scribal_goddess | Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years

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Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years

Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years
Contents and Warnings
Chapter Nine: The Sound of Never

The staccato click of shoes grew closer, and a man in a grey suit entered the room.

My first thought was relief – he wasn’t Christian Grey – but he was still definitely armed and professional. I could tell because of the military stance and the earpiece, and decided, from the way that our captor subtly paid attention when he entered, without taking his eyes off of Allie or myself, that he was important.

It took a few seconds for my brain to click into gear beyond registering that I’d probably seen him distantly amongst Grey’s security entourage at the party. I blame the fact that it had to be nearly three in the morning.
The double take that he did upon seeing us was enough to jog my memory.

“Who are you,” asked Jason Taylor, “and why are you here?”

I mentally sighed. “I’m Lindsay Pilot,” I told him, “This is Aliea Veldon, and we’re detectives.” Then, trusting that it was now all right to make more than the minimum amount of movement, I leaned back in my uncomfortable seat. “I don’t suppose the name Lelia Williams means anything to you?”

I could feel the look of fond exasperation that Allie was giving me. More than that, I could feel the tension slowly starting to seep from the room, like air from a leaky balloon.

Taylor opened his mouth to say something, but there were a few soft footfalls that cut him off.

“I told you not to come,” Leila said softly from the doorway.

The spring-tightened corner of my soul relaxed as I looked at her. I could almost hear Allie’s shoulders unwind next to me. Leila looked a bit ruffled, and Allie’s coat hung on her like a deflated circus tent, but she looked calm and was only hunched in on herself a little. Considering where she was, it was almost a planted flag of defiance.

“Lindsay insisted on chasing you down so that she could remind you when your stitches had to come out,” Allie said.

“You know these people, Leila?” Taylor asked, eyeing us suspiciously.

She came half a step into the room, and nodded at him. “They’re working with the police to bring him down,” she said. “They took me in.” Her eyes flickered down to the painfully gleaming tiles, and though her expression didn’t exactly tremble, it flickered a bit.

“This is ridiculous,” I said to Taylor. “I take it you’re no longer holding us at gunpoint?” I stood up and crossed the room to offer Leila a hug. She put her arms around my shoulders and hung on with surprising strength. “Believe me, I know you want to help,” I told her when I let go, “but you don’t have to do any of this alone. You don’t have to work with these guys unless you really want to, and-”

“No, we have a plan,” she said. “And I do want to help. I think – well, this is the least I can do. I found out that he’s been… controlling… her, by telling her how dangerous I am.” Her voice quavered a little. “I shouldn’t have come back.”

There were only two people here who could have told her that, so I split my glare between Taylor and Sawyer. Hadn’t they ever heard of giving people only the information that they actually required?

Taylor was unimpressed, but he’d put his gun away and apparently instructed Sawyer to do the same, which effectively meant that Allie and I now outnumbered them. “And how did you come into this?” he asked, extending his cynicism to Allie as well as me.

“We were hired to investigate Christian Grey, and we have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility,” Allie replied, deploying an equally sardonic eyebrow.

“By who?” Sawyer chimed in.

“You can’t seriously expect us to answer that,” I replied. “Your turn: what’s the plan?”

“Ladies first. How did you come into contact with Leila, and why are you here?” Taylor’s voice was all business. “Sawyer, we need to get back on track before Welch or someone shows up – take Leila and keep making the copies. Leila, are you good to go get what we need?”

“Yessir.” Leila replied, and gave a frankly awful salute.

“Good girl,” Taylor said, giving her his full attention and an almost paternal smile. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re done.”
I watched the relief slide over her face before she turned around and disappeared through the door again. Sawyer shot a glance at his boss before following her, giving her a wide margin of space.

That left Allie and I alone with Taylor, which meant one of two things: he trusted us, or he was confident that he could take us. Either way, he gestured for us to sit down with him at the table, and we cooperated.

“Think carefully before you answer,” he said in a low voice. “If you’re only trying to get information out of her, I swear you’ll live to regret it.”
I could feel my indignation bristling up, so I took a deep breath and tried to answer diplomatically. Allie got there before I did. “We bumped into her on the street,” she said, “Like we’ve already told you, we were hired to stop Christian Grey, and that’s what we’re here to do.”

“If you think you can force her to testify, you’re wrong,” Taylor continued, his voice level and somehow painfully earnest. It was the voice of a man who doesn’t need to rely on volume or anger. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to put Grey away, but if you think you’re going to drag her through all that, again -” he shook his head. “I’ll testify myself, give more information than you knew existed – but you have to let her go.”

The indignation settled out of my shoulders. “We’re not exactly officially with the police,” I said. “Private Detectives. I’d just hoped… she left us a note,” I finished lamely, and shrugged. “Said that we should contact you if -” unexpectedly, I felt my throat swelling with the ache that came just before tears, and Allie shifted closer to me. I tried to clear my throat and only partially succeeded. “I thought something awful was going to happen, so we came straight here.” It was all I could still manage to say.

I watched Taylor sag, and scrub at his face.

“What a mess,” he said, and I couldn’t help but agree.

“What about you?” Allie asked, drawing Taylor’s gaze. “We’ll work together better – or at least get in the way less – if we know what you’re up to.”

Somebody had clearly given Taylor pointers on how to drag himself back together. In under a second, he’d gone back to efficiency and command.

“You don’t want to get involved,” he said. “Grey’s dangerous. I’m sure you know that already, but – no offense – you don’t understand what he will do to you. And he’s not the only one who we’re going to take down. I still wish that we didn’t have to get Leila involved, but the truth is, we needed her, to get him to leave the building without us. In a couple hours, we’ll have enough information to go to the police and give them everything, including the evidence against everyone who has been enabling Grey, and they’ll be able to catch them all in the same net.” He glanced between me and Allie and came to a decision. “I’ll let you out the back way with Leila before we do. She’ll need somebody to help her get out of the way.”

It seemed fair enough to me. We’d come to see Leila safe, and we couldn’t push our way into the circle of this heroic conspiracy any more than we could force the police to allow us to investigate alongside them.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” I told Taylor, “but all right. Allie?”

Allie made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “You’re in charge of this investigation,” she said. Her eyes were tired, and my heart swelled painfully when I realized what she was trying to say. Of course she’d want me to keep talking, cover for her while she tried to scrape together some magical protection for Taylor and Sawyer.

She’d keep going until she dropped.

“The girl that… Ana,” I fumbled. “She’ll be okay?”

Taylor nodded, but grimaced. “All right as she can be,” he said, “don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. With any luck, Grey won’t know what’s happened until he’s been arrested. She’s a sweet kid, and she doesn’t deserve anything he’s put her through.”

“Nobody does,” I said, quietly. “If it helps – between your case and ours, there’s almost no way he can walk free. Leila’s testimony could help, but she won’t need to if she doesn’t want to.” And I was fully resolved that after tonight, our couch was hers for as long as she needed and wanted to stay. Home was something I doubted she’d had much experience with in the last few years, and if she didn’t want to go back to her parents in Massachusetts right away, she should have somewhere to stay.

Taylor nodded and stood up. “Please stay in this room and out of our way,” he said, “this will be over far more quickly if I don’t have to stay here and watch over you.”

At that moment, Sawyer stepped back through the door.

“I can’t find Leila,” he said.

Chapter Eleven: War Far from Over

* I fixed the medicine fail in Anoxic with the gracious help of dragonclaws, who should know. PSA: keep your bandages clean and dry, and your stitches away from water to prevent infection, and use iodine or chlorhexidine to clean them rather than rubbing alcohol, to prevent scarring. Never use hydrogen peroxide. This has been a public service announcement by Scribbles.

** An overdeveloped sense of responsibility is not the same thing as an overdeveloped sense of vengeance.

*** After so many self-contained chapters containing multiple days, I have to say it’s nice to be able to do proper cliffhangers again.

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** An overdeveloped sense of responsibility is not the same thing as an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. LOL But it's very close. ;)

Can't wait to see where you're taking this next!

The Princess Bride deserves every quote and offhand reference. ;D

Not long now!

It's such a quotable movie! Did you hear there's a possibility Disney will make it into a stage show?

I don't know whether to be delighted or terrified. They seem to be buying up nostalgia in bulk.

True. But (imo) Disney generally does things well, so I feel pretty okay about all the projects they've got in the works.

I'm actually kind of looking forward to the Star Wars, because maybe they can tie the old trilogy to the new trilogy a bit better... but they probably don't have the right to alter anything... at least maybe they'll do the montages better?

Edited 2013-11-12 16:39 (UTC)

Oh I hope. I'm not sure anything can be worse than Episode II. I know people are always hating on Episode I, but to me, the ~frolicking in the meadows~ Padme/Anakin romance was the worst part. I always skip it on re-watches.

Honestly, I think episode I, aside from the plotholes (there were a few) fit the tone of the original trilogy better. It was an adventure where the heroes behaved heroically, and had all the fantastic exploring... and child Anakin was played by a much better actor than "brooding manchild" Annekin.

Also, the age gap for Padme/Anakin has always irked me a bit... the Dawson casting makes the supposed five years age gap impossible to believe... and there was no chemistry, largely because they kept forgetting about Padme in the middle of Episode II, and Anakin's actor only had two facial expressions.

Exactly! The only problem is that it doesn't really tie in plot-wise with Episodes II and III.

Their relationship gives me the creeps. I can't watch Natalie Portman in anything without thinking of her as Padme. Which is a shame, since she's a good actress, and I actually like her character in Thor.

Well, it's more of a set-up, which you can do in a six part series when you start from the front... but not from the middle.

Yeah, it's all... squidgy. And it's not the age gap, it's the obsession, it's very uncomfortable and honestly I was not surprised that in the end Anakin killed her. I saw it coming even in episode two when he started obsessing over her and then with the sand people... nope. You start your darkness early in the middle of a prequel trilogy and lose the presence of an actual hero for the next movie and a half? Bad move. Force choking his wife to death made Vader so, so much less of a redeemable villian. So did slaughtering the padawans (one gets the impression that they hoped to squeak the sand people by on "it was revenge, yes it was wrong but it wasn't premeditated, he went crazy with grief,) but honestly, after seeing that, good luck selling Vader's redemption scene, Lucas!

Yeah, Anakin just makes me uncomfortable. And honestly? The Vader redemption scene always makes me laugh, even though I know it's supposed to be super touching. Luke & Vader's scenes just come off as so cheesy to me. But the good kind of cheese. The kind I enjoy over and over again. ;)

Episode III is just dark. I'll watch it, especially if I'm doing a complete re-watch of the series, but it isn't fun like the original trilogy is.

Yeah, but everything was hammy in the first trilogy. :D

I think Anakin's actor knew he was playing a spoiled, petulant brat that would turn psychotic... and when the script was trying to make him more sympathetic, it didn't work in the least. (Rather like the guy who plays the new James Bond, who knows the dude is a sociopath and plays that brilliantly... but I still can't watch it!)

So true. :D

Probably. I've heard Hayden Christensen (that's his name, I think) is good in other things, but idk.

Really? I love the new Bond movies! Everyone has their favorite Bond, though, and I had only seen bits and pieces of the old ones before the latest movies.

I saw Skyfall and none of the other ones. Which... yeah, part of my thing with Skyfall was Bond, part of it was the really terrible treatment of Severine (the girl who Bond has sex with four whole in-movie minutes after he is a dick about the fact that she was a sex slave since her preteen years,) and the last part was probably a bit that I shouldn't have been watching movies with sociopathic characters at the time. :/

Yeah, I can understand you not liking that. Tbh, I probably wouldn't like that too much on a re-watch. I actually didn't remember that part. I've only seen the movie once, in the theater, and that was obviously awhile ago.

We watched it three times this summer while I was on a school trip. This probably contributed to my intense hatred of that scene.(We had a limited number of available movies and there's only so long you can marathon the Directors' cut of Lord of the Rings.)

You know, I've never really had a problem with characters like Bond and Jack Bauer (I loved the show, but he definitely crossed some lines), but now that I'm older I think I'd have a problem with the narrative approving of their actions vs. flawed protagonists making not always good choices.

Flawed protagonists I absolutely don't have a problem with (though I reserve the right to start hating them if they cross the moral event horizon,) but when the narrative just shrugs and plays along I start to get uncomfortable. Which I think is part of the huge no sell for Anakin Skywalker, because in the first trilogy, his actions were clearly shown as bad and his moment of redemption - well, he couldn't undo anything, and maybe he didn't regret anything but the fact that it was his son that Palpatine wanted dead, but that made him morally complex.

With the new trilogy, they were clinging to the "pity the poor misunderstood violent arrogant man," well into the third movie, and they didn't put in enough of Obi-Wan's perspective to show a clear balance of someone who was decent but fundamentally flawed and human. It became the Anakin love angst fest that everyone else was secondary to.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. It was early in the morning here and it didn't come out very well. :P

Well, glad I correctly read your brain, then. :)

*sucks in a horrified breath* No no no Leila no does Hellspawn have her NO

On another topic, TAYLOR AND SAWYER, I ADORE YOU. They're so sensible and protective!

Hi there!

Taylor and Sawyer are proper gentlemen. :D

Taylor? Oh, that's such a relief.

And he's working with Leila!

And I think he, Sawyer and the girls would make such a good team!

Aaaand, Leila disappears. Not good!

Another great chapter!

I think I psyched everybody. :D

Oh yeah, my headcanon has been that he's working with Leila for so long... I sort of had to, you know? Taylor and Sawyer would probably work pretty well with Allie and Lindsay once they all had their cards on the table.

Thanks!

What a relief! It's our man, Taylor. :D

Like the folks above, I think he and your girls would make an excellent team. He can be the brawn, and they can be the brains/magic.

*eep!* Leila's missing! Oh no, don't tell me it's the canon handgun scene. *flappy hands* Or do, if you twisted it. But... no spoilers! *flails* Nononodonttellme! I must see it! *flails more*

DAMNIT, MY EXCITEMENT HAS MADE ME ALL STUPID. THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME I HOPE IT LASTS.

I know, they should all totally team up and fight crime, right? :D

Well... it's a bit early to match up to the Canon handgun scene, since it's right now about 3:00 in the morning the night after the party at Grey's parents' house...

Ah, death by suspense. Beats death by flogging a dead horse any day. ;D

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Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years

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