Shawn thought of all that Remy had probably put himself through to get to them so quickly, the guilt twisted through him once more. He watched as Remy rolled over
carefully and turned away from him, and he cursed himself for all the confused
feelings he harbored. It should have been simple. How could he have compared five years to three months? How could he have betrayed that trust so easily?
“Shawn?” Remy ventured finally.
“Hmm?” Shawn responded in a sleepy tone, trying to make Remy think he
had been close to sleep instead of close to a nervous breakdown.
“You never answered my question,” Remy said accusingly.
“Didn’t I?” Shawn asked in confusion.
“Mais non. You thought you would distract me by answering other
questions, but that only works once a night.”
Shawn sighed and reached out to roll Remy over to face him again in the
darkness.
“So we’re going to do this now, are we?” Shawn asked in near defeat.
“Do you think me a traitor, Shawn?” Remy asked bluntly.
“What would you do, Remy? What would you do if I were the Archer?”
Shawn asked suddenly.
Remy blinked at him and stopped breathing as they stared at one another.
Finally, he let his breath out in another long, slow exhalation. “You’re not, though, so what does it matter?” he asked uncomfortably.
“How do you know I’m not the Archer?” Shawn asked, feeling the need to
play Devil’s Advocate and harboring suspicions he just couldn’t shake. “We were
apart for the first time in five years, you realize, before this mission started. For a full
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two months, Remy. How do you know I wasn’t off killing my fellow agents and–”
“Shawn!”
“What would you do?” Shawn demanded. “After I’ve just told you that I’ve
betrayed your trust and gone and fallen for another man. What would you do if I had betrayed more than that?”
Remy stared at him for what seemed an eternity, and finally the younger man
swallowed and blinked at him. “I told you,” he said quietly. “I would follow you.
Wherever. Even into the very gates of Hell if you felt the need to go. Nothing you can say or do would change that. Maintenant, tell me the truth.”
“What if it were one of the others?” Shawn asked persistently, ignoring the
question and the pounding of his heart. Remy’s words had both wounded him and
thrilled him at the same time, but he was determined to get his answers.
“What?”
“What if the Archer were one of the others? What if Thiago is the Archer?
Or Brandt? Or Carl, or Niko? What if he’s one of them? What would you do then?”
Remy stared at him, blinking rapidly as he tried to figure out how Shawn’s
mind was working. Shawn watched him closely, waiting for the spark of suspicion in Remy’s eyes, but it never came.
“I would follow,” Remy stated quietly.
Shawn was taken aback by Remy’s answer. He hadn’t expected that at all.
He had expected a vehement protest as to the innocence of his companions or…
something.
“Why?” he asked curiously.
“Because they’ve earned my loyalty, too. And no matter what happens now,
they have it.”
Shawn closed his eyes and swallowed painfully. “Your loyalty will get you
killed one day, Remy,” he mumbled.
“My loyalty is the only thing keeping me alive,” Remy responded acidly.
Shawn’s eyes snapped open and he stared at Remy. “You do, then,” Remy said
painfully. “You think me a traitor for making the deal.”
“I never said that,” Shawn argued. He was waffling and he knew it, but the
truth was that he didn’t know what he thought. If Remy wanted to join the Archer
then… yeah. That made him a traitor. And Shawn was under orders to kill traitors.
Trained to do it. Programmed to do it. His only defense against the impulse was to fool himself into thinking that Remy was still with him. He had to be with them, still.
“Are you the Archer, Shawn?” Remy asked softly
Shawn stared at him, and Remy waited patiently for his answer.
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“You shouldn’t have to ask,” Shawn responded finally.
“Right,” Remy said in disgust. “You know what? I don’t care who he is,
Shawn. I don’t care if he’s one of us. I want to find him. I want to join him. I want to do whatever he needs me to do to take the fucking Organization down, and then we’ll disappear.”
“Remy, for fuck’s sake what are you–”
“I–”
“Shut it! I don’t want to hear about joining the fucking Archer! I don’t want
to hear about taking the Organization down! Jesus fucking Christ!” Shawn rolled over and tried to roll out of the bed. He needed to pace. Remy grabbed his arm before he could make it all the way out of the bed.
“Shawn! You wanted to be free,” Remy said, his voice low and persuasive
and incredibly enticing. “We could be free. We’ll disappear together. We’ll take the others with us! Brandt, you can bring him,” Remy added in a hushed whisper. “We’ll pool everything we have and we’ll buy a fucking island in the Caribbean or–”
“An island?” Shawn asked, his voice wavering between frustration and
amusement.
“I hear they’re selling cheap,” Remy responded with a shrug.
Shawn snorted, close to despair, and sat on the edge of the bed with his head
in his hands.
“No more of this, Remy,” he said finally.
“But–”
“Please! I’m fucking begging you!” Shawn said as he turned and grabbed
Remy by the arm and shook him violently. “Not another fucking word about joining
the Archer!”
“John said he would know if I went back on my word,” Remy persisted.
“John was talking out his ass.”
“And you were there, were you?” Remy challenged seriously.
“I–”
“He was serious, Shawn,” Remy interrupted in a low voice. “The Archer is
watching us.”
“Bollocks! He may be watching us, Remy, but who are you more afraid of?
Him or me!” Shawn yelled before he could think through the implications. As soon as the words left his mouth, he blinked in shock and pulled his hand back. He had just threatened Remy. Threatened him! What in the fuck was this mission doing to them?
They were both silent. The room seemed to grow darker as the silence
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deepened. Shawn could feel Remy moving on the bed, and he waited to discern
exactly what the man was doing. Soon he realized Remy was lying flat once more,
and he carefully shifted and flattened out beside the man. They were silent, laying on their backs side by side once more, staring at the ceiling and barely breathing.
“We find another way, then,” Remy finally murmured. Shawn turned his
head to look at Remy. Even in the dark Shawn could see the determined set of
Remy’s jaw. “The six of us. We get out together or die trying.”
XI.
THE Archer lay awake until the dawn, trying to decide on his next move. He had
several roadblocks, the largest of which involved actually making contact with the other five as the Archer instead of the man they knew him to be. The next step would, of course, be getting them to follow him. But the Archer liked to take one nearly impossible
step at a time.
He lay there despairing as to what to do, thinking perhaps that the best move
would be to simply expose himself and hope they didn’t kill him. Remy seemed open to the idea of joining him. Perhaps he could take Remy into his confidence and make an ally of him, not as the man Remy knew, but as the Archer. If anything, Remy was loyal to him. To all of them, really. It could possibly work. It could possibly be forcing Remy into choosing between his loyalties, though. That, or Remy would go
into a rage and kill him and solve that problem. That certainly wasn’t very appealing.
As he thought through his situation, it hit him suddenly. Gray Kincaid was
supposed to be in Brisbane, lying low. He could put in a call to Gray and get him to put on a little performance, something to point them in the right direction. Yes! That was it! He would just have to figure out how to contact him without raising any
suspicion. And he would have to do it quickly.
Finally, with his plan in place, the Archer drifted off into a restless sleep.
XII.
NIKOLAUS’S head hurt. In fact, his entire body ached with the very distinct pain of fatigue.
He hated having to move again that morning, but they were better off safe
than sorry, as Thiago had put it. They moved one at a time to the new location; an empty flat Brandt kept in Brisbane. It was nice, and Nikolaus found himself
wondering why a rambling pyro like Brandt had a nice uptown flat instead of a shack in the outback or a hole he’d blown in the ground somewhere. It was a pleasant
surprise, though it left Nikolaus feeling slightly uneasy for some reason he could not define.
Nikolaus, Remy, Brandt, and Carl sat at a café table outside, a few blocks
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from the flat, their various notes, maps and whatnot spread about them haphazardly as they discussed their next move.
“What does Shawn think of it?” Brandt asked as he lounged in his chair and
watched the other patrons of the café nonchalantly.
Remy shifted uncomfortably and looked at them all carefully. Nikolaus knew
Remy had to be sore after the treatment he had gotten the night before, but he
wondered if that was the reason the other man couldn’t sit still or if it was nerves.
“Shawn won’t go for it,” Remy said finally
“Then why are we discussing it?” Brandt asked coolly.
“We’re discussing it because I want you to know what we’ll be differing
from with the plan I’ve been trying to formulate,” Remy responded testily.
Nikolaus glanced at Carl worriedly. Remy and Brandt had been snapping at
one another all morning, and they’d just barely been able to restrain themselves when Shawn had been present. If they started sniping at one another without him there to rein them in, Nikolaus didn’t think he and Carl would be able to put a lid on it before they attracted unwanted attention.
Nikolaus leant forwards when Remy started cursing inventively.
“You fucking motier foux, you kicked me!” Remy hissed as he leant down
and rubbed his shin. “Fuck you, you fucking mad fuck.”
“Remy!” Carl admonished, his eyes sliding to a mother with two small
children sitting several tables away. “You’re gaining some undue attention,” he
hissed. “Let’s try to avoid stepping into a minefield, okay?
“Mines?” Brandt repeated with interest as he zeroed in on Carl. Nikolaus and
the other two froze and looked at Brandt warily. His eyes gleamed suddenly with
renewed passion and Remy and Carl both edged away as they watched him.
“Down, boy,” Remy said as he put a tentative hand on Brandt’s forearm and
patted him carefully. Brandt and Remy looked at one another, their eyes narrowed
and their lips twitching briefly before they were both snickering quietly.
“Sorry I kicked you,” Brandt snickered finally.
“Yeah well, sorry I ‘fucked’ at you,” Remy responded with a smirk. This got
them all snickering again, and when they calmed down finally all the tension was
gone from their little group. Nikolaus sat back and looked around at the other patrons idly as the waitress came to bring their food. He supposed there were advantages to being half-crazy.
The mother and her two kids hadn’t noticed them. There were several
couples sitting around, lost in their own worlds, and a group of young ladies sat staring at the four of them intently. Nikolaus smirked at them and they giggled and blushed in an amusing manner.
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At the next table, a man sat reading a newspaper and rocking his head
slightly to the music coming from his little white iPod. Nikolaus’s eyes lingered on him, thinking he looked vaguely familiar. His red hair was shaggy, and his beard
looked as if it needed a trim, but other than that, the portion of his face that Nikolaus could see was fairly unremarkable. Nikolaus shook his head and returned his attention to the others.
“Should we not wait for the others to talk about this plan of yours?” Carl
asked as he unwrapped his silverware. He and Nikolaus seemed to be thinking along the same lines. He wanted Shawn there to crack the whip if the discussion went south again. Remy looked at him appraisingly, and Brandt shrugged and looked off into the distance disinterestedly.
“Sure,” Remy said eventually. “They should be back soon, non? Shall we
have another look at those notes then?” Remy asked them. Nikolaus frowned at him
and leaned towards him until he could speak and have just Remy hear him.
“Should you not be practicing a little discretion here?” he asked
disapprovingly as he gestured at the tabletop covered with their material.
Remy smiled pensively. “You make me proud, Niko,” he said with a wink.
“But people rarely pay attention to what other people are doing in places like this,” he said as he gestured vaguely at the other patrons. “If there’s someone here who knows what we’re on about, then we’re dead already. No need for discretion.”
That didn’t exactly make Nikolaus feel much better.
“Where’s my crispy paper?” Remy asked absently as he fumbled through the
stack of papers and files, completely oblivious to Nikolaus’s discomfort.
Carl dug through the papers and brought out the message Remy had carried
with him throughout all his ordeals. It was burnt and bloodstained and scribbled upon, but it made Nikolaus smile slightly as Remy took it and began to stare at it.
Carl took out the other note, the one Remy had made of the second message
Nikolaus had uncovered, and he and Brandt bent their heads over it.
As Nikolaus puzzled over the now familiar jumble of letters and numbers,
the music from the redhead’s headphones got louder and louder, and finally Nikolaus looked up to glare at the man. He had taken the things out of his ears and put them on the table, turning the volume up all the way and rocking his head back and forth as the surprisingly loud music blared out of his specialized earphones in the otherwise calm atmosphere.
“D’you mind, mate?” Brandt growled as he looked up at the man.
“Hmm?” the man responded absently as he looked up from his newspaper in
surprise and turned in his seat slightly to look at Brandt.
“Could you turn that down a bit?” Nikolaus asked politely, even though the
man now had his back to him.
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“Oh! Yeah, sorry,” the man said in a slow, Southern American accent.
“Sorry ’bout that. It just makes me feel at home, y’know, hearing that play. It’s Dixie,” he o
ffered as if that was supposed to make it okay.
Nikolaus did a double take and then glanced at Remy, but the Cajun didn’t
seem to be bothered by the use of his nickname in song.
“That’s fascinating, mon frère, ” Remy murmured disinterestedly as he
chewed on his pen and stared at the paper in front of him without ever turning around to look at the man sitting behind him.
The guy shrugged and put the earphones back in his ears before gathering his
things and getting up to walk away. Nikolaus watched him go curiously, thinking that he looked awfully familiar and that he seemed to be in quite a hurry for someone who had been so relaxed just moments before. When he glanced back at the table,
Nikolaus saw what looked to have been the man’s Sudoku puzzle still lying on the
table. He frowned and reached out to snag it.
“He wasn’t very good at this,” he said dubiously as he examined the
answers. It was obvious, even on a passing glance, that some of the answers weren’t correct. “Hell, he’s even got letters in here,” Nikolaus laughed as he examined it.
Suddenly his laughter died away and he frowned at the puzzle, then looked at the
message Remy held in his hands. “Gott,” he breathed as realization came tumbling down on him.
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked quickly as he looked up into Nikolaus’s
shocked eyes.
“Mein Gott,” Nikolaus responded slowly as he looked up into the crowd the
man had disappeared into.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nikolaus saw Shawn and Thiago running
toward them through the crowded plaza.
XIII.
BRANDT spotted Thiago and Shawn at almost the same time as Nikolaus did, and he
stood half out of his chair in alarm. What could possibly make those two men lose their cool enough to literally run through a crowded plaza?
Nikolaus sat frozen as he watched them approach, and Carl was tense in his
chair as he sat beside Brandt, looking as if he were about to jump into action. Remy sat calmly sipping his drink as he looked at Nikolaus curiously. He wasn’t even
paying attention to Shawn and Thiago. Brandt spared him a little sneer before looking back to Shawn and Thiago as they jogged up breathlessly.