Chapter Text
⟡ 8:05:54:02 ⟡
There are already two other Gabriel's at Raton's biggest civic guard outpost. He's not even the only rookie Gabriel at the RTA. The port city sits in a wide basin within a basin, a funnel for carefully monitored forest fires and storms, the quietly steady pulse of the gateway between neighboring Elsus and the rest of the world across the water. Raton trades in ore and wood, people constantly buzz about and bump into each other from all over, rushing for the best stall spots in markets and clamoring to advertise their wares loudest. Raton trades in everything, everything but names, apparently.
Doesn't matter.
He's far from Solace, far from the woman carrying the baby that isn't his and his parents who demand marriage anyway. Far from the farm, the constant, deafening quiet. Here, everything feels alive, every surface thrums with energy he couldn't put to words if his life depended on it. The sun had set hours ago, quicker this time of year. Solace is only about an hour behind Raton, but after a day and a half of travel, time itself feels like something subjective.
The trains run on time, the RSC keep things clean around the clock, the place is buzzing with activity, people move through crowded and bustling streets like ants, each of them with their own mission and destination in mind, most carrying something. Baskets, books, children, tools—people don't mull about here, there's always something to do, something to work on.
He's almost afraid to slow down, even to look at the buildings or ask questions. It seems that everyone here is already part of some well-oiled machine, and his accent is too heavy for quick conversation between carts.
He might've been taken a bit more seriously if he were in uniform. The first man he tries to stop for directions tells him curtly that he has no money to spare, waving him off as he passes.
Probationaries might get more shit here, though, he reasons. He checks his map again. Elsusan uses most of the same characters as his own native tongue, with a few squiggles added here and there, tacked onto the underside of some, hovering above others. He relies on the pictures more than the names.
The more he tries to focus on the next left or right turn, the more his eyes burn.
He's put so much thought and effort and will into leaving, and now that he has, there's nothing to keep his mind busy and away from the last thing Charlotte had said to him.
You deserve better.
Like she knew? No. She'd said it with such a soft smile, not the compassion and soft-spoken empathy the moment deserved, but like a quip, like something clever.
You deserve a son, don't you?
Like a daughter would be punishing? He'd never cared, really. As long as the baby was healthy, he'd be grateful. Part of him hopes it's not a girl, for the poor kid's sake, having a mom like that. There was more venom in that three letter word than he thought a person could cram into one syllable.
He's not sure why he cares so much, anyway. Not his baby. He'd wanted to give Charlotte a family, of course, wanted kids of his own to return to, to bring up right, not like he was. He'd be a good father. He can't, though, to put it plainly, and Charlotte had accepted it, she'd gone her own way when he said he'd just never considered it. Came back when the sickness started.
He couldn't just announce to half of the town that Charlotte was a liar, though, not without exposing why.
So he runs. Better to be remembered as a coward and a bastard than the man he really is.
He finds a landmark between two illegible signs and pulls a short pencil from his pack, scribbling it in on the map. He couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the ground in this place, but he knows he'll figure it out. With enough patrols, he'll be able to navigate the place like his childhood home. This is home, now. Just needs time to feel like it.
The day might as well be over, now. The large clocktower displays 10:45 by the time he notices it. He hasn't even unpacked yet. His time here has only just started, he's got time to figure this out. The details of a go-to breakfast, the best places to read when the sun is out, the places to avoid if he wants a good bargain on bread. This place will be home someday, he's sure of it.
⟡ 8:00:00:00⟡
Dockworkers and train porters are sick. Everywhere. It makes sense, given how quickly the weather turned, autumn shorter than last year, winter coming quicker, he overhears. His own nose has been running since he got here, it's little more than a dry throat and some adjusting to the mountain air. Something warm to drink and another blanket will do him some good. He doubles his socks and keeps his hands in his pockets.
He's got hours before he's expected at the outpost, a blessing and a curse.
He couldn't sleep. Something keeps him away from the room he's rented, the bed he's yet to know the shape of, the rest he desperately craves but rejects against his better judgement.
He learns his way around, mostly by following other people, watching where a majority tend to go. By the time his toes go numb and his fingers start to ache, he's figured out the armory, a repair shop, and a small smithy.
He's never seen children forge before. It's stranger than anything else he's seen since arriving, but it's clear this isn't treated like something kids do for fun. There's practice with a hammer, first. Learning to aim downward momentum with one hand and keep rhythm with the other. He sips mulled wine and watches an old man guide small hands to brace properly and teach the angle to strike, warning sternly against leaning right over the iron.
"Sparks fly up, yes? What else is up if you're bent over the thing like this?" He mimics the child's earlier posture, "Your face. Would you like to keep your face? Your eyes are useful, aren't they?"
The child nods immediately and corrects himself. More swinging practice. It's odd to see a child up so late at night— he looks around for the clocktower to orient himself— so early in the morning, rather. It's four in the morning, now.
When he was a boy, his father had taught him to string a bow. Firm, like the older man here, but... colder. He'd given him wood and cord, told him to figure it out, not to come home until he'd gotten the tension just right. His jaw aches just thinking about it, remembering how hard the bow had snapped up against his force when it'd slipped through his hands, the pain of impact so intense he thought he'd lost his eye on that side.
He runs his tongue over his teeth, takes another sip, and looks away.
Back to the map.
He'd marked a few things on his way to the outpost, making sure he knew how to get there on time in the morning. He sits at the intersection of another bustling street, this small bakery behind him, the smithy on the other side of the narrower road before him. He knows that to get to the outpost, he needs only to follow the crowd and watch for the building on his left. The armory is at the outpost's right, the bank just beyond its front gates, and the inn where he'll be staying beside it. There's a theater, a large cafe, something else around the corner. He can smell the coffee from here, faint but sharp.
He stands once he's too cold to be comfortable, when the cold stops numbing and starts burning. He's fishing money from his pockets for the drink when another man bumps into him, distracted with gods only know what.
"Watch where you're walking!" the man snaps, "Fucking idiot, stay home if you can't stand up without getting in the goddamn way."
Gabriel blinks, his mouth popping open, then closing abruptly. Before he can get a word in, the man is already leaving, shoving at a cart in his path, kicking the wheel of another before rounding a corner.
"le con," he mutters under his breath, leaving his money on the table before pulling the collar of his jacket up over his ears, grateful he's heading in the opposite direction.
⟡
His lodging is warm, that's what Gabriel cares about more than anything else. He's found that he can endure a great deal if the promise of a warm bed at the end of it is there. It's strange, being in this unfamiliar place, so entirely other in his own skin, and still... none of this is new. The bed, the air, the drink still warm in his gut, even the asshole who'd run into him. It's just slightly off, just a few degrees off axis from what he's used to. Just enough to make his skin crawl a bit.
He checks his pockets again. Everything is in place, everything is with him. His acceptance letter undiscovered, his money where it ought to be. He'd made the two-day trip here just in time, and no one back home should know where he is.
He wanted this. He'd gone quite far out of his way to get it, so... He turns his head, looking over the empty space beside him. It's not too late for him to start over. With an honest woman, this time. He could make a good living here, protecting people the way he'd always wanted to. Raton has a high crime rate, being the point of so much trade. People come in and out all the time, steal things, steal people, and he could help dismantle that, from the inside. It's the kind of work he'd always wanted to do.
The city still works. Still breathes. The trains run on time, the wine is good and easy to come by. There's plenty to do, plenty of ways to help out and be useful. He has time.
Outside, someone is singing. He can hear clapping, the rhythmic kind, like when someone dances, keeping time for the steps. He closes his eyes and remembers the engagement ring in his pocket. He tries not to let himself imagine his own almost-wedding, the way Charlotte would've looked in her mother's dress.
⟡
The Other Gabriel hates him. It's immediate, and honestly, he can't be blamed. Late for his first day, the last to come in, shivering and underdressed, his tunic half-tucked, hair sticking up in places. He'd overslept. Iseult stands with her arms crossed under her chest, brows pinched together.
"Wondered when you'd come to join us."
Gabriel swallows thickly. The Other Gabriel straightens immediately and steps into the room, taking in his surroundings. He apologizes in broken Elsusan, his accent foreign, worse than Gabriel's.
"Raton eats rookies," she warns, looking him over, "if you're not going to take shit seriously here, get out and go home."
The Other Gabriel blinks. Stunned at the woman's response, and more than a little amused, by the look of things.
"Yes, ma'am," he nods slightly, "is guard Hoxha present?"
Iseult blinks slowly. "She is," she answers flatly.
"...she?"
"Sit down," Gabriel mouths, the secondhand embarrassment making his own stomach start to turn.
"From now on, you're Other Gabriel," Iseult decides.
The man's mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again. "I–I was here first, though," he argues.
"Not today you weren't," Iseult cocks a brow at him, "we'll be down to one rookie if you don't fix yourself and come back a presentable officer."
Gabriel decides quickly not to call him The Other Gabriel to his face, with the way the man looks sharply up and down his uniform. He races upstairs toward the guard's quarters, likely to change, and Gabriel releases a soft breath. He's exhausted, he'd slept like shit, and while he's glad Iseult seems to have taken him coming in so early as a sign of drive or ambition, he hopes she doesn't expect him to come half an hour early every day.
Iseult turns her gaze toward him. He stiffens. "At ease. I won't bite you," she frowns.
"I... I would hope not, ma'am," Gabriel nods slightly.
She shrugs slightly, "I don't know what stories you've heard, maybe the expression is... inappropriate now."
Gabriel chuckles. More of a scoff, a small, amused exhale that draws Iseult's gaze like a magnet. He clears his throat softly. She asks him where he came from, and he answers. Solace. Far inland, to the southwest. A farm he'd been born on with a vineyard his family was known for. Second largest in that region.
"And you came here?" she questions, narrowing her eyes at him. "I bet it's odd for you, starting work so early in the day."
"We work in the morning, same as anyone else," he bristles slightly, despite himself, "for us regular people, work doesn't start when parties stop."
"Still," Iseult crosses her arms under her chest, "I'm sure you could've gone somewhere safer. Quieter. Why would you choose to come here for your first appointment?"
"I want to help," he answers honestly. "As best I can, at least."
She studies his face for a long moment. Raton is a place no one wants to be, as of recent. The city is crowded, and the transient lifestyle that seems default leads to more than a few pickpockets and thieves. Recently, things have only gotten worse.
"Do you really think you can do that?" she presses.
"I'm willing to find out," he answers.
⟡ 7:09:35:42 ⟡
There's a lot going on in the precinct. No one around him seems to fall out of step, though, a well-oiled machine barreling toward somewhere, even at midnight. The tour is meant to be brief, the way Iseult hauls ass from place to place makes that much obvious, but it still takes a long while to get from place to place, and then down to the basement level to show them where the dogs are kept. No one goes on night patrols without their dog, no one goes anywhere at night alone. He's assigned a small hound, told to remember the face, because the dogs aren't given names.
"How do you recall them, then?" he asks.
"You plan on being here long enough to give him a name, don't you?" Iseult cocks a brow at him, "you'll train with him, patrol with him, eat, sleep, and shit with him if you have to. This is your partner, now."
Iseult doesn't mince words, that much is obvious. He hadn't expected to leave his first day of work with a pet, but... a police dog makes sense.
For now, the dogs stay in the kennels, and Iseult walks them back upstairs, leading them to the second floor. Eight women have been taken, similar demographic, families come every day looking for updates. There's one outlier, a man who'd never returned from a long shift. Iseult tells him that his wife comes every afternoon with their daughter to wait outside, just in case he returns.
"A man who abandoned his wife and child, that's horrible," Other Gabriel frowns, hurrying to fall in line beside Iseult without colliding with anyone else, "he could've just left with another woman, though, right?"
"He was one of us," Iseult tells him firmly, "a good man, and a great father. He wouldn't've done that."
I really should figure out what his surname is, Gabriel thinks, I can't call him 'Other Gabriel'.
"One of us, like, an officer?" Other Gabriel asks. Gabe? No, that sounds childish... He is childish, though. Maybe it'd fit.
"A sanitation worker," Iseult clarifies. A beat. "I'm telling you about these disappearances because it's important that you keep an eye on people who fit previous victim profiles."
"Women, yeah," Other Gabriel nods, "of course. Always watch women."
Iseult makes a face. Gabriel isn't sure if she's annoyed or offended.
"They're blonde, conventionally attractive, and young," Iseult starts, leading them toward the second staircase, "the youngest is eighteen, the oldest was twenty-three."
"You said victims," Gabriel says, "are there bodies?"
"No."
"How do we know they're... um..." Gabriel clears his throat, "I'm not sure what the right word to use is," he confesses.
"We don't know they're dead," Iseult responds, "but after a certain point, one starts to hope they are."
Gabriel feels his skin prickle at the insinuation. He isn't so lost on the plights of womanhood that he can't imagine what she's suggesting these women might've been taken for.
Iseult pushes open a large door, bringing them into a room with desks cramped into every available corner, their surfaces littered with stacks of papers and books, legers and notes, sketches pinned under weights and coffee stained mugs.
The room is empty. The only space thus far where they can speak without dodging other officers bustling around.
"Knowing what I've told you, where do you suggest we look first?" Iseult asks, crossing her arms under her chest.
"Docks," Gabriel answers. Iseult nods slightly, then looks to Other Gabriel. Her brows quirk up slightly, expectant.
The man's mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again. "Knowing what exactly? The sanitation worker doesn't fit in with the other victims. Why would their disappearances be connected?"
Iseult looks to Gabriel.
He blinks. It doesn't seem out of the question. Sanitation workers back home worked late at night and into the early mornings, going home before dawn, in most cases. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the man might've seen something while he was working, and being alone on the job, the kidnapper had taken him, too. But where was the man working? Where the women last seen? Raton is a big place, with a lot of ways in and out.
He looks around the office as he considers his response. There are maps pinned over older maps, case files stacked on windowsills, notices tacked over notices. They're trying. Hard. If the answer was as simple as he wants it to be, they would've figured this out ages ago.
"I can't say," he admits, "I don't know enough about it yet."
Silence hangs longer between them than it had all afternoon. Eventually she nods, a slight tip of her head as her gaze shifts away from him.
"Good answer."
Despite her praise, she sounds disappointed.
"This is the S.T.E.A. office," she continues, "they've set up shop here to help. They've been here for a month, and haven't stopped working since. Your job is to stay out of their way, and run errands. Whatever helps them keep themselves upright and alert enough to keep working like they are."
Other Gabriel barely resists the urge to groan. It's an expression Gabriel himself is familiar with, something not-quite mock offense. Honestly, it's mutual. As much as he wants to help, he's jaded enough to know that help doesn't always come from the front where everyone can see him. He doesn't know the city yet, he'd rather learn from the safety of the underside of this department's wing than on the frontlines where he couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the ground.
"Yes ma'am," he nods, "Where do we start?"