Chapter Text
Charlie had picked the target.
His half-sister may have been put away, but her most unsavory contacts were still very much active, and pissed off that one of their biggest sources of laundered money was now defunct. Luis Briseño, an arms dealer who played both sides of every conflict you could imagine, was one such contact. A paranoid man, he kept the key to his offshore accounts literally offshore, in a high-security computer bank located inside his superyacht. He was also planning a party aboard said superyacht in a few weeks’ time that would be picking up its guests from just outside Manhattan.
It was rather convenient of him, actually.
The trick was this: Merritt would hypnotize the captain, making sure he took the yacht on the exact trajectory they needed him to take. He would also stay behind on the dock and pickpocket the tickets that Jack, Atlas, and Henley would need to make their way in as guests. Bosco, Charlie, and June would pose as waitstaff, pulling off the first part of the heist and serving as a distraction for the second part.
Once the younger trio got past the guards, they had a “doohickey” (Merritt’s words, but it caught on) that could be attached to the yacht’s computer and begin a digital lockpicking sequence. It would need at least half an hour to work, so they wouldn’t be able to actually make it out of there with the key, but they needed to be just “careless” enough to make Briseño’s security believe they had it. The guards would be so focused on catching the apparent thieves that by the time the sequence had completed, Henley could retrieve the doohickey and the offshore account key from the server room without arousing any suspicion. Lula would further obfuscate the escape by staging a rather dramatic leg mangling via outboard motor – in the planning stages, she gleefully announced “I’m gonna need two gallons of corn syrup. At LEAST.” Finally, while that was happening, Henley, Atlas, and Jack would change outfits and escape on the yacht’s supply boat.
In hindsight, it was a bit funny that Charlie had been the one everyone was most worried about. Their escape route was going to require a dive into the Hudson River, likely with armed guards shooting after them. The guns were easy enough – at the dock, Jack would switch out the guards’ magazines for blanks, so the kids would never actually be in danger of getting shot. But Charlie could only sort-of swim, and tended to panic every time his head went underwater.
Still, it had to be him in the distraction heist. He was the only one who understood how to setup Henley’s doohickey, and insisted it was easier for Henley to take a few weeks to teach him how to swim and hold his breath a minute or two underwater than it would be to teach anyone else how to code it properly.
Shockingly enough, he was right. The heist would have gone off perfectly.
That is, if any of them had noticed the guard change between the docks and the yacht itself.
When Charlie emerged on the pebbled incline on the other side of the river, coughing and spluttering, he was a little amazed he’d made it. The guards had been two steps behind them when they dove into the dark water, and if not for the sounds of gunfire, he might have thought himself out of it. But once he was under, he had no choice but to keep going – his hands rigid but slightly cupped, arcing ahead of him through the water, just like Henley had drilled him on. The adrenaline got him through the rest of the way.
June emerged beside him, pushing wet hair out of her face. “Everyone alright?” she asked.
Charlie was about to respond with a breathless yes, when he heard the shaky voice behind him.
“Not really,” said Bosco. His hand was held up to his left side. Even in the cover of night, a growing dark stain was visible soaking into his white waiter’s uniform shirt underneath it.
“Shit,” said June, succinctly.
Charlie didn’t say anything, just a small incoherent noise of alarm, and rushed to Bosco’s side. His heart fell into his stomach, a gear somewhere in the back of his brain ticked back from victory to controlling the damage. It was his plan, his fault, but he could fix it. He was going to fix it.
He put Bosco’s right arm over his shoulder, ignoring the groan of protest and turning back to June. “Go up to the street and get us a car. We’ll meet you there.”
“Got it,” said June, wide-eyed, speaking in the tone of voice that meant she was terrified but saving it for later. She ran, gravel flashing up behind heeled non-slip shoes.
It wasn’t very far to the road, but it felt like an eternity, each step pained and sluggish, the streetlights seeming dim and farther away with each step. Bosco’s forehead was wet with sweat as much as river water and alarmingly, he had nothing to say, focusing all his energy on one step after another.
Charlie didn’t say anything either, because he only had one thought: Thaddeus Bradley had gotten shot in a nearly identical location.
And he had been Charlie’s fault, too.
By the time they reached the top, June had pulled up in a Honda Civic sorely in need of a wash, and Charlie internally thanked the heavens she hadn’t gone for a Benz again this time – the last thing they needed right now was anything flashy. She dashed out to open the backseat door, and helped maneuver Bosco inside while Charlie grabbed the dry clothes they had hidden earlier in a nearby bush. They wouldn’t have time to change, but maybe he could keep the blood off the seats of whatever poor schmuck had decided to park next to the water today.
Bosco was draped across the backseat with his legs up against the window, partly to keep them elevated, and partly because he had too many limbs to fit the back of a Civic. Charlie sat by him on the floor, helping hold pressure on the wound while June drove.
Bosco stared up at the grey fabric ceiling, watching flashes of warm light and shadow pass by with each streetlight. He must have shivered, because Charlie placed a flannel jacket across his chest. June’s, he thought. Where was she again?
“June’s driving?” he asked.
“Yeah, June’s driving,” said Charlie. Wow, Charlie was close to him. One hand was pressed into Bosco’s side, the other had its fingers intertwined with his. Those two points of contact were very warm, which was something he could focus on.
“Nice. Good driving, June,” he said.
“Thanks, Bosco,” said June, who would have been able to take the compliment if she hadn’t just clearly driven over a curb. In her defense, that asshole didn’t know how to turn, and she was going a good twenty over the speed limit at the moment.
Bosco was starting to feel a bit outside of himself. He knew he had been shot, and annoyingly, it appeared they would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for one guard with decent aim. He wasn’t sure yet why they still had had bullets, but someone would surely figure that out and let him know. He was glad, actually, that it had been him and not the others – despite his practice, Charlie wasn’t a strong swimmer, and while June had had lessons in the past, Bosco was the only one of them who had been on the JV swim team in high school. His breaststroke had been automatic, even when he felt a searing pain in his lower back with each pull and he knew something had gone very, very wrong.
Plus, he now was in the enviable position of having zero control over the situation, which also meant he didn’t have to worry about what they were going to do next.
From his face, it was clear Charlie was worrying about it enough for all three of them. Bosco tried to say something comforting.
“It doesn’t really hurt,” he said. From his objective vantage point outside his own body, Bosco was surprised at how much his words were slurring together. Still, he gamely continued on. “I think that’s shock, probably.”
“Yeah, buddy,” said Charlie, “it probably is.” From the way Charlie had chosen to say ‘buddy’ as if Bosco was an endearing but troublesome toddler, Bosco’s statement had clearly not been comforting in the slightest. Quite the opposite, in fact. Was Charlie crying, or was his face still wet? “Don’t worry about talking, okay?”
Ah. So yeah, this was pretty bad. He noticed his blinks were getting slower, as if somehow the movement of his eyelids was affecting the speed at which the world moved around him. There was a dark undertow at the back of his consciousness, threatening to pull him under. Charlie said something, and June said something, and an amount of time passed. Bosco was surprised to find that, with a hole currently passing through his torso, the main thing he felt was cold and vaguely nauseous. Could be worse, surely.
Then he was being lifted up, and that sort of hurt again, and June’s flannel was gone and so were the two warm points of Charlie’s hands. Instead of grey fabric above him, there was a night sky fogged orange by light pollution, and he was suddenly very cold.
He blinked, the undertow took him, and then there was nothing.
-
June had to be the one to text the other Horsemen. Charlie’s hands were covered in blood.
He could have gotten up to wash them off, but he was currently incapable of doing anything other than staring at the pale blue waiting room wall. His grand plan to fix everything had gotten him to the hospital, and there it had stopped cold.
June was holding Charlie’s hand, which had to be pretty gross, but it was a necessary anchor to the present. Neither said a word, because what could you even say? They didn’t know anything other than “they’re prepping him for surgery now,” and “Merritt M. responded ‘👍’ at 10:58 PM.” Even for a hospital, the pair were covered in an alarming amount of blood, soaking wet, bedraggled, and absolutely exhausted.
Which is exactly how Merritt and Lula found them, looking more like two lost children than ever. Hugs came first, then a plan.
“Do you remember what car you took to get here?” Lula asked.
June blinked, kicking her brain back into the present action. “Civic. A green one,” she responded.
“Cool,” said Lula, “You and I can take it back to your place. You’ve got cleaning supplies there, right?”
“Cleaning supplies,” said June, and then, “Yes.”
Merritt slung an arm around Charlie, “And you and I, tadpole, we can hold down the fort here. You just let me handle the cops, capiche?”
Charlie startled. “Cops? Why would there be–?”
“They always call the cops on a GSW. But I highly doubt their best and brightest. I’ll do all the talking, you just stand there and look–” Merritt looked at Charlie for a moment. He looked lost, and scared, and utterly miserable. “Yeah,” finished Merritt, “keep looking like that.”
Lula took June’s arm gently, leading her to the door. “C’mon kiddo,” she said gently, “the sooner we’re out of here, the sooner we can be back.”
But before she could be moved any further, June broke away, running to wrap both arms around Charlie’s neck, burying her head into his chest. After a moment, he wrapped his arms around her back, kissing the top of her head. “See you soon,” he mumbled into her hair.
June pulled back, eyes wet, and kissed his cheek in return. “See you soon,” she said, releasing her arms. Charlie’s hands pulled away from her back, leaving behind two red smudges. Time to go. Work to be done.
-
Lula drove, which was unfortunate, as she was a terrible driver. June had lost count of the times her fellow Horsewoman had made an awkward wave at a fellow motorist, exaggeratedly mouthing “SORRY, SO SORRY!” at their honking horns. But also, June couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, so she doubted she’d be any better now that the adrenaline of Bosco bleeding out in the backseat had left her system.
Lula was also talking, a lot. Normally it wouldn’t bother June so much, but right now there was a buzzing hive in the center of her head, and she could only catch bits and pieces of the one-sided conversation: “- one guy saw my leg come off and totally projectile vomited, had to be five feet -” “- haven’t heard from the others yet, but I know Henley got the doohickey -” “- and if we leave the car around the corner, they’ll probably just think they forgot where they parked. I do it all the time.”
Finally, the Civic arrived at the-hideout-formerly-known-as Meltzer’s Bagels. Lula killed the ignition.
“Okay, so, any particular clothes you want me to grab?”
Oh right, her clothes. June was still wearing her waiter’s uniform, black half-apron and all. The white button-down shirt hadn’t been nearly as stained as Charlie’s (or Bosco’s, for that matter. Best not to bring that image to mind right now.), but there were still little red smudges everywhere.
“Um, whatever’s in the closet,” she said finally. “It’s all the same closet.”
“And cleaning supplies are…?”
“Kitchen island.”
“Got it. Sit tight.”
And June was alone in the car. She had once been a solitary creature, back when she was dressed up like a doll and taken from party to party, expected to smile and say nothing and feel nothing at all. Later, when it became clear she was not a little obedient doll, she was locked away in a dorm room with the other unwanted dolls until she was old enough (or quick enough, as the case turned out to be) to leave. Rather than understanding they were all here for the same reasons, they had instead wallowed in the pain of being unwanted, and tore each other to pieces.
She thought she hated everybody in the world until she met Bosco and Charlie. And even then, for a good long time she hated everyone in the world EXCEPT Bosco and Charlie, especially if they were adults old enough to know better.
But then they had introduced her to the Horsemen, an old news headline from when she was in elementary school that she kinda sorta thought she remembered. From scraps of performances captured on shaky phone video, uploaded to YouTube in glorious 480p, she saw what the world could look like if grown-ups gave a shit about anyone other than themselves.
Meeting the real deal had lived up to that, mostly, even if she was still wary of The Eye having the best intentions. She knew the Horsemen did, though, and that was enough for her.
Speaking of which, Lula had returned with an armful of clothing and a Trader Joe’s bag dangling from the other elbow.
June got out of the car and opened the doors to the backseat, looking for the first time at the damage – the clothes Charlie had put down were completely soaked with blood, and it had made its way to spots on the (fabric, shit, she knew she should have stolen something with leather upholstery) seats below.
Lula handed June a shirt and jeans, giving her a Stern Look and guiding her away from the car. “No, stop that, just put these on. I’m good with blood, remember?”
June peeled her eyes away, and took the dry clothes gratefully.
“You know, it looks like a lot, but I think that’s a pretty survivable amount,” Lula chattered away behind June’s back, clanking together various cleaning implements from the bag as she did. “You can lose a couple of pints before things get real bad. Plus he’s tall, you know? So there’s probably-”
June unfolded the shirt, grey and emblazoned with cheery blue text reading: POKER? I HARDLY KNOW ‘ER!
One of Bosco’s. She couldn’t help it then: she started crying, at first trying to hide it out of habit, then giving up when her breath hitched just a little bit too loud.
She hugged the shirt to her chest, and Lula was by her side in an instant, drawing her in. She smelled like corn syrup and chemical solvents, and her leather jacket squeaked a little against June’s cheek.
“Shit, sorry, I’ve never been good at this.”
You ARE good at this, June wanted to say, but she hiccupped instead.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Lula, “and even if it’s not okay, that’s okay too.”
“He’s all I’ve got,” said June miserably, which felt like a stupid line even as she said it, and anyway she knew it wasn’t really true, but it had FELT true, just then.
“You’ve got Charlie, and you’ve got us.” After a few moments, Lula released the hug, awkwardly patting June on the shoulder as she did. “And you’ve got a couple minutes while the peroxide does its thing, so get it out now so you can tell me where we need to park this guy’s car, alright?”
-
The police arrived sooner than expected, while Bosco was still in surgery. For privacy’s sake, Charlie and Merritt were escorted to an otherwise empty recovery room before being met by the officers.
They were a surprisingly classic pair: one short and fat, the other tall and thin. Merritt let them get through polite introductions before hitting them with the hypnotic suggestion, a feat that had been explained to Charlie many times but still seemed like Actual Magic to him. Merritt snapped his fingers, and their heads dropped in perfect unison.
“You’re going to explain to your superiors that this was all a misunderstanding. No need for names on the report, either,” Merritt thought for a moment, then grinned. “And if anyone presses you for any further information, you’re gonna snort like the little piggies you are, got it?”
Snap. Consciousness returned.
“Sorry for the mix-up, sir,” said short-and-fat.
“Have a good rest of your evening,” said tall-and-thin.
The officers left.
Merritt stuck his head out of the doorway, flagging down a nurse. “Apologies, sir, we’re here with the young man who’s in surgery for a gunshot wound. Are we supposed to wait here?”
The nurse checked a clipboard at the door. “Are you the patient’s family?”
“My son,” Merritt confirmed, gravely but politely. Then, with a nod to Charlie, “My nephew and I would like to wait up for him.”
“You’re in the right place,” said the nurse. “We’ll make sure to let his doctor know where you are.”
“Thanks so much,” said Merritt, and closed the door. He turned to Charlie, and let out a low whistle. “Best and the brightest, what’d I tell ya.”
“How do you do that?” asked Charlie.
“Now, I know I’ve taught you the basics of mentalism once or twice before–”
“No, not that. You’re not…freaking out?”
If anything, Merritt’s drawl got drawl-ier. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t exactly ‘freak out’ these days, no. Not a lot of help, generally speaking.”
“I know, sorry, I can’t…help it.”
Merritt nodded, and went to sit in one of the strangely anti-ergonomic chairs provided next to the window. “You and Danny, you’re the same way. You’re always so busy thinking twenty steps ahead of everything that you forget the most important step.”
“Which is?”
“The next one.” Merritt looked incredibly pleased that his line had landed. “Like, for example:” He inclined his head toward a second door in the recovery room. “You should get washed up. It’ll be a while until the ladies get back with some clothes, but you’re gonna feel a thousand times better just rolling the sleeves up and getting under your nails.”
“Right.” The blood had started to dry. Charlie was a bit surprised he had let it get to that point. He entered the tiny bathroom and winced when he saw himself reflected in the mirror over the sink. The single fluorescent light in the room wasn’t doing him any favors, either. Dutifully, he rolled up his sleeves and washed to his elbows with the pink hospital soap. The water was brown, then red, then pink, then clear.
It helped, a little. At least his hands smelled clean – the rest of him stunk of iron and sweat and river water. But it was something.
He sat down next to Merritt, who was typing away at his phone with a single pointer finger. It was one of his old man-isms that Charlie found the most endearing.
“So what now?” Charlie asked.
“The others are on the supply boat now. Looks like we got what we came for, at least. Briseño is gonna have a much harder time moving his weapons without his 300 mil of liquid assets, I can tell you that much.”
Charlie let out a long breath. “That’s good.”
Merritt clapped him on the shoulder. “You did good, kid.”
Charlie looked down at his hands, finally clean again. He did his cardistry exercises, unconsciously: thumb moving from tip of pointer finger to base of pointer finger, then tip of middle finger, base of middle finger. Ring finger, pinky, reverse, repeat. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
“I can imagine it wouldn’t.”
“They were supposed to have blanks.”
Merritt nodded, stretching out his legs. Hadn’t been five minutes in this chair, and his back was already starting to hurt. “Jack switched the rounds just fine, but we were all so focused on doing our own jobs that no one noticed the guards had a shift change until it was too late. Those goons all look the same, anyway.”
A cold lump of self-loathing lodged itself into Charlie’s stomach. “Of course. I should have seen that. We could have–”
“Ah ah ah,” Merritt cut him off. “We are NOT doing the blame game. Start doing that, and you’ll be drinking yourself to death in Mexico in no time. And as much as I enjoy your company here, I don’t want to see you at my spot in Rosarito.”
But Charlie’s brain was on a roll. “It’s not even the first time I got someone shot.”
It actually took Merritt a second to figure out what the hell Charlie was even referring to. Thaddeus? The kid still blamed himself for Thaddeus? “Have you ever even held a gun?”
Charlie thought about it. “No, but–”
“Then you’ve never gotten anyone shot. Some punk cop on your sister’s payroll and a goon who looks exactly like every other goon made a decision to pull a trigger. Not you.” Merritt looked at Charlie for a long moment, who kept his gaze steadfast to the floor. “It’s a dangerous line of work we’re in, beansprout. We forget it, ‘cause it’s fun, but it’s dangerous too.”
Charlie had known that, hadn’t he? Poking the most powerful people in the world directly in their wallets had consequences, of course it would. When a trick went wrong, you either had to improvise, or cut and run. He could think on his feet as well as the rest of them, and if the consequence of failure was imprisonment, well, he was no stranger to jailbreak.
But death? He hadn’t managed to puzzle a way out of that one yet.
If it weren’t for death, he would have never have had a need for revenge, and if not for revenge, he would never have become a Horseman, and Thaddeus wouldn’t be dead, and Bosco wouldn't be –
“Can you tell me again?” Charlie asked, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “How exactly you did the thing with the policemen? My hypnosis still needs work.” And he needed to think about something, anything else right now.
“Sure kid,” said Merritt, tipping back his hat and grinning. “The first thing you gotta know is, tricking most cops is easy mode.”
-
It took three hours for them to put Bosco back together, which was a long time to be both incredibly anxious and incredibly bored.
By the time Jack, Henley, and Atlas had returned to shore, most of the work had already been done – the Civic had been returned, the kids had gotten cleaned up (as best as could be done in a hospital bathroom, at least) and reunited, and an eerily pale – but alive! – Bosco had been wheeled back into the recovery room.
He was still asleep after the surgery, and more surprisingly, so were Charlie and June. They sat as close to each other as physically possible in the anti-ergonomic chairs, June’s head on Charlie’s shoulder and Charlie’s head on top. Once the three of them were finally in the same room together, the pair had collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.
It had been a long night.
The rest of the Horsemen met up in the waiting area outside of the recovery room, close enough to monitor but far enough away that their voices wouldn’t carry.
“Okay,” said Henley, keeping a watchful eye through the window on the closed door, “I’ll ask the question that no one else seems to want to ask: should we be doing this?”
Atlas tapped his foot, annoyed by the question or by having to stand around and wait for something to happen. “Jack wasn’t much older than they are when we got started, and he turned out…” A pointed glance was directed at J. Wilder, who had crumpled himself into a waiting room chair next to Lula, “Well, he turned out.”
“Thanks for that,” Jack snapped back, “Remember how I had to be dead for months?”
“You’re saying that like we blew up your car for real.”
“No, you just had me to go to the morgue and – I quote – ‘pick out the dead guy that looks the most like me.’”
“But did you die.”
“Guys,” said Henley. “We’re not litigating this again.”
“They did really good tonight, all things considered,” Lula offered. While she’d been able to keep calm and be the Capital-A Adult in this situation, taking care of the blood and the stolen car, she didn’t think she’d have been nearly as composed if it had been Jack.
“It’s not up to us to decide for them,” Merritt said. “Reality check had to happen sooner or later. If they still wanna be Horsemen after all this, so be it. If not…”
The lack of an end to that sentence felt ominous. Would they really lose the newest Horsemen already? Would that, in turn, break the rest of them apart again?
“I feel…” Atlas’ brain short-circuited for a moment. Had he really started a sentence with ‘I feel’? “...Responsible for them.”
“Well, hell, we’re not gonna leave them by their lonesome if they decide they don’t want to jump off buildings anymore,” said Merritt.
But it had been nice, having them around. It had been a year and change since Veronika, and in that time there had been renewed excitement over having a Big Plan to work on. The heist tonight was their first real play, but a whiteboard full of potential targets back at the warehouse promised billions more in wealth to be redistributed. The Horsemen were together, the stars back in their eyes again. They had missed this, hadn’t even realized how MUCH they missed this, and it never could have happened without Charlie, Bosco, and June.
Was it selfish of them to want things to stay that way forever?
“No one’s going to make any more life-altering decisions tonight, I hope,” said Henley, glancing at her watch, “So I have to get back to the kids.” It was a testament to the somber mood of the situation that Atlas refrained from making a snide comment about the mention of Henley’s other family. “Call me when he wakes up, okay?”
Goodbyes were made, and a loose system of visitation times set up. The only thing left to do was wait.