#think 'huddled in a cave gnawing on a bone' kind of vibes

[wantonlywindswept]

Skybird abandoned sequel ficlet

for @lucdarling <3

So Skybird is a fic I wrote many many many years ago, back when fandoms were still on Livejournal and we had writing kinkmemes (which were honestly only like 50% kink/smut tbh) where you could post story ideas and invite people to write something on that idea. I had been on an Inception kick and was current up to like, 2.5ish? seasons of White Collar, and found this prompt:

Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey.

Thus began a descent into a fevered writing fugue that involved far too many hours of researching art and resulted in 30k words of fic written in the space of a month.

This is a snippet of what had been the vague idea of a start of a sequel to that fic. Looking back at it, it’s actually a surprisingly coherent/self-contained little story intro, so I don’t mind posting it. Unedited b/c I cannot be bothered, please have pity and remember that this was written *checks* thirteen years ago jesus god i am so fucking old

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They tricked him the first time.

Neal came to his senses by way of a hand slapping across his face, jolting him out of a bleary haze. He squinted up through the gloom of the—basement? cellar? something underground, at the very least—into angry brown eyes that stared out from two cut holes in a ski mask.

Neal resisted the urge to groan.

Amateurs. And even worse: clichéd amateurs.

“What do you know?” demanded the blurry figure. Male, middle-aged, hint of a foreign accent covered up by years of playing at New York posh. Unfortunately, the question held no ground with Neal, not without context. He could think of a hundred—a thousand, really—things that he knew, locations and names and numbers and faces and plots and conspiracies, all of which he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to talk about.

So he collected that information and buried it away, pushing it into the furthest reaches of his mind as he affected a serious expression.

“The earth revolves around the sun,” he replied, nodding decisively.

The punch to the mouth was hard and disorienting, but disappointingly predictable. It also made Neal realize he was sitting tied to a chair as it tipped dangerously beneath him.

“What do you know?” the man gritted, grabbing a handful of Neal’s hair and yanking his head back, pressure put on the exposed line of his throat. Neal let out a huff of exasperation.

“It would help if I knew what you wanted, wouldn’t it?”

The man scoffed and dropped his head.

“You know what we want.”

“I really don’t,” Neal replied mildly. He craned his neck around as the sudden whir of power tools echoed through the stone room, trying to catch a glimpse of the noise. He knew that noise. He knew it like he knew New York, like he knew the feel of lockpicks in the dark. That was the sound of a drill, and it was going through a Class TXTL-60 grade safe.

“Robbery?” Neal asked, perking up instantly. “Where are we? Some old bank vault? An old heiress’ abandoned wealth?” He waggled his eyebrows. “I’m going to go with the heiress.”

“Shut up,” the man snarled, and this time the punch sent Neal toppling back onto the floor, the chair and all his pressure on it landing atop his bound arms. His head smacked against the floor and he bit his lip against the pain, the room spinning and a low rumbling in his ears.

“What is that?” a new voice asked. Also male and younger, maybe twenties, rough and unpolished. He walked upside-down into Neal’s line of sight, wearing the same boring black outfit that every small-time thug had grown attached to ever since Hollywood decided to buy stocks in ski masks.

“This wasn’t in the plan,” Middle Age snapped, because apparently Neal wasn’t the only one hearing things. The younger man just spread his hands as the noise grew louder, looking around the room in a decidedly nervous fashion.

“Don’t look at me, I had nothing to do with this,” Twitchy declared. Middle Age snarled and stalked over to Neal, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him up, chair and all.

“What have you done?”

“Bees,” Neal replied at once, a little groggily. “Thousands of honey bees migrating—”

And then the far wall smashed in because there was a bulldozer driving through it, and at the wheel of the bulldozer was Arthur.

“Huh,” Neal said blankly, even as he was dropped back down. The chair stayed blessedly upright this time as both Middle Age and Twitchy grabbed for their guns. Arthur leapt out of the bulldozer in a smooth motion that was almost inhumanly graceful, a pistol in each hand and a murderous look on his face.

Two shots took out Middle Age and Twitchy. A third, aimed at a point Neal couldn’t see, stopped the sound of drilling.

“Pѐre,” Neal sighed as Arthur strode toward him, relief warring with embarrassment in his chest. But when he looked up he saw the guns still in Arthur’s hands, and a look on his face that sent a shiver down Neal’s spine.

The look on his face was wrong. It was all wrong. His eyes were cold and his face was a blank mask and he wasn’t Neal’s father. He was something else, something inhuman and wrong and bad and he wasn’t Arthur.

“No—” Neal struggled to scoot back, to break free, to do anything to escape the implacable force moving toward him. But all he could do was stare, helplessly, as the not-Arthur came to a stop in front of him. He squeezed his eyes shut as one of the guns rose, turning his face determinedly away.

“Wake up, Neal.”

Neal’s eyes snapped open in understanding just as the bullet entered his skull.