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Part 2: Molly
Rating: PG-13
Universe: Carogne
Characters/Pairings: Sebastien, Molly Markos, strong mention of Jan
Summary: Sebastien deals with the fallout of his discussion with Sorka, in the form of one very angry Molly.
Wordcount: 2115
Claimer: Mine, except for Molly, who is my sister's, same as Jan
Someone rang the bell out in the apothecary. Sebastien straightened, putting down the sword he'd been cleaning, and moved to the door. He wasn't nervous. Generally speaking, the nasty people in his life didn't tend to ring the bell. So he wasn't nervous, wasn't even thinking of being nervous, before he walked out and the smell hit him and he had to spend a moment pushing panic down and trying to resist the urge to hide under the counter.
River water and sewer and good stew. Just a hint of spice, and the flatness of flour. Crawling night.
"What can I do for you, Mrs Markos?" he managed, politely, spine stiff and straight and ready for the kind of blow that didn't come physically. Jan had muscle. His grandmother had power.
She didn't answer for a long minute. He could feel her eyes on him, feel the weight of her stare, and furiously resisted the shudder that wanted to crawl through him. He was not going to bow before Docklands Molly. Jan was his bloody friend, about the only good one he had, and if she didn't like it she could jump in her own damned stew!
Crawling night, why did all the women in his life have to be terrifying?
"I've been hearing rumors," she said at last, her voice calm and blank and careful. He twitched before he could stop himself, and sensed her bitter little smile of triumph.
"What kind of rumors?" he tried, a poor cover admittedly, but there wasn't much point in trying better. Not with her.
"Oh, nothing much," she said lightly, and he wished for his cane. That tone never meant anything good. "Rumors about a bounty on my grandson. An unofficial bounty, through the mehwet. Enforcers, looking for a name for themselves. That kind of thing. You heard anything about that, Mr Sebastien?"
Well, nothing much he could say to that, was there? "I've heard," he said shortly. "Most of the mehwet's probably heard by now. Why?" She was silent for another little moment, deliberately, trying to frighten him. She was succeeding, but he wasn't about to let it show. Not for her.
"Do you know how I heard about it?" she asked at last, quietly. He twitched, surprised.
"I presumed through your contacts," he answered, honestly baffled. "I hardly expected you to miss it!" Not when it was about a threat to her grandson. Docklands Molly had feelers the breadth of Carogne looking specifically for even a whisper of a threat to Jan, and tended to be ruthless and somewhat spectacular in response to them, no matter which side of the board they came from. She squashed Wekha and Polizei alike in defense of her family, and anyone with a brain in Carogne's underworld knew that.
"Hmm," she murmured, leaning forward on the counter, leaning into his space, causing him to twitch badly and lean back. She studied him for a long minute, looking for signs of ... something. He had no idea what, and had to hope it showed, because whatever she was looking for, he had no idea what it was.
"Hmm what?" he snapped at last, strongly disliking the sensation of being stared at. He always had. He may be a deformed little freak, but he was not a sideshow, and he was not going to be stared at. "For heaven's sake, woman, out with it! Whatever you want, you're going to have to tell me, because I have no idea what you're looking for!"
She stared at him for another minute, and he was close, so very close, to actual violent action, when she suddenly reached out and seized his wrist. He froze, his other paw gripping her wrist on pure instinct, his lips pulling back in a snarl of warning, and then she spoke.
"Sorka told me," she said, very quietly, and his knees gave out. He staggered, releasing her arm to grab at the counter, flinching back from her.
"What?" he rasped, horrified. "What?"
"Sorka told me," she repeated, slowly and carefully. "She told me a lot of things, actually. Came by to see me just so she could." He flinched, his paw fluttering in the air between them, panicking as she went on, implacable. "Want to know what she said, little doctor?"
He shook his head before he thought, because it couldn't be good, it wouldn't be good, and crawling night, was she going to have him killed? Because she could, and would, if Sorka had said ... Sorka wouldn't say. Would she? She was mad, in all senses of the word, and she was in a fey mood after promising not to touch them, but even she wouldn't take revenge this way, would she?
He shrank a little. It was Sorka. Of course she would.
"What did she say?" he whispered, small and afraid and proud enough to raise his chin when he said it, proud enough to angle his head so his blind eyes were facing her. Her paw tightened over his wrist, briefly, almost soothingly, and he gripped the counter to hold himself up.
"She told me there was a bounty out on my grandson. She told me she had planned to kill me so she could clear the way for it." He jerked, but she held him tight, and kept going. "She told me how she planned to do it. How she planned to kill Jan afterwards. She told me this, doctor. To my face, she told me how she planned to destroy my family, how she was going to lure Jan into the sewers with you, how she was going to cut his throat in the dark like a feral, how she was going to carry his head to the mehwet after. She told me this."
He stood very still, trembling a little, half in fear and half in stupefied reaction to the threat to Jan. Because he could feel it, could hear it happening in his head, hear the bewildered tone in Jan's voice as he followed him, hear the shock when Sorka arrived, hear the terrible gurgle as blood filled his friend's throat ... He was shaking. He was shaking against the counter, leaning all his weight on it, because he could imagine it all too clearly, because he knew the sound, the exact sound Jan would make as he died, and the thought of it put a ball of white fire in his belly and a clawing, desperate thing in his throat. He felt sick. He felt more than sick. He felt furious.
"She will not," he heard himself growl. "She will not! Night and riverdank, she will never touch him!" He shook under her hand, wanting to pull away, to gesture, to promise and make it clear, because gottverdammt but Jan was his friend, he was his, and Sorka would kill him before he let her use him for that! He would ...
"I know," Molly Markos said, quietly, and he stopped, stupidly, wiping at his ear with his free paw.
"What?" he asked, at last.
"I know," she repeated, gently, and he recoiled in raw shock, because Docklands Molly was never gentle, not with him, because she hated him and had never hesitated to let him know, and he didn't believe what he had just heard. He didn't believe it.
"What?" he said again, dumbly.
"She told me," Molly explained. "She let me get riled up, let me get so mad I wanted to strangle her then and there, rip her apart with my bare hands ... and then she told me. She told me you had stopped her. Told me you had forbidden her to touch Jan, had even threatened her if she dared." The was something like admiration in her voice, and he shook his head stupidly, confused. "She told me you told her not to touch me, either." She stopped at that, paused for a moment, and when she started again there was almost a touch of uncertainty in her voice. "Why?" she asked.
He shook his head, too bewildered to even understand what she was asking. "What?" he whispered, and he realised that he was being an idiot, realised that he needed to find another word to be able to say, but he simply had no idea what was going on.
"Why did you forbid her to touch me?" Molly repeated, patiently. "You don't like me, doctor. I don't like you. We have never pretended otherwise. Why protect me, then?"
He twitched a little, coming back to himself, enough to wonder at her idiocy. "Why do you think?" he snapped. "Without you, Jan hasn't a hope! The Wekha would eat him alive, and the Polizei would throw him to them without a second thought! Without you to keep the mehwet in line ..." Without her, Sorka and the like, not to mention Jan's supposed colleagues in the Polizei, would kill him without a second thought. And Sebastien was not about to let that happen. Didn't she realise that? Didn't she realise that while he'd happily drop her in a vat of her own stew, he would never, never allow Jan to be hurt while he could help it. Even if it meant helping her.
She was silent again, which worried him, quite aside from seriously getting on his nerves, and he wished she'd stop. Just say something, strike him, call her goons, whatever, just so it was done. She'd given him enough damn frights for one evening, and he badly wanted her gone, wanted her out of here, so he could sit down and shake for a little while in peace. But she didn't leave.
"You know, I did think it might be some ploy on your part, doctor," she said quietly, coldly. "That you sent Sorka, made a little threat. Or wanted me to owe you, wanted something to hold over my head. One of those games of favours you're so very good at." He stiffened, furious, because although he'd pay quite a lot in blood and favours to have her owe him that way, he would never use Jan to do it, but then she was speaking again, and he couldn't even open his mouth. "But I should have known. I should have known. Jan doesn't call people friends who'd do that. He's not so stupid as all that. And I should have known it. I should have known there was a reason he trusted you."
"There is," he snapped, defensive and almost afraid, because if Jan trusted him than Jan was really a lost cause. You didn't just trust people like him! "He's a suicidal idiot, couldn't you tell?"
She slapped him, one sharp burst across his cheek, and he staggered, tasting blood in his mouth where he'd bitten his cheek. He raised a paw to his face, stunned.
"You don't talk about him like that," she said calmly. "Jan is a better friend, a better person, than you could ever hope to deserve. He's not like you. That makes him honest, not a idiot. Understood?"
He said nothing, glaring at her, because that was too much, too far, and he had a longstanding and quite understandable hatred for people who hit him and spoke to him with that kind of contempt. He knew what he was, thank you, knew very well his own myriad flaws, and while he might agree with her that Jan was a far better person than he, she had no right to say so, no right at all. And though she could threaten him, though she could hit him and get away with it, squeeze his wrist and keep him close to her, he had his own weapons, and not even Molly Markos was immune to the chill of his furious, eyeless glare, the white gleam of his left eye and the ruin of his right.
She let go of his wrist, pulling back and whispering softly in apology. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."
"Yes," he agreed, chillingly, holding his wrist gingerly, icy with offended pride. "It was." She backed off, standing straight from the counter, pulling all the way out of his space. It wasn't much of an apology, but he had learned some time ago to take what he could get. "Now if you don't mind ..." Meaningful, cold. He needed her to leave.
"Of course," she said, soft and with genuine shame. "Of course. But ... doctor?"
He stiffened even further, almost painfully, and snarled at her. "What?"
She didn't comment on the harshness of his voice, hid her contempt as she turned away and headed back through the shop, only to pause as she reached the door, turning back to him long enough to say: "I do owe you, doctor. I owe you."
And then she left, and he had no idea what he was meant to do next.
From:
no subject
*shudders* Somehow Sebastien being sightless makes his aural imaginings all the more powerful, because he catches the details so well. Watching his protectiveness clash with Molly's was amazing.
From:
no subject
Heh. Him and Molly are pretty awesome together. Mostly because they hate each others guts, but would each of them do anything to protect Jan. Who doesn't understand why they don't like each other at all. *smiles and ruffles his fur*
Thanks for reading!
From:
no subject
Heh. She can say Sebastien doesn't deserve him, and Sebastien can close-to think it, but Jan's not dead, and he could have been. That's worth a lot.
Sebastien's fascinating. So terrified, so very, very good at cowering when he needs to, and yet... when pushed, he may bend (or appear to), but when pushed too far, he won't. At all. And then he's deadly. And loyal, if threats Jan are part of his "too far". From a safe distance, I really like him.
From:
no subject
Heh. Sebastien doesn't know what to do with Jan. He knows what's happening between himself and Sorka, mostly, because they're using each other and he gets that, but with Jan ... Jan never asks him for anything. Which makes Sebastien want to give him things, and not ask for anything in return. Which terrifies him.
Hee! I love my rat, my Sebastien. He's scared and twisty and paranoid and mean, but he has his points of honour and he sticks to them. *snuggles him* I'm so glad you like him!