Chapter Text
Pate wonders why he couldn’t tell it had been a trap at first.
Wet leaves cling to the bottoms of his boots as he slinks against the wall, the sound of his own breathing deafening in his ears. The last sight he’d seen of Creighton was him biting and scratching at the man with curly blond hair as he was dragged into an alleyway, dropping the food so he could focus his energy on a means of escape — Pate was lucky enough to slip out from the fray, he’s always been the more nimble one of the two of them.
Three voices overlap in the alleyway: Two deeper voices that most certainly belong to grown-ups — Pate catches one as the blond man’s voice, the other isn’t so familiar — then there’s Creighton’s snapping and yelling in protest (no one will hear him or pay attention to him or try to help him, Pate knows. Not in a city as busy as this one, especially not a Mirrahan one).
“—Get off me!”
“This one fell for our trap quickly. Certainly lacking in brains, but it’s not as if that’s important anyways.” A laugh that makes Pate cringe, grateful for the cover of the wall he hides behind.
“Hmm. Not much to look at, but he’s got meat on him. You know they don’t go for the stick-thin sorts.”
“Well, money is money.”
“Pity I wasn’t able to catch that friend of his in time, though.”
Something twists in Pate’s stomach. He presses one hand to the cold brick wall behind him for balance. He’s talking about me.
“He had a friend with him?”
“Oh, yes — far less homely to look at, you know. He probably would’ve been very popular, could’ve fetched us quite a bit in terms of money.”
“What a shame.”
“It certainly is, he was far more nimble than the one here. Slipped right through my fingers.”
A strangled noise of distress. That’s Creighton’s voice. “Pate? He got away?”
“Oh, he has a name. Pate. Well, he may have gotten away from us but we ought to keep our eye out for him just in case.”
Pate can’t stop the violent shaking of his hands. If they get Creighton away from him, he’ll be on his own. He’ll have no guard dog who’ll act as the brawn of their duo, no one to hide behind when cunning words won’t make adults turn their sharp eyes away from him. He knows he’s far better at staying hidden, but the dreaded what if of being caught by these men hangs over his head. The blond man could easily recognize him by the mop of curly red brown hair and the splotchy freckles dusting his nose and cheeks if he decides to let his guard down one day…
Everything happens so fast.
He remembers the knife he has in his pocket, the one he’d nabbed a few weeks ago. There’s a cracking of splintering bones and tearing through skin and fabric beneath metal, and Creighton joins in, hands wet with fresh red blood twisting his own knife into the man’s throat.
Pate’s breath comes out in faint puffs on the chilly, dewy-moist air. Then:
“We need to get out of here.”
The bonfire’s small, faint brassy illumination from the firelight only making the contrast between light and shadow bolder. Pate’s as close to the fire as he can get without risk of burning himself via means of the sparks, yet he still can’t warm up. His stomach growls, but they’d had to leave behind their food in the fray; to go back would mean the chance of getting caught all over again.
Pate looks down at his hands — the dark red bloodstains have since dried to a rusty brown, crusty beneath his fingernails — and then to Creighton, who has his back turned to him. His stringy, pale hair looks sickly yellow by the firelight, he sits with his knees tucked under his chin.
Here in the woods they are safe from people. The heavy leaves and towering trees will provide enough cover for them. But Pate still thinks about the hands that reached out for him when they’d made their initial escape, and wonders for a moment what might have happened if those hands had grabbed hold of him alongside Creighton, too.
“You haven’t said anything since we’ve set up for the night,” Pate notes.
At first, the only answer he gets is silence save for the crackling of burning wood. Then:
“I don’t really feel like talking about much is all.”
He thinks about that stomach-turning what if and knows he doesn’t want to risk Creighton drifting farther away from him. It might be a little laughable, really, how easy Pate was able to worm his way into his head: Now Creighton, who could kill a man without so much as blinking, follows him with all the large-eyed loyalty of a dog.
Pate doesn’t want his dog to turn on him or run away.
“Still scared from earlier today?” Then, because he knows that solidarity in suffering helps, he adds on, “It’s okay. I’m still shaken up about all of it too.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sure you don’t. But talking about it might help—”
“Pate, I just said I don’t want to talk about it.”
A growly, rasping quality enters his voice; this is a telltale sign that Pate’s getting under his skin. But Pate doesn’t know how else to test Creighton’s loyalty to him other than getting under his skin, so he turns over the next words he wants to say in his head before clearing his throat of phlegm and speaking once more.
“You didn’t answer my question about whether or not you’re scared.”
“‘Cause I just said—”
“You don’t have to say anything more than that. I just want to know if you’re still scared from earlier. That’s all.”
Creighton looks back to him over his shoulder. Firelight dances in his frost-blue eyes, making them shine like polished brass.
“Alright. I’m still scared.”
His words come out flat and broken. Pate has never seen Creighton cry, but he knows that when he tries (and fails) to keep his voice from cracking that he’s growing more shaken. It won’t take much for him to start rambling, either. Pate doesn’t have to do much.
“I got scared ‘cause I knew they were still looking for you,” Creighton says at last. “But also because I knew what would happen now that I was caught. Before I met you, you know — I’d seen it happen to some of the other children from before. But I never thought it’d happen to me. Or you. And it almost did. I was more worried ‘cause you’d gotten away, and I knew they’d be looking for you but — but I think I was scared because I might’ve been left behind all alone, and I don’t want to be alone.”
This is what he wants to hear.
Creighton sucks in a heavy breath before continuing. “I dunno what it is. I was fine with being by myself before I met you. But now that we work together so well, you know how to help me out of things ‘cause you’re better at talking with grown-ups than I am. And it’s so strange, too. It’s like you’re my…”
He’s too cautious to use the word “friend” or anything close to it. Pate’s fine with that, since he doesn’t quite keep Creighton around as a proper friend, either. Still, this is what he’s supposed to say. Pate already has a leash on him, and he’s not going to let go.
“I’m still scared, if that helps. I don’t know what else to say, really.” He is scared, but not for any of the reasons Creighton thinks he is — that’s something he intends to keep to himself.
Creighton turns away from him again, his motions lacking the stiff contempt from earlier. “It’s fine. Like I said, I don’t really want to talk.”
Pate nods in false understanding.
He’ll do whatever he has to to keep Creighton from leaving him behind.