Chapter Text
To say that Riz is a credit to his division is understating the matter. In the Elmville police department, Riz is his division. Between the otherwise-competent precinct captain’s endless piles of paperwork and the complete ineptitude of his well-meaning coworkers, Riz has been the driving force of any and all local investigations since he was a freshman in high school. Now, as an official member of the payroll and the essential lead of any and all cases forever, his part is not just important but crucial, essential, unique even –
“Hot date last night?” Fiona says.
Riz glares blearily, severity of his gaze matched only by the bags under his eyes. “No,” he says, gesturing to the piles of paperwork littering his desk. How did she even get into his office without making noise. She’s not a rogue. Riz immediately makes a note to put some sort of trap to alert him in the door frame, for next time.
“It was a joke.” Fiona rolls her eyes. She pushes a cup of fresh coffee across the desk at him and Riz immediately straightens up, the suspicious crinkle of his forehead smoothing out. “You should try them sometimes.”
“I can be funny,” Riz says. He cautiously sniffs the coffee.
Fiona doesn’t bother to dignify him with a response – which is good, because he’s stopped paying attention, throwing the cup back and chugging until his throat burns too much to continue. There are two competent people in the precinct, he amends in his head, wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand. Fiona’s a half-elf – a paladin – who’s young, even younger than Riz, and just transferred recently. He doesn’t actually know what type of paladin she is, not because she hasn’t explained it or put it on a resume, but because Riz doesn’t know jack shit about paladins, and quite frankly feels that his life will be much easier if he continues to not know jack shit about paladins.
“Did you work the entire night?” Fiona picks at the edge of Riz’s papers. He has to resist the urge to straighten them as she leafs through the pile, thick eyebrows slowly rising the more work she sees. She’s not a pretty girl, exactly – not that Riz has much of an eye for that sort of thing anyway. She’s…stately.
“Seems like it.” Riz rubs his eyes. He’s not quite at a level of exhaustion yet, but he sure could go for a sleep spell right about now. “Captain was overwhelmed with paperwork for that prisoner transfer. I told her I’d get it done for her by this morning. Then Arthur Aguefort called for that last-minute emergency, and. Y’know.” He makes a vague sideways gesture.
“Yeah.” Fiona shakes her head. “I can’t believe you went to that school. That was insane.”
“That’s just how it is in Elmville,” Riz shrugs. “Those freshmen actually had a way better first day than we did.”
Fiona gives him one of those Looks she sometimes does, the look that says Riz’s hometown is fucking weird by the account of literally anyone except himself. He accepts it gracefully. It really wasn’t that bad. None of the kids even died this time. “Right,” Fiona says slowly as Riz pulls another, more measured drink from his coffee.
At age 24, Riz Gukgak has grown into some parts of himself and out of others. His hair still curls wild, his goblin face still long and skeletal, his freckles still prominent, but in many ways, he is less an aged-up version of his teen self and more a poorly constructed recreation. The shadow of a beard over his jaw is heavy. Where he once carried himself unnervingly straight and professional, his slouch is severe enough now that he doesn’t seem to have grown an inch. His outfit, once ironed daily, stretches in wrinkles, shirt polka-dotted with coffee stains. He isn’t even bothering with the pretense of a hat anymore, just combing his fingers through his hair and hoping it suffices. Riz Gukgak, once a put-together briefcase boy teen detective, has now become – and he is very proud of this – a Real Motherfucking Investigator.
“So,” Riz says when his coffee is drained, significantly perked up, “What’s the status?”
“Same shit as usual. Just keeping an eye out and watching traffic ‘til the prisoner gets transferred tonight.” Fiona swings one of his visitor chairs around, settling in backwards so that she can prop her chin on the backing. “I was gonna ask – do we know anything about this guy? What he’s up to, why they’re sending him here?”
“Not much. Isn’t technically a prisoner, at least.” Technically, what Riz has is confidential, but it’s confidential in that he also was not allowed to see it and had to slip it from the captain’s desk. It’s not like he’ll get in much more trouble for talking about it. “Guy turned himself in. Offered information in exchange for amnesty. Looks like he’s on the run from someone. That’s all we’ve got.”
“Nothing else?”
Riz shakes his head. “No class, no race, no description. They don’t even put his name – just a codename.” Riz traces his finger across a pen, easing the tip across his thumb. “‘The Privateer.’”
Fiona grins. “That’s very dumb.”
“Sure fucking is.”
“How are we supposed to know it’s him if he we don’t know what he looks like?”
“He’s being accompanied. Armed guard.” Riz frowns across the desk, lips puckering as he looks Fiona up and down. “Have you met Angela Worrel?”
“No.”
“She’s the head of something-or-other in the capital. She’ll probably be with them. And she’ll be a dick about it. Put me in jail once.” He puts up a finger before Fiona can question that. “Let me finish the paperwork, and I’ll give you the rundown on her.”
Fiona grunts, sitting back in her chair. “I might have my own work to do, you know,” she says. “You’re obstructing justice.”
“Yeah, I’m really holding you here against your will.” Riz watches her pull out her crystal and goes back to his work, his wrinkles softer. As he bends over, he can feel the pull of sinew and scar tissue over his chest, aching the way it only does when he hasn’t slept in too long, or when he thinks too hard about where he’s been. He rubs a hand, idle, over his torso, along the line of the scar sliced across it, and feels his spine shiver at the phantom memory.
“Riz?” He looks up at Fiona. “You okay?”
Riz Gukgak is 24 years old. 6 years ago, he was murdered. He gets up every day, and his reconstructed heart bangs like drumsticks against his ribs, and he solves mysteries, and the puckered scar from his time in the afterlife usually only bothers him when he agitates it.
“Yeah.” Riz manages a smile. “I’m fine.”
Low jazz is playing crackly and distant when Riz finally jimmies the lock to his apartment. It’s a recognizable tune, a theme song, from the TV that is often left running in the cramped kitchenette. Riz drops his lockpicks onto what is supposed to be a key rack, ears twitching as the music reaches its peak.
Kristen Applebees is sitting, alone, in the kitchen, at the patterned folding table that was supposed to be temporary. Her crystal is face down on the table, and she’s nursing the same coffee cup that Riz had pushed into her hands last night. Her hair is half shaved; what’s left has been parted to the right, dyed sporadic streaks of turquoise. Her shirt is baggy, faded, one of Fig and Gorgug’s first pieces of merchandise, back when they were still called Fig and the Cig Figs. Her eyes, too, are baggy, faded. Her shoulders. Her expression.
She puts up a hand when Riz walks in. “Let me watch this one, it’s the pigeon episode,” she says. “I made coffee for you. We can talk after.”
Riz’s eyes dart from Kristen to the coffeemaker to the TV Screen. “Kristen,” he starts.
Kristen gives him those wide pleading eyes, the same ones from his front door last night. “Pleeease.”
“You’ve seen this entire show four times at least.”
“It’s the pigeon episode.”
“That means nothing to me.”
Kristen flaps a hand at him. Riz looks at her for a long moment. Finally, he sighs, shakes his head at her enraptured expression, and makes his move on the coffeemaker. He pulls the pot out and swirls it, lips pursed as he evaluates the brown sludge inside. It’s cold, but not freezing, and Riz’s taste buds have been thoroughly grated from years of eating his own cooking. It’s probably fine.
By the time he drops into the chair next to Kristen, coffee in hand, he’s already lost the plot of whatever’s happening on screen. The dialogue is well-written and acerbic, though, and the image of pigeons filling a man’s apartment to burst is a little funny, so Riz concedes an unwilling point to the show. Riz often concedes unwilling points to this show.
“Okay,” Kristen says half an hour later, when the episode closes on the image of the main character heading into a pigeon wedding. “Sorry. I love that one. Season one, man.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Kristen makes a distorted noise, hand flying to her chest. “You haven’t seen it?!”
“Bits and pieces.” Riz sips his own coffee. The station is rolling right into the next episode, that same smooth jazz powering through to the image of the title card – The Unsleeping City. “It’s good background noise. I don’t understand the plot at all, but y’know.”
“We have to binge it together.”
“Nah.”
“Riiiiiiz,” Kristen says, but when Riz gives her a Very Adult Cocked Eyebrow Expression she recedes back into herself, hands curling again around her mug.
“We should talk,” Riz says. Gently. He thinks. Riz doesn’t really have a head for these, like, sensitive things, and across Kristen’s many, many life crises, has usually ended up ducking out and letting the others handle it so he doesn’t make things worse. “You don’t. Have to tell me. Why, uh.” He gestures to her whole being. “You know. But. I mean.” He blows out in a puff of frustrated air. “Do you, like, need a place to stay indefinitely, or just for the night?”
“I – “ Kristen rotates her jaw, a little clicking sound of nervous energy that her human ears almost certainly can’t pick up. “I don’t know,” she says, and her voice catches. “We, uh – she – I mean, Tracker – “ Kristen stops. Clears her throat. “I don’t know. I. Definitely don’t want to go back today. But. I don’t know. If it’s a long term thing.”
“Okay.” Riz makes an aborted motion to grab her hand, last second rapping the table instead. “That’s fine. I mean – Adaine’s, y’know, on Oracle business, you’re free to take her bed. As long as you need. Until Adaine gets back and then, like, you can still stay, but probably you’ll have to sleep on the couch or something. But – uh, if this ends up being longer than a day.” Riz gestures to the fridge. “Groceries, y’know?”
“Oh – yeah, yeah, I’ll pay,” Kristen says, which is nice after the many experiences of Fig using Hershey kisses as payment for bumming over instead of anything useful. “Of course. And – if it’s, uh, really, done. I’ll get my own place. But – “
“Until then.”
“Yeah. Until then. I’ll get stuff and pay rent and all that. Um. Thanks.”
“No problem.” Riz starts to stand – sits back down. “You don’t have to talk, but uh, if you want to, I’m. Here.”
“Right.” Kristen’s smile is still tired, still faded, but it seems sincere. Riz thinks it’s sincere. He has a pretty high insight, but he also has notoriously poor rolls, so it’s probably best to let someone else figure it out. “Thanks, Riz.”
“Yeah, of course.” This time Riz actually stands, spine cracking dangerous loud as he stretches his back. “Fuck I’m tired. Alright. I’m going to bed.”
“You just drank coffee.”
“Sure did, mom.” Riz makes a face and Kristen snorts, undignified, very much like the high schooler Riz first befriended. He smiles and punches her on the shoulder. He is pretty sure that is a thing that friends do, punching each other on the shoulders. He thinks he saw it in a movie once. It seems right. “Wake me up if you need anything, alright?”
Kristen salutes as Riz sidles out the room. His chest throbs again as he collapses on the bed, the sound of the TV echoing slightly louder behind him as Kristen turns the volume back up. Dammit. He rubs over his scar again, wincing when it aches. That means bad dreams tonight.
To say that Riz and Adaine live together is not technically accurate. To say that Riz, Gorgug, and Fig live together is also not technically accurate. As Elven Oracle, Adaine is obligated to spend a certain amount of the year in the capital of Fallinel, so her room is often empty for long stretches of time. Fig and Gorgug, mostly by Fig’s decision, live out of their little tour van, and definitely are not bumming alternatively off of their parents and their high school friends-slash-extended-family, so shut up. So while Adaine and Riz live together by technicality, for the most part Riz lives on a constant schedule of rotating roommates. Which is a list Kristen has now been added to. So.
Riz rolls over in bed. It’s a good system, he thinks, generally, and also right now while he is thinking about it, rolling the quilt between his fingers. He still lives close to his mom, sees his friends all the time. Everyone can get together for holidays under the premise of technically all being related to Fig somehow. Sometimes even Gilear drops by, with some knew woe betiding him. It’s good. Everyone he cares about in one place.
Everyone. All of them.
His scar throbs again and he gives in, reaching over to rummage in the bedside table for some pills Kristen had given him, right after she had brought him back from…right after she had brought him back (leaning overhead, worried, it’s always scary the first time, she’d said, with the look of someone who’d put their head in death’s mouth and come out with one tooth less). They make him lightheaded and fuzzy and kind of dumb, but he needs the sleep more than he needs the lucidity. He pops a pill, dry, then stows them back into the dust for however many more months he can manage without them. Jut one good day of sleep will do him, he thinks. Just one. Then he’ll be fine. He will.
The medicine helps with sleep but it does not dull the pain, so when Riz finally drifts off he is still feeling the shudders vibrating across his ribcage, beat-beat-beat of a heart scarred and reformed, hammering too fast and too loud and too wrong.
It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.
“Just take one night off, fucking gods,” Fiona says, when he tells her this verbatim, and then continues to repeat ‘It’s fine’ on loop without realizing it for a good minute straight.
Riz’s mouth shuts with a click. “You don’t understand,” he says. “It’s part of the aesthetic. Detectives gotta be sleep deprived. And in pain. And angsty. It’s the law.”
“It is not.”
“It is.”
“We work at a police precinct.”
“And I rank higher than you, it’s the law, done.” Riz leans back in his chair. He’s got the dumb detective overcoat Fig had bought him for graduation, dramatic and high-collared and with just so many unnecessary pockets. In retrospect, he thinks she might have been making a joke, but Riz had worn it every day for the first year on the job. On nights like tonight, when his scar has only just stopped being a pain in the ass and he still feels woozy from meds, it is a good security blanket of professionalism to convince everyone at the precinct that he still totally, definitely has his shit together. “What time is it?”
“7:01,” Fiona says. “Since, you know, it’s been a minute. Since you last asked. At 7.”
“That’s how math works, yes, good job keeping up.” Riz glances at one of the new forms on his desk and promptly throws it into a drawer, where it will be a problem for Future Riz. Riz used to believe that his detective arch nemesis would be some smart coy criminal with wits and maybe like a little bit of sexual tension and a secret heart of gold. Unfortunately, Riz’s arch nemeses are instead, depending on circumstances, Past and Future Riz, whom he hates and who hate him with much more passion than heart of gold man ever could. “And when is the – fucking – guy getting here?”
“Codename Privateer.” Fiona snickers down at the fingernail she’s bitten down. “Soon. No official time.”
“Why don’t we ever have official times.”
“The gods hate us.”
“That isn’t my fault.”
“What?”
“There was a demigod who – never mind.” Riz collapses back, and then blinks when he realized that he’d leaned forward in the first place. “Any second?”
“Any second,” Fiona confirms, and they both look up sharply as movement – a car – passes outside the glass front door. Fiona brightens. “Speak of the devil?” she says hopefully.
“Gods, I hope it’s not a devil,” Riz mumbles. Fiona gives him another one of those trademark What Is Wrong With Elmville Looks. Riz finds that he is a little too out of it to care.
He’s not quite sure what he expects. The very limited number of pirates he knows wouldn’t come back to Elmville if Sol grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and threw them, but this Privateer was still adventurous enough to have gone into piracy in the first place. Maybe that was why they’d sent them in Elmville’s direction – easiest place to reintegrate someone used to constant vigilance and excitement back into society. They’ve certainly hosted pirates before, Riz muses, watching the car doors open.
There is a flash of white hair. Riz’s heartbeat stops.
He is older. No eyepatch anymore, but a proper admiral coat now, sleeves pulled up to reveal arms full of scars, a few matching on his chin. His hair is still shaved at the sides, but the top is longer, pulled back in a roguish ponytail. High boots. A familiar rapier in a familiar scabbard, a hooked noise and a smile that Riz knows, knew, had been chasing, had been trying to forget.
It doesn’t make sense. At all. It isn’t possible.
But there – cuffed, getting dragged through the front door by Angela Worrel, eyes glued to the floor, ears a shade darker than the rest of him, like a kid found reading a book with bad words – there, there, older, Riz’s ears are ringing, his eyesight is a little fuzzy – there, looking up, catching eyes, sheepish, ashamed, something – Riz can’t breathe –
Fabian Seacaster, 26 years old, is standing in the Elmville police department for the first time in eight years. “Hey, the Ball,” Fabian says.
Riz throws up.