Chapter Text
Look what the cat's left on the doorstep—a wrangled, squirrel carcass.
The first few days after the golden comes home are interesting for everyone, to say the least, and everything seemed to be about Oggie. The smell of the rot seems to follow him everywhere, somehow a very common thing to bring up, and nobody even talks about the actual damn squirrel itself, so why don't you give me a break, huh? The first day he was back, he came with lunch down to the workshop beside the range, and there Isla is. Its a dusty, stuffy place with wide windows, drinking in the rusty sun over the Underworld. The light comes off her blue and white feathers, spreading a cold, brimming glow around her.
"It's completely alien," she had said immediately, a sleek and quiet eye still trained on the spark of a sniper she was taking apart. Coiled on her work chair, which had been years old then. "His ID must have gone up in flames with the rest of that prison, right? But, no. It's almost as if he just dropped out of the sky right as you came along. I mean... No name, no more pawprints or a traceable face, not even a birth cert in the government database?"
"Just my luck," Oggie would say, cracking open his gas station mac and cheese, feeling oddly gratified. "I should buy a lottery ticket."
"Maybe he's a fugitive?" Isla does something, and suddenly her claws are jumping away from the flashing, heavy clink of metal. "Ouch. Does that taste good?"
"Not at all." Nevertheless, Oggie eats. He gives her a bite. "But, is it so surprising a fugitive would be in detention?"
"Absolutely not," she agrees. Somehow, Isla is always so clearheaded and hard in her conviction that it was almost easy to feel safe around her. You could trust her like you could hold a detective's hand in a crime scene. "So why would it burn down only now? What does the government have to hide even from people like us?"
The long-term mercenary pushes herself from the table and rolls off on her wheelie chair, completely leaving the world of her work. Her huge wings float by heavily. "And, well.. did we just forget there was a detention centre in the middle of Silly York?"
"How?" This is getting embarrassing now. In the long lines of their work, running around the breadth of Silly York shooting people, they should have crossed that building at least once or twice. Somehow, everyone is only caring now that you literally cannot tell there was a building there at all.
"Exactly." She plants the heel of her thick boots onto the table, amidst the heavy metal appliances and thingamabobs, and looks out somewhere else. Under the piercing weight of a bird's eye, the horizon always seems to stretch, the vast spreading a little more. "We don't even know how many people that centre could hold. Maybe even thousands. Maybe even some of our friends."
Oggie's eyes fog up. Church, Socks, Rue, Anya, to name a few. "Yeah, but we wouldn't be able to recognise them in there. They're all just ashes, now."
"You know," Isla says, her head wheeling around calmly, her large clear eyes unblinking. "I think Church would have skipped prison and gone straight to the chair."
That steals them a laugh in all of this, a thawing. They bump fists, and for them, that kind of thing is sacramental. You will never, ever know for sure which of those countless times might just be the last, so you make every single one sear. And, maybe somewhere out there, wherever he is, Church is laughing too.
"Oggie." Wine dark, red goat eyes. "Care to explain?"
Oggie is left fumbling in Mylo's office. Every piece of furniture is such a dark shade that, with the dim light, he feels like the bright lamp on the table is a spotlight and the walls close in on them. It could be that, or the intense, solid physicality of Mylo with his big arms planted on the shiny oakwood, that make his heart beat. The gold adornments on his horns twinkle even in the insidious, soft shadows, the alexandrite on his left hand's index shining the dullest. His eyes are discrete but intense, sucking like a black hole, drinking you in entirely.
"What's the big deal?" He says, curiously, maybe weakly. "You know, we don't give the guy enough credit for the fact that literally nothing seems to kill him and make him stay dead. Don't we need more people who won't die, on our side than the other?"
Mylo exhales, shutting his eyes, and even something about that breathes power, like electricity, sparkling into the air. "I don't give a fuck if you die. I care if you do a good job or not, and you know, it's almost as if dying can actually prevent you from doing that, right? Have you seen the state of this man? I want you to swing by the sick bay later and that is an order."
"And that is an order," Oggie parrots like a blubbering baby. You can be scared of Mylo, anyone is. But Oggie's something else. "Well, if he's weak after surviving a fire that a 3,000 square feet building didn't, why don't we just crucify him for that, huh?"
"Listen to me." Mylo rounds the table in a second and grabs Oggie's arms, not angrily but securely. He gets up close. "Listen to me. Actually listen."
"I'm a little distracted."
"What are you? His PR department? Is he your colleague, your boyfriend, your dad? Why do you feel bad for him? Right now, you and that golden are assets, and what I am doing right now is cutting losses."
Mylo lunges for the accounts on the desk, the ones keeping Griffin Co. running in the underworld. "When you decide someone isn't worth it, you don't slipshot change that decision. You need him to stay dead if he wants to walk that line so precariously. And if he's going to self destruct on his first mission, why buy him armour? A gun? Time? Opportunity cost?"
Wow, Oggie thinks, fascinated and enamoured by the firm, clawed and ringed grip. He should start bringing home all the roadkill he sees, so Mylo can put him back in his place, preferably more roughly next time.
He shrugs. "I'll take care of him."
"And will that diminish your performance as an employee?"
A cloying smile breaks out on Oggie's face like a spark to alcohol. He leans forward into Mylo's space, and something heats up in their throats. "Of course not, Boss."
Mylo snorts, holding the moment with an electrifying, daring mischief. Then, he lets go, to Oggie's disappointment. "Okay. Good. If that dog even makes it out."
"He will," Oggie says. That's the end of that. Why does Oggie feel bad for the golden?
Maybe Mylo felt a bit bad for roughing Oggie up (even though he liked it), because now he's looking elsewhere, grabbing his paw, and playing with the ruby on Oggie's ring finger. His black paw pads are wide, warm and soft.
"And why exactly do you say that?" He asks, looking up, and Oggie knows it's just a question but when he's looking at him, his eyes look ten times lovelier.
The black teeth of his boots bite into and slide against the mud. On the bushes around him, the leaves are coated with a layer of soot and dust, blown from the incident site. Detritus and ruin seemed to engulf the place, still half burning, where the youthful grass is singed, layer upon layer, and then completely evaporated. It was almost like hell had opened up a gaping maw into the earth, the shell of a once domineering building nestled into the chaos. Pipes stick out and spew puke like broken bones. Bodies are everywhere, in the peripheral, the putrescent thick stench like a paste, painting the inside of your lungs. The air is almost aching with heat, and Oggie is already sweating horribly despite only just arriving.
Down there, laid a sundrowned pile of fur in the mud. If it was an animal or anything at all, it was horrible. He doesn't know where it starts or ends. It's just slick with charred flesh, soot, struggle and unluckiness, smoke still wafting up into the air like he was hot out the oven. Trembling bones, somewhere, maybe. The blood pool, almost boiling, seeps into the grass of the earth, and touches the tip of Oggie's boots.
Oggie takes the lit cigarette out of his mouth, and crushes it in his palm. The pain, alight in his paw is squeezed out.
"Well, hello, Icarus," he murmurs.
The pile of fur, shivering madly (it must have been post mortem convulsions) began to move. A back tremors with coughing, a pair of arms grasp around uselessly like that of a baby's. Flesh, blood, mud and soot stick and stretch into threads. Its breath pops and gurgles, gritting out the walls of his throat. A head raises, out of all of this, and a single raw, bloodshot, tearing eye blinks open unsteadily. Some fur is still present, somehow untouched by everything, and Oggie sees that it is golden, with an ember.
Maybe it was because the sun was behind Oggie, overpowering his silhouette, or because the creature was afraid and hurting, but when Oggie reached out to pinch the ember out, it managed to bat his paw away, and gave out in the process. Its arms, stiff and dead, slide like legs under a collapsing marionette. Its paw, whatever was left of it, almost seared Oggie's, and left some blood and soot staining the white fur.
Pulling his paw back, Oggie flexes it, the heat still raw on his soft paw, surprised to say the least. Surely, in the detritus of this prison, you know I'm your only hope of coming out of this alive?
The animal's head is laying heavily in the mud, but it's single eye is still staunchly opened, making direct eye contact with Oggie, almost as if to say, "Exactly."
In the recent days, flowers were found at the ruins of the detention centre. In the midst of shootouts and gang territory, they were left untouched there, almost like a quiet memory to whatever must have happened to those poor, dirty sinners within those four walls. Manual labour, torture and execution are common inferences, and the emblem of those experiences now lay in the sick bay of Griffin Co. Recently, Isla sold the first Griffin branded guns with a spark mechanism that is controlled by them, and so far, reviews are perfect, because they don't know. Mylo was there to complete the deal, stamp the papers and sign, hiding an inward smile. Their power grows.
Oggie swings by the laundromat downstairs the apartments before heading to work. He'd usually stop by Mylo's office first, but this time he goes straight to the sick bay, fluorescent lights, white walls and a chronic, sterile alcohol smell.
Nim turns around, still fastened to that characteristic big red clipboard that is too big for her tiny hands. Her short, silver fur is somewhat ruffled, whiskers drooping. She looks ten times older, somehow. Oggie passes her coffee from the lounge.
"Thank you. I haven't had unbroken sleep in days. It's always something with this patient." She looks up, taking off her also very big glasses. Everything seems to be too big on her. Maybe she's just small and cute. "I don't know how he isn't dead. First he was already malnourished before experiencing multiple 3rd degrees, then he caught pneumonia, and to top it all off? He went into septic shock from all the infection, twice. But.. for better or for worse? He's still kicking."
Oggie turns his attention, and there he was, all he was then. He didn't look like he was really kicking at all. His head was so utterly bound head to toe in bandages that it was almost just as hard as before to tell what animal he was. Swathed with wires like blood vessels, engulfed by a bed of machines and beeping. He seemed so unnaturally small that he could just disappear, sink into the pillows and drop. Oggie saw that his fur, clean of the soot and blood, is actually golden in colour. His single eyelid, the one not covered, trembles.
"Is he awake?"
"He's been drifting in and out of consciousness, all morning." Nim takes a brief lapse to sip. "And saying things."
"What things?"
"Just blubbering and crying."
Oggie looks back at the sundrowned golden. His head moves a little bit, like he was fighting sleep paralysis. Why fight at all? Oggie can't stop thinking about the way he was at the end of his life, and the last thing he would have spent it doing was push help away. Why? Is it so impossibly cruel to still keep him alive?
"He's a dog?"
"Hard to tell, innit? Yeah."
"Do we even have a name on him?"
Nim puts the clipboard down, a very good answer. "No. No family, no connections to any gangs in the area, nothing anywhere."
Oggie exhales. If Mylo were here, seeing this now.. If he had seen everything Oggie saw, he would know, why he would have to feel at least a bit bad for the sundrowned golden. The dog in the cask of a bed moves again, groaning through a hoarse throat, but a throat nonetheless. His one eye is cracked open, staring at Oggie in an almost accusatory, but defeated light.
Satellite realises he is still alive, only somewhere far down the road. He discovers it, stumbles upon the fact like an empty bottle on the road, or a corpse in the river. Previously, he thought that the four walls of the room were just faces, hiding nothing behind, floating in an abysmal medium. He thought it was all just a game, a bad dream, or something else unthinkable, like hell or eternity, that he was in. But, from the aching thickness, the phasing in and out and the thresholds, he picks a side and comes out of it. And all he knows, are the four walls of this sick bay, the glaring lights, the beeping he no longer notices, and his doctor. Her back is turned, and before this, it would have been a mistake, but Satellite had lost that. Lost something.
"Do you have a name?"
What sort of question is that? He's some kind of toddler, some kindergartener she just met? He sounds mad, but the truth is that for the first time since forever, he doesn't have anything left in him to be mad with. He breathes in searing lungs through a gritted throat, the only thing he has ever been called, the only thing that he is in this wide and wonderful world.
What comes out is some toady gurgle.
He tries again, and again, and then, it finally comes out right this time. ".. Satellite."
"Satellite. Hey. Hi." She turns, in an oversized doctors coat, neat nails tapping the back of her clipboard, her fur smooth and glossy. Her eyes are big and clear, devoid of sharpness. "I know that many things might be really confusing for you right now, but don't worry. I'm here to help. You can call me Nim, alright, sweetheart? Do you know where you are right now?"
"No." Where Satellite was seemed like such a small question. Nothing was making sense, not in front of him or anywhere else, if anything outside this room even existed at all. Some arms were raised, and the pair of gnarly paws that floated into his blurry vision were looked at, the fluorescent lights behind simmering at its leathery edges.
"That's somewhere to start. Help me hold this." Satellite tries to grab onto the clipboard, but for some reason, it passes through and falls on his chest. The pain from that small thump alone makes him clench up, and exhale slowly. He looks again at the paws. Leathery, utterly marred with wrinkly scar tissue. Is that him? Is that really, really him? Is he in there, somewhere, hidden under layers and layers of now ruined, inpenetrable skin?
"You look a bit different than you remember, huh?" Satellite's hoarse eyes are dragged back to the doctor as she retrieves the clipboard. Her soft eyes make him weak, the weakest he had ever felt in his entire damn life. Yeah, he does look a little different, doesn't he?
"Why can't I feel anything?"
"I was just getting to that." She looks down, somewhere, like she couldn't bear to deliver the news with eye contact. "The fire burnt through many of your muscles and nerves. Almost nothing left. Your eyes are just as bad, but your paws especially. I nearly amputated both, you know? I was able to reconstruct your muscles, though. But your nerves, however...."
Satellite looks back up at the ceiling boards, but the ceiling boards aren't really seen at all. The fire. Blistering, sweltering, rocking back and forth. He blinks and comes back to the cool air conditioning, the alcohol smell, the softness of the blankets. No, it's not that sad of an ending, not really. If suddenly he is unable to feel pain, then, that just makes the job a lot easier, doesn't it? Satellite doesn't even know it or recognise it himself, but the aching and the choking up in his chest is actually grief. He changed. He's different, now. And in the very, very end, he doesn't know where he is and might not ever find himself, ever again.
Suddenly, pulled back to the room, the doctor places something light on Sat's chest. Looking down, in his blurry peripheral, is something orange and crumpled. Clothes, singed black at some places. His eyes almost doesn't recognise it, but his body does—they are his prison clothes.
"Oggie told me to get this to you," Nim says. "Maybe you'll need it."
Upon hearing the name of that dog, Satellite closes his eyes, and grits his teeth.
So, this is Satellite. This is truly Satellite, the patchy and frail dog staring back in every agonising reflection. Just passing shards of a mirror now broken, laying on the floor in utter pieces. He looks haunting, like something that's lived past the end of its myth. The other mercenaries in Griffin Co. can't believe their eyes. Some of the older ones recall him, or a more speculative version of him that died a long time ago, in a roundup around the poorer areas. He was never seen ever again, they'd whisper. Now here he was again, in the flesh and bone, but not in another more intangible, unspoken way. He was too quiet, too fragmented, too otherly. It was like he was only half back, and half dead.
Despite this, business is business and work is work, so Satellite carries on living, doing whatever he needs to do to ensure shelter at night and money. Living and living and living and living and living. He's a bit more privy now, to everything—he knows now that he is in the territory of Griffin Co, an arms manufacturer and supplier deep in the underworld, and these are the wretched saints who brought him back from the brink, just to thrust him back into this world of gunsmoke and iron tang. Upon seeing him, Mylo didn't acknowledge him, other than an indifferent wrinkle of his nosebridge and the turn of an eye. If Satellite could care less, he would have said that the kingpin was wary of him, or maybe jealous. Isla was curious with him like she was curious with a circus animal, just watching with those big eyes. Nim was somewhere more tender, on the other hand. Her disarming sympathy, anchoring him, their rare moments of banter.
In the recent days, he'd picked up walking again without issue, but his hands was where it was at. Nim was exceptionally worried that keeping them was ultimately not worth it. He couldn't even clench those paws fully, and they could only tremble and convulse in reaction to shocks. But, to him, as long as your index is good enough to close over a trigger, you can fight. Promptly after that revelation, Nim told him to get back into the sick bay and stay there. Which, is really fine to him.
Another day, none other than Oggie swings by. Hadn't gotten a clear look at his damning salvation, until now. Sleek, bluish fur, a purple vest suit and a red collar, interestingly enough. His forearms are marred with scars, which brings him closer to home than his eyes do. Nim is in the room when it happens.
"You were pitiful. Completely unrecognisable," Oggie is saying, arms crossed, fiddling with a ring. "It's nice to see you fighting, despite everything. Are you healing?"
Satellite huffs.
"Fighting?" Something very familiar and comforting sparks in his searing gut, a the first time in a while—anger. "I'm.. This isn't fighting. This is wretched survival. And if it weren't for you, I'd finally be dead!"
"You're welcome."
The audacity. He doesn't even know. He can't know. He, standing there with scars that only serve to make him look pretty, he and his rugged dog loyalty, rings shining like his sharp teeth, his manicured fur and rich suit. Oggie's probably in this, gunfire and iron tang, for the money. He gets to choose it, gets to pick up a knife voluntarily. Satellite's in this because nothing else outside of this exists. For him, he was born with no paw, and a knife was welded to the bloody fucking stump.
Something small and solid lands on Satellite's lap, as he's still bristling. Looking down with eyes that are by now clearer, he sees that it is a golden zippo lighter with an intricate carving of a phoenix on it.
"Saw this and just thought of you," he says, something steely but still warm underneath. Oh, and a lighter, after everything that has happened? "A little congrats on surviving."
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Satellite rips the covers off the bed, more harshly than he had ever in his stay. Frankly, he was in no state to fight and he didn't even think he was strong enough to make it that far, but here he is, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "You think you're my goddamn saviour? Bringing me back from the brink just to make me work to hell in this death factory? I haven't suffered enough, right? I need to repay every bad deed I've done like some poor, dirty sinner?"
Oggie doesn't even budge one bit. He even leans into Satellite, locking eyes, before Nim's back on her office chair turns. This whole time, she was just preoccupied with work until now.
"It wasn't just Oggie," she says. Something about her voice is clear and disarming, like a cool river. "I worked really hard to save you, too."
The fire completely leaves Satellite at that moment. Of course.
"And get back in that bed." So, Satellite does. "If you boys make a ruckus in my sick bay, I swear, I will kill the both of you."
"Is he even fit for action?"
Nim turns to Oggie and shoots him the dirtiest frown her face can manage. "Get out."
"Hold on, now!" His resolve breaks. "I've to tell you that Mylo wants him in work by June or he has to get out."
Nim eyes flit away, to somewhere else, brow knitted. "That's only a month more. Tell him to give us until the end of the year."
"Right? He won't like it, but.. I'll fight for the extension." Oggie turns to Sat, and nods, shooting him a shit eating grin. "Give us a chance, won'tcha?"
Satellite huffs.
"Yeah, only Mylo would bend to your will, huh?" Nim turns back to her work so they can't see the growing smile. "Or, should I say, bend over?"
Oggie bursts out laughing and heads out the sick bay. Satellite is left there, touching the cool metal of the lighter, still feeling ripped off. He doesn't get the joke.