The last thing you ever wanted to do, in the short life you accepted you’d have, was start a union. No one unionized in your line of work, ever. Getting hurt came with the job. You didn’t have a problem with that, or you thought you didn’t, but then someone smuggled a copy of the news past the officer waiting outside your hospital door.
At first, you were happy to see your face on TV --you looked good in the security guard’s uniform and the gun in your hands caught the light in this really badass way-- but, after you watched yourself get knocked out by a garbage can lid that comes flying out of the darkness like a frisbee, the smile drops off your swollen face. There’s about twenty more minutes left in the clip before the police swoop in and haul your unconscious body out of the parking lot. Twenty, long, minutes of heavily edited footage where a person-shaped shadow slinks along walls and takes out your coworkers. Three minutes of fame aren’t worth the literal headache of dealing with that guy.
The part that really gets to you comes about eighteen minutes into the feed. Some reporter with a valley-girl sounding name who’s been droning on and on about the heroic endeavors of the city’s “finest vigilante,” finally shuts up as the shadowy figure reaches a moonlit room. He’s spent eighteen minutes methodically punching people like you in the face; it was nice, you knew where you stood with a guy like that. But when he steps away from the wall and onto the walkway over the city’s water supply, he doesn't go in with fists or flying kicks like he did with you. He was facing off against the Boss --someone actually crazy enough to drop the bottle of poison in his hand over the railway-- and he doesn't attack. Instead, he sits down, right there on the suspended walkway above the city’s water, and waits.
Later on, weeks after that night in the hospital bed with blood soaking through the gauze wrapped around you and stitches just about everywhere, you figure out exactly when it was you’d gotten so pissed off. You thought it happened when the goth parkour wannabe takes the Boss by the arm and gently hands him over to the police. To be completely honest, that bothered you, a lot. But that first moment? the one where he made the decision not to go in gadgets blazing? That’s the one that really gets to you.
***
So you tell your buddy, just let it all out one night after moving gun crates into a shipping container. That one rant to someone who’s worked the job as long as you have --and for nearly as many evil geniuses-- turns into a lot of conversations with more and more people. You can see the impact of what you're saying by the way twenty different crooks don't bash your face in.
There’s a bigger crowd the next week. The week after that, your little group has to take it out back because you don’t fit in the brewpub any more. When you move out into the piss stinking alleys that feel like home under your feet, that’s where things really started. Now that the group was getting bigger, you’d moved from vigilante prejudice to actually getting paid enough to cover hospital bills. The Bosses don't like it. The Bosses are also exactly the sort of people who think robbing banks and shooting clerks on a weekly basis was a good way to make money; it really isn't all that surprising that they didn’t want to have to up your pay. Plus, in an ever-running stream of life going wrong for you, they decide that you are the problem, not the thing you're actually complaining about.
What really sucks is that you’d been careful not to talk about the Bosses. Sure everyone knows that they can easily fix the problem --or at least make it worth getting shot-- but you aren't dumb. There's a difference between getting roughed up by a cop and getting on the Boss’ bad side.
At one point there were thirteen separate hits out on you and those were just the ones you knew about. When no one takes the shot, the price on your head just goes up. The highest one is supposed to be in the tens of thousands, but no one’s tried to kill you. Honestly, the urge to fake your death and disappear with a cut of the money is starting to look appealing; you might actually convince a buddy or two to help you out with that.
The Meetings get bigger, more and more people crowd into alleyways until fights break out for just a bit of breathing room. You get credit for not stopping those fights, it showed you were really one of “us”, “really in the business”, “you get it”--all code for the fact that you aren't looking to change things up or stop the violence. You like violence.
Reporters --the type who play soccer with kids in active war zones or get in the faces of kingpins in prison, the ones that didn’t have valley girl names-- wade into the crowd at some point. They're the reason you move from shouting to using a megaphone. There are wireless mics that would sound better between all these brick walls, but apparently "they don’t look as good.” The reporters would ask you to stand on a box too, except you’re sure they know that you shouldn’t hesitate to hit them with it if they brought the possibility up.
Anyway, you’re an Advocate now --that’s what the reporters are calling you. The weirdest part is that it's not in a weird “let's give the new crazy baddie a name” kind of way, they mean it. You’re an advocate, a speaker for all the people like you --or something like that, you never really looked up the definition. Still, it’s not like any of this attention even mattered. No one’s gonna complain if a few judges got more understanding, but they’re not the ones shattering collarbones.
Some nights, while you’re talking, you think you see a shadow moving along the rooftops. Something flickering just outside the corner of your eye; it makes your skin crawl. Then there are the days when your nerves yell at you to duck and something whistles through the air toward you. You manage not to duck, or flinch, or even look at whatever it is that’s coming at you and so far nothing’s hit. A bootle came out of the crowd once, but the sound of it shattering into the wall next to your head was quickly drowned out by a yelp of pain and the comforting crack of a boot crashing into someone else’s ribs.
There’s no way to tell if the shadows you think you’re seeing are actually him or not. Whoever the vigilante is, he can’t not know about your movement now. The crowd’s gotten big enough to move out from the alley and onto the streets; not a main street, but you’re all out and visible now. The shitty part is that everyone else thinks they’re safe being just a face in the crowd, but you aren’t. You get to stand in front of everyone else, holding onto your megaphone --which is hooked up to a speaker-- and have your name and face plastered on the front page of a website.
***
You get home from giving a speech, the largest one you’ve ever given, and something's wrong. You can tell from the moment you unlock the door. Your hand instinctively slips the gun out of the waistband of your jeans and you make the split-second decision to step into the dingey apartment instead of running. Just because you take a few months off doesn’t mean someone could just barge in here and scare you out of your own home. You haven’t gotten soft.
The minute your feet cross into the living room, something moves by the wall. A human-shaped silhouette steps into the dim light from the open window at its back and holds its hands up. You don't lower your gun.
“I’m just here to talk.” His gravelly voice is pitched slightly higher than you remember, but you also remember the shadow being taller.
You’re wary. If the rumors are true, then this guy's been hanging around someone new; some shortie with a good kick and a voice that cracks. You haven't seen him yet, but that doesn't mean the new guy isn't here too. “And you couldn’t find a light switch?”
He shrugs, “you haven’t paid your electricity bill.” Of course; you can’t help sighing as he reminds you. He waits to see if you’ll say anything, but when you don’t he puts his hands down, “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Is that supposed to make me trust you?” you snap, keeping your gun trained on his head.
“It’d make things easier, but no, it wasn’t.”
“Good.” You shuffle a little, shifting your weight, staying loose. He doesn’t relax either. This entire situation is stupid and you just want it over with as quickly as possible. “Why’re you here?”
“Heard your speech.”
“Which one?”
He doesn’t miss a beat, “the past ten.”
“Took that many to sink in?”
“Had to know if you meant it.”
You look him squarely in the eyes and make sure your voice doesn’t shake. “You ruptured my buddy’s kidney two months ago.”
“No I didn’t.” He says it like he keeps track, “a year ago maybe, but I doubt you were friends.”
You have to think, “the warehouse on 30th?”
“The Docks.”
You were there for that one. It’d been a bad fight. You’d gotten off easier than most with a busted arm that took two months to come out of the cast. All in all, breaking your wrist in three places ended up being worth it; casts are surprisingly good at knocking out guards. But the fact that he remembered that night --knew what he’d done and who he’d done it to-- that was too much. You can’t stop the awestruck, “can you be any less of a creep?”
“You’ve said that before. Broke your jaw last time.” He doesn’t sound like he regrets it; the bastard probably doesn’t lose sleep over any of the things he’s done to you.
There’s a go-bag next to the bed one room over and some cash hoarded in three places around the apartment; it’s enough to get settled somewhere else. Screw the union. Screw the bosses. Screw any family you may or may not have living. If he knows where you live, the next time he comes here it might not be just to talk.
“You can’t be here to talk about all the fun times we’ve had together.”
“You’re right.” He pauses and looks off to the side, “I treat the villains better than I treat you.”
So that’s what this is about. All of this drama was because he finally heard you. The fear you’d never admit to feeling floods out and the rage that’s been burning since you saw that newsreel is all that’s left. “No shit.”
“I have some friends, outside of all of this, if they set up a bank account-”
You didn’t even realize you’d raised your gun just a bit higher. “We don’t want your fucking money,” you spit.
“I could ask your friends in the hospital.”
You want to throw the gun at his face and kick him until his knees bend the wrong way. Instead, you grit your teeth, “we take care of our own.”
“How long’s that going to last after people start getting cancer from all the chemical plants?” Did he just say that you can’t pay? That you’re even gonna live long enough for it to get that bad?? That he cares about your health!? This is the man that threw a garbage can lid at your head! That kills people!
A growl rips through you and you fire into the shadows. Everything narrows down to the red glow of the bullet burning through the cheap drywall across from you. There’s no thump of a body hitting the floor.
“What will Tiny say when he wakes up from the coma and sees the bill?” You fire into the darkness where his voice is coming from. There are three more burning holes. “Or Jeff’s wife when he gets another concussion?”
“You did that! To both of them!!”
“Not the cancer.”
“SHUT UP!” He won’t stop moving and it’s making him really fucking hard to hit. Years of trying to just shoot this goddamned man come back and you feel the cold mess of hatred in your fingers. You keep scanning the darkness for flashes of movement until the trigger clicks empty under your curled finger.
He finally stands still; in the darkness, it looks like his teeth are glowing. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”
“Bull shit!” You spit, “you like beating on us.” He doesn’t bother defending himself. “If some idiot billionaire sees the news and decides to give us money, fuck it, we’re not gonna turn that down. But not from you. You get to leave us alone.”
“You hurt people.”
“You fucking hurt us!”
Something changes in the way he’s standing, like he’s not on his toes anymore. “I’ll try to be more gentle.”
You chuck the empty gun at him. It thuds into the wall and a huge sheet of drywall falls to the floor and shatters. Your teeth grind together, “don’t. You. Fuckin’. Dare.”
Surprisingly, he grins, “I knew you’d say that.”
There’s nothing left to throw.
He waits for you to say something, or do something, but you don’t. So he nods --like you’ve come to some fucking gentlemen’s agreement-- and slides one leg out of the open window gracefully. It should look awkward--you shouldn't even be able to see him leave in the first place--but this is probably some weird combination of respect and fear tactic.
It’s been a long day and he didn’t punch you in the face this time, so you can’t quite give enough fucks to stop yourself from asking, “doesn’t that hurt your throat?”
He stops on the fire escape, hands curled around the top of the window like he’s gonna fucking close it behind him, and looks as confused as someone can from behind a mask. “No.” He doesn’t offer any more information. You blink and he’s gone.
You take a few seconds to look around, make sure he’s not hanging around the side of the building before you rush to your go-bag. You don’t bother locking the door.
***
The next day, one of the boys drives out to a motel about three hours outside of town to tell you about how this idiot billionaire sent a cheque. You roll your eyes, “how do you know it’s from a billionaire?”
“No one else has this kinda money.” Which is a good enough answer. When you see the cheque, you have to hold yourself back from just shooting the kid and cashing it yourself. You could live the good life off of it.
The kid brought a note too; a weird one, typed so you can’t compare the handwriting between it and the cheque --you’d tried. Don’t leave. I have friends. He tells you that he thinks it’s from one of the bosses, but the moment you read that, your stomach drops.
“Creep.” He doesn’t ask you what you mean by that and you don’t tell him, but you do let him drag you back to the city.
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