Chapter Text
Early 2000s, New York, USA
Week One
He woke into the staleness of the morning, his foul mood of the previous night wrapped around him more tightly than his luxurious 600-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. It was still dark outside, the streetlights mixing with the dull midwinter-grey that preceded dawn in New York City.
He cast a wary eye at the antique wall clock, fully expecting to be disappointed and gratified to find himself correct: It was not even a quarter past four in the morning. A full day stretched ahead of him, some eighty thousands of seconds to tick slowly into the past before he might realistically be released to sleep once more.
Stumping over to the bathroom, he pulled out his straight razor from the mirrored cupboard and proceeded to shave the faint stubble from his jawline, the bits of greyed hair forming a thin layer of grime in the basin of the porcelain sink.
His gaze met his own in the mirror, then, and he stared it down levelly. The passage of time showed more clearly on his face than he remembered it having done before, the faint scar at his temple pulling his skin tighter just beyond his left eye. A token of a more violent era. He scowled at the view, giving his reflection one more parting glare before returning to his room, dressing himself impeccably in a tailored deep grey suit complete with cravat and pocket square. Buttoning up his long wool overcoat and wrapping his fingers around the head of his silver-knobbed oak cane, he headed for the door.
His mood did not improve by the time he left his third-floor Brooklyn walk-up, striding down the streets with a purpose that was not matched by the twenty-somethings in his way, faces inclined down to their phones in the pre-morning darkness, clutching the same ubiquitous plastic coffee cups with the smiling mermaid on the side. He wondered if he would ever be able to accustom himself to the excesses of this age, the detritus of plastic piling up in every spare corner of the planet.
It was a brisk morning, and the office buildings around him funneled the wind into the same path, blasting its way down the street without mercy.
He slowed for a moment and glanced down, intent on retrieving a pair of fine leather gloves from the breast pocket of his overcoat, when he was suddenly jostled by a thirty-something man who had trodden onto him from behind. He stumbled for a moment, the man behind him having nearly stepped one of the heels of his shoes off of his feet.
The other man gave a noise of long-suffering irritation and side-stepped him sharply, attempting to blow past with a murmured “Move, old man,” under his breath.
His own fingers flexed, a muscle-memory that once rage had been enough to rouse him to action, to the spark of emotion that the years had all but erased. Instead, he glared at the man, allowing just a hint of otherness to cross his face. The man blanched, picking up his pace as he scurried away as Gibbs watched without a modicum of interest.
Humans had no real reason to fear him. The stories had gotten some of it right. An abnormally long life was the trademark of his kind, and he’d long ago acquired a taste for O-negative. And indeed, he supposed, a stake through the heart might very well kill him just as it would any other man.
But most of the legends were wrong – most conspicuously, that a ravenous desire to consume human blood motivated his every action (though in the absence of this sole source of nutrition, he would starve); that sunlight would scorch off his flesh (though it was deeply uncomfortable, instantly blistering open any exposed skin); or that he would turn into a bat at night (he had no idea where that one had originated, and he particularly disliked it.)
But humans also had no real reason to like him. And that, frankly, was how he preferred it.
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As he approached the Manhattan high-rise, the shining glass doors were quickly pressed open from the inside by a red-coated doorman who nodded politely but said nothing. Small talk, the door staff had years-ago learned, was not tolerated by this eccentric yet impeccably-dressed gentleman.
With a faint expression of distaste, he retrieved his plastic ID badge and pressed it to the security turnstile, watching the lighted blue pixels arrange to authenticate his access.
J. Gibbs IV, Esq.
The fourth, indeed. Of all the modern indignities, paperwork was by far the worst.
As the beaten sheet metal doors of the elevator opened and closed around him, rocketing him up 60 floors, Gibbs indulged himself in a moment of reminiscing.
There had certain been, in his long experience, a human obsession with categorization and labeling. But the challenge, he reflected soberly, was the increasing level of scrutiny dedicated to this process. It was becoming quite difficult to find individuals of high skill, able to provide him with the identity documents he needed in order to secure housing, employment, proof of education...
Digitization was started to prove far more of an existential threat than any farmer with a pitchfork and lighted torch ever could.
Well, digitization and the concept of the “open office,” he mused, as he entered the still-dark office suite that would, within a few hours, be populated by the incessant chatter of paralegals, lawyers, interns, and administrative staff; the constant churning of printers and copiers; the ringing of phones and pinging of texts on mobile devices that no one had the courtesy to silence. He stepped into his private office – a condition of his being willing to work there – and pressed the door firmly closed.
With a sigh, he hung his coat neatly upon the door hook, pulled open a thick stack of case files on his mahogany desk, and settled in to read.
The hours he’d so dreaded in the morning passed smoothly along as he lost himself in his work, fingers turning over crisp pages. Let others spend whole years of their short lives squinting at blue-light screens – he’d stick to the printed word.
Brrrringggggg! Brrrringggggg!
He’d recently relented and allowed the firm’s IT team to replace his beautiful yet at that point hopelessly-broken 1950s rotary phone with one of their standard desktop models. Now, fingertips hesitating over the myriad of buttons, he patently, passionately, regretted the moment of weakness.
“Heya, Jethro!”
In the privacy of his own office, Gibbs felt his lip curl. The voice was all too easily discernible. “Pete,” he acknowledged reluctantly, a moment too late for the acknowledgement to be anything other than sullen in the face of this unexpected call by the firm’s managing partner.
“Glad I caught you at your desk. I have a new case for you. A really interesting one.”
Unwilling to take the bait, Gibbs remained silent.
“A class action lawsuit against a healthcare company that defrauded several hundred senior citizens out of their life savings.”
“Interesting indeed that you would think of me on this one.”
“It’s a quick, clean pro-bono case. Great team and it’s pretty far along, actually, in terms of casework and witness testimonies. You’ll be over and done in a few months.”
“I see.” His voice insinuated clearly enough that he didn’t. “My hands are quite full with the Tri-State Antitrust.”
“Jethro, you gotta get your pro bono in before the end of the calendar year. I’ve told you before, we run this firm fully in compliance with the ABA’s ethical guidelines, including their recommended minimums for volunteer hours.”
His voice was firm, which, reflected Gibbs, leaning back slightly in his chair, presented a problem. Pete seemed uncharacteristically set on this. An excellent judge of character far more by experience than innate skill, Gibbs felt certain the other man would not bend.
He could walk, he supposed. After fifteen years at the firm – and having given his age as “60” upon joining – he was hitting the far end of believable by all accounts. To remain was to put off the inevitable. But the idea of leaving and starting anew was, at this point, to lose his one reason for living in the person of Aloysius Bernard Von Graefe.
“Very well,” he gritted out, pressing the phone harshly back into the receiver.
Gibbs had first met Aloysius when he himself was just turning to the legal profession, having decided at some point in the fifteenth century that a life by the sword was starting to be a bit much for his knees. And frankly, it was simply indecorous at his age. Heaven forbid he lose an eye and find himself forced to wear a patch for the next millennium.
Aloysius was already then an expert in canon law, gallivanting around Europe offering legal services to men of repute who, for a substantial fee, could rely on Aloysius to sway crowd and judge alike. His loquacity was legendary even then.
Perhaps the fame was well-deserved. Aloysius was a real Cicero – in fact, Gibbs had his suspicions on that point, though of course impossible to prove – and having gone head-to-head with Gibbs in the courtroom on no fewer than seven occasions in the last decade, had bested him on four of those seven instances. They were rapidly hurtling toward their eighth confrontation now – a decidedly cookie-cutter anti-trust case between two mega-corporations – but it had promise to even the score. And he was running out of time to do more than that before he would need to move on and start his life afresh.
He spared a glance for the clock on the wall. 9:30pm. Long past dark outside. He might as well leave. Aloysius could wait. In fact, there was nothing that couldn’t wait in his world.