Author's note - sorry for the long wait on an update. This was a tough chapter to write, given that David is astonishingly difficult to work with. Also, this is an important chapter and I wanted to get it right! Oh, and did I just subtly quote Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock in this chapter? You bet I did. Literature expert level up if you can find it.
It was three days later, and Nightingale had missed countless calls from Michael. Her comm rang at eight am and she picked it up, much to Robin's momentary relief. His relief vanished, however, when he found out it was David, calling her in to start work on a new case.
"Fine, fine," said Robin, who had just sat down to breakfast with tousled hair and sleepy eyes. "Off you run, Agent Brightley. Go save people. Be brilliant. You always are."
Nightingale had marvelled that Robin could be so charming so very offhandedly, kissed him for his kindness, given Colm a promise she would be home by four, and flown away in the hovercraft.
Her flight was a long one, harried by the morning snarl of commuters. She was not in the most serene of moods when she arrived at HQ, nor was she particularly thrilled when David greeted her with a customary grimace.
They were alone in the team's office. The sun, which had risen some time ago, had managed to find crevices between the huge buildings and shot a timorous ray through the huge windows, illuminating the scene with a warm glow.
David, standing with his back to her, staring out at the city, had turned when she had entered. He had said nothing to her but had curled his lip in disgust without her having said so much as a word. She went about settling herself in for a moment or two, humming and ignoring David, before the conspicuous absence of Caroline, Nicholas, and Pierce made her ask:
"You're briefing me before you brief the rest of the team?" She settled into a chair and watched David as he gave a soft snarl and rounded on her.
"No, I'm not. And try, Nightingale, just try not to take that tone with me for one moment of your fucking life-" he began. Nightingale waved her hand and was surprised when it earned her his momentary silence.
"I have a better suggestion, Detective," she suggested.
"Let's hear it, then." It was a challenge, said in the worst possible tone - she was too stupid to have a good suggestion, the tone said. She was a silly woman with foolish ideas and she could not possibly measure up to the paragon of brilliance that was Detective David Beckett, the tone mocked her.
Nightingale did not believe for a second that David thought she was stupid, nor would she have particularly cared for the opinion had it been true. On the whole, it barely fazed her. The years of her association with David had not lead to her devaluing his opinions, but it had blunted her to his outright cruelty.
So, crossing her arms and regarding David with a level-headedness she knew drove him wild with frustration but which he admired, she asked him:
"Do you trust me?"
"No further than I could spit," he snarled back, his face twisted with anger. Another lie, which neither of them truly believed, said only in the hopes it would wound her. It did not.
"Liar," Nightingale rebuked him. The word was sedate but firm, and then followed with a command: "Answer me."
"Nightingale, for the love of-" he began. His eyes lost some of their fiery hatred when he said it. His tone was not calm, as hers was, but it was quiet. Deadly. Nightingale would have been frightened of it had she feared him.
"Just answer, David," she said. She was unable to keep some of the impatience from leaking into her voice.
There was a pause in which David's jaw ground with abject disgust, which was how Nightingale knew he was about to be truthful with her. His emotion was choking him in his attempt to let it master him, and he now spat it out as though it were a poison:
"Yes." Then his voice softened and, as though the first admission had eased the rest, he spoke with an astonishing gentility and a candid honesty. "I trust you. With my life. With anything."
"Good, then," she said, and nodded. She did not smile, and tried to keep her tone civil as she went on. "Now, could we possibly get along, given that you trust me?"
There was a very long pause. David's head was bowed and he did not look once at her. It was not a defeated silence, far from it, but it was one of someone overcome. He was ashamed of his sentiment, Nightingale supposed, and exhausted by having let it get the better of him.
"Do you trust me?" he asked eventually.
"Yes," said Nightingale after a pause of her own. Years out of the bordello and of becoming less bitter had made her better than David at allowing for the tenderness of emotion, but she still disliked unbending her pride to say it.
"That's idiotic," he snapped. His anger was for both her and himself, it seemed. "I sold you out, for Christ's sake. Used Rose to get you on my team."
"And I imagine you feel your share of guilt over that," said Nightingale.
"I-" he began.
"I won't force you to answer that," she said, and waved her hand. She could only expect so much from David. His years since their meeting had made him more bitter, not less, and he had already unbent himself so far. "I won't ever forgive you, which I'm sure you know. I don't think you ever expected me to forgive you, really. The damage is done and can't be undone. But would you do it again? Sell me out again?"
"No," he said. "No. Of course not. Never."
"Then I trust you," she replied.
There was another very long pause. David's head was bowed. Nightingale, rising from her seat, went over to him. She did not reach for the hand that sat gripping the back of a chair, nor the other held loosely at his side. Instead, putting her hand under his chin, she raised his head.
He obeyed her, and looked straight into her face. She smiled at him as sweetly as she could to try to take some of the crushing sorrow - or was it some sort of perverse joy, or satisfaction? With David she could never know - out of his eyes.
Running her thumb up over his cheek, she felt him lean his head into her hand with a low, rumbling sigh. Then she rose and kissed his other cheek. He did not flinch away from her, as he was wont to do. He stayed very still, and Nightingale appreciated that more than she could say. He was allowing himself to be humbled for a moment, to give in to the emotion he despised. Nightingale valued that surrender.
"There," she said, and smiled at him again. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
He was out of her grasp in a moment, his teeth bared and his eyes flashing. The surrender was gone and he was all hot fury and cold aggression again. "Don't you fucking mock me," he growled.
"I wasn't. David, believe me, I wasn't," she said. She reached her hands forward in supplication and invitation.
He had turned away and was grasping the back of a chair very hard. Everything about him was a series of hard lines: his clenched jaw, his straight back, his clawed fingers. After a moment, he gave a sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of his soul and pulled out the chair.
Nightingale's eyebrows rose but she did not give into the temptation to ridicule him for it as he, waving his hand, offered her the seat. Instead, she came forward and took the invitation. She sat and folded her hands in her lap, which was wise, for had she leaned forward and picked up her tablet she was sure she would have shattered it in surprise for what David did next.
As he pushed in her chair, and settled her with perfect ease before the table, he leaned forward and kissed her hair. It astonished Nightingale into stillness, that quick brush of his lips against her hair. She had little time to allow surprise to show on her face, for it was at that moment that the rest of the team entered.
Nicholas and Pierce came in together, both of them looking well-rested and far happier than when either had left a few days before. They settled beside Nightingale, with Nicholas on Nightingale's left hand and Pierce on Nicholas's other side.
Nightingale avoided small talk with them, far too perturbed to say anything. She snatched up her tablet from the table and pretended to be occupied with it. It did not stop her from witnessing, however, when Caroline entered.
The woman came around the table across from Nightingale, allowing her to see how Caroline came forward and, with her arm extended in the lightest of touches, ran her fingers over the back of David's hand. She was also able to see how he withdrew his hand and turned away from his wife. He did not flinch back as he did when Nightingale ever paid him affection. Instead, he moved away as if he could only barely be bothered to.
The distinction was not lost on Caroline, or on anyone else. When Nightingale touched David he reacted with a vicious indignation; when Caroline did so, he withdrew with a passive apathy.
"Ouch," commented Nicholas, nudging Nightingale and gesturing to what Nightingale had just seen.
"Try for some fucking subtelty, Nick," muttered Pierce. His voice was soft but the hand he used to punch Nicholas's thigh was not.
But neither Caroline nor David seemed to have heard them. Caroline had, instead, gone over to the window and was staring at her husband over her shoulder. He was not looking at her, but had his eyes trained instead on his own tablet.
Now Caroline wound carefully around the table. She kept her eyes on David with every step she took and he did not look at her once. She pulled out the chair on Nightingale's right and then, tucking herself into it with far more sinuous and leoine coiling and curling of her frame than could possibly be required, turned to Nightingale.
"You're not going to like this," she said. Nightingale turned to meet Caroline's eyes and found the other woman's face two inches from her own.
"Oh?" Nightingale challenged.
"No. You won't," replied Caroline. She turned her head for a moment and Nightingale followed her gaze. David had looked up now, and his eyes were fixed firmly upon the two of them. He had paused in his movement and now stood perfectly still, watching the pair of them.
"Why not?" said Nightingale.
"You'll see," said Caroline. Her tone was serene with an undercurrent of vindictiveness. Nightingale could not blame her for it. She would have done the same, she imagined. She was not so much better than Caroline that she would never seek to wound the woman her husband loved instead of her.
"New case, everyone," said David, bringing them all to attention. At a command, the lights in the room dimmed and the windows tinted themselves to a smoky dullness, obscuring the light of the sun and casting the whole room into shadow. As he spoke, David brought up a holograph that hovered, shimmering, behind him. The coat of arms of the Western Union - an eagle crowning a roaring lion with a crown of fleur-de-lis - hung in the air at his back, and for a moment the crown seemed to sit upon his head.
"Why did we get this one?" asked Nicholas as he settled more comfortably in his chair. "This is big, right? And we've just come off a case."
"Takahashi and her team are busy with something else, so the rules were bent somewhat," said Caroline, answering in the place of David. "Besides, this is an area of speciality for us."
David nodded at his wife and she back at him. Nightingale realized that whatever their conflicts were they were still undeniably devoted to one another in their way. They had lived together, worked together, relied on one another. They had trusted each other when there had been no one else to trust. They had a child together. David and Caroline were as close as two such people could be. There ought to have been no place for Nightingale in David's soul for this fact, but by some awful chance, there was, and she came between them.
"And that is..." said Nightingale, letting her voice trail off. It was Caroline she challenged but David who answered her.
"Inamoratas," he answered. His eyes, set glowing by the holograph, were fixed firmly upon her face, gaging her reaction.
"What the hell are you-" began Pierce.
David cut him off with a little growl. "There's a big business now in illegal bordellos stocked with Inamoratas. These men are Peter Ongawe, Victor Trevor, and Hikaru Ito," said David. Lifting hand, he flicked through three holographs of three men. They appeared together, hovering in the blue ether of the holograph, cast in monochromatic azure.
"Nightingale?" asked Nicholas, his voice wary. He did not touch her, both because he was of the sort of person (and therefore the right sort of person) never to touch another unless it was warranted, and because his tone enough to express his worry. She understood why, for her fingers were dug very firmly into the arms of her chair and lines of poetry recited themselves in Robin's voice in her mind.
His murmur had been quiet, but it was enough for everyone to hear. David, whose mouth had opened to go on, now pressed his lips together in a firm line - which he evidently wanted to be taken as impatience but was evidently concern given how Caroline looked painted - and raised his brows to Nightingale.
"Is it...the Inamoratas?" asked Pierce, his voice at its sweetest and its gentlest. He sounded most like Michael in such moments, and looked most like him with his dark eyes wide with concern.
"Yes," said Nightingale, through clenched teeth. Caroline had been right - she did not like this. But it was not only the suffering of these new women that put her in such distress. "But also...Victor Trevor. I know him. Client."
Pierce let out a soft whine of such sympathy and Nicholas a growl of such fury that Nightingale wanted to embrace both of them in gratitude.
"So I had heard," said David, inclining his head to Nightingale. "And your insight will be helpful, if you'll give it."
"Unless the insight that you want is how Victor Trevor likes to fuck, I'm not going to be of much help," replied Nightingale and her voice seethed with fury, hissing out from between her bared teeth.
"I think that's exactly the insight he'll want," muttered Caroline. David did not even glance at her as he went on but Nightingale did. Something was still unsaid in Caroline's air, some vindictive, vicious satisfaction was yet to be had. It frightened her.
"Undercover agents have told us these three men are a triumvriate of illegal Inamorata-dealing globally," he said, and with a flick the faces of the triumvriate had vanished, replaced by a globe upon which three points, three dots marking cities, pulsed and glowed. "They, according to our sources, deal in highest quality made in the most skilled underground labs. They ship Inamoratas between three transfer points - London, York, and Kyoto."
"Do we known how many labs supply them? And how many bordellos are there?" asked Pierce.
"We have intel on both. We know who supplies them and where they go. A source on the inside has access to all of this information and has reliably informed us that if we nail the three of them and we've choked the business." David's tone was flat and dispassionate, as if he did not care.
"And how are we going to do that?" asked Nightingale.
A tiny smile wound over David's face. "With you," he said. "We'll send you undercover. I'd imagine that of anyone on the planet you're the best at posing as an Inamorata."
"True," conceded Nightingale. Her anger had not abated but it had quieted somewhat. Pretend to be an Inamorata - that was something she could do. "But if any client sees my face - or other parts of me, actually - they'll know who I am and what we're up to."
"That would be a problem - if it weren't for the demand for Nightingale copies."
"What?" murmured Nightingale.
"It's a new fetish, apparently. You were undoubtedly the most famous Inamorata on the Western Continent. After you became the symbol of emancipation, demand for you only increased," said David. A sneer had curved its way over his face, coiling its lines of contempt at the corners of his mouth and in his brow. "Those who remember you want you again, or want to experience something so beautiful it caused the emancipation of a whole class of people, and some of the really fucking twisted ones want to fuck you out of anger."
Nightingale was not sure whether the bile rising in her throat was from fury or disgust. This was what Caroline had truly meant, this was what she would not like. But that was an understatement - this went beyond dislike, or even revulsion, or anger. Such a deep-seated emotion of horror, of fury, of loathing, of fear Nightingale had no name for her.
"And people are making copies?" she said. Her voice was quiet.
"Yes. Of course, most of them are terrible - even if they do look something like you, they don't have your charm. You weren't just the sum of your beauty, Nightingale," said David. At any other moment Nightingale would have noted the aggression with which David admitted to her beauty. "You were also your personality and those habits you learned for survival that made you so popular."
"So you want me-" she began.
"To go undercover as the perfect Nightingale copy. Let the triumvriate see you in action; when they bid on you, which they will, we'll have them for trying to trade in Inamoratas. It will be enough to jail them for some time, and will give us the legal ability to freeze their assets and, of course, to search their properties. You can, I imagine, figure out what we'll find."
"Their Inamoratas," supplied Nicholas. David inclined his head in deference to the correct answer.
"How many is that?" asked Pierce.
"Four thousand in total," replied Caroline. Her voice was low but not dispassionate like David's. It was easy to forget that her son had once been one of these creatures and it made her rail against the injustice of the slavery.
Nightingale, meanwhile, had said nothing and she stared in stony silence ahead of her. Inside, her emotions roared at her mind but not a single one peeped out from behind her steely countenance. She said nothing, heard nothing, though she felt everything - every possible emotion had crashed down upon her and left the blood singing in her ears.
There were some facts discussed, some queries answered, but she did not hear them. She blinked once, twice, as if to dampen the haze in which she found herself. The world seemed to slow about her and congeal, until the muted, murky voices of her colleagues warbled about her nonsensically, while all at once her mind, with its thoughts crashing upon her in wave after wave, roared loud in her ears and set her reeling.
One word brought her back - the only word that possibly could have. A voice spoke and said:
"Robin. Robin won't mind."
Nightingale shook her head and managed to surface from her thoughts. It was David speaking, and all four sets of eyes were upon her. "It's not Robin I worry about."
She was ashamed of her voice when she spoke - it was thin and sounded frightened. She recoiled from it in disgust.
"Then what?" pressed David. He sounded impatient but also worried, if he were capable of anxiety on her behalf.
"Would you need me to - to fuck any of them?" By the end of the phrase her tone was as full of strength as it had been weak before. Her voice broke halfway through the sentence but she set it right with a growl.
"Possibly." David told the truth quickly and bluntly. It would have been cruel had it not been truth that Nightingale so desperately wanted.
Nightingale clenched her teeth, biting hard against her lip, hard enough to make herself bleed. She quivered and hated herself for it, shuddered and was ashamed. She was the Queen of the Bordello, she would not be afraid, she was not Rose, she was disgusted but she would be afraid of no man or of anything he could do to her-
But she was. She was terrified. She was also angry, more angry than she had been in these long years of her happy life. Thoughts of Robin and of Colm, of their love, fluttered hopelessly against her mind but could find no purchase on her anger to soothe its ragged edges, or tame its wild fury.
"Nightingale, I won't make you do it. I won't force you," said David. His tone was as gentle as he was capable of. Low and measured, he spoke as if he was afraid of Nightingale, which was an impossibility. It was more likely his esteem for her - which she knew he had - that made his voice calm. "If you won't, there are others we can turn to. Others to go undercover. There are so many former Inamoratas that if you can't bring yourself to-"
"I'll do it," she said. She managed those three words in a low snarl and did not think she could do it again. She spoke, and fell silent, though her thoughts raged loud in her ears.
It had not been Robin that had inspired her, nor Colm. She had thought only of Rose. She had been brave for Rose once. And for others like her she could do it again.
David said nothing else but gave her a nod of such gratitude that it very nearly warmed Nightingale's heart to see it. But she was too angry, too horribly, awfully overcome to feel any such glowing emotion.
"Since this is an international affair, we'll be liasing with a team from the Britannic Federation," he said, and to a casual observer it would appear as though he had gone on in a cavalier show of disregard for Nightingale's horror. But a casual observer would have been blind to the way his eyes flickered to her, or how the softening of the severe lines of his jaw meant more gentle concern than passionate tear-floods from any other person could ever signify.
"Tokyo wants nothing to do with this whole business, and is happy for us to deal with it ourselves so long as we hand Ito over to them. To which I've agreed," he added, when Pierce gave a grunt of dissatisfaction.
"When do we meet them, then?" asked Nicholas. He had extended one hand to Nightingale under the table and away from David's eyes, but he had not touched her. He was waiting for approval to comfort her, to soothe her.
She pushed him away in disgust - and saw the hurt on his face - nauseated at the thought of his hand on her body. She allowed herself a privilege she had not had in the bordello, and one that would be denied her soon - she fled.
Rising from her chair, she managed a stately walk the ten or so steps out of the room, and the thirty more to the bathroom at the end of the hall. She opened the door and then locked it behind herself. Perfectly alone, she let herself collapse on the floor, weeping.