Cold wind. This November weather here in Chicago bit into the skin as Theo sat outside the club. He was smoking, he never smoked. He hadn’t lit up a cigarette in nearly ten years. His heart was beating quicker from the rush of unfamiliar nicotine, eyes fluttered and his hand hurt. Cigarette balanced on light lips under the city lights, the neon and hallogens that made up Chicago. He hated them sometimes, but they were home. They seemed to emanate and air that screamed for the world to burn. Burn it would. Between his mistakes, the things falling apart in his head, it was all a lot for Theo to take in and his mind wouldn’t stop racing. He needed to just scream ever since that night.
Hence the taste of burning cancer on his lips. He wished it would rain, the cold could tear down onto him in a more forceful way. His black suit, thread count higher than his damn IQ clung to him in the cool night weather. His body seemed to be aching everywhere, in particular in his stupid hand. Cat had done what she could that night, but it hadn’t mattered, he’d fractured a couple bones. The Doctor had set them, chiding him for trying to get involved in a terrorist situation, Theo had wanted to tell him to fucking die, but he had bit his tongue. The pain still coursed through him, though he had nearly refused his pain pills. His pain killer of choice involved a bottle and a long drink.
The cast and metal placed around his right wrist, fingers barely able to move, throbbed. He was glad in the long run that he hadn’t refused the medicine, the bottle popping with a sickening snap as he opened it. Tossing the clear plastic up to his lips and swallowing the pill. Cigarette having to be moved to make the connection with the chalky pill. He swallowed it dry, a lump in his throat, body feeling the dry clump of pharmaceutical science as he downed the mess of chemicals. He hated drugs. Hated the drug trade that made the Kovalis and by proxy himself wealthy. He hated himself most of all though, wishing he had been less of a piece of shit and more of the man that Sera had needed that night. Zephyr, fucking hell, Valentine, would have been a better choice for protecting Sera. They wouldn’t have let her be taken and gotten themselves broken in the process.
He lifted the stick back to his lips, finishing it off in a sick drag as he shoved the bottle of pills back inside his jacket. The night was long and he was dreading having to go talk to the man inside the damn closed club behind him. Zephyr Jackson. Arguably the only person on the planet that Theo trusted to not kill him, the one man he could easily say had actually saved his life before, he had failed him. He had failed Zephyr like he was some common thug. He knew his skills had never lay in fighting, no Theodore Dolion was a talker. A damn good public speaker, debate expert and talented as hell lawyer. He knew all of that in his soul, but the reality of it was that when it came time to protect someone he cared about in the slightest, he had failed horribly. He felt like his mind was going to collapse in on itself before he even talked to Zephyr, he had actual guilt, he wasn’t the stoic manipulator he had always promised himself that he would be, he had given into emotion and he was going to destroy that line of feeling before it took over and broke who he was on an internal level.
The cigarette finished fully, he tossed it out into the gutter. The bit of fire still evident on the end of it, flicking through the air as it landed into the concrete. Cars flashed by with a bright flick, he stared them down, knowing that it was unlikely that the car had anything to do with him or any part of their business. It was nearly impossible in a city this size, but they had been attacked, they had been nearly destroyed by a calculated hit on that damn boat. Nothing would ever get Theo off edge again, he didn’t trust this city and he didn’t trust nearly anyone in the world anymore, not even his old friends and lovers, Zephyr was different though. Zephyr was the one person in the world that he knew wouldn’t fuck him over in the long run.
Tucking his shirt in again slightly making sure that the dark fabrics weren’t bunched and that he looked good. Theo knew that he always looked good, it was a selling point. Half of convincing others to do anything was your look, not what you said, he was going to make sure that he was at the top of the game when it came to what he was capable of controlling himself. He moved to the door and without thinking, he moved to open it with his broken hand, cursing under his breath before moving to throw the door open with his good hand. He stepped inside, the smell of alcohol and various colognes played at his nostrils when he let the door clamp closed behind him.
Theo made his way across the club. Chairs on top of tables, shut down for the night. He ran his fingers along the wood, casually checking for dust the way he had been taught when he had gone through a formal school for etiquette, he didn’t even know why he did it anymore, it was just a habit. He found none, Sera and Zephyr always kept a clean and well managed club. He didn’t see Zephyr at all, he knew Sera wasn’t here. Still in the hospital, again because he had failed his only friends. His feet slapped wood as he walked across the room, stepping behind the bar with a soft sigh, “Get your shit together, Dolion.” He said to himself in the empty room.
He assumed that Zephyr was in the office, the last time he’d been here was with Sera in that same office. He had made plans, ones that were probably going to fall apart if Theo didn’t nail down some points on it soon. None of that mattered, he had gone to see Sera, she had been kind enough, but he still blamed himself in his core. He managed to lift one bottle of whiskey out from behind the bar, setting it on the wood top. He tilted the bottle to pop the top off and onto the counter. Took him longer working one handed, but he grabbed a glass, they were chilled in a fridge behind the bar, a nice touch. Beautiful golden liquid hit the glass as he tipped it, watching the glass fill about halfway. He licked his lips as he finished, popping the top back on to the whiskey, leaving it on the counter.
Whiskey in hand now, he took a sip, knowing Zephyr wouldn’t care that he was taking a free drink, he would have been offered one anyway. He moved slowly, leaning into the office door, his broken hand’s cast knocking against it before pushing the door open, immediately catching the sight of Zephyr. He didn’t say anything at first, just staring at the other man as he pushed the door open fully. He stood, swirling the glass in his hand, just looking at Zephyr before he took a slow sip, tipping it up to his lips as he tasted the warm liquid, swallowing, “Fuck us right?” He finally spoke, sighing as he stared at Zephyr, “I owe you. Many apologies.”
A house of cards, tethered to the ever-changing shift of the wind that no longer seemed to swell in the direction of the Kovali’s upper hand left him with a knot thick in his chest. For those who were so strategically prepared for being blindsided, the shadows of this city they believed belonged to them had crept up and torn at their ankles so violently it toppled the long-standing precipice of calm into something far more violent. It was something that Zephyr had only ever felt a small handful of times, near minute in comparison to the overwhelming stretch of stoic expression that so often dawned on him in times it almost seemed out of place. An attack on the Kovali would always stand as an attack on him -- as much as Rafal himself was the organization, Zephyr stood the backing that never seemed to fail, until more recently. It was something he didn’t intend on letting slip through his fingers again.
Not now, that such an attack would rage war on the organ that before long had existed purely to keep him alive. One and the same that constricted so brutally he might have sworn the body hanging from the gallows had turned his insides to ash, jarring with such force against the inside of his ribcage that any blade or bullet might have been a welcome replacement. He’d known what it was, known that it betrayed every pinnacle of his own pivotal rise to glory but there was far too much truth in the wreckage to ignore it. Love. The ashes had buried him once before, the damage inflicted so carelessly upon his heart once before left bitterness paramount, but this..-- this felt cataclysmic. A life without someone so embedded into everything he did was, crippling even in thought. Thoughts of which he’d never allowed to situate themselves so consciously even despite the previous weeks of separation from her. Passing minutes had felt eternal as the imploding fury caught knuckles white as orders fell to secure Rafal fell without room for argument.
The lowering of the body had barely earned itself a breath of relief. They’d missed the mark, pieces of the woman hanged no doubt a perfect silhouette for Sera, but details he’d never miss and the closer he drew the easier breath filled his lungs until all that was left was the balling anger that’d left the question: where was she? Anything beyond such thought was automatic. Preprogrammed into the very veins of the under-boss as he moved through the crowd pushing his men to flood the boat with a presence that came flanked by something far more unruly as officers drew rank that in the underworld, they never held in the first place.
Now, hovering the platform of the club, shielded behind bulletproof glass overlooking the floor below, holding the underbelly of the city didn't feel like enough. Not while his insides burned white-hot with the transgression painting a target on his back --- across his chest in such a public display. He wanted blood, wanted to watch the city burn and collapse in on itself, to twist it until what was left snapped at the knees and recognized that certain targets came with a far higher price than any of them were so willing to pay. Chaos, was an entity, and neither state of being nor tirade could overthrow what people knew lived within the shadows. A chaos and cataclysmic being that existed through the shifting chess pieces that Zephyr himself controlled. And as if fate itself sealed the door of Purgatory shut, one such piece showed itself before the reckoning.
All too aware that perhaps Theo had yet to show face here knowing what Zephyr likely already knew, he simply watched from above as he helped himself to a drink. Good. He’d need it. The permanence of white-knuckled fists dove the depths of his pockets for as long as it took for his equal to find the office door, pausing behind the stringent knock offered by cast covered limb. He didn’t move, didn’t shift from a sentient post beyond the glass window, stoic as he waited. The thing about fury was that it was often uncontrollable, a variable that Zephyr didn’t work with; he refused to hold at his side for any amount of time purely for the unpredictability of it. It wasn’t something he trusted, not something he could fall back into and safe-guard as he so often had those around him. “Fuck us?” He deadpanned, the rising sense of questioning that slipped beyond statuesque existence offered the shift of boots against the ornate stone flooring until he came to rest behind his desk.
“Fuck us.” Repetition only further solidifying disbelief as he stood to full height, neither intimidation necessary, for the man opposite, stood taller. Yet, azure hues burnt line of sight across the room as if he’d intended to cut Theo down to size purely to meet him eye for eye. “I’m gonna’ ask you one question,” he started, heavy timbre a knifes edge as the weight of one such answer hung the precipice of how this night ended. “I know what happened on that boat,” The short nod he offered barely notable, “I’m just curious as to whether you’re aware of what happened,” Digits tightened and he felt the shifting of his knuckles from years of broken bones. Standing still felt unnatural, far too unlike a man that sought secrets and truth from the shadows. Ever moving, he never rested and that essence remained as he rounded the edge of his desk and perched the expanse of wood. “Because last I checked, I’ve only ever asked one fuckin’ thing of you and somehow...” The details of which surrounded only one aspect, yet perhaps he’d somehow believed that Theo might have anticipated the true extent of what he’d asked. Protect me like I protected you.--- “Somehow that small little detail keeps slippin’ right through those fingers of yours.” Hands pulled from his pockets to clasp together across his lap, right hand shifting to gesture roughly to the cast he wielded.
Perhaps, it pressed the boundaries a little more than he could serve to deal with. He’d only ever asked Theo to protect Catalina; shockingly enough, he’d managed at least that this time. Alike most, however, expectation bared it’s teeth with the knowledge that everyone knew the lengths Zephyr Jackson would go, to keep Sera safe and alive. Further still, what he was willing to do to anyone who put her at risk, markings of their own hands or failed intentions baring the same stretch of fault. “So, my question is ---” He rose again, the tepid itch that stretched the length of his spine cold and unrelenting as he moved to close some of the distance that remained until calloused hands could find the glass within Theo’s and take it. “How the fuck,” he spat, tightened fist shattering glass to rain shards and amber liquid to the floor below, “did they get their hands on her so easily?” It was, regardless of intent, a direct attack on Zephyr Jackson himself --- Rafal Kovali be damned, he’d raise their own organization to the ground and build it all over again if it meant ensuring that the pillar being in his life remained where he intended her to.
