The Archer

by Abigail Roux

  was a comforting fashion.

  Their group seemed to be floundering. They didn’t have a plan or even so

  much as a goal other than the very long-term one of not getting dead. Thiago worried that, like his own and everyone else’s, Shawn’s planning ability was hindered by his

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  concern for Remy’s well-being. It spoke volumes about the group’s coherency that no one seemed willing to do the most obvious thing and move on, leaving Remy to fend for himself. Thiago felt sick just thinking about it.

  After the shock wore off, they’d suffered through another short bout of

  accusations and an interesting little tussle between Brandt and Shawn, from which Shawn surprisingly came out the victor, hovering over Brandt and threatening him

  with a pinecone he managed to grab as they rolled on the forest floor. Brandt had questioned whether Remy could have been responsible for the bomb, and Shawn had

  taken exception.

  They’d all eventually decided that Remy couldn’t have done it, and what was

  more, he’d had no reason to do it. After this last seed of mistrust was uprooted, they’d slowly but surely grown to trust one another. And yes, care for one another.

  Yes, they were a team. And yes, they’d become good friends in a short time.

  And yes, they’d formed a close bond and all that shit, but they still had no plan and no purpose. If they didn’t set up shop again soon they’d really be in the shit.

  Remy shifted and groaned, bringing Thiago out of his depressing thoughts.

  “Hola, aguante,” Thiago whispered gently as he leaned in and brushed the

  curls away from Remy’s damp forehead. Remy looked back at him blankly for so

  long that Thiago began to worry that the fever had caused some sort of amnesia, but then Remy blinked and a smile ghosted across his lips.

  “Aguante?” he repeated in a weak voice. “What the hell does that mean? Oh, God, does it mean I’m dying?”

  Thiago smiled and laughed in relief. “It’s better than ‘Dixie’, isn’t it?”

  Remy closed his eyes and smiled. “There is history behind that one, mon

  vieux. What’s your excuse for calling me a lizard, huh?”

  Thiago cocked an eyebrow and grinned. It sounded as if the old Remy was

  beginning to shine through once more, and Thiago couldn’t remember many times

  that he’d felt more relieved. The sooner Remy could move the sooner they’d be on

  their way.

  “It simply means a rebellious or spirited person,” he explained with a

  dismissive wave of his hand. “I could think of no word that fit you better,” Thiago said softly as he scooted his chair forward and rested his elbows on the bed. He

  enclosed Remy’s hand with both of his own and rubbed the man’s cold fingers as he looked down at them absently. Remy watched him warily, but then the caution

  seemed to seep from his features and he smiled again.

  “Has he told you any stories yet?” Remy asked in a hoarse voice. He cleared

  his throat as Thiago looked back up at him.

  “Who? Shawn?” Thiago asked in surprise.

  “Oui,” Remy answered, his voice still hoarse and pitifully weak.

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  “No. He has been… quiet,” Thiago said hesitantly. He didn’t want Remy

  knowing how worried everyone was about him. It wasn’t just Shawn. There’d been a

  definite funereal air about the group as they’d waited for Remy to either improve or die, but that was the last thing Thiago wanted Remy knowing. From the little he knew of the younger man’s personality, Thiago thought Remy would probably just rush his recovery and end up getting even sicker than he was now if he knew that they were all concerned and that Shawn was almost out of his mind with worry.

  Remy simply nodded and closed his eyes as if it took effort to keep them

  open. Thiago was about to offer to go and fetch water. Or food. Or painkillers. Or Shawn. Whatever would make him feel better, but then Remy started talking.

  “Usually when he think I’m dying, he start babbling nonsense and telling

  embarrassing stories,” Remy mumbled. Thiago had noticed that his way of speaking

  changed with how lucid or exhausted he was. The intriguing accent was nearly always present, unless Remy actively tried another, but there seemed to be a difference in the way he put emphasis on different parts of words. He also seemed unable to pronounce the hard sounds when they came at the end of his words. Ask became ax, next became nex, desk became des, some of his the sounds became de sounds. It was slightly endearing to hear his natural dialect. “Rahdoht, non? Talking that got no end to it,”

  Remy explained with a fond smile.

  “I cannot imagine Shawn… babbling,” Thiago murmured with a smirk.

  “Mais oui, he do. I figure he’d tell you how we met, since you wanted so bad to know. He’d tell you different, but I caught his scent before he caught mine,” Remy started without preamble.

  Thiago perked up and leaned forward attentively. Remy had been babbling a

  lot, but he seemed coherent now.

  “I started following him instead of the target, and one day when he was out

  on surveillance I broke into the building where he had set up camp. I did just like I told Niko that day out in the woods, you remember? I put little charges in the firing pins of each of his long-range rifles. It was perfect, mon ami, beautiful. As soon as he pull the trigger, whether it was me or my target he be shooting at, the gun would self-destruct and take him with it.”

  Thiago wondered whether he should try to get Remy to clarify that he was

  talking about how he and Shawn first met, but Thiago feared bumping the younger

  man’s train of thought off track, and so he remained quiet and simply listened.

  “But the more I saw of him; the way he work, the way he carry himself, the

  way he….” Remy trailed off and opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling with a faraway look. “The way he stopped and helped little old ladies cross the street, even when he was supposed to be tailing a mark. I could not have someone like that just blow up, non? I became enthralled by him, I think. By this time, I had almost forgot the target.

  And let me tell you, that salaud was hard to tail,” he added as he looked over at Thiago. “Neither one of us ever even got so much as a look at his face. He was an

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  agent, too. Like us. Another one of the fuck ups from that Purge mess… bad gris-gris.

  Lucky bastard, too, to have two agents on him and live through it….”

  Remy seemed to drift off a bit, but Thiago waited patiently. He thought of

  how lucky he himself had been during that mess. He’d been one of the agents

  assigned as a target, and he hadn’t known just how lucky he was until later when he’d found out about it. He’d never known why the agent on him hadn’t taken him down.

  Thiago had found out later that the agent had been called the Hunter, and for some reason the name made Thiago shiver even now.

  “Anyway, by then he had caught sight of me as well,” Remy continued, his

  voice getting a bit stronger the more he talked. “And I knew I had to make the first move, so I set a decoy in a vacant building near his.”

  “A decoy?” Thiago asked with interest, his professional curiosity getting the

  better of him.

  “Mm hmm. The buildings, they were real close together, see, so I let him

  track me going into the one next to his a couple of times. I don’t think he really thought me a threat,” Remy said thoughtfully, his mind very obviously wandering as he slurred slightly throughout his story. Thiago thought about getting him to stop, but his curiosity won out over his concern and he l
et Remy continue. “I mean, look at me,” Remy instructed with amusement. “Five years ago I look like a baby, non?”

  “I believe it,” Thiago nodded with a small smile, taking in the Cajun’s

  features. There were only faint laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. There were no blemishes on his smooth face aside from a barely discernible scar that ran over his left eyebrow. He did not look like a man who’d lived such an eventful life.

  “That was one of my advantages,” Remy murmured. “But he set up

  regardless of how young I looked, wanting to get me out of the way in order to take care of his mark and get on with it. That’s what he tell me later. That I was a ‘damn nuisance’, always showing up and distracting him from his mark.” Remy laughed weakly and closed his eyes once more. “I went through the fire escape to the roof while he was trained on the front door, jumped the gap between the buildings and

  kicked open his door as he stood there looking for me through his scope.” Remy

  started snickering again and opened his eyes to look up at Thiago. “You should’ve seen his face. Like a deer in the headlights.”

  “Can’t imagine he was pleased,” Thiago murmured.

  “So I taunt him some, non?” Remy admitted with an errant little flip of his hand. “It piss him off like you would not believe. I was feeling pretty good about myself at that point, so I forget to tell him not to throw down his gun.”

  “Ay, Dios mio,” Thiago muttered with a hint of a laugh.

  “As soon as I saw his hand move to toss that fucking rifle my way I yelled at

  him not to drop it. It would have blown us both back to the bayou.” Remy smiled and shook his head, remembering what he obviously considered a good memory now that

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  time had washed it clean of the fear and uncertainty. “Canaille. He must have known because he got this… self-satisfied… smug little… shit-eating grin on his face, and then the shitwit tossed the fucking thing at me.”

  Thiago put his hand on Remy’s forehead to check how warm he was, and

  Remy nuzzled up into the contact as if the action were automatic. He definitely

  looked better, but he was still warm. “What happened?” Thiago prompted after Remy remained quiet.

  “I catch it,” Remy sleepily as he let his eyes drift shut once more. “Dropped

  my own gun and catch that one. Shawn, he dive behind a couch, and when he come

  back up he have a handgun.”

  “What’d you do?” Thiago asked after Remy was silent for several more

  moments.

  Remy sniffed and finally opened his eyes again to turn and look at Thiago. “I

  turned tail and run away.”

  II.

  CARL hadn’t slept too soundly of late. He seriously doubted any of them had,

  actually. Agents rarely slept soundly, with the possible exception of Brandt, who couldn’t be moved when they shared a bed even when Carl kicked and shoved him.

  But this sleeplessness was a little different. It wasn’t just wariness, it was worry.

  Concern over a comrade. They didn’t deal with that often. Carl, in fact, had never dealt with it.

  None of them were sleeping soundly, but Carl thought that perhaps his

  reasons were a little different. He had a lot on his mind that the others were either not thinking about or weren’t openly discussing.

  Yes, he was worried about Remy just as much as they were.

  Yes, he was frustrated with their lack of options, just like the others were.

  And yes, he wanted revenge, not only for almost being killed, but also for the

  sheer fact that someone had gotten the upper hand on them.

  But unlike the others, Carl wasn’t as certain of whom exactly he wanted to

  kill for it all. Carl rolled to his other side for perhaps the fiftieth time in the last hour and earned himself a swift kick to the leg.

  “Ow! Son of a bitch!” he hissed quietly, rubbing his calf and turning to glare

  at Shawn through the darkness.

  “Quit moving. Tosser,” Shawn mumbled grumpily as he turned his back to

  Carl once more. When Carl sat up and rested back on his elbows to look at his cranky bed mate a menacing growl emitted from somewhere in the vicinity of Shawn’s head, which was now buried under a pillow.

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  They were essentially doing a round robin with the sleeping arrangements.

  Every two hours someone new would go into the connecting room to look in on

  Remy, and whoever got up would concede their spot in bed. Carl began the night with Nikolaus, and Shawn took the first shift. But then it was Nikolaus’s turn, and Shawn replaced him next to Carl. Apparently Nikolaus was too scared of him to say anything about his restlessness, but Shawn didn’t seem to have that problem.

  “Bastard,” Carl grumbled as he flopped heavily onto his back. He flopped

  again and made as much fuss as he could manage, causing the mattress to bounce up and down as he scooted up behind Shawn and threw his arm and leg over him. Then

  he started to breathe heavily against the back of Shawn’s neck until the other man started to snicker sleepily.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” Shawn grumbled, trying to hide his

  amusement as he turned halfway over and let his fuzzy cheek rest against Carl’s nose.

  “I’m seeing how far I can push you until you blow up,” Carl whispered back

  against his skin matter-of-factly.

  “Blowing up is a bad term,” Shawn muttered as he turned his head even

  more, his lips just barely brushing over Carl’s as he spoke. “Brandt would blow up. I would probably snap.” Carl smiled against Shawn’s lips. “You got something on your mind, I promise I’ll listen in the morning,” Shawn said softly as he pulled back

  slightly and gave Carl’s shin one more kick for good measure. “Now go to sleep!” he hissed.

  Before Carl could retaliate, the door to the adjoining room opened and the

  room was briefly flooded with light as Thiago stepped in. It was Brandt’s turn to sit up with Remy, but the man snored lightly as Nikolaus fought to keep from being

  pushed off the bed. Carl rolled his eyes. Brandt was an active sleeper, as they had all discovered during the bed rotation.

  “Fuck, I’ll take this one. I can’t sleep anyway,” Carl said with a smile as he

  retreated from the warmth of Shawn’s body just in time to narrowly miss being

  kicked again. He didn’t even bother to pull his jeans on over his briefs as he shuffled past Thiago. “How is he?” he asked the Argentinean quietly.

  “He was awake earlier,” Thiago said quietly as he glanced at the spot in the

  bed Carl had just vacated. Or perhaps he was glancing at Shawn, Carl wasn’t certain in the low light. “He talked for a bit.”

  Carl nodded and gripped Thiago’s shoulder. Then he pulled him close and

  whispered, “Beignet’s a grumpy bastard tonight. Careful that you don’t move at all.”

  “You and Brandt deserve to be bed mates,” Shawn grumbled from beneath

  the bedcovers he’d thrown over his head in a huff. Carl gave Thiago one last pat on the back and disappeared into the adjoining room.

  The lamp beside the bed was on, and one of the others had pulled a chair to

  sit beside the bed at Remy’s head. Carl stood motionless for several seconds, holding

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  his breath as he looked at Remy’s still form.

  When Remy didn’t move at all, Carl walked on cat’s feet over to the chair

  and eased himself into it. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the horrid painting above the bed as his thoughts wandered.

  They’d managed to replenish their wardrobes as they m
oved, and they had

  enough loose cash to keep on renting cheap motel rooms for the next few weeks at

  least, but they were still in trouble.

  Carl had been going over the various scenarios they’d contemplated together,

  and he just didn’t think any of them fit.

  Yes, the Archer could have known that they’d formed if he had a contact in

  the Organization. A mole. Yes, any agent worth a flying fuck would want to strike first, and Carl thought the Archer fit under that category. And yes, the bomb could easily have been placed by an outsider. But how had he known where they were?

  This was the question that kept Carl awake at night. How had anyone known

  where they were?

  “You look bored stiff,” Remy’s hoarse voice observed from the bed. Carl

  shook himself out of his thoughts and looked down at him in surprise.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he admonished quietly.

  “I was. I think I was, anyway,” Remy murmured blearily. “What were you

  thinking about so profoundly?” he asked in a tired, teasing voice.

  Carl frowned and hesitated. Should he confide in Remy? From the night

  Brandt had taken Carl into his confidence, Carl had had a difficult time trusting the Cajun. But over the last week, watching him struggle through the pain and the fever and offering only jokes and weak smiles when he was lucid, Carl had developed a

  slow but sure change of heart. They’d thought his cover a little too perfect to be genuine at first; the endearing, occasionally bumbling young man with an innocent smile was possibly the best performance Carl had ever seen. His reactions to

  everything they said or did to him had been perfect, and Carl could understand why he and Brandt had become suspicious.

  But now Carl could see that Remy’s act had been dropped, and surprisingly

  most of it had been genuine after all. He was endearing. He was upbeat. He was a little on the clumsy side, though the few incidents Carl had witnessed during their hurried travels could have been due to the injury. And in Carl’s opinion, he was trustworthy.