by Jack Parker
"It's okay. Keep it together. Let's get out of here."
Emery took one last look at Hunter before shaking his head and heading out the door. Victor was close behind him.
"We need to contact Georgie," Emery said robotically while making his way towards the stairs.
Victor already had his cellphone to his ear. "Doing that now, just keep moving."
Emery nodded and quickly moved down to the house's side exit. It opened into the vast gardens and Emery began to descend the long set of concrete steps that led to the side road below. Victor caught up with him fast.
"She's on her way. She should be here any min—"
"Stop!"
Both men looked up in surprise as a man came down the top of the steps, training a gun on them. Emery didn't recognize him as any of the individuals in Hunter's protective service, and in fact he was not dressed like one. He wore some entirely black stealth ensemble instead of Hunter's usual mandated suit and tie.
"Hey, we were invited," Victor said, holding up his hands.
"Weapons on the ground," he ordered.
Emery and Victor both looked at one another before simultaneously bolting left into the tall hedges.
"Stop! Stop where you are!" the man yelled after. This was punctuated by a gunshot that bit at the dirt inches from Emery's heel as he dashed away. He nearly tripped over himself as he sprang away from it but kept his footing and charged into the cover of the greenery around him.
They could hear other voices and thudding footfalls as they were tailed. Another bullet zinged past them and Victor scrambled off to the side with Emery in tow, stopping behind a statue fountain to return fire in three quick bursts. "This way!" Emery said, yanking Victor's other arm. They ran hard for the edge of the property. Several more shots sounded behind him and made the run feel like a split second before they were skidding to a halt at the gate that surrounded the land. They fell into a coordinated tandem, Victor hoisting Emery immediately up onto the gate, where he climbed over and reached down to haul Victor up with him and over the top just as they could see bodies emerge from the brush in hot pursuit. Victor fired another shot through the bars and Emery could hear a cry of shock from a distance before they were running again.
"Through the park!" Victor said, gesturing up ahead.
They rushed up, hopping a short stone wall and continuing inward. "What about Georgie?" Emery asked.
"She's not the one getting shot at right now!" Victor replied in a high-pitched tone.
"Alright, down this way. Lots of tree cover," Emery went off and Victor followed. "How many did you see?"
"Three," Victor informed. "I hit one. Just the leg, but he's out of the chase."
"Not the worst odds."
"They could be better."
It was another sixty seconds of running before Emery finally had to stop and catch his breath. He leaned a hand against a tree as he panted for air on the crest of a steep incline that led down to a road. It wouldn't be too difficult a climb down, but it would need to be slow. He looked back to see Victor beside him, hands on his hips and puffing out great clouds of vapor into the cold air. "Do you think we lost them?" Emery rasped.
"Don't know." Victor bent over a little and rubbed at his side. "Don't see 'em. Don't hear 'em."
Emery nodded and drew in a few more deep breaths before straightening up. "We've got to get to Georgie."
Victor looked up and flipped a hand at him. "Call her. Get her over here."
"She could be in trouble. If we were ambushed, they might have found her, too."
"We're not going back there," Victor said. "And what the fuck are Eaton's men shooting at us for?"
Emery shook his head. "I don't think they're his."
"Then whose?"
Emery turned to speak, but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A body had broken from the trees and was aiming a gun at an oblivious Victor. Emery didn't have time to think. The sound of a shot cracked through the air just as he lunged at his companion. The collision took them both down the hill and Emery's stomach had time to drop just before he hit the earth again with a searing, nerve-tearing pop. He yelped and kept rolling down until he came to a discombobulated heap at the bottom with Victor nearby, who was cursing and clumsily trying to right himself. Emery couldn't keep his screams of agony at bay, alerting the gunman to their exact location, but as soon as he appeared at the top of the hill above them Victor had his gun out and fired a clean shot into his side.
The man toppled with a cry and spun down the slope a few feet away from them. Victor lurched to his feet and marched over, planting one more shot into his head.
Emery had managed to get to his knees by this point, forehead touching the ground as the fingers of his uninjured arm dug hard into the loose soil, howling in pain.
"Shit, oh, shit, are you hit?" Victor asked as he skirted to his knees beside him. He could feel hands on his back.
"Ah—!" Emery squeaked piteously. He shook his head and gripped at his limp arm.
"Your arm?" Victor leaned down to try and look and Emery hacked up some of the contents of his stomach before shuddering and wheezing.
"My—my shoulder," he choked. "It's gone out. Fuck. Fuck!"
"Shit," Victor repeated. "The right?"
"Yes…yes…" he moaned. "Ah, fuck…ugh, it's happened once before, it…ah, god…"
"Okay. Okay, fuck, come on. I can reset it."
Emery clenched his eyes shut and tried to get to his feet with Victor's help. He nearly fell back over as he did so, but got upright enough to lean on him. Victor indicated a stone bench a few dozen feet away and began dragging him towards it.
"We've gotta do this quick. Get down on your stomach. Hang your arms."
It was hard, but he dizzily obeyed. The immediate pain had lost its hold and adrenaline was gradually creeping back in. As soon as he was lying down Victor set him straight with his hands and grabbed the wrist of Emery's injured arm, then planted a foot into his armpit and sighed.
"Fair warning: this is gonna fucking hurt."
Emery didn't have time to feel apprehension before Victor pulled hard. In one absolutely excruciating jerk he could feel the bone crunch back into place. He screamed again and fell off of the bench spitting a series of angry swear words. Victor was on top of him again, holding him, feeling at the shoulder with a hand. "Jesus fucking Christ…" he whimpered.
"I gotcha, man, you're alright," Victor panted. That's when the sound of a revolver's hammer drawing back pulled their attention once more.
Another man was standing at the edge of the road near them, gun aimed. He was dressed similarly to the others. "Stand up," he ordered.
Victor frowned and began to stand, stepping in front of Emery. Emery grabbed weakly at his leg to try and stop him.
The car was so close that Emery only had time to register the wind snapping by his face before it was past him. It collided with the man standing by the road, ripping him under the tires. Victor had fallen back to the ground in shock and they both gaped at the sudden mess. The struck man lay in pieces on the pavement, his head opened up like a split melon. The passenger door swung open and Georgie leaned over the seat, face harrowed. "Get in," she ordered.
Victor leapt to his feet and tore Emery off the ground to pull him towards the car. As soon as they were in she sped off like a bat out of hell, tires flinging gravel and gore behind her.
Emery sank down in the backseat while held his shoulder and fought a groan. He tried to look back behind them for any more pursuers, but all he could see was the blackness of night. Victor was slouched in the passenger's seat, heaving and grimacing as he gripped his own bruised body. Georgie threw a few concerned glances their way before clearing her throat. "…I take it things didn't go well."
Emery slowly closed his eyes.
* * *
Being hurled down a hill was a preferable alternative to getting fucking shot, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch, Victor decided as he adjusted the bag of
frozen snap peas on his painful side. His cut up leg was resting on another of the dining table's chairs and Georgie had plied him with plenty of cold beer to try and take the edge off, a gesture he couldn't find it within himself to snub. Trustworthy or not, at least she was useful. He looked over at Emery. The man was sitting in the other room by himself on the floor, back against the wall as he nursed a bottle of water. He'd hardly said a word since they'd gotten back, claiming that the stiff wall felt good on his hurting shoulder and then sank into a little world of his own. Victor felt depressed just looking at him.
"Can I get you anything else?" Georgie asked, drawing his attention back.
"No," Victor said. He held a beer to his head and pressed the coldness of it into his skin.
She came around the table to look down at his leg. "That cut's a bit rough. Let me patch that."
"I can do it myself," Victor dismissed.
Georgie folded her arms. "Then do it. You're bleeding on my furniture."
Victor gave her a challenging look and leaned forward, but quickly had to jerk back in pain and grip at his side. He grumbled in discomfort and she sighed at him.
"You might find my help to your benefit if you can manage to swallow your idiotic American pride for just one second."
Victor wanted to retort, but she was looking an awful lot like a gift horse at the moment. He shook his head and leaned back. "Who the hell were those guys?"
Georgie sat down and gently rolled up his pant leg, staring at the injury. She carefully lifted his injured leg and set his sock-covered foot in her lap. "Eaton's men, I take it."
"Emery didn't think they were. And anyway that wouldn't make sense. His men knew we were there—we were let in. Why would they attack us on sight?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Georgie replied. She glanced up. "I suppose that depends on the nature of the conversation our boy had with his stepfather."
Victor shook his head. "I don't think he would've sicced his goons on us after that. He was…uh…well, it's fucking complicated."
"I can't help you there."
"How did you find us?"
Georgie cleaned away the blood and began unravelling some gauze. "I followed the gunfire. It sounded like you boys were in a spot of trouble."
"Yeah, well it was awful nice of Ludkov's lackeys to stick around and make sure we got out okay."
"That's what I was for," Georgie pointed out. "And I think I did alright."
"I guess…you gonna be able to clean that guy out of the grill of your car?"
She shrugged a lithe shoulder and continued wrapping. "I was due for a new one anyway. Got to replace vehicles about once a year in this business, generally."
"Why? How many people do you run over a year?"
Georgie smirked and finished up. "That'll do, I think."
Victor looked down at his leg as she stood and placed it back on the chair, nodding begrudgingly. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
"I won't." Victor took a long swig of beer, following her eyes as they drifted over to Emery.
"He's not alright, is he?" she asked quietly.
Victor looked over at him as well. "No. He's not."
She frowned deeply and watched the man in question sip at his water. "I'm truly sorry. I was hoping for the best."
"There's no best in this situation," Victor said. "It's all shit. Remember that realization we talked about?"
Georgie nodded hesitantly.
Victor looked back to him. "Well I think he's having it."
She studied Emery for a long while before looking away. "Perhaps you should speak with him."
"I'll try."
Georgie picked up her coat from the table and pulled it on, zipping it up as she wandered over closer to Emery. "I'm going out now," she told him. "You'll need some painkillers for that shoulder. I'll be back in a little while, but take anything else you need from the kitchen, alright?"
Emery didn't look up, but gave a succinct nod. Georgie gave Victor one more concerned look before heading back to the door.
"You'll be gentle with him, won't you?"
Victor shooed her away. "I can handle it." He downed the rest of his beer and set the bottle down as he heard the door click shut. It was damn sad that it had all amounted to this, but Victor hadn't expected anything different. He just wished he could have made Emery understand before finding out himself the hard way. He stifled a groan as he heaved himself up out of the chair, putting weight on his somewhat stinging leg and dropping the frozen vegetables onto the table carelessly. His hand swung out and snatched two more beers by the neck before he wandered over to where Emery sat.
Emery looked up as Victor handed him down one of the beers, his eyes bereft as he stared at it. After a long vacillation he ended up taking it. Victor took a drink of his own. "Do you wanna know why my name's Victor?"
Emery stared up at him questioningly.
Victor stepped over to Emery's side and eased himself down, hand on his side and back against the wall as he slid into a sitting position against it. He let out a relieved breath once there and rested an arm over his knee. "See my mom always fancied herself as the artsy type. One of those people who takes one class at a community college and thinks they know everything there is to know about the given subject. For her that was art. When I was a kid she used to buy dozens of cheap-ass prints by famous artists and hang 'em up everywhere. She thought it made the dump we lived in look 'cultured'. All it actually did was make us look trashier. Anyway, she was really obsessed with anything Van Gogh. He was her favorite. So she named me after him."
Emery was silent for a long time. He picked at the beer label on his bottle before slowly turning to look at him. "Then…shouldn't your name be Vincent?"
Victor shook his head. "My mom was exactly as stubborn as she was dumb. She used to brag all the time that she was worldly enough to have named her kid after a famous painter, but wouldn't hear it when people tried to correct her. She refused to do a half second of research to see that she'd made a mistake and instead just insisted to everyone else that it'd been Victor Van Gogh all along. Anything that said otherwise was a 'misprint'. I just lied and told everyone I was named after Victor Frankenstein for most of my childhood."
Emery snorted softly and looked down. "That's not a very good story."
"No, but it's relevant," Victor replied. "I get it. Sometimes the idea of being wrong about certain things is too shitty to face, so you refuse to consider it."
Emery leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. "You don't have to tell me I'm a fool, Victor. I know."
"That's not what I mean. I just mean I'm sorry."
Emery took a long drink. "You don't have anything to be sorry about. Other than being bloody right all the time."
Victor shifted and thought for a long moment. "It's shit, Em. What your stepdad did to you, that's a shit deal."
Emery hung his beer between his drawn up knees. "You were right about that, too. Killing him, it wouldn't have solved anything. Whatever happened between us will be wedged in a corner of my mind until the day I die. There's no getting away from it. I mean my last name is still legally 'Eaton'… Maybe it was naïve, but I really thought I'd never see him again until Kurt went missing. And it was all for nothing."
"Well, look at is this way. Now you know for sure where he's not."
"…I really might never see him again," Emery said. "I don't know what I was thinking trying to find him here. It's been over a month. Whatever happened, I'm too late."
Victor didn't know what to say. He didn't want to lie to him—he was right. Kurt was long gone. There was nothing in the world that could soften that blow.
Emery sighed and looked out at the opposite wall. "You know they say you don't know what you have until it's gone, but that wasn't true for me when it came to him. I was very aware of what I had and I was grateful for every minute of it. Over the course of the last two years he became…part of what I need in order to be myself. It's only
without him that I realize how little I was made up of before him. Do you know what I mean?"
Victor considered it for a moment. "Sure."
Emery rubbed his forehead. He looked like he'd aged years in the past few hours. "If I've lost him, I'll have lost every single person I've ever loved. They've all been taken. I've got nothing left. And the irony is that now I understand Kurt better than I think I ever did. Why he was the way he was when I first met him. The people you love are living, breathing parts of you. And you can only lose so many of your parts before you become nothing at all."
Victor scanned the floor. Yeah, maybe. Victor's mother was dead and they'd never had a good relationship to begin with—he honestly didn't even know if he loved her. All of his other family members were still living. His aunt and uncle and cousins remained in Hartford as far as he knew, and they hadn't been taken away from him. He'd pushed them away all on his own when he proved himself a royal fuck up and cold-cocked that drunken loudmouth. But Emery was right. They were still a part of him. It really wasn't fair that the kid's last vestige of companionship had been jerked away from him and he deserved his closure, if nothing else. He moved his leg so that it was flush against Emery's and nodded to himself. "Look, Em. I don't know what happened to Kurt. But…I'm going to help you find out."
Emery looked over at him without understanding.
"We'll find the truth. We'll look into it together. You were right, I mean I know people he used to know, I have leads, I can find information. Two heads are better than one."
Emery looked away. "You've already fulfilled your part of our arrangement, Victor."
"So we'll make a new one."
"It would be moot," Emery dismissed flatly. "I no longer have the freedom with which to look for him. I'm one of Ludkov's thugs now."
Victor 'tsked' and scratched at his beard. "Yeah, hard to put a good spin on that shit. But I'll be there with you. We'll tag team it."