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“You cannot be this stupid, motherfucker.”
“Hey, good to hear from you too, how's it going, nice weather we're having?”
He can hear Job roll his eyes over the phone. “The weather's shit, it's going like shit, and you're being the world's dumbest asshole,” Job says. “It's not even in the direction you were heading so don't give me that 'it's on the way' bullshit.”
Lucas would ask how Job knows this, but Job probably has ten different satellites and cameras tracking him, so he just shrugs. He's already pulled off to the side of the road. It's a cold, brisk morning, the sun just coming up, and he's been on the road for a few hours already. “Okay, fuck, it's not on the way,” he says. “But I--”
“You need to what—check on your ex-wife, who's not even fucking up there anymore? Even she had the good fucking sense to finally leave Banshee in the dust and not look back once she got the fuck out of there.”
Carrie—Ana is off in Hawaii right now, having a nice family vacation with the kids, since Deva's on leave right now. She'd talked about having him come up, but it wasn't serious and he didn't blame her for it. Sometimes you just need to get away from who the fuck you were and pretend you're someone else and they're both experts at doing this kind of shit and mostly getting away with it.
It's why he's still Lucas Hood after all. He's not the dumbass kid who killed his dad only to replace with an even shittier version until Job wised his ass up to the retirement prospects of people the government pays under the table to blow other people away. And the guy who fucking stole from a crime lord and got his ass sent to prison pretty much died there, the last bits of him getting snuffed out completely in Banshee at the bottom of a lake.
Now? Now he's Lucas Hood, no longer fucking sheriff, but still mostly trying to stay on the right side of the law, even if he keeps swerving into the middle. Lucas Hood's a pretty good guy, after all. He's worked through a bunch of shit, made peace with the fact that he's just not cut out for the white picket fence kind of life, and accepted that the closest thing he has to stability in his life is giving him shit on the phone right now over a trip down fucking memory lane.
Granted, most people's memory lanes don't involve half the town trying to kill you, but Lucas is special that way.
“Look, I'm not going to stick around,” Lucas says. “I'm going to keep a low profile, scout out the area a bit, and make sure everyone's doing okay.”
“You know,” Job says. “You could just ask me. I've got a thousand motherfucking databases at my fingertips and you want to go analog in a town that's still recovering from when you blew out of there seven years ago.”
“Well, it's not like I'm going to go down to Sugar's, get a beer, and hope to stumble into being sheriff again. I think Brock has that still on lockdown.”
The sound of typing. “He does,” Job confirms. “Maybe I'll give him a head's up, let him know your dumb ass is thinking about coming back into town, and he'll send out some of his boys to escort you to the county line.”
“I'd think you were serious,” Lucas says, “but that would mean having to talk to him and we all know how you feel about dealing with law enforcement these days.”
“What the fuck ever,” Job says, infinite weariness at Lucas's ongoing stupidity clear in his voice. “Just get in, take a look around, and get the fuck out. Don't get yourself into any kind of trouble.”
“Sure,” Lucas says, hanging up.
Neither one of them really counts on it, but it would be a nice change if for once, he could visit Banshee without a body count.
It's easier than he thought it would be. Banshee's grown a little bit, a few new stores here and there, some potholes repaired, but no one's coming out there to build a Costco or anything. No, contrary to all the grand plans everyone had back when he was around, Banshee looks to be a place stuck in time.
Still, there are a few things that have changed.
“Hey, Proctor's house is for sale,” Lucas says. “You think I should try to buy it and settle down?”
He hears Job snort. “You might be able to with the right offer,” he says. “Been on and off the market for a few years now and no one's ever lasted through escrow .”
“Surprised they haven't torn it down.” It'd be the first thing he do, even if he had to go in the middle of the night with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.
“Probably too worried about rousing a few ghosts along the way. Speaking of which, you're not raising the dead over there, are you?” He can hear Job tapping his nails against the phone. “There's a few more cameras there than there used to be.”
“I figured,” Lucas says. No, he's been good. Much as he'd love to see Sugar, to let him know that he and Job are doing well and listen to Sugar weakly protest that he wasn't asking about him, he knows better. The past is either dead in the ground or gone to the wind. There was no temptation to go down to see the station, no desire to see a memory that hasn't existed there for years.
Even his dreams now have started to fade and blur, faces he knew becoming indistinct. Give a few more years and maybe he'll take a look in the mirror and he won't remember a time when Lucas Hood wasn't a graying ex-con whose best years were long behind him.
“No,” he sighs, pulling away from the empty driveway, leaving one monster's den behind. “I guess you're right. This was a stupid idea.”
“Don't tell me you finally got some sense in your fucking brain,” Job scoffs. “Should I break out the champagne to welcome you back tonight?”
“Yeah,” Lucas says. “There's just—one more thing I need to do.”
“And here it fucking is.” There's a click and yes, Job has just hung up on him, which is sadly predictable for him. Just as well. They both know that what he's about to do is a terrible idea, but that's never stopped him before and besides...
He owes it to one more ghost he needs to put to sleep.
The cabin's just a few burnt pieces of wood now, hard to see under leaves, but Lucas could find it even if it was buried in the ground. The last remnants of his time in Banshee, a place no one remembers but him now.
“Fuck,” Lucas says softly. What else is there to say? Sorry, you probably deserved better, but so did a lot of people in Banshee? Sorry I didn't save you from your worst impulses and fell prey to my own? Sorry, I was a shitty sheriff and a terrible investigator and it took me nearly killing your uncle to realize the shit that was right under my nose?
Fuck. Job was right. This was a dumb idea to return to Banshee.
He opens his phone up, maybe to make some sort of penitent call to Job, to reassure him that he's learned his lesson and he's not going to pull this shit again, but there's no reception. Out in the boonies here, it's not surprising, but it's been five years and enough has changed that--
“What the fuck--”
He's getting fucking rusty for idiots like this to get the drop on him. Lucas looks up and there's two truly spectacular specimens of idiocy before him. Have to be in their mid-twenties, pasty and thin, with a patchy beard on one of them that's doing nothing to hide his rash while the other one keeps picking at his face.
Doesn't take a genius of Job's caliber to recognize exactly what's he stumbled across, or what's stumbled into him.
“Just passing through,” Lucas says, already playing defense. “Don't mind me.”
“Fuck you say,” Patchy says. “What the fuck are you doing out here?” He spits on the ground. “Nobody comes out here unless they're looking for something.”
Lucas holds out his hands, eyes them both carefully. Neither one of them looks particularly strong, but idiots like this, hopped up on shit can do some serious damage if you underestimate them. The trick is to calm them down, get them to see he's not a threat.
Which he's not. This is Brock's mess, not his, at this point. Maybe he'll have Job shoot him a line down the road, get him guessing how the fuck Lucas still knows shit, but for now, he just needs to get the fuck out of the woods and back onto the road.
“Just leaving,” he says. “Didn't mean to interrupt whatever you boys are up to. Not my business.”
Itchy scratches his face some more. “Seems to me like you're making it your business,” he says. “Just who the fuck--”
“That's what I'd like to know.”
New voice. Fuck.
There's the sound of rustling behind him. Lucas has just enough time to turn around before something wallops him against the face and everything is one bright burst of pain before it all shuts off.
“You fucking kidding me?”
“We're fucking dead.”
“We're not dead.”
He can hear the voices like he's swimming through water, murky as he dives to the depths before trying to rise to the surface. Coming up is pain in his head, his face. His nose is clogged, probably broken, but it's not the first time that's happened. Hell, it's not even the first time this year, thanks to an old friend getting twitchy.
He keeps himself still, silent. Assess your situation, he thinks. Three men, all with itchy fingers and loud voices and you're fucking rusty at this shit. If you make it out of this in one piece, you might think about sticking to the kinds of jobs that don't involve getting bludgeoned.
“How the fuck do you know?” Probably Patchy, deeper than his friend, but just as nasal and whiny. “He's a fucking sheriff.”
“I told you he was up to shit,” Itchy says. “Just passing through, my ass. That fucker was looking around to see if we were up to something.” There's a pause.
“Wait, but I thought that other guy was--”
“Ex-sheriff,” an unfamiliar voice says and this must be the asshole that knocked his ass out. “Maybe his friend called him back to help out.” There's something considering in the voice that's not present in the other two, which is a problem. “You boys don't remember this shit, but he was a real pain in the ass back in the day.”
He's not going to feel proud about it, but he kind of fucking does. So Asshole has at least seen him before. Probably not one of Proctor's Colombians because he'd be in a body bag right now, but there were enough lowlifes even before Proctor imported the better dressed ones. For all he knows, he's one of those biker assholes too dumb to completely get the fuck out but smart enough to lie low until everything blew over.
Not that he can talk about stupidity, because he's got rope around his wrists and oh, yeah, he's fucking wearing nothing more than his underwear since apparently when he was knocked out, they stripped him down. Great. If he dies naked, Job will never let him hear the end of it.
“So what the fuck do we do?” Patchy asks. “We shoot his ass and we got ourselves the entire fucking department on our ass.”
“Not unless we bury the body,” Itchy says. “I could probably get something dug up before it gets dark.” A clank as he picks something up and yeah, Asshole hit him with a shovel which clocks. Not hard enough to completely crack his skull, but Job would say the last thing he needed was more hits to the head.
“No need,” Asshole says. “I got a better idea.”
Lucas can hear moving around. He should get up, make a break for it, but a quick peek out of his eyes tells him that would be the worst fucking idea. Itchy might have nothing but a shovel, but Patchy's got a shotgun and you don't need to get lucky with that when you're five feet away from someone.
So he'll wait this shit out. They don't look ready to kill him, not yet.
There's a hand at the back of his neck, pulling his shirt back and he almost groans as he's yanked against a bigass dude.
“Seems to me it's the perfect time to test out our new product,” Asshole says. “Best part is that if they find this fucker in the woods with it, they'll probably blame it on him. Everyone knows that he hung out with Proctor a few times.”
Hung out is the wrong phrase for “tried on multiple occasions to end each other's lives and only allied when other assholes were horning in on the murder game,” but it doesn't really matter, not when someone's jamming a needle in your neck, trying to push some shit in, and it's going to be fucking now or never. Lucas jerks away, jams an elbow into the guy's neck, spinning him around so he's between the shotgun and Lucas. It means that Asshole takes the hit when Patchy's itchy trigger finger goes off, and if he doesn't get a full blast, the scream means he got enough of it to give Lucas a head start.
He's using speed now, relying on that and surprise to get him out of sight, which thank fucking God, because they're the type of stupid assholes who probably wanted to dump his ass in the woods and watch him until he started foaming at the mouth.
And he can feel it in his veins now, whatever the fuck they gave him working fast. He didn't get a full dose, he hopes, but there's enough shit in him that he knows he's fucked if he doesn't get it out.
But Lucas Hood has no phone, no gun, no clothes, nothing but him and a ringing head, blurred vision, and the vague knowledge of all the times he's hid out in these fucking woods. There's three of them and one of him and he's going to have to do this shit all on his--
“Hello, Sheriff,” he hears, and no fucking way, not today. Not now, but Proctor never did know when to shut up and get the fuck out of Lucas's way so why should today be any different?
“You know if I had to see a Proctor,” Lucas says, “I would have preferred Rebecca.”
He looks annoyingly put together, not the beaten, bloodied mess Lucas left him in, but the Kai Proctor Lucas remembers, all black suit and immaculate white shirt. He's leaning against a tree, watching Lucas crouch with vague amusement, like he's too good to be sitting in these woods. He won't even respond to Lucas's mention of his niece, so it's obvious he's not really here.
“You're dead,” Lucas says. It feels like he shouldn't have to say this.
Proctor shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “You don't really know, though, do you? Did you actually see me die?”
“Saw your house,” Lucas says. His head is pounding now and he wipes his nose, coming away with blood. “I bet if I looked hard enough, I could have seen the bloodstains in the driveway.”
Proctor smiles, teeth even and white as his shirt. “It must have been a sight,” he says. “Too bad you weren't there with me.”
“What? Fighting off your drug dealers?” Lucas snorts and then regrets it as the pain in his nose makes it abundantly clear how fucked up it is. “Why the fuck would I have helped you out there?”
He sees Proctor move closer to him, kneel down. There's blood spattering his shirt now, and Lucas wonders why he didn't see it before. “Didn't you ever wonder how things would have been if we would have worked together instead of against each other?”
“Can't say that I have,” Lucas says. He can't hear anyone yet, but his head is spinning and he has to put one hand against a tree for support.
“Now we both know that's a lie, Sheriff.” Proctor's voice is quiet, soft, and yet somehow Lucas can hear it clearer than anything around him. “I wouldn't be here if it hadn't crossed your mind. You can picture it, right? A world where you asked me for help in finding your friend and I assisted you, but in return, you helped me out with my problems.”
He opens his mouth and shuts it because the fucked-up part is that he can see it. He would have looked at Proctor's casual smile, the way he tilted his head when Lucas told him he wasn't Sheriff anymore, and maybe in that world, he would have taken Proctor's hand, convinced himself that it wasn't anything different than asking his help with Rabbit or the bikers. It wasn't going to kill him and the lesser of two evils is always better, right?
“Or maybe something earlier than that,” Proctor muses. “Maybe you rolled into town and found that Mrs. Hopewell didn't give a damn about anything you did and there wasn't anyone around to help you out. So you started fucking and fighting and drinking your way under the table in Sugar's bar until one day you got yourself into a mess that no one was willing to get you out of. But I did. I saw your potential and even if you couldn't be Burton, you could still be useful in your own limited capacity.” His smile is wide now, blood in his teeth, dripping down his lips, because he's always been a butcher that hid bloody hands in white gloves.
Lucas has known a lot of men like him. Worked for a fair number. Even left most of them still alive.
“I wouldn't have agreed,” Lucas says. “Not even then.”
Proctor leans back. His shirt is almost solid red now. “Perhaps not,” he says. “Sheriff.”
He says the last word like he doesn't believe it.
Like Lucas doesn't believe it.
At least he has the decency to disappear when Lucas hears someone crunching through the leaves.
He gets up, fights through the head spinning, and sprints through a few trees until he's able to loop back behind--
Itchy.
The easiest, probably, given that he's carrying the shovel. He keeps twitching, looking in all directions like he expects something to come out of the woods and jump him.
Lucas obliges him by doing exactly that. It's not even that much of a challenge to wrest the shovel away from him and give him a solid crack across the face. Itchy doesn't even scream. Now that's how you bash a fucker in the face with a shovel.
He could be dead. Lucas finds that he really doesn't care that much.
He searches the body quickly, but there's nothing on it besides some Backwoods and a lighter, which he pockets. He could strip the body but if his buddy is anywhere close, he doesn't want to be caught with Itchy's pants down. Nudity sucks but a shotgun blast to the face sucks more.
Lucas leaves the body behind, takes the shovel and uses it to prop himself through the woods. It's better than nothing, even if it's going to be flimsy protection against a shotgun or--
Oh, he thinks. Yeah, this probably is going to do jack shit against guilt and regret.
He's not saying that he misses Proctor, but at least that would be easier than his next ghost, a glimpse of dark hair and a blue uniform and a smile that says--
He drops the shovel. “Siobhan.”
The light's getting dimmer out. He's not sure how long he was knocked out, or how long he spent communing with the potential ghost of Kai Proctor, but it's clear that time is not on his side, and judging from the hallucinations, neither is his sanity.
“You're not happy to see me,” she says. Her smile is smaller than Proctor's, but it's worse because it looks genuinely pleased to see Lucas there, even in the state he's in. She shouldn't greet him or be pleased to see him. There should be bitterness, anger, anything but the forgiveness he sees in her eyes.
“Not under these circumstances,” Lucas says dryly. “I don't think this was the future either one of us intended.”
Siobhan nods. “No.” Her hands skim through the leaves, like the wind ruffling the branches and for one horrible second, Lucas can pretend that she's still here, breathing and happy and--
Alive.
“You killed him for me, didn't you?” she continues. “Clayton. You got your revenge. Not that it does me any good, does it?”
“You deserved more,” Lucas says.
“We all did,” she says and Lucas feels grimly satisfied to hear at least some judgment in her voice. It's easier to deal with your shame when it doesn't pretend anymore. “I guess that's why you're out here to apologize to the other woman you killed.” Her breath carries to Lucas's ear, whispers into it. “Did she know your name at the end? Your real one?”
“I'm sorry.” He's shaking now, maybe from adrenaline or the drugs or the fact that he's running around almost naked in the woods, but he knows it's not any of that. “I wanted you to know the truth.”
“We could have run,” Siobhan says. Her hands smooth Lucas's hair, running gently over that as she leans her head above his. “Once we both knew who you were, we could have left Banshee. Did you ever think about that?”
It might have been a burning house, a pillar of dreams turning into ash like it was with Ana, and that would be comforting to imagine, but there's a worse vision he can think of. It's Siobhan and him, hand in hand, leaving Banshee, leaving Siobhan and Lucas behind to become someone new. Proctor gets help sooner, Lucas takes Clayton out with one clean shot, someone saves her and as he holds Siobhan close, all he can think is thank God.
I'm not too late.
“Yeah,” Lucas says. “I thought about it.”
“Me too.” Siobhan shakes her head. “You do know that you're not the reason this town's fucked, right? It was fucked long before you and it'll be fucked long after you're gone.”
“Maybe you wouldn't have died if I hadn't shown up, though.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs. “Or one of those biker assholes would have gotten me or my ex or just a lucky shot from a scared kid. You can't save everyone.”
“I wanted to save you,” Lucas says.
“I know,” she says. “And you tried.” Her smile's still there. Even after knowing everything, she still loves him.
“So here's something what you need to do.” Siobhan's final breath comes against his forehead, a cold touch that is still warmer than everything around him. “Save yourself,” she says. “And take care of these assholes.”
Lucas closes his eyes, steadies himself. When he opens them back up, she's gone and he can hear the sound of panting in the distance.
“Steve, where the fuck are you man?”
Lucas whistles back. The smart thing would be to run, to hide, to wait until someone finds him.
That's not his style, though. He crouches, waits for Patchy to come puffing up. No shotgun in hand. Asshole must have decided the only one shooting anyone else today would be him. Good. He might not need the shovel.
“Steve?”
Lucas stands up. “Hey, buddy,” he says. “Missing your friend?”
He can taste the blood on his teeth as he grins and lunges forward.
Ten minutes later, when Lucas is beating Patchy's face in with his bare fists, it occurs to him that saving himself might be a bit trickier than he imagined.
Two down. One to go.
He's stumbling when his ears start ringing even louder and for a moment it's so loud that he wants to fall to his knees and start screaming.
Then it stops for a few seconds.
Starts again.
Shit. Lucas thinks. It's that phone he took off Patchy. It looks really familiar, almost like--
Oh, fuck. Right.
“Yeah?”
“Where the fuck are you?” Job's voice makes him wince, hold the phone away. The screen's dim, cracked.
“Woods.” He shivers. He didn't grab Patchy's clothes either? Huh. That blow really did fuck his head up. “Don't know exactly where.”
There's noise in the background, clicking and cursing and Lucas yawns. “What is wrong with you?”
“Not sure where to start.” He looks down at his arms, his hands sticky and cold. “Next time I tell you I'm going to Banshee, remind me to check to see if there's junkies having a picnic in the woods.”
“Oh, for—you know what, no,” Job says. “You sound like shit and I don't need an explanation, I need you to get the fuck out of there. Just keep your phone on and I'll find you.”
“Don't think I can.” Lucas squints. “I think it's going to die soon.”
“Of course,” Job mutters. “So once again someone's going to have to go find and save your pasty ass.”
“You volunteering?”
“Aren't I the one that always gets drafted, asshole?” He can hear more typing. “Keep moving, stay alive, and for fuck's sake, the next time I tell you not to go to fucking Banshee, you fucking listen to me or I will take a page out of your ex's book and handcuff you to your goddamn--”
“Job.” He likes to think he's sounding really calm, cool, right now, though the words seem like someone else is speaking them, talking over a line and he's listening to two assholes have a conversation that doesn't include him. “Sorry.”
The line goes quiet and Lucas thinks for a moment that maybe the phone's finally gone dead, but no. “Promise me--”
“Not sure I can do that,” he says and the world spins before going dark again.
Lucas wakes.
Still alive, still naked, still in the dark.
No idea how long he's been out, but it's really fucking cold now. The phone's completely dead.
He starts walking, no idea where he's really going. Everything in him now feels light, like something's carved him out and filled it with electric wires, lines sparking against his skin.
Maybe he's walked for miles. Maybe it's been a week.
He has no fucking idea, but he keeps moving because that's what he knows to do.
Just keep going.
When he sees the cabin, he wants to laugh.
There's almost no light in it, no sounds coming from it, but of course, this is how it ends. As it begins, a man hiding out in a cabin, waiting for death to forgive him all his faults and weaknesses.
He opens the door carefully, nudges it with his foot. There's a figure he can make just in the light of a flickering oil lantern swinging from the ceiling. It's sitting on a chair by the table. It's too short to be Asshole, too still and patient to be anything other than another ghost waiting to be exorcised.
Rabbit, most likely, or maybe Gordon, come to castigate him over stealing his family. The former would be expected and tiresome, the latter at least would have every right to hate him.
It is neither.
Lucas Hood raises a glass to him, a hole through his hand. “Here we are,” he says. “Back at the beginning.” He doesn't look how Lucas remembers him, but it's been a while since he's seen him.
Lucas walks through, shuts the door behind him, leaving them both in almost complete darkness. “Yeah,” he says.
“You weren't the worst sheriff, all things considered,” Hood says. “At least you tried before completely fucking it up.”
“It's not like I planned it,” Lucas says. “I didn't roll into town with some scheme to take over Banshee.”
Hood shrugs, knocks back his glass. “You could have left,” he says. “You didn't have to stay either. You could have gotten back on your bike and gotten the fuck out of town as soon as you got in.”
“I--”
“It's not like you didn't do that anyhow,” Hood says. “All these bodies and you still ended up abandoning the town to its own devices. And now you're on the run from the kind of shit you should have stopped.”
“I didn't know it was going to happen.” Lucas is raising his voice now, which is stupid, but in keeping with the kind of day he's having. “I didn't know any of this shit was going to go down.”
“Exactly,” Hood says. “You didn't.”
Lucas blinks. Either the drugs are really fucking with his mind or--”Wait, what the fuck?”
Hood's hand reaches out, grabs Lucas. “You could have left town and all these people would be alive. You could have also left town and they'd all be dead. Point is you don't fucking know what would have happened so stop wondering if shit would have been different. Feeling guilty isn't going to change a goddamn thing.”
“I'm not—I got over this,” Lucas protests. Really, he has. He's been fine for the last few years, content even. He's made his peace with Banshee, and the only reason he came back was just curiosity. Nothing else.
“We both know that's a fucking lie,” Hood says. “You wouldn't be having us fucking ghosts in your brain screwing with you otherwise. Banshee's moved on without you. You need to do the fucking same.”
He cocks his head. “Also, as the part of your brain that's still paying fucking attention, you have one more asshole outside your door. He's either going to come in blasting or wait for you to come out and blast you.”
“Fuck.” Lucas's brain is about ready to burst out of his skull. It's dim in this cabin, almost empty. Judging from what little light he has left, there's nothing he can use unless he wants to try to use a table to stop a shotgun shell at close range.
There's nothing...
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Lucas says. “This?”
Hood pats him on the back, his hand hitting with a hollow sound. “It's poetic, right?”
Lucas reaches above his head. It's easy to unhook the lantern, to watch the shadows sway in its light. It's even easier to break it on the curtains, watch the cheap fabric take to it like gasoline, spread flame to lick at the walls, the door.
There's a pounding at the door. Asshole's already cursing ,his voice heard above the flames. “It's his cabin, isn't it?” Lucas asks.
Hood's teeth gleam in the light, the dark void behind them stretching into infinity. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he says. “But it's been a ride.”
The door splinters as Asshole lurches in, holding his sleeve to his face while the shotgun in his right hand dangles. He's taken off guard by the fire, his eyes wildly peering around for the cause of it.
What he does not expect is a screaming nearly naked man to launch himself at him and take him to the ground, landing on top of him and pinning him to the ground, clawing and biting and hitting until the thing below him is screaming in terror, writhing and pleading and--
“Sheriff Hood?” Lucas hears and looks up to see Kurt Bunker and three other kids in uniform staring at him in mute terror.
“What? Brock couldn't make it?” Lucas says and then allows himself to finally, mercifully pass out and leave all this shit up to someone else.
“You know, the fucking Cocaine Bear would have been easier to handle than this shit.”
Brock Lotus is almost completely bald now, his beard more gray than brown, but there's still the same “oh, fuck me” look in his eyes as he gazes down at Lucas, lying in the hospital bed. Lucas assumes the restraints are mostly there to help him as he goes from withdrawal from whatever shit they pumped into his veins, but he wouldn't put it past Brock to have just tied him down for pure, petty vengeance.
It's why he's such a good Sheriff for Banshee.
“Next time I'll make sure to rip out a few throats,” Lucas says. He's drained now, feeling like everything's run through him so that he's a dry creek bed, waiting for something to replenish him.
“When Job called me and told me that you were in town, I almost hung up on him,” Brock says, pulling a chair closer to Lucas's bed before sitting on it. “But I know that asshole would keep calling me until I gave him what he wanted.”
“Thank you,” Lucas says. He even means it. “For coming to get me.”
Brock shifts uncomfortably in his chair, looks off to one side. “Well, you should thank Bunker,” Brock says. “He's the one that suggested that you probably went off to go find--” He breaks off.
“He was right,” Lucas says, closing his eyes as a wave of nausea passes over him. “What about the others?”
“The ones you beat the shit out of?” Brock barks a short laugh. “They'll live. They won't be happy about it, but I think they'll look forward to their time in prison after what you pulled on them.”
They got lucky, Lucas thinks. In more ways than one. “It'll be restful for them,” he says.
“Yeah, well, you get some rest here too,” Brock says. “They don't really know exactly what you got dosed with, but you're lucky to be alive. So take it easy, don't rush off, and for God's sake, once you get better, stop fucking pulling shit like this.”
His hand hovers over Lucas's sheets like he wants to pat him and there's a new warmth in Lucas's body, something not caused by the cocktail of drugs in his system. Maybe he should have stayed away from Banshee. Maybe he should never have come back.
But--
He feels something drop onto the blanket and Lucas opens his eyes to see Brock stand up.
His phone is tucked in the creases, screen lit up. It's still cracked, but after all it's been through, it's still fucking working, so he'll call it a win. “You found it,” Lucas says.
“Wasn't hard,” Brock says. “But I think your clothes are toast.”
“I—oh, fuck,” Lucas says. “So--”
It's Brock's turn to close his eyes. “Just don't come by the station,” he says. “I really don't need my deputies distracted any more than they already are.”
“Yeah.” Lucas looks down. “Probably not.”
“But stop by Sugar's before you go,” Brock adds, just at the door. “Let me know when you do and I might swing by.”
Lucas finds a grin easily coming to his lips. “You might?”
“Just to make sure you're really leaving,” Brock says, but his ears are pink and he won't look at Lucas as he opens the door.
“He's all yours,” Lucas hears and Job saunters into the room, patting Brock on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Job says. “I owe you.”
“Yeah, well, we'll see if I ever collect,” Brock mutters and the door shuts behind him.
“I told you it was a bad idea, motherfucker,” Job says, perching delicately on Lucas's bed. His makeup is perfect as always and the reflection off his pants could blind someone, but there's exhaustion in his eyes and his polish is chipped. “Now do you believe me?”
Lucas lets his head sink on the pillow. “I do,” he says, yawning. “So how did you find me?”
“Please.” Job sounds almost offended. “I told you there's more shit in Banshee now. I was able to get an idea of your location before you passed out on me.”
His voice is tight as he says the last few words. Lucas pretends not to hear it. He owes at least this much to Job for having to listen to him--
“Right,” Lucas says. “How was it talking to Brock?”
“As pleasant as ever,” Job says. “So are we done with our past now? After we get out of the hospital where we landed our stupid ass in, are we finally done with Banshee?”
“What do you think?”
He can hear that sigh in Job's voice, the sound of a man with boundless reserves of patience for another man's stupidity. “One drink, and if anyone starts asking me if you're coming back, I'm throwing your ass in my trunk and driving straight back home before you can say, 'well, I was looking at the old Proctor place.'”
“I'll save you a seat at Sugar's,” Lucas says and closes his eyes.