The Archer

by Abigail Roux

  “I was just thinking… I was thinking about the Archer, actually. And the

  fire.”

  Remy nodded slightly and began to shift uncomfortably. “Will you help me

  up?” he asked almost ashamed after several moments of struggling. Carl could

  sympathize. It must have been difficult for a man like one of them to ask for help. But

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  he shook his head.

  “No,” he said bluntly. “Keep your broken ass in bed.”

  “I’m not getting out of bed. Just… just help me sit up. Please? My ass is

  killing me and so is my back. Usually when I’m on my back I’m having a lot more

  fun than this, non?” Carl suppressed a snicker and took pity on him. He stood up, rearranging the pillows to offer more support before wrapping his arms around Remy gently and helping him prop himself against the pillows at the head of the bed. Remy buried his face against Carl’s neck as the pain from his injured thigh and his broken ribs washed over him, but he didn’t make a sound of complaint. Carl sat on the bed beside him after he made sure Remy was steady and looked at him worriedly.

  “That was more effort than I was expecting,” Remy muttered wryly, a small

  grin on his lips despite the fact he’d gone completely white.

  Carl was once again struck by Remy’s attitude, and he found himself liking

  the younger man even more for his perpetual buoyancy. He put his hand gently on the other man’s forehead and made sure that Remy’s temperature felt normal.

  “Do you want water? Food? Anything?” he offered, feeling helpless in the

  face of Remy’s stoicism.

  Remy just shook his head and waved his hand through the air. “Go on with

  what you were saying,” he said as he sat up straighter and leant forward with a

  grimace.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolument.”

  “Well… I don’t really know where to begin. I have this idea, but… it just

  sort of flits across my mind and I can’t grab it long enough to be able to express it properly,” Carl explained with difficulty. He saw Remy frown slightly and knew he wasn’t being clear. “I mean, I know what I want to say, and where I want it to end, but I don’t know how to get it there in explaining it to you.”

  “Uh huh,” Remy responded flatly, biting his lips as his frown deepened.

  “Mais quelle est l'extrémité? What’s the end then?” he asked finally.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you didn’t know where to begin? So, start at the end. Merde, I

  probably won’t remember this in the morning anyway, non?” he added with a little laugh.

  Carl smiled and nodded. “Okay,” he murmured, rubbing his hand

  thoughtfully over his mouth and cheek. Finally, he exhaled and cocked his head to the side. “I don’t think the Archer was the one who set that bomb,” he stated as he looked sideways at Remy to gauge his reaction. To his surprise, Remy was nodding eagerly and looking at him with wide brown eyes.

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  “I thought that’s what you were getting at. Neither do I,” he told Carl

  excitedly. His voice was still weak, but his face had a healthy flush to it that Carl had yet to see until tonight.

  “You don’t?” Carl asked in surprised.

  “Mais non. Too many pieces, they do not fit. Tell me what you think.”

  “Well….” Carl looked at Remy uncertainly.

  “Come on, the only thing my mind has to do these days is wonder who I

  have to kill to get revenge for what will no doubt be a nice painful limp. Humor me, Trigger,” Remy pleaded with a wry smile. “Please?”

  “Okay, okay. Just don’t use those puppy dog eyes on me again.”

  Remy nodded and smiled in pleasure, and Carl licked his lips

  absentmindedly, wondering where to start.

  III.

  THIAGO stood in the darkness for some time after Carl had closed the door, and

  Shawn assumed he was allowing his eyes to adjust before he tripped his way to bed.

  With this crowd, it was dangerous to go stumbling through a dark room. You never

  knew what sort of sharp, explosive, or disturbingly gooey objects might be on the floor. Shawn had taken some of the Silly Putty out of Remy’s bag– it didn’t do to think about why Remy kept it– and gave it to Brandt to keep him from playing with the C4. They’d been finding it everywhere ever since.

  “There’s nothing in front of you,” Shawn offered groggily as he rolled onto

  his back and rubbed his tired eyes until little white lights began to shoot across his vision. Thiago grunted in response and took a tentative step. Shawn laughed softly at his reticence and let out a surprised little woof when Thiago leapt onto the bed instead of walking the three steps required to get into it like a normal person.

  He began to bounce around a little on his hands and knees and Shawn was

  jostled on the mattress, completely against his will. “Carl sent you to torture me, didn’t he?” Shawn groaned in a long-suffering tone.

  “Yes,” Thiago said as he flopped onto his stomach and stared at Shawn like a

  little kid waiting for a story. Even in the darkness Shawn could feel the odd blue-gray eyes on him, and he wondered what in the hell had gotten into Thiago. He was usually so… normal.

  “What do you want?” Shawn asked warily after several moments of silent

  staring.

  “Un favor.”

  “Uh huh,” Shawn said in the same wary tone.

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  “Remy is doing better,” Thiago offered. Shawn closed his eyes and breathed

  out an inaudible sigh of relief. He’d known the lad would pull through. There had never been a doubt in his mind. Not at all.

  “You said he was talking?” Shawn asked nonchalantly after a few seconds,

  digging for information without seeming to be overly hysterical about his partner’s health.

  “Yes, hence the favor I would like from you.”

  “Uh oh. What has he been babbling about now?” Shawn groaned

  uncomfortably, trying to divert Thiago from this mysterious favor.

  “You.”

  Shawn blinked and turned his head to look at Thiago’s shadowy form in the

  darkness.

  “What was he saying about me?” he asked carefully, almost afraid to hear

  the answer.

  “He was telling me about how you two met. The whole ‘we tried to kill each

  other and that’s it’ nonsense won’t work anymore. I want the whole story. The rest of it, anyway.”

  Shawn gave an inaudible sigh of relief over the fact that their initial meeting

  was all Remy had talked about. He looked from Thiago to the other bed where

  Nikolaus had given up trying to fight Brandt for the covers and was staring at them, listening intently. Shawn could see the reflection of his glasses in the little bit of moonlight seeping through the heavy drapes, but not much else.

  “Come on over here, Niko,” he said finally. “Leave him to that bed for

  tonight, yeah?”

  Nikolaus got up almost instantly and looked at Shawn gratefully before

  wrestling his pillow from Brandt’s arms and flopping into the bed with Shawn and

  Thiago.

  “Aww, now I’m cold,” Brandt murmured in amusement.

  “Have you been awake this whole time?” Nikolaus whispered harshly.

  “Arschloch!”

  Shawn couldn’t help but laugh as Brandt snickered shamelessly.

  “Come on, then,” he called softly to Brandt. Brandt got up and ripped the

  covers from his own bed, then came over to pow-wow with the others. Shawn and

  Thiago
huddled under their own bedspread as Brandt and Nikolaus sat opposite them, sharing the covers Brandt had pilfered from the other bed.

  “Story time?” Brandt asked wryly, his eyes shining gleefully in the darkness

  as he held a pillow to his chest and leant forward expectantly. He reminded Shawn of a five-year old on Christmas Eve. Thiago nudged Shawn with his foot beneath the

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  covers, and they both burrowed their cold toes beneath Brandt’s body, wiggling them until Brandt began to laugh again, finally culminating in a few helpless snorts and a minor fit as he fell onto Nikolaus and batted at their wiggling toes.

  Shawn smiled, thinking that a man of Brandt’s mentality and stature

  shouldn’t be allowed to giggle, but the smile faded as he thought back on his first meeting with Remy. They had nearly killed one another.

  “Where did Remy leave off?” he asked Thiago as soon as they’d all settled

  back down and the snickering died away. Thiago told him, and Shawn smiled fondly

  and nodded. He picked up in the telling where Remy left off. As he spoke his mind flew over the sea of his memory to that day five years ago, and he relived it in the telling as if it had been just yesterday.

  Remy wasn’t stupid now, and he hadn’t been then, either. He knew when he

  was beaten and when he should retreat, and he wasn’t too proud to do it. In perhaps the fastest series of movements Shawn had ever been witness to, the rifle had been tossed back at him and the other man had disappeared into the hallway before it had hit the ground.

  Shawn flinched and ducked, but the rifle landed harmlessly on the cushions

  in front of him. He blinked at it, then vaulted over the back of the sofa and took off after the other man, determined to rid himself of this nuisance before he was caught with his proverbial pants down again.

  The stairwell door clanged closed as he skidded into the hallway, and Shawn

  was just seconds behind the kid when they reached the roof.

  Shawn clearly remembered thinking about how much of an action movie

  cliché it was to be running in hot pursuit over the rooftops of a city, but he did it nonetheless. The kid was fast, and as Shawn struggled over the many hindrances and gravel-filled patches of roof, the other man seemed not to be bothered by them and he was swiftly pulling ahead.

  Shawn got off several shots, but as the kid zigzagged across the rooftops, his hands covering his head protectively as bits of concrete and gravel exploded around him, not one came close to actually hitting him. Shawn knew that his only chance was to catch the other man as he made the jump from one building to the other. Shoot him right out of the air. He was like a fucking mountain goat.

  Shawn skidded to a halt at the edge of the building that he stood on and

  steadied his hand, aiming for the gap that the kid would have to leap across. But as he came to the knee-high wall at the edge of the building the kid ducked out of sight behind an electrical conduit of some sort and did not re-emerge.

  “The fuck?” Shawn murmured to himself. His gun stayed at the ready, but

  his gut began to tell him to run. This was unfamiliar territory and he was up against an obviously experienced opponent. He should be retreating. Now.

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  Just as he lowered his weapon and began to back away, the kid popped up

  only meters in front of him, a small gun aimed at him and a smile on his face.

  “Son of a bitch!” Shawn shouted in frustration, his gun whipping back up to

  train on the other man. The corners of the kid’s mouth twitched, and finally a snort that he just couldn’t contain escaped as they stood pointing their guns at one another.

  “My sentiments exactly. What’s your name?” the kid asked him in the same

  pleasing baritone. He had regained the deep southern drawl, but Shawn still thought that it didn’t fit him.

  “Fuck you,” Shawn replied in a polite voice, making sure he employed the

  heavy Boston accent he had been using with his cover, as much as the five words he had uttered could have an accent, anyway.

  “Alright then. Where are you from, Mr. You?” the kid replied in an amused

  voice. “Your accent is… off.”

  Shawn snorted in irritation. “Why do you want to know? Do you keep a tally

  of your kills or something?” Shawn had asked in his real Yorkshire accent.

  “Ooh, now that one’s better,” the kid had said appraisingly in a new, posh

  English accent. “Yorkshire? Your own, perhaps?”

  “Could be.”

  “I’ve been watching you.”

  “I know.”

  “I watched you to the point that I’m not sure I can kill you.”

  “Is that so?” Click . Shawn blinked at the sound of a gun cocking. The kid hadn’t moved. Had that been his own gun cocking? Had he meant to do that? The kid stiffened almost imperceptibly, but he went on with the surreal conversation as if nothing untoward had occurred.

  “Yes. I watched you walk a little old lady across the street and lose track of your mark for your trouble. Now, after that… you can’t be all that bad, can you?”

  Shawn’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. That had been days ago. He was

  beginning to shake, he was so angry with himself. He had been watched for two whole days before he had caught wind of it?

  Just as his body tensed their two mobile phones began to vibrate

  simultaneously. The jarring vibration caused the kid to jump slightly in the tense atmosphere. But Shawn was already so on edge that the vibration in his pocket caused his trigger finger to convulse. The gun didn’t make a sound other than the soft thump allowed by the silencer, but that hadn’t lessened its effect.

  A disembodied shout sounded from somewhere close and pulled Shawn

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  violently back to the present. He stopped short in his telling of the memories he’d been reliving. The four of them scrambled from the bed with difficulty, their limbs and bedcovers getting them tangled up together, and they rushed towards the door to the other room.

  IV.

  NIKOLAUS was the first into the room adjoining theirs, and he stopped short when

  he saw Carl sitting on the bed with Remy, both looking perfectly innocent and quite frankly stunned at the sudden ungainly arrival of their colleagues.

  The others ran into Nikolaus one at a time in a comedic little domino

  performance, with Shawn and Brandt just barely keeping their feet and Nikolaus

  ending up on the floor beneath Thiago.

  “What the hell?” Carl asked in confusion.

  “Did you call out?” Brandt demanded as Nikolaus pushed his face off the

  floor and looked up at the bed. All he could see was Carl’s head, as if it were floating above the bed and looking extremely confused while doing so. Thiago pushed up onto his hands and knees and looked down at Nikolaus, but Nikolaus couldn’t turn enough to see the expression on his face. As Thiago grunted in agitation at not being able to untangle their legs, Nikolaus began to laugh silently. Thiago grabbed him around the waist to help him up, but when he felt Nikolaus laughing, he too began to shake

  silently, trying valiantly to hold the laughter in.

  “No. Must have been from a different room,” Carl shrugged as he watched

  Nikolaus and Thiago flounder on the floor. “We didn’t hear anything. What in the hell are you two doing?”

  The question finally broke through their defenses, and Nikolaus and Thiago

  both burst into little spurts of snorts and laughter as they tried to help one another off the floor.

  “These damn walls are too thin,” Shawn grumbled as he disentangled

  himself from Brandt and stepped around them and into the room. “Will you two ge
t it together please?” he shouted at them.

  “Sorry,” Thiago wheezed as they finally found their feet. Nikolaus quelled

  his laughter into two or three short little snorts and bit his lip in order to keep quiet as Shawn stared them down. Thiago cleared his throat and schooled his features into a frown. “Sorry,” he repeated in a deeper, serious voice that sent Nikolaus into another fit of giggles.

  Shawn rolled his eyes and shook his head. He gave them one last look before

  walking to the bed and crawling in to sit beside Remy at the head of it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly. The emotion in his voice immediately

  silenced Nikolaus and Thiago’s laughter, and as Nikolaus watched Shawn worriedly

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  place his hand on Remy’s forehead, he wondered what he’d found funny in the first place.

  “I’m fine. Feeling much better, actually,” Remy said, and his voice did

  sound much stronger than it had when he’d spoken to Nikolaus several hours earlier.

  His fever must have finally broken. “Carl and I were just having quite an interesting discussion,” he added, clearing his throat again and looking at Nikolaus and Thiago curiously.

  “As were we,” Brandt said before striding to the bed and sitting down beside

  Carl. Nikolaus noticed that he was careful to avoid Remy’s hurt leg as he sat.

  “Oh, yeah? Talking about the Great Shooting of Remy, were you?” Remy

  asked with a smirk.

  Nikolaus blinked in surprise, and Thiago asked, “How did you know?”

  Remy sniggered, which by all accounts was a good thing. This was the most

  activity they’d seen from him since the explosion. If Remy was getting better, then they could move on and take care of business. Whatever that business happened to be, now.

  “You’re so easy to predict, Thi,” Remy snickered. There was a moment

  where Thiago tried to look affronted, but he couldn’t hold it for long.

  “Well?” Shawn prompted.

  Remy turned to look back at him, and as his face turned into the light of the