In these the last few months of her pregnancy, Madison had taken to joining Tag late on the porch. There was the sound of crickets and an owl, if the night became still enough, which Winter afforded, but the cold, it tended to mute sounds, and one really had to listen beneath the weight of the weather for the nightly music. Usually, the syncopation was their voices, passages of thought aloud falling away into whispers or rising into hushed laughter. There was a kind of silver-toned silence that cloaked things more often than not. Their faces cloaked with it too, and their talk, which wasn't talk at all, but glances and heartbeats and understanding. Fingers twining and untwining. The moon cast off its shroud and whiter than it was all night, and loaning them a small wonder. A late-night muse on the universe and the way their universe was about to alter significantly.

"Fin's told me there's been a few applications. You recall Crispin? Or has Fin broached it with you already?" They were bundled up under a heavy blanket that was wearing at the ends. Something she'd held onto from her mother and had kept in the bottom of her chest at the end of her bed until she had moved in with her two. Sometimes she swore she could still smell roasted hazelnuts and smoke in the fibres. An impossible smell, given the years. Once spread out by country bonfires, Bill, Ada, Madi, talking about ghosts. But the past, as Tag and her knew, could be tenacious, and live on in the strangest of ways. Persisting or resisting. Haunting our lives in unexpected ways. She inhaled the ghost of the scent.

"What do you think?"

Not as ill as she had been, she enjoyed these late hours; they were sanctuary.. just her and him and the moon. It seemed the time to talk about any matter that floated on the edge of their thoughts so that when they slid beneath the covers it was with a fresh mind. Earlier in her pregnancy, these hours had been the worst. Anytime between the hours of three or six she could feel a spell come on and be sick for the better part of that hour. Tag, never once complaining, by the door of the bathroom, leaning. Waiting. Bringing her water or giving her the space to do what she had to do and clean her own mouth. She would eventually open the door to a face that was only worried eyes that appealed to her, offering anything she needed and his hair that said his fingers had been in it, wishing he could do more. Madison's face was always filled with apology and the zombie-fatigue of a mother to be. Her stomach was round as it would be and her back and legs liked to remind her of it.

But these nights, now her body had decided to acclimatise, were softer on her, leading her to a clear mind and their discussions could be as once before on that porch - rich, intriguing, and always vast.


"I like him. With a certainty I can't place any reason for havin'. He seems like someone who might do well about the bar. Don't know about his knack with people as a whole, but kinda nice the idea of havin' someone a little harder there. Not the kinda fellow you walk over."


Integrity. That was what Crispin had radiated outward from the first time she met him. When he had spoken up, for her, as she sat exhausted and sad after Glenn's sudden disappearance. Cianan had been prodding and she had been too far gone to urge the elf to desist. Crispin had been provoked, perhaps for some likeness he felt, or pity, and shot that elf down. She had looked at the man with value. He'd given her a voice when she hadn't the motivation to find her own.


"I left that offer on the counter.... Looks fine. Thinkin' maybe.... we just bite. Do it." Pale hands engulfed his beneath the blanket, squeeze of fingers and a look up and into his face from her lean into his shoulder. There was no sound but the weight of the weather. A muffled cocoon that surrounded them. At that time, there was no bell to be heard either. Tolling and terrible.

Like some great thunder clap had gone off that only Madison could hear, she shot bolt upright in bed. Cold worry glistened on her face and was wiped away by the back of a shaken hand. She exhaled and darted her eyes all over the room. To Tag, asleep beside her. The window. The door. The cupboard where swords and a gun slept away their dire potential. A knee was bent and brought up for an elbow and she leaned, thinking back over the dream. The feeling of it, how fresh it was, still with her. Pounding in her head and in her chest. Glenn had been dead. Laying still and gone in a puddle of his own blood. Her hand had held the gun that had taken him down.

Tag made a sound, his eyes trying to open against the blue-dark. Madison motioned a hand over his face, across his eyes, lulling him back to rest. He smiled and reached out for her. "It's okay...", whispered on a breath. Then in another she was gone from the sheets and in one more, out the door. The hall was violet ahead and drowned out in long sheets of dark, only growing lighter as the moon loaned daggers of its reflection across the lounge.


Knuckles slid along the wall and off it to her side as she pulled the thick wool of her robe about her and made way to the door and onto the porch. She gulped the air and looked out over the yard that gave way to gate and eventually the road. It was somewhere between four and six in the morning. The in-between. There was no evidence of what the day would bring with it, no other storm to perceive other than what raged and rolled and still clapped in her mind. Further out in the sky was the growing white of the sun, clawing across the horizon. Staring at the distance, so far from it, when once she had been immersed in it, raced off into it, she felt the strains of a sadness that had not touched her in some time. Were her feet really ready to remain in the one place? Was she really ready to be a mother? She had kept such thoughts to herself. Sometimes she wondered what her mother would answer with, and it was always "no one is ever ready; life only happens."


As she stood there, a gathering wind was picking up speed. Coming from all directions, or so it felt, until she sat on the porch and felt the tugging of a north easterly. She sighed and moved a hand up and down the roundness of her belly. "Hey you." The vibration of her own voice something she paid attention to. The warmth of it passing through her chest. The feeling of her voice in her throat, the sound and tone of it, the slight twang when she felt tense or afraid, the way it softened when she was smiling or happy. She heard herself in a new way, cautious and aware of it, wary of even her thoughts and what she allowed to enter them. As if even the way she spoke and thought might affect the child, plot some course for it simply by speaking or thinking it. And always, she tried to suppress her memories, and those wind-tugging sensibilities, the ones that made her eyes wander the sky ahead of herself. Would she ever miss the distance?


But she had not really been listening to herself. She had only become aware of the things that she believed she shouldn't let into her mind. Things like old houses she must sell, things like Glenn Douglas and their unfinished, broken history and the past she had left behind but secretly felt might never really be done with. Like the very threads of life that made her who she was, were irrevocably linked to a place and a purpose and a fate that she had come to resent. But below all that, was the gnawing and persistent disease that came with suppressing a thought or a feeling and eventually came to the surface, as if borne of all the weight that tried to keep it down. Light continued to brighten the sky and what had been only outlines in the night became true shapes and familiar landmarks. She pictured that same light throwing day time across Redemption. Alone and wasting in the dust.


The little voice she didn't listen to, or tried not to, finally had a place for clarity and precision. It was a sure but delicate voice. Madison hugged herself and leant back into the crook of the stair. She listened as the wind lapped at her face like an unseen sea, slow gasps of it that pulled at the long, wild lengths of her hair.


If she sold the house, a huge part of her history and someone else's would be gone. It had been a hide out as much as a home. It had been a place or ruin and a place of renewal. And now, it had become a place where Douglas rested his head. She did not ask what he was into now, she had allowed only knowledge of him being in town, knowledge that he was still around, that he could present himself at any time. In one sense, it was a comfort knowing someone of her ilk, her kind, was here. In another, it was the prospect of never seeing him again that bit at her. Even after the fall out, there was a care. A concern. He was a part of her identity, and she is. Selling the house meant he would go elsewhere in town, or elsewhere entirely, and she would not know. Patrick Foley and his handsome generosity would cast an end to all of it. She would be forced to give Glenn up, perhaps for good. Was it so hard to imagine she might not know her kind again? It was. And the loyalty she had to him, for reasons unknown.


Getting to her feet, she made the decision within to sell. That she would say yes, regardless of the secret consequences she feared. As Madison turned to head inside, to return to her bed, to Tag, to sleep, she could feel that familiar tugging at her heels. The feel of it like vapourous hands in her hair. Casting a look back to the sky, growing whiter still, clouds fanning out in thin trails, she could hear it, too. The westling wind was forming.

A brow of hers arched with genuine surprise. "..He'll be waitin' up for me. Told him I was at Charlie's checkin' up on things. How's the hand?" Nodding towards the one that had led him to darker channels in the hell of the west. Every man could be a snake if he chose, but not all got the chance to be. And fewer yet got out alive. She inhaled stiffly. The scent of tobacco and dust tugging at her senses. It was so that the match was covered with a hand and brought towards her, turned before her gaze.

Said hand clenched and unclenched itself at her mention of it. "Trigger finger works," he said with a wry grin before turning his gaze upward to look at her. "Smoke botherin' you? I can put it out," he offered, not unkindly.

"No... it's a smell I don't mind." She answered, not taking it any other way than it was meant. Her smile more full as it showed at the sides of her mouth. "Someone's made an offer on the house. They look to be movin' in sooner rather than later."

"Domestic life ain't all it's cracked up t'be anyway. That's good news," he shrugged and took another drag. "You close the deal yet?"

She turned the match around and around. The smell of things extinguished raked at her. His mention of domestic life.. There was a look at him that was approaching hurt. Or curiosity. Or some stranger mix of the two. "No.... Had Heil doin' a little recon. The man wants to meet with me. I have a couple things to be sayin' to you about this."

"Like what?" he leaned back, feet pushing to scoot the chair back a few steps so he could kick them up and rest his dusy boots on the edge of the table. It put distance between them, a barrier. Like he was going on the defensive.

Madison continued. "You're gonna have to find another place to hang your hat. And I want you to look into this fella for me."

"Shit, Madison, I already know who it is."

"I can't", she gestured to her stomach, "and I think you'll be able to dig more than any one else I know. You never stop diggin." Then came his reply, not expected, and her eyes widened.

"Patrick Foley, right?"

"... And how the hell is that possible, Douglas?" She nodded at the name, curtly. Leaned forward, best she could. "Foley. Thats arright."

"Stopped by a few times now. Met him in town for drinks once, too."

"And when were you gonna tell me this?"

"What d'you wanna know about him? What's it matter? The house ain't gonna be yours anymore, anyhow." He went on. "When you asked. I'm not Heil. Don't jump to attention whenever you will it, Madison. I got my own **** t'deal with, too."

"He bothers me. He unsettles me. And....." her jaw flexed uneasily.

"Ain't important."

"It is important." Frustrated, she sat back, exhaled.

"Why's he bother you? You met him yet?"

"Heil's been lookin' into it."

"An' what's <I>Heil</I> dug up?"

"Foley ain't nice. He a'int unicorns and cupcakes."

"Neither are you. No one is."

That earned him a smirk. "I feel..... " She searched for the words. For how to explain the indecision she nursed. "I am just feelin' uncomfortable about the whole thing. Givin' that place up. And where do you intend to go... I mean.. you gotta have somewhere to stay, Douglas?"

"Shit, Madison. You wanna talk about not nice. I'm not nice. Robbed you first time we met, remember?" he asked with a raised brow, the cigarette in his hand forgotten long enough that a trail of ashes followed where he gestured.

Her fingers rapt at the table top.

"Don' worry about where I stay, Madison. It ain't your concern. I'll figure it out."

"He's a different kinda bad. You know it. And it is my concern." She retorted, her voice not hiding her emotion.

He snorted and smashed the cigarette out into the table. "No such thing. Bad is bad. Good is good. Some people just stay bad so long the good part dies out. Happens to a lot. Happened to me. Almost happened t'you," then he sat up a little straighter and looked her square in the eye. "How far along are you now? How many more months?"

She stared right back. "Due next month. Why do you care?"

"You wanna be a mother to that baby? A good woman to Tag, right? Have a family?"

"Already am. Already do, Douglas." Her voice at its softest.

As she softened his voice hardened. "If you want it t'stay that way, Madi, then sell Foley the house. Forget about it. Forget about him. Forget about me. Men like us, places like that, we're trouble. If you keep holdin' on to the past, it's gonna come back to bite you."

"You and me both know, I'm already poisoned."

"I'll get your man killed some day. He'll get your baby taken away. That's the kinda future you incite, holdin' on like you are. Doesn't mean you should keep drinkin' the poison, Rye."

Her chin lifted, and she pulled her eyes from his, settling back into the seat's poor embrace "Ain't so easy. And I've been... I've been tryin'."

"Sure it's easy," he sat back, relaxing slightly. "You just...forget. I did it with my brother. You did it with me."


She licked her upper lip and flinched. "I did, huh." She let the words sink to the bottom of her stomach. "... I feel a responsibility to you. After everything."

"Oh f*ck that." Douglas spat. His eyes rolled in their sockets and he tossed a glance over his shoulder at the door, as though desperate to escape. "Just sell the house, Madison."

She laughed and it tasted as bitter as it sounded, as she sat there shaking her head. "Not yet." She looked at him then, to see what he would do.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to not go away. Don't wanna be pickin' up a paper to see you're dead on some road side."

"I'm not the sorta fella who sticks around. "Probably better'n I deserve."

"No, but you always come back." "And", she gestured between them, "so do I."

"You know why?"

She was grating her teeth again.

"Do you love Tag?"

"Yeah. I do. Very much."

"Do you love me?"

Madison sat there a moment before she could bring forth only a nod. It was another moment before she spoke. "Didn't think I did 'til you just asked me."

"Well, now we've found the root of the problem, Madison," he said with a sigh, sounding defeated.

"But you... you never let me inside. And disappeared." She explained. Whether to him, or herself, or them both. "It ain't no root. No problem. It is what it is...." she exhaled again, heavy, and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "I don't want you to go."

"I'm not tryin' t'argue about why we fell out. The problem is, Madison..I love you. An' you love me. But you love Tag. An' I knew you loved me a long time ago, an' that's why I keep comin' back," he ran his fingers through his hair. There was a little gray in it these days, but not much. "Because I know how you feel an' I can't help myself. But if you didn't. Or if I didn't. Then I'd be gone an' it wouldn't hurt either of us more'n it already has."

There was a space between them. A space between the resonance of words and a space for regrets to fill with color.

"I'll deal with Foley." He added on, as if he had not revealed what he had.

And she, she could only sit there. Her hand ran the roundness of her stomach. Her face strained. Something dawning on her. "Don't think you've ever said it to me before."

"I haven't."

The words hung in the air. If she looked at a dead point in the middle of the space between them she could have made them out. She closed her eyes instead. "Goddamn you."

"And I shouldn't have. You need to forget about it and me. I'm trouble for you and that little family you got growing. And as for damning...God already did, Rye," he smirked at her.

She swallowed and shook her head, stretching to her height from the seat and stepping out of the dismal circle of light the lantern cast half heartedly. "And how. And now I gotta walk out of here like you didn't just say to me."

"Life's a cruel joke."

"No. You're just a cruel man."

"Forget about it, Madison. Forget about me an' your life will be the better for it." He laughed then, in his unpredictable way. "I'm that, too."

She found herself smiling.. and then grinning.

"You ran with this cruel man for a spell. That make you cruel, too?"

She walked over towards where he sprawled in his chair. She leaned over him and took his face into the cold clasp of her hands. "Guess it did. For a spell." Then, she pressed a kiss to his forehead.

When she drew back he had a different look about him. His hand had fallen to finger the gun at his hip in that nervous way it did. He withdrew into old habits and that faint twinkle of light had disappeared in his gaze. "One day, Madison. One day I'm gonna kill you."

Her smile was lopsided. The wild, sleepless dark of her hair all skelter down her front and serving as a curtain between them as she watched his face change like cloud shadows along the land. "You'll kill me Douglas. But not by your gun." Her words quiet. Her eyes intense and bright. "I have what you need." Then she was stepping away, backwards. Her eyes remained trained on him. Her hands raised, pulling back either side of her coat, to display her waist, bereft of iron.

Glenn sat there in that chair and tried not to watch her too closely. "How's that, Rye?"

"I'm your true north. I'm the good you lost along the way. It's why you come back." Pausing at the door, she leaned. A hand along the frame, thumb pressed into the wood. "We complete one another in ways neither of us have ever liked to admit."

"What's that mean for us in the end..." his hand fell away from his gun and he chewed at his lip. "Go home. Tag's waitin'."

"I don't rightly know, Douglas." After a stretch of thought. "Stay at the house.... til the sale. If you want to."

"I'll probably stay after the sale. Takes an army t'make me get up when I don't want to. Should probably let your buyer know."

"Don't I know it." A pause. "As for him... "Unless you're dead." She laughed.

"I already died once. Twice shouldn't hurt."

"Much." Glenn was given a smile.

That old snake hand clenched again and he forced a smile back. "Good night, Madison."

Her hand had never known that bite, but hurt from how severe a ball it had made in her pocket. The edges of her smile faltered until it was a ghost on her face and she turned and stepped into the hall. Footsteps through the passage. Like heartbeats into the dawn.

Behind her, the coach rolled off into West End darkness. Bundled up in one of Tag's shirts, old jeans and steady feet in older boots, she stood near Heil's, her shoulders hunched as she ran a hand down over her belly and back up. Before her was the roll-away side entrance to the Watch detectives' pad. With her gaze darting over shoulder every so often, she awaited his response to her signature rattle, three knocks (with the toe of a boot) and "HEIL!"

When he didn't answer immediately, she felt concern flare within. Habit. But something that had only come on her prematurely given the context of recent years. A toe nudged at the door, kicking it lightly enough to make a sound. "Heil. Get out here."

She tipped her head back to stare up the wall that spanned upwards from the roll-away garage style entrance. There were no windows this side, only grates, pigeon shit and at the very top, a fire escape ledge that had no stairs below it (if there once had been, it had been an aeon ago), so served purely as a vantage over the city before one perished in bright flames should the ledge live up to its original purpose. But it was there she noticed a leg bent askew and a polished oxford hanging off the side. It startled her a moment until she could make out wisps of cigarette smoke climbing above the figure. Steps backwards as she strained to see who it was. "Heil?" Her voice was unsure and bright in the hollow alley.

He jerked, jumping up though not without a delay which told her he was drunk, perhaps, his hands loosely clutching the edge of the steel balcony. "Hey Madi.... whatcha... doing here?"


"You were meetin' me remember? Not good manners keepin' a pregnant woman waitin' in the cold."

He swayed a little and then waved at her that she should wait. She arched a brow and lowered her eyes to the small, fat blue box beside the entrance ahead of her with a light in it. It made a kind of whooping sound and flashed green (fizzing, a rapid series of blinks like it was also drunk) and then the roll away wound up. Madison ducked her head and stepped through...

It brought her face to face with Andy Jacob.

"Yo Madi. Glad you could join us." He had the muzzle of a Rutger held to her stomach.

The Offices of Myrrell and Spitt
Door 141, Octaviar's Antiques, Marketplace

Behind an unimpressive door was a long, very narrow hall whereby upon reaching the end, the patron was met with a very narrow, skeleton-spindly staircase of corroded steel which spiralled up to the small, unimpressive, spartan offices of Kurtis Myrrell and Rile Spitt, above what was previously an antique shop.

Outside, on the hardly-there landing, were a couple of collapsable chairs, upon which Madison Rye waited, boot heel-chair rockin', whiskey flask-a-tappin'. When the door opened again and she was asked to step inside, she was met by Heil, who gave her one of his half-smiles and dip of the head, escorting her towards the large, raw oak tables situated dead centre in the room. Light tumbled inside, huge white sheets of it, that sent glare off of every surface. To the right of the table, four glasses with a finger of whiskey each, sat waiting.

"Mizz Rye, we are glad you could make it. Congratulations on the birth of your child. You're glowing."

Madison smiled and it was forced. If she was glowing, she didn't feel it. She looked straight to the stacked papers beside the whiskey glasses and then pressed a look towards Heil, before levelling the cold blue of her steely gaze on the lawyers. "Men, which is my copy?"

The two shared a look and Heil suppressed a smirk, nodding towards the releases and deeds before them all. "My client has pressing obligations, gentlemen. Can we please proceed?"

"They said you weren't one for pleasantries, Mizz Rye", Rile remarked regardless of the passage of time and the need to hasten it. He looked Madison up and down over the small, rectangular glasses that sat on his nose, gave one more look to Heil and Myrrell, before nodding. "Very well. Business then.

"My associate has prepared the paperwork. Foley's representatives are due here momentarily."

"Thought they were meant to be here now, actually", Madison interjected, though her eyes were scanning the documents that Myrrell was placing down before Madison.

"They... were kept up. Foley can be ...hard to motivate."

"He runs to his own clock, Mizz", Myrrell tried to explain, straightening his tie, in his awkward, stiff way. He suddenly reached out to fluster about Madison's copy, to help her to the dotted line, until he was met by her cool regard again.

"Can find it myself. I'd like to read everything over."

"His men really shouldn't be much longer, Mizz Rye."

Heil and the brunette shared a look with a matched roll of eyes, and continued to survey the papers. A pause, a nail scratching at one missing detail.

"He is forgoing the cool off period is he?"

A darted look between all men, she arched a brow. Her look so serious, so so serious, that Heil had to fight another smile. He'd been on the receiving end of that look of hers, how many times?

"He's wanting it all finalised today, Madison", the detective explained. "No fussing around."


Madison went to reply, agitated that Foley and his men were scarce, when there were footsteps echoing off the steel of the stairs. Expectantly, all four turned towards the door. A hand curled around the shot glass closest, and she threw it back.

Funny, how a person can change the light in a room. It wasn't only for the bulk of the thugs that stood by the window partly obscuring the day that had been streaming in. It was the disquiet that settled across the table, like a low crawling fog. The thought, sudden, wild, raced through her head as she watched the men separate and Foley head towards her.

He cut a figure in the room that was distinct, refined, unexpected and terrifying. Something of him reminded her of the unsettling way Douglas had been to her, with all his immediacy, cockiness and mad-seeming way and talk in the beginning of their relationship. How despite shattered glass and spilled whiskey he had appealed to some part of her. Patrick, while not appealing, held her interest, but for other reasons entirely. He was as different as a man could be to Glenn, but they held a semblance that was uncanny.

Screaming in her head was only see, Madi, he's a madman too. Look at that face. Look. You were right. This was wrong. Don't ink. Don't do it.

Some days it was hard to tell if what she was thinking or acting with was put of paranoid habit from the older days when such a mode of operating was common and necessary. Or, if she was just losing it, in some small way. Paranoia for a life can't be healthy.

With whiskey burning her throat she cut the man a smile that wasn't one and met his grip. Hers was tight, cold as her stare, quick. There was more you could read of a man in how he greeted you.

"Patrick Foley... was half thinkin' you were a ghost." The smile that came after that was more real but it wasn't nice. She glanced over the table, watched as his emptied glass was placed beside hers. Felt a slip of apprehension cool in her belly.

"But, you turned up. Lucky for me. I forgot to bring my henchmen with me, did I miss a memo?"

That brow was up again as she nodded without looking directly at the men, to the two by the window. "If they're not here as your representatives, I'd prefer they leave the room, Mister Foley."

Heil sucked in a tight breath and removed his hat. He looked to the two lawyers who had frozen in place by the table. It was as if the room had darkened, despite noon blazing in the skies.

Funny how a person could do that.

With squinted eyes she watched the dance unfold. Watched the way Heil watched Foley which gave further cause for that slip in her stomach to noose-knot, the way the lawyers nearly shrunk into themselves as the man approached. Yet, Patrick reminded her of porcelain, or broken clay. He made her think of dreary mornings and broken windows. She with-held the sigh that welled in her chest as he was once again looking her way and owning the room.

"I'd like to clarify .... your grace, in not wantin' to allot a coolin' off? Is that so?"

"Yes, yes", Spitt continued, "she is speaking, specifically, of note six point two on page four. About half way down, sir." Myrrell was heading around to produce one of the deeds for Foley to review and sign.

"If that's so, how quick you want to turn the cash around? Keys are with the gentlemen here, for when you're secure."

She watched him, her gaze widening just enough to catch that darkness spread. As though indeed a trick of the light or a flare of intuition in her sights, a nagging, persisting feeling that drew her eyes around and beyond all the men with a strangeness that had her fixating on the tarnished, gold-framed mirror leaning against the far side wall, beside the cabinet which housed a selection of top shelf liquor.

Billy at the door and closing it. She caught sight of the chair outside and boots that couldn't belong to anyone else. Madison let out an audible gasp, her eyes wide. Heil following her stare.

Traces of single malt sparkled dully in the empty glasses. The pen fell from her hand to the table and rolled, a sound that seemed to go over long, before knocking into one of the glasses with a clink. It punctuated her heartbeats.

Foley would find her eyes on him sharply. "What Is This."

"You know damn well what I'm talkin' about."

There was only that, and the sounds of her leather jacket squeaking as she reached around beneath it. "I want to know what in hell is goin' on. Right now."

Heil ran a hand down over his mouth and cleared his throat loudly, taking a step around so that he was placed out of the firing line of Madison's gaze and closest to the lawyers, so that he might translate for them. "She knows the gent outside..", he whispered, "give her a moment." He had spied Douglas via the mirror in following her stare. Now, he was doing so again, as the long dark barrel of her misgiving settled on the Irishman without fatigue.

"You tell me why you got that son of a bitch here with you. What game is this sh*t?"


From beneath the jacket she produced a ballpoint pen. Her arm in the air beside her head. With a thumb, she gave it a couple clicks. "I ain't signin' nothin' until you explain an' thoroughly too."

"Ah, Glenn Douglas, how wonderful of you to join us", quipped Heil, none too impressed, as the outlaw set foot inside and took his place not far from Madison and between him and Patrick. He made a flamboyant gesture of greeting to the man then folded his hands neatly before himself and lowered his head, regarding the three the way someone endures the grim procession of a funeral. He'd never taken to Glenn, never understood Madison's unyielding loyalty which sometimes almost felt like fealty, to the man. Maybe it said something he didn't want to hear, didn't want to consider. He wondered momentarily what her boyfriend, Tag, made of it too. Foley, well he was a whole other deal. And Heil didn't know what he had to think on him just yet.

The Lawyers wore stiff smiles and postures and not much else, looking on. When it seemed as if the tension might be too much, they both went for the shot glasses and knocked them back. Spitt moved to the cupboard for the bottle, to refill all the glasses and return with a few more. Looked like Rye wasn't going to be getting her haste, afterall.

"Real estate, huh? Didn't pick you for it."

The hand with the pen came down, she gave another two clicks, counting off her measuring look between the Irishman and the outlaw. "Hmm. Knew you two were acquainted... but business? Feelin' a little left out in the cold, boys."

She could feel her eyes burning in her head as she locked eyes with Glenn. Stubborn and steel-eyed them both, and everything about them said the office it might catch fire. Every time he was a fixture in the room, any room, it all changed again. The light, the mood. And every time she hadn't seen him in a while and he was walking towards her, it was like seeing him for the first time all over. It could still surprise her that the air hummed around him, that it could prickle the hairs at the back of her neck, how the volatility that animated so much of his life crackled in his eyes like a barely constrained storm. She sucked air as he came towards her and exhaled it when he stopped short.

I'm gonna kill you, Madison.

The last time she had been alone with him, those had been his parting words. Always, the charmer.


"Why, Mister Foley, stumblin' upon Douglas, my dear, dear old friend, in my property, how mighty fortuitous for you. He gonna get a pretty grey suit like your other two, too?" Her eyes roved the man's face, she could hear clay crumbling, could hear glass exploding, could hear the whistle of the wind. "Or is that bein' pressed as we speak?"


"Ash always was his colour." Eyes were on Glenn's.

Remember, Madison. We don't ask. We take what we want.

She was staring at Glenn, hard. Foley was still smiling and the two lawyers were beginning to become quietly irate at what was transpiring; for their lack of comprehension and the time quickly dissolving in this discourse. But Madison wasn't thinking about them, or Foley, she was intent upon the gunslinger and the spill of shadow. The way the darkness ran through her blood and threatened to spill from her lips. Heil could see the venom spreading and cut past Foley to eclipse Douglas, taking her by the arms and looking down into her face. The woman was vibrating with emotion. She was biting the words inevitably on her tongue. But at Heil's assuaging, Madison inhaled and looked to her boots. He spoke into her hair, leaning to whisper.

"This isn't the time or the place, Madi. Don't do this in here. I know it's different where your from, that politics can be paraded, but this, what you're doing right now, it could be damaging. Soo. please. I beg you, this once. Sign the papers and don't worry yourself with what that criminal is doing here. Then it will be done. No more worry."

Her head lifted, their faces close and she nodded but without conviction. Blue eyes were darting.

"The papers, to assure you..", he continued in a low voice. "I reviewed a copy by post already and I've been over Foley's agreement with a fine-tooth comb, several times over, in fact, to be sure." He squeezed where he held onto her. She always felt to him like she might disappear, because she had. As though so much of her was ephemeral or prone to being stolen by a wind. But there, in those offices, Madison Rye was so very real - he could feel her hot breaths as she breathed out through her nose, the heat of agitation and the watery clearness to her eyes, so filled with the trouble. He took a deep, fortifying breath for them both, making sure he had her eyes with him and smiled at her when he did, his back still to the rest of the room.

"It's going to be okay, Madison", he sighed and released her to step aside and step up, looking at Glenn with a frown and then to the Irishman whose face was expectant and seemed amused at the situation he no doubt had orchestrated.

"My client would like to continue with the matter at hand. Shall we?" Heil broke, stepping towards the table and flicking through the pages until he came to the last. He indicated for Madison to join him, who was still standing back, rigid, staring at Glenn. Her body was at the table before her eyes.

"And, if there's further business not particular to the sale of One-One Redemption, we ask that it be taken outside." Heil then looked to Glenn. "With you. I think you've been here long enough." Firmly.

He took his eyes off the outlaw and to the lawyers. "I apologise for the delay in the proceedings, gentleman. It's been.... an unexpected afternoon."

"All is well", Spitt conveyed with as much gregariousness as could be mustered given the climate. He ran a hand down his tie smoothing it and peeked over towards Glenn, then Foley, before returning his eyes to Heil.

"Was there anything else?"

"No no.. I think we are fine." Heil answered. "I don't believe we need anything else." A look shared with the Irishman on that. "Unless Mister Foley has anything else to add once he has signed."

Madison's signature shined in black ink on stark white paper. The woman herself stood with her head down and her hands down back pockets. She was silent.

That?s all it takes, Madison. Once you start lettin? me in that?s it. I got you now, like it or not.