Chapter Text
You’ve just settled in with your journal, pen poised and eyes searching Kankri’s face where he stands on his raised platform - more a collection of dead stumps in this forest clearing than anything - when Mituna tugs on your sleeve.
“We’re being followed,” he says.
His voice is pitched low enough that Kankri doesn’t hear. You stay as relaxed as possible, glancing around the trees. “I would know if there were other trolls around,” you say.
“They didn’t follow us into the woods. Hung back in the city. Wouldn’t make a note of it, except I’ve seen all three of ‘em hanging together in the last three towns. Seems kind of coincidental to see the same trolls in so many places. Flashes of them on the edges of crowded sermons, but never anywhere we’re all isolated, like they're taking down information. I haven't got close enough to make out faces, professions.”
“We haven’t split up in the last three towns. Hmm. Could just be following my beloved because they’re too shy to approach. What are the colors?”
“Two teal. One green.”
“We’ve had tealbloods on our tail for three towns and you didn’t say anything?”
“Would have if they trespassed.” Mituna shrugs, his shoulders a tense line. “Didn’t want to bring it up in case they turned out to be a… a problem I had to deal with.”
You don’t doubt the information. You’re a killer tracker in the woods and the desert, but crowds scramble up your senses. Easier to follow one rustle through the underbrush than pinpoint a million confusing scents. It’s not that the city makes you incompetent, but it does make you anxious, and Mituna is better at categorizing faces and movements of other trolls than you’ll ever be.
“But you’re bringing it up now?”
“Figure maybe you have a better way to deal with it than…”
“Hmm.” You consider for a moment. “We’re going to trap them.”
---
Traps you can lay. Trolls don’t track this long without a game plan, and whether that involves calling in reinforcements or not is up for debate. Could be they haven’t moved yet because the four of you are a pack, one innocent heretic bordered on all sides by three bloodthirsty killers. There are reasons Kankri hasn’t fallen under a legislacerator’s boot yet.
So you’ll split off, see what they do. Warn Rosa of the potential of trouble at tonight’s sermon, since she’s more than capable of handling what the Empire throws at her. You, on the other hand - you loop your arm through Mituna’s and the pair of you amble away from the crowd, take a leisurely walk. Even love beyond quadrants occasionally needs space apart!
The trolls are interested in at least one of your boys. If it’s Kankri, there’s still a chance they’re just poking their claws in idle curiosity and starry-eyed adoration. If it’s Mituna…
Well, you packed your weapons for a reason.
“So,” you say, casual, conversational, “how many problems have you dealt with for us so far?”
A snuck glance shows the tips of his ears turning yellow. “I. Uh.”
“I’m not gonna be mad.”
“None. Not technically. Rosa told me she’d - that I didn’t - Rosa’s been taking care of problems.”
The relief blooms in your chest, makes your steps more buoyant. You try not to be too obvious about it, but you sigh and nudge your head affectionately against his shoulder, twining your fingers through his. “Good,” you say, squeezing his hand.
He flinches, imperceptible to most, but you and Kankri have the history to pick up on it.
“It ain’t about my moral standing,” you explain, quick. “I know trolls do what they have to do. But we told you we weren’t gonna make you kill anymore, and we meant it.”
He shrugs again. “You don’t need to coddle me.”
“It ain’t coddling.”
“You talk like the clowns, sometimes,” he says. It comes out idly, too relaxed, like he’s been waiting ages to bring it up but doesn’t want to be obvious. “Your accent, I mean.”
“We’ve both had our turns with the clowns. I just got out sooner than you did.”
“Oh. So you - I mean - he saved you too? I didn’t know. No one said anything in the Court.”
“Let’s just say you and me have more in common than either of us does with him. Which ain’t - isn’t a bad thing.” You squeeze his hand again and hop up on tiptoes, stretching to kiss his cheek. “It’s nice to have someone around who gets it. I promise you aren’t the worst person in our group. Not by far.”
“Is it fucked up that that’s kind of a relief?”
You laugh and shake your head, kiss his cheek again. “No, it’s a relief that it’s a relief. Hey. I love you.”
He grunts.
Then he tenses. “They’re following us.”
Well. Trolls after him have fewer reasons to be benevolent. Plenty of people want to get their hands on him for all the wrong reasons. Your pulse quickens, blood threading hot through your veins. “How far back?”
“Few blocks.”
You prick an ear and hear the footsteps, three pairs, faux casual. “Okay,” you say. “We’re going to head somewhere deserted, find out what they want, and settle this like adults.”
He winces.
“I can take three trolls if it comes to that,” you say. “Won’t be a problem. Don’t get your hands dirty - look away if you need to.”
“You don’t have to get involved in this,” he says. “I can find out what they want on my own. If they’re from the Court then this is - so fucking far from your problem it doesn’t even register on the scale, fuck, Meu, I don’t want to make you…”
“Relax. You aren’t making me do anything.”
His pace stumbles. “Meu.”
“Yeah?”
“They weren’t - not in uniform before, I didn’t - legislacerators, you should look.”
You crane your head back. Three uniformed lacerators, two teal and one green like he said. One with reflective red glasses, one with enough facial piercings that they catch the light even from this distance, one with a hand thrust casual into the pocket of his jacket like he’s fumbling for a drink instead of a gun.
You keep your pace steady. “You think they have bullets or tranq darts?” you murmur.
“If they were planning to kill they would have acted while we were in camp.”
“Mmm. Change of plan,” you say, and yank him into the alley that you’re passing.
You break into a sprint as soon as you’re out of sight of the lacerators, Mituna hot on your heels. A flying leap takes you to the edge of a garbage bin, and from there to the underside of a fire escape, swinging in a wide arc to plant your feet on the platform. Your moirail floats up beside you, his eyebrows raised.
“I recognize how dire this situation is,” he whispers, “but I could have just floated us both up. Showoff.”
You shake your head and press a finger to your lips, then mime raising something into the air. Keep floating.
The pair of you climb the stairs silent, hauling ass onto the roof as three pairs of patter-footsteps enter the alley. You stay low, elbows planted on the ground, using your toes for propulsion leverage, wiggling toward the next roof. With any luck, they’ll keep going, think you ran farther than this - but the steps idle in the alley.
“Come on out, goldie,” a deep voice calls - from which of the lacerators, you couldn’t tell. “You aren’t in trouble.”
Mituna stiffens for a split second, then moves faster, throwing himself over the gap between this roof and the next. You land beside him stealthy, catlike, and then grab his waist and pull him onto the ground.
“Stay quiet until they move on,” you breathe, “and then we’ll figure out a plan.”
“Where you at?” the same voice calls. “Help us out.”
“Up here!” Mituna shouts, and you clap a hand hard over his mouth. His eyes go wide and horrified.
Fuck - of course there’s a psychic in the bunch, they wouldn’t send a team for a volatile psion without one. You dare to hope they haven’t heard him, can’t pinpoint your location, but you hear the footsteps approach and ice slides down your spine.
Mituna wrenches your hand away. “Get the fuck out of here, Meu, I’ll take them.”
“Not a chance,” you say. “Mind control doesn’t work on me.”
You don’t like thinking about the work it took to shield your pan so fully, or everything that happened before. Mituna doesn’t need to know the gritty details, and neither does Kankri, or Rosa. But it’s useful as hell in situations like this, and you’re not about to look a gift hoofbeast in the mouth.
“Meu.”
“The psychic is their trump card,” you murmur. “I think I can still take them. Be very still and run if things go south.”
“They’ll kill you.”
You stroke through his hair with your fingertips. “You think I care?” you say with a small grin, and then you equip your claws.
“Let’s take this really easy.” The voice belongs to the olive, who swings a leg over the ledge and stands military-straight. Huh. You didn’t know green could do mind control, but maybe the rarity is what got them into the corps in the first place.
Mituna stands up, his gaze unfocused, distress pulling on the corners of his mouth. You swear under your breath and watch the olive, careful, waiting to see if the other two make an appearance, waiting to strike. You have to take him out fast, before he figures out he can’t influence you and decides Mituna works better as a weapon than a hostage.
“He has a pretty big bounty on his head,” the olive says, conversational, and it takes a moment for you to realize he’s talking to you. “You could share the profit.”
There’s no way he doesn’t know who you are. Honestly he’s just insulting your intelligence, like he’d share funds with a traitor, like you’d take money over clade to begin with. You relax your face into an easy smile and say, “Sounds like a fun talking point to me.”
Mituna stiffens, flashing a glance between you two.
“We needed him to get out of the Court, but he’s useless to us now,” you say, and you know the words will hurt him, and you apologize silently for needing the hurt to be real, for needing him confused to get closer. You inch forward and let the claws slide back in, still smiling. “I’ll cut you a deal. Trade Captor for a chance for the rest of us to go free. If you come down on my clade, we’re going to have problems.”
“Meu,” Mituna says.
“Stay back,” says the olive. “Let me grab the psion, and we’ll be on our way. Think we can leave your clade unharmed. For now, anyway.”
“See, this is my idea of a good negotiation.” You place a hand on Mituna’s lower back and nudge him forward. He goes, halting and confused, and the psychic doesn’t have enough of a hold to make his stride even but Mituna isn’t sparking like he would be if his pan were wholly his own.
It’s inconvenient and clunky, their journey down the fire escape. With any luck, the olive will be too confident in their hold to…
“Don’t waste a tranq bullet,” says one of the others, and you could laugh out loud. “We only have so many. Let’s get out of here.”
Morons. You wait until they’re at the mouth of the alley, can’t believe they think they’ve gotten away with it, and then you spring from the corner of the building and land on the olive’s shoulders.
They’re not expecting an aerial attack because the roof is three floors up and no one in their right mind would jump three legislacerators without being ready to die. The element of surprise gives you just enough time to knock the olive to the ground, which wrenches his grip away from Mituna - you slide your claws out seamless, and drive them down so hard into his skull that they come out slick with brain matter.
Good thing you’re not squeamish! Mituna rights himself easy enough without the fingers in his mind, and you whirl before he has a chance to act, aiming for the throat of whoever’s closest. But the pierced lacerator already has teal blood on the corner of her mouth, choking on her shock, and now it’s your own surprise that gives the others the advantage.
The death blow you’re expecting doesn’t come, so you have the time to resolve the picture in your mind. It doesn’t compute.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a solid perigree,” the red-glasses legislacerator says, pulling her teal-slicked cane from the chest of her companion. She flashes you a smile that glitters in the streetlights, all sharp teeth and malice. “You want to punch it through with your claws so it’s not so obvious I’m a filthy traitor?”
Legislacerators deal in shade and manipulation. You hope she’ll think you’re too smart for a brute-force attack, that you can take her off guard, and thrust your claws at her glasses instead. Clean shot, shove through the glass, shove through the eyes, out the back of the skull, leave the bodies and rinse off and head home.
Your knuckles hit a psionic shield, translucent and shimmering red-blue between you. Mituna’s hands are up, separating the pair of you as physically as he can manage. He could snap her neck in a second, turn the bodies to ash, but you can't let him - you have promises to keep. Murder twists a troll, and he’s fragile no matter how much he tries to protest otherwise. You lay a hand on his arm, soothing, but his face isn’t animal or anguished. Instead you find the strangest expression you’ve ever seen - his brow furrowed, mouth flat, like he’s blinking to dispel a desert mirage.
“Latula,” he says.
The legislacerator smiles and opens her mouth, and out comes hyena laughter that licks the hairs on your arms, makes them stand straight up. She laughs like a clown undone by a good punchline, leaning on her cane, no trace of fear.
“Miss me, hotshot?”
Mituna growls and drops the shield. “I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t. But your companion here will.” She pouts at you, but then the smile is back. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you murder is a rude way to greet an old friend?”
“You’re not taking me back alive.”
“Oh, please. I’m not taking you back at all. I mean, I could. Could have wiped out this pretty picture singlehandedly. Do you know how fucking obnoxious it is to send three trolls to do what one could? It’s like he’s doubting my abilities or something.”
Mituna snarls this time and bolts forward. You jerk an arm toward him to stop him from doing something he’ll regret, like that would solve anything when he can shoot lightning beams from his eyes, your other arm angled toward the lacerator in case you need to steal the kill for yourself. But then you realize you’ve misjudged the interaction entirely when he knots his fingers in her hair and kisses her.
It’s the most vicious kiss you’ve ever seen, and you’ve watched a lot of highblood pitch pairs go at it. He slams her back against the wall and pulls so hard on her hair that you’re surprised none rips out, and she laughs and sinks those sharp teeth so deep into his lip that yellow stains his chin. When she hooks her hands around his neck and drags her claws down his skin like she’s tracing an artificial collar, you step over the olive corpse and shove yourself between them.
“Holy fuck,” you say. “Control yourselves.”
The lacerator laughs, another hyena pitch. “You really going to auspistice us? We have time for a quickie.”
“Get off of him,” you say calmly, “or I’m going to put my fist through your throat.”
Mituna steps away, wiping the blood from his mouth. “It’s okay, Meu,” he says.
“Like fuck it is.”
“She killed her companion, look.”
“Because she’s tryna buy time to run. She knows we’d have killed her so she’s playing pretty traitor to wiggle out alive. That’s what being a legislacerator is. Fucking other people over in the name of results.”
“What a cynical and hilariously accurate view you have of the profession,” the teal says.
“It’s - it’s okay. Just give her a second to explain herself.”
“Did you miss the reason they're here? The mind control? I’m sorry? Are you fucking insane?”
“She wasn't doing the controlling, though.”
“I will let her explain if you two swear not to fuck in this alley.”
“Aw,” the teal says.
“Meulin.” His voice comes out strained with loathing - self-loathing or black, you can’t tell. “It’s okay. This is Latula Pyrope. She’s my kismesis.”
The tealblood smiles, softer this time, less glitter on her fangs. “Neophyte Redglare. Call me by my hatch name and I’ll gut you throat to waist.”
“Underground Huntress,” you say, mostly for the sake of watching her reaction. Her eyes narrow just slightly behind the glasses, which you consider a victory. “Touch my moirail again and I’ll do the same.”
“Well,” Mituna says. “This sure is a cozy in-clade introduction.”