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It wasn’t the most humiliated he’d ever been. But it was getting its own special asterisk for being one of the worst times that he’d done to himself. Still. There wasn’t enough energy left in him to be resentful of Mia for getting him a bottle of water. He shoved roughly a hundred dollars in unmarked bills into her hands for it, anyway, to save what little face he could.
“I. He forgave me for it,” tight lipped. Tight throated. Water cool and awful feeling down his gullet. “And convinced me to tell Ortega what was going on. With everything. And from there you’re pretty much caught up,” that flinchy gaping hollow in his back that came after an unwanted catharsis, opening it toothless maw. “You were there for the next parts of…all of it,”
There was a long silence from Mia and Richard clamped down hard on his own thoughts to keep them from spilling into the gap. She didn’t need any of the liquid nitrogen leaking from his neurons.
Until, from seemingly out of nowhere, came a little fruit fly of curiosity, darting from topic to topic until it landed somewhere that Mia hoped wouldn’t involve more of his mind slicing into her own.
“What happened to your arm?” a tentative poke, just to see if the mangled flesh growled. It earned a sigh instead, Richard could feel the nerves there perking up at being mentioned. Being thought about. Pins and needles needles needles. At least his hand wasn’t actively bleeding. Anymore. “Was it another fight with…,” halting on calling them his friends. His.
“The Catastrofiend injured it,” plain and simple. Mia’s thoughts scrambled violently along their lines, pinging back to the central hub of the web. The Catastrofiend was back? Since when? How? “That part is…when we um. Took Regina back,” the name written down was more formal. Titled. Half for the professionalism of the article and half for Mia’s own need to distance herself from it. The memories weren’t her own, but the videos had given her enough reason for the sour taste in the back of her throat. “The Catastrofiend was there—after I was able to email you all the information from her private computer, it attacked,”
The fly stuck on that particular thread and Mia’s attention was edging dangerously close to it. “Where exactly did you take her to?” phrasing the question as…open. Vague. And then internally wincing, apparently aware of how bad a job she had done.
“I won’t give out the address of it,” and Richard felt a little pop of surprise at himself for being able to sound even as remotely steady as he did. “Even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to find it on a map. Not easily at least,” it did have an address of course. But beyond the physical, he would need to give out the locations of all the guard posts, the dual purpose buildings, the. “It looks like a standard farm, though. Nothing really special from the road,” a comment that had Mia scribbling down something about ‘hidden in plain sight’ and then cautiously tacking on something about.
No.
He didn’t chase it.
“I believe we are coming to the end of this, Miss Ochoa,” at the very least, he was. He’d cried, made a fool of himself, almost snapped something in Mia’s mind, and had been generally letting off the shittiest aura the beach had seen since the nanosurge.
A particularly large gust off the ocean sent salt against both of their faces. Sticky. Humid. Smelling of. “One more question,” pushing just a little harder.
One more, always one more. She could handle it. He could handle it.
“You…you chose to become a villain,” quieter there, as though the seagulls would overhear. With Richard’s luck, they probably would. She was gathering her thoughts into neat little rows and columns so she could begin weaving the narrative. “Because you didn’t see any way that the current establishment would let you accomplish your goals. Because the,”
“The system is weighted to keep those in power, in power,” he shrugged. “That’s nothing new. And it won’t really ever change, not without getting into people’s heads and making them something other than human,” Mia scowled, about to say something about systems of governance and anarchy. Richard cringed. “I’m not naïve enough to think that I can change all of that overnight by blowing up some buildings and outing some politicians as –gasp—corrupt,” her scowl deepened into a full frown when he voiced the word ‘gasp’ but she marked it down dutifully in her notebook.
“Where I was actually going with that question, Mad Dog,” tight on the title, a little riposte for the joke earlier. “Was.” And then stopped hard, suddenly reconsidering if the question was worth asking at all. If it would only run the risk of getting him upset again and hitting her hard, whether he meant to or.
Hm. Still didn’t believe him that it wasn’t on purpose then? Fair. It stung. But it was fair; he wouldn’t trust his word either.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to…,” Mia’s mouth trailed off while her mind provided the rest. Wouldn’t it have been easier to make another choice? To leave Los Diablos, to leave behind everything and start fresh. To go into deeper and deeper hiding. Or.
Or. Even the alternative. To reach out to those who might have helped. To seek out people he couldn’t begin to fathom trusting. Not then, at least. Not while he had still been so hair trigger. Ricardo had been a mess, even if he still refused to talk about it. Chen may. Chen may have. But there were too many unknowns still buzzing in Richard’s head.
He didn’t let his mind stray back towards Daniel. Would have been even more wide eyed. More golden hued and. Thoughts shepherded back to the flock. The task at hand. Mia was clearing her throat. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to give it all up?” she finally decided on, looking up to meet Mad Dog’s gaze. “Instead of becoming a villain, instead of going through all of this,” gesturing around them both. “Putting yourself and the people you care about in danger. To try and expose something you just admitted probably won’t have that large of an effect,”
Richard regarded her with a cold look, frost forming on the edges where her mind had reached too far forward. She squirmed. And it took far too much effort to stifle the grease fire spark of satisfaction. “I never said that it wouldn’t have a large effect,” Richard leaned in, elbows back on his knees. “it’s going to have a massive effect. It’s bigger than myself, or what I suffered, or what I might suffer in the future. Do you understand that?” asking the question as softly as he could. Harder than bedrock. “What they are doing at the farm, what they’re planning for the FEZ and the people here…all of it is too big to…,” too big to ignore. Too big to block out and pretend didn’t exist.
It made for a nice reasoning. Certainly better than trying to explain the way his bones ached when he thought about leaving. About leaving in anything other than a body bag. What was he, if not this? Who could he have ever been, if not Sidestep. If not Mad Dog.
“It would have been easier to run and pretend like I didn’t care about any of it. But I don’t think I could have lived with myself,” a sharp, sharper than he wanted it to be, laugh. “Not that I live with myself very easily now, but…I think you know what I mean,” giving her a sidelong glance that Mia expertly slid off her shoulders. Hard to ignore the scoop of the decade, even if it was dangerous.
“So that’s it then?” and a very cautious toe over the line. “That sounds very…heroic of you,”
“I’m not a man who considers the ease or the glory of a task before I do it. The path that I’m on now isn’t one with any twists or turns. A few years ago, who knows? Back when I was…back then, I probably would have given you an entirely different speech. But now…I like to think of it…like a one way tunnel. Train tracks through a mountain. You have to get through to the other side, because there are no other exits. There’s no turning back,” pain bloomed. Pain in his right hand where he clutched it too tightly, twisting the flesh until the knuckles popped and skin broke again in slim crescents beneath his nails. “There’s a train coming and every step you hesitate at brings it closer and closer to running you down. If I stopped. If I tried to run any other direction than forward or hide, it would only get me killed. And the train would just keep coming, running over everyone and everything else in its path,”
There was a slight, polite, hesitation at writing down the melodrama, but her pen moved after the moment slid by.
“I can’t ignore the train, Mia. The only way out of this is through,”
It was half an hour and five blocks away before Richard’s stomach finally punched through the haze, into his gut, and sent him vomiting in a nearby alleyway. Every muscle in his back was coated in quick dry plaster, crackling tight under the tension of his movements. Every nerve was sore and flinchy and screaming at him.
It had gone well.
Much better than expected.
The fact that every single voice in his mind was raised in chorus for a drink was muted with a trembling hand. Left hand. He’d practically mauled the defenseless right, bruised and sore, knuckles throbbing, thin cuts starting to scab over and itch as he walked. Better than expected.
Mia had done him the courtesy of admitting it would take her a while to get the story actually written into something digestible to the public at large. Maybe a month or two, but she could rush it if he needed. He didn’t know what he needed. Two months felt both agonizingly long and perilously close. Close enough to feel on the back of his neck and as distant as the moon. Christ, this was gonna be bad.
There was obviously something going on with the Farm. There hadn’t been any sign of retaliation yet and the lack of violence was making his stomach turn even harder. Whatever would come out of that was going to be bad. Very.
He spit the last lines of phlegm out and grunted against the wall, beating out a powerful aura that sent basically every person on the street that day moving to the other side of the road. Although, to be honest, the smell from the alleyway was doing a lot of heavy lifting for him. The sun was sinking down low over the skyline, moving the heat of the day off his shoulders, but it had thoroughly baked whatever had been discarded in the nearby dumpster.
Another bullet point crossed off the list. Made good on the interview exclusive with Mia. A subpoint was added: make sure Mia didn’t die between now and the release of her story. A bullet point below that: make sure Mia didn’t die after the release, either.
Could she be persuaded into something like protective custody? Probably not. She didn’t seem the sort to be willing to sit idly by. But keeping her safe was still a priority he couldn’t back burner. Mia was going to have several targets on her back and Mad Dog could provide a layer or two of protection. In theory.
Which was going to be slightly easier, a little seductive glimmer whispered, because Mortum had texted him earlier that day, sometime during one of his breakdowns. Quick, to the point. “Saturday at 7.” And then the address to a bar he’d never been to. Which. Was reasonable.
Perfectly reasonable, even if. Certainly, Mortum wasn’t thrilled about the fact that he knew where her lab was. He’d avoided the topic with Ricardo and had been chewed out by Daniel for denying he knew where it was, but it was the least he could do for the good Doctor. He’d kept her name close to his chest, her identity. Still. It had been hoping for too much that she might let him back into her refuge.
Not her friend. Very much not her friend, not after all of this. He could aim for not an enemy that wouldn’t kill him immediately. Bet on her curiosity and the favor he owed. And the funds he had set aside to transfer to her. Without the slow drain of keeping Mit…Anathe…Ah, beans, keeping the body alive, those funds were easy enough to reassign towards buying a little bit of the Doctor’s confidence back. Hopefully.
So much hope anymore. Ha. Turn the thoughts away, don’t acknowledge it. Don’t get sucked down the ro—his mind had already spun the wheel, taking the detour. Hope hadn’t been. Had been, that was its own problem there, wasn’t it? Nudging its way into his thoughts and shouldering the doctor out of view for the moment. Hadn’t mentioned Hope in the interview.
Nowhere near his place to talk about them. Plus then it would have opened up all sorts of questions about body hopping and possession and absolutely no one needed to know about that. But. Another turn down a side street, dragging his attention further and further away from center.
Hope had been hanging around their old haunts and then quietly and sheepishly avoiding him if and when he happened to be in the area. Like he was a dark cloud. A poisonous vapor. Like he. Don’t think about it. No. No, do think about it. Had to think about it. Apparently, he was in a lot of their nightmares. Ricardo had looked thoroughly upset about that, even if he hadn’t admitted it while passing along that revelation.
It's not that they didn’t want to see him, exactly, Ricardo had danced around the issue during that talk. It was that seeing him triggered one too many horrible things that they couldn’t sort through as being reality or hallucination. Hope had said that they remembered razor blades against their skin, ropes around their neck, and just couldn’t do it anymore. They needed more time away from him.
And the longer they spent away, the more they tried to reckon with having been inside his mind, the more he was becoming some boogeyman in the dark. Judging from the tone of voice and the slant of his gaze and the way Ricardo had changed the subject, that was a feeling that hit him a little too close to home.
Which.
Ha.
Ah, beans. What was he even supposed to do about that?
It was hard enough with Daniel, who had every reason in the world to have his subconscious be afraid of him. Anathema had gone into his head and come out Hope and apparently the experience had made them. Made him. There was no helping that, was there? No fixing it. No way to say ‘sorry you had to feel me trying to kill us over and over again’. Sorry you have to live with that now.
Whatever Ricardo was feeling about it, whatever was making that expression when he talked about how Hope was coping. Ricardo never ran anywhere except further into danger, a fact that was only just starting to reveal how grateful Richard needed to be for it. Gratitude he could express at another time. Better than he had before.
The next sharp turn brought him back to the city center.
Was Mortum afraid of him? Danny and Ricardo and now Hope and why not the doctor, too? She’d been betrayed by him, and clearly didn’t trust him after that betrayal. But was there fear there? She knew what he was, both in terms of being a regene and Sidestep. Knew he was a telepath and knew to use numbers to keep him out. She could use a dampener at her lab, he knew she had one. Did she think it wouldn’t matter? Or was she just trying to ignore the past when she’d let him in? The idea that she might not be afraid of him hurting her again was firmly escorted out of the building. Replaced with her not thinking of him enough to fear him.
That one felt better.
Richard swore quietly under his breath and shook his head, trying to clear away some of the thoughts. Get back on track. Back to business.
He needed to rinse his mouth out. Needed to clean off his right hand and bandage it. And then maybe a cold shower. And then Mortum at seven. If everything went well and he didn’t get shot. If he got the armor. If the favor she asked for wasn’t…Ah, beans, right. There was that tricky little favor hanging over his head. What was it that she was going to need from him?
Mortum knew Mad Dog wasn’t a killer. Historically, she hadn’t been too interested in his politics or his demolition work, either. Was it to steal something? Poke his nose somewhere dangerous? He wasn’t the most subtle of villains available, but if it was between her neck or his, he couldn’t blame her for offering his up.
Richard palmed open his phone, pulling the address back up and memorizing it. Not too far away from where he was at, actually. Which. No. No, if Mortum was watching him, she wouldn’t give herself away like that.
Part of him whispered, in mild alarm, that he was willing to believe it was coincidence. Well, more than whispered. It smacked him with its handbag and was reading him the riot act, but it was sidelined by the incoming ‘pling’ of a text message.
How did it go? from Daniel. He was on duty that day, but if he had time to text, Richard had time to take in a deep breath that nothing too exciting was going on. Two days ago some numbskull calling himself the Brutalizer…or was it the Brute? Had picked a bad fight with the Rangers. Argent had taken him down, ultimately, with air support from Herald, but things had been quiet since then.
Good. Good day so far. You?
The response was almost immediate. Tense. M came by with G. Fed agents due in the morning. M for Mayor Alvarez. With the Guardians. Because federal agents were coming in to possibly investigate what was going on with Senator Carmichael. She hadn’t made it back home to Virginia yet, an interesting tidbit that Mad Dog had squirreled away for later. She’d raised a big enough stink to get the governments eye peering closer at the Rangers, a fact which Chen doubtlessly did not appreciate.
Richard felt his ‘good’ day taking a nose dive rapidly. What time are you off today? What time can we talk about this face to face, was the real question. Had Captain Blaze come? Alvarez had no jurisdiction over the Rangers, but what had she said? What had their management said back?
Again, the message back only took as long as Daniel’s thumbs tapping it out. Late. Eat without me. Late being after ten then, usually. Sometimes even later, depending on if someone attacked. Or how much paperwork needed to be done. Well. Enough time to try and hide what he’d done to his hand, which throbbed out an accusation or eleven. Was that a break? Too much swelling for the moment to tell.
Got it. A pause. Stay safe, love you
Love you, too <3 the heart emoji smacked Richard clean into a smile. A softer snort leaving his chest. If he could bottle and sell that feeling, he’d be a billionaire before Sunday breakfast.