Fic: Vacation (6/?)
Spoilers: Definitely spoilers up to the beginning of Fool Moon, though there may be bits and pieces I've picked up from fandom that creep their ways in. This takes a wild turn for the AU, from what I understand of later books, but being turned into a cat would probably do that to the future of most protagonists.
Rating: this chapter is probably still PG, which is incredible considering the amount of PG-13 and R fanfiction I write.
Pairing: Marcone/Dresden (eventually)
Warnings: hints of religion. Plot begins to appear. I only partially overcome my desire to have Marcone monologue (but not about his evil plans...well, maybe a little, mostly about things that have already happened).
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the premise, that belongs to prompter roseinlove12.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven
I woke up pretty late, to an empty bed. Marcone coming back to the bedroom had roused me - he put a rosary into his dresser drawer and started changing out of another extremely nice suit. I wondered if I’d ever see him in the same one twice.
“Did you just sleep this whole time?” Marcone asked. “Aren’t you a lazy cat?”
Since I was pretty sure it was a cat’s prerogative to be lazy, I didn’t let Marcone bother me too much. I was distracted by the realization that he attended Mass - fairly regularly, if the rosary routine was any indication.
“I got you a present,” he said, sitting next to me. He reached into a bag. I was expecting another catnip mouse. I was displeased with the collar I got instead, snapped on before I could escape. I was especially irritated by the bell.
This had to be some form of torture. No wonder Mister got rid of these things as soon as he could. I clawed at it, succeeding only in gaining a cheerful ringing noise from the dratted bell. I yowled, and Marcone scratched behind my ears, clearly unimpressed by my displeasure.
“Now we won’t need to trust to luck when you inevitably try to escape,” he said. “And hopefully no one will think they can use you against me.” He kept scratching my ears just right, so I nearly forgave him for the collar. I didn’t really believe it would have his name on it, and when he let me up, I figured out a way to check. There was a big mirror in the bathroom - I puzzled out the backwards writing.
Just “Gianni” and a phone number. Gianni was an Italian form of Jonathan. The number was probably Hendricks’ again; I didn’t work too hard to read it. John Marcone had claimed me, and unless I got the collar off before I turned back, I’d probably asphyxiate. I’d have to get out of this house. It was the sixth day of the spell, so I should leave tonight, if possible. I wished I could figure out a safe way to get home, but it would be a hell of a walk from Marcone’s mansion to my apartment.
I’d missed breakfast and lunch, and my stomach was whining about it when I stopped thinking long enough to listen. Pawing at Marcone’s leg - he was on the computer again, did he never stop working? - got me a lift to the kitchen and a large helping of roast beef. I was glad to know Marcone believed in spoiling his pets. I hoped this meant I didn’t have kibble to look forward to once he got around to buying it.
I hadn’t been warm, well-fed, and safe in too long. This was starting to feel like my worst problem would be what kind of food someone else paid for me to eat, after cuddling me and playing with me. No imminent danger of being killed in various horrible ways by eldritch fiends? Clearly an off-week for Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.
Refusing Marcone’s payroll had been a lot easier when I was able to actually speak the word “no” and could walk away from him without someone calling me a silly kitty and picking me back up to bring me “home.” Still, having subsisted off of the blood money, it didn’t make the food taste worse. Maybe cats had simpler morals, maybe I was losing sight of my own…maybe the world wasn’t so simple as I’d always thought. In spite of years of sticking to my guns, morally, chivalrously (Murphy might say chauvinistically), and magically, I found myself leaning toward the last.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But my philosophy appeared to be dreaming of it now, and I couldn’t stop myself from the other connections it made. Marcone wasn’t so bad. What he did wasn’t so bad. “So bad” had not existed for me, once - things were good or they were awful. People were saints or child-molesters. Part of that, I think, was the desire to punish myself, to validate my own self-hatred. There was no way I was a saint. Extenuating circumstances, self-defense, what mattered to me was I’d killed the only father figure I still had: my mentor, my guardian, my uncle. He may have mentally enslaved my girlfriend and he may have been trying to corrupt me, force me to drink the blood of an innocent, to use black magic, but he was a living man and I had ended that life with magic. I had used something pure and good to do a horrible deed, and for what? To save my own sorry hide?
Was that worth it? Did it balance against the perversion of goodness I committed? Using magic to kill is like molesting a child, stabbing someone with a Christmas ornament, or otherwise taking what should be bright and innocent and beautiful and using it for something awful and wrong. Was saving my own life enough to make that okay?
If it had been a child I was protecting from Justin, instead of myself, I think even then I would unequivocally said yes. If he had been attempting to kill a child, I would not have hesitated to use magic to destroy him. So was I worth less than a kid because I was older, or because I was me? I wasn’t sure I would have saved an adult that way.
And so my morality turned to shades and colors instead of black and white. It hurt. It took some getting used to. I didn’t have easy answers anymore, not that the answers had ever been easy. And there were moments, as I’m sure there would be days (in the future), where I doubted this whole system, doubted myself, and backtracked a little, wanting to hide behind the old reflex of calling Marcone a scumbag, of believing totally in Murphy and the well-meaning natures of (most of) the police force.
I let Marcone pet me more, hoping it would make my head stop hurting so much. The jingle of the collar wasn’t as irritating, I guess I was getting used to it.
“Mr. Marcone? There’s a police officer here to talk to you,” a goon said.
“Show them in,” he shrugged, petting me more. I perked up a little.
I recognized the smell before she even came in the office. Murphy. I bounced out of Marcone’s lap and sniffed her curiously. She glared at me.
“I don’t like cats.”
I hissed.
“He doesn’t like you, either,” Marcone observed, amused.
“I’ll cut to the chase, Marcone. Dresden is missing, and so’s his girlfriend. They’re not really the eloping type and you’ve been putting the word around that Dresden works for you. So I wanna know anything you know.”
I hopped back into Marcone’s lap, trying to tamp down the guilt over being unable to help Susan or reassure Murphy.
“Mr. Dresden is missing? This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Marcone said, his face and voice betraying nothing. His hands trembled a little as he stroked me, though. Really? The mobster would miss me? I was learning all kinds of uncomfortable things in this form…
“Well you’d better start hearing things. He’s a police consultant, which means he can’t just disappear when we need to consult him,” she scowled.
“Lieutenant Murphy, I assure you, if I hear anything about Mr. Dresden or his lady, I will ensure the information gets into the right hands. If you could share some details about the case, perhaps I could offer you better assistance,” he said diplomatically.
“Dresden was last seen just outside his apartment, presumably working a missing pet case for a neighbor who seems to be under the impression he’s an animal psychic. That was almost a week ago.” She flipped through her notes. “October 31.” I thought for sure Marcone would find it highly suspicious that I appeared as a cat when I disappeared as a human. Maybe Lea had worked a little extra into her spells.
“And the lady?”
“Susan Rodriguez, reporter for the Arcane. She was reported missing four days ago, November 2, last seen the night before.”
“When was Mr. Dresden reported missing?” Marcone asked. His hands were still and untrembling on my back.
Murphy closed her notebook. “Officially, he’s a suspect in Ms. Rodriguez’s disappearance, even moreso because we can’t find him now. Unofficially, well. People don’t see him every day. We went to pick him up for questioning and his landlady mentioned him heading out on Halloween, had a little chat and he said he was working on a case. He hasn’t been anywhere else that we can pin down for sure. Apparently he mentioned heading near Michigan Avenue; he joked and asked if she wanted him to pick her up some new threads.” Murphy rolled her eyes. “But no one who was in the area on Halloween mentioned seeing a six-foot-nine urban cowboy.”
“Do you believe it has anything to do with Mr. Dresden’s…unique talents?” Marcone continued. I was surprised Murphy was letting him ask so many questions.
“It’s likely. He isn’t exactly easy to take down, and I didn’t see signs of a struggle anywhere around Michigan Avenue; no one reported any unscheduled lightshows or firework deployments, so whoever grabbed him came prepared and got the drop on him, most likely.”
“You do not believe he ran off with Ms. Rodriguez?”
Murphy glared at Marcone. “No more than you do. Harry may not be totally honest with me, but I like to think I’m a good judge of character. He’s an idiot, and a chauvinistic one to boot, but he wouldn’t kidnap someone. He doesn’t really have that kind of temper, to hurt loved ones.”
Stars, she had no idea. Though, Uncle Justin had really thoroughly pissed me off, so I wasn’t sure he counted.
“I merely wanted to be sure we were on the same page, Lieutenant Murphy. I believe I know Mr. Dresden somewhat better than most, and I find it difficult to imagine hurting anyone who was not actively trying to kill him. Ms. Rodriguez I am unfamiliar with. But I also believe that the few Mr. Dresden does let into his heart have a very real power over him, and exist in a peculiar blind spot of trust. If he loved her, she would probably be one of the people most able to neutralize him.”
Murphy raised an eyebrow. “What are you basing this theory on?” she asked.
“I have heard it called several things, but the most common name in the literature I found termed it a ‘soul-gaze.’ The first time a practitioner makes prolonged eye-contact with someone, they see parts of each other that are hidden.” Marcone paused. “Mr. Dresden and I shared a soul-gaze once. It was…enlightening.”
I shivered, remembering what I had seen in Marcone: a practical but ruthless tiger. It had not really occurred to me then that I don’t associate animals with evil. A tiger is a predator, but that is its nature. It can also be a formidable protector of its young and its territory, but it does not kill frivolously or wage war as mankind does.
“You’ll keep an eye out for them?” Murphy asked after a moment, apparently deciding to believe Marcone…or at least not to question him further.
He shrugged. “My men always keep an eye out for unusual things, and unusual things seem to follow Mr. Dresden constantly.”
“That’s true enough,” Murphy shook her head. She walked out and I hoped she was telling the truth about not suspecting me, but there was no way she’d believe where I’d been, not that I really wanted to tell her.
Being a cat was easy. People stroked you and fed you and cuddled with you all the time. Being a human was hard. You had to work for a living, and lie to people, and figure out when they lied to you. But cats couldn’t rescue their girlfriends and cats couldn’t make potions. I couldn’t buy comic books or solve crimes or work magic, not the way I wanted to, not with my tools. I was helpless, and I hated being helpless. Worse, I was useless to the people I cared about.
Marcone didn’t get much work done when Murphy left. He paced and called a lot of people. He mentioned me in a lot of those calls, but some of them were in Italian, one of the many languages I don’t speak. The gist of the calls I did understand was distressing. Marcone considered human-me one of his, possibly as much as he considered cat-me his. He wanted me found, treated for injuries, and brought to him as soon as possible. The underworld of Chicago was tearing the city apart for little old me - but to find me, they were looking for Susan, too. That was promising. Maybe she’d get some help and some good would come of this.
Marcone kept calling people well into the night. I curled up in his lap and fell asleep, still not dreaming and still unsettled by it.
Rating: this chapter is probably still PG, which is incredible considering the amount of PG-13 and R fanfiction I write.
Pairing: Marcone/Dresden (eventually)
Warnings: hints of religion. Plot begins to appear. I only partially overcome my desire to have Marcone monologue (but not about his evil plans...well, maybe a little, mostly about things that have already happened).
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the premise, that belongs to prompter roseinlove12.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven
I woke up pretty late, to an empty bed. Marcone coming back to the bedroom had roused me - he put a rosary into his dresser drawer and started changing out of another extremely nice suit. I wondered if I’d ever see him in the same one twice.
“Did you just sleep this whole time?” Marcone asked. “Aren’t you a lazy cat?”
Since I was pretty sure it was a cat’s prerogative to be lazy, I didn’t let Marcone bother me too much. I was distracted by the realization that he attended Mass - fairly regularly, if the rosary routine was any indication.
“I got you a present,” he said, sitting next to me. He reached into a bag. I was expecting another catnip mouse. I was displeased with the collar I got instead, snapped on before I could escape. I was especially irritated by the bell.
This had to be some form of torture. No wonder Mister got rid of these things as soon as he could. I clawed at it, succeeding only in gaining a cheerful ringing noise from the dratted bell. I yowled, and Marcone scratched behind my ears, clearly unimpressed by my displeasure.
“Now we won’t need to trust to luck when you inevitably try to escape,” he said. “And hopefully no one will think they can use you against me.” He kept scratching my ears just right, so I nearly forgave him for the collar. I didn’t really believe it would have his name on it, and when he let me up, I figured out a way to check. There was a big mirror in the bathroom - I puzzled out the backwards writing.
Just “Gianni” and a phone number. Gianni was an Italian form of Jonathan. The number was probably Hendricks’ again; I didn’t work too hard to read it. John Marcone had claimed me, and unless I got the collar off before I turned back, I’d probably asphyxiate. I’d have to get out of this house. It was the sixth day of the spell, so I should leave tonight, if possible. I wished I could figure out a safe way to get home, but it would be a hell of a walk from Marcone’s mansion to my apartment.
I’d missed breakfast and lunch, and my stomach was whining about it when I stopped thinking long enough to listen. Pawing at Marcone’s leg - he was on the computer again, did he never stop working? - got me a lift to the kitchen and a large helping of roast beef. I was glad to know Marcone believed in spoiling his pets. I hoped this meant I didn’t have kibble to look forward to once he got around to buying it.
I hadn’t been warm, well-fed, and safe in too long. This was starting to feel like my worst problem would be what kind of food someone else paid for me to eat, after cuddling me and playing with me. No imminent danger of being killed in various horrible ways by eldritch fiends? Clearly an off-week for Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.
Refusing Marcone’s payroll had been a lot easier when I was able to actually speak the word “no” and could walk away from him without someone calling me a silly kitty and picking me back up to bring me “home.” Still, having subsisted off of the blood money, it didn’t make the food taste worse. Maybe cats had simpler morals, maybe I was losing sight of my own…maybe the world wasn’t so simple as I’d always thought. In spite of years of sticking to my guns, morally, chivalrously (Murphy might say chauvinistically), and magically, I found myself leaning toward the last.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But my philosophy appeared to be dreaming of it now, and I couldn’t stop myself from the other connections it made. Marcone wasn’t so bad. What he did wasn’t so bad. “So bad” had not existed for me, once - things were good or they were awful. People were saints or child-molesters. Part of that, I think, was the desire to punish myself, to validate my own self-hatred. There was no way I was a saint. Extenuating circumstances, self-defense, what mattered to me was I’d killed the only father figure I still had: my mentor, my guardian, my uncle. He may have mentally enslaved my girlfriend and he may have been trying to corrupt me, force me to drink the blood of an innocent, to use black magic, but he was a living man and I had ended that life with magic. I had used something pure and good to do a horrible deed, and for what? To save my own sorry hide?
Was that worth it? Did it balance against the perversion of goodness I committed? Using magic to kill is like molesting a child, stabbing someone with a Christmas ornament, or otherwise taking what should be bright and innocent and beautiful and using it for something awful and wrong. Was saving my own life enough to make that okay?
If it had been a child I was protecting from Justin, instead of myself, I think even then I would unequivocally said yes. If he had been attempting to kill a child, I would not have hesitated to use magic to destroy him. So was I worth less than a kid because I was older, or because I was me? I wasn’t sure I would have saved an adult that way.
And so my morality turned to shades and colors instead of black and white. It hurt. It took some getting used to. I didn’t have easy answers anymore, not that the answers had ever been easy. And there were moments, as I’m sure there would be days (in the future), where I doubted this whole system, doubted myself, and backtracked a little, wanting to hide behind the old reflex of calling Marcone a scumbag, of believing totally in Murphy and the well-meaning natures of (most of) the police force.
I let Marcone pet me more, hoping it would make my head stop hurting so much. The jingle of the collar wasn’t as irritating, I guess I was getting used to it.
“Mr. Marcone? There’s a police officer here to talk to you,” a goon said.
“Show them in,” he shrugged, petting me more. I perked up a little.
I recognized the smell before she even came in the office. Murphy. I bounced out of Marcone’s lap and sniffed her curiously. She glared at me.
“I don’t like cats.”
I hissed.
“He doesn’t like you, either,” Marcone observed, amused.
“I’ll cut to the chase, Marcone. Dresden is missing, and so’s his girlfriend. They’re not really the eloping type and you’ve been putting the word around that Dresden works for you. So I wanna know anything you know.”
I hopped back into Marcone’s lap, trying to tamp down the guilt over being unable to help Susan or reassure Murphy.
“Mr. Dresden is missing? This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Marcone said, his face and voice betraying nothing. His hands trembled a little as he stroked me, though. Really? The mobster would miss me? I was learning all kinds of uncomfortable things in this form…
“Well you’d better start hearing things. He’s a police consultant, which means he can’t just disappear when we need to consult him,” she scowled.
“Lieutenant Murphy, I assure you, if I hear anything about Mr. Dresden or his lady, I will ensure the information gets into the right hands. If you could share some details about the case, perhaps I could offer you better assistance,” he said diplomatically.
“Dresden was last seen just outside his apartment, presumably working a missing pet case for a neighbor who seems to be under the impression he’s an animal psychic. That was almost a week ago.” She flipped through her notes. “October 31.” I thought for sure Marcone would find it highly suspicious that I appeared as a cat when I disappeared as a human. Maybe Lea had worked a little extra into her spells.
“And the lady?”
“Susan Rodriguez, reporter for the Arcane. She was reported missing four days ago, November 2, last seen the night before.”
“When was Mr. Dresden reported missing?” Marcone asked. His hands were still and untrembling on my back.
Murphy closed her notebook. “Officially, he’s a suspect in Ms. Rodriguez’s disappearance, even moreso because we can’t find him now. Unofficially, well. People don’t see him every day. We went to pick him up for questioning and his landlady mentioned him heading out on Halloween, had a little chat and he said he was working on a case. He hasn’t been anywhere else that we can pin down for sure. Apparently he mentioned heading near Michigan Avenue; he joked and asked if she wanted him to pick her up some new threads.” Murphy rolled her eyes. “But no one who was in the area on Halloween mentioned seeing a six-foot-nine urban cowboy.”
“Do you believe it has anything to do with Mr. Dresden’s…unique talents?” Marcone continued. I was surprised Murphy was letting him ask so many questions.
“It’s likely. He isn’t exactly easy to take down, and I didn’t see signs of a struggle anywhere around Michigan Avenue; no one reported any unscheduled lightshows or firework deployments, so whoever grabbed him came prepared and got the drop on him, most likely.”
“You do not believe he ran off with Ms. Rodriguez?”
Murphy glared at Marcone. “No more than you do. Harry may not be totally honest with me, but I like to think I’m a good judge of character. He’s an idiot, and a chauvinistic one to boot, but he wouldn’t kidnap someone. He doesn’t really have that kind of temper, to hurt loved ones.”
Stars, she had no idea. Though, Uncle Justin had really thoroughly pissed me off, so I wasn’t sure he counted.
“I merely wanted to be sure we were on the same page, Lieutenant Murphy. I believe I know Mr. Dresden somewhat better than most, and I find it difficult to imagine hurting anyone who was not actively trying to kill him. Ms. Rodriguez I am unfamiliar with. But I also believe that the few Mr. Dresden does let into his heart have a very real power over him, and exist in a peculiar blind spot of trust. If he loved her, she would probably be one of the people most able to neutralize him.”
Murphy raised an eyebrow. “What are you basing this theory on?” she asked.
“I have heard it called several things, but the most common name in the literature I found termed it a ‘soul-gaze.’ The first time a practitioner makes prolonged eye-contact with someone, they see parts of each other that are hidden.” Marcone paused. “Mr. Dresden and I shared a soul-gaze once. It was…enlightening.”
I shivered, remembering what I had seen in Marcone: a practical but ruthless tiger. It had not really occurred to me then that I don’t associate animals with evil. A tiger is a predator, but that is its nature. It can also be a formidable protector of its young and its territory, but it does not kill frivolously or wage war as mankind does.
“You’ll keep an eye out for them?” Murphy asked after a moment, apparently deciding to believe Marcone…or at least not to question him further.
He shrugged. “My men always keep an eye out for unusual things, and unusual things seem to follow Mr. Dresden constantly.”
“That’s true enough,” Murphy shook her head. She walked out and I hoped she was telling the truth about not suspecting me, but there was no way she’d believe where I’d been, not that I really wanted to tell her.
Being a cat was easy. People stroked you and fed you and cuddled with you all the time. Being a human was hard. You had to work for a living, and lie to people, and figure out when they lied to you. But cats couldn’t rescue their girlfriends and cats couldn’t make potions. I couldn’t buy comic books or solve crimes or work magic, not the way I wanted to, not with my tools. I was helpless, and I hated being helpless. Worse, I was useless to the people I cared about.
Marcone didn’t get much work done when Murphy left. He paced and called a lot of people. He mentioned me in a lot of those calls, but some of them were in Italian, one of the many languages I don’t speak. The gist of the calls I did understand was distressing. Marcone considered human-me one of his, possibly as much as he considered cat-me his. He wanted me found, treated for injuries, and brought to him as soon as possible. The underworld of Chicago was tearing the city apart for little old me - but to find me, they were looking for Susan, too. That was promising. Maybe she’d get some help and some good would come of this.
Marcone kept calling people well into the night. I curled up in his lap and fell asleep, still not dreaming and still unsettled by it.