midnight brawl

She expected a covert operation, but as she dodged the dim lights to stay in the shadows, but Cecil was walking confidently along the center of the road, looking exactly as if he was out for a pleasant evening stroll. To him, this probably was a regular evening. She had the mental image of every possibility how he could usually spend them, and immediately imagined the awkwardness of dinner alone above the brothel once more. 

Lost in her thought, she continued to walk along the side of the road, immediately stepping face first into Cecil’s back, who stumbled forward and cast a glare in her direction. Her cheeks flushed and she shrunk further into her coat in embarrassment. He made a motion with his head to walk into the alleyway. Nora stepped in front of him, desperately nervous that this wasn’t a horrible situation. Not that it made much difference, since Cecil seemed to almost appear in the doorway of a run down building. He was quite hurried as he opened the door and stepped inside. Nora followed closely behind him, expecting the worst.

She was pleasantly surprised to find the warm glow of lamplight on a hole in the wall bar. It was warm, with pleasant music, though everyone that was there looked suspicious, including Cecil. With all these people who would be noticed in daily life quite easily, Nora stuck out like a sore thumb while Cecil blended in easily. He took a seat at the bar, then motioned for her to join him. She left her coat on, feeling better inside the protective woolen shell.

Cecil ordered two shots of vodka from the bartender, a relatively young bald man with spectacles. He nodded, poured two, and set them in front of Nora and Cecil. Cecil smiled at her and took his glass, lifting it in anticipation for her to lift her own. She grimaced, but raised her own, and was about to drink when she noticed an annoying glance from Cecil, who looked like he wanted to say something.

Oh. A toast. Of course.

“To our partnership.” Nora nodded and touched her glass to his, and they both tipped the glasses back. As soon as they finished, Cecil set his glass gently on the counter and looked directly at the bartender, motioning him to come over. Nora followed suit and set hers down, hoping ardently that he wouldn’t make her drink any more vodka.

“István,” the bartender walked over. 

“Yes?” he replied, pushing up his spectacles with his index finger. Cecil drew a fist back, and thrust it straight into the bartender’s face. A sickening crack of glass was heard, and the bartender righted himself woozily as a clamor of people began to surround them. Blood dripped from the bridge of his nose as his spectacles dropped from off of his ears.

Nora panicked and froze for what felt like an eternity. The scene seemed to unfold in slow motion, with Cecil standing, a small gaggle of patrons surrounding him. Nobody checked the bartender, who was swearing in Albati. A fist came flying by her right side, and she instantly slid off the stool and dropped to her knees below the commotion. 

There were people stumbling all around Cecil’s scuffed shoes, and the shoes and person themselves were shifting weight around. None of this was what she had expected, and she wanted out of there-- quickly. Nora began to crawl on her hands and knees towards where she assumed the door was, since the crowd of people had disoriented her. Besides, with a brawl like this, the constables were sure to arrive, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of the night inside a jail cell. She wasn’t sure she wanted to spend the rest of the night with Cecil, for that matter.

She made the wrong choice for direction, and wound up with at least a minor amount of cover underneath the hinged counter that allowed entrance to the bar back. Nora could see drunk patrons in varying states of disarray, fighting with each other, as well as with Cecil, who seemed to be holding his own rather well. People were staggering out the door, continuing the violence outside, causing all sorts of disturbances in the darkened alleyway. 

The bar had mostly cleared out, and of those left, two were fighting with Cecil, and three amongst themselves. Who knew it was so easy to cause a panic? She was about to make a break for the door when the counter above her lifted, and the bartender, István, tripped over her. He didn’t lose his balance, but he certainly realized that she was with the man who had punched him in the face.

Thankfully for her, István was still slightly dazed and more than disoriented from his newfound vision impairment. He lifted his leg to kick her, and Nora’s previous flight response switched to fight. Grabbing his ankle, she thrust her weight forward along the dirty floor, causing him to topple over her back, landing face first on the ground. Another sickening crack sounded from the impact, and István was out cold. Cecil had at least subdued one of his attackers, who was out of breath and looking a little purple around the face. His buddy immediately dropped the quarrel with Cecil and went to help his friend out the door to hopefully avoid the oncoming raid of police. 

Cecil looked back at Nora and István, the former of whom was quickly rising to her feet to make a break for the door as well. He paced towards her, giving a short command. “Pick him up, we’re going outside.” She wanted to run, but knew that it would cause more trouble for her in the end if she did. Nora grunted, lifting István by the shoulder, one arm draping around her own shoulder, his other draped around Cecil’s. The height difference was awkward, and Cecil had to stoop slightly to effectively carry István outside.

The fights had broken off into people tending to their wounds, various stages of broken noses lining the sides of the alley. Nobody paid any attention to Cecil and Nora; they were all too busy making sure nobody was coming at them with a left hook. As the two rounded the corner back into the main street, they heard the rapid clap of hooves on cobblestone, and Cecil cursed audibly at the arrival of the police. As the rest of the small troop moved in on the alleyway, a constable on a horse pulled up in front of the trio, István still unconscious. 

“What’s going on here?” he questioned, the horse beneath him still trotting in small circles as he reigned it in. 

Before Nora could speak, Cecil jumped in, “My sister and I were getting a drink when a brawl broke out! I managed to help my friend here make it out, and we’re taking him home for some rest.” He was rather adept at the lie, and after a brief expression of doubt, the constable let them go on their way.

She shot a glare across the draped head of István, meeting with Cecil’s right eye. “Your sister? We look nothing alike! You could have gotten us arrested!”

“But I didn’t.” She could hear the smug satisfaction with having gotten away in his voice, but didn’t care to press the issue further, since she had no idea where they were taking the bartender, and he was starting to get heavy. Thankfully, Cecil made up part of the burden by shifting more of István’s weight to his shoulders. Nora supposed it would have been easier to cart him around town by Cecil grabbing the armpits and herself grabbing the feet, but that would probably be suspicious, and they already had to deal with one constable. More would just be troublesome.

She gritted her teeth and bore through it. They managed to drag the semi-conscious István outside the brothel. Nora stayed outside and propped him up while Cecil went inside to clear a path up to his apartment. The girls distracted the johns while Nora and Cecil helped István stumble half-heartedly up the stairs. They managed to get him into the apartment and lie him on the sofa as he came around.

Nora was still catching her breath while sitting nearby when she saw Cecil place a pistol that he drew from his waistband on the coffee table. “What the hell?” she hissed at him, glancing between Cecil and István. “Put that away! We don’t need any more violence!”

Cecil shook his head and left his seat, crouching between the table and István as he blinked and regained his normal functions. István propped himself up on the sofa, muttering a curse under his breath in Albati. “Welcome back, István. It’s been a while.”

István was not pleased to see that Cecil had greeted him. Less pleased that Cecil had been the one to punch him in the first place. “Numian bastard,” he spat at the man in front of him.

“Watch your tongue, or I’ll punch you again. There are ladies present.” Cecil jerked István’s arm out in front of him, causing the man to flop back against the seat of the sofa and groan in pain. The red haired man tore open the buttons on the sleeves of the bartender’s shirt, and lifted it above his elbow. Subtle, but still noticeable, was the same scar that was present under Cecil’s eye. Nora was immediately uncomfortable with all aspects of this situation.

“Why’d you show up after two years, Cecil? You could have gone on with your petty little life here.” He emphasized the ‘petty’ with an air of extreme distaste for everything he saw in front of him. “Have you finally decided to help us again?”

Again? Nora was confused, she thought that Cecil had been trying to stop them the whole time; that everything bad that had happened to him had been out of his control. “What do you mean?” she asked, panic starting to tinge her tone.

István laughed and sat himself right-side-up on the chair. “You mean you haven’t told her, Cecil? Your own wife? How can you live with yourself?” he snickered.

Cecil stood from the crouching position and to anyone unfamiliar with him, his height was intimidating. “Not my wife, István. She doesn’t need to know. I live with myself just fine.”

Nora felt the pit in her stomach again, and turned to face the bald man. “What is he not telling me?”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“Oh, I think it does,” István chuckled. “You know, he was the one who chose to give him that sight he has.” Cecil grimaced and averted his eye downward. “He was helping the cause for so long, and when he was finally given that sight, he ran away, like a coward.”

She stared at Cecil incredulously. She hadn’t even known about this entire affair 3 days ago, but she still felt betrayed. It was so much easier to believe that it was okay if he was forced into it, but knowing that Cecil had chosen to help the Shroud originally was information that she wished desperately was a lie. “Is it true?” she asked.

Cecil sighed deeply, there was no point in avoiding it any longer, as Nora would just continue to question him until she got answers. “Yes.

“I was 7. My parents had moved us to a country estate here in Essborn. It was them, my older brother Levi, and younger sister Adeline. They ran a successful manufacturing enterprise. A wealthy contact somehow told them about the Shroud, and they joined. I don’t know why, even now. They brought us children and raised us with the cult. I know that Levi tried to leave, but I never heard or saw from he, my parents, or Adeline again. Everyone pretended they had never existed.”

He took a pause and sat himself on the edge of the table, obviously recalling the trauma of his youth. “I was always told I had been there all along, and I believed it, after a while. I was convinced everything we were doing was going to bring about a new, better age. When I turned 18, I inherited the family fortune, but all the documents had been lost. There’s no record of my family anywhere.

“I continued to help, I had to make the world a better place, I was young and naive. I wanted to help, and I offered myself to become an Oracle. I was 27. I opened my eyes and in my disoriented trance I saw everything. Every genocide, widespread fire, earthquake-- everything Behena wants, and I realized I wasn’t helping anybody. I refused to follow the clues until I was cursed with seeing the inside of Behena’s mind.” Cecil took a very long moment to compose himself, it still pained him to talk about. “I left in the middle of the night, and swore to myself that I would see the Shroud end.” He turned to István. “When I heard you set up an underground pub, I thought naturally I should pay you a visit.” The grim conversation took on a tone of gallows humor as Cecil gave a small laugh, remembering the brawl. “The way you fell onto your face was graceful, István.”

The Albat sneered, then stood up. “I appreciate the warm welcome, but I have business to attend to.”

Cecil all but jumped to his feet, blocking access to the front door as fast as possible. “You’re not leaving until we’ve gotten some answers.”

István frowned, made a half-hearted attempt to push past Cecil, and when it didn’t succeed, he stood there, dried blood coming from under his nose. “I have nothing to say.” But he did notice that near Cecil’s “wife”, lay a pistol, unguarded. If he could play his cards right, he could kill the girl and subdue Cecil. István carefully paced back to the chairs and took a seat.

“I need to know what you know about mines in the area supplying to you,” Cecil demanded from the doorway. “Any of them within a day’s reach of Essborn.”

The bald man shrugged nonchalantly, “They don’t tell me those kinds of things.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it. All your gems come from nearby, there’s no way you could transport them across the country without suspicion.” Cecil stalked over to the man, reaching a hand unceremoniously into the breast pocket of István’s vest. He pulled out a slip of paper, and István saw the opportunity present itself. 

István, once Cecil had unblocked his movement, darted his right hand forward for the pistol, seizing it and aiming the cocked weapon at Nora. 

Nora, who had been processing the barrage of information with great difficulty, snapped back into the present and felt her stomach sink. The barrel of a gun, pointed directly at her. She was too stupid to scream, and too scared to run, so she sat.

Cecil breathed out a “shit!” under his breath, but remained in place. 

“You’re going to toss that paper you stole from me into the fire, Mr. Wyverstone, and not make a scene, or I’ll kill this one.” István walked over to Nora, weapon ready, and jerked her to her feet. She wasn’t resisting, and some panic-starved part of her brain had the urge to laugh at how rough he was being. It’s hard to argue with a gun. 

The redhead pulled the paper from his pocket, taking a slightly longer look at it before he walked and tossed it in the fire. The cracking and snapping of logs remained the only noise to be heard. Cecil slowly began walking towards the two with his arms at eye level. “I’m not going to do anything, István, just unlock my door for the two of you to leave without a scene. Don’t hurt her, please.” He continued to creep across the floor, István watching and making sure there were no risks to himself. Cecil successfully made it to the two of them, and slowly removed the key from his pants pocket. “I’m going to unlock the door, you can leave without any problems. We won’t come after you.”

The fear had started to grow from within Nora and she felt her knees becoming weak underneath her. As she was trying her hardest to persevere, a flash of orange hair swept past her, then into her, and she tumbled to the ground. Unsure of what was happening, she began to sob, as if all of her previous emotions had been leading up to this moment for a very long time.

A gunshot broke the silence, shooting straight up into the roof beams of the building. She heard a clatter of metal, and saw István and Cecil both scrabbling for the fallen weapon. This time, however, Cecil won, and successfully grabbed it back. He rose, stepping in front of Nora, protecting her. She scooted on her rear and her arms, as far away from the scene as possible.

István steadily came towards Cecil, prepared himself for a physical engagement, and was met with a loud, red gunshot in the stomach. As István sank to his knees, then onto his side, curling up into the fetal position, Cecil unloaded the rest of the pistol’s ammunition and slid it to Nora across the room.

Nora watched in horror as the green carpet began to turn brown as the fibers mixed with the Albat’s blood. She could hear him simultaneously groaning and laughing, and while she was glad she hadn’t delivered the final shot herself, perhaps somewhere but the stomach wouldn’t have been so long and excruciating a death.

Finally, there was a long, choked groan, and then silence. The logs in the fireplace crackled. The silence and smoke mixed, turning the air into a gaseous form of discomfort. Nora wasn’t sure how to react, and Cecil was staring at the bald head on the ground.

After too many moments had passed, Nora choked out a sob and crumpled to the ground. It was all too much, everything had gone extremely south, and things were not getting better. She couldn’t bring herself to feel anything for the dead man, nor could she see Cecil in the same friendly light. Things had been ripped away from her, and what she thought she knew was nothing close to the truth. Nora felt her chest heave rapidly, and felt herself hyperventilating as she was brought to her feet by a strong arm.

Cecil helped her to the bed in the corner of the room, where he let her lie down. He wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it, so he said nothing and let her cry. She was too hysterical to be of help at the moment, and were this violence not something he had accepted many years ago as a child, he would probably be in the same situation. Regardless, he had experience with it, and he dutifully wrapped the body of István in the rug where he lay, and suspiciously dragged it down the stairs.

Nora was vaguely aware that something was happening, but had dissociated enough that nothing occurring around her felt tangibly real. It felt like a dream she was unable to wake up from, knowing it was a dream, and no amount of pinching could stop it from running its course. 

Cecil came back in about an hour, with Mary behind him. The pale face was smeared with dirt, and the nice white shirt and black pants had mud splattered across them. Mary, however, looked solemn, yet as composed as one can when wearing little more than nothing. Cecil glanced over at Nora, who had stopped sobbing and replaced it by staring into the distance. Mary took notice and sat down beside her, gently stroking her hair without a word.  Cecil drew a bath for himself, and disappeared into the washroom.

Nora had fallen into a half-sleep, and woke up as the redhead emerged from the washroom. His hair was slicked back with water, though the eyepatch remained in place. He had put on significantly less fancy clothing, but the fact that it was clean seemed to make it look nicer than it was. She sniffled, sitting up. Mary had left, though there was a warm pot of tea on the (now clear) dining table, presumably Mary’s doing. Cecil walked to the table, poured two cups, and pulled out two chairs; one for him, and one for Nora. She was in no shape to readily discuss what had happened, but a warm cup of tea would help calm her nerves at the very least. The two sipped the beverage in silence, until he finally spoke.

“Nora, I-...” he paused, and she listened attentively. It was the first time he had called her Nora, and not Miss Compton, and it felt far more natural to call her by her name, and not a title. After what they had been through this evening (Was it still evening? Was it morning by now?), it was well-deserved. “I’m sorry.” He stared into the porcelain cup. “He was going to kill you no matter what. I couldn’t let that happen. I can’t let you die, and I can’t be forced to go back. More people than the two of us will die if that happens.”

She took a sip from her teacup and tried to steel herself as she wiped her forming tears. “What did you… how did you… István?” Nora couldn’t quite put her thoughts into words.

Thankfully, Cecil understood and provided an answer, “I buried him. Outside of town. The Shroud won’t know until a few days from now. We’re safe here for now.”

Nora nodded, and finished her cup. She stood, assuming that Cecil would want them to continue with the plan. The sooner the better, right? And if they only had a few more days of safety in his apartment, they would need to get to work. She brushed the front of her skirt off and tried to steady her voice. “So where are we going now?”

Cecil shook his head, setting his cup on the saucer. “We’re staying here until tomorrow. You… You’ve been through a lot, today. And it’s going to get harder from here.” He could hear the tremble in her voice, and admired her for her resolution in spite of all the horrors that were both already unleashed and facing them to come. “Go, take my bed, sleep the rest of the day. I’ll work on things solo.” He walked with her until she came to the edge of the bed, and he went to the wardrobe next to it. Cecil removed a shirt and a pair of casual pants, then handed them to Nora. “We can visit your flat tomorrow to get you a change of clothes. Wear these for now, you’ll be more comfortable.”

He turned and walked back to the kitchen, washing the dishes that had been dirtied, and making sure that Nora knew he wasn’t watching. She obliged, though, and swiftly swapped outfits. The shirt was much too large for her, especially in the sleeves. The pants felt foreign, as she rarely wore them, but they were not uncomfortable. She crawled underneath the duvet and rolled onto her side, facing the wall. Cecil gave a quick look to make sure he was in the clear, and once decency was confirmed, he walked over to his desk, piling papers in separate sections. Nora could hear the shuffling of parchment, but decided she had best avoid the temptation to stare and focus on trying to get herself to sleep.

The ambient noise of writing and paper shuffling lulled her into sleep, and she dreamt of nothing. Everything had been emotionally as well as physically exhausting. There were no subconscious ideas to explore, and for that she was grateful.

Nora didn’t know how long she had slept, but she woke up groggily. The thin tendrils of daylight from outside had faded, and the oil lamps were all that kept the small apartment lit. There was light snoring coming from the desk, and she raised her body up to take a look.

Cecil had fallen asleep, resting his head in the cradle of his arms on top of the paper. She smiled to herself, dropping her legs out of the bed. Softly, she walked across the floor and shook him gently. He was obviously just as exhausted as she had been, since he woke up slightly, but not enough to be considered conscious. Nora helped him over to his bed, pulling back the blankets. Once his head hit the pillow, he was completely asleep. She curled up next to him, staring at his shoulders moving softly up and down. There was something supernaturally peaceful about watching him sleep. Cecil, with all of his twisted history and emotional turmoil, unable to escape what he did to himself-- asleep. Calm and serene, without fits or even a snore. Eventually, she fell back asleep herself, but this time dreamed of herself walking alone on the northern shores of Numia, with everything that could worry her nonexistent.