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Luciano doesn’t even have Sylvester’s door shut behind him before Cordelia greets him.
She’s standing in the doorframe to his left, either already having been passing by or having jumped at the sound of the hinges creaking open. “Have you heard?” she asks, a self-assured, smug smile blooming on her face.
Unsurprisingly, Luciano has no idea what she means.
“You haven’t, then,” she says at his lack of a response, the gleam failing to leave her eyes. “It’s all on television; you have to see.” She disappears into the farther reaches of the apartment, clearly expecting him to follow.
Bewildered, he does.
He finds her again in what currently passes as a living room in the rearranged apartment, seated beside Sylvester on the couch, leaning forward as she watches the TV with rapt attention. Cordelia says nothing further to Luciano, but Sylvester offers up, “Morning,” as he gestures at him to turn his attention to the TV as well. It’s tuned to a news station, and, immediately, Cordelia’s demeanor makes sense.
Luciano comes to stand behind them, leaning over the couch back. They watch the news together in usual silence, and every second feels like its own eternity. The program flips through footage of the smuggling tunnel, an interview with Maisy Lafayette (“–what caused your family to take action, rather than go to the police–”); an interview with Leonardo (“–we should not encourage vigilante justice–”) that Sylvester tenses at and would have made Luciano laugh on any other day.
The reporter mentions Carmen Spurl, calls her tough on crime, which is the worst understatement Luciano has heard in weeks, and Cordelia says, “That’ll show ‘em,” still so, so proud.
“I have to thank you for the lead,” Sylvester tells her. “I wasn’t expecting things to take the direction they did–”
Right. Of course. Luciano had known it was Sylvester’s fault–their fault, his fault–but, for some reason, the external confirmation is the killing blow.
It had felt fine, at first. All of it had. Putting up with, even assisting, Louis Rosewell throughout his little crusade; Cordelia poking at the archive’s files (for fuck’s sake, Luciano had helped her with that); walking away from Lucile, Leonardo; the only way he’d ever made his living, and walking into a tenuous, fragile; uncertain unknown.
Hell, whatever trouble it all caused Lucile had felt deserved.
But, now, here was reality, staring at Luciano unflinchingly from the TV: This would mildly annoy Lucile for a week, get people Luciano was supposed to look out for arrested for longer, and give Luciano himself absolutely nothing.
No future, no escape from Lucile’s eventual ire; not even momentary satisfaction.
“–right, Luciano?”
He manages to halfway drag his attention back to Cordelia, who’s twisted around to look up at him. Sylvester has too, and, belatedly, it occurs to Luciano that there is someone missing from their little gathering.
“I’m a genius, am I not?” Cordelia says, maybe repeats.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Where’s Pascal?”
He sees the way Cordelia sighs–right, he probably shouldn’t have dismissed her, she was just starting to warm up–and when he and Sylvester lock eyes, he swears concern’s written there. “Well,” Cordelia says, definitely cooler, “if you must know, he’s at a job interview. He’s an excellent bodyguard, so I’m sure it’s going just fine.”
“Right, right. That’s good. We’ve all still got bills to pay–”
And this isn’t paying them.
This isn’t doing anything, really.
It’s not going to do anything, not for Luciano.
So, he leaves.
• • •
Regardless, Luciano finds himself back in Sylvester’s apartment the next day. It’s routine at this point, and it’s not a routine Luciano’s willing to throw away over nothing.
Though, given yesterday’s miserable affair, Luciano is minding his own business, standing in the corner while marveling at the underused kitchen of a man who has apparently never cooked, not even once, in his entire sorry life.
Which is exactly when Sylvester approaches him at the counter.
At first, Luciano assumes he’s just going for a cabinet. He isn’t though, he’s going for the coffee instead, which creates an awkward maneuver around each other as Luciano fails to move out of the way in time, and then Sylvester takes it all a step further by asking, not even really looking at Luciano, “How’s the cold?”
“Actually, it hasn’t been that bad–” He gets distracted by Sylvester actually opening a cabinet, because did this man not even own microwavable items, or cans of things; what did he even eat– “Pascal’s girl–mm, Cordelia–shoved one of her teas on me while you were out the other day, and I’ve actually been feeling better since.”
Should he say something to her? He hasn’t seen her around yet, or anyone, really, outside of Mordecai laying across the chairs at the table.
“Oh, and here I was, preparing to get sneezed on again,” Sylvester says as he starts the coffee maker. Whatever ends up dripping out of it is going to be bad quality, Luciano can already tell, and, honestly, that tracks, given the state of everything else, and is exactly why he brought his own coffee to begin with.
“Well, if you insist–”
“No.” Sylvester actually takes a hurried step back, hands going up. “Ah, uh, no thanks.” He tries and fails to smooth over his reaction. “I’ll pass.”
Luciano can’t help but laugh. “Y’know, it’s always funny to see you flustered like that.”
The glare he receives in return doesn’t last long on Sylvester’s face. It slips away as he turns to find a coffee mug and disengages from the small talk, asking, “Are you alright?”
Because of course they couldn’t avoid it for long. Sylvester’s curiosity would be the thing that got him killed one day. Well, curiosity or concern–Luciano honestly isn’t sure which it is this time, given the man has an abundance of both. It doesn’t really matter, because both are liable to do him in.
“About as good as I can be, given the circumstances,” he replies, knowing it comes out clipped.
“I see.”
“And you?”
Like a fletchling chick, Sylvester blinks dumbly up at him. “Huh?”
“How are you?” Luciano tries again.
“Oh, uh, sorry.” The bird-like look stays fixed on his face. “...No one ever asks me that. You caught me by surprise.” He breaks eye contact and ends up looking somewhere toward the floor.
Sylvester’s killing him, really.
Luciano watches him run around at everyone else’s beck and call, for a job or not, ever single fucking day of his life, and then he actually has the audacity to be taken aback by Luciano merely reciprocating a question he’d been asked first, all out of simple social obligation.
“I guess my answer’s the same as yours,” Sylvester finally says, still half at the floor.
If he’s unnerved by the way things are unfolding, it’s certainly for a much different reason than Luciano. Still, though, the idea that at least one other person isn’t completely comfortable with it all clings to him, refusing to depart.
The next sentence out of his mouth isn’t planned, really.
After all, a moment before he’d been prepared to spend the day miserably listening to the news cycle through arrest reports.
“Hey, Syl, could you do me a favor?” he asks, already knowing he won’t be turned down.
“Sure thing, Lucy.”
“Y’know that little gift shop at the apiary? Powder Snow?”
He receives a noise of acknowledgement as Sylvester goes to pour himself bad coffee.
“Could you meet me there in an hour?”
“‘Course.”
• • •
Luciano doesn’t stick around.
Nothing in the apartment is worth it, not really. Not when he has to think.
The point of dragging Sylvester all the way out of that building, almost to Aurora Link, far, far away from Rosewell, Mordecai, Pascal; Cordelia, is to talk. The problem is that Luciano doesn’t quite know what to say.
There’s the passing, surface-level things to ask, of course. (Where do you think this is going; is there a real plan here, actually; are Rosewell’s loose, ill-defined or at least ill-explained, ideas really something you’re going to rely on?) He’s bothered–not necessarily by their actions, but by his own involvement–and he can say that, too.
Anything further is likely pointless to voice, though.
There aren’t easy answers to anything, and, if polled, the majority opinion would be that he shouldn’t be having trouble anyway.
The apiary is visible across the road. Nothing has changed since the morning, everything covered in a thin blanket of snow, the sun’s light gleaming off it and the ice.
It’s a familiar, comfortable sight. Luciano has watched the place grow over the past handful of years, given it’s been there every day he’s chosen to walk from the harborfront down to Western Crossing, ever since he first moved into his house and refused to leave.
The shop’s bell chimes when he opens the door into warmth, and the worker behind the counter gives him a smile he knows well. She recognizes him for the man he no longer is and yet always will be.
He ignores the trepidation in her eyes, gets himself another coffee, breakfast; something for Rose, and settles down in the corner booth, back firmly against the wall, to wait for Sylvester. Rose takes up post at his side.
It’s familiar. Comfortable. A passing imitation of calm.
And then Sylvester wanders in to the sound of the bell, and Luciano’s lost a half hour to staring out the window at the snow dotting the cobblestone.
“Hey.”
Luciano still has no idea what to say.
“Hey, hey.” His original coffee’s half-gone and gone cold. “Get a drink; get me another too,” he says, nodding toward the counter. “I’ll pay,” he tacks on at Sylvester’s reluctance.
“I can pay,” Sylvester grumbles, but takes the outstretched bills.
He settles down across from Luciano when he returns, a cup in each hand. One is passed across the table as Sylvester asks, “Is there a particular reason you wanted me to come all the way out here?”
“Privacy,” Luciano says, tucking the mug and its heat between his hands.
“Privacy?” Sylvester glances around skeptically. “In a public place?”
“Better than the revolving door that is your apartment–”
“A condition which you actively contribute to–”
“Besides, I needed the coffee as it is.”
“I have coffee.”
“It’s bad coffee, Syl.”
“One could debate that.”
“One would lose.”
Sylvester looks genuinely offended, which is enough to make Luciano laugh. Sylvester watches him with narrowed eyes until he finishes, and then asks, “So, what’s eating you?” and forces Luciano back to reality.
He sighs, trying to gather his thoughts into something coherent. “It’s just, seeing that huge bust on the news…” The warmth from his mug is starting to sting, and, yet, he can’t find it in himself to let go. “Those are the guys I’ve been working with since I was a teenager, y’know?” It’s the only way he really knows how to ease into expressing the feeling, and he hopes Sylvester understands just from that singular sentence.
But Sylvester’s concerns are elsewhere, of course, on Leonardo and a string of government jobs. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure they’ll all be out on the streets before you can say ‘Lonardo.’”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, but–Fuck, Syl, you’re practically a cop as it is!” When he raises his voice, Rose stirs beside him.
“Are you saying you don’t want to do this anymore?” Sylvester asks, still missing half the point.
“I don’t want to get in the way of it, but that was my entire life. And I don’t feel any remorse for my choice in careers, Syl. I’m not going to sugar-coat it for you. I was a Capo, Leo’s second-in-command–” Raphael’s before– “You don’t get to where I was by being a good person.” He frees a hand for long enough to throw air quotes around the phrase. “I’ve hurt plenty of people, Syl, you’ve just never seen it before, because you’ve never been in my way.”
Sylvester has only ever helped Luciano even, and look where that had gotten him. Luciano isn’t blind to where the origins of the gauze over his eye trace back to. It may have been Lustrous’ blow, but it was Luciano who had approached him first.
Yet, Sylvester doesn’t even respond to the assertion of Luciano’s bloodied life. In fact, it seems like he’s about to try and shrug it away, and Luciano moves to cut him off. “No, y’know–” He reaches for anything that will affect Sylvester and lands on the kid that follows him around like an abandoned puppy. “Y’know what I did as a recruiter? I trained up all the street rat kids around the city, so we could take a cut of whatever they stole. S’how I know Mordecai, you realize that? Do you?”
There is no way to walk away from this, not fully, not without it killing him. There never was, and there never will be, no matter what they all do.
“I’m just a sneezy, sleazy alley cat in the end.”
“And I appreciate that you didn’t lie about it,” Sylvester says smoothly.
That–
That’s a loaded statement, but Luciano doesn’t have time to pause on it, because–
“I–I mean, what’s gonna happen to me, Syl? If we keep doing this–What, I sell out my subordinates, my friends, my fucking friends, and then I join them in jail so they can lynch me once it’s all over?”
“I can’t say.”
It’s suddenly too much to read the expression on Sylvester’s face and know he’s reading Luciano’s in turn, and Luciano finds himself looking away. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he mutters down at the table.
A weight presses down onto his leg. He glances to the side to find Rose attempting to attract his attention, both arms pushing against him, worry written into the way she’s carrying herself and the tone she takes with him. He drops one of the hands that’s trying to conspicuously cover his face to her, cupping her cheek. “I know, Rose, I know…”
Sylvester is still uncomfortably watching him, but he has no idea what to say next, hadn’t even meant to say as much as he has, so he focuses on keeping his hand from shaking against Rose’s skin.
After a moment, Sylvester turns his head to the window. When he speaks, his train of thought is all but incomprehensible to follow. “Do you hear…?”
“What?”
And then Luciano does hear it, mostly because one of the apiary workers opens the door. The combee are buzzing outside, louder than they should be, and all Luciano can think is how convenient it is for this awkward point in his and Sylvester’s conversation, as Sylvester stares at the workers while they converse and exit the building. He’s standing up before Luciano can even voice anything, so what Luciano ends up saying is, “Sounds like they might need help.”
“Right. We can finish talking after.” Sylvester makes it two steps away from the table before he turns back expectantly. “Are you coming?”
Luciano glances down at Rose, still leaning against his leg. “Look at her, Syl. There’s vespiquen out there.”
“We are both aware you have other pokemon. We are also both aware she can win a fight, vespiquen or not,” Sylvester says, then throws his hands up in the air and walks out the door when Luciano only stares blankly back at him in response.
“Have fun!” Luciano calls as the door swings shut.
Have fun, because Luciano won’t.
…He had known, of course. Foresaw how the entire conversation would play out if he spoke too far, still did, and now was disappointed in the result he’d already seen coming.
He doesn’t think he actively regrets it, though. Maybe Sylvester doesn’t quite know what to say in response, but he isn’t quick to jump to a dismissal, and that’s more than Luciano expects from anyone involved.
He just doesn’t get how Sylvester can be so fucking calm about it all. Luciano’s no fool: Sylvester’s entire life has been upended as well. But onward he marches regardless, outwardly largely unaffected; shocked that someone takes the half second out of their day to ask him how he’s holding up. And then he jumps up to go fight a hive of combee, even though no one actually asked him to, because he’s selfless in a stupid sort of way, or, more likely, because he’s trying to escape the awkward iceberg Luciano has steered their conversation right into.
“So, did you want to go out there?” he asks Rose as the buzzing grows louder, starts to grate. She shakes her head firmly, still clinging to his side. “...You’re trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”
Rose vocalizes, and he knows she’s agreeing. She’s one of his oldest now, unabashedly his favorite, and he can read her as well as she can apparently read him.
“…Thank you.”
One of the workers walks back in, paying him and Rose no mind.
Minutes later, Sylvester follows.
“Syl, you good?” Luciano asks, standing to move toward his side. “You look like you’ve been crying. ‘S Mordecai’s job, not yours.”
“I’m fine,” he replies, clipped, halting in the middle of the cafe to brush at his coat. “It’s just, mm, smoky outside.”
The worker at the counter giggles. “Yes, thank you for your, ah, attempt at helping. We typically find that battles are not the best way to subdue entire colonies of combee, but it does get the job done.”
“Right,” Luciano says. Sylvester seems fine, really, if put out over being caught in whatever smokescreen they’d conjured up. “…Why the smoke?”
“Well, if I recall correctly,” Sylvester says, “combee become subdued and sleepy when they inhale smoke.”
“Yes!” the worker chimes back in, apparently determined to engage herself in their conversation as much as possible. “Our owner called Mrs. Maisy Lafayette. She’s always such a help!”
Maisy Lafayette–It was the moltres, then. Moltres, swooping low across the apiary and spewing harmless smoke to calm the combee. It’s a stark contrast to the moltres that lives, immortalized, in Luciano’s mind; the moltres that flew at Maisy Lafyatte’s side as the Flores family was dismantled brick by brick, dead body by dead body; the moltres that gave Dominic the burned flesh permanently branding the right half of his face.
Last night, Maisy Lafayette, minus a moltres, had raised hell in the smuggling tunnels that were once hers and the Lonardos had called theirs for almost as long as Luciano could remember. Today, Maisy Lafayatte, plus a moltres, does community service for the small business in her neighborhood.
Something about it, twisted together with the old memories of her, rips at him.
Sylvester only mutters something like, “Of course,” before following the worker into the back office, presumably because Luciano has managed to miss half a conversation in his wonderment at the life Maisy Lafayetter now lives, or perhaps the act she plays.
Luciano assumes he wasn’t invited wherever Sylvester is going, or else Sylvester would have long since turned back to drag Luciano along with him. He retreats back to their booth to wait, knowing Sylvester will wander back out to rejoin him eventually.
When he does, the bits of the conversation Luciano missed become immediately apparent. “No, don’t tell me, it’s already clear. You have a job, don’t you?”
“What do you want me to say? I have to make money somehow. You’re all driving up my bills, I’m quite sure.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure me an’ Cordelia preventing Truffles from freezing the place is helping. But I guess that’s sorta gonna become a problem for me soon, too…” He reaches for Rose again. “I’ll have to track down a legitimate job somehow. If I live through all this, at least.”
Sylvester is clearly teetering on the edge of saying something, and it hits Luciano all at once that he abjectly cannot handle a conversation of this caliber.
“But, hey, I won’t burn that bridge until I get to it.” He’s not even sure what bridge he means–The bridge where Lucile impales him on Articuno’s ice, in lieu of scraping it across his shoulder, dangerously close to real damage, the way Raphael always had? “‘Sides,” he continues, fighting more than he would like to keep his voice steady, “I’ve still got seven of my nine lives left.” It would be a slightly more comforting joke if he hadn’t just been thinking about long years of lightning and fire and blood. “If I can handle being poisoned twice over, I can… I can do this too.” Surprisingly, he thinks he actually believes that one. “Speaking of do, if you want help… Well, it’s not like I’m doing anything for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Noted.”
• • •
Sylvester takes him up on the offer in the worst way he possibly can.
After an hour of lounging around, occupying more space and time in the apiary shop than anyone ever rightfully should, Luciano is interrupted in his train of thought by Sylvester dropping a Lonardo emblem on the table.
Luciano raises his head, smoothly packing away his shock. “Where’d you find one of those?”
“Around the hives,” Sylvester says, completely matter-of-fact, as he sits down across from Luciano. “Can you think of any reason why the Lonardos would be involved in the kidnapping of the apiary’s vespiquen?”
It hits Luciano immediately, even though he hadn’t paid attention to this year’s planning. How could it not? One of Dominic’s auctions is less than a week away. The Lonardos will take whatever selling power they can get for it, and, while the vespiquen won’t be the biggest lot of the night, they’ll be more than worth the trouble of taking them.
There are two thoughts in Luciano’s head.
One: Sylvester is a Lafayetter, an ex-lawyer, an ex-police officer, and the least Luciano can do for his former friends, for the people who had once looked to him for direction, is prevent Sylvester from going anywhere near them.
Two: Sylvester is a selfless idiot with no sense of self-preservation, and if Luciano breathes a single word of the auction, Sylvester will weasel a way in out of him and weasel his way onto that boat and weasel himself straight into Adamant and Lustrous’ waiting, quick-to-murder arms.
“I have no idea,” Luciano lies.
Sylvester is clearly skeptical, but instead of just saying that, he carries on with his unfortunate, accurate logic. “One of the beekeepers noticed there were two men, darkly dressed, skulking about the premises recently.”
“So? What’re you on about, Syl?” Idiots. They’re not supposed to be seen. “There are plenty of sketchy people in this city, me included. You can’t just assume they were involved.”
“I have more than enough of a good reason as to why they were involved. They were carrying fire-type pokemon. As you well know, given our conversation an hour ago, combee and vespiquen can be subdued by smoke. I think that makes for a reasonable enough connection, don’t you?”
“What? No, it doesn’t. Plenty of people–” He begins a protest he’s just starting to craft, only to be met with a sharp pain in his arm. He pulls it back, quick to realize the culprit is Rose’s needles breaking past the talonflame claw-proof fabric of his jacket. The sleeve almost catches, almost rips on her spikes. “Ah, fuck, seriously?” She’s bristling, irritated, and he knows she’ll do worse given the opportunity. “Alright, alright, fine! Fine.”
“Thank you, Rose.” Sylvester has the audacity to wink at her.
“Fine… Maybe it is the Lonardos.”
“You seem very resigned to this conversation,” Sylvester observes mildly.
It makes Luciano bristly. “Syl, we just talked about this! I can’t just sell them out! It’s not–They weren’t–You have to understand, I–It was Donna Lucile that tried to kill me, not them. They haven’t done anything that justifies me ratting them out to you or to anyone else.”
Sylvester looks down at the table for a moment, breaking steady eye contact, and then looks back up. “What do you know, Luciano?”
He sighs, knowing he’s being overdramatic, and runs a hand through his hair. “Fine,” he repeats. “Winter is when the Lonardos have their biggest pokemon auctions. Most of the year, we–they–” Sylvester says nothing about the slip of tongue– “spend our time smuggling pokemon other regions see as exotic out of Riverview. Then, to make a quick profit and recoup any financial losses at the end of the year, they auction off desirable pokemon for hefty prices back on home turf.”
“That explains a lot,” Sylvester says.
“Sure. These days, the biggest stronghold is on the S.S. Suoesirg. It’s that huge-ass ship that’s on and off docked at Aurora Pier,” he clarifies. “It’s where they hold the auctions as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the vespiquen were a last-minute steal to sweeten up the list.” He sighs. “Syl, I wouldn’t tangle with the guys who run these auctions, and I’ve been working with them my entire life. The worst is their leader. He was one of Raphael’s, and now Donna Lucile’s, favorites, favorites, if that, ah, put things in perspective for you.”
Sylvester nods, eyes on the Lonardo emblem still sitting between them on the table. For a singular moment, Luciano thinks it’s enough. He’s won. Then, Sylvester says, “Well, alright. Give me some pointers, then, and I’ll sneak on.”
“Wh–No. No. Syl, do you actually have a death wish? These are not your average, every-day thugs. They can, will, and have thrown anyone without an invitation overboard.”
“It might be winter, but I can still swim.”
“With cement shoes.”
“While I don’t understand the workings of high fashion myself–”
“Fuck, Syl, is there any way I can convince you this is a terrible idea?”
“What do you think?”
“…Right.” He finds himself running his hands through his hair again. “It’s hopeless; point taken. But you really have to be careful, Syl. One tiny mistake and that’s it.”
“I understand, alright?”
“Mhm.”
“So, lay it on me, if you’re so concerned. What do you think I need to know?”
It’s easiest to just throw himself into the explanation. Space out of all context. Pretend he’s giving a rundown to Lee, Lucile; Raphael. Hell, pretend he’s a decade younger, first running through the intricacies of their newly-crafted system to Adamant and Lustrous with Dominic, except there was a lot more back-and-forth in that conversation.
Sylvester is clearly trying to listen, but every once in a while Luciano catches him starting to stare off into the middle distance, or getting lost in the details. Most of it seems to be sinking in, though, or at least enough of it to halfway assuage Luciano’s worries.
“Can’t I just wear your disguise?” Sylvester asks, as Luciano tries to start in on the convoluted inner workings of Dominic’s costume scheme.
“No, because your eyes are blue.” It’s ridiculous, actually, that Luciano remembers all this as well as he does. The four of them had committed it to memory the first year–easier to run security when you knew what you were on the lookout for in the first place–and it had never left him since, determined to exist at least somewhere in the back of his mind until the day he finally gave up and died. “…It’s a nice eye color, actually,” he adds absentmindedly. “Mine are just green. But it means your mask’s gotta resemble a pokemon that isn’t a feline, but purple.” He launches back into the presentation, determined to make it through. Determined to drill into Sylvester’s head the seriousness of the situation.
He can only vainly hope he succeeds.
• • •
Luciano arrives at the pier far, far too early. The sun’s still out, even; the auction won’t start for hours. It makes him feel better, though, to skulk around the docks and hover under the bridge and watch the S.S. Suoesirg from afar.
He’d made up his mind almost the second Sylvester had walked out the apiary’s doors, had nearly stood up and yelled it after him. Luciano was coming too. Walking straight into the lion’s den.
It’s the least he can do, after Sylvester has done the same for him.
And, even without that, Sylvester has to stay alive. If he doesn’t, this had all been worth nothing. It was Sylvester that Luciano had inadvertently stepped onto Lucile’s bad side for in the first place. If Dominic or Lustrous or Lucile kills him now, then why had Luciano suffered through any of the past month?
So, now, Luciano is standing under the bridge, dropping cigarettes into a pile at his feet as he smokes, a duffle bag and Rose at his side and two fake IDs in his jacket pocket, waiting for the sun to set.
Lustrous and Adamant appear up on the higher levels of the deck once, then twice. Luciano could recognize them across any distance, any crowd. He’s known them since he was a teenager, has grown up with them at his side, a few years younger but always the slightest bit quicker to violence and blood. They’re making last-minute preparations, and Luciano should be up there with them–normally would be, for at least one round around the deck.
Although, hadn’t he been considering skipping this year even before everything came crashing down?
So, maybe not.
He will be there, though, in the end. And they’re going to kill him, which is both slower and faster than he thought it all would catch up to him. And they’re going to kill Sylvester, which is–
Which is unacceptable.
He’s already covered this. Sylvester cannot die. Especially not because Luciano handed him an ID, handed him just enough information to make it onto that boat; handed him a death warrant.
And it’s Syl, so he won’t listen to little, inconsequential things like logic and reason. He never seems to. If he did, Luciano would have died as he should have, comfortably and ignorantly presuming Lucile still had his best interests in mind.
By the time Sylvester approaches, well after the sun has set, Luciano has long since made up his mind.
Sylvester cuts right to it. “Do you have the ID?”
“Yeah,” Luciano says, and makes no move to give it to him.
After a long, uneasy minute, Sylvester asks, “Can I have the ID?”
Luciano can’t even bring himself to say anything, just reaches for his crobat’s Poke Ball.
Sylvester’s reaction time lacks. He is not, has never been, a trainer, nor has life ever required him to be one before now. Truffles, however, more than adequately makes up for that fact, and Luciano finds himself returning the last of his pokemon to their Poke Ball far, far sooner than he would like.
Sylvester takes an additional step backwards, putting even more space between them than he had already scrambled to make at the start.
He doesn’t return Truffles, her Poke Ball gripped tightly in his hand. She stands firm between Luciano and Sylvester, ice crystals layering the ground as she breathes. Luciano has no way of getting past her, which is almost reassuring. She’s loyal, too loyal–Luciano would call it overprotective, if he hadn’t just lashed out–and she won’t just fall over to the first person who looks at Sylvester wrong.
However, it does mean Luciano may have to shortly squirm his way out of being gored by an angry mamoswine.
“So, uh, is there a particular reason you attacked me without warning, or…?”
“I–Mm. Well. Are you really sure you wanna do this?”
“Yes. Could I have the ID now?” Sylvester’s walling up, putting on a tough facade, which is the real consequence of Luciano’s actions.
Words refuse to come. He makes no attempt to move.
“Lucy,” Sylvester tries again.
“I can’t,” he admits.
“What?”
“I can’t do it, Syl. They’ll know, they’ll kill you.”
And every wall drops again. Sylvester steps up to lean on Truffles, relaxing against her fur, like somehow Luciano’s assertion that they’re going to die in three hours has calmed his nerves. “Nah, Lucile’s already said she’s going to be the one to kill me, so I assume she’s warned everyone else not to.”
“Don’t even joke about it. She will, Syl, she’ll–”
“I’m not joking.”
“Shut up,” he bites out, well aware he’s walking out onto thinner and thinner ice. “It’s not the kinda thing you say with a perfectly straight face.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“What do you mean you’re not? This is the woman who stabbed Monty with a foot-long icicle and left him to bleed to death, alone, in an alley!” The ice gives way underneath him, and what comes out as he hits the water, a desperate last resort, is, “Aren’t you afraid?”
Sylvester stiffens a bit, like that’s finally, finally gotten through to him. Luciano plunges ever onwards, trying to drag himself back to the surface, trying to drag Sylvester along with him.
“Listen,” he starts again, more composed. “Like I said before, the guys on that ship aren’t the kinda people you want to mess with. They go out of their way to cause pain, just for a laugh.”
“What happened to ‘no unnecessary killings’?”
“I think we’ve more than established that not everyone follows that rule.” Between Monty, Luciano, and Sylvester himself, Sylvester should know better than to even voice it by now. “They answer to Lucile, not Leo.” Which is where the split between Luciano and the three had really started, in the end. “He’s always been a hands-off Don, and they don’t respect him in the slightest.” Not that Luciano respected him either, but he’d taken the opportunity to slow down, pause; reconsider it all. “Lucile’s the one who took on the responsibility when it wasn’t her place.” He pauses just long enough to breathe. “And it doesn’t take a fucking genius to know what her stance on the ‘no unnecessary killings’ thing is, yeah?”
Sylvester tosses Truffle’s Poke Ball from hand to hand, then returns her to it in a flash of red and white. “Luciano…” He takes a step forward, seemingly hesitant, then clears the distance between them and comes to lean against the wall of the bridge beside him. “I understand what you’re feeling.”
Luciano shakes his head, denying it on instinct.
“No, I do; okay? And all I really know is that I don’t know anything for sure. I can’t promise you that things will turn out fine when I don’t even believe it myself. I… I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Syl–”
“But I’m an ex-cop trained in self-defense, and I can and will take the hard route if you don’t give me that ID right now.”
If not for Truffles–she’s really gotten to be a monster of a mamoswine, a far cry from the swinub Luciano first saw–Luciano would laugh at the assertion. Sylvester couldn’t touch him, not unless Luciano let him.
“Ugh, fine.”
Luciano delivers the piece of plastic into Sylvester’s waiting hands.
Sylvester gets a stupid, self-satisfied smile on his face as he tucks it into his pocket, obviously proud of himself. Luciano laughs at the sight, which causes Sylvester to pause and tilt his head back toward him questioningly.
“You’re terrible, y’know that?” Luciano says. “Absolutely terrible.”
“So I’ve been told,” Sylvester responds, the smugness returning in full-force. “Ready for this?”
“As long as you promise you’ll be careful,” Luciano adds as a last-minute plea, “yes.”
“I will be. Besides, I’ve got you looking out for me, right?”
“That’s going to do you less good than you think it is.”
“It’ll do just fine.” Sylvester looks to the Suoesirg haunting the harbor, then back to Luciano. “No use in waiting any longer.”
And Luciano still disagrees, but, well– “Then why are you still standing there?”