Archive of Our Own ^beta

A car streaks down a quiet, abandoned road far outside the nearest city, hills and woodlands to either side. With the only other light being the feeble glow of the half-moon, the car’s headlights beam through the darkness of the night.

As it rounds the next bend, a staggering figure shuffles towards a tree near the shoulder of the street. Then, as the car passes, he ducks his body away from it and pulls his hood forward as far as he can to protect the glossy finish of his helmet from the revealing glare of the headlights. 

The burst of wind as the car zips past ruffles the long coat around his knees. Kaiser shivers, hissing through his teeth. The night is cold, and it chills the sweat and blood clinging to his skin. Kaiser straightens from his hunch, then plants a hand on the side of the tree when a ripple of dizziness comes with the motion. A deep breath through gritted teeth as it passes, and then Kaiser continues his hike.

Kaiser has been walking for a very long time. How long exactly? He doesn’t know. A while. Probably covered a couple kilometers. Hopefully. He isn’t moving very quick with the cut running down the side of his thigh, and the bruise on his knee isn’t helping, nor are the bruises on his ribs, nor the blood running from his shoulder, nor the gash on the side of his head, nor the break in his nose, nor the burns around his arms and chest. 

Everything hurts. And as the minutes and the meters wear on, and on, and on, he can feel himself getting slower and slower. By now, he is practically dragging himself down the road.

But all that matters is that he is still putting distance between himself and that fucking warehouse.

As he gets settled into walking once more, one foot in front of the other, Kaiser decides to try his helmet again. He feels around the dark panel over the front of his face, then fumbles his fingers around the cracked plastics and finds the button panel tucked away. It’s pointless, he knows, trying to fiddle with the wires, and it’s stupid, he knows, to believe that he has any energy left to cast a ritual—but if he can at least get some energy flow…the battery seemed undamaged when he checked it…if it has any charge left…

A motorcycle revs in the distance. Fear fires through Kaiser and sends his heart right into his throat. He stumbles and catches himself on a tree. All the shadows in the forest move, and he blinks them away. Some raccoons, or something. Or the cracks in his face shield. Or imagination. Or exhaustion. He’s not being followed, he thinks. Knows. Thinks. Shit. Kaiser pushes himself away from the tree and stumbles back into walking. 

His hand slips into the pocket of the coat and finds the knife he stole from that lackey—brute—whoever, whatever he and his associates were. They’re dead now, so they’re not Kaiser’s problem anymore.

Except—the small symbol tattooed on the lower left ribs. Only one of them had it, but that combined with their familiar methodology is damning enough. 

They know. Isentropic knows, and they’ve put a target on Kaiser’s head. They’re after him. The question remains, though: Are they after Kaiser, or are they after Cesar?

Kaiser hugs his free arm around his middle, hand passing over his lower ribs. He was unconscious for a while. He… He doesn’t know if they saw. He doesn’t know if they would think to check. He doesn’t know if they would know his face. He didn’t recognize any of theirs, but it’s been years. Besides, the lights in the room were right in his eyes when they had him tied up, and using that explosion ritual certainly didn’t help him when he was trying to see their faces afterwards.  

The bushes and trees begin to thin out, just a little, as he slowly approaches a corner. A crossroads of another street cutting through the wilderness. Kaiser steals a glance behind him, just to be safe, before continuing. 

Would it have changed what they did to him? Would they have called it in if they knew who he was? They definitely would have, though he didn’t find any phones on any of them. They could have been keeping them somewhere else. Kaiser should have searched more after destroying the camera, stupid…

Another shiver rattles through him, and Kaiser grinds his teeth against the ripple of nausea and dizziness that comes with it. He stumbles and wheezes, a hand braced on his knee. His breath is loud in his helmet. Don’t throw up, don’t throw up. Don’t pass out either. Shit. Kaiser breathes, and he swallows, and then he keeps walking.

When he gets to the crossroads, he has a look around. Forward and to the right seems to head back into the hills whereas, if he squints up the leftmost path, he thinks he can see the road widen a bit, and the trees disappear. There will be less places to hide, but…Kaiser can’t wander around in the wilderness forever. He will die out here if he does. 

Kaiser doesn’t want to die. There is too much that he still needs to do. Kaiser takes his chances and heads left. 

Several more minutes pass, and he finds himself relieved that he did. Around another bend, previously blocked from view by a hillside, is a gas station. Its yellowish lights illuminate the pumps, the front of a small convenience store, and two garages. The garages are closed, metal doors rolled down, but Kaiser can see the lights are on in the store. Blinking the dark shapes out of his eyes, he can just barely see a large man sitting behind the counter.

Kaiser leans against the steep slope of the hillside, resting a moment with the knife in his hand. Okay. Okay. Progress. Kaiser can work with this. There is a truck parked up front—probably belongs to the man. If he tries to break the window and hotwire it, the man will hear him, and will probably come running out. Kaiser doesn’t think he can fight him like this. He has the empty gun in his waistband, so he could try to threaten him—he could even get the keys that way, or some cash, or even his phone…

But the man is big. Bigger than Kaiser, and Kaiser knows he looks like a wreck right now. He can hardly stand without swaying. If the man decides to overpower him, that will be it. 

It will be risky. But what other choice does he have?

…Well. 

There is one thing, but—no, he can’t. Kaiser wheezes out a laugh at the thought. No, absolutely not, no way. He doesn’t even remember the phone number. Well he does, but that’s only because he’s made it a habit of memorizing phone numbers, but he’s decided to act like he doesn’t. Because he would never call in this situation. Because that would be fucking stupid. 

It will bring too many questions, and it will put him in a favor-debt because everybody wants something, and Kaiser refuses to let those guys have anything on him. And what if they decide to take advantage of the fact that he—the occultist scum— is half-dead and defenseless? 

Okay, they…might not do anything so drastic. Because they still need him, obviously. Right. The other points still stand, though, so the question is: Who does he take his chances with?

Kaiser leans back against the hillside and stares up at the sky, breathing. Who does he take his chances with?

…Fuck. God damnit. Fuck his fucking life. Kaiser unbuckles the straps of his helmet and wriggles it off, wincing as the padding scrapes over the gash on his head. He stumbles away from the hillside and slinks around the garages. In the narrow alley between them, Kaiser hides his helmet. He wipes some of the blood off his face with the inside of the stolen coat—thank god that fucker was smart enough to do his torturing in black clothes—and pulls the hood on. 

God. Kaiser can’t believe he’s doing this. This is a terrible idea—but possibly getting into a fight with the guy behind the counter is even worse. Kaiser shoves his hands in his pockets and heads for the convenience store.  

An electronic bell lets out a distorted chime as Kaiser steps in. He comes in with his head ducked down, hoping to avoid any cameras. He misses his helmet already, but in this case, his helmet and its face shield are a lot more suspicious than his own, real face. Kaiser shuffles towards the counter.

The man behind the counter noticed him the moment he walked in, of course, and lowered the magazine he was reading. He seems older: dark weathered skin, greying hair, at least in his fifties, and built like a brick wall. His expression morphs into—suspicion? Something like that—as Kaiser approaches. “Can I help you?” the man asks slowly.

“He-ey—” Kaiser chokes. He clears his throat. Adjusts the coat to make sure none of the blood or torn clothes are showing. “Hey. Uh, yeah, I…” 

What, does he just…ask? It can’t be that simple. Kaiser doesn’t have any money. Would the man want money? What is he even doing here. He should take out the gun, make a threat, throw the knife, fucking—do something—

“Sir?” The man’s voice cuts through the fog. “Are you alright? You don’t seem well.”

“Um.” Kaiser blinks rapidly. Focus. Focus. “No, I—I’m fine. Just tired. It’s late. Uh. Right. I wanted to know…”

Kaiser lifts his head a little and scrounges together what he hopes is a pleading, innocent expression. “...Do you have a phone that I could borrow?”

~*~

The house is dead silent at this hour. Liz is in her room, at her desk, looking through the case notes for the third night in a row. The map of the three Isentropic-related locations they have been able to identify is laid out before her, and after many hours of research using the notes Kaiser, Arthur, and Thiago put together, she has been able to narrow down one, maybe two possible locations of other “hideouts” or “game rooms” or whatever they are. She has managed to find the names of the people who own these locations, but running those through the police database doesn’t bring up anything…

Liz taps her pen on her notebook, thinking. Isentropic has money, and they have connections. That much she has gleaned from Kaiser’s hints and what they have found so far. It’s possible that they might have a contact in the force to wipe criminal records of some of their higher profile members. She will have to keep a record of all the people she is finding here to see if Kaiser can identify any of them as occultists.

Liz twirls her pen around, scoffing to herself. Right, like he would confirm the identities of his primary clientele. She has heard him complain that Joui’s arrests have been “hurting business.”  Liz can’t see Kaiser risking his little operation anymore than he already has.

She will have Leticia run the names through the Order’s system first to see if anything turns up. If something does, maybe she will ask Kaiser about it anyway, just to see how much he is lying to them. 

Just as Liz is making a note to herself to call Leticia in the morning, a phone begins to ring. 

Liz blinks. It’s not hers. It’s coming from the next room over—Thaigo’s room. He went to bed particularly early tonight, trying to catch up on sleep; the nightmares have been frequent this week. Liz doesn’t know who would be calling him at this hour, but Joui is following up on a lead for suspected occultist activity tonight. Liz knows that Thiago, tired and nearly deaf, probably won’t wake up to his phone ringing for a while yet. Liz stands, cracks her back, and goes to answer.

Sure enough, Thiago is still dead asleep when Liz heads into his room and weaves her way around his usual mess. His phone is ringing and buzzing on his nightstand. He is just barely starting to stir when she gets to it and picks it up.

To her surprise, it isn’t Joui’s contact that she is met with, nor any of the others. Instead, it’s a random phone number. She recognizes the area code, at least. She almost hangs up, thinking it’s a spam call, but…on the off-chance it could be the Order—calling only him, from an unblocked number, for some reason—Liz decides to answer. Thiago is starting to wake up, anyway. 

Liz puts the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

~*~

“Hello?”

Oh fuck, that is not Thiago’s voice. In fact, Kaiser knows exactly who that is. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

~*~

“Uh.” The person on the other end of the line pauses. “Isn’t this—Thiago’s number?”

“Who’s asking?” Liz retorts. The voice is familiar, but she can’t quite place it. 

“It’s… Wait, sorry, is he there?”

Liz folds her arms. “I can’t tell you anything until you tell me who you are and why you're calling at…” She looks at the clock on Thiago’s nightstand. Her eyes go wide. “My god, one in the morning?” She didn’t realize how late it was.

As the voice on the other end of the line starts to sputter, Thiago sits up on his side and clicks on the lamp. He blinks at Liz, confused. “Who is it?” he mumbles.

Liz shrugs. “I don’t know,” she signs back, mouthing the words. “They want you.”

Thiago seems to think about this for a second before he makes a beckoning motion. Liz passes him the phone. “Just a second,” he says into the speaker before he sets it down on the nightstand so he can sit up and put in his hearing aid. Liz sits down on the edge of the bed, curious.

Finally, Thiago brings the phone up to his ear. “Hello? Thiago speaking.”

~*~

“Hello? Thiago speaking.”

Thank god. Kaiser wasn’t sure how he was going to explain anything to Liz, much less how to do so without saying his own name. The less the store owner knows, the better. 

Alright, now. Words. How does he do this. “Hey. It’s uh, it’s me. You…gave me your number about a week back? Said to call if ‘anything comes up.’ Remember?”

There is pause, and then a long hum on the other end of the line. “Ahh, yeah, I remember,” Thiago replies, tone knowing. He yawns. “Good morning, man. How are you?”

“Uh. Bad.”

“Bad?”  

Thiago almost sounds surprised. Kaiser furrows his brow. “Well, I’m calling you. Because something came up.” 

“What happened?”

Kaiser steals a glance at the store owner, who is watching him with narrowed eyes and crossed arms. He is standing a couple paces away, between him and the door—probably to dissuade him from running off with his phone. But this is a landline? A cordless landline, to be fair, but as if Kaiser is in any shape to run longer than a few steps, anyway. Well, if he pushed himself, maybe…

“Hello? Hey.”

Kaiser blinks back to himself. “Um.” He glances at the man again. “It’s complicated. I can’t really explain it all over the phone, you know?”

“I see. Do we need to meet up?” Thiago chuckles. “Man, you could’ve waited until morning to call, if that’s the case.”

“Eh, well, this—can’t wait until morning.” 

“Okay…? So we need to meet now?”

“Yes? Look, I…” 

Kaiser flounders, the words getting caught in his throat. He doesn’t need Thiago’s questions, he doesn’t need Thiago’s scrutiny, he doesn’t need this debt hanging over his head, everyone wants something—  

“Hello? What do you need, man, speak.”

“I need a favor.” It tumbles out of his mouth. “Okay? I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Kaiser’s heart is starting to kick up in his chest. Fuck, he’s actually doing this. Fuck. “Come on, you’re starting to make me worry here.”

“I need you to pick me up,” Kaiser says. He braces a hand on the countertop, head spinning. He doesn’t know if it’s the horrible feeling in his chest or the horrible feeling in his everywhere, but he suddenly doesn’t feel the steadiest. “You— You have a car right? I’m sorta stranded.”

“Stranded?”

“Yeah, um.” Kaiser takes a deep breath. Ugh, he kind of feels like puking again. “I ran into some trouble.”

“Trouble? Trouble how?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated.” Kaiser scrubs his eyes. “It’s…about what we’re working on. You know.”

“Are you hurt?”

Kaiser almost laughs. No, wait, he definitely laughs. His lips don’t feel real. “Yeah. Some. A bit.”

“Sir, are you alright?” the store owner suddenly says. Wow, Kaiser almost forgot he was there. The man is holding out a hand to him. “You’re swaying. Do you need to sit down?”

“Uh—”

“Who was that?”

“No thanks. Eh, gas station attendant.”

“Gas station— Dude, where are you right now?”

Kaiser brings the phone away from his ear. “D’you mind telling me where I am?”

~*~

“You’re where?”

Liz watches this conversation go on with growing confusion and growing alarm. Who is this person? And they need Thiago at one in the morning? And they could be hurt? Thiago’s face has been flicking between confused and worried for the past several seconds as the person on the other end of the line explains, their voice tinny chatter through the speaker. 

“...Right, okay. Give me a minute here to think.”

Thiago brings the phone away from his ear, staring at it in his hand and rubbing his forehead. “What?” Liz says to him. “Who is it?”

Thiago looks at her briefly and just holds up a hand in response. “Wait.” Liz crosses her arms again and gives him a what-the-fuck look because what the fuck. She sees him pull up Google maps and rapidly punch something in. Liz leans over in time to see that it is a location with a lot of greenery and very few roads before Thiago brings up the route details: A 38 minute drive. 

Thiago flicks back to the call and brings the phone to his ear again. “Alright, here’s the situation. I can come get you, but you’re a ways out. It’ll take me forty minutes to get there. Are you good for forty minutes?... Okay. And you said you’re hurt, right?”

Liz leans in again. “They’re hurt?”

Thiago ignores her. “Is this a first-aid kit situation, or…? Okay, I can bring one.” He gets up and heads to his chair, where he has about six different hoodies tossed over the back of it. He pushes some aside and picks one out, tossing it on the bed. All the while, he talks: “Stay there, and—I don’t know, stay out of sight, I guess… Good, okay. I’ll see you in a bit. Bye.”

The words are out of her mouth before he even properly hangs up: “Who the hell was that?”

Thiago opens up a drawer in his dresser, pushes some shirts aside, and pulls out his shoulder holster. “It was Kaiser.”

“Kaiser?” Liz is on her feet in an instant, marching over to him. “Why was Kaiser calling you in the middle of the night? How did he get your number? Did he hack your phone or something?”

“I gave him my number a while back,” Thiago says pointedly, sparing Liz a look like she is the unreasonable one here. He shrugs on the holster and clips it. Then he grabs his pistol. “I told him that if anything important came up, he should call.”

Liz watches him go through the motions of checking his pistol and magazine. How can he say this so casually? “And?” she demands.

“He didn’t tell me details, said he could explain later—there was someone else there, so I think he didn’t want to say too much in front of them.” Thiago finally turns to face her, expression set. “But he’s hurt and he needs a hand. So I’m giving him one.” Thiago holsters the pistol, grabs the jacket, and starts to leave.

Oh like hell. Liz hurries past him and shoves herself in the doorway, arms extended to either side of the frame to keep him from pushing through. “And you’re going. Just like that.”

Thiago shrugs. “He called. I told him I would come.”

“You don’t even know what happened! He could be lying to you, trying to get you all worried so you’ll come running faster.”

“Or he could not be.”

Liz scoffs at that. “He is an occultist. Lying and manipulating is what they do.”

Thiago raises an eyebrow. “And we don’t do the same?”

“When we do it, we’re saving lives,” Liz replies, gripping the doorframe harder. “People like him do it to use others for their own selfish means. We should know better than anyone else not to take his words at face value.”

Thiago sighs. He scrubs his eyes between his forefinger and thumb. “See, Liz, I’m starting to realize that this is the problem with our arrangement with Kaiser. We’re trying to work with this guy, but so far it’s been hard because he doesn’t tell us anything. Not… everything. Not really.”

“Because he’s hiding something.”

“Well of course he is!” Thiago exclaims. “Because we are agents of the Order, and he is an occultist, and we haven’t given him a good reason to actually trust us!”

“He doesn’t need to trust us,” Liz grits out, jaw tight. “He just needs to cooperate with us.”

Thiago’s expression seems to wince, lips tight. “You and I both know that’s not how it works. You remember Nostradamus.”

Liz stares. “What—” he is talking about Alex, he is talking about Alex— “the fuck do you think you’re implying? Alex was actually innocent, we understand that now, but we know this time that Kaiser is an occultist. We know he has killed, we know he has made money off this—”

“That’s not my point,”

“—shit he does with his ‘commissions.’”

“That’s not my point! I know Alex and Kaiser aren’t the same, of course I know that. But like Alex, Kaiser is involved with what we’re investigating, and despite whatever we think about him, we need to work with him.”

Thiago starts to count off on his fingers. “But we don’t know his name, we haven’t seen his face, we don’t know why he’s after Isentropic—the real reason he’s after them, not that bullshit about a debt. Hell, it was just last week that he let us hear his real voice for the first time! There have got to be a dozen other things that he is keeping under wraps—things that could be important. We’re just going to be getting in our own way if we keep holding each other at arm’s length.” 

“It’s too dangerous, Thiago,” Liz insists. Sure, she understands what he’s saying, but thinking of the others they’ve met—the same kind of people who tortured those students, built Santo Berço, experimented on Agatha’s mother; the same people who have murdered dozens, and maimed countless more, and nearly had Liz and the only people she cares about killed several times over. “Trusting him isn’t a risk we should take.”

“I think we have to,” says Thiago, “and I think we should.” 

This is a bad idea. She knows this is a bad idea. She can’t risk Thiago’s well being just because he has a hunch. “Well, I think you’re wrong. Kaiser is dangerous. We know this, we’ve seen people like him before.” 

Thiago folds his arms. “Liz, let me tell you, of all the occultists and esoterrorists that we have met, Kaiser is the one I’m most willing to take a chance on. Don’t look at me and say you don’t see that he’s different from the rest.”

“He—” 

It pops into her head, unbidden: The night Kaiser shot Joui in the face. He could have left Joui to die, should have left Joui to die, but instead he used that ritual to pull Joui’s jaw back together and staunch the bleeding. 

And that was before they even made their arrangement.  

And he hasn’t hurt anyone since.

“—is strange,” Liz allows, because damn, it’s true. Aside from being an occultist and a criminal, Kaiser is just a weird guy: short with his words, cagey about random things. “He’s unpredictable.”

“Maybe right now,” answers Thiago. 

Liz scoffs. “What, you want to— decode him?”

Thiago gives his head a bow. “It’s what I do.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing, “Thiago, do not tell me you’re trying to psychoanalyze the occultist—”

“I’m trying to understand him.”

“Oh my god.” 

“There’s a difference.”

“There really isn’t!”

“Understanding is mutual,” Thiago emphasizes with a gesture of his hand. “Look, Kaiser is… You’ve seen him. He works on his own, full-on solo act, yet he trusted me enough to call me when he needed help, so I need to trust him too, and believe he’s telling the truth. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

“Then why the gun,” Liz says flatly, nodding towards the pistol tucked against his side.

“Because I’m not an idiot. Truth or not, there could be trouble.”

“Then I’m coming with you. You’re not handling this on your own.”

Thiago purses his lips. “Liz, my dear, with all due respect—”

“You said he’s hurt,” Liz cuts him off before he can even begin to worm his way out of this one. There isn’t going to be convincing him otherwise, not when he’s stuck in an idea like this, but Liz can at least make sure he doesn’t get himself into a situation with no back-up. “He will need someone to treat his injuries, and you and I both know that your first aid needs work.”

Liz doesn’t like Kaiser. She doesn’t trust him either. Thiago knows that, but he also knows that she’s right. She sees him struggle with this before he finally folds. “Fine. Okay. But try not to corner him, yeah? Or grill him for answers. It sounds like he’s had one hell of a night.”

Liz drops her arm from the doorframe. “Fine.”

Thiago passes her into the hall, patting his hand on her shoulder as he goes. “Go get your bag and your gun. I’ll meet you in my car.” 

~*~

“Good, okay. I’ll see you in a bit. Bye.”

“Who the hell was—”

Kaiser hangs up. With some rapid button presses, he deletes the number from the phone’s call history before handing it back to the man. “Here. Um, thanks.”

“Of course,” the man replies, taking the phone back with ginger movements, like he still isn’t sure what to make of all this. “Did you…get everything sorted with your friend?”

“Ehh.” Kaiser leans back against the counter for a moment and turns to survey the convenience store: small, tight, entirely too bright, entirely too visible, only one exit. “Yeah. ‘S, uh, fine.” He pushes himself off the counter, wobbles into a walk with a hiss— “Ow—” and starts to leave.

Kaiser can feel the man’s funny look as he shuffles towards the door. “Where are you going?” Kaiser ignores him. “You can wait in here, if you like— My god, boy, you’re bleeding!” A hand on his shoulder— “Are you okay?” Something awful in him twists— “What is going—”

Kaiser shrugs him off and crashes into the door. He shoves out into the night and wrinkles his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. He grabs at a wall. Ugh, Kaiser really doesn’t want to be thinking about Cris right now. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if it was Cris who gave him that “call if something happens” number... 

Eesh. No. Not thinking about it. Not. Thinking about it. Kaiser gets his feet under him again and shambles his way over to the narrow alley between the garages where he hid his helmet. He braces a hand against the wall as he stoops over to pick it up and wriggles it on. He swears under his breath as it scrapes against the gash on his head again, but a bleeding wound is better than being caught without his helmet.

All the buckles secured, he leans against the wall. He… He would very much like to sit down. A lot. His legs are shaking, he could curl up to ward off the chill, wrap his stolen coat around his knees. But he knows if he sits down, he runs the risk of dozing off, passing out, whatever. And being unconscious would be bad, especially if someone comes looking for him.

Because Isentropic is looking for him now. They’re after him. So they’re after Thiago and his team, too. Of course they are. Everyone is being tracked down, hunted. Now, more than ever, Kaiser can’t risk being caught unaware. They’re after him. They’re after him.

Kaiser knew that this would happen if he ever started making moves against Isentropic. He knew that at some point, no matter how subtle he was, they would turn around and strike back. And that… That…

Kaiser runs a hand across his lower left ribs, bruised and marked. He remembers the sting of disappointment in their voices, and the crack of his knees on the concrete, and the wires carving paths beneath living flesh, and the screaming, and the blood.

They always maintained a strong sense of family within the cult. They did not take kindly to those among them who did not feel the same. And as for traitors…

So, Kaiser stands in the shadows of the alley. And he watches. And he waits.

God knows if Thiago will actually come. Kaiser hopes he does. At this point, he doesn’t think he has any other chance.

~*~

Liz insisted on driving. Thiago let her take the keys, because he didn’t want to fight her on it, and he’s pretty sure that’s why she asked in the first place. That, and to give herself something to do to cool off. So now Thiago is left sitting in the passenger seat for the forty minute drive into the hills, watching the city give way to houses, give way to dirt, give way to grass and trees and forest.

Thiago doesn’t like to worry, if the worrying isn’t going to help him. Worrying won’t make Liz drive faster—she is already going plenty fast enough, thanks—and worrying won’t make Kaiser’s situation up at the gas station any better. But he can’t help but wonder how the fuck Kaiser ended up hurt and stranded at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, a solid forty minutes in the complete opposite direction of the area of São Paulo he usually operates in. And for it to be possibly connected with the Isentropic case? That doesn’t bode well either—not for themselves, not for the case, and not for Kaiser.

Yeah. So Thiago is worried. And he really wishes he hadn’t let Liz take the keys from him.

Eventually, though, they do reach the gas station. It is a humble establishment: two pumps, a tiny store, and a couple shut garages, likely for the roadside repairs of unfortunate travelers. Liz pulls up past the curb and foregoes the shadier parking spots to instead park under the lights shining down on the pumps. 

The moment the car is off, Thiago unbuckles. “He’s probably inside,” Thiago says. He adjusts his jacket, making sure the gun strapped to his side is hidden from view. “I’ll go grab him.”

Liz unbuckles. “I’ll go with you.”

“ No, that isn’t a good idea,” Thiago cuts in, smoothing the harshness in his tone as best he can. “He doesn’t know I brought you with me. We don’t need to corner him—he gets jumpy with that trigger finger of his. You can see into the store from here well enough, alright? If something happens, you’ll be there in seconds.” 

“I’m not letting you go in there by yourself,” Liz snaps back. “That was the agreement. We answer the call, but I stick with you.”

(The problem with this is that, despite his big scary occultist helmet and big scary occultist rituals, Kaiser is one skittish son of a bitch. And he is jumpy. As far as Thiago can tell, he himself is the only one Kaiser acts somewhat normal around, and Liz is the one Kaiser spends most of his time actively avoiding—along with Cris, but Cris can understandably be a lot sometimes.) 

“Then consider staying here and keeping an eye out for anyone coming in,” Thiago replies, to which he is given an utterly unconvinced glare. “Look, forget Kaiser for a second—can’t you just trust me on this one? Me? And my judgement? You know that if I smelled bullshit, I would have told you by now, right?”

It is a lie. Kind of. Just a small one. Thiago doesn’t smell bullshit, but part of him knows that he is running some risk being out here, and that Kaiser can keep a secret when he wants to.

But, using his better judgment, Thiago is choosing to trust Kaiser. He will trust Kaiser. And it will pay off. 

Liz looks very, very angry with him at the moment. The fact that she didn’t immediately snap back at him with a retort, however, is answer enough. She beats her hand on the rim of the steering wheel a few times. “ARGH, FINE! Fine. But I am waiting here with the door open and my gun in my hand.”

Thiago makes a soothing gesture. “Whatever you want, my dear.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Thiago opens the door. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The night is brisk. Thiago resists ruffling his jacket too much, trying to keep what is concealed concealed, and starts to cross the small lot towards the convenience store.

He doesn’t make it more than a few steps, though, before he spots movement out of the corner of his eye. 

~*~

Time passes in a haze. It takes all of Kaiser’s concentration to stay upright, to stay aware. He’s freezing, though he’s never been so drenched in sweat, he’s sure. He tries to keep himself busy for a little while by fiddling with the wires in his helmet. He doesn’t think he could pull together the willpower for a ritual like this, but he has to try…

The shaking in his fingers doesn’t let him get very far with that, anyway. So he goes back to waiting.

A horrible, wretched eternity later, he sees headlights come up the road. He has seen some cars pass, blurs in the darkness that send his heartrate up so fast it almost makes him puke, but these lights seem to take longer to arrive. The car in question slows down when it gets to the gas station, then turns and parks by one of the pumps. 

Kaiser shuffles back into the alley a half step, hands braced on the wall for support. He tries to see who it is, but between the glare of the headlights and the glare of the lamps above the pumps and the cracks in his face shield and the dark shapes wriggling before his eyes…he can’t make out much. 

A minute passes, and the passenger side door opens. Out steps a figure in a dark hoodie, with dark hair, and…Thiago? It must be Thiago. That must be Thiago, heading for the convenience store. Where Kaiser is not. 

Kaiser tries to say something, but the syllable gets caught in his throat. He slumps against the wall and shuffles out to the edge of the alley, swallowing, trying to find words. His head spins and spins with the motion. Ugh. He is. Not feeling good.

However, probably-Thiago freezes when Kaiser steps out of the alley and whips around towards him. “...Kaiser?” he calls.

The voice reaches Kaiser a bit muffled, but his entire body relaxes at the sound before he can even process it. Thiago. It’s just Thiago. The talker. The one who likes to smoke with him. The one he called. The one who answered. Kaiser can recognize him now. 

“Hey,” Kaiser says, or something like it. He doesn’t even know if Thiago heard him. He has the mouth plate on. Thiago always has trouble understanding him when he has his mouth plate on. It’s worse with the modulator, but Kaiser doesn’t use that around him anymore…

Thiago is…walking towards him? Yeah. Walking towards him. Saying something, maybe. Kaiser can’t quite hear. He should get closer. He takes a step and the ground tilts and darkness sweeps in and his legs go numb and his hand reaches out and closes around something and…

…and next thing he knows, he is sitting on the floor, hands gently pushing him to lean with his back against the wall. Oh. He…? Oh. Okay.

Kaiser’s head tips back, helmet hitting the wall with a thunk. Fire jolts across his head. Ow.

“Careful.”

What?

“You are fucked up, man. This is what you call ‘a bit’ hurt?”

Kaiser blinks his eyes open. Thiago. Kaiser swallows. Words, words, words. “Uh. Hi.”

Thiago makes a sound like a laugh. It’s not a happy sound. “Good morning. I take it you’re hearing me now?”

What, did Thiago say something before? “Yeah?”

“Good. Then here’s the thing. You look like you’ve been run over by three angry semi-trucks, and I can wrap a bandage, but this is a bit above my pay grade.” Thiago throws a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got Liz in the car who is a lot more qualified at handling the situation you’ve got going on—” He makes a collective, hand-wavy gesture over Kaiser— “right here. Understand? I want to know if you’re cool with me calling her over, since I didn’t tell you she would be coming with me.”

Liz is here? When did Liz get here? Liz hates him. Hates. Him. Probably-definitely wants him dead, but that would impact the mission, wouldn’t it. Thiago wouldn’t let her kill him, even if she wants to. Because she does. Want to. Probably? Maybe. 

“Kaiser? Can I call her over?”

Right. Should Liz come over. Should Liz… It’s. Probably fine. Kaiser can’t be sure, his head is too soupy for that right now. The weird part is that Thiago is bothering to ask him. Fuck it. If Liz wanted to kill him he would’ve been dead weeks ago. “Sure.”

Thiago looks away and makes a beckoning gesture with his arm. Some seconds slip, and slip, and slip…

“...aiser? Kaiser? Hey.”

Hands shake him. Kaiser jumps, helmet hitting the wall with a thunk. Fire jolts across his head. Owww.

“Are you with us?”

Us? Kaiser blinks his eyes open, and sure enough, there is Liz crouched beside Thiago, one knee up and a briefcase by her leg. “Hi,” says Kaiser.

“Hey,” says Liz and oooooh, she doesn’t sound too happy with him. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Liz,” Thiago sighs. 

“Took me,” Kaiser answers, because Liz asked him a question and he doesn’t need her angry at him right now. “Dunno where. Wanted…something. T’stop me, I guess.” The ‘cease and desist’ procedure. Kaiser remembers it well enough. The methods haven’t changed much over the years.

“Right,” says Liz. She opens up the briefcase and rips open a package, wiping her hands with whatever is inside, and then pulls out a pair of gloves. All the while, she keeps talking: “I need you to tell me what hurt you, where it still hurts, where you’re bleeding from, if you were injected with anything, and if you feel like passing out or vomiting.” She takes out a thing and —ka-click!— turns on a pen light. “Got it?”

“Um,” says Kaiser, squinting at the light. Everything kind of hurts, but he doesn’t think that’s what she’s asking for. He concentrates…

“Liz, take it easy on him—”

“I’m trying to do my job. I need information to do my job.”

…and he pulls together some thoughts. “Leg. Uh, cut my leg. Thigh. With a knife. It hurts. It’s…still bleeding? Shoulder too.” Should he really be telling her all his weak spots? “Uh.” Oh well. “Metal pole on the ribs. A lot. My knee too. S’not as ba aAGH!”  

Hands press something on his leg, right on the gash, and sharp, burning pain bursts from the muscle. Kaiser tries to push whatever-it-is off of him, but an arm much stronger than his own knocks him back. “Easy, man, let her work.” 

“Wh—”

“Sorry,” Liz says, not sounding very sorry. “I should probably say that this is going to hurt.”

“You could’ve warned him,” Thiago points out.

“This is true. Bring your knee up, Kaiser.”

Kaiser tries, but all he manages is a vaguely-upward jerky movement. Thiago—now holding Liz’s pen light; she passed it to him?—puts a hand under his leg and helps him get his knee up. 

Liz spends…an amount of time wrapping gauze and bandage around his thigh. Then, she starts to tug at the coat. Kaiser flinches back, tries to scoot away— 

“Your shoulder,” she tells him flatly. “You said it was stabbed.”

“Cut.” A hum. “A lot.” Another hum. She continues trying to take off his coat, and Kaiser lets her, trying to maneuver his arm so that it doesn’t cause complete agony while still getting it out of her way.

Thiago reaches over, steadying him. “Here, I—”

“Hello?! Is everything alright over there?!”

“Never mind.” Thiago lets go of Kaiser’s arm, passes Liz her pen light, and wipes his hands off on his jacket. “Hold on, I got it.” He grunts as he stands, then he heads back into the lot with an easy grin on his face: “Evening, sir! Can I help you?...”  

A moment passes with the sound of Thiago chattering in the background. Liz gets the coat off of him. Kaiser shudders as cold air runs over his sweaty, blood-bathed arm. Liz takes the empty gun from his waistband, checks it, and puts it aside, out of his reach. Kaiser hisses through his teeth and squints against the glare of Liz’s pen light. Bright. Very bright. Eesh. And he even has his face shield on…

Liz’s hand, instead of going to his shoulder, idles by his forearm. The light focuses there, and travels up his arm, and oh. Right. Those. 

“What,” mutters Liz, “the hell are these?”

“Mine,” Kaiser exhales because well. That’s basically true. Half of those wires he had installed himself. The others… Well, they’re in him now. And he can’t get them out. Not a fucking thing he can do about them. They’ve grown into his wrists. And his neck. And probably his spine, too.

“Fucking hell...” Liz looks around his arm some more. “...These are burns.”

“Ritual.” The explosion. It burns him, but it always burns everyone else much worse. 

Liz hums. “Figures.” Finally, she gets to his shoulder. “Damn. Okay. Did they… They cut your sleeve off for this?”

“‘Timidation,” Kaiser mumbles. “H’miliation.” They had been filming it, so. That’s how they always did it: Start outward and work your way in. Builds suspense. Builds fear. And it makes for better blackmail because it just gets worse, and worse, and worse, and more revealing, and…

“What did you say?”

Kaiser shudders again. He wheezes. The camera is destroyed. He crunched up the SD card and threw the pieces in a muddy ditch. No one will ever see it. No one will ever see his face. They won’t ever see his face.

“Kaiser.”

“Mm?”

“What did you say?”

“Intimi… Intimidation,” he manages. “Trying to… Eh.”

Liz dunks something from a bottle onto some gauze, and then presses the gauze to his shoulder. A burst of pain again. Kaiser chokes on a yelp. She wipes at the wound for a while. 

“So,” says Liz. She puts the pen light in her mouth to grab and start wrapping some bandage. She takes it out again. “You were being tortured.” It’s more of an observation than a question.

“Mm.”

She continues wrapping. “Do you know by who?”

Kaiser laughs. Or, well, some sort of noise bubbles out of him. It hurts. He laughs a little more, choking on breath. Does he say it? They should know. They should probably know. But they’ll know that he knows and…that isn’t… But they should know… They’re all being…

A jostle. Kaiser winces. Liz’s face comes into focus again. “Kaiser, do you know who was torturing you?”

“Hey, leave him alone, will you?” Thiago crouches back into view. “Let the man suffer in peace. Wait until you’re done shoving gauze into his wounds to slam him with questions.”

Liz huffs. She puts the pen light back in his hand, then leans away from Kaiser for a second to look into the lot of the gas station. “...What did you tell him?”

“Well,” Thiago begins. He looks at Kaiser and points a finger at him. “ You crashed your girlfriend’s motorcycle—” He taps Kaiser’s helmet— “on your way back from a weekend trip. So you called me, your cousin, to come bail you out. You were just too embarrassed to admit what happened over the phone. Thankfully, my roommate—” He gestures to Liz with a sweep of his hand— “is a paramedic-in-training, so you’re in good hands.”

“Paramedic -in-training?” Liz echoes pointedly.

Thiago makes an uncertain sound. “ Official paramedic is too convenient, but I still wanted him to leave us alone and, you know, not call anyone.”

“Don’t have a girlfriend,” Kaiser notes, because he doesn’t.

Thiago throws his hands up. “Damn, everyone’s a critic. How is the situation over here?”

“Got his shoulder cleaned and wrapped,” Liz explains. “As best as I can, anyway. I need to check his ribs—”

“No.”

Liz’s head whips up to him. “No?”

“No. M’ribs are fine.” They are, in fact, not fine, but he will sooner walk himself back to São Paulo than let either Liz or Thiago see the tattoo he has there.

“You said that they were hitting you with a metal pole,” Liz points out.

“Not hard.”

“Really?”

“S’fine.”

“I seriously doubt that.” Her hand moves towards him, him, his shirt and Kaiser gasps and kicks and throws his hand at her wrist and yanks and—

“Woah woah, easy, everyone, easy!” Thiago’s hand separates Kaiser’s from Liz’s wrist, and both of their arms are shoved back. He looks at Kaiser. “You? Breathe.” He looks at Liz. “And you? Leave his ribs. If he says they’re fine, they’re fine.”

Kaiser blinks a few times at this. He doesn’t understand why Thiago has been nagging Liz about the way she is treating him, just that he is. Most of the time, Kaiser can’t be sure if what Thiago says or does is genuine, or if he’s trying to get something. Because everyone wants something. And Thiago is much too good with words to not get what he wants.

But still. Thiago has stopped Liz. His friend. For Kaiser’s sake.

What the fuck is happening.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Liz hisses back. “And I wasn’t even going to check them; if he wants to sit around with broken ribs, then that’s on him. I was going to fix the gauze around his leg.”

Thiago makes an as you wish gesture, and Liz’s hands move towards Kaiser, and down to his wounded leg. Kaiser grits his teeth as she moves some gauze around.

“How’s the breathing, Kaiser?” Thiago asks after a long beat of silence.

Kaiser’s brain takes a moment to catch up. He draws in a breath. “F…Fine?”

“Does it hurt too much to breathe?”

“Not…really? A bit. Hurts in general.”

“Then your ribs are probably just bruised. Some light fractures maybe.” Liz spares him a look. “What? I’m an expert in having broken ribs. I had to listen to those doctors go over the symptoms for ages. Might as well use that for something.”

Liz heaves a long sigh, but she doesn’t say anything on the matter. Thiago smiles at this. Kaiser just grits his teeth as medical tape is pressed into place and lets Liz and Thiago deal with each other.

Eventually, Liz sits back. She takes her pen light and sweeps it over him. “So, anything else I should know about? Or not know about?” (Kaiser glares at her, though he knows she can’t see it.) “Heavy bleeding, slurred speech, spotty awareness…” She pulls her pen light back for a moment and taps it on her knee, eyebrow raised at him. “What you need is a hospital, but I’m assuming that’s off the table.”

Kaiser shakes his head. He hasn’t been to a hospital in years. The wires are hard to explain, to start.

“Right.” Liz goes back to sweeping over him with her pen light. “It’s probably the blood loss. The fact that you’re still conscious at all is ridiculous. You…” Her pen light stalls at his neck, by his ear. “...have blood coming down from— Were you hit in the head?”

To be honest, Kaiser wasn’t going to mention it. His helmet is on. It’s fine. It’s definitely fine. “Just a cut,” he mumbles.

Thiago leans in over Liz’s shoulder to get a better look. He frowns. “Man, this is a lot more blood than ‘just a cut.’ What the hell. Did they take a brick to your head?”

Well, basically. That brick wall had been rough, and the lackey’s hands had been rougher. “They, uh—” Liz’s hand hovers up near the jaw of his helmet. “Hey.”

“Just trying to see better,” Liz says, extending a single finger to prod at him. “Turn your head that way.”

Kaiser knows it’s pointless, but he does it anyway, just to get her hands away from his helmet. Sure enough, Liz makes a frustrated sound. “All this shit is in the way. I can't see anything.”

"Kinda the point," he deadpans.

Liz scoffs. "Well, I can't see your injury."

He doesn’t much care. 

“We have to take off your helmet.”

Kaiser suddenly cares. “No.”

“We do. You’re bleeding from the head— still bleeding.” She shines her pen light at his neck. “Some of this looks fresh. If you were hit, you probably have a concussion, but I won’t know until I can check your eyes. And, this will get infected if you leave it like—”

“No,” Kaiser repeats. “It’s fine." Definitely fine. Probably fine. He has left worse untreated. Maybe. Well. Okay. And never a head wound, but—

“Leaving it like this would be stupid,” Liz says plainly. “That’s the truth.”

“Don’t care.”

Thiago frowns at him. “Kaiser…”

Liz, meanwhile, sputters. “Wh— Are you crazy?!” 

“I—”

“Don’t answer that.” She throws up her hands. “Look, I can’t force you to do anything. If you want to sit around with a gaping hole in your head, be my fucking guest; but I also don’t want to have to deal with you dying from organ failure, or a lack of oxygen to your brain, or an infection in your head.”

“Kaiser, she has a point,” Thiago says before Kaiser can try to object again. “Head injuries are serious business. It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave it open like this.”

Okay, it’s not like Kaiser doesn’t know that. But. Taking off his helmet? That isn’t something he can do. No one who has ever known him as ‘K@1S3R’ has seen his face. No one. It is to keep Isentropic from finding him, to keep himself from being targeted by other occultists, to keep himself, K@1S3R, alive. No one knows who K@1S3R is, and no one will ever know who K@1S3R is. It has to stay that way. He will die if it doesn’t. 

…Liz and Thiago are not occultists, though. They aren’t Isentropic, either. They aren’t targeting him to kill him. If they wanted him dead, they could have killed him right here, several times over. They could have killed him the past few weeks, several times over. They could have grabbed him, slammed him to the ground, hauled him away. 

Thiago answered his call for help. Caught him when he fell. Liz, for all her bite, has been treating his wounds instead of making them worse. Stopped when he told her to.

No one knows who K@1S3R is… 

And concussions don’t stick like they used to, not after so many years since he first Transcended. And with that in mind, the blood loss probably won’t kill him either. 

But he’s not too keen on finding out what it’s like to have a head wound that’s infected.

No one knows who K@1S3R is… No one knows who Kaiser is…

…It’s just two people. He can handle two people, right? 

Kaiser, with trembling hands and a pounding heart, reaches for the buckles of his helmet.

~*~

Honestly, Thiago didn’t believe that Kaiser would actually do it. In this case, he is glad to be proven wrong. He watches, with genuine amazement, as Kaiser unfastens his helmet. He starts to lift it, pauses for a long moment, and then slowly, finally, peels it off his head.

There is a cold sort of dread that comes with it. Okay. So this is serious.

Kaiser, as it turns out, is a pretty normal looking guy—disregarding the blood, bruises, and probably-broken nose, of course. His face is sharp, thin. His ears look… fine. Normal. Thiago has seen how long his hair is, and he has seen Kaiser’s beard on the occasions where he takes off his mouth plate to smoke, but it is strange to finally put it all to a face. The only remarkable thing about Kaiser is that his eyes are a deep, definite shade of purple.

These are the eyes that Liz immediately attacks with her pen light, holding Kaiser’s face by the jaw so he can’t look away. Kaiser hisses, scrunching his face up. “Th’fuck.” (Oh good. At least Thiago doesn’t have to strain to hear him anymore.) 

“Checking your pupils,” Liz tells him. “Open your eyes.” 

“Urgh,” Kaiser says through his teeth.

Thiago huffs at the sight of him. He looks fucking miserable. “You better open ‘em up, man, she won’t let you go until you do.”

Kaiser sighs, but he obliges. Liz holds her light near one of his eyes, moves it away for a few seconds, then brings it back to his other eye. She brings it away again. “Yep. You’re concussed.”

“Cool,” mutters Kaiser, voice dripping with snark. “Thanks.”

Liz ignores him. She turns his head to the side and yeesh. The gash is as long as one of Thiago’s fingers, and it has drenched the whole left side of his face and matted his hair with blood. How on Earth is this guy still awake?

“Okay,” Liz exhales. Thiago knows she has seen the size of it, and he can tell by the pitch of her voice that she is just as shocked as he is. She takes out some gauze and starts tilting his head around again. “Keep your head here. Thiago, hold this—” She slaps the pen light in his waiting hand— “and can you help me pull his hair out of the way? Don’t touch anything else.”

“Of course.” Thiago scoots closer in the narrow alley and does exactly as he is told, giving Liz the space she needs to work. 

Without his helmet on, Thiago can see every grimace and every flinch Kaiser makes as Liz wipes at the wound, then starts to wind bandage around his head. His hand is curled into a fist where it rests on his helmet at his side. His face is taut. His eyes are squeezed shut through it all. Thiago isn’t sure if it’s from the light of the pen or from the pain. Probably both. He is breathing pretty fast, though his chest has been shuddering like that since they got here. 

(Kaiser grabbed him when he fell. Tight. Scrambled and gasped and dug his fists into Thiago’s sleeves with terrifying force, like it was the only thing he had left. And then his consciousness wavered again, and Thiago had to ease him onto the ground.)

Kaiser doesn’t look good. Not at all. And with him saying he was “taken” and Liz asking who was “torturing” him…

Thiago does some simple math, and he realizes that they can’t leave Kaiser alone. He doesn’t want to leave Kaiser alone. Oh, Liz is just going to love what he has to say…

Okay. How does he go about this? Thiago clears his throat. “So, is a hospital really not in the cards?”

“No,” both Kaiser and Liz say at the same time. Liz elaborates: “He has too much evidence of the occult on him. Tattoos, body modifications...” (Thiago has seen the wires. He is trying very hard not to stare at the wires.) “It will raise too many questions, and I don’t think even you can answer all of them.”

“No, I agree,” Thiago replies easily. “It would be better to keep him where we can see him anyway, right?”

Liz pauses, and she looks at him. Ah Christ. “Thiago, what do you think you’re suggesting?”

“I’m just saying,” Thiago begins slowly, letting time stretch to build cushion for the impact, “that if this concussion and blood loss business is as bad as you say it is, then it’s probably not a good idea to just drop him somewhere on his own. So our options are either our place, or…” Thiago thinks, and then he shifts the light to his hand and spells it out for her: O-R-D-E-R. “And I don’t think that one is wise at all.”

“Thiago, we’re not— We can’t just bring him to the house,” Liz objects, shaking her head as she staunchly continues wrapping Kaiser’s head. “Wherever he lives is probably more secure than our place, anyway.”

“They found it,” Kaiser says. He cracks his eyes open and looks…not quite at either of them, but towards them. “My apartment. Grabbed me there.”

“Your apartment?” Liz echoes, brow furrowed. Thiago racks his brain, trying to remember if Kaiser ever mentioned anything about where he lived; he draws up a blank. “They tracked you down to your apartment?”

“I have other places, but…” Kaiser takes a deep breath, and his eyes slip away from them. “I dunno if they know.”

“They tracked you down to your apartment,” Liz repeats. “Oh, wonderful. So they know who you are and where you live.” 

Kaiser doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just stares at the opposite wall, breathing unsteady. 

Then, he swallows. “Yeah. I dunno if they know you,” Kaiser continues, still not looking at them, “but they know…” He blinks rapidly a few times, and his head starts to dip.

“Shit,” Thiago swears as he leaps to steady Kaiser’s shoulders while Liz keeps a desperate hold on the half-done dressings around his head. “Hey, Kaiser. Kaiser.”

“... Me,” mumbles Kaiser, voice tight. “They know me.”

Oh, fuck right off, Kaiser sounds scared. There isn’t any other word for it. Fuck.

“Bring your head up,” Liz orders. 

Thiago puts a hand on the wall behind Kaiser’s head to keep him from knocking it again as he struggles to do so. “Liz,” Thiago murmurs.

He doesn’t even get to start. “Yeah, I know,” she says, and she doesn’t seem thrilled about this at all. “Can’t put the kidnapping victim back where the kidnappers found him. Common sense. God damn it.” She pulls one last bandage tight. Kaiser makes a noise like a yelp. Liz goes and loosens it before pressing on some medical tape.

Then, she whips around on Thiago. She throws a finger in his face. “He stays downstairs. On the couch. Supervised, by you.”

“Okay.”

“And you stay armed.”

“That works.” It doesn’t, not in Thiago’s mind, but compromises, right? “Are we ready to go, then?”

Liz plucks the pen light from Thiago’s hand. “Let me pack my things.”

“Kaiser?” Thiago asks. He finds Kaiser is staring at Liz, almost as if in a daze. “You ready to go?”

Kaiser blinks, and his eyes flick towards him. Thiago notices that his eyes have just the barest glow, now that Liz’s pen light is off. “Uh. Sure.”

“Good, because that wasn’t really a question.” As Liz snaps her kit shut, Thiago shuffles himself over to Kaiser’s side and shoves his shoulder under his unbandaged one, snaking his arm around Kaiser’s back. He pulls Kaiser’s arm over his own shoulders. “Alright, we’re up on three. One, two, three…”

~*~

A horrible noise is dragged out of Kaiser’s chest as Thiago makes him shift his weight forward. God, it fucking hurts like all fucking hell, fuck. Spots dance in his vision as Thiago forces them both upward. “H-hold…” Kaiser chokes. His head is spinning. “Slow… You’re…”

“I got you.”

“Thiag…”

“Aaaaalmost there, man.” At last, they straighten. “And there we go! Good to be on your feet again, right?”

Kaiser wheezes. “Fuck...”

“Uh-huh—”

“...y-you.”

“Uh-huh!” Thiago lets out a short laugh. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been getting that a lot recently. Speaking of, my dear, do you mind grabbing his helmet? I’ve got my hands full.”

His helmet. Kaiser looks to the side in time to see Liz standing up with her briefcase in one hand, the coat thrown over her arm, and his helmet dangling in her other.

Kaiser extends his hand out. “S’mine,” he says, because it is, and he needs it, and he doesn’t want her to try poking around in it. It’s broken enough. 

Liz raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re not putting this on,” she tells him. Kaiser just keeps his hand outstretched. Liz frowns, but she puts the rim of the helmet in his grasp. Kaiser curls his fingers into the plastic and suddenly remembers how to breathe. 

Thiago adjusts his hands around Kaiser’s body; Kaiser tries his hardest not to squirm too much at the feeling. Eesh. Touching. He can’t say he’s a fan of this, but there is no way he is standing or walking on his own right now. God, he is fucking tired. 

“Okay,” Thiago says, “to the car.”

“Oh hell, you are not walking him across the gas station like that,” Liz snips. “He looks half-dead, do you want that man to come out here again? I’ll bring the car around, wait here.”

Kaiser watches Liz head off at a brisk pace: across the lot, to the pumps, and into the car. 

“You know,” Thiago remarks as the headlights come on. “She’s not wrong. You do look half-dead.”

“Mm.” Kaiser moves his feet under him, trying to get more pressure off his leg. “I feel like it.” 

Thiago shifts their weight again, and some of the pain eases. Kaiser sags from the relief. Okay. This isn’t so bad actually.

“Yeah, I bet you do.” Thiago takes a deep breath, and he sighs. “It’s probably a good thing you called.”

(It is.)

Kaiser doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He hugs his arm around his middle, passing his hand over his lower ribs again, as Liz brings the car and parks it in front of them. Thiago opens the back door, carefully shuffles Kaiser in, and shuts it for him. 

Car. Backseat of a car. To drive to Liz and Thiago’s house. And sleep there. This feels like some really weird, fucked up dream. Kaiser fumbles the seatbelt on as Thiago gets into the front seat, and he watches him pull up Google maps on his phone as Liz pulls them off onto the road.

And then they’re driving.

Liz and Thiago are silent up in the front seat. Kaiser puts a steadying hand on his helmet in the seat beside him, then leans his head against the window and watches the dark shapes of the wilderness whip by. 

He knows that he should stay awake for the drive. When they get back to São Paulo, Kaiser needs to pay attention to where they are and where they’re going, so if he needs to run, he can; so if he needs to sneak away, he can. 

But he finds that he doesn’t want to. He should want to. But he doesn’t. He almost feels hollow in the absence of it—the want to escape. 

He doesn’t feel good. Everything hurts. Kaiser decides that all he wants is to sleep.

~*~

Liz has been driving for five minutes in some extremely contemplative silence when Thiago moves for the first time since they settled in. From the corner of her eye, she sees him perk up, then turn around to look into the back seat. “Kaiser?”

A few seconds pass, and there isn’t an answer. 

Thiago faces forward again. “Should he be sleeping right now?”

Liz’s eyes flick up to the rearview. Sure enough, Kaiser is slumped against the window in the back seat, eyes shut.

“You know,” Thiago continues, voice low. “With the concussion and all.”

Liz drums her fingers on the steering wheel. Kaiser asleep in the backseat. Kaiser, occultist wanted by the Order, asleep in the backseat. How did Thiago get her to agree to this. Fuck. “We’ll be waking him up in thirty minutes, so it’ll be fine,” she informs him. “Concussions require you to check in every few hours.”

Thiago makes a sound of acknowledgement. He is quiet for a moment. There is only the hum of the engine, and the rumble of the wheels on the road.

Then, Thiago lifts his head in a way that tells Liz he’s about to start something. “Look. Liz... I wanted to thank you for doing this.”

When she spares him a look, she finds him looking back. 

Genuine. He is speaking to her. She nods her head once, slowly, just to let him know that she is listening.

Thiago continues: “I know you don’t like him, and I know you didn’t want to do this. But I’m glad you did. Because—well, he was really fucked on his own, to be honest with you. And I’m glad you insisted on coming with me because if it were just me and that first aid kit then Kaiser would’ve been fucked anyway.” 

Liz huffs. She doesn’t smile, but to his credit, she kind of wants to. 

“So, that’s it. Thank you for trusting me.”

Liz looks into the rearview again. Kaiser’s face, bloodied and covered in bruises. 

There are deep circles under his eyes. Deep. Liz saw them when he got into the car, visible under the roof lights. His red-stained hand rested limp on the broken helmet beside him.

Liz can say that, just this once, it does not seem like Kaiser was lying. 

“Don’t mention it,” Liz replies.

They drive on, swathed in silence.

~*~

…

…

…

“Kaiser.”

He jolts into awareness when he feels something on his knee. Every part of him screams. “Ow, fuck.”

“Awake now?”

Kaiser blinks. His head is splitting. His mind whirls as he tries to make sense of car, inside of a car, Thiago looking back at him from the front passenger seat with his hand half reaching for him. A door slams, making him jump again, and then he realizes it’s just Liz getting out of the driver's side.

Right. Liz and Thiago’s house. For sleeping. Kaiser breathes through a yawn, scrubbing his eyes. “Yeah.”

Thiago’s mouth quirks upward. “Good. We’re here.” 

Just as he did back at the gas station, Thiago helps Kaiser stay on his feet as he shambles up the drive of Liz and Thiago’s house. It’s a nice place, with a high gate around a little front garden. Nothing crazy. Kaiser is relieved to find that Thiago is willing to take more of his weight as they scale the short set of stairs to the front door. He thinks he’s adjusted to leaning into Thiago’s side now, given the touch doesn’t make his skin crawl anymore. 

Kaiser tries to remember the last time he was this close to another person, but after a while, he loses that train of thought.

Liz waits for them at the door. Once Kaiser has his feet firm at the threshold, she goes ahead of them, flicking on lights and shooing away the little dog that comes snuffling at Kaiser’s unsteady feet. 

“Bolinho,” Thiago explains. Kaiser wasn’t going to ask, but okay, that’s kind of cute. “Liz, did you find the towels?”

“Towels?” Kaiser echoes.

“Found them.” Liz ducks out of a side room, carrying in her arms two dark grey towels and a dark red towel that have all clearly seen better days. “Joui just put them back in the wrong cabinet.”

“Why towels?”

“Man,” Thiago remarks. “I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself recently, but you look like—well, like you’ve been tortured. You’re covered in blood, Kaiser, you can’t lie straight on the couch like that.”

“Oh.” Kaiser looks down at himself. Yeah. Okay.

“We keep a few old ‘throw-away’ towels for dealing with blood and such,” Thiago continues, helping him down the narrow hall. “Joui used them last when he crashed here after some solo work one night. He does that sometimes.”

Solo work. Tracking down other occultists, then. Kaiser wonders if Joui came here the night Kaiser threw that cursed flash drive at him. He never knows how those flash drives truly come out until he powers them, but the creatures are almost always tricky to deal with. Kaiser never thought to ask him what it looked like. Liz’s first aid might have been needed…

They’re in the living room, before Kaiser can really process it. Liz spreads one last towel before stepping back and watching at a distance as Thiago deposits Kaiser on the cushions. 

Kaiser sets his helmet down beside him and gingerly sags back against the couch, eyes closed. He sighs. Fuck, it feels good lay against something that’s meant to be laid against. He gives himself a few seconds to relish in it before forcing himself to sit up so he can get at his shoes. Ow, his ribs… 

Something lands with a whump beside him. He jumps, and then he sees it is an old, folded blanket. He looks at Thiago. “Huh?”

“Throw-away. Get as much blood on it as you like.” 

Kaiser nods and kicks one of his shoes off. He waits for his head to stop spinning from the motion, then goes for the other. Everything inside him is begging for him to lie down, and right now, his shoes are really the only thing preventing that.

“Do you still have your gun?”

Kaiser glances up from his laces. He lifts his head in time to see Thiago lift the side of his jacket—the side that Kaiser was not leaning against, he realizes—to reveal to Liz a pistol tucked into a concealed shoulder holster. “Right here.”

Kaiser puts his head back down. He can’t blame them. Kaiser would want a weapon too, but he doesn’t think that he is allowed one here. Which is part of the point. Kaiser gets the laces half-done before he decides that’s enough and kicks off his other shoe.

“Right,” says Liz. “Well, I’m going to bed. Wake me when you need to trade off.”

“Oh, don’t even worry about that, my dear. I’ve gotten plenty of sleep.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Four hours without any weird dreams? I’m not testing the lucky streak, no ma’am.”

“You’re not selling this for yourself.”

“Liz, go to bed.”

“Fine.”

Kaiser sets his helmet on the ground next to the couch and carefully, carefully, lays himself down as Liz and Thiago exchange goodnights. Liz catches his eye as she passes around the couch, expression unreadable, before disappearing from sight. He hears her feet head up the stairs.

Thiago watches her go. Once her footsteps have faded away, Thiago shifts his jacket aside again and draws his pistol. He slides the magazine out, looking at the bullets, and Kaiser is waiting for him to snap it back in when he suddenly extends the magazine to him.

Kaiser just— He just stares at it. “...What?”

“It’s only for her peace of mind,” Thiago explains. He shrugs. “But, you know, I find I have trouble sleeping when someone else is holding a loaded gun in the room.” He gives the magazine a little shake. “Take it.”

This doesn’t make any sense. Thiago doesn’t— Thiago doesn’t think he is a threat? Which, sure, like this? No, Kaiser isn’t, not really, but Thiago does not think he is a threat. And he is willing to sacrifice his protection just for Kaiser’s sake.

A bewildered sound, something like a laugh, rattles out of him. His chest feels light. Kaiser lifts a hand and pushes the magazine back towards Thiago. “A-Are you crazy? I was kidnapped, man. Keep that thing and use it if anyone comes in.”

A grin cracks Thiago’s face as he chuckles. “Fair enough.” He snaps the magazine back in and sits himself in the armchair across the way. He trades the pistol for a book on the end table. He points to the lamp above him. “You don’t care if I keep this on, do you?”

Kaiser could not give less of a fuck. He pulls the blanket over his head and buries his face in the pillow.

“Didn’t think so. Goodnight.”

“Mm.”

A quiet settles over them.

It is weird, to be in a room without his helmet on with someone who knows him as K@1S3R . It is weird, to be in a house he doesn’t know, in a neighborhood he doesn’t know. It is weird, to be lying on Liz and Thiago’s couch, a blanket pulled over his head, fresh bandages wound around his wounds. It is weird, to be resting with Thiago sitting in a chair nearby, a loaded gun by his elbow, but quietly turning the pages of a book.

It is weird. But it is not bad. Sleep comes easier than Kaiser expects it to, and it takes him even more gently.