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Perhaps Barok should have known to give up on the day before he even left the front door to make his journey to the office; he could justifiably have said that the universe gave him a sign.
When he descended the stairs, pulling his coat over his shoulders as he went, his left foot went straight through one of the stairs with a sickening crack. He stumbled, catching himself on the bannister (which, thankfully, did not give way in the same manner), and pulled himself up straight. When he lifted his foot, crumbling wood stuck to the sole of his shoe.
“Elvin?” he called. Sure enough, the housekeeper poked his head around a doorway just down the hall. “I think there’s some wood damage. Could you get someone to check it out?”
Elvin pulled a face. “Ah, sorry, my lord, I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“That bad? Explain.”
Elvin nodded. It was a credit to his years under Barok’s employment that he didn’t seem afraid in the slightest of displeasing him. “There are signs of woodworm in the house, my lord,” he said. Barok grimaced. “We thought it would be easily contained and removed without informing you, but it seems that was not the case.”
“I see.” Barok wasn’t a stranger to the kind of damage that could be done - he’d hosted more than one acquaintance whose house had been plagued by the things in the last few years. It could easily be handled, with the right professional involved, but until then… “Get someone in to deal with it as soon as possible.”
“But my lord, stripping back the wood will make the house far less hospitable, I couldn’t ask you on such short notice-”
Barok shook his head. “It’s fine, Elvin. I’ll sort something out.” He glanced across the hall, eyes falling on the clock. Even if he hurried, he’d be late, and a certain apprentice of his wouldn’t let him hear the end of it. “I have to go, so see it done.”
“Of course, my lord,” Elvin answered, and then Barok was gone (thankfully without putting his foot through any more stairs), cursing his poor luck. Of course he’d be forced to find somewhere to reside for the immediate future on top of his work day. He couldn’t get a moment of peace.
Worse still was when he climbed the stairs of the Prosecutor’s Office. A little noise in the corridors was usual, and every so often there were visitors to his office with Asogi. The noise he heard when he opened the door, however, was of a different character.
“Oi, watch where you’re swinging that thing!” And if that wasn’t a familiar voice. Just Barok’s luck to have his arrival coincide with that of the junior detective.
He fully expected a particular sight to meet his eyes at that moment: Kazuma Asogi in front of some kind of fragile object, sword in hand, barely moments from hitting it. What he did not expect was one Maria Gorey, equipped with a large knife that should definitely have been restricted to a lab space, facing off against… a spider.
Asogi, naturally, was standing on top of his desk, barely more than an inch or two off the floor. When Barok entered the room, his gaze snapped up, and Barok could practically see the childish young man and principled prosecutor at war in his mind.
Barok sighed, striding across the room to take charge. He plucked a crystal glass from the cabinet, approached the offending creature (on top of the reconstruction table), and let the glass trap it in place.
Tension dissipated from the room, and all of a sudden they seemed to register exactly what their little escapade looked like. Asogi hopped down from the desk in a single, smooth movement that shouldn’t have looked half as graceful as it did.
“Do I get an explanation for the circus I walked in on?” Barok asked.
Asogi coughed into his fist. “I mentioned that there was a spider in our office earlier,” he said. “Ms Lestrade and Ms Gorey offered to help me dispose of it.”
Of course; Barok had been dimly aware, through the general slow drip of civil conversation he and Asogi managed to keep up now and again, that his three junior coworkers were cohabiting in a townhouse not far from the office. Until now, it hadn’t leaked into the working day in quite such a dramatic fashion.
“If you were so bothered by the spider, you could have asked me to dispose of it,” he said. He’d dealt with this particular quirk of Asogi’s before. He’d even hazard saying that he found it amusing.
“I would have, if you were here when I arrived at the office,” Asogi said. There was a hint of triumph in his voice; his lateness hadn’t gone unnoticed, then.
“I was waylaid in my home,” Barok answered, keeping his tone light, with no room for mockery. Asogi always took whatever he could get - it was what made him such a good prosecutor. And such an infernal coworker. “There was a minor infestation of woodworm.”
Lestrade made a sympathetic noise. “That sh- thing can take out whole ‘ouses, if you’re not careful.”
Barok nodded. “I will certainly be out of a residence for the foreseeable future,” he said. Three faces ahead of him creased in various degrees of grimaces in sympathy for his plight; he was glad they didn’t just laugh him off.
Maybe there was a leveller in place, with him walking in on their little performance just now. Something that pulled down the walls that normally stood between them.
“Do you need somewhere to stay?” Gorey asked, her gaze flickering between Lestrade and Asogi. They both nodded.
“You could always stay with us,” Asogi said. There was a fire lit in his eyes (perhaps, Barok mused, he was imagining his superior sleeping on a moth-eaten sofa. As if he would ever be caught dead sleeping on such a thing). “We have space, and it would be cheaper for you than finding a hotel room on such short notice.”
Barok was distinctly aware, faced with the expectant faces of three people who practically existed to inconvenience him as frequently as possible on a daily basis, that they stood to gain something from this. Namely, Barok had money; they had rent to pay. They’d get everything they could from him and then some.
The smart decision here, at least for his sanity, would be to refuse them outright. He saw enough of them at work - they saw enough of him at work. He’d end up paying all their rent for the next month if he accepted their offer, probably, and they’d all be irritated by each other no end within hours.
And yet, they were all watching him, eyes piercing. Barok could practically see them compiling reams of reasons for him to stay, and given that they were some of the brightest young minds in London’s legal profession… it would probably be less exhausting to just accept.
“Alright,” he said, telling himself that the acceptance had nothing to do with maybe, possibly, being a little curious about getting to know them outside of a workplace setting.
Three faces lit up with lightbulb-bright grins in tandem, and Barok held back a sigh. He clearly had no idea what he’d just agreed to.
“Good evening, Lord van Zieks.” Gorey opened the door with a soft greeting and a knife (a kitchen knife, he was sure, but it remained disconcerting) when Barok arrived later that evening, luggage retrieved from his woodworm-ridden home and packed in a trunk. “We cleaned the room you’ll be staying in. It’s very sterile.”
Barok nodded to her. “Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for extending the offer of hospitality.”
“Thank you for extending the offer of money,” Gorey replied, her words just as smooth as Barok’s. “My tools aren’t cheap.”
Barok coughed. “Quite,” he said, moving past her and towards the room; up two narrow flights of stairs, down one corridor, and then into an admittedly very clean, if sparse, bedroom. It wasn’t as grand as he was used to, but it was enough - there was a bed and a desk and the floorboards weren’t in imminent danger of disintegrating. He’d take it.
He turned back to the door to thank Gorey for the help moving his trunk (she had cheerfully informed him that it was lighter than the average body), but she was already gone. He took it as a cue to settle in.
Within minutes, there was a commotion going on downstairs. It took a while for Barok to work out what it was they could be doing - he trusted them, mostly, not to murder each other, but there were rather a lot of murder-y noises travelling up the stairs. Shouting, hands slamming on tables, the scrape of a chair-
“I’ll cleave you in two, Kazuma Asogi, and I know exactly how to falsify the evidence.” Gorey’s voice, followed by the slap of paper against a hard surface. Of course.
They were playing cards, threats of violent retribution and all. Like playing in a gentleman’s club with the group a few bottles deep, except Barok didn’t smell a drop of alcohol. The three of them were just like that.
Barok couldn’t help but smile to himself, settling in at a safe distance from the chaos. He didn’t expect to be invited—he was only a guest, after all—but that wouldn’t stop him from taking note of it. One of them might say something interesting.
That ‘something interesting’ came not half an hour later, accompanied by footsteps on the stairs. “Hey, Mr Reaper,” a voice said, and that it came from Lestrade was a given - she was practically the only person in London who hadn’t dropped that particular moniker for him, pinning it to him as some kind of reminder of how they knew each other. Like Barok could ever forget.
Still, she said it with something akin to fondness, so he didn’t really mind. He set his pen down before turning to her. “Did you want something?”
“Yep!” She popped the p, her mouth tilting into a wicked grin. “We’re between rounds. Wanna join in?”
There was an appropriate response to such a question: no. No, he did not want to play card games with his immature colleagues. He was merely staying in their residence, and becoming overly familiar would be unprofessional.
He stood with a scrape of his chair against the ground. “Deal me in.”
It turned out that Barok wasn’t exactly good at the kinds of card games preferred by his colleagues, but for once that didn’t exclude him from the enjoyment. There was a kind of peace in sitting back, the designated ‘not a threat’ player, and watching as they tore each other apart.
Gorey (“you should call me Maria,” she grumbled, the one time he managed to best her in the charmingly named game of ‘bullshit’. “You gave up the professionalism when you slid that lie past us.”) was funnier than he’d known her to be when working, all fast jokes and smug smiles. And Kazuma (“but only out of the office,” he grumbled, picking up twenty cards when Barok called him on his bluff. “It helps separate the humiliation here from the courtroom.”) had the same cutting wit when he wasn’t using it for insults. It was… refreshing.
At some point, something warm pressed against Barok’s knee, and he looked down. “He wants to be up on your lap,” Gina said, gesturing with her hand (Barok watched as Maria took a quick, sly glance as she partially revealed her cards) to where Toby’s chin was now against Barok’s thigh. “You don’t gotta let him, but he’ll keep staring if you don’t.”
Barok looked down at the dog, all wide, hopeful eyes, and sighed. “Alright,” he said, patting his lap, and Toby didn’t even hesitate for a second before jumping up there and curling into a perfect circle.
It was nice. He didn’t understand why the dog adored him, or why people he would admit to barely knowing would share their home and laughter with him so easily, but it was heartening. More fun than he wanted to admit, certainly.
“I’m off!” Kazuma called, bright and early that Saturday morning. His words were followed by the slam of a door and no further explanation; not even when he’d be back. Barok looked across the large table to where Gina and Maria sat, both of them shovelling in a quick breakfast before they answered a summons to work a case that came to the constabulary early that morning.
Gina shrugged. “Kazuma does Kazuma things,” she said. “Might ‘ave gone to Baker Street? Or maybe not. Either way, he’ll be back this afternoon.”
Barok nodded. He glanced over towards the kitchen, where dishes were starting to pile up. He hadn’t often done them himself, but if the others were busy…
Maria followed his gaze and laughed. “It might be better if you don’t touch them, Lord van Zieks,” she said. “I wash things properly.”
“I could-” he began, but Gina shook her head.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” she said. She glanced around the room. “But if you want to do something, you should take Toby out! I can’t take ‘im to the scene this time.”
“You want me to walk your dog,” Barok surmised.
Gina grinned. “A legal mind worthy of being called the pride o’ London, connecting the dots like that,” she said. She pointed across the room to where a leash hung on a door handle. “Take him on that, let him off at the park, and don’t forget to pick up his crap!”
A week ago, Barok might have threatened to speak to her boss for even suggesting he do such a thing—completing what amounted to a chore for a young woman (if that - it was more like he was doing a chore for a young woman’s dog)—but the idea couldn’t have been further from his mind. “Alright. When does he need to go?”
“Whenever,” Gina reported cheerfully. “But when he gets insufferable, you have to go, or he’ll piss in the house.”
“Charming,” Barok said, locking eyes with Toby as Gina and Maria finished up their hurried morning routine, leaving the house in a flurry of noise. “Well, tell me when you want to go,” he said, feeling profoundly silly talking to a dog until the aforementioned dog huffed lightly. Message received and understood, apparently.
Not a quarter of an hour later, Toby’s head was on Barok’s knee, and he took that as a sign to pull on his hat and overcoat and follow Gina’s instructions. He hadn’t walked a dog in a long, long time, but as a child it had always been a particularly fraught experience involving a lot of chasing and more mud smeared on his trousers than he wanted to admit to. Toby wasn’t exactly the well-trained hunting dog his own family’s hounds had once been; he was ready for a humiliating nightmare of a trip.
As it turned out, walking the dog… wasn’t actually that bad. Perhaps surprisingly, given his owner and the people he spent the most time around, Toby was actually a relatively well behaved dog, especially when allowed to follow whatever took his fancy while Barok watched from a distance.
It was a pleasant day and no one in the park seemed to recognise him - and if they did, they knew better than to stop him. It made, all in all, for a pleasant walk. Not nearly as bad as he'd imagined.
And then, because there was some higher power that governed his life to be as contrary as possible, two things happen at once. First, he heard a voice calling him from across the park.
"Mr Barok!" It was Gina, who would have been a welcome addition to his morning if it wasn't for the second thing, which happened the moment he spotted her: just two feet away from him, Toby arched his back in a squat and unloaded his now-digested breakfast on the ground. Barok pulled a face. Gina pulled the opposite one, delight in every inch of her expression.
Barok inclined his head. “Are you going to clean up his mess?”
Gina’s smile widened. “You’re closer,” she said cheerily. Because she was right; he was much closer. He had the paper bags she’d left out just by the door. By all rights, he was walking Toby.
Barok let out a long-suffering sigh to let Gina know exactly how he felt about this, and went to clear up the little gift Toby had left for him on the ground.
“Thanks for that,” Gina said, falling into place next to him after he’d deposited the bag in a bin. Toby raced over not a second later, paws scrabbling at her knees. “Hello there Toby, did ya miss me?”
Toby, ever one to play favourites, barked in response. The thorough scratching Gina gave him between the ears in response—and the slice of what looked like sausage that appeared from a napkin held in one of her coat pockets—had probably helped that one along. Picking up poo couldn’t compare in bumping Barok up the ranking of Toby’s favourite humans.
Not that he wanted to be one of Toby’s favourites. He was just a pleasant, well-behaved dog to be around.
“He kept looking around the park when we arrived,” Barok said. “I believe he was confused about why you weren’t there.”
“Awww, Toby!” Gina scratched under his chin, and Toby soaked up every second of the attention. “Did ‘e behave himself? I don’t normally ask other people to walk him.”
“He was fine,” Barok answered. “A damn sight better behaved than Balmung. He used to-” Barok cut himself off when Gina’s expression soured. Ah. Maybe not the best dog to bring up in conversation with the protege of another of London’s Reapers. He’d become so used to being able to speak his mind amongst the three of them that he hadn’t even thought about keeping the conversation from dangerous territory.
A decidedly awkward silence settled, Barok clamping down on the urge to fidget with the hem of his coat as Gina looked away, eyes searching for Toby who, barely metres away, didn’t really need to be supervised.
"You know, I don't actually blame you for what happened." Gina’s voice broke the silence with exactly the topic Barok had been dreading broaching with her for months now. "You knew what you were doing and you didn't know that you were wrong. It's your job to do what you do, and even if I thought it was going to kill me, it didn't. So I don't mind."
If it had been in the early days of their acquaintance, Barok might have said something about how he was surprised she could come out with something so articulate. Fortunately enough, in the months he’d known her, he’d also known people who had said as much and found themselves on the other end of a much deserved chewing out.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said. And it wasn't just a pleasantry, an automatic response to what were meant to be conciliatory words. It was the truth. "Similarly, I don't blame you for your strong feelings towards many of my exploits during that rather tumultuous time in both our lives."
"I 'ope you wouldn't!" she replied, but she was still smiling. "I didn't expect you would, but it's nice to hear it anyways."
"You didn't expect that I’d hold it against you?" He honestly hadn’t thought that she held a high opinion of him at all.
Gina shook her head. "I think you're an alright sort really," she said. "Despite the money."
“Despite it?”
Gina grinned the immensely familiar grin of the pickpocket. He had it on good authority that it was no longer a part of her profession of choice, but he’d keep an eye on his pockets anyway. Just in case. “Despite it.”
Barok chuckled, the sound caught between a laugh and a cough. “Well, I’m glad.” As he spoke, he offered her a tentative smile, and her own softened in turn. “And for what it’s worth, I’m very happy to see what you’ve made of every unfortunate circumstance that has befallen you in recent times.”
“It’s worth plenty,” Gina answered, whistling for Toby; he ignored her, likely guessing the walk was nearly at its end. “Oi, Toby, you were meant to come back! Woulda made me look all suave!”
Barok laughed properly at that, and Gina joined in. The sun shone on, Toby resolutely refused to return for the next half an hour, and everything felt… fine. They’d even had the conversation they’d been waiting months to have and neither of them ended it in a rage.
Barok was very, very glad he’d been bullied into the walk.
Eventually, Toby seemed to tire, and the circles he ran around the pair of them turned into lazy ambling. Still, the moment they turned towards the park gate, he scampered off once more, disappearing into the bushes.
“Fancy going to get him out?” Gina asked, and there was a smile on her face which told Barok exactly what she actually thought of that suggestion.
He returned the smile. “We might need two people to catch him,” he said, and Gina barked out a laugh.
“You should make more jokes in court; you’re not as boring as you look,” she said. “People’d like you more.”
“I don’t need to be liked.”
Gina shrugged. “Works for Kazuma,” she said. “You know, he’s popular down at the prison. Somehow.”
“Like meets like?” Barok offered, and Gina folded in on herself in laughter. At the sound of it, Toby popped out of the bushes, and they took their chance before he worked out what was going on, catching him and getting him back on the leash so they could all go back to the house.
When they got in through the front door, Toby scampered straight towards his bed, curling up into a tight ball and resting his head just above his tail. He let out that heavy, world-weary sigh all dogs had within them.
He looked content, and Barok, if asked, would probably concur. It had been a long time since he took time out of his day to just stretch his legs and think of the world from another creature’s perspective. It was nice.
Maybe, when he went back to the house (which was now significantly more, but not yet entirely, free of woodworm), it was time to have a dog again. It had been too long.
“A penny for your thoughts, Barok?” Kazuma called from the top of the stairs. Barok was still getting used to his propensity towards popping out of nowhere.
“None of your business,” he called back, because if any of them caught wind of it, he’d never hear the end of his hypothetical dog. Kazuma just chuckled.
And, just like that, it hit him: he wasn’t looking forward to the day when the house was habitable again. He’d be glad for a more comfortable bed, but other than that there wasn’t a spark of appeal to it. There’d be no more impromptu dog walks, nor card games that stretched far too late into the night. Just that wall of professionalism raised once again, keeping everything in their office respectable.
Damn all three of them - or four, he supposed, his eyes drifting to where Toby’s paws twitched in his sleep. Somehow, they’d endeared themselves to him.
Living with them wasn’t what he wanted to do forever - they were young adults, with adventures to get to without the wary gaze of someone like him. Sometimes, watching them (Maria was in the kitchen, and while he knew she was good with knives, the sounds of her preparing the most recent acquisition from the butcher’s were alarming at best) was a reminder of a time long past. A time he wanted them to experience on their own terms.
But there was something else too. Something warm that had managed to sneak in between exchanged barbs and important conversations left far too late (and how many did he still need to have with Kazuma? They were probably innumerable), leaving him attached to them. Bonded together in the same way, perhaps, that they’d found each other in a city where none of them had many friends.
There was a word for it, of course. Something Barok hadn’t had or even hoped for since his brother died. And he wouldn’t dare put it into words, but he knew what it was. The fact that they’d accepted him into their fold, given what he’d done to all their families before…
There was a word for that too: gratitude. Barok would just have to work out how to express it.
The next week saw them all in court once again, with himself and Kazuma behind the prosecution bench and Gina and Maria at the stand, giving their report on a rather unusual crime scene.
“There were scuff marks all over the floor,” Gina explained, “like something ‘eavy had been moved. I think it was a body.”
“And if the body had been moved as the good detective suggests,” Barok said, “then there’s no reason why Mr Rot could not have been involved. In fact, it makes it more likely, given that his partial alibi involves the purchase of a trunk.”
“Objection!” the defence called. Someone whose name Barok couldn’t fully recall - Gramore, perhaps? “The trunk was bought at the same time as the murder occurred, not after it.”
“Objection!” It was Kazuma who called that time, fighting his way to the contradiction just before Barok could call the lawyer out himself. “As Ms Gorey just testified, the body was battered, with the bruising making identifying the exact time of death difficult. This matches the possibility that the body was moved in a trunk, and in particular one without cushioned insides - which Mr Rot was very clear his trunk did not have.”
“On that note, why hasn’t this trunk been seized as potential evidence?” Barok asked.
“My client is a soldier!” probably-Gramore blustered. “He does not need to hand over all his belongings due to a false accusation of murder!”
As the man spoke, there was a noise under the bench. Something shuffling; if Kazuma wasn’t standing stock still beside him, Barok would have thought it was him fidgeting. Whatever it was, Barok pushed it out of his mind. It couldn’t be more important than the task at hand.
“Your client, soldier or otherwise, is not exempted from the laws of the land,” Barok said. “Particularly when the murder of an innocent man has occurred. Justice must be served, and it cannot happen conclusively without a proper investigation. The crime and its perpetrator, however, are still obvious without the trunk, and this is particularly clear from the murder weapon.”
Then there was another noise. There was something moving just outside of Barok’s line of sight, something that wasn’t the usual ebb and flow of motion that happened naturally in a crowd of people. But he kept his mind on the task at hand; he was close to closing this case, and Kazuma would be on the lookout for anyone with hostile intentions regardless.
Then Kazuma made a noise akin to… a delighted squeak? And Barok didn’t understand it, but he was nearly done, and then this accursed case could be over. “The murder weapon could only have-”
“Toby!” And that was Gina, talking about the godforsaken dog, and that meant- “I’ve been looking for him all day, of course ‘e ended up here! Musta followed his uncle Barok to the courthouse.”
And that meant, of course, that there was a medium-sized dog wriggling around on a shelf of the prosecution’s bench. At the sound of ‘uncle Barok,’ the rascal opened his mouth and barked, his tail wagging with a series of alarming thumps against the glass bottles stored there.
The whole courthouse was in uproar, and Barok patently refused to add to the chaos with broken glass generated by an over-excited, under-trained dog. He bent down slightly, reached for Toby, and gathered him in his arms, lifting him up to the top of the bench. Then, because the whole damn gallery was practically cooing, he grasped the dog’s collar in one hand and held him there.
“Sit,” he warned. Kazuma made another noise; a stifled laugh, one hand grasped tightly against the bench as he held himself upright. His shoulders were shaking with the effort of it.
Well, one of them would have to be professional about all of this. And it wasn’t going to be Kazuma or Toby. “Your Honour,” he said. “I have the dog under control. May I continue?”
“Of course,” the judge answered. There was a poorly-repressed smile on his face too, because the whole courthouse was clearly filled to the brim with clowns. “Where did you leave off before this delightful animal made himself known?”
Barok gritted his teeth, ashamed that it took him more than a second to remember. “The motive, your Honour,” he said.
“Right, the motive.” The judge smiled. “Are the jury ready to continue?”
The jury had nearly identical expressions of delight on their faces. Barok just had to hope that they were still actually listening when the head juror nodded, her eyes still fixed on Toby.
He supposed every eye on Toby also meant every eye on him, for once. Barok could work with that. “Therefore, the motive is clear: Mr Rot acted mistakenly in defence of dog and country-”
He knew the moment that the words left his mouth that he’d made a mistake. He knew exactly where ‘God and country’ had become something else, and that there was no coming back from it. Dog and country would haunt him for months at a minimum.
Barok looked up at Kazuma, doubled over with laughter, fist hitting the stand as he struggled to keep his breathing under control. Gina stood wheezing just across the room, her arm hooked around a giggling Maria, mirth painted all over her face.
With their joy bubbling in his chest, it was hard to care that he was embarrassing himself in front of London’s public. His hand still at Toby’s neck—this time moving to scratch the poor, very confused dog under the chin—Barok let himself laugh in the presence of people he now cared about far, far more than he’d ever expected to.