The Great Below

The Loyalist

After taking Alex to the Infirmary, Nick suggested Octavia lie low in his quarters for the rest of the day. She readily agreed. He offered to pack a breakfast and bring it to her but she declined, still woozy, more from the idea that Alex had shaken her than the physical act.

"Is there anything else I can get you?" he asked, once he'd let her inside.

"Could I hold on to your keys?" She cheated a little. Octavia reached out and grasped Nick's hand. Not too firm, just enough to let him look down at her bony fingers and feel a twinge of guilt. "I need to be able to leave the room. Just in case."

Nick's other hand came over hers, patting it. He looked reluctant. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said.

#

The ring of keys, including one with a black fob that was clearly for Nick's sedan, grew damp in her fist as she sat on Nick's unmade bed. There was guilt. She had forced a little of it onto Nick in the hallway, showing him that frail hand of hers, and it had doubled back, the gift that kept on giving. They keys found a new home in the pocket of her black hooded sweatshirt and Octavia started to tear the room apart.

She told herself that she wasn't doing anything to the room that Nick hadn't already done, overturning piles of discarded clothes and movies and picking through the rubble of his captive life in search of anything that might protect her from Victor. She thought longingly of Alex's imitation Boy Scout pocket knife, which she had stolen on her first night underground. Nick must have kept something. It couldn't all be in the weapons cage; otherwise, the men who had flooded Dominic's room on the night she'd nearly shot him would have been unarmed.

She couldn't tell them about Victor's plan. She had learned something in her captivity that they would not readily accept: that Dominic had all but died when Victor made the decision to 'fix' him. Good old Victor, who never went back on his word. Loyal to a fault.

Alex was his own kind of Victor, only opposite. She imagined him being ever the good nephew and intervening, trying to do what he thought was right, even if it caused Victor to kill him.

Octavia found success in Nick's underwear drawer. It wasn't ideal, and she hadn't wanted to look in there at all, but there was a square wooden box under a pile of clean shorts that made her breath catch in her throat. She maneuvered it out, shorts falling from each side of the drawer, and slid her fingernail under the lid. Locked. Octavia fished Nick's keys back out and found a tiny one that could have belonged to a mailbox, or a padlock. It slid in and turned.

Inside, the Walther P38 and one full magazine.

#

It hadn't mattered that Alex had spent several hours worth of fifteen-minute increments icing his orbital bone or that he'd persuaded Doctor Townsend to give him a painkiller so strong that it came with a warning not to drive a car. Once Dominic heard that it wasn't a concussion, he green-lit Alex's assignment for the night. Then, to be nice, he added Nick to keep an eye on him.

Alex had plenty of downtime in the Infirmary to imagine how his conversation with Dominic would eventually go: he would procrastinate out of anger, putting off the argument he so desperately needed to have until morning. He would spend the night alone (probably because Octavia would stay with Nick, or, even more gut-wrenching, Victor) and he would shuffle to Dominic's office unshaven and exhausted. Maybe his appearance would make his argument more compelling.

He imagined a version where Dominic became livid with his nephew's weakness and decided to kill her himself. There was another, even more shameful version where Alex took an immense verbal beating and ultimately withdrew his argument. Family was family. And after what he'd done to Octavia, she had every right to hate him as much, or more, than he currently hated himself.

Then, the one he was increasingly placing his stock in: the version where he gathered their things after the job and fled with her tonight. Dominic would be drunk or asleep by then. He knew it had flaws, but in his imagination, there was no version in which Dominic conceded that Alex was right.

As they left for their job, Alex and Nick found Octavia loitering in the stairwell directly under the exit, which clipped any remaining confidence he had. They hesitated, setting their bags on the concrete. He was going to have to apologize; he knew that, and it wasn't likely she'd want to hear anything after he'd shaken her. Alex wasn't sure if having Nick by his side would make it easier or considerably more difficult. "Octavia," he said.

She still wore what he'd chosen for her – a selection of her favorite pieces. She'd dug both her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt and the hood was up, casting a shadow over her face. The one part he could see was the soft line of her mouth, short and straight.

"I'm sorry about earlier." He didn't have to courage to say it above a whisper. He wanted to reach out and feel the thin waterfall of hair that spilled out the front of her hood, wanted to push the sweatshirt back and see her sorrowful eyes. "I'll come see you the minute we get back."

Nick bent to retrieve his bag. "I'll leave you two alone," he said, and took the flight up two stairs at a time.

Octavia toed the edge of the other duffel, curious.

"Please don't do this. Don't trust Victor." He had to stop when the words caught in his throat. He coughed and tried again. "He used me to get out last time, but I won't be here. There's no one else he can manipulate as easily and he'll get you both shot if tries to force his way out."

She was shaking her head, eyes still hidden by a band of shadow.

"Is it Victor? There's something you still want, revenge maybe. I could help you get revenge."

Nothing.

"I could stay..." he said hesitantly, heart pounding. "I don't want to let you down."

"No. You should go." And then it didn't matter that he couldn't see her eyes because a tear landed, a black dot, on the front of the sweatshirt. "You can't fix everything." And in a small miracle, she reached for him.

Alex embraced her, hands flattening against her shoulder blades and pressing her to him. He wanted to fasten her closer somehow, to tear that damned hood back and touch her porcelain skin. Her arms hooked behind his waist and he buried himself in the curve of her covered neck. There was no longer any trace of the eucalyptus perfume, not even in his memory; it no longer existed. "Please don't go. I'm sorry."

"Focus on the job," she murmured, burying herself against him in a fierce grip.

"Just wait an hour or so, be patient. I'll gladly go with you," he said.

She leaned back, her lips curving into a tiny smile. "On the job," she replied. "I said focus on the job."

"I can't."

She rose on tiptoe to whisper a kiss onto his lips. It was the best she could do, considering the thin scar forming at the center of her lower lip from Victor. Her voice didn't seem too strong, either, wavering when it should have been strong. "I'll see you when you get back."