transverse. The expression on her face is one of utter shock.
“Y—You’re still here,” she says, staring them up and down. “I t-told you. I told you to leave.”
“Well I guess you ain’t the only one who don’t listen,” Reynolds snaps. Smith’s hand closes on his arm in warning; he ignores it entirely. “The fuck were you thinking? They could’ve immolated your empty fuckwit head!”
“I-I…” Piece struggles for words. “I was m-making sure you got back. I was d-doing my job.”
“Gettin’ killed for us is not your job! Your job is being a dumb kid and savin’ your own damn hide when two fucking tallboys start stompin’ at you!”
Piece gawps. “I’m n-not a child,” she stammers finally. “I’m t-twenty.”
“I don’t care what age you are, gal, you don’t go Void-damned charging tallboys with nothing but a fuckin’ sling, do you hear me? Outsider’s fucking balls—”
She starts shaking. “You have no right. You have no right telling me what to do—”
“And you,” Reynolds shouts, jabbing a finger at her face even as Smith hauls him back, “you got no business doin’ shit that’ll get you killed right fast—”
“St-top it. Stop it, stop talking, stop it—”
“No gal, you’re gonna listen, and you’re gonna listen hard, because you’ve got more of a fucking death wish than any fucking person I’ve ever met, and I don’t—not a word from you, not one—I don’t care if we got the whole damn Abbey on our heads, the next time you pull a fuckin’ stunt like that—”
Piece stamps her foot and roars, “Kord Reynolds you SHUT UP!”
His jaw drops. Smith’s shoulders slump. Piece stumps towards them, absolutely white with rage, one hand snapping a blade from her sleeve, and her expression is so outright vicious that Reynolds reaches for his knives.
“Nobody touches you,” Piece snarls. “Nobody, do you hear me, nobody!” Her knife is bright in her fist. Her eyes are wide and raw. “I don’t care how many they are or what they are, if they come anywhere near you I’ll kill them. If they so much as look at you I’ll kill them too. Every one, every last one, I don’t care if all I’ve got is my teeth. And I don’t give a damn what you do or what you say, you can’t make me leave and you can’t make me sorry and none of you are dying no one else is dying I’ll break every bone before that happens I won’t—let it—happen—!”
Her voice cracks so violently Reynolds thinks she’ll cough blood. But Piece just doubles over, choking and hacking, and it’s suddenly all too clear just how badly she’s been injured. Her left shoulder and upper arm glisten raw. Her fingers are cut and bleeding. Her hair is singed, her lower legs blistered, her skirts tattered and smoking. Piece totters and clutches the compound bow, coughing fitfully. Her knife clinks forgotten in the street.
“Won’t h-happen,” she hiccups, breath coming in pained gasps. “Won’t—ever—”
Reynolds clenches his jaw and swings his arm off Smith’s shoulders. “Carry her,” he mutters. “Like fuck she’s walkin’ anywhere.”
Piece staggers away. “Your shin’s fractured,” she rasps. “You can’t walk on that.”
“Well I’ll just fuckin’ crawl,” Reynolds snaps, but Piece shakes her head. Shoves herself off the bow and stumbles over. Swings Reynolds up into her arms and carries him like a bride.
“Okay. We can go now.”
“Dammit, gal!” He grips her uninjured shoulder, catches Smith’s eye, and transverses—when Piece catches her bearings in the base and realizes what he’s done, she bristles with rage but still stomps to the sleeping area and Reynolds’ cot before dumping him without ceremony.
“We are not done talking,” Reynolds yells after her as she stalks out. “And get your injured ass to Popinjay!”
She soundly ignores him, staggering around Smith as he blinks into the room. A few moments later there’s a crash in the hall, followed by exclamations of concern.
Piece fainted.
-
Reynolds wakes the next day as he has only after a thorough poisoning: mouth like cracked leather, skull crushed down two sizes, a heavy sickness in his chest. It stays with him even after he gets out of bed and washes up. A morning for whiskey rather than coffee, then, and even that thought makes his head reel.
When he goes back to his cot to pick up the last of his weapons for the day Smith is there, sitting on the adjacent cot. The other Whaler looks as awful as Reynolds feels. His face is almost gray, and the shadows under his eyes are pitch.
“Popinjay says Piece should recover fully, so long as infection doesn’t set in,” Smith says quietly. “He seems to be under the impression we’ll be enforcing his medical recommendations.”
Reynolds takes the list Smith hands him. It’s a full sheet of Popinjay’s brutally square and cheerful handwriting; several of the instructions address them by name. “Well, fuck.” He rubs his face.
Smith doesn’t say anything.
Reynolds glances over, eyes how the man’s looking at Popinjay’s sheet, then sighs and says heavily, “What I said yesterday. Don’t…don’t take it to heart, alright? I said a lotta shit.”
Smith’s gaze drops to the floor. After a moment, he says, “Piece may have appreciated a gentler delivery of your sentiments, yes.”
He hadn't been talking about that, but the subject sits just as heavily in his stomach. The look on her face, the way she raised the blade… “She ever show that kinda temper to you?”
“No, but…” Smith rubs his palms together in slow circles. “Jenkins mentioned her being different, when she found him in Draper’s Ward. She didn’t leave anyone alive.”
Well. He’s dealt with worse than an injured homicidal maniac in the mornings. Reynolds tucks his last knife in place, straightens and cracks his spine. “Come on, she’s probably eating.”
But Piece is conspicuously absent from breakfast, her usual spot taken by Valenti, and she fails to appear all throughout the regular trickle of Whalers coming in from patrol or grabbing food before assignments. Reynolds has resigned himself to braving Popinjay’s workroom when the last of the morning crowd leaves, and Piece edges into the mess.
She’s foregone the usual coat and undershirt, wearing only the vest and trousers. Her left arm hangs limp in a sling; her hands are a lacework of stitches. Her shoulder and bared shins gleam with burn salve.
And she looks…
She looks like she’s been crying.
She looks absolutely miserable.
Whatever words Reynolds had prepared shrivel up on his tongue as Piece limps to a timid halt before them, her eyes fixed on the floor. She doesn’t look at them. She doesn’t even try.
“M-Morningtide,” she mumbles, barely audible.
And Reynolds feels awful.
He shouldn’t have shouted. He should’ve held onto his temper and picked out his words, or better yet just had Smith lead with the talking, because Void damn it this is Piece. Piece who left pastries and supplementary reports on Rulfio’s cot for a month after it turned out the intel she’d given him was faulty. Piece who took all of Jenkins’ patrols until his leg healed because he’d been injured on her assignment. Piece who licked spice packets for five months to drink Tyros’ pepper soup because she’d only managed three spoonfuls the first time.
Piece who’s now standing in front of them like a thrashed wolfhound, because of course Reynolds’ every word is evidence of abject failure. Of course what happened is entirely her fault.
The three of them stare in awkward silence until Reynolds says, “Look gal, about—”
Piece blurts, “I want to apologize.”
Reynolds blinks. Smith stares. Piece takes a shuddering breath.
“I-I’m…I’m sorry I yelled. And that I lost my temper. I try hard not to, a lot. It’s a, a problem, with me. I ruin things, when it happens. S-so, I’m sorry I thought about stabbing you both, a-and…I’m really sorry I…told you to—shut up.” Piece barely manages to meet Reynolds’ gaze as she says the last part, and he’s about to tell her that’s not the issue at all here when she rushes on, “I-I know I’m difficult, to work with, and to be around. And I kn-know, yesterday, I was out of line. So I just wanted to say if—if you don’t want…to be f—to work with me anymore, I understand.” She swallows. “I don’t…I don’t mind.”
It takes a moment for her words to fully sink in, upon which Reynolds says, “You fuckin’ daft, gal, have you even seen the way you fight?” while Smith overrides him with, “It would be an honor to have you continue fighting at my side, Piecemeal. Only please don’t throw yourself in mortal danger on our behalf, hm? I’d hate to lose my best student before I taught her how to bake trifles.”
Piece could not have looked more stunned if Smith had laughed in her face.
“You’ll still teach me trifles—?”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and to Reynolds’ absolute horror, tears spill down her cheeks. Oh shit, he thinks, feeling himself panic, while Smith’s mouth opens and closes in a vague attempt at words. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. What did Smith say wrong? How do they take it back? Would they make it worse if they hugged her? Did you even touch people when they cried?
This wasn’t in the plan. They don’t have a plan. Outsider in the Void, how do they make her stop crying?
“Um,” whispers Smith, wide-eyed and barely audible, “m-maybe you would like to sit down?”
Piece sinks into a chair across from them, still snuffling, but scrapes her tears away with her palm. “I don’t understand,” she says thickly. “This isn’t punishment?”
Reynolds stares. “Why would we punish you?”
“Because…” Her confusion seems to match his, though her expression’s still anxious. “…because I made a mistake. I made a mistake and you’re angry.”
“We were angry because we were worried,” says Smith patiently. “You could have gotten killed, or gotten injured worse than you did, and that…that isn’t—we wouldn’t punish you for that.”
Reynolds digs out a handkerchief from his coat and hands it over. “Here. I know it looks grimy, but I promise it’s clean.”
Piece accepts the cloth with stitch-wreathed fingers, and that’s when Reynolds notices the scars.
Her right arm is streaked with them, all old and faded and fine, the patterns of forearm and shoulder turned against steel. He’s used to seeing such things, but not to them looking so oddly stretched, as if growth spurts had tugged them out of shape. The marks vanish under her vest; what’s visible of her left arm sports similar lines. Reynolds has the ugly feeling that the rest of her is scarred the same way.
“You always get punished for runnin’?” he says quietly. Piece glances at him as if it’s a trick question. Then she looks down.
“I was the best, but I wasn’t the favorite,” Piece mumbles. “We didn’t run so his favorites could.” She folds her arms about herself, at least the best she is able to, with the sling. “I didn’t run so everyone else could. Don’t run so everyone else can.” She shivers and rocks in her seat, and when she speaks next her cadence is different, her accent an Alban brogue. “You go first, you leave last. You come back with everyone or you don’t come back at all.”
Reynolds stares at her, and it’s like watching the wreck of a person twist into shape before him: take someone young enough, scared enough, with a heart large and bruised enough, and you could choke the self-preservation right out of them. Replace it with stay and fight, don’t run, even if all you have is your teeth, because everyone else has, and no one else will…
“Piece,” Smith is saying, “you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s why we train together, and why we work in teams. You aren’t responsible for everyone here. You don’t need to stay behind.”
The expression on her face is grief. "But I’m only good at taking things,” Piece croaks. “Breaking things. But now I can do it for people. Good people.” She lowers her head, rocks herself in her seat. “And I want to. I have to. If I don’t, what good would I be?”
“Void no, gal.” Reynolds leans across the table. “You ain’t just a face-stealer and a fighter. You bake and you know spices and that weird fancy shit with Jenkins. You taught me how to fuckin’ sew proper.”
Piece gives him a wobbly smile. “I could only bake after Smith. I only knew spices after Tyros and proper tailoring after Jenkins. And I was only able to teach you because you didn’t say no.” She looks down again, faintly trembling. “All the good in me now started from all of you. I’m sorry I scared you, and I’m sorry I worried you, but…please let me be useful. It’s the only thing I’ve got that’s mine.”
Smith looks at Reynolds. Reynolds looks at Smith.
This is the worst breakfast conversation either of them has ever had.
“As long as you understand we’re going to be right beside you,” says Smith finally. “You aren’t to charge anything alone.”
“And if it’s tallboys I’ll skin you alive,” Reynolds mutters. Smith shoots him a flat glare and looks back to Piece.
“Is this a fair compromise?”
“M…m-more than fair.” Piece looks up at them and smiles, but it’s the nervous placation of a child facing the rod. The fact that she even knows the expression makes something barbed twist in Reynolds’ gut. “I know I’m flawed,” she says. “And I know I’m not easy to be with. But I’ll work on it. Won’t let you down.”
She’ll keep throwing herself in harm’s way for them, Reynolds just knows it. Don’t matter the effort or intention; you can’t switch off training like that any more than you can switch off a knife.
They’ll just have to keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t die doing stupid shit.
On their next assignment, he and Smith find, amongst their provided supplies, a brand new handkerchief labelled Reynolds neatly tied with ribbon, and two custard-and-cake-filled jars with spoons tied to their lids.
Trifles.