To Regret A Wanted Death

Is this....a oneshot!?

Trying to find a murderer in 17 system hours as your body slowly gives up on you, isn't quite that easy. As Aventurine walks around Golden Hour he gives out money to people and asks them about "death", the more he walks around the more his vision gets hazi around the edges, and the pain in head won't stop throbbing, but he knows he has to push on, he's in this all or nothing.

After a very regretful but not so meaningless encounter with a Fool, the gambler sets out to find the other mute she spoke of. Walking around as if he wasn't quite literally dying. Stumbling around in the small spaces between buildings, trying to avoid the crowds, Aventurine bumps into someone. As he stepped back and blinks the haziness away, Aventurine found himself face-to-face with Ratio. "Oh, you." he said rolling his eyes, even though it hurt. "Have you come here to make fun of the state I am in?" Ratio having expected the conversation going that way, handed Aventurine a little capsule. "I've no time to bicker with you right now gambler. Don't open this untill you're at your lowest, understand?" To think the man that betrayed him, would be giving him a helping hand right now. That's assuming whatever was inside that thing, was going to be of any help. "You never fail to make me angry, Doctor. Especially as of late." Aventurine retorted back, as he took a hold of the capsule. And then handed Ratio a letter himself. He had written it at some point after stumbling uppon that Fool. "Read it when I'm dead, and only when I'm dead. It's no surprise for the both of us that I will still come out victorious, alive or not. And you are going to read that when I die. Understand?" the scholar doesn't say anything, he nods, takes the letter and watches as Aventurine walks away. After a minute, he too, leaves.

Following Aventurine's grand show and his demise, in the bridge between the afterlife and life itself, Aventurine stands in front of Acheron as they talk "I can not give you the answers you are seeking. It's simply not my place, nor can I give them all. But there is something that can be answered, it is in your pocket." she tells him. Remembering the letter from the betrayer, Aventurine searches his person to find it, moments later he's opened it. The letter read:

"Dear gambler,
I won't lie my action of betrayal towards you was harsh, and I may, to an extent, regret what I have done. It happens to the best of us. You put your trust in me, that was a gamble in itself, albeit it being long term, you lost. I'm sure you'll go all out with your last big gamble.

Best of luck, you'll need it.
Dr. Ratio

Ps: Topaz will worry if you don't make it, so for the good of the both of us, make it back in one piece, alive and still kicking. I might treat you to a drink, as a way to say "sorry", because I'm not saying it out loud."

"Bastard..." he sighed.

Acheron was gone by the time he finished reading the letter. He couldn't help but laugh, even in his dying moments, Aventurine couldn't help but think of that dammed Doctor. Before his doom, in his better days working for the IPC, Aventurine would get lots of looks, bad mostly, it was no news that people wanted to see him fail, see him die duo to one of his unreasonably dangerous gambles. He puts his life on the line everytime "all or nothing" after all.

And it was no surprise Ratio was one of them. Sadly enough for the Doctor, because of their similar jobs, they often found themselves on missions together. People soon started assuming less of the scholar, they thought he was falling for the gamblers game when they saw the two man return from a successful mission laughing and smiling. Oh how wrong they were, Ratio is no fool. If anything, Aventurine has fallen for Ratio's game, and he fell hard.

He didn't know if the "good luck" and the ps in the Doctor's letter were genuine or not. And by the Eons did he want it to be so. Aventurine was no stranger to one-sided relationships, be they professional, platonic or romantic. People didn't see him as anything other than a quick way to solve a problem, he wasn't a human in their eyes, he didn't need basic human stuff, like the rest of them did. He was but a tool.