![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Lies You Live
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, implications of past torture and sexual abuse, potential triggers for suicidal thoughts and actions.
Notes: This is the extended, higher rated director's cut version of the story, being posted in parts over the next week or so. If you'd prefer not to wait, a complete (non-sexy, rated 15!) version can be found here. Also, there is fabulous art by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skylar0grace here.
Summary: Hunting is in her blood and in her bones, but when Abigail Whistler's path crosses that of a smart-mouthed vampire who seems perfectly happy to die, she's left questioning everything she thought she knew. While her team work to cure Hannibal King of his vampirism with an experimental antivirus, she finds herself warming to their captive in spite of her reservations, and when their actions turn out to have devastating consequences, Abby's loyalties are left torn.
Masterlist: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Part 03: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
It took the better part of a week for King's temperature to drop to the point where he spent more time awake than asleep, even without Velasquez sedating him. Abby, however, saw very little of him. Whether it was down to Mick pissing him off once too often, or because he thought it was a good idea to keep her away from King for the time being, Frank had her hunting most nights.
She didn't mind. As fascinating as King was, it felt good to get back in the field. She went with Dex more often than not, and he was smart enough to hang back, let her do her thing and only step in when she needed it.
She didn't need it often, not when they stuck to the edges of the vampire world: the loners; the stragglers; the ones who hunted in small packs, disenfranchised from the complex, political world that existed at the top of the vampire heap.
There were enough outcasts to keep her busy and she slid into the rhythm of it easily, cutting through the dark streets, the subways and underpasses, the alleys and the narrow lanes that marked their territory, the places where the scent of blood drew them.
But she was the shark in the water. Most of the time they didn't stand a chance, which was just the way she liked it.
When she got back to base one morning, sweaty and satisfied, Mick was waiting for her, leaning against the side of the building, a cigarette clutched in one hand.
"Frank wants you," he grunted at her by way of a greeting. "Your vampire pet's awake." He took a puff, blowing smoke rings that somehow managed to blow into her face.
She stared him down until he looked away, scowling. "Seems he's not a vamp any more," he said, and that was as close to an apology as she was going to get from Mick.
He pushed himself away from the wall, stubbing out his cigarette with the toe of his boot. "You coming, then?" he asked. "Or are you saving that for later? When he's up and about, maybe?" She shoved him as she walked past him, grinning over her shoulder as he stumbled and swore at her, his words lacking heat.
"Dick," muttered Dex. She wasn't going to disagree, but at least Mick was their dick.
Frank was waiting for her in the armoury, discussing something with Hedges. She waited as patiently as she knew how for Frank to extract himself, but after a few moments, he waved her over.
Hedges' face was grave underneath the twitchiness, and she slowed her steps, scanning Frank's face for any hint of what he was about to tell her. Her first thought was King, that the cure hadn't worked or - worse - that it had killed him, although why she should give a shit was beyond her. But Mick, as much of an ass as he was, wasn't deliberately cruel. He wouldn't have lied about that.
"What's going on?" she asked quietly.
Hedges darted a quick look at Frank. "Well, I've -" he started, but Frank cut him off.
"Sommerfield's given King the all clear."
"Okay." She drew the word out, still trying to figure out what she was missing.
"We start grilling him. Anything he tells us, we verify, use what we can."
It made sense, and she found herself nodding even though the need for this level of secrecy was escaping her. But then Frank looked to Hedges, the kind of look that put her instantly on edge.
"I've been... well, I've been tracking the news sites for any mention of King. I wasn't expecting anything, maybe a notification that they'd finished putting the archives online -"
"Hedges," Frank warned.
"Yes, sorry. Um..." Hedges stared down at the paper in his hands, looking flustered. "This came through yesterday. I think you should read it."
When he thrust it at her, she took it automatically, turning it around so that she could read the headline. She got as far as the end of the first paragraph before she looked back to Hedges for confirmation.
"It's the same address," he said in answer to her unasked question, his voice subdued. "As the one on King's birth certificate, I mean. I guess they never moved."
"Jesus." She stared back down at the paper again, not reading the article but staring at the picture set next to it instead, a posed portrait of a neatly turned out couple in late middle age. "Does he know?"
"Not yet," Frank replied. "I need him focused."
She nodded and then, because that didn't seem enough, she added a soft, "Okay."
"All right," said Frank. "It's game time."
-o-
When Dex and Velasquez finally escorted King into the large room they used as a mess, there was no doubting that he was still their prisoner. They flanked him, one on either side of him, half a step behind him and with both of them watching him warily.
He looked much better than he had the last time that Abby had seen him. There was a fresh bandage wrapped around his left wrist, where the silver cuff had bitten in deep, and Abby took that to mean his wound hadn't healed well. He seemed to have regained the mobility in his hand, at least, and his colour was better.
They'd also given him the opportunity to shower and change - his hair was damp, sticking up from his head, but the clothes they'd found for him afterwards must have been Frank's, who was closest in size and build to King. They were still too small for him. The sweatpants weren't too bad, although he was narrower around the waist and hips than Frank, and the pants had slipped down a couple of inches, probably the only reason they'd reached his feet. The t-shirt was a worse fit, stretched across his chest as though it had shrunk in the wash and leaving a couple of inches of his stomach bare.
Taken together, they made it difficult to miss the dark black of the glyph, tattooed a couple of inches below his navel.
She filed the sight of it away, even though it begged more questions than it answered, while she busied herself with pouring a cup of coffee. It bought her some time to think her way through the best approach to take to get King to open up. Once again, Frank hadn't been in a sharing mood; he'd always had a tendency to be a close-mouthed bastard, but this recent level of secrecy was starting to eat at her.
Dex pointed King towards a chair at one end of the table, and he sank down into it wordlessly. Dex kept going, heading towards the other end of the table where Frank had positioned himself. Velasquez followed him, paying very little attention to King, and Mick emerged from the door behind Frank, still buttoning up his fly, which she hoped to God meant he'd just been to the bathroom.
Given that Sommerfield and Hedges were already firmly ensconced in seats beside Frank, it meant that - deliberately or not - her team had ranged themselves at one end of the table, all of them neatly aligned against King.
King hadn't missed it, which simply confirmed her suspicions that he wasn't stupid. He fidgeted a little, avoiding anyone's eyes, staring out of the window to where the sun shone down over the neighbouring derelict buildings. A brief look of longing passed over his face before he damped it down again, curling his fingers together so that they didn't twitch and give away anything that he was thinking.
"Coffee?" she asked, and it took King a moment to realise that she was talking to him.
He stared at her, thrown and blinking his confusion, but before he could answer, Velasquez interrupted with a firm, "No stimulants."
"That would be a no, then," he said, but the words lacked his normal cockiness - what little there was in his voice was strained, as though he felt like he needed to make the effort but his heart wasn't in it. He was still too thin and washed out, with dark shadows underneath his eyes.
She grabbed a bottle of water for him instead, placing it on the table next to him and taking a seat that was halfway along the side of the table, which meant that it was halfway between King and her team.
"I notice I don't get offered a cup of coffee," Mick groused, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
"You want a cup?"
"Yes."
"Get off your ass and get it then."
Mick shoved two fingers up at her and pushed himself to his feet, grumbling.
"Get me one while you're up," Dex drawled, and Mick scowled over his shoulder at his friend.
King was watching them, picking absently at the label on his water bottle with his thumbnail. Dex and Mick's banter had put him a little at ease. There was a small smile playing around the corner of his mouth, but his brow was crinkled, as though he wasn't entirely sure he was supposed to find their fooling funny. The smile disappeared as soon he caught sight of Frank watching him. Frank's face was drawn down into the frown he'd been wearing since they'd first found King, and Abby could see how that would be intimidating for someone who felt as vulnerable to Frank's whims as King undoubtedly did.
King looked away, twisting the top off his water bottle and taking a slow swig from it. He was obviously playing for time, and Abby couldn't blame him for it.
"Tell me about Danica Talos."
Frank, as usual, shot straight from the hip, no time or patience for the social niceties. It wasn't the way that Abby would have opened things with King, not when King was obviously so ill at ease, and she wasn't at all surprised to see that the question - and the brusque, straight to the point tone it was delivered in - had King tensing up, his mouth setting mulishly. For once, however, he seemed to have reached the conclusion that being a smart-ass wasn't the way to go.
"What do you want to know?" he asked mildly, and Frank tapped his fingernails on the table, an impatient little sound that gave away more than Frank usually did.
"How about you start with how far her operation spreads, how many familiars she's running, and what her plans are, and move on from there?"
King arched his eyebrows, a look of polite disbelief on his face. But there was something else lurking behind it, something that again had Abby thinking that he was stalling.
"What makes you think I know anything about what Danica gets up to?" He sounded bored, but his gaze darted away from Frank's. Either he was a terrible liar or an excellent one.
Frank snorted, his impatience now clear on his face. "What makes you think I give a shit?"
The muscle in King's jaw jumped, but he didn't challenge Frank. He didn't answer him, either, biting at his lip like he didn't know where to start or how much to share. Frank wasn't going to get anywhere like this; the certainty settled into Abby's chest, and it made her reckless.
"Why don't you start at the beginning?" she said, and Frank shot her a guarded look, one she ignored with some effort. It was habit to feel like she had to justify herself to Frank, even when he didn't ask her to. "With Danica..."
King fixed his eyes on her, maybe because it was easier, less intimidating than looking at Frank. "It... it's stupid, you know? I was out with friends, we went to a bar, and I went straight for the one that screamed bad news." He gave a diffident little shoulder shrug, and a small smile formed on his face, one that seemed to be aimed at himself.
"I do that," he said. "It's like I've got a sixth sense for who's going to fuck my life up the most and I just can't resist. There was Veronica... she threw all of my shirts in the garbage. Then there was Natalie... she cheated on me with my best friend at the time. Can't hold that against them too much - they actually ended up getting married, which is legal in Canada. I sent them a fruit basket - I thought that was oddly appropriate."
He trailed off, and Frank shifted in his seat, the look on his face edging past impatient and heading towards forbidding.
"It was Don's birthday, so he got to pick where we went." The look in King's eyes was distant, as though he was working his way through his memories, pulling them up from wherever he'd safely pushed them down. "He picked this techno place, totally not my kind of scene, but he was turning thirty, so I guess he needed to feel like he was still young or something equally pathetic. It was too loud, too bright, but there was this woman..." He trailed off for a moment, and she couldn't figure out whether the memories were good or bad. "Long legs, fuck me shoes, and fuck you attitude." He shrugged again, staring into space rather than looking at any of them now, his fingernails still picking at the bottle's label. "I actually thought we'd hit it off, if you can believe that. Everything was going swimmingly, at least until she bit me. I mean, Jesus. She fucking bit me. And then her cell phone rang." He let out a bitter laugh, oddly out of place with his even tone. "So I'm bleeding to death in her bed while she's taking this oh so important phone call, like I'm nothing."
The last few words held a bewildered kind of grief in them, a sudden switch in tone that she could sympathise with. She wasn't the only one, judging by the faces around the table. All but Abby had lived the same story or some variation of it - their world ripped apart in an instant.
"Why did she let you turn? Why not finish you off?" Frank's voice was calm and steady, but there were undercurrents of disbelief lurking just under the surface, and King didn't miss those either.
"I'm a good lay," he shot back, sliding his swagger into place like it was the only armour he had or needed.
Frank wasn't amused. "Tell me about Talos' plans," he said again, locking his eyes with King. His tone was gentle, but his expression was firm and unyielding. "What's she up to? How many people is she running?"
"I don't know."
"All that time with her - five years - and you don't know anything?"
"She's not exactly the sharing kind."
"No?" Frank leaned forward in his chair, folding his hands neatly on the table and staring at King, his brow pulled down into an irritated frown. "Can't be that good a lay if she never bothered with pillow talk."
King had no answer to that, but the muscle in his jaw twitched again as he looked away from Frank. Frank studied him for a long moment, his expression giving nothing away. "You have a clan tattoo."
King shrugged his shoulders again, jerky and uncoordinated, still avoiding looking at Frank. His expression was stubborn, mulish and uncooperative.
"Want to tell me why you have that if she just picked you up in a bar?"
"She gave it to me once I'd turned."
"Really?" Frank didn't bother to hide the scepticism in his tone. It was the wrong tone to take, not when King was already feeling vulnerable and defensive; Abby shuffled in her seat but a sharp look from Frank kept her silent this time. Frank turned his attention back to King, and his tone was dry as dust. "That doesn't happen in my experience."
"And your experience is just so vast and all encompassing, right?"
"I've spent the last twenty years killing vampires, boy." Frank leaned forward, his expression dangerous. "Don't think you stand a chance if I decide you're more trouble than you're worth. As far as I'm concerned, you're just another familiar who got what they wanted."
"Right." There was a sharp note of anger in King's voice now, too. "Can I be frank, Frank? Since we're apparently in a sharing mood and all. Given that you've never been turned into a vampire by a psycho ex-girlfriend, forgive me if I happen to think that your so-called vast experience is a crock of shit."
Frank's expression froze, a glint of anger in his eyes. Shit. Frank was going to hate her for it, but she needed to head this off and head it off fast if they were going to get anything useful out of King. She'd apologise later, if she still needed to once Frank had come to his senses.
"Why turn you?" she asked, keeping her voice calm and even. She looked directly at King, but that didn't mean she wasn't all too aware of Frank and the mingled disapproval and irritation he was radiating. "That's not the way these things usually play out."
"You don't believe I'm a good lay?"
She didn't smile. "I don't believe that was the only reason."
"So you do believe I'm a good lay?"
"How about we focus on things that are actually important? And no," she added when he opened his mouth, more animation in his eyes than had been there for the rest of the conversation. "That isn't."
King glanced away from her, his eyes meeting Frank's for a moment before his gaze dropped to the table, where he was absentmindedly drawing patterns in the condensation dripping from his bottle of water. "In case you hadn't noticed," he began slowly, "I've got a bit of an attitude problem. And while a gentleman obviously never asks a lady her age, Danica's got hundreds of years on the clock." He looked up and met Abby's eyes. "She's bored," he said simply. "She's really fucking bored, and I'm at least entertaining."
"So... she decided she needed a boyfriend?"
King let out a bitter laugh. "My tattoo's two inches above my dick," he said. "Why don't we think about that for a moment?"
She did, and the scenario she came up with wasn't pretty. "She marked you as her property?"
"I think the most appropriate term would be 'fuck toy'," he said brightly, but his eyes stayed bitter.
It silenced her enough for Frank to step in. "So as her 'fuck toy'," he phrased the term ironically, and King tensed up again, enough to have Abby biting back on a sigh, wondering how the hell Frank, who was usually so smart, could be so stupid when it came to King. "She didn't tell you anything?"
"Did you miss the part where I said she wasn't the sharing kind?"
"Did you miss the part where I said I didn't give a shit?"
The muscle jumped in King's jaw again. "She didn't let me off the leash much," he said, and there were whole worlds in those words. "Mostly she got Asher to do her dirty work."
"Asher?" Frank straightened up, suddenly interested.
"Asher Talos. Danica's brother."
"They're pure bloods?"
"No." King frowned, apparently thrown by the question. "Difficult as it is to believe, Danica was actually human once. She got turned, turned Asher, near as I could tell. The family that slays together and all that jazz."
Frank considered this, the wheels turning behind his stony façade as he stared at King. "Mostly she got Asher to do her dirty work. That's what you said."
"Yes."
"But not always."
King's jaw twitched again, his gaze darting away from Frank's. "What do you want to know? That I ran errands for her sometimes? That I behaved myself? Was a good little boy?"
"Were you?"
Maybe it was the tone in Frank's voice that triggered it, but King seemed to reach a decision, finally looking Frank in the eye. "She set me on fire once," he said, and it took a second for Abby parse the words, for them to actually make a horrible, macabre sense. "It... it's not really something I can recommend. But it worked. I was good." His mouth quirked up in the slightest of smiles, but there was no humour in it, nothing but a kind of broken emptiness. "I was very, very good for... oh, months."
Frank didn't say anything, but he didn't break King's gaze, holding it steadily, nothing of what he was thinking showing on his face.
King was the one to look away first, but Abby got the impression that it was nothing to do with not being able to face Frank.
"The first time I fed..." He trailed off, eyes distant again and swallowing, as though the memory of that thirst was leaving him dry and parched now. He didn't take a drink, although his fingers tightened around his bottle for a moment. "I wouldn't, not at first. But the thirst... you don't know what it's like until you've been through it."
"So you gave in." It wasn't a question, and Frank's tone wasn't kind, but it wasn't needlessly cruel either - just hard and uncompromising, much like Frank himself.
King swallowed again, but again she didn't think it was because of Frank.
"No," he said. "Danica..." He trailed off again, expression bleak. "I wouldn't, and she got tired of it. All dressed up and taunting, with no pay-off. She has a short attention span sometimes. And for someone who's lived as long as she has, she's really fucking impatient." His expression twisted for a moment in remembered pain. "She bit her, right in front of me. And all I could smell was the blood and I wanted it, God, I wanted it. And she told me..." He let out a breathless little laugh. "She told me that this girl was going to turn. She was going to become a monster, like me, live forever like me, and that Danica would make every single second of that eternal life an absolute fucking misery. She'd have done it, too."
"So you killed her to save her."
"No." King let out another one of those broken little laughs, one that twisted in Abby's gut, sharp-edged as it was with grief and guilt. "I killed her because I couldn't save myself."
It was ugly and awkward watching King like this, watch him twist and tie himself in painful knots. But he hadn't finished. He finally took a swig of water, his hand shaking so that drops of it ran down his chin.
"So if you want to know if I was strong enough, if I was brave enough to... what? Keep hold of my humanity? No, I wasn't. Most of the time I worked on pissing Danica off because it was the only thing I had, the only thing I could do that still felt like me. But frankly, Frank? After the whole fire thing, I usually made sure I didn't go too far."
It would have been easier to deal with King's words if they'd been confrontational, if he'd thrown them in Frank's face just to piss Frank off the same way that he claimed he liked to piss Danica off. But they weren't; they were quiet and subdued, when King was anything but.
"You never thought of getting out?"
"And go where? Until Abby here offered me the chance of a goddamned cure, I didn't see how there could be a way out. Even if I got away from Danica, where the fuck was I going to go? I'd still be a monster. No chance of outrunning that."
"No," Frank agreed. "And now?"
There was something in Frank's tone that caught King's attention, leaving him watchful and wary. A cautious look formed slowly on his face as he searched Frank's expression for some sign of what was going on in the razor sharp mind behind it. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't seem to find it.
"Is this the point where you tell me that now that you know the cure works, you're going to take me out back and put a bullet in my brain?" He said it lightly, as though it was a joke, but the look in his eyes said otherwise. There was real fear in there, and something else, something that said he wouldn't have been surprised. She got the feeling that he'd be more surprised now if shit didn't happen to him.
King's question had her shuffling uncomfortably in her seat - and she wasn't the only one around the table doing so - but it didn't seem to faze Frank at all.
"We've discussed it," he said, which was news to Abby. The hurt was sudden and surprisingly sharp. "Sommerfield needs to monitor you for a while yet. Make sure the cure's really taken."
King cast a look at Sommerfield, hope and dread mingled together in it. "I'm... glad?" he said. "And then? I'm a little curious about my long term prospects."
Frank leaned forward, putting more of his weight on his folded hands. His eyes were keen, as focused on King as they'd been throughout, but there was something else in them, something that was not eagerness or anticipation, but watchful and waiting. Dread settled in Abby's stomach, a suspicion of what was coming.
"I'm sure you'd like to go home," he said, and Abby made an abortive move, one that died stillborn when Frank turned his piercing blue eyes onto her. She'd thought he wasn't cruel; she didn't want to be proved wrong.
King didn't miss it. When she looked back at him, meeting his eyes helplessly for a moment, her dread had transferred to him. He swallowed slowly, no idea what was coming but knowing he wasn't going to like it. "Eventually," he said cautiously.
"That's not going to be possible."
From the way that King's shoulders slumped, she suspected that he'd known that, known it and tried to be resigned to it. But it was also clear that he thought that was the worst that was coming.
He was wrong.
Frank slid a folded piece of paper across the table towards King. She knew what it was, but King couldn't even have had an inkling and before she could say anything, warn him, the look in Frank's eyes stopped her short again. They were calm, too calm for what he was doing.
King glanced at her, hesitating as he caught sense of some of what she was trying not to show. Something must have been slipping around the edges of the serenity she was trying to project, because King swallowed as he reached for the paper, pulling it slowly towards him and looking at her again once he had it, searching her face.
The dread settled back into his eyes as he unfolded it and started to read.
Whatever he'd expected - whatever he'd tried to prepare himself for - it wasn't this. His eyes widened and he let out a sound, soft and wounded, as though someone had just knifed him in the gut, driving all of his breath out of him.
His fingers were shaking as they smoothed the paper out, a repetitive little motion as though he thought that if he straightened it, made it pristine, it would reveal itself as a fake, not real. But he couldn't manage it; he let go, his fingers curling against the table top as he shook.
"What the...?" Mick, of course. Abby ignored him, her attention focused on King.
King looked up, his eyes glassy and hollow. "When?" he asked, and that sound, too, was forced out of him, rough and hoarse.
"Two days ago," Frank replied evenly, while next to him Hedges swallowed, a look of guilt crossing his face as though he felt that by finding it he was somehow responsible for it.
King's breath escaped him in a huff, something that sounded half-choked. "How long have you known?"
"We... um..." Hedges shot a nervous sideways glance at Frank, obviously uncomfortable. "We found out yesterday."
"Yesterday?" King's voice broke for a second. "You knew and you didn't tell me?" He switched his attention from Hedges, staring straight at Abby, the hurt and betrayal written clearly on his face. "You knew?"
The grief in his voice silenced her, and she swallowed down all of her justifications; if he needed to rage, to grieve, she'd let him. It wouldn't be the first time she'd watched someone fall apart in front of her. It wouldn't be the last.
Frank said nothing, but Hedges was more honest. "We... um... only told Abby just before..." His voice trailed off, fingers twitching guiltily.
"I'm sorry," Abby said quietly, as though that could ever be enough. King looked at her, his eyes wide and wet. He nodded jerkily, but he didn't let the tears fall, not yet.
"Someone want to fucking well clue me in?" Mick asked again, sounding pissed.
"Um... King's parents. They... um... were killed two days ago," Hedges explained, the words finally falling out in a rush as though if he said it quickly it would be less painful. "Home invasion."
"It wasn't a home invasion," King said brokenly, and there was no anger there, not yet. It would come, she knew. Once he'd had time to process.
"It was Danica Talos," Frank stated calmly, and King threw him a look - there was anger in there now, mingled with the grief, but Frank didn't look away. King did, and his face folded in on itself as he tried desperately not to fall apart in front of them.
"Fuck," Mick breathed slowly, and for once she didn't want to strangle him. There was a kind of shocked awe in his tone, but the look he gave King was as sympathetic as Mick ever got. But then Mick could appreciate what King was going through.
"I didn't think she knew," King whispered brokenly. "Where they were... that they... Her family's been dead so fucking long... I didn't think she knew." He took another shaky breath, and somehow she knew what was coming. "This is my fault."
"No." Her mouth was dry, and she swallowed, not finding the words easy. "It's Danica's fault." It didn't seem to help and she hated that she had to do this, but she'd never been one to back away from the hard things. "King. Your brother -"
His head snapped up, his face horrified and hopeless. His body was tense, bowing towards her as though he dreaded what she was going to say next but needed to hear it anyway. "Which? Alex? Julius?" His expression cracked, and so did his voice. "Both?"
She shook her head, rapidly incorporating the idea of two brothers into what little she already knew of King. "Neither as far as we know, but you know Danica better than anyone here. Will she go after them, too?"
He blinked at her, and the action finally sent a tear rolling down his cheek. He seemed oblivious to it, but Abby wasn't. It hurt seeing him like this, and it shouldn't.
"I..." He stopped dead, his face slack with shock and grief. It was all too understandable - he was still reeling, and she'd just thrown him another curveball. His grief was too close, too personal, and she'd never been any good at dealing with stuff like that. All she wanted to do was get as far away from him as possible; instead she reached out and placed her fingers on his arm, awkwardly pressing them against his skin and hoping it helped.
He didn't pull away.
"I don't know," he said eventually, the words coming out in a rush. "I don't think so..." His face twisted with grief again. "She lashes out, you know? But she has a short attention span. She..."
"She might not care enough to find them?" she completed for him. The words might have been brutal but the idea was enough to have King start the slow, painful process of putting the pieces of himself together, papering over the cracks as much as he could so that they wouldn't see.
"Yeah. And even if she did... she's kind of weird about brothers." He paused, his eyes still wet and red-ringed, but he'd locked everything down as tightly as he could now. Only his ragged breathing and the sensation of his arm trembling underneath her fingers gave him away. "She killed the rest of her family."
But not her brother. Maybe that would be enough to mean that King's would be spared.
"I'll... I'll see what else I can find out," said Hedges quietly, watching King awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. But then Hedges had his own grief; they all did.
"You stay long enough for Sommerfield to get what she needs from you," Frank said gruffly. "And after that..." He paused, waiting until King finally looked up and met his eyes, his own giving nothing away. "We'll see."
-o-
King's face haunted her, although she had no idea why she cared so much. Maybe it had been the naked grief she'd seen written there, or maybe the fact that he was still an enigma and she hated not understanding what was going on, even if it was only what was going on inside his head. Whatever the reason, she found herself standing outside his door, still not sure if she actually wanted to go in and see him.
Mick was on guard, but since Mick seldom gave a fuck about anything, he wasn't giving her any grief, even if he was eyeing her like he suspected that she'd lost her mind. Maybe he had a point. She hesitated for another long moment, and then finally knocked on the door.
There was a long pause before King said, "Come in." He didn't sound very welcoming, but she opened the door anyway, easing her way inside and shutting it behind her.
King was sitting on the bed, still dressed in Frank's too small cast-offs. His back was against the wall, but she tried not to read too much into that, like she tried not to read too much into the fact that his legs were curled up and his feet bare and oddly defenceless - she guessed that Frank's shoes hadn't fit him that well.
He stared back at her silently, his face blank and pale and his eyes red rimmed. She half expected him to recover himself, say something funny and borderline obscene to mask everything he was feeling, the way he'd been hiding behind his smart mouth since they'd first brought him back, but he just swallowed and looked away, his fingers flexing nervously against the fabric of his sweats.
That left her to break the silence.
"I thought I'd check in... see how you're doing."
He licked his lips, still avoiding her eyes. "Thanks," he said, and his voice was shaky. It seemed cruel to push it, insist on knowing how he was doing when it was obvious that the answer was not very well.
She nodded, resisting the urge to wipe her one free sweaty palm against her pants. "I, um... I had Hedges print something out for you." She glanced down at the printout she had in her hand, and then shoved it awkwardly towards him, glad that it hadn't smeared.
He hesitated for a moment before he took it; she couldn't blame him for that one, not after the stunt that Frank had pulled. He searched her face for long moments, almost as if he was looking for some sign that she was about to kick him when he was down. He didn't seem to find it, finally turning the card over. When he saw the picture printed on it he swallowed again, his face crumpling a little.
"It's just from the newspaper website," she explained. "It turned out that they'd used a... higher resolution picture and just squashed the size down." That had been the explanation that Hedges had given her anyway, or at least as much of it as she could remember.
He nodded, his fingers touching the side of the photograph gently as he took in another shaky breath. His eyes were wet, and she shifted uncomfortably.
"I... I didn't think you'd have one. A picture of them, I mean."
"No," he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "Thank you."
Something sharp tugged at her chest.
"Hedges found an obituary as well," she said gently. "If... if you want it." He swallowed again, pressing his lips tightly together and she hesitated before adding, "I thought you might like to know... They never stopped looking for you. That's what the obituary said anyway."
He nodded again, his breath even shakier, and she wasn't surprised when he blinked and a tear finally spilled over to roll down his face. He wiped it away impatiently with the heel of his hand. "Thank you," he said again, and this time the words were tight and choked.
There was nothing else she could think to say; she nodded and left him alone with his grief.
Mick had gone, but Frank was waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He looked up when he heard the door, meeting her eyes.
She stayed silent, unable to think of anything to say, nothing that would be productive, anyway, and Frank waited until she'd closed the door behind her before he finally spoke.
"You think I should have broken it to him differently." There was no anger in his voice, no sign of defensiveness, just a kind of tired blankness Frank's voice that wasn't any easier for Abby to hear. "Maybe gone a bit easier him."
She hesitated before she nodded. "We could've earned his trust," she said, tacking a maybe onto the end of the sentence in the interest of full honesty. And because Frank being this quiet, this uncertain was outside her realm of experience
Frank stared at her for a long moment and then nodded thoughtfully. "I don't think you did too badly on that one," he said. "But I had to know." She frowned at him, struggling to follow his meaning, and he gave her a small, quiet smile before elaborating. "I needed to see how he reacted, Whistler. Needed to know if it was genuine."
She treated him to a long, steady look, trying to keep her face calm while her mind whirred behind it. "You still think it's a trap?"
"I think that there was a possibility that it was a trap." He rubbed his hand over his face, scrubbing the bristles that were already growing in with his palm. "I know it seems far-fetched," he admitted, "but you don't know Danica Talos."
"But you do know her?"
He paused for a moment, his fingers still curled in the act of scratching at his chin. "I know of her," he said eventually, and his tone was dry, and that was more familiar. "She's a devious bitch, and she's got a particular hate on for hunters. I wouldn't put it past her to sacrifice her favourite toy if she thought she could bring down someone like Blade."
She filed that away, as well, along with everything else she knew about King. It didn't seem feasible, but Frank had a hell of a lot more experience than she did in the vagaries of vampires. She wasn't about to question his judgement.
"What now?" she asked, and Frank's expression grew distant and thoughtful.
"Watch and wait," he said, giving her the kind of shrug she'd have expected to see from Dex rather than Frank. "Not a hell of a lot else we can do." He straightened up, tilting his head to look at her. "Just... don't get too cosy with him, not until we have a better idea of exactly which way the wind is blowing."
She nodded and he gave her a brief, approving smile, squeezing her shoulder before he walked away.
She watched him go and wondered what the hell it was about Danica Talos that had men like Frank and King running scared of her.
-o-
Part 05: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, implications of past torture and sexual abuse, potential triggers for suicidal thoughts and actions.
Notes: This is the extended, higher rated director's cut version of the story, being posted in parts over the next week or so. If you'd prefer not to wait, a complete (non-sexy, rated 15!) version can be found here. Also, there is fabulous art by
skylar0grace here.Summary: Hunting is in her blood and in her bones, but when Abigail Whistler's path crosses that of a smart-mouthed vampire who seems perfectly happy to die, she's left questioning everything she thought she knew. While her team work to cure Hannibal King of his vampirism with an experimental antivirus, she finds herself warming to their captive in spite of her reservations, and when their actions turn out to have devastating consequences, Abby's loyalties are left torn.
Masterlist: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Part 03: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
It took the better part of a week for King's temperature to drop to the point where he spent more time awake than asleep, even without Velasquez sedating him. Abby, however, saw very little of him. Whether it was down to Mick pissing him off once too often, or because he thought it was a good idea to keep her away from King for the time being, Frank had her hunting most nights.
She didn't mind. As fascinating as King was, it felt good to get back in the field. She went with Dex more often than not, and he was smart enough to hang back, let her do her thing and only step in when she needed it.
She didn't need it often, not when they stuck to the edges of the vampire world: the loners; the stragglers; the ones who hunted in small packs, disenfranchised from the complex, political world that existed at the top of the vampire heap.
There were enough outcasts to keep her busy and she slid into the rhythm of it easily, cutting through the dark streets, the subways and underpasses, the alleys and the narrow lanes that marked their territory, the places where the scent of blood drew them.
But she was the shark in the water. Most of the time they didn't stand a chance, which was just the way she liked it.
When she got back to base one morning, sweaty and satisfied, Mick was waiting for her, leaning against the side of the building, a cigarette clutched in one hand.
"Frank wants you," he grunted at her by way of a greeting. "Your vampire pet's awake." He took a puff, blowing smoke rings that somehow managed to blow into her face.
She stared him down until he looked away, scowling. "Seems he's not a vamp any more," he said, and that was as close to an apology as she was going to get from Mick.
He pushed himself away from the wall, stubbing out his cigarette with the toe of his boot. "You coming, then?" he asked. "Or are you saving that for later? When he's up and about, maybe?" She shoved him as she walked past him, grinning over her shoulder as he stumbled and swore at her, his words lacking heat.
"Dick," muttered Dex. She wasn't going to disagree, but at least Mick was their dick.
Frank was waiting for her in the armoury, discussing something with Hedges. She waited as patiently as she knew how for Frank to extract himself, but after a few moments, he waved her over.
Hedges' face was grave underneath the twitchiness, and she slowed her steps, scanning Frank's face for any hint of what he was about to tell her. Her first thought was King, that the cure hadn't worked or - worse - that it had killed him, although why she should give a shit was beyond her. But Mick, as much of an ass as he was, wasn't deliberately cruel. He wouldn't have lied about that.
"What's going on?" she asked quietly.
Hedges darted a quick look at Frank. "Well, I've -" he started, but Frank cut him off.
"Sommerfield's given King the all clear."
"Okay." She drew the word out, still trying to figure out what she was missing.
"We start grilling him. Anything he tells us, we verify, use what we can."
It made sense, and she found herself nodding even though the need for this level of secrecy was escaping her. But then Frank looked to Hedges, the kind of look that put her instantly on edge.
"I've been... well, I've been tracking the news sites for any mention of King. I wasn't expecting anything, maybe a notification that they'd finished putting the archives online -"
"Hedges," Frank warned.
"Yes, sorry. Um..." Hedges stared down at the paper in his hands, looking flustered. "This came through yesterday. I think you should read it."
When he thrust it at her, she took it automatically, turning it around so that she could read the headline. She got as far as the end of the first paragraph before she looked back to Hedges for confirmation.
"It's the same address," he said in answer to her unasked question, his voice subdued. "As the one on King's birth certificate, I mean. I guess they never moved."
"Jesus." She stared back down at the paper again, not reading the article but staring at the picture set next to it instead, a posed portrait of a neatly turned out couple in late middle age. "Does he know?"
"Not yet," Frank replied. "I need him focused."
She nodded and then, because that didn't seem enough, she added a soft, "Okay."
"All right," said Frank. "It's game time."
-o-
When Dex and Velasquez finally escorted King into the large room they used as a mess, there was no doubting that he was still their prisoner. They flanked him, one on either side of him, half a step behind him and with both of them watching him warily.
He looked much better than he had the last time that Abby had seen him. There was a fresh bandage wrapped around his left wrist, where the silver cuff had bitten in deep, and Abby took that to mean his wound hadn't healed well. He seemed to have regained the mobility in his hand, at least, and his colour was better.
They'd also given him the opportunity to shower and change - his hair was damp, sticking up from his head, but the clothes they'd found for him afterwards must have been Frank's, who was closest in size and build to King. They were still too small for him. The sweatpants weren't too bad, although he was narrower around the waist and hips than Frank, and the pants had slipped down a couple of inches, probably the only reason they'd reached his feet. The t-shirt was a worse fit, stretched across his chest as though it had shrunk in the wash and leaving a couple of inches of his stomach bare.
Taken together, they made it difficult to miss the dark black of the glyph, tattooed a couple of inches below his navel.
She filed the sight of it away, even though it begged more questions than it answered, while she busied herself with pouring a cup of coffee. It bought her some time to think her way through the best approach to take to get King to open up. Once again, Frank hadn't been in a sharing mood; he'd always had a tendency to be a close-mouthed bastard, but this recent level of secrecy was starting to eat at her.
Dex pointed King towards a chair at one end of the table, and he sank down into it wordlessly. Dex kept going, heading towards the other end of the table where Frank had positioned himself. Velasquez followed him, paying very little attention to King, and Mick emerged from the door behind Frank, still buttoning up his fly, which she hoped to God meant he'd just been to the bathroom.
Given that Sommerfield and Hedges were already firmly ensconced in seats beside Frank, it meant that - deliberately or not - her team had ranged themselves at one end of the table, all of them neatly aligned against King.
King hadn't missed it, which simply confirmed her suspicions that he wasn't stupid. He fidgeted a little, avoiding anyone's eyes, staring out of the window to where the sun shone down over the neighbouring derelict buildings. A brief look of longing passed over his face before he damped it down again, curling his fingers together so that they didn't twitch and give away anything that he was thinking.
"Coffee?" she asked, and it took King a moment to realise that she was talking to him.
He stared at her, thrown and blinking his confusion, but before he could answer, Velasquez interrupted with a firm, "No stimulants."
"That would be a no, then," he said, but the words lacked his normal cockiness - what little there was in his voice was strained, as though he felt like he needed to make the effort but his heart wasn't in it. He was still too thin and washed out, with dark shadows underneath his eyes.
She grabbed a bottle of water for him instead, placing it on the table next to him and taking a seat that was halfway along the side of the table, which meant that it was halfway between King and her team.
"I notice I don't get offered a cup of coffee," Mick groused, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
"You want a cup?"
"Yes."
"Get off your ass and get it then."
Mick shoved two fingers up at her and pushed himself to his feet, grumbling.
"Get me one while you're up," Dex drawled, and Mick scowled over his shoulder at his friend.
King was watching them, picking absently at the label on his water bottle with his thumbnail. Dex and Mick's banter had put him a little at ease. There was a small smile playing around the corner of his mouth, but his brow was crinkled, as though he wasn't entirely sure he was supposed to find their fooling funny. The smile disappeared as soon he caught sight of Frank watching him. Frank's face was drawn down into the frown he'd been wearing since they'd first found King, and Abby could see how that would be intimidating for someone who felt as vulnerable to Frank's whims as King undoubtedly did.
King looked away, twisting the top off his water bottle and taking a slow swig from it. He was obviously playing for time, and Abby couldn't blame him for it.
"Tell me about Danica Talos."
Frank, as usual, shot straight from the hip, no time or patience for the social niceties. It wasn't the way that Abby would have opened things with King, not when King was obviously so ill at ease, and she wasn't at all surprised to see that the question - and the brusque, straight to the point tone it was delivered in - had King tensing up, his mouth setting mulishly. For once, however, he seemed to have reached the conclusion that being a smart-ass wasn't the way to go.
"What do you want to know?" he asked mildly, and Frank tapped his fingernails on the table, an impatient little sound that gave away more than Frank usually did.
"How about you start with how far her operation spreads, how many familiars she's running, and what her plans are, and move on from there?"
King arched his eyebrows, a look of polite disbelief on his face. But there was something else lurking behind it, something that again had Abby thinking that he was stalling.
"What makes you think I know anything about what Danica gets up to?" He sounded bored, but his gaze darted away from Frank's. Either he was a terrible liar or an excellent one.
Frank snorted, his impatience now clear on his face. "What makes you think I give a shit?"
The muscle in King's jaw jumped, but he didn't challenge Frank. He didn't answer him, either, biting at his lip like he didn't know where to start or how much to share. Frank wasn't going to get anywhere like this; the certainty settled into Abby's chest, and it made her reckless.
"Why don't you start at the beginning?" she said, and Frank shot her a guarded look, one she ignored with some effort. It was habit to feel like she had to justify herself to Frank, even when he didn't ask her to. "With Danica..."
King fixed his eyes on her, maybe because it was easier, less intimidating than looking at Frank. "It... it's stupid, you know? I was out with friends, we went to a bar, and I went straight for the one that screamed bad news." He gave a diffident little shoulder shrug, and a small smile formed on his face, one that seemed to be aimed at himself.
"I do that," he said. "It's like I've got a sixth sense for who's going to fuck my life up the most and I just can't resist. There was Veronica... she threw all of my shirts in the garbage. Then there was Natalie... she cheated on me with my best friend at the time. Can't hold that against them too much - they actually ended up getting married, which is legal in Canada. I sent them a fruit basket - I thought that was oddly appropriate."
He trailed off, and Frank shifted in his seat, the look on his face edging past impatient and heading towards forbidding.
"It was Don's birthday, so he got to pick where we went." The look in King's eyes was distant, as though he was working his way through his memories, pulling them up from wherever he'd safely pushed them down. "He picked this techno place, totally not my kind of scene, but he was turning thirty, so I guess he needed to feel like he was still young or something equally pathetic. It was too loud, too bright, but there was this woman..." He trailed off for a moment, and she couldn't figure out whether the memories were good or bad. "Long legs, fuck me shoes, and fuck you attitude." He shrugged again, staring into space rather than looking at any of them now, his fingernails still picking at the bottle's label. "I actually thought we'd hit it off, if you can believe that. Everything was going swimmingly, at least until she bit me. I mean, Jesus. She fucking bit me. And then her cell phone rang." He let out a bitter laugh, oddly out of place with his even tone. "So I'm bleeding to death in her bed while she's taking this oh so important phone call, like I'm nothing."
The last few words held a bewildered kind of grief in them, a sudden switch in tone that she could sympathise with. She wasn't the only one, judging by the faces around the table. All but Abby had lived the same story or some variation of it - their world ripped apart in an instant.
"Why did she let you turn? Why not finish you off?" Frank's voice was calm and steady, but there were undercurrents of disbelief lurking just under the surface, and King didn't miss those either.
"I'm a good lay," he shot back, sliding his swagger into place like it was the only armour he had or needed.
Frank wasn't amused. "Tell me about Talos' plans," he said again, locking his eyes with King. His tone was gentle, but his expression was firm and unyielding. "What's she up to? How many people is she running?"
"I don't know."
"All that time with her - five years - and you don't know anything?"
"She's not exactly the sharing kind."
"No?" Frank leaned forward in his chair, folding his hands neatly on the table and staring at King, his brow pulled down into an irritated frown. "Can't be that good a lay if she never bothered with pillow talk."
King had no answer to that, but the muscle in his jaw twitched again as he looked away from Frank. Frank studied him for a long moment, his expression giving nothing away. "You have a clan tattoo."
King shrugged his shoulders again, jerky and uncoordinated, still avoiding looking at Frank. His expression was stubborn, mulish and uncooperative.
"Want to tell me why you have that if she just picked you up in a bar?"
"She gave it to me once I'd turned."
"Really?" Frank didn't bother to hide the scepticism in his tone. It was the wrong tone to take, not when King was already feeling vulnerable and defensive; Abby shuffled in her seat but a sharp look from Frank kept her silent this time. Frank turned his attention back to King, and his tone was dry as dust. "That doesn't happen in my experience."
"And your experience is just so vast and all encompassing, right?"
"I've spent the last twenty years killing vampires, boy." Frank leaned forward, his expression dangerous. "Don't think you stand a chance if I decide you're more trouble than you're worth. As far as I'm concerned, you're just another familiar who got what they wanted."
"Right." There was a sharp note of anger in King's voice now, too. "Can I be frank, Frank? Since we're apparently in a sharing mood and all. Given that you've never been turned into a vampire by a psycho ex-girlfriend, forgive me if I happen to think that your so-called vast experience is a crock of shit."
Frank's expression froze, a glint of anger in his eyes. Shit. Frank was going to hate her for it, but she needed to head this off and head it off fast if they were going to get anything useful out of King. She'd apologise later, if she still needed to once Frank had come to his senses.
"Why turn you?" she asked, keeping her voice calm and even. She looked directly at King, but that didn't mean she wasn't all too aware of Frank and the mingled disapproval and irritation he was radiating. "That's not the way these things usually play out."
"You don't believe I'm a good lay?"
She didn't smile. "I don't believe that was the only reason."
"So you do believe I'm a good lay?"
"How about we focus on things that are actually important? And no," she added when he opened his mouth, more animation in his eyes than had been there for the rest of the conversation. "That isn't."
King glanced away from her, his eyes meeting Frank's for a moment before his gaze dropped to the table, where he was absentmindedly drawing patterns in the condensation dripping from his bottle of water. "In case you hadn't noticed," he began slowly, "I've got a bit of an attitude problem. And while a gentleman obviously never asks a lady her age, Danica's got hundreds of years on the clock." He looked up and met Abby's eyes. "She's bored," he said simply. "She's really fucking bored, and I'm at least entertaining."
"So... she decided she needed a boyfriend?"
King let out a bitter laugh. "My tattoo's two inches above my dick," he said. "Why don't we think about that for a moment?"
She did, and the scenario she came up with wasn't pretty. "She marked you as her property?"
"I think the most appropriate term would be 'fuck toy'," he said brightly, but his eyes stayed bitter.
It silenced her enough for Frank to step in. "So as her 'fuck toy'," he phrased the term ironically, and King tensed up again, enough to have Abby biting back on a sigh, wondering how the hell Frank, who was usually so smart, could be so stupid when it came to King. "She didn't tell you anything?"
"Did you miss the part where I said she wasn't the sharing kind?"
"Did you miss the part where I said I didn't give a shit?"
The muscle jumped in King's jaw again. "She didn't let me off the leash much," he said, and there were whole worlds in those words. "Mostly she got Asher to do her dirty work."
"Asher?" Frank straightened up, suddenly interested.
"Asher Talos. Danica's brother."
"They're pure bloods?"
"No." King frowned, apparently thrown by the question. "Difficult as it is to believe, Danica was actually human once. She got turned, turned Asher, near as I could tell. The family that slays together and all that jazz."
Frank considered this, the wheels turning behind his stony façade as he stared at King. "Mostly she got Asher to do her dirty work. That's what you said."
"Yes."
"But not always."
King's jaw twitched again, his gaze darting away from Frank's. "What do you want to know? That I ran errands for her sometimes? That I behaved myself? Was a good little boy?"
"Were you?"
Maybe it was the tone in Frank's voice that triggered it, but King seemed to reach a decision, finally looking Frank in the eye. "She set me on fire once," he said, and it took a second for Abby parse the words, for them to actually make a horrible, macabre sense. "It... it's not really something I can recommend. But it worked. I was good." His mouth quirked up in the slightest of smiles, but there was no humour in it, nothing but a kind of broken emptiness. "I was very, very good for... oh, months."
Frank didn't say anything, but he didn't break King's gaze, holding it steadily, nothing of what he was thinking showing on his face.
King was the one to look away first, but Abby got the impression that it was nothing to do with not being able to face Frank.
"The first time I fed..." He trailed off, eyes distant again and swallowing, as though the memory of that thirst was leaving him dry and parched now. He didn't take a drink, although his fingers tightened around his bottle for a moment. "I wouldn't, not at first. But the thirst... you don't know what it's like until you've been through it."
"So you gave in." It wasn't a question, and Frank's tone wasn't kind, but it wasn't needlessly cruel either - just hard and uncompromising, much like Frank himself.
King swallowed again, but again she didn't think it was because of Frank.
"No," he said. "Danica..." He trailed off again, expression bleak. "I wouldn't, and she got tired of it. All dressed up and taunting, with no pay-off. She has a short attention span sometimes. And for someone who's lived as long as she has, she's really fucking impatient." His expression twisted for a moment in remembered pain. "She bit her, right in front of me. And all I could smell was the blood and I wanted it, God, I wanted it. And she told me..." He let out a breathless little laugh. "She told me that this girl was going to turn. She was going to become a monster, like me, live forever like me, and that Danica would make every single second of that eternal life an absolute fucking misery. She'd have done it, too."
"So you killed her to save her."
"No." King let out another one of those broken little laughs, one that twisted in Abby's gut, sharp-edged as it was with grief and guilt. "I killed her because I couldn't save myself."
It was ugly and awkward watching King like this, watch him twist and tie himself in painful knots. But he hadn't finished. He finally took a swig of water, his hand shaking so that drops of it ran down his chin.
"So if you want to know if I was strong enough, if I was brave enough to... what? Keep hold of my humanity? No, I wasn't. Most of the time I worked on pissing Danica off because it was the only thing I had, the only thing I could do that still felt like me. But frankly, Frank? After the whole fire thing, I usually made sure I didn't go too far."
It would have been easier to deal with King's words if they'd been confrontational, if he'd thrown them in Frank's face just to piss Frank off the same way that he claimed he liked to piss Danica off. But they weren't; they were quiet and subdued, when King was anything but.
"You never thought of getting out?"
"And go where? Until Abby here offered me the chance of a goddamned cure, I didn't see how there could be a way out. Even if I got away from Danica, where the fuck was I going to go? I'd still be a monster. No chance of outrunning that."
"No," Frank agreed. "And now?"
There was something in Frank's tone that caught King's attention, leaving him watchful and wary. A cautious look formed slowly on his face as he searched Frank's expression for some sign of what was going on in the razor sharp mind behind it. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't seem to find it.
"Is this the point where you tell me that now that you know the cure works, you're going to take me out back and put a bullet in my brain?" He said it lightly, as though it was a joke, but the look in his eyes said otherwise. There was real fear in there, and something else, something that said he wouldn't have been surprised. She got the feeling that he'd be more surprised now if shit didn't happen to him.
King's question had her shuffling uncomfortably in her seat - and she wasn't the only one around the table doing so - but it didn't seem to faze Frank at all.
"We've discussed it," he said, which was news to Abby. The hurt was sudden and surprisingly sharp. "Sommerfield needs to monitor you for a while yet. Make sure the cure's really taken."
King cast a look at Sommerfield, hope and dread mingled together in it. "I'm... glad?" he said. "And then? I'm a little curious about my long term prospects."
Frank leaned forward, putting more of his weight on his folded hands. His eyes were keen, as focused on King as they'd been throughout, but there was something else in them, something that was not eagerness or anticipation, but watchful and waiting. Dread settled in Abby's stomach, a suspicion of what was coming.
"I'm sure you'd like to go home," he said, and Abby made an abortive move, one that died stillborn when Frank turned his piercing blue eyes onto her. She'd thought he wasn't cruel; she didn't want to be proved wrong.
King didn't miss it. When she looked back at him, meeting his eyes helplessly for a moment, her dread had transferred to him. He swallowed slowly, no idea what was coming but knowing he wasn't going to like it. "Eventually," he said cautiously.
"That's not going to be possible."
From the way that King's shoulders slumped, she suspected that he'd known that, known it and tried to be resigned to it. But it was also clear that he thought that was the worst that was coming.
He was wrong.
Frank slid a folded piece of paper across the table towards King. She knew what it was, but King couldn't even have had an inkling and before she could say anything, warn him, the look in Frank's eyes stopped her short again. They were calm, too calm for what he was doing.
King glanced at her, hesitating as he caught sense of some of what she was trying not to show. Something must have been slipping around the edges of the serenity she was trying to project, because King swallowed as he reached for the paper, pulling it slowly towards him and looking at her again once he had it, searching her face.
The dread settled back into his eyes as he unfolded it and started to read.
Whatever he'd expected - whatever he'd tried to prepare himself for - it wasn't this. His eyes widened and he let out a sound, soft and wounded, as though someone had just knifed him in the gut, driving all of his breath out of him.
His fingers were shaking as they smoothed the paper out, a repetitive little motion as though he thought that if he straightened it, made it pristine, it would reveal itself as a fake, not real. But he couldn't manage it; he let go, his fingers curling against the table top as he shook.
"What the...?" Mick, of course. Abby ignored him, her attention focused on King.
King looked up, his eyes glassy and hollow. "When?" he asked, and that sound, too, was forced out of him, rough and hoarse.
"Two days ago," Frank replied evenly, while next to him Hedges swallowed, a look of guilt crossing his face as though he felt that by finding it he was somehow responsible for it.
King's breath escaped him in a huff, something that sounded half-choked. "How long have you known?"
"We... um..." Hedges shot a nervous sideways glance at Frank, obviously uncomfortable. "We found out yesterday."
"Yesterday?" King's voice broke for a second. "You knew and you didn't tell me?" He switched his attention from Hedges, staring straight at Abby, the hurt and betrayal written clearly on his face. "You knew?"
The grief in his voice silenced her, and she swallowed down all of her justifications; if he needed to rage, to grieve, she'd let him. It wouldn't be the first time she'd watched someone fall apart in front of her. It wouldn't be the last.
Frank said nothing, but Hedges was more honest. "We... um... only told Abby just before..." His voice trailed off, fingers twitching guiltily.
"I'm sorry," Abby said quietly, as though that could ever be enough. King looked at her, his eyes wide and wet. He nodded jerkily, but he didn't let the tears fall, not yet.
"Someone want to fucking well clue me in?" Mick asked again, sounding pissed.
"Um... King's parents. They... um... were killed two days ago," Hedges explained, the words finally falling out in a rush as though if he said it quickly it would be less painful. "Home invasion."
"It wasn't a home invasion," King said brokenly, and there was no anger there, not yet. It would come, she knew. Once he'd had time to process.
"It was Danica Talos," Frank stated calmly, and King threw him a look - there was anger in there now, mingled with the grief, but Frank didn't look away. King did, and his face folded in on itself as he tried desperately not to fall apart in front of them.
"Fuck," Mick breathed slowly, and for once she didn't want to strangle him. There was a kind of shocked awe in his tone, but the look he gave King was as sympathetic as Mick ever got. But then Mick could appreciate what King was going through.
"I didn't think she knew," King whispered brokenly. "Where they were... that they... Her family's been dead so fucking long... I didn't think she knew." He took another shaky breath, and somehow she knew what was coming. "This is my fault."
"No." Her mouth was dry, and she swallowed, not finding the words easy. "It's Danica's fault." It didn't seem to help and she hated that she had to do this, but she'd never been one to back away from the hard things. "King. Your brother -"
His head snapped up, his face horrified and hopeless. His body was tense, bowing towards her as though he dreaded what she was going to say next but needed to hear it anyway. "Which? Alex? Julius?" His expression cracked, and so did his voice. "Both?"
She shook her head, rapidly incorporating the idea of two brothers into what little she already knew of King. "Neither as far as we know, but you know Danica better than anyone here. Will she go after them, too?"
He blinked at her, and the action finally sent a tear rolling down his cheek. He seemed oblivious to it, but Abby wasn't. It hurt seeing him like this, and it shouldn't.
"I..." He stopped dead, his face slack with shock and grief. It was all too understandable - he was still reeling, and she'd just thrown him another curveball. His grief was too close, too personal, and she'd never been any good at dealing with stuff like that. All she wanted to do was get as far away from him as possible; instead she reached out and placed her fingers on his arm, awkwardly pressing them against his skin and hoping it helped.
He didn't pull away.
"I don't know," he said eventually, the words coming out in a rush. "I don't think so..." His face twisted with grief again. "She lashes out, you know? But she has a short attention span. She..."
"She might not care enough to find them?" she completed for him. The words might have been brutal but the idea was enough to have King start the slow, painful process of putting the pieces of himself together, papering over the cracks as much as he could so that they wouldn't see.
"Yeah. And even if she did... she's kind of weird about brothers." He paused, his eyes still wet and red-ringed, but he'd locked everything down as tightly as he could now. Only his ragged breathing and the sensation of his arm trembling underneath her fingers gave him away. "She killed the rest of her family."
But not her brother. Maybe that would be enough to mean that King's would be spared.
"I'll... I'll see what else I can find out," said Hedges quietly, watching King awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. But then Hedges had his own grief; they all did.
"You stay long enough for Sommerfield to get what she needs from you," Frank said gruffly. "And after that..." He paused, waiting until King finally looked up and met his eyes, his own giving nothing away. "We'll see."
-o-
King's face haunted her, although she had no idea why she cared so much. Maybe it had been the naked grief she'd seen written there, or maybe the fact that he was still an enigma and she hated not understanding what was going on, even if it was only what was going on inside his head. Whatever the reason, she found herself standing outside his door, still not sure if she actually wanted to go in and see him.
Mick was on guard, but since Mick seldom gave a fuck about anything, he wasn't giving her any grief, even if he was eyeing her like he suspected that she'd lost her mind. Maybe he had a point. She hesitated for another long moment, and then finally knocked on the door.
There was a long pause before King said, "Come in." He didn't sound very welcoming, but she opened the door anyway, easing her way inside and shutting it behind her.
King was sitting on the bed, still dressed in Frank's too small cast-offs. His back was against the wall, but she tried not to read too much into that, like she tried not to read too much into the fact that his legs were curled up and his feet bare and oddly defenceless - she guessed that Frank's shoes hadn't fit him that well.
He stared back at her silently, his face blank and pale and his eyes red rimmed. She half expected him to recover himself, say something funny and borderline obscene to mask everything he was feeling, the way he'd been hiding behind his smart mouth since they'd first brought him back, but he just swallowed and looked away, his fingers flexing nervously against the fabric of his sweats.
That left her to break the silence.
"I thought I'd check in... see how you're doing."
He licked his lips, still avoiding her eyes. "Thanks," he said, and his voice was shaky. It seemed cruel to push it, insist on knowing how he was doing when it was obvious that the answer was not very well.
She nodded, resisting the urge to wipe her one free sweaty palm against her pants. "I, um... I had Hedges print something out for you." She glanced down at the printout she had in her hand, and then shoved it awkwardly towards him, glad that it hadn't smeared.
He hesitated for a moment before he took it; she couldn't blame him for that one, not after the stunt that Frank had pulled. He searched her face for long moments, almost as if he was looking for some sign that she was about to kick him when he was down. He didn't seem to find it, finally turning the card over. When he saw the picture printed on it he swallowed again, his face crumpling a little.
"It's just from the newspaper website," she explained. "It turned out that they'd used a... higher resolution picture and just squashed the size down." That had been the explanation that Hedges had given her anyway, or at least as much of it as she could remember.
He nodded, his fingers touching the side of the photograph gently as he took in another shaky breath. His eyes were wet, and she shifted uncomfortably.
"I... I didn't think you'd have one. A picture of them, I mean."
"No," he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "Thank you."
Something sharp tugged at her chest.
"Hedges found an obituary as well," she said gently. "If... if you want it." He swallowed again, pressing his lips tightly together and she hesitated before adding, "I thought you might like to know... They never stopped looking for you. That's what the obituary said anyway."
He nodded again, his breath even shakier, and she wasn't surprised when he blinked and a tear finally spilled over to roll down his face. He wiped it away impatiently with the heel of his hand. "Thank you," he said again, and this time the words were tight and choked.
There was nothing else she could think to say; she nodded and left him alone with his grief.
Mick had gone, but Frank was waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He looked up when he heard the door, meeting her eyes.
She stayed silent, unable to think of anything to say, nothing that would be productive, anyway, and Frank waited until she'd closed the door behind her before he finally spoke.
"You think I should have broken it to him differently." There was no anger in his voice, no sign of defensiveness, just a kind of tired blankness Frank's voice that wasn't any easier for Abby to hear. "Maybe gone a bit easier him."
She hesitated before she nodded. "We could've earned his trust," she said, tacking a maybe onto the end of the sentence in the interest of full honesty. And because Frank being this quiet, this uncertain was outside her realm of experience
Frank stared at her for a long moment and then nodded thoughtfully. "I don't think you did too badly on that one," he said. "But I had to know." She frowned at him, struggling to follow his meaning, and he gave her a small, quiet smile before elaborating. "I needed to see how he reacted, Whistler. Needed to know if it was genuine."
She treated him to a long, steady look, trying to keep her face calm while her mind whirred behind it. "You still think it's a trap?"
"I think that there was a possibility that it was a trap." He rubbed his hand over his face, scrubbing the bristles that were already growing in with his palm. "I know it seems far-fetched," he admitted, "but you don't know Danica Talos."
"But you do know her?"
He paused for a moment, his fingers still curled in the act of scratching at his chin. "I know of her," he said eventually, and his tone was dry, and that was more familiar. "She's a devious bitch, and she's got a particular hate on for hunters. I wouldn't put it past her to sacrifice her favourite toy if she thought she could bring down someone like Blade."
She filed that away, as well, along with everything else she knew about King. It didn't seem feasible, but Frank had a hell of a lot more experience than she did in the vagaries of vampires. She wasn't about to question his judgement.
"What now?" she asked, and Frank's expression grew distant and thoughtful.
"Watch and wait," he said, giving her the kind of shrug she'd have expected to see from Dex rather than Frank. "Not a hell of a lot else we can do." He straightened up, tilting his head to look at her. "Just... don't get too cosy with him, not until we have a better idea of exactly which way the wind is blowing."
She nodded and he gave her a brief, approving smile, squeezing her shoulder before he walked away.
She watched him go and wondered what the hell it was about Danica Talos that had men like Frank and King running scared of her.
-o-
Part 05: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
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"Jesus." She stared back down at the paper again, not reading the article but staring at the picture set next to it instead, a posed portrait of a neatly turned out couple in late middle age. "Does he know?"
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh about there I had an inkling, then when he found out later in the chapter...
Oh man the ache is actually visceral. It hit HARD. And then Abby's pain and god, King.
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