Chapter Text
The air had that slightly damp, dank quality to it that made you feel as if you were breathing in something alive. It was a quality matched in the cobblestones, water-dark and slick underfoot as Apo darted along them, as well as the buildings that leered over the street, their wood and stone exteriors seeming to sag under the weight of their burdens. As for what those burdens might be, Apo didn’t have time to stop and ask—she was in the middle of something only slightly more important and quite a bit more life threatening.
It was a terrible Saturday to have to run from the peelers. It was also a terrible Saturday in general, and perhaps the worst day of Apo’s month, if she had to rank them, but both of those things were to be expected. Terrible Saturdays were not uncommon, depending on where and when Apo had managed to stumble into. And Apo tended to have bad days. It could’ve been one of those rules of the universe that Ren was always repeating, slotted into place next to ‘Don’t try saving anyone you didn’t bring with you’ and ‘Be careful of accidentally revealing currently-unknown information to strangers’.
Apo Kuna will not be able to have a good day, it would read, printed in tiny, hard-to-read script in a tattered old journal with half of its cover missing. And right beside it, an R written over a U surrounded by a circle—an Unbreakable Rule.
So Apo wasn’t entirely surprised by the predicament she found herself in, but as she skidded around the corner without pausing to slow her momentum and only stumbled slightly as a result, she still wished she hadn’t ended up in it.
Another whistle pierced the air, blown by a peeler half a block behind her, if Apo had to judge. She didn’t exactly want to stop and check if she was right, given that they were chasing her and she wasn’t in the mood to spend the night in a freezing cell. She kept running through the streets, quick as a shadow, weaving her way through the thin crowd and ignoring the strange looks she received for her trouble. A few kind people moved out of the way of her mad dash, most likely worried about being trampled, but she didn’t have time to stop and thank them.
Maybe if she had better luck, she wouldn’t have been seen. Maybe she wouldn’t have had her day spoiled in the first place, or she wouldn’t have seen those flowers and been struck by the sudden need to have them, or she would’ve remembered one of the most important rules. Maybe a lot of things. No good to dwell on them now, not when she was in a much more immediate predicament and not when she couldn’t exactly go back and change things.
“STOP!” one of the peelers yelled after her. “HEY, YOU!” He sounded out of breath. Why did guards even ask people to stop? If they were running in the first place and hadn't just given themself up as soon as they were caught, it was unlikely they’d change their mind once they’d gained a couple miles, especially if they’d just get ‘resisting arrest’ added to their list of charges.
Perhaps it could just be argued that peelers weren’t very clever. None of the ones Apo had ever met were, anyway, and she ought to know. She was something of an expert on the subject, after all. They were all loud, though, what with their shrill whistles and angry yelling and stomping boots. They created a terrible racket. She didn’t even have to look behind her to get a vague estimate of how far ahead of them she was, but she could tell that they were getting tired.
Unfortunately, so was she. Apo was definitely faster than them, with a small head start and a lot more stamina, but she didn’t particularly relish the thought of getting chased down. She needed to get out of the street, quick, preferably without being seen.
The buildings around her had changed without her notice, growing thinner and slimier along their bases, though they retained the leering and sagging of all the buildings in Lower Dublin. The cobbles were slicker beneath her feet as well, green muck gathered in the grout between them. The air carried a metallic smell. Apo had managed to steer herself closer to the river without even realizing it, which was perfect, because now she had a plan.
From about thirty paces back, the shrill cry of yet another whistle mixed with the disembodied shouts of the peelers as they made a general fuss. Ahead, another crossroads, although this one wasn’t a fourway intersection like all the rest along her route had been. The street she was currently running down ended rather abruptly at the hulking metal side of a warehouse, and the grimy cobblestones continued in either direction along the wall. Apo made a split second choice, turned left, and hoped she’d guessed correctly.
Finally, she’d gotten a lucky break. The warehouse’s wall turned a corner into a narrow alleyway just paces down the street, and Apo ducked into it as quick as possible. She was in a tight little path between two buildings, edged in on both sides by dark metal splotched with rust. It wasn’t well lit, though that was only by virtue of shadows from the darkening twilight hour and the huge structures hemming her in. Still, Apo wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She continued inching her way down the path, forced to walk sideways by the narrow space, intent on getting as far away from the peelers and their tinny whistles as she could.
Something behind her creaked, the horrible drawn-out noise of metal straining. It didn’t mean Apo was in trouble, but then again, it also didn’t not mean that. Apo wasn’t about to take her chances in a day already full of rotten luck. She moved a little faster, going as quickly as she could in the confined area, and wriggled her way out of the tight path, right onto the muck-covered riverside.
That…was about par for the course, honestly. Apo didn’t know what she’d expected. In fact, it was probably the least bad thing to happen to her that day, which was a win in her book. Her shoes sank into the muddy sludge bank of the River Liffey, squelching as she darted toward the nearest cover.
Martyn once told her that he suspected she wore black because it meant no one could see her when she inevitably had to hide from whatever law enforcement she’d pissed off. Apo had rolled her eyes and told him to get better jokes, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. Well, actually, he was. She didn’t wear black because it was easier to hide from whoever. It just happened to be a convenient perk she took frequent advantage of.
Apo wrinkled her nose as she stepped into the murky water of the River Liffey, soaking her shoes and kicking up the silt and other debris on the riverbed. She waded over to the cover she’d seen, a bridge only a handful of feet away, and slipped into the deepening shadows under it. Why a bridge was even here, when most of this section of the riverbank was lined with rusted warehouses and filthy boardinghouses with more rats than guests, she didn’t know. She was just very grateful that it was, or she would’ve had to take her chances pressed up against the side of a building, which offered a lot less security in terms of not being seen by people.
The underside of the bridge was, like most things along the River Liffey, damp and slick with river slime. The stones that made it up had long since had their original color obscured by grime and muck, and the entire structure seemed to slump under the weight of the location it’d been built in.
That was a fairly common feature of the buildings in Lower Dublin, just like the persistent fog that hung around the city, or the memories that every thing held and were all too happy to share if you were willing to listen. The water tasted just a shade the wrong side of sedimentary, nothing grew except for mold and moss and river slime, and fae lingered on every street corner with too-sharp smiles, just waiting to make a deal with an unsuspecting passerby. Upper Dublin was supposed to be much nicer, more like what the old city used to be before half of it had sunk, but Apo had never had reason to go up there and see it for herself.
The water flowed uncomfortably around her ankles. It smelled like iron and something else unpleasant that Apo preferred not to identify. Her shoes were already well past waterlogged, and the hem of her skirt was getting soaked as well. She was trying very hard not to think about what she might be standing in, or that Martyn had once told her that all sewers in the city poured into the River Liffey.
One long minute passed, then another. Apo almost believed she could hear the sounds of whistles and shouts fading into the distance as the peelers disappeared along the riverbank. She wasn’t sure if it was real or just her imagination playing tricks on her. The peelers were an annoying tail to shake, and Apo had already done too much to avoid getting caught to mess it up by being overconfident.
At any rate, she’d be able to hear them coming, and it wasn’t like they’d ever see her, crouching in murky ankle-high water in the shadows of a little-used bridge. She didn’t have anywhere to be, so she could stand to hide for a little bit longer.
Even if the hiding spot was dingy, and smelled worse the longer she stayed there, and her shoes were starting to bond with the filthy water on a molecular level. Discomfort was good for the soul, or whatever Ren always said.
It was a great opportunity to assess her state after the mad dash and pursuit through the streets of Lower Dublin, which winded and looped like intestines at the best of times. And it was decidedly not the best of times when the aossi were making the entire city rearrange itself to their conflicting whims. She could’ve easily lost something, either in the admittedly disastrous thieving attempt that had led to her peeler chase or the actual chase itself.
She was rather hoping she hadn’t, though, only because she didn’t want to attempt to retrace her steps to get it back.
Apo blew out a slow sigh and went to lean against the slick stones of the bridge underside, only to realize that that was a fantastic way to get some sort of disease and a pretty terrible idea otherwise, and quickly corrected herself. It was well past sunset by now, not that it would be visible, the bruised sky above slowly transitioning to black. She reached into her pockets, sewn cleverly into the folds of her skirt so that they were hidden from view and deep enough to hold anything she might need to fit in them. Sausage was an absolute wizard with a needle and thread when he decided to be helpful. Which was, given his usual cheerful uselessness, pretty hit-or-miss.
The flowers that got her into this mess were still there, though they felt a little worse for the wear after spending however long in her pocket being bounced around as she ran. She pulled them out carefully to reveal a small bouquet of slightly wilted, crumpled blooms. They weren’t as perfect as they had been when she’d seen them in that shop window and been struck with a sudden desire to have, but the petals were still a brilliant sunshine yellow, like they’d been gilded with gold. She didn’t know what kind of flowers they were, but she quite liked them, even somewhat knocked around and droopy.
Apo wasn’t entirely certain why she’d abruptly decided that she needed to have those flowers, to the point that she couldn’t make herself think of anything else but getting them. She’d seen them sitting there, easily the brightest thing on the entire street, and her fingers had gotten that persistent itch to steal. It had felt incredibly important, in that moment, to have those flowers. Like something terrible would happen if she didn’t get them as soon as possible.
It was definitely weird, but not the strangest thing that had ever happened. Honestly, Apo was more confused as to how the peelers had managed to keep up with her while navigating the shifting streets, courtesy of the aossi, than she was about what had come over her when she saw the flowers. They were pretty, shining golden petals arranged around a deep brown center. Their color reminded her of summertime and sunlight, things that had no place among the dreary grime of Lower Dublin. There were certainly worse things to get the spontaneous urge to steal.
Apo carefully placed them back into her pocket and took out the other important thing she had on her. It was a silver pocket watch, glinting in the distant light from an unseen source as it twisted on the delicate chain it hung from. The cover was embossed with an intricately designed wolf being impaled through the heart by a sword, surrounded by a halo of light. Engraved in minute script along the curve of the edge were the words sic semper tempus.
It wasn’t ticking, Apo noticed with a frown. She held it up to her ear to check that the ticking had in fact stopped and was greeted with dead silence.
“Shit,” she muttered. That was decidedly not a good thing.
She clicked the lid of the watch open to confirm what the lack of ticking had already told them. The hands were still, frozen between the eight and the nine. It was dead.
Apo got a sinking feeling in their stomach. “Shit, shit, shit.” They tapped the metal side a few times, as if that would do anything, and then turned it over, searching for the seam along its back. Their nail caught in it and they pried the back of the watch open, exposing its inner mechanics for their eyes to scan over.
“Shit,” they hissed out one final time, exasperated, just to cement the fact that their day had gotten infinitely worse in the span of a few short minutes. They glared down at the broken balance staff, which was stopping the gears from turning properly and keeping the hands stuck in place. Great. Just what they needed. They resisted the urge to throw the stupid thing into a wall.
It wasn’t theirs, after all. Destroying it would be rude, not to mention Ren had told them once that it was a family heirloom. Where he’d gotten it from, Apo didn’t know; Sausage had mused that it was probably the same place he got his strange accent, and then he’d cackled at his bad joke.
They wished they had one of them at their side right now, just to be stuck with someone. Even Sausage’s cheery, lackadaisical attitude would be welcome, despite how incredibly unhelpful and annoying it would be. On second thought, it was probably better that Apo was alone. They loved Ren, Sausage, and Martyn, but those three were also not the most useful in a sticky situation. If they had to solve this problem with a constant stream of background chatter, they might’ve snapped.
If Apo tried, they could’ve figured out a way to fix this. They could’ve thought up a plan in two minutes and stepped out from under the bridge to put it into action, and their plan would’ve eventually landed them back home, where they could complain to Ren about his shitty watch and suffer the lecture of misusing it with only minimal eye rolling. If Apo tried, they could do quite a lot. Maybe they could even have a good day, if they really, really put in the effort.
But Apo was wet, and tired, and generally fed up with the day before they’d gotten chased for ten blocks by peelers, or had to hide under a mucky old bridge, or found out that their one way home was broken and currently useless. Apo had had a bad day since they’d seen the bright blue hair of Scott Goldsmith in a tailor’s shop and stormed into the place to chew the asshole out, only to end up seething and struggling not to cry at the same time. Which was how confrontations with that rat bastard usually went. He had a particular talent for saying exactly the right words to make Apo feel weak and helpless while also pushing all of her buttons at the same time.
Suffice to say, Apo was not having a good day, and she really didn’t have the energy to expend towards thinking up a plan, or trying to solve their out of the mess they were in. All they really wanted to do was sink deep into the riverbed of the River Liffey and never get up again.
They tried to come up with something regardless, got as far as I could, and hit a blank. Their brain was refusing to cooperate. Apo protested that she didn’t want to do this either, but really, they should probably stop standing in filthy water under a grimy bridge, and they could only do that once they had a new place to go. Her brain didn’t listen, which was inconsiderate of it.
She could just start walking, of course, and figure the rest out as she went. She’d done that a couple times and it had worked out well for her in the end, though the path there had been very painful and winding. All she had to do was take two steps forward, and she’d be out from under the bridge, free to wander Lower Dublin as she pleased. Minus the peelers still looking out for her. And her lack of money.
Her legs didn’t move. Her shoes stayed planted in the river mud, far beyond soaked or sodden or any other descriptor and well into turning into water themselves.
There was a point most people reached, known as the breaking point, where they simply couldn’t take anything else. Apo’s breaking point was much further than most peoples’ would be, which was an occupational hazard of being unable to have a good day by the laws of the universe. One had a higher tolerance for unfortunate or miserable situations. Still, even Apo had their limits to how much they could take in a single day, and the clusterfuck they had found themself in appeared to be it.
Perhaps if she died here, Ren and Sausage and Martyn would eventually realize she was gone and give her a nice gravestone somewhere. Here lies Apo Kuna, it would read. Beloved friend and troublemaker. She died as she lived: exhausted and not doing anything noteworthy.
That was an incredibly depressing final marker, the thought of which was finally enough to stir Apo into actual motion. She wasn’t dead yet, and she could almost definitely think her way out of this. She’d done so with worse situations. Well, no she hadn’t. But she’d done so with countless other problems she’d gotten herself tangled up in. Apo had untangled herself every single time.
She just had to think of a plan.
After all, Scott fucking Goldsmith was still alive, and Apo was not about to let that egotistical rat bastard outlive her.
She took a deep breath, dropped the useless pocket watch back into one of her pockets, and clenched her hands into fists a couple times to get the blood flowing properly. Then Apo took one sodden, squelching step out from under the bridge, and another, and another. She kept walking, shoes squishing loudly with every step, out of the River Liffey and back into the weightless, liminal danger of a Lower Dublin night.
Apo didn’t know it at the time, but this decision would be the one to finally, inarguably ruin their life. It would lead to their very own personal tragedy, which they would come to realize the rest of their life had simply been a precursor to; it would cause them innumerable stresses and heartaches; it would be directly responsible for the heartbroken wreck of a person they’d be left once all was said and done. It would be the choice that led to their eventual death, and before that, the choice that utterly and irrevocably changed them, leaving them wondering if they regretted it or were glad for it.
In the distant nights to come, when Apo sat awake and replayed those events, she would always find herself stalled at the bridge, knowing what would come next and questioning what she should do about it. And she found herself making the exact same choice over and over again.
However, the Apo currently making her waterlogged way out of the River Liffey was blissfully unaware of these things. She contemplated, for a brief moment, wriggling back through the narrow path she’d come down, before deciding better of it and turning to the right. She made her sort of careful but mostly wet way down the mucky riverbank, the mud suctioning her shoes with every step, trying to think of what she was going to do.
Somewhere near the city center, a young woman with an unusual education was placing a bouquet of red flowers into a jar of water and questioning why she’d been struck with the sudden urge to get them. Somewhere else, a panicked young man was being reassured by a friend and a doctor that he was safe, that he wouldn’t be hurt here. To the East, at the docks, two inhuman creatures sat watching and listening and waiting for what was to come. To the west, the Unseelie Court was creating a deity.
Those things aren’t important to our story quite yet. But, like the movement of the tides, certain things can only be held off for so long. And when they come, they come with force and fury.