![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sylph_fics((Set between Deathstroke #51 and #52))
It was almost over.
From the legal side, this long day--week, month? He'd lost count--was over. He'd been cleared of all of Wade's manipulations and the deaths in his name and Dayton's insanity-created schemes. He could walk as a free man again, even within the US. There were already jobs piling up, things he needed to get to—Steel had a hunt he needed finished, some metahuman lunatic. Rose was tucked safe with the Titans and as far away from him as he could safely put her.
Only one thing left to do—well. One set of things, really.
He walked away from where Wintergreen was drowsing in the chair to use the phone in the kitchen, dialing international numbers by memory, waiting through the connections until he had the law firm Frannie used on the phone. He'd been fairly sure she still had him listed as her next of kin, but the lawyer confirmed that (and other things) with the blunt honesty his stepmother had always cherished. It took almost three times as long to get in touch with the French police and arrange for her body to be released to the lawyer as it had to make the first call. Frannie'd wanted to be buried there outside Versailles, had the plot and everything arranged--such a practical woman. He could probably make the funeral, as long as that red tape would take.
Slipping back up to check that Wintergreen was still asleep took only a few moments and the time to leave him a scrawled note. Back in a few—no, I'm not going to go get in trouble.
This was his responsibility. He wasn't going to let Wintergreen shoulder it.
Luckily enough, they already were in New York. He glanced down at his clothing for a second, decided it was good enough, and headed for the city morgue to go and do one last thing for the people he'd gotten killed. He owed all of them that much.
It was almost amazing how easily New York police missed noticing even his height and distinctive features when he was wearing normal business clothes, he thought wryly as he walked through the halls without ever being challenged. He reached the morgue attendant finally, and started the long, laborious process of identifying and claiming his dead. First, easiest in some ways, were each of Lili's girls, lying still and with the bare-faced pallor that the blood-loss and cleaning agents brought. Some of them had already been claimed by family that had come out of the wood-work or by the girls that had been out working on that awful night, but several were still waiting, would have gone to pauper's graves—not any more.
The attendant tried to tell him what it was going to cost to claim and bury them, voice sounding a warning, and he shook his head. "I know. I don't care."
"Your wallet, man."
He could see it written all over the attendant's face, 'why do this for a bunch of whores', but the man didn't say it, so he just nodded once, hard and sharp. "Exactly."
Then it was Maurice. It wasn't hard to find her. She was still laying out on a covered table instead of behind one of the doors—too heavy, too broad to fit inside one of them. He walked across and laid the sheet back and muscle all down his back tightened even as he nodded. Wrong for that dapper, playful dark woman to be so still and paler than she had ever been on the steel, all of her weight not buoyed by the personality that had always filled even more of the room than she did...
He took care of the paperwork for her.. and heard her voice in his ears for a moment. //No, papers are my job, honey...// He felt his nails bite into the palm of his hand, and took a long breath, letting the cold fall down around him and behind his eye. Just another job.
Last, not least, waiting in one more of the cold steel boxes... Squirrel. His stuttering, shy freckled kid of an employee that had had an unmatched brilliance for weaponry and design and died for being too damn loyal to run. So damn young—he really did look like a kid, younger than ever in the harsh light with the freckles and buck-teeth he would never grow out of so obvious. It sounded strange in his own ears, felt odd on his lips to say the boy's real name, give the legal information he'd never cared for or wanted to go by to claim him for burial.
In the 'city that never sleeps', it wasn't hard to contact the funeral home he wanted to use even this late in the evening. A few arguments later, and he had them mostly convinced that no, he did mean now. It took longer for the mortuary staff--mortuaries', actually, as the one he would have preferred to use couldn't handle the load--to arrive than it had to claim their bodies and what few of their effects had survived the ways Wade had killed them. Effects in hand, he slid into the front seat of the hearse carrying Maurice and went to deal with all of her arrangements. They would be the most complicated. //Of course, sugah...// whispered in the back of his mind, and he took another slow breath.
The moon rode high enough that he could see it between the skyscrapers as he stepped out of the hearse and headed inside, and he knew this wasn't going to be finished any time soon. So many details to take care of, the few people left in his network to call and tell when the funerals would be held if they wanted to risk coming, accounts to close and move and transfer--but those last could wait a little longer.
It was almost over.
From the legal side, this long day--week, month? He'd lost count--was over. He'd been cleared of all of Wade's manipulations and the deaths in his name and Dayton's insanity-created schemes. He could walk as a free man again, even within the US. There were already jobs piling up, things he needed to get to—Steel had a hunt he needed finished, some metahuman lunatic. Rose was tucked safe with the Titans and as far away from him as he could safely put her.
Only one thing left to do—well. One set of things, really.
He walked away from where Wintergreen was drowsing in the chair to use the phone in the kitchen, dialing international numbers by memory, waiting through the connections until he had the law firm Frannie used on the phone. He'd been fairly sure she still had him listed as her next of kin, but the lawyer confirmed that (and other things) with the blunt honesty his stepmother had always cherished. It took almost three times as long to get in touch with the French police and arrange for her body to be released to the lawyer as it had to make the first call. Frannie'd wanted to be buried there outside Versailles, had the plot and everything arranged--such a practical woman. He could probably make the funeral, as long as that red tape would take.
Slipping back up to check that Wintergreen was still asleep took only a few moments and the time to leave him a scrawled note. Back in a few—no, I'm not going to go get in trouble.
This was his responsibility. He wasn't going to let Wintergreen shoulder it.
Luckily enough, they already were in New York. He glanced down at his clothing for a second, decided it was good enough, and headed for the city morgue to go and do one last thing for the people he'd gotten killed. He owed all of them that much.
It was almost amazing how easily New York police missed noticing even his height and distinctive features when he was wearing normal business clothes, he thought wryly as he walked through the halls without ever being challenged. He reached the morgue attendant finally, and started the long, laborious process of identifying and claiming his dead. First, easiest in some ways, were each of Lili's girls, lying still and with the bare-faced pallor that the blood-loss and cleaning agents brought. Some of them had already been claimed by family that had come out of the wood-work or by the girls that had been out working on that awful night, but several were still waiting, would have gone to pauper's graves—not any more.
The attendant tried to tell him what it was going to cost to claim and bury them, voice sounding a warning, and he shook his head. "I know. I don't care."
"Your wallet, man."
He could see it written all over the attendant's face, 'why do this for a bunch of whores', but the man didn't say it, so he just nodded once, hard and sharp. "Exactly."
Then it was Maurice. It wasn't hard to find her. She was still laying out on a covered table instead of behind one of the doors—too heavy, too broad to fit inside one of them. He walked across and laid the sheet back and muscle all down his back tightened even as he nodded. Wrong for that dapper, playful dark woman to be so still and paler than she had ever been on the steel, all of her weight not buoyed by the personality that had always filled even more of the room than she did...
He took care of the paperwork for her.. and heard her voice in his ears for a moment. //No, papers are my job, honey...// He felt his nails bite into the palm of his hand, and took a long breath, letting the cold fall down around him and behind his eye. Just another job.
Last, not least, waiting in one more of the cold steel boxes... Squirrel. His stuttering, shy freckled kid of an employee that had had an unmatched brilliance for weaponry and design and died for being too damn loyal to run. So damn young—he really did look like a kid, younger than ever in the harsh light with the freckles and buck-teeth he would never grow out of so obvious. It sounded strange in his own ears, felt odd on his lips to say the boy's real name, give the legal information he'd never cared for or wanted to go by to claim him for burial.
In the 'city that never sleeps', it wasn't hard to contact the funeral home he wanted to use even this late in the evening. A few arguments later, and he had them mostly convinced that no, he did mean now. It took longer for the mortuary staff--mortuaries', actually, as the one he would have preferred to use couldn't handle the load--to arrive than it had to claim their bodies and what few of their effects had survived the ways Wade had killed them. Effects in hand, he slid into the front seat of the hearse carrying Maurice and went to deal with all of her arrangements. They would be the most complicated. //Of course, sugah...// whispered in the back of his mind, and he took another slow breath.
The moon rode high enough that he could see it between the skyscrapers as he stepped out of the hearse and headed inside, and he knew this wasn't going to be finished any time soon. So many details to take care of, the few people left in his network to call and tell when the funerals would be held if they wanted to risk coming, accounts to close and move and transfer--but those last could wait a little longer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
OOC:
Date: 2008-11-02 12:12 am (UTC)Yeah, ripping out hearts here...and I can just see Jesse, trying so hard to put on a strong face when it's time to bury her brother...
Re: OOC:
Date: 2008-11-02 12:33 am (UTC)*nods* She's rattling around in my head.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 02:37 am (UTC)In my defense, I didn't get in any trouble?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 02:38 am (UTC)I did, in time, understand that you needed to do it...and it was easier on me than six months of silence.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 02:46 am (UTC)I... had to. And I'm glad. It was easier on me, too.