The Road Home

[abrightboy]

Raylan's loose ends had been tied in Kentucky and Malcolm's were as tantalizingly close as they'd ever been. He and Raylan made the trip to New York with the intent of discovering the fate of the girl in the box, so they could head down to Miami without... baggage.

They would have to start with the revelation Jessica and Ainsley had made to Malcolm right before Raylan was shot, sending Malcolm back to Kentucky: that Eve had infiltrated the Whitly family to learn more about the Surgeon's victims.

Malcolm let them into the New York loft - a space he considered theirs now, more than his, since they decided they might weather the hurricane season there after moving to Miami - smiling as Sunshine tweeted greetings. Once the door was shut behind Raylan, he opened the door of her cage. Ainsley would have fed her diligently, but nobody would have let her out to fly. Sunshine took off across the loft and Malcolm grinned, watching her go.

He looked at Raylan. "We can still bring her with us when we leave, right?"

Comments

[tinstar]

He took a deep breath through his nose and nodded, resisting a similar urge to wrap himself around Malcolm and silently promise to be a bastion against the bullshit of his family. But definitely not in a place where it could be used against the profiler. This wasn't friendly ground.

"Then we go to Clairmont. Together. I can't promise I won't punch him again but I can promise that I will try not to." They needed Malcolm's answers before they could go to Miami. Raylan would do whatever he had to, including controlling himself, to get to that end. To get Malcolm away from the dark hell that New York and his Family seemed to bring.

"We can make it through a conversation, I'm sure."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiled up at him.

"The things you do for me," he teased lightly, but he also meant it. Raylan didn't have to be here at all. He didn't have to agree to this. He could have been like everyone who ever told him she wasn't real or that this was all so far in the past it couldn't matter anymore. He could have told him he was going to Miami and to take it or leave it. But he came here to do this. For Malcolm.

When they reached Claremont, Malcolm took a deep breath before walking into the building, centring himself, straightening his tie.

When they reached Martin Whitly's cell, he took one more deep breath before Mr David unlocked the door and they stepped inside.

"My boy," Martin said with delight. "I didn't know you were back in town. And Raylan. I know we've had our differences, but with you joining our family, I'm glad you've come by to put them behind us."

[tinstar]

Raylan bobbed his head to the side and down, smiling bashfully before looking up at the elevator floor number. "I ain't done it yet, don't let me get ahead of myself."

He might still punch Martin, depending on how the man acted but he would honestly try.

Once in the parking lot of Claremont, Raylan watched Malcolm prep himself, hating that he had to. If only he could give the smaller man some of the raw, inarguable fury for Arlo that let Raylan cut off his heartstrings for the man that had helped create him. But he couldn't. He could only support Malcolm as he went through this.

Raylan kept his expression civilized, sliding on a shallow smile over a faint lift of his eyebrows and a shrug of his lips. In truth, hearing Martin say his name that way made his skin crawl but he wasn't going to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that, in any way. "I can assure you that is not why I'm here. Malcolm's got a few questions for you and I'm here for moral support."

Moral support and a peek into how Martin and Malcolm interacted together over one of the most important issues of their relationship.

Raylan ambled over towards Martin's 'library', utterly ignoring the line or if his foot stepped over it as he peered in to look at the spines.

[abrightboy]

Martin’s body language remained completely oriented towards Malcolm, but his eyes tracked Raylan’s movements.

“My boy always has questions. He has a curious and active mind, just like his old dad.”

“I’ve discovered the identity of the girl in the box,” Malcolm says coolly. “Sophie Sanders. What did you do with her?”

Martin laughs, looking from Malcolm to Raylan and back.

“The girl in the box. You’ve been going on about that fantasy for years.”

[tinstar]

Raylan hummed noncommittally in response, not acknowledging the statement otherwise as he let the two of them get on with it, but he couldn't help the petty, nosy, assholish part of himself that pulled a book off the shelf. Opening it up, Raylan wandered back onto his side of the line and took to leaning near the door, flipping through the pages, eyebrows lifting in surprise at the detail he found within.

Most sophisticated picture book with collage level notes he's ever seen in his life.

Oh don't mind him over here, casually flipping through Martin's shit.

[abrightboy]

“Sophie Sanders. You put her in a box in our basement. And then you brought her on the camping trip. Then what?”

“Honestly, Malcolm. Sometimes your imagination is a little too active…” he started with a laugh.

“STOP,” Malcolm said firmly. “Just stop. If you’re not going to cooperate, we’re leaving.”

Martin watched him warily, then looked over at Raylan.

“How are you enjoying my journals?”

[tinstar]

Page after page lazily flipped - Raylan aimed to be the most boring thing in the room but Martin clearly had other ideas. Raylan looked over at his question, eyebrows lifting as he glanced back down at the drawings with a shrug of his lips.

"You draw these yourself?" Raylan asked in a Not answer, looking over at Martin side long before pushing off the wall, eyes dropping down at the book as he comes back to Malcolm's side, almost annoyingly . "You've got a good hand at it if that's the case. Attention to detail. The kind of attention to detail that suggests a colorin' pencil set maybe, and a damned good memory. How long did you practice again? Been a few months since I bothered to read your file," he continued, finally raising his dark eyed, too friendly smile at Martin.

"Answer Malcolm's question."

[abrightboy]

“I’ve answered Malcolm’s question,” Martin told him, approaching the line. “The answer doesn’t change just because he doesn’t like it.”

Malcolm’s jaw flexed. The tether pulled taut.

“I practiced for over ten years, though I consult to this day.” He held his cuffed hands out for the journal. “Though my time as a surgeon was cut tragically short when my ungrateful son grassed me to the authorities.”

[tinstar]

"All you've told him is that he's 'imaginative'-" And somehow, when Raylan echoed the word, it dripped with condensation. "-That isn't an answer. You know he's telling the truth."

Raylan didn't flinch or step back, he took Martin's approach with the same level, steady eyed personage that he maintained regardless of how he felt.

"If you're still consulting, there's no old man excuse to fall back on. This is all a dance to help you avoid facin' whatever fall out you think will come of tellin' him the truth. If you're worried about the Marshal's service," Raylan continued, reaching out to pluck an errant hair out of Martin's sweater shoulder and cast it off to the side and a look with a rub of his fingers before nonchalantly returning his eyes to Martin.

"You shouldn't be. I'm not here on behalf of the Government. This time. So if you'd like to see your 'dear boy' again.. Answer his question."

Raylan's smile lifted a little as he dropped one of his ace cards.

"Or I take him to Miami, and you don't see him again for.." Raylan shrugged. "Always so hard to find the time to come back home, isn't it."

[abrightboy]

Martin snorted. “Miami,” he said derisively, like that was the stupidest thing anyone had ever said to him, but he looked at Malcolm and Malcolm saw That Look hidden underneath it.

“That’s where we’ve decided to live. It’s only over five times further away than DC was,” Malcolm noted dully. “That should about do it.”

Martin’s expression becomes feral, the belt of his tether straining as he leans towards Raylan.

“If you think for a moment your badge would protect you when my moment comes, you’ll be fatally mistaken.”

[tinstar]

Raylan's smile lifted a little around the edges and the journal was snapped shut pointedly, the gust of air no doubtly felt on the underside of Martin's chin.

"You might wanna take a number on that one. If you think the badge is the only thing I got to protect me, this is gonna be an easy fight," he taunted, eyes narrowing a little as he walked away towards the bookshelf to put his 'borrowed' book back.

"You took Malcolm and Someone else on a campin' trip. Loaded up the girl in the box, in the back.. To kill her up where no one could hear, I'm guessing," he elaborated as he turned around, nodding like he understood the reasoning. "Awfully messy if someone hears what's goin' on. Let's walk through that. So you arrive at the cabin and unload?"

[abrightboy]

“I never needed to go anywhere for that. Hasn’t Malcolm shown you the kill room in the basement? That was my special place. No one heard him scream when my erstwhile colleague dragged him down there and nobody would have heard her either,” Martin tells him.

[tinstar]

"Good for you, we'll get you the Soundproofing of the year award," Raylan replied flippantly. "So, why'd you bring her on your trip then?"

[abrightboy]

“The camping trip wasn’t for her,” Malcolm said softly. “He took me on the camping trip to kill me. Killing her there, too, was… two birds and one stone.”

“And as it turns out, you stabbing John threw all the stones into the river, as it were. Has it occurred to you that maybe I didn’t kill anyone on the camping trip?” Martin countered.

[tinstar]

Raylan kept his reaction to that buried deep inside, keeping his eye contact on Martin's face as his jaw flexed a little.

"So the plan went bad and what, she escaped?" It was a failing, but Raylan couldn't imagine Martin letting her go. It didn't fit into the narcissisms of the man.

[abrightboy]

Martin looked at Raylan and smiled, just a little. It wasn’t a friendly look.

“What does it matter? I haven’t seen her since. She went to ground and, honestly, I don’t care where.”

[tinstar]

There it was. The answer Malcolm was looking for. Raylan smiled broadly, lips kept together for a supremely dry 'friendly' look of his own.

"So last time you saw her, she was alive." It mattered why, but the semantics of that was Malcolm's to fight, not his. Malcolm wanted to know if she was alive, Raylan wasn't sure the Why of it mattered if they could find her.

[abrightboy]

“You’re lying,” Malcolm told him in a low but fierce voice. “Why wouldn’t she go to the authorities? Why wouldn’t she ever tell anyone what happened? Why wouldn’t she resurface for twenty years years to tell her family that she was alive??” he pressed with increasing desperation in his tone. “She saw you. She knew who you were.”

“She had bigger problems than little ol’ me,” Martin told Malcolm matter-of-factly. “And that’s why you need to leave this - and her - alone,” he advised them.

[tinstar]

"Bigger problems than the serial killer that kidnapped her in the first place?" Sounded a little like bullshit to Raylan, who's eyes narrowed, head leaning back a fraction as he stared at Martin.

"You oughta know Malcolm enough by now to know he's not gonna leave it alone, which means neither am I." What was enough to make someone like Martin Whitly scared?

"You're scared, ain't cha?"

[abrightboy]

Martin snorted. “If I were, it wouldn’t be for myself.”

He leveled his gaze at Malcolm.

“And if you won’t leave it alone because I’m asking you to, then do it for your mother and your sister. Believe it or not, son, I’m trying to be a good father here.”

Malcolm’s eyes stayed on him, on his face, even as Malcolm seemed to almost vibrate inside his skin.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing that needs to be disturbed.”

“That’s your opinion. If I find her, I can ask her.”

“No,” Martin said. “You can leave it alone.”

Malcolm looked at Raylan, then turned towards the door, moving to knock.

“Malcolm Whitly, you will drop this at once!” Martin all but howled at his back.

[tinstar]

As Malcolm turned away, Raylan ambled over to take his place, a physical barrier between Martin and Malcolm, despite the teether that was doing all the work.

"You give us a head start, I can put the whole of the Marshal's Service into protecting him. You know he won't stop. You know I'm not gonna encourage him to stop. So help me keep him safe, hmm? Give me somethin' to go on, somethin' to look into."

Martin's yelling had been meet with the same even, friendly tone Raylan had carried before, hands propped on his hips.

[abrightboy]

Martin laughed at him, boldly, right in his face… but there was an almost maniacal edge to it.

“The Marshal’s Service. Go on; give it a try. The Marshal’s Service can’t protect my family from him,” he hissed.

Malcolm turned away from the door.

“From whom?” he asked. “What’s this all really about?”

Martin held his gaze for a moment, his jaw tensing. He glanced at Raylan, then looked at Malcolm. “Nicholas Endicott,” he said, quietly enough that it was clear he was reluctant to even be heard saying the name. “My boy,” he said earnestly, “forget about him. Forget about the girl in the box. Go to Miami. Get married. Live. If you get any further into this, that dream is over.”

[tinstar]

Raylan blinked casually, head canting to the other side like Martin had said something faintly interesting as he was laughed at. He was going to take a lot of pleasure in proving Martin wrong; Raylan had been chasing all sorts of men for twenty years. He knew more about tracking a man than most agents of the FBI.

The immovable force vs unstoppable object.

The petty smarminess of it all faded away into a narrowed attentive look as it looked like Martin was and did spill a fraction of his beans. Better two beans than none. Raylan looked over at Malcolm and nodded faintly. He could work with that. Plenty of ways that he could run afoul of the Marshal's and Raylan was willing to ply and deal where he needed to, to bend some rules and make someone's life uncomfortable. If he decided that was the right course of action.

Just because he could, didn't mean he would.

"What's he got over you?" Raylan ventured with a faint lift of his chin. "Why's he scare you so bad?"

[abrightboy]

“The same reason he scares anyone with half a brain,” Martin scoffed. “He’s spent his life and his fortune snaking his tentacles into every level of the halls of power. But your girl Sophie, she worked for him. When she recovered from her little ketamine nap, she told me about some files she had on him. Insurance for my lifestyle that she offered in exchange for her life.”

“So you let her go,” Malcolm said, calculating, more willing to believe it in this light. “So where are the files? If they can end him, we’ll use them and put him away.”

Martin rolled his eyes expansively. “Do you really think you’ll get that far? He promised to ruin my family if I so much as ever breathed his name…”

“So give me the files,” Malcolm insisted, his voice rising, “and he won’t be a threat to us or anyone anym…”

“THERE ARE NO FILES!” Martin finally shouted at him. “Are you happy? It was all a lie! We’ve got nothing except a thin belief that there’s some files out there, hidden.”

[tinstar]

"Hey," Raylan said softly, whistling lowly to get Martin's attention back on him. "Alright. He's big and he's bad and I respect what you're sayin'-" It took a lot more than some bullshit power to spook Martin to this kind of degree, to balance his family's livelihood so neatly on a pin's head.

"What did you get for promisin' to not breathe his name? How's he get pulled into this beyond her tellin' you about him? You let her go, to go get the files, right? Files that don't exist. So she played you. How does Endicott get in front of you to hand out this warnin'?"