13Edit: So apparently the copy-paste function on here isn't all that great. Who knew? I should've, since I've been on this hell site for more than 15 years. Yet here we are. Anyway- it's been fixed now!
Also, just so we are all on the same page: this fic will follow most of the events of canon, but the timeline is going to change up. I didn't like how fast-paced everything seemed (how is Matt back out and fighting after episode two, like, the next day?) and there's some necessary re-arranging that had to happen in order to accommodate my OC and some plot points she brings up.
Olivia regretted her life choices exactly three minutes before running into the creepy masked man. She knew it was exactly three minutes, because she'd called her friend as soon as she'd mistakenly turned onto the one-way street (yeah, it's me. So listen, I'm a complete idiot and got myself lost. I'm stuck on a one-way right now, so it's going to be a couple- holy shit, is that a kid? I'll call you back, no, no, don't worry, I'll be fine) and had, for unknowable reasons, looked at the call time before hanging up. Exactly three minutes.
She'd spent her blissful black-clad-murderer free minutes regretting that she'd taken the back way. At two thirty in the morning. It served her right, really, for not knowing her own city well enough. So instead of rushing off to her friend's place like she'd intended, she was stuck on this stupid frigging one-way, enjoying the view of abandoned warehouses, and trying very very hard not to worry about all the illegal activities happening in said warehouses.
And just as she was starting to relax (she could finally see the end of the road, hallelujah!) her headlights lit him up. Just barely, really, but she could see him all the same. In all his serial killer glory. Holding onto a preschooler. The sight of it stopped her heart, and the ice that ran down her spine had her immediately slamming on her breaks and ending the call with her friend.
It seemed as if they were all surprised, because none of them moved. She gripped her steering wheel, white-knuckled, and stared out her windshield at the man bathed in her headlights. He stood very very still, as if he thought she wouldn't see him if he just didn't move.
He was heaving great lungfuls of air that looked incredibly painful. It was still early enough in the year to get cold, so each breath came pouring out of him like steam, curling luminously around his head. His left hand was clenched, and her throat closed up at the sight of blood dripping down it. The mask covered the entire top half of his face, and it was almost more disconcerting than the blood covering the lower half. The image he painted made her heart rate go from frozen-in-shock to launch-myself-into-space.
Pycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est.
She really should get out of here. This was no doubt a one-way ticket to murder town.
But she couldn't, because plastered to the entire right side of the man was a preschooler. She didn't notice any obvious injuries, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be any in the future, if she drove away now. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she did that. So, incredibly reluctantly, she opened her car door.
"Hey there, you ok kiddo?" Her voice wavered just slightly, but her hands didn't shake as she lifted them up into the air - I'm not armed, I'm not a threat, we're all good here.
She left her car door open and slid forward a step, slowly, cautiously. Her heartbeat was just one giant throb throughout her body, but her hands were steady and her legs still carried her. We're all good here, we're all good here, we're all good here.
The little boy buried his face in the man's throat, and his small hands grabbed at the black shirt beneath them.
"What's your name?" She asked, sliding forward one step, two steps, before the man went unnaturally still and she froze.
"Mica," the boy mumbled, voice hoarse like he'd been crying. She bit the inside of her cheek, her fingers curling slightly in an effort to control her anger.
"Mica? That's a great name, I do a story time with a boy named Mica," she stopped her herself, cursed- fuck- under her breath. Now this psycho would be able to figure out where she worked. After all, how many places in Hell's Kitchen offered regular story times? Exactly one- the library she worked at.
"So, Mica, are you headed home? Because I can give you a ride there, a car is a lot faster than walking." She held her breath, sure this was where the man would take off with the kid. She widened her stance in preparation to chase after him. Not that she'd be able to take him in a fight, if she ever caught up to him. But, well, she couldn't leave this kid, she just couldn't.
"Can we?" Mica asked, still buried in the man's throat.
The man continued to hold himself eerily still, and stared at her for what felt like ages. Finally, he lifted his left hand (and she absolutely did not flinch) and placed it carefully against Mica's head. He made no further move, and didn't say anything, just stared at her.
"Why are you all the way out here?" She asked next, but even as she said it she noticed the warehouse behind them. It wasn't close, but if she squinted she could just make out a broken-in door and a couple large lumps laying on the ground. Something about it gnawed at the back of her brain.
"I don't know," Mica said, tears clear in his voice, and the man's hand buried into Mica's hair in what she thought might've been a comforting gesture.
They were all very, very quiet for a while. Too long, apparently, because the man in black took a step back as if to leave, and she panicked and jumped a full foot forward. And then, finally, her mind pulled at the information she was unknowingly looking for, and just as the man turned to dash away, she shouted after him.
"Wait! It's you, isn't it? The one that saved all those girls?" She'd been digitizing that article for her library the other day. A group of women had been admitted to the hospital, hysterical and crying about how a man in a mask had saved them from traffickers. It'd sounded like the drugged hallucination of some incredibly lucky girls, but here was the proof.
He stopped, half turned away from her, and tilted his head slightly. At least he hadn't taken off. She really didn't think she'd be able to catch up to him if he ran.
"Listen. I- I have a car," she said, voice flat and a little pathetic sounding. "And I mean, wherever you're going, it's gonna take a while walking, isn't it? And it's already almost three, it's gonna get light out soon, you really don't want to go walking around looking like that, not during the day. So- so you should-" she paused, whispered psycho killer under her breath, took a deep breath, then finished, "you should get in my car and tell me where to go."
They stared at each other for another long few seconds.
"Please?" Mica asked, head finally lifting from the man's neck. The man looked down briefly, then seemed to make up his mind and started to limp towards her car.
Oh god. Oh god. Ok. God. Fuck.
She turned to watch his progress, and stood staring dumbly as he buckled Mica into the back then sat himself in her passenger seat. This was surreal. There was a masked man and a possibly kidnapped child in her car. Both of whom were staring at her impatiently.
"Right. Fuck. Ok." Run run run run run run run away.
Her legs turned into jello on her walk back to her car, but it was only a few feet so she managed. It was really her shaking hands that would be the problem, but at such an early hour she could afford to be a little wobbly in her driving.
"So. Right. Now what?" she asked, carefully not looking at the man next to her as she put her car back into drive.
"Ninth and Thirty-Seventh." And that was that for several minutes of tense silence. Until both of them noticed Mica at the same time, quietly crying in the back seat.
He'd covered his mouth with his hands, like he was afraid of making noise, but his little shoulders shook with the effort of it.
She glanced over to the man next to her, and sighed when she saw just how lost he looked. Pulling over to the side, she unbuckled herself and turned to face Mica.
"Hey. Hey, it's ok. I know you're scared, and it's ok to be scared, but you're safe now. We're going to get you home, I promise."
"I miss- miss- miss-" Mica's sobbing had ramped itself up, and he could barely breathe around his words. He'd started to hyperventilate and she was getting worried that he'd work himself up to the point of passing out.
"Alright, it's alright, hold on," she told him softly while she got out of the car. She continued to say reassuring words to him, even as she rounded the car (which he surely couldn't hear) "-be ok. Come here," she finished saying as she opened his door, crouching down and opening her arms to him. It took only a second before he'd unbuckled himself and launched into her arms.
Burying her face into the top of his head, she sat heavily against the asphalt and pulled him into herself as tightly as she could.
"Alright Mica, you're doing great, but we need to breathe, ok? Can you feel me breathing?" She wasn't sure if he'd be able to hear her over his sobs, but he nodded jerkily and she felt relieved.
"Hush, hush, it's ok. You're going to breathe with me now. Annnnnd iiiiiiin," she held her breath for several seconds, waiting for Mica to follow along, "annnnnd oooouut."
It took several minutes of hushed breathing before Mica's hiccuping breaths calmed, and he sat quietly in her arms. He'd seemed to relax himself, but when she stood up with him he clutched to her desperately.
At a loss for what to do- she couldn't drive and hold him at the same time- she made a quick decision and opened the passenger door. The masked man stared up at her, but made no protest when she gently passed Mica off to him, disentangling his little fingers from her shirt in the process.
She sat down heavily in her seat, but didn't start her car back up right away, choosing instead to stare at the man sitting next to her. He really didn't look to be doing so good, but she didn't want to ask how he was in front of Mica.
It wasn't until he turned to look at her that she finally started her car back up. The tense silence from before had dissipated, and there was a distinctly less threatening aura coming from her passenger. After the panic she'd suffered through the last twenty minutes, it almost felt relaxing.
As she turned down another side street, she was surprised to find herself humming. Cutting herself off, she glanced embarrassedly at the duo next to her, only to find the man leaning his head tiredly on the window with Mica safely asleep against his chest.
"So," she started, now that Mica wouldn't over hear them, "on a scale of one to ten, how badly are you doing?" She was careful not to look at him, instead focusing entirely on the red light in front of her. But when the light turned green and he still hadn't said anything, she flicked her eyes in his direction.
"Because you really don't look like you should be alive right now," she continued, "and I don't really know how this whole secret identity thing works, but I imagine you don't want me dropping you off anywhere near your place. And, I mean, like I said, you look like death. I really don't think you should be limping off anywhere unsupervised. And. Um. Well..." He was staring at her now, and even though she could only see his mouth, he looked distinctly unimpressed with her.
"And?" He managed to sound both incredibly exhausted and threatening at the same time. Truly, it was impressive, and she'd usually take him seriously, except that she was pretty sure his head was leaning against the window because he was too tired to move it.
"I'm going to regret this, I know I am. But I've already made a whole ton of mistakes tonight, and you probably already know where I work, so what's one more horrible decision really going to do, right?" She always rambled when she was tired, it was a horrible habit and she really wished she could just make herself stop but she couldn't.
"Is there- is there a point in there?"
"Yeah, hold on, I'm getting there, I just have to work myself up to it," she took in a deep breath, tightened her grip on the wheel, and spat out, "I'll drop you off at my place. I'm not going to be there tonight, I have to meet my friend at the ER. So you can- can clean yourself up, or call a friend to pick you up, or whatever it is you do, and we'll part ways and never meet again."
He rocked his head back and forth against the window, staring at her, and she felt anxiety bubble up and tighten her throat. She was used to making a fool of herself, but it somehow felt different when she did it in front of a vigilante. The silence stretched on for almost a full minute before he finally responded.
"I'm at about a seven," he sounded more amused than threatening, and his head continued to loll tiredly against the window. "You're going to want to turn right here, and pull over to the second building on your right."
"Where are we?" She asked as she pulled up against the curb.
"His dad's place," the man replied, slowly unbuckling himself and shifting Mica around. It looked incredibly painful, but she got the feeling that he wouldn't appreciate help. "I'll be back in a minute."
"While you're doing- uh- that- I'm going to call my friend. I was supposed to grab stuff from her place for her, and I sort of hung up on her, she's probably panicking. Just- just wanted you to know what I'm doing, so you don't come back to me on the phone. Just in case you were, you know, uh, worried?" She winced, her face flushing in complete embarrassment.
"Right," he replied tightly, and then opened the car door and swung himself out, Mica perched on his bent arm.
While he was carefully walking up the sidewalk, she looked at her phone- four missed calls and three increasingly more panicked text messages.
"Olivia! Where are you? Are you ok? What kid?" Leanne picked up the phone on the first ring, voice frantic. While Leanne peppered her with questions, Olivia watched the masked man knock on a door down the street.
"Hey, yeah, I'm ok. I'm going to be headed back to your place soon. Remember how I said I was lost? Well I found a kid wandering around. I just dropped him off at the police station." The lights in the house flickered on, and the door was thrown open so fast that she could hear the bang of it hitting the railing.
"Oh my god! Is he ok? Do you know if his parents were found?"
She watched as an older man desperately grabbed onto Mica, loud sobs echoing down the street, and his lips pressed hard against Mica's forehead. She could tell he was murmuring things- broken up by sobs, and muffled by Mica's hair- but she was too far away to make it out.
"Olivia?"
Her breath was caught painfully in her throat, and she had to try several times before she was able to respond.
"Yeah, yeah his dad was at the station. It was actually really painful to watch, he was so worried, you know? I hope I never feel that kind of fear. Anyway, I still have to swing by your place, and then I'll head back. Shouldn't be more than a half hour, forty-five minutes tops."
"Well, thank God he was returned safely. Take care, don't get lost again. Bret is doing better, they're thinking they'll be able to get him in for surgery first thing in the morning."
"Oh! That's great! You'll both be able to go home some time tomorrow, then!" The masked man was making his way back towards the car, and it was very obvious that he was starting to head down hill, fast. "Listen, I'm leaving the station now, so I've got to go. I'll see you soon, love you!"
She leaned over to open the car door for him, and sucked in a breath when she noticed just how much blood there was on the seat. This much blood was a seven?
"You didn't tell her about me," he said as he settled back into his seat.
"She worries about me more than enough. If I told her I'd picked up a dude in a mask that I met next to a warehouse, she'd probably actually kill me," her hands had begun to shake again with the reminder that she really didn't know this man at all. It was not a good idea to be in a car with him, and it especially wasn't a good idea to drop him off at her apartment. Drawing in a sharp breath, she stilled her hands against the steering wheel, and looked over at him.
He'd leaned his head back against the window, and she could see that his face had gone completely ashen and clammy. He had his hand pressed into his side, and his breathing had gotten thin. In short, he looked like he was half a step from dead.
"I know I said I'd take you to my apartment, but-" she cut herself off with a jaw-cracking yawn, and by the time she'd finished, he had already unbuckled himself and was trying to open his door.
"It's fine, I understand," he was saying. Or, well, he was trying to say, but it slurred together and was difficult to decipher.
"Sit back down you idiot. I'm not kicking you out, I'm asking if you want to go to the hospital. We can pick you up some normal-people clothes, and I can say I found you on the side of the road."
"No. Hospitals ar-" he sucked in a hissing breath and went one entire shade paler, "hospitals aren't a safe place for me to be, not when I've got a wound that would be obvious to trace back to tonight."
"You are going to die, you get that, right? If I take you back to my apartment, you will pass out and die."
"I've already had it looked at, it's been taken care of. It's just blood loss at this point. If you take me to your place, I'll restitch it and be out before you get back."
"Oh, good, it's just blood loss and some torn stitches. Nothing that any sane person would need to go to a hospital for. Of course. Fuck. Ok, fine, but I swear if I come back and you're dead-" she paused in her rant as she merged lanes, and tried to think of something to say that wasn't I'll kill you "-I'll make sure everyone thinks you died doing something embarrassing. Like autoerotic asphyxiation, or something."
He huffed a wet-sounding laugh at that, which didn't make her feel especially confident that he would stay alive.
"So how do you expect to get me into your apartment without anyone noticing?"
"Oh, right," she strummed her fingers against the wheel, and looked at him appraisingly. "Well, I mean, there's the fire escape, isn't there? I'm on the top floor, so if you think you can make it that far... Though, the window doesn't open all the way, so maybe it's better if you come in through my roof access door."
"Roof is fine," he slurred.
She squinted over at him, listening closely to how laboured his breathing was. Pursing her lips together and heaving a heavy sigh through her nose, she turned back to the street. She was going to put herself out on another limb, but she needed to make sure he was actually worth it, first.
"What happened tonight?"
They'd both been silent for so long that the sound of her voice made him jerk in surprise, and he pursed his lips together tightly at the movement.
"The... Russians. They kidnapped that boy. I brought him home."
She took her time thinking about that. It's what she had assumed, when she realized who the man was, but there were some things that weren't adding up. There were two guards near the door- that she could make out, at least- and only one boy in there. It didn't make sense to have that many people without the trafficking element being added in. But there'd be more kids then, wouldn't there?
"Why'd they take him?"
He was silent for a long time, and she thought maybe he had passed out.
"I've been making things difficult for them," he finally said, shifting upright and carefully not looking at her.
"So, what? They took him to try to lure you out?" His silence was incredibly telling, and she cursed under her breath. Rolling to a stop at the red light near her apartment, she took the whole light to think it over, tapping a constant beat against her steering wheel.
"How many of them were there?"
"Ten?" He didn't sound very confident in that answer.
"Is that rounding down?" He didn't respond, just shifted in his seat again. For someone who had a secret identity he was terrible at being vague and mysterious.
She eased into her parking spot- she paid a monthly fee at the car park because there was no way she was ever going to parallel park- and then turned to him, silent once more.
This was a really dumb choice, especially now that she knew innocent people were getting hurt in order to get to him. If any of those men at the warehouse saw her, there was a chance- slim sure, but still there- that they could follow her home. She also wasn't entirely sure she wanted him to know where she lived. He looked incredibly dangerous, and she knew she'd lose sleep imagining him breaking into her apartment. But he'd taken on ten people to save one kid, and he'd taken the kid home despite his injuries.
"Wait here for a second," she told him, heaving herself out of her car and trying not to think too much about all the horrible ways her choice could go. She popped open her trunk, and grabbed her in-case-of-emergencies winter blanket.
"So here's what we're going to do," she told him as she opened his door and handed him the blanket. "You're going to drape that over yourself and we're going to hope no one is wandering the halls. If they notice you, you are my best friend's husband, who was banned from the house for being incredibly sick. You will not say anything, at all, until my apartment door is closed and locked. Are we on the same page?"
By the time she'd finished talking, he'd made himself a nice hooded cape, and was leaning against the closed door behind him. He nodded tiredly, and then stumbled after her when she turned to cross the street.
He tripped on the curb, and she realized he probably wasn't able to see through the blanket covering half his face. The tense set of his shoulders and the way he slowly measured each step told her that he was having a problem with balance, too, so she heaved yet another sigh and stepped up to his side.
"Here," she said, placing his left arm around her shoulders, and pressed her hand on top of the one covering his injury, helping him apply pressure. "There's an elevator, so you won't need to walk up any steps." Which was good, because she lived on the eighth floor, and he didn't look like he could clear more than two. She sure as hell wouldn't have had the strength to drag him up the remaining six.
He winced at the added pressure to his wound, but didn't protest, and followed her through the lobby where they waited in a tense silence for the elevator.
She held her breath when the doors slid open, and felt a rush of relief when there was no one there.
Shoving him forward as best she could- he was heavier than he looked- she whispered to him "so it's probably not a good time to warn you, but sometimes the elevator gets stuck." She slapped the button for her floor without looking, and maneuvered them so they could lean in the corner.
"What?" There was a very slight note of hysteria in his tone, and she pressed her lips together not to laugh. The man beats the shit out of Russian mobsters, but the thought of a broke-down elevator has him panicking?
"It's fine, my neighbor repairs them for a living, if we get stuck I can give him a call."
"How long would that take?" His voice was thready, and he swallowed hard. She was suddenly reminded of a book she liked to read at story time, and the laughter bubbled out of her before she could help it.
"What?" His voice was demanding and hard as steel, but she couldn't stop laughing long enough to respond. It wasn't even that funny, she was just stupidly tired.
"The- the vigilante and the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad night," she finally said, voice a little hoarse from laughing. At his unimpressed look, she continued, "I know, I know, it's not very funny. It's just- you're afraid of being stuck in an elevator after all the things you did tonight."
He opened his lips to respond, but then pursed them back together when the elevator doors swung open. She shuffled him around a bit, wincing at the obvious pain it was causing him, and quickly moved them out of the elevator and down the hall.
The surrealness of the situation hit her once more while she struggled to unlock her door- her key was stuck in the lock again. She had a stranger practically draped over her. She was willingly letting a man who could beat up ten people into her home. He was bleeding all over her night shirt. And she still had to grab supplies for her friend who was stuck at the ER, so her night wasn't even half finished.
Finally getting her door open, she shouldered her way through with him still plastered to her side, and kicked the door shut behind them.
"Hey sweets, I'm home. I've got company though, so you might want to-" her cat had rushed into the hall to greet her, noticed the strange man, and immediately darted into the bedroom "-hide. Here, my couch is this way. Sorry about the mess, I wasn't exactly expecting to host a dying person."
"...'m not dying, I told you already."
She ignored him entirely, and tried to lay him out on the couch as gently as she could. Despite her best efforts he still exhaled on a large hiss as soon as she went to lean him back.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she mumbled softly as she continued to help him lay down. "I'll be right back, I'm going to go get you a wet towel and some rubbing alcohol," she told him once he was finally laying down.