Chapter Text
CHAPTER FOURTY TWO: ATONEMENT
???. ??? 2007.
His hands won’t stop shaking. There are jolts of electricity cracking up his spine, feeding on the weak vertebrae. He might fall apart at any second: the fragile little boy he always has been. The rattle in his lungs aches longer with every breath. His hands won’t stop fucking shaking.
Red and blue lights are still flashing behind his eyes, and it hurts. He was standing in the pool of blood for eons, staring at Takamori’s face for even longer. What has he become?
“Mr. Minyard.”
Asher jolts—coming back to his body is unfamiliar. These shaking hands are a stranger to the rest of his body. He stares at the person in front of him and then flickers his eyes down to his hands. Scarred white skin meets his gaze, clean of any blood or residue.
Clean. No, not clean. He can still feel Takamori’s still-warm body under his hands, still hear his own shouting, still see the rotted face. A maggot was hanging around him. Nesting.
There is no warmth left in this world. Asher’s face hardens as he continues to stare at his palms, and he slowly brings his gaze to the person. They’re an officer, concerned with a pen and notepad in their hand, and they encourage him with, “You were recounting tonight’s events.”
At Asher’s blank stare and expanse of silence, the officer adds, “The basement…you said it was unlocked when you arrived?”
“Uhm,” Asher starts, and he clears his throat. He can see the blinding white room again as he screws his eyes shut, and he shakes his head as he reopens them and murmurs, “Yeah. Everything was unlocked.”
“And no other cars were parked out front?” He’s questioned next, the cop waving their pen around as if to jolt Asher’s memory. “No tire marks?”
Clenching his jaw, Asher shakes his head. Frustration enters his bloodstream. He didn’t get on the ground and start sniffing for tracks. He says, voice lowered, “There was nobody else when we got there. Just Takamori’s car.”
The officer nods and starts scribbling something down. Asher’s knee bobs and his neck cracks as he looks around the office sharply. He feels like he’s already been through this. How long has he been in this office for? How long has it been since he saw Stray’s face without the fish lens of the blood and the flashing lights?
He leans forward, fast, and impatience meets with his anger. “Haven’t I already answered your questions? Can I go?”
“This is a long process,” The officer tells him with a tight-lipped smile. Asher stares at it. “I just want to reaffirm everything and get the details right.”
The anger’s head bobs forward, and Asher feels his eyes narrow. His fingers clench; his knuckles are ice as they strain. He needs to talk to Stray and he needs to talk to his family and he needs to talk to—
Norton.
It’s his fault her partner is dead. It’s his fault.
How is he to face her again?
Asher sucks in a breath and abruptly stands; he’s met with a, “Woah,” from the officer in front of him, and terror immediately enters him when the other in the corner of the room puts their hand on their holster and. And they can’t be serious.
A disbelieving laugh leaves him, horrible. “You think I did this?” As the cop starts shaking their head and opening their mouth, Asher rakes a hand through his hair and adds as the realisation hits him, “You’re trying to see if our stories line up. You think I did this?”
“An FBI Agent has been murdered,” The one in the corner states, and at the rising tone, Asher stiffens and looks around the room wildly for a way out. “This is a homicidal investigation, and questioning must proceed. Nobody is accusing you—”
“Let me out then,” Asher interrupts, nodding to the door. He goes to step forward but freezes again, wary of the holster. He grits his teeth. The walls are getting smaller. The lightbulb is thrumming. There’s a sickness in his throat. He has no idea how long he’s been here. He vaguely remembers washing his hands of the blood after a sample was taken, vomiting whatever was left in his stomach in the toilet and being told that his legal family had been called. Asher points to the door, “Let me out!”
“We’re going to need you to sit back down, Minyard,” A hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Asher flinches back so hard he registers smacking his head against the wall. Someone tries to help him up, and the room twists into an old cabin in the woods and Asher starts clawing and shouting and, “Let me out!” is repeated over the kafuffle.
Takamori is dead. He was a fucking idiot.
Suddenly, the weight is ripped off from him. Asher wrenches his eyes open—the familiar builds of Andrew and Aaron are in the room. Andrew is aggressively shoving the officers away while they shout at one another, and Aaron is telling them to get out with a sharp voice. The world is tipping side-ways, and Asher heaves and heaves. His lungs are filling with the pool of blood that surrounded Takamori, and he shoves his palms over his eyes and groans in the agony of it.
“Help him up—” He hears, and he shakingly navigates himself alongside Aaron and another set of hands as he stands against the wall. He can hear one of the cops threatening, presumably, Andrew, and there’s entirely too much noise, too much noise for him to be registering none of it.
Annabelles muscled skull stares at Asher when he finally sees properly, and he can feel the terror engraved into his face. He schools it, chillingly, and swallows and blinks several times. Norton is looking at him with perhaps the saddest expression he has ever seen in his life.
His chest burns as he stammers, “I’m sorry. I was…”
She nods and erratically looks down and then back to him, shaking her head as she does so. It seems to take years for her to say, “Don’t say anything else. Everything will be okay.”
Warren’s voice overcoats everything will be okay. Asher nods once and then twice, and as he’s led out of the room, one of the officers shouts, “You can’t do this! We found incriminating evidence on his phone—”
“The FBI will handle this now,” Asher hears Norton snarl, and there’s no response, but Asher’s more focused on what the cop said.
He registers hearing himself mumble, confused, “Incriminating evidence?”
“They’re talking about the mentions of the meat locker in our messages,” Norton murmurs in his ear as they continue to harshly walk. He can see the passing face of cops and hear rushed typing and ringing telephones. Asher squints. Her voice is striking, contrasting her usual plain voice so much it’s reeling him over the edge. Norton adds, “Don’t worry. They won’t have anything with me here now. You’ll be fine.”
It takes everything within him to nod. The next few moments are flashes—Stray’s face comes into Asher’s vision alongside Wymack’s and Abby’s, and they exit the precinct. The sun is in the sky, orange and pulsing as Judgement Day descends upon them. Asher is led into a car and sandwiched by his brothers. He sees Stray slip into Wymack’s ute through the window, and lurches against his seatbelt as if to throw himself through the car for him.
Asher hears the names ‘Warren’ and ‘Safa’ and tries not to freeze and burn and die. He hears ‘reporters’ and ‘the body’ and that’s it for him. He closes his eyes and wants to squeeze his ears shut but restrains as he tries to bore into the leather seat and breathe.
Takamori is dead. Will it ever sink in? An anger is eating at him, dry and raw and all the more exemplified by the guilt. He reaches up and places his head in his palms to block out the bright white light of the meat locker seeping through his eyelids. His heavy breathing is shaky and accompanied by Aaron murmuring, “Asher,” over and over again, rising in worry and fear.
Stray had been the one to call the cops. He had been shaking and shouting at Asher, trying to get him to help. Thinking about it now, Asher is enraged at himself. All he could do was sit and stare, horrified and so, so angry, and Takamori had been dead. And he had just…sat there.
When the cops had arrived, Stray had somehow dragged Asher out of the basement. They had been sitting on the doorstep of the ruined, all too familiar house, and Stray had been saying something over and over. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.
Asher had looked over to him blearily and wondered when he had gotten covered in so much blood. When they had both acquired the smell of death. And then the flashing lights, and the rough handling and Asher’s voice tearing as he shouted and struggled and his eyes watering as he met Stray’s void eyes as he, too, was lugged away.
The darkness had consumed him, and he had drifted. Air moves in front of his face quickly, and Asher snaps his eyes open. He becomes aware of what he’s looking at slowly, and the world around him even slower. The car is vacant now—Asher is still seated in the middle of the backseat, and cold air is blowing in from beside him. He turns his neck gradually.
Andrew is leaning inside the car, face unnaturally twisted and, distinctively, sad. Wind is blowing in over his frame. He pulls his hand away from where he was seemingly waving it in front of Asher’s face, and says, “You should come out now.”
A sharp headache hits Asher, splicing his forehead in two and encrusting within his brain folds. It spreads into the back of his cranium, picking the ash from his skull. He jerks as a shiver entangles him, and then nods once and then twice, irregularly, and then quickly begins to exit. Andrew moves out of his way and steps back as Asher exits, and the floor almost crumbles beneath his feet when he closes the car door behind him.
Feeling Andrew’s gaze on him, Asher avoids it and darts his eyes around. They’re in the parking lot of Warren and Safa’s apartment—Wymack’s, too—and he almost doesn’t spot the only other person with them.
Norton is leaning against the building’s wall, and he can’t see any of her features from this distance. Only the grey curl of smoke winding around her as she pulls her smoke from her mouth and taps at the filter.
Andrew grabs his attention again with a vacant, “Asher.”
He meets his gaze, and Andrew stares at him for a world’s turning. His hands seem to be clenched from where they’re clasped in his jean pockets. He murmurs, “Don’t be too long.”
With that, he turns and walks towards the entrance. Asher watches him leave, arms weak at his side, and then he begins a slow trek towards Norton. As he approaches, he imagines what he will be met with. A tortured, pained face? Cold eyes, even colder words? The guilt…no, the burden, the responsibility, the weight he must carry, strengthens.
Asher leans against the brick wall when he reaches her, and he tips his head back to it. The back of his hair protects his nape from getting pricked by the uneven texture. He leans his arms against it, enough to feel an itch. When did he even change into a short-sleeve? They would have taken his other outfit for evidence, and the blanks in his mind are alarming. This whole ordeal is reminding him all too much of his days after being rescued from Jonathon.
The guilt immediately intensifies as he furrows his eyebrows and gazes through the thick haze of smoke. Takamori is gone, and Asher is making it all about himself. His peripheral vision shakes, darkening, and Asher glances at Norton.
Her hair is down, the side of her face holding a green undertone, the purple under her eyes bruising. Her dishevelled appearance is something separate from the Norton he knows, and it makes him ache. Asher watches as she brings the cigarette to her mouth, her fingers stuttering with it. She takes a long drag—too long—and he feels it in his chest when she begins to cough. She hunches over, and Asher reaches out instinctively. Hovering his hand over her back, Asher allows the uncertainty to win and withdraws his palm.
Seconds pass. Minutes. Norton continues to cough, and Asher can’t look away as snot drips from her nose and saliva escapes her mouth. He can hear the build-up of phlegm, and there’s a certain sob to her breaths in between the coughs.
Heart twisting, Asher’s mouth is dry as he asks, “Do you want me to find some water?”
It’s a half-hearted question. Where is he…where is he even going to find water around here? He would have to walk to Warren’s apartment door and get a glass, or buy an expensive bottle from the lobby, where an employee likely wouldn’t even be posted. Or he’ll have to find a tap etched into the brick wall and hope it doesn’t spray spiders and insects.
Norton shakes her head as she chokes and coughs, and there’s a harsh blow of wind when she raises her head. Her hair folds around her face, and Asher can only see her eye staring at him through the length of it all. It looks haunted. Asher ducks his head.
Another minute or so passes as the Agent collects herself. She pulls out a fresh cigarette, and Asher’s gaze attaches to the flame of her lighter as it flickers against the weather. It dies out once before Norton cups it, protecting it.
“He didn’t ask me,” she says, suddenly. She follows the statement with a drag, and Asher feels his eyebrows furrow.
He goes to ask her to repeat herself, but he heard what she said. Asher’s partially glad he didn’t—Norton likely would have been lying dead with her partner if he had asked her, and he feels a flash of guilt and tries to shove it down. He knows all too well what she’s feeling.
Norton thinks she could have stopped it if she were there, just like how Asher feels with Annabelle, Kay, Tykera, Emily, and Rion. Some sort of fucked up survivors guilt.
He opens and closes his mouth and lands on an uncertain, “He didn’t want to put you in danger.”
Norton shoots him a glance, and Asher can’t read if it’s understanding or disdainful. He carries in a wavering breath and blinks to the horizon, squinting against the sun’s light. A dark cloud is beginning to gather. He reaches up to rub under his eyes and silently cringes at the dry chunks of guck in the corner of his eyes. They tear at his waterline as he picks them out.
“I’m sorry, Asher,” Norton abruptly states, and Asher rips his hands from his face and turns his head to her. Norton is fully facing him now, a withered expression falling across her. There seems to be an invisible weight pushing her shoulders down as her spine fails her, and she almost crumples before him.
Alarmed, Asher reaches out and steadies her with his hands to her elbows. Norton grasps for him as well; her palms land on his shoulders and he is pulled into an eye contact with her that he cannot force his gaze from.
What at all does she have to apologise for? His stomach twists and almost gurgles as he swallows the pool of saliva at the back of his throat, and his words come out raspy as he replies, “What?”
“We didn’t listen to you,” Norton tells him, almost…mourningly. There’s a groan carved into her voice, a frustration that Asher can see is destroying her. Once again, it’s debilitating to hear the woman so open. Her monotonic tone is gone, and Asher almost loses what she says from being so engrossed in the difference.
“What?” Is all he manages to repeat. He should rack his memory for what she’s talking about, but he can’t bring his focus from her. Jaw clenching, Asher watches as Norton releases him and brings the cigarette forward to her lips again. The next drag is, again, too long, but she only coughs once this time.
Norton taps her fingers against the filter. “At the café. You told us…”
A pause. Asher’s frown strengthens; his teeth hurt.
“You told us there would be no coming home if we investigated the other meat lockers. You told us that we were lucky last time, and to wait. And I brushed it off.”
“Norton—” Asher starts, but Norton holds a finger up and he shuts his mouth. He can’t help the sadness that begins to stretch across his face.
She continues sharply, “I brushed it off, even when you asked us to just trust you. I encouraged Takamori afterwards; I was so focused on finding those…those kid’s bodies and finally getting the case closed that I didn’t even see it in his eyes,” She brushes her hands on her jeans. As if ridding them of blood. “It’s my fault he’s dead.”
“No,” Asher’s voice rises, overcoming her last few words. He shakes his head. “No. It was whoever fucking shot him’s fault. Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” Norton suddenly exclaims. She throws her arms up in the air in an uncanny action, and Asher locks eye contact with her. “I know I wasn’t the one to shoot him, but I may have well had the second I started telling him that we should go to the lockers. I was an idiot, and I was silly to think that this could all be so simple, when it’s never been anything but. It’s my fault he’s gone, and I will go to hell and back to atone for it.”
Harsh breathing falls upon Asher’s face. He stares at Norton as she turns away from him sharply, and he allows for her words to sink in. He feels the guilt and regret and horror grow in size within him, attempting to seize his skeletal frame and skin him of any humanity. He gets stuck on the last sentence.
“‘Atone?’” Asher murmurs, and Norton doesn’t hear him. His eyes narrow, and he echoes, louder, “‘Atone?”
Silence festers between them, electrostatic and fuzzing. Asher’s eyes flicker between Norton’s as he tries to calculate what she’s thinking, and he holds in a breath and doesn’t let it out.
“When does your ‘someone’ get here, again?” She asks, muffled, her gaze glued to the concrete. Asher shifts his feet around, and an exhausted fog settles around his face—and he sharply blinks as realisation hits him.
“Today,” He tells her, confused. The memory pieces of last night are falling into place, the body, the cops, the questioning. Remembering it makes it feel as though it was a lifetime ago, and it’s concerning. Stuart is supposed to be here today. Feeling Norton’s eyes beginning to bore into him, Asher looks over to her and says, “I think I should go inside and talk to Neil.”
Her facial features narrow. “What does he have to do with this?”
Asher roughly rubs the space between his brows as he closes his eyes, and he tries to think of a summary. Neil had told him that Stuart wouldn’t fight for a shell of a man. He had told him he’d help. Ichirou will be dethroned. World peace. Asher lives.
“He’s, uh,” Asher begins and scratches at his hairline, opening his eyes. He owes her everything. “Stuart Hatford is the man coming to help. He’s Neil’s uncle—”
“I know the name,” Norton interrupts, and her voice has returned to plainness, but a troubled look flashes across her face. Asher frowns, finding it a little worrying. He goes to speak, but Norton waves her cigarette at him in a dismissal, “You should go talk to Josten.”
He observes her for a moment. The messiness. The bruised eyebags. The discoloured lips. She adds, almost hesitantly, “I’ll be fine out here.”
One step away almost makes Asher fall backwards. He can feel his knees creaking uncomfortably as he tries again, and he can’t help but stare at Norton as he leaves her for the entrance to the building. Her black attire is a standout against the worn bricks, and the thick smog of smoke almost swallows her person entirely when Asher reaches the doors.
He finds his way through the lobby and takes the stairs instead of the elevator, savouring the light burn in his calves as he reaches Warren and Safa’s floor. He becomes too aware of how unfamiliar the shoes he’s wearing are as he walks along the hallway’s expanse, and he has to re-learn how to breathe as he comes to a stop before the door.
Asher knows he can just knock. He knows he can just walk in.
But he feels like a stranger to his own skin. How will he face the people he loves and be alright? Somehow, his knuckles curl into a fist and he knocks. There’s a delayed reaction in him letting his hand fall back down to his side.
The door opens a couple seconds later, and he’s greeted with the face of Safa. Her soft face is a shock, and the immediate twist of her concern hurts him, and he feels himself crumple.
Falling into her, Safa catches him with open arms. His feet cross over the door line separating them, and the warmth of Safa—his sister—and the apartment engulfs him. There’s an itch at the back of his neck that pricks and shudders, but he manages to ignore it for the duration of their hug.
As they part, Safa’s grip seems to strengthen, but the sensation is gone the next second. They don’t need to say anything; Safa gives him a weak smile, and Asher fails to give one back. She turns silently and Asher follows her into the breadth of the apartment.
Warren is a prominent figure by the window—he’s in the face of the sun, and thus outlined by it. Andrew and Aaron are beside each other on the couch, Aaron patting the back of Hunter slowly while Andrew stares towards the direction of Neil, whose Asher’s eyes lock onto.
Phone to his ear, Neil is just nodding grimly to something, and Asher’s heart flutters a little. He removes his eyes from Neil and looks around for any other familiar faces. There’s no sign of Wymack or Abby, or Stray.
A weird sense passes through Asher. He blinks and uncertainty pats at his pocket, where the shape of his phone is unsurprisingly absent from. He can’t message him. Stray must be with Wymack and Abby. He’s not here. He’s not here covered in blood and begging Asher to say something and help him and help him!
Alongside the weird sense, though, is relief. It’s sharp and surprises Asher when he realises what it is. He pushes it to the back of his mind and watches, awkwardly, as his brothers jerk their heads towards him.
It’s uncanny to have two same pairs of eyes peeling him apart. Asher looks to the ground, and he hears the couch creak and Hunter whine as Andrew and Asher approach him. Warren makes a sound by the window, as well. A quick glance to the man shows that he’s watching Asher, face tight and stance uncertain.
Asher looks back to the twins, and he wants to speak, but he’s afraid of what would come trailing from his mouth. An apology would be unfit; his brothers wouldn’t accept any apology, and Asher can’t exactly truthfully say he’s sorry for going to Takamori’s location without telling anyone. It was an instinct to go. Anything else he could say would tear him apart, and maybe his brothers, too.
Per usual, it’s Aaron who speaks first. His voice is sharp in the silent room, a stark contrast. “Norton got us to the police station as soon as we heard. What did you tell them?”
Surprised, Asher frowns and tries to recall the memories. He shakes his head once and replies, tentative, “I…don’t really…I recounted the events to them. They asked me to tell them how I got to the house and how…how I knew to.”
He stops, stumped, but he hopes Aaron can hear what he left unsaid. How I knew to go to the basement. The image of the stairs repeats in his mind, as well as the slow trek down. If he had been a step faster, perhaps Takamori would still be alive. His body was still warm.
“Nothing incriminating?” Asher pushes, jolting him from his thoughts. Asher stares at him. There’s a crinkle in Aaron’s eyes, a certain haunted look that strikes something inside of Asher. His brother must be getting reminded of his trial, and Asher wonders if he might seize up, his muscles turning in on each other. “Nothing they could say was ‘planned’?”
in reply, Asher shakes his head slightly. He racks through his memory for anything, but there is completely nothing Asher can recall apart from the phone. However, Norton said she would have control over the investigation now. He says, “No, nothing except for a phone conversation about the lockers. But Norton said she would be taking control of the case—”
“Did you see the state of her out there?” Aaron interrupts, troubled. Asher watches as he and Andrew share a look, and Aaron frustratedly rubs the back of his head. “They’ll take her off the case, no doubt.”
Worry takes ahold of Asher. He flickers his eyes between his brothers quickly and straightens his spine, and he tries to speak, but he can’t, because Aaron’s most likely right. Norton’s superiors can’t allow her to stay on a case with it having personal ties to her, even if they likely know how torturous that will be for her. His eyebrows pinch together, and he fails to say anything.
He doesn’t need to; he sees Warren move from his place by the window, and Andrew and Aaron step away from him. Asher’s heart twists a little at the looks in his brother’s eyes—they both obviously want to say something to him, tell him they’re sorry for his loss, perhaps, but maybe they can’t get the words out. Just like himself.
Warren grabs his attention as the man clears his throat. He’s gazing at Asher like he wants to hug him, and although Asher thinks he might fall and splatter into nothing, he pushes through the shakiness and reaches out for the man. Akin to Safa’s hug, he’s submerged into warmth.
“I’m so sorry,” Asher hears Warren murmur to him, and Asher shudders against him. A second that feels like an eternity passes, and they part. Warren bores his eyes into his own, and it’s clear what he’s trying to get across unspoken. Come to me anytime.
Asher’s attention is grabbed by the movement from Neil at the other side of the room. He’s flipping the cover of his phone down with a blank look on his face, and the pit in Asher’s stomach grows. He sends Warren an apologetic glance and side-steps past him, silently walking towards his co-captain.
Each step forward feels as though he’s growing heavier, the weight upon his shoulders painful and evolving into something stronger. Asher drags a hand down his face, his palm dry, his fingerprints cracking at the contact.
Neil doesn’t look at him until Asher has reached his side. His gaze seems to pierce through Asher’s skin, his muscles, his bones, his nervous systems, his very atoms. Neil tells him, “Stuart’s been delayed. He won’t be here today.”
Coldness consumes him. His lips part, and Asher bites at his bottom one, and tries not to burst out into tears or vomit or die. He was supposed to be here today. Asher needed him to be here today. Now, more than ever. Norton will decay right in front of him. Takamori has already begun to.
What are they supposed to do? Hope Ichirou doesn’t send his newest Butcher after them and Fortress while they wait? Takamori shot his newest candidate, and Fortress slaughtered his men. Ichirou won’t just sit and wait for them to prepare.
Asher must be making a dreadful face because Neil continues talking, as if to consolidate his thoughts. “He should be here a week into July.”
Peeling his eyes from Neil, Asher stares out the window. The horrible guilt is turning to ice inside of him, a frostbite beginning to eat at him. Carving the marrow from his bones, making them hollow. He won’t be able to hold the weight any longer.
No Stuart. No Takamori. No Asher. Just all of…him.
“Asher,” Neil’s voice suddenly cuts into him. Asher snaps his eyes to him; Neil’s mouth is almost frowning, his eyes almost showing something. His tone is intense as he tells him, “He’ll be here.”
Will they be dead before that, though? Asher doesn’t want to be strung up. He sucks in a breath and looks around the room roughly, and shakes his head a little, asking, “Where’s Stray?”
He’s not in the kitchen. Not on the couch. Not in a dark corner of the lounge-room. He’s not here, and he knew this, but it’s all the more painful. Asher tries to steady his breathing; tries not to be a crybaby.
Asher can remember when he began to feel better after his kidnapping. He can remember the smallest glints of hope that would send him reeling because of how alive they were. He can remember each tug of breath feeling lighter, every inch of paranoia still brutal but becoming natural. He can remember all of it, and now he does not know how he ever became better.
Who was he kidding? He can’t do this anymore. He doesn’t want the blood leaking into his cuts, stinging. He doesn’t want to find the bodies. He doesn’t want to see an Exy court again. He doesn’t want any of this, if it leads to him becoming as alone as he feels right now.
The isolation is a cage settling over him, familiar. Asher hears Stray’s voice. Help me! Asher, he’s bleeding!
“He went with Wymack and Abby,” Neil murmurs from beside him. Asher turns his foggy gaze to him, spends a second taking the news in. He assumed that. It’s not a crime for Stray to not be here right now. It’s not. The relief he felt before is diminishing quickly.
Pulling his thoughts from Stray, Asher spares another second in closing his eyes. Norton, alone and smoking outside the building, is an image that falls into his mind, and he weakly nods to himself. He has to break the news to her. Asher says nothing more. He turns away from Neil, his brothers, Warren and Safa, and leaves the apartment.
His fingers shake so aggressively at his side they might break.