Who: Felix Strand-Weissman and Will Breithart (NPC) What: Turns out that Felix's enemy really doesn't want him testifying When: Thursday, August 1, 2019 | morning Where: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Warnings: Airborne drugs, spell-slinging and violence, a bit of blood, mention of suicide
Felix sipped at the last of his espresso and willed it to do its job and infuse some alertness into his body. He'd eaten what he could of his breakfast, but his stomach was too much in knots for him to get down much without feeling more ill than he already did. He wasn't sure how he could face carnivorous plants in the jungle without blinking an eye, but the prospect of sitting in front of a large group of people and being questioned about his life choices had him nearly squirming in his seat. It had been the right choice to come early and let the Prosecution do their worst with him, because at least now he knew a bit of what to expect—but Merlin was he a ball of nerves.
It was three hours earlier in Snowcap, but that didn't stop him from pulling out his phone and dashing off a quick text to his husband: Getting ready to head over now. Wish me luck. Love you and miss you like crazy. Tomorrow night can't come fast enough.
"Anything in particular I should expect when I get there?" he asked in German, pushing his chair back from the table as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. It was muted now, of course. "The portkey they gave me should take me past all of the press and such, right? How long until they bring me out?"
The number of times Will had checked his phone for updates was directly proportionate to his tension levels. Despite this being a job, he'd actually enjoyed his time in Brazil with Felix, not the least of which was that he got to speak German with a frequency that had been absent for many years now. He spoke Portuguese as well, and it had been something of a relief to learn that this was a language that Felix had mastered too. It made dealing with a translator superfluous and one less person he had to wrangle while they were here.
He ate another bite of pão de queijo before answering, but noted how little his temporary companion had actually managed to get down. It wasn't as if he could blame the other man. This was unbearably stressful. "Unless the defense tries any of their last minute circus acts, you should be going up on the stand as soon as you get there. The prosecutor's office made very sure that the route was secure, and you'd be bypassing any sort of crowds. My portkey will"—he broke off and patted down his pockets—"dammit, I left mine up in the room. I'm going to run and grab it, but I'll be back before yours activates."
Felix nodded and willed his stomach to settled with the other man's words. He would be in first thing, out before he knew it, and hopefully they wouldn't have to call him back tomorrow. Even if they did, the worst would be over once he knew what he was in for, right? He blew out a breath and stopped his hand midway up to run through his hair, because he'd actually made a moderate amount of effort to look decent in dress robes with his hair somewhat behaving, and he wasn't about to mess it up now.
"Don't worry about it," he said, pulling his own portkey—a coin that was stamped with the Conselho Mágico Brasileiro official emblem—and holding it up. "We're going to the same place, yeah? I'm sure no one will side eye you too hard if you land with me and have to walk a few rooms over." He checked the clock on the far wall of the hotel restaurant. "Only got a couple of minutes anyway. Thank Merlin. All this waiting is horrid." He couldn't help a hint of a smile, as it occurred to him he'd said something similar to Njall recently: Not wanting to wait is rather a theme of ours, isn't it?
Will considered the proposal for a moment, and then nodded. His group would be just down the hall, there in case things went sideways or if someone did something incredibly stupid. Lethal force was authorized, but he really hoped it wouldn't come to that. He offered the other man an understanding smile and put his hand on his forearm, giving it a squeeze. "I know what kind of torture this is. The anticipation is inevitably worse than the event itself, but, Felix, I believe down to my bones that you've got this. I won't say it'll be easy, but I know you can do it."
Felix offered his hand to shake the other's, coin still in his palm to also serve has their connection point for the portkey when it activated. "I really appreciate it, Will. Truly. I'm not sure I could have done this without your help. I've been running and hiding from this man for months now. I'd like to think I've gotten up the courage to do something about it, but that fact is still debatable."
He felt a little tingle go through his palm as the clock ticked over to eight. "See you on the other side, then." There was another few seconds, and then that familiar tug behind his navel came, and he closed his eyes against the nausea that always followed. He'd learned how to deal with it so that it wasn't a problem, but that didn't keep it from coming every time. As his feet his solid ground again, he said, "Well, that was—"
And then the Stunner hit him full in the chest.
As soon as reality snapped into focus when they landed, Will knew something was horribly wrong. He'd been in every single room in the courthouse at least three times in the last week, whether it was in the official building plans or not. This space was nowhere he'd been before. There were boxes and crates stacked to the too tall ceiling, and most of the room was steeped in shadow, except where early morning light was trying to force its way through a set of windows set high in the wall close to the ceiling. The entire place had an air of neglect. It was a problem. It was a big fucking problem.
Even though he was already moving, he was entirely too slow to keep Felix from getting hit. Small mercies that it hadn't been a lethal attack. At least not right away. He had no doubts that it would go that way. Will's wrapped his arm around Felix's shoulder and threw himself bodily toward a nearby towering stack of crates as he put up a shield spell. He had one thing going for him: no one had anticipated him being there.
Felix struggled to focus, struggled to catch his breath, to move, to do anything, but all he could do was lean—more slump—into Will's side and follow the other wizard's lead. There was shouting coming from an indistinct place on the other side of the room, in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese that made it difficult to distinguish its meaning. Or maybe that was just that fact that he was only half-conscious, holding onto wakefulness only by the weird comparison that had popped into his head: that this was just like the last time he'd been in Brazil.
His head lolled away from Will's shoulder, and his cheek fell painfully against one of the nearby crates; the scent of its contents was so potent that it might as well have been a reviving spell. "Ifyinmelas," he murmured, mostly under his breath as he tried to make his body respond to his brain. "Shite. Ifyinmelas!" Felix struggled to move, struggled to move, to push away from the crate, no matter that there were people with wands pointed at them elsewhere. Those weren't the real danger. "That's what he—nevermind, it doesn't matter. We have to get out of here!" He realized belatedly that he'd dropped into English without noticing, and he added in frantic German, "It's toxic. These crates are full of highly toxic flowers." In small doses, they were an extremely potent upper. In large doses, it would be an extremely easy way of getting rid of a star witness without getting one's hands dirty.
Plants had never been a specialty of his, but now that Felix has mentioned it, Will definitely detected a prevalent scent in the air and the fact that his heart was racing even faster than it did when he was running on adrenaline. His arm was still around the other man, and he pulled him in tight even while they were trying to distance themselves from the crates. He tried to apparate, and nothing happened. "Fuck." It was English, because it was an effective curse. One more try. Zilch. "Fuck." He dropped back into German as he listened to the pounding of approaching footsteps. "We can't disapparate. Do you still have the coin? If not, what can we do to counteract the...flowers? Freezing? Fire? Can we use them to incapacitate them instead? What do we do, Felix? I won't let us die here. We can't. I made too many promises. We have to make it out of here."
Felix still leaned heavily against Will as he got back to his feet. The ground seemed to sway beneath him, but he wasn't sure how much of that was the spell and how much was the amount of toxic fumes in the air. It was harder to smell once they were away from the crates, but he knew from experience that it didn't mean the danger was gone. He pulled his own wand, but rather than use it to try to escape, he placed a series of protective charms on both of them. It made him think of doing the same thing with Derry only a few weeks earlier, and for a moment his thoughts went to the Reserve, and his job, and the black patches, and then leaped to Njall, and a silly smile came over his face. He pulled out his phone and noticed that he'd received a reply from his husband.
Love you too. You don't need luck. You've got this. But I'll wish you BEST of luck anyway. Text me after. <3
I love you so much I don't even have the words except I might be dying and I need you to know anyway, he typed back and tapped the send button. The message sat there spinning endlessly, trying to go through but with no signal. He couldn't stop staring at it.
A nearby footstep pulled him out of his reverie, and he jerked backwards, nearly pulling them both over again—before he realized the sounds were coming from somewhere beyond the walls. They looked flimsy, but he had no doubt that magic made up for what the physical structure didn't have. The sounds disappeared in the distance, leaving them alone. "The protective charms will buy us some time," he said, getting his head about him again. The flowers had obviously already affected him—and Will, too, he suspected—but at least he could keep it from getting worse. "But Ifyinmelas will eat at the magic slowly enough that we won't be able to tell when it's time to refresh. It'll slowly start getting to us."
He handed Will the portkey coin, which felt like so much dead weight in his hand now. Obviously not the real thing, since it had brought them here instead of the courthouse. "I don't actually know a lot, not the really useful stuff. It's highly illegal to bring it out of the jungle. I heard stories when I came about explorers getting high on the stuff and getting lost. It didn't sound like such a bad thing at the time, being able to wander endlessly into the trees until something ate me. Sounded pretty fitting, really. I could just disappear and no one would even know what had happened to me." His eyes fell to the phone still clutched in his hand, and he knew without a doubt that he did not want that now. He wanted a honeymoon on the beach and a new life in Snowcap, away from all of this. "I don't want to die. I didn't even want to die then, not really. Obviously, since I ran with my tail between my legs after that stupid card game. I don't even know why he was so mad. For a big time criminal like him, the money was small change. Money and these stupid seeds."
He pulled them out of his pocket and tossed them to the ground. He'd brought them almost as an afterthought, in case they were needed as evidence...though evidence of what, he'd had no idea. It was rare, sure, and the one that he'd germinated was pretty enough, but he'd never understood why everyone had seemed to awed when Monterero had bet the things. He'd been so drunk by then that he figured he'd mostly imagined it.
Except the little packet of seeds was emitting a steady stream of light that he'd never noticed before.
Felix looked over at Will. "It's—" He pointed at the ground and then cursed under his breath. "I'm a fucking idiot. Find dirt. Soil. I need soil, and as many plants as they've got packaged up in this place, there's got to be some somewhere."
"This is not an opportune time for an experiment, Felix." But despite the admonishment, Will was already moving in near silence a short distance away to try to locate any of what his new herbologist friend was looking for. Of course, he was still listening and looking out for their would-be attackers/killers, but sometimes Ant got like this. And there was something undeniably exciting about researchers on the brink of a discovery, an infectious quality that he loved being around. Anytime was the perfect time for science! He pried open a couple of boxes that were labeled differently from the ones that Felix had freaked out about, and he levitated one of them over to where he'd left the other man. "Will this do? There's soil in the pots, yes?"
"It's not an experiment. Okay, well, yes, it's an experiment. But I've got a good feeling! Bad feeling? I'm not sure what kind of feeling I have right now except that godammit these flowers are pissing me off!" He wanted to kick one of the crates for good measure, but he still wasn't quite steady enough on his feet for that. He leaned against a nearby shelf and tried to slow his ragged breathing. "Yes, fine. I can work with anything that doesn't have those fuckers planted in them."
Unsteady or not, he lumbered toward the other wizard and grabbed the box in the air, using his weight to force it down to the ground. Inside were a dozen or so plants that he was sure would be familiar if he gave himself time to examine them. He did not. He unceremoniously yanked them from their pots, then with equal lack of care poured all of them out into a great pile of dirt on the floor. It was only when he got to the seeds that he was extra careful, pulling a single seed from the packet and putting the rest back into his pocket. "See if you can find the doors. Even if this works, we're still going to be stuck, and they could always come back to check and make sure we were dead. Or brain-addled. Guess it depends on what they're going for. But wait!" He flicked his wand at Will, redoing the protection charms. "Just in case. They've probably got this place loaded with the stuff."
Once Will had gone, he sank onto the ground crossed-legged next to the dirt and put the single seed into the center, gently covering it. It got a little spray of water from his wand, and then he started the daunting process of attempting to force growth on a rare seed in non-ideal conditions when his head wanted to do anything but focus.
A quick perimeter check showed the room to be empty, and Will was momentarily baffled. But then it made a sick sort of sense. They'd been planning on stunning Felix and leaving him here to OD on crazy narcotic flowers. It was diabolical, and he could just picture Monterero sitting next to his lawyer, all smug and smiling. Like he'd won. Fuck that. He found the door, but it was warded out the ass. So even if Felix had woken up, he would've had a hell of a time trying to get out. The problem was finding the right wards. He muttered, "Appare vestigium," at the door, and watched as it lit up gold. A lot of gold. This was going to take a while to untangle. "Shit."
"We haven't heard anything in awhile," he heard a man say in Portuguese. "Do you suppose they're dead?"
Someone scoffed just beyond the door. "You're crazy if you think any of us are going to go in there right now. You want to be a martyr for Monterero, go right ahead. He doesn't pay me enough for this."
A green flash came from beneath the door and then the sound of something heavy falling to the floor. There was silence as Will continued trying to untangle the wards. Another voice--this one a woman--came through the door. She spoke in heavily accented English, and her disdain was so clear that he could practically see the curl of her lip like there was no barrier between them. "I didn't care for the tone of his disloyalty."
The growth spell required intense periods of concentration to accomplish, which meant it took Felix three tries just to get it from seed to seedling. He was sweating, despite the fact that the warehouse was far chillier than he knew it would be outdoors, probably trying to keep the temperature regulated for these bloody plants. He frowned and stared at the little sprig of green, his wand tip hovering just above it, and murmured the spell incantation evenly, over and over again. Again, he lost it, and he huffed in frustration, wiping his sleeve over his forehead.
He looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of Will, but the other wizard was entirely obscured by the shelves and crates. When he looked down, he noticed his phone sitting on the floor near the pile of dirt, but not quite on it. Had he pulled it out, or just never put it back into his pocket? He couldn't remember. He poked at the screen until it woke up and stared down at the wedding picture that was his lock screen.
He could do this.
Felix turned his wand on the plant in earnest, and within a few minutes he'd progressed it into a full-grown plant. Nearly there. He had to stand, because it was too tall for him to reach the top leaves anymore, and though he still wavered on his feet, it wasn't enough to throw his new sense of focus. All he needed were a couple of flowers. It wasn't as if he was going for beauty here. The stems glowed at the same level that the seeds had, but as the first tiny buds appeared, they were so bright that they practically lit up the room. It was the one thing that let him know he was right. The one he'd grown at home hadn't done that, so it was reactivity of some sort—and why else would Monterero panic over their loss than if they were seeds for the highly-valuable antidote.
He barely waited for the petals to open before he'd snatched off two of the four blooms and shoved one of the petals in his mouth, stumbling his way through the warehouse looking for Will. He approached with one hand already outstretched and filled with petals he'd ripped off as he'd gone. "Eat—" He froze and went silent as he realized there were voices on the other side of the door. He only hoped he hadn't been so loud that they'd heard him.
There was nothing in his catalogue of talents that had prepared him for this tangled mess of glowing wards on the door. Puzzles were far more Ant's forte, and occasionally Rani's. He loved watching the two of them and Melody crowded around a table, working through some literal picture puzzle or other three dimensional riddle until they'd solved it. Every once in awhile, Will would join in, but he knew that this wasn't a strength of his. He had no patience for anything this tangled, and thought perhaps that he'd been staring at this door for at least five years when he heard footsteps running up to him.
It was only Felix, which was really good, because Will's wand was still at his side, and Will's mind was a complete blank on defensive spells. Or offensive spells. Or common spells that he'd known since he was a first year. It was a thought that made him snicker. "Funny story," he whispered. "We might die." Still, he looked in askance at whatever Felix had in his hand before he pitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. "This is warded so much. They wanted to kill you. You weren't getting out of here alone. Or alive. But I'm here! But I'm not helpful. It's warded up the ass. I feel like I should know this, but I can't...get to it? Did you make your glow plant? Someone's dead out there."
Felix held his hand up and grabbed a petal from it, plopping it into his own mouth. "Glow plant," he whispered, nodding at it and holding his hand out again. "Eat. It doesn't even taste nearly as vile as the potions the healers give you." And he was feeling a bit more clear-headed already. Either it was the world's best placebo...or he'd been right, and this was truly the antidote.
A dubious look was given to the proffered horticultural offering, but Will trusted Felix. He didn't trust easily, but they'd been working together for nearly two weeks now, and usually in close quarters. That counted for something. And, really, Adriana Cardoso was going to kill him if he showed up with one of the prosecutor's witnesses dead. "How do I keep surrounding myself with violent women?" Will muttered mostly to himself as he took a couple of petals and dutifully stuffed them in his mouth. They tasted… Well, they tasted like a plant. Earthy, with floral undertones. This was positively pleasant compared with some of the things he'd had to ingest over the years. "Remind me to tell you about the sewers of Antwerp, if you want vile. But this is no time for games of 'I've had it worse.' Cardoso's not going to be able to hold up the court for much longer."
He waved a hand at the door, meaning for it to encapsulate the entire area. "They shouldn't be able to hear us. Sound dampening. But we can hear them. Clever twist on the classic." He said all this at a nearly breakneck pace, but his thoughts were beginning to clear a little. Will paused a moment as more discussions were taking place on the other side of the door. He leaned back with a grim smile. "Well, great, they know who I am. They're not going to wait. You should hide. Even if it's their own wards, it'll take them a moment to undo them. Keep your head down. I've got you."
Felix managed a crooked smile at that and clapped a hand to Will's shoulder. "We get out of this alive, and the first round for 'I've had it worse' is on me."
He leaned in and tried to make out what was being said, but he was still wobbly enough that he didn't want to risk getting too close to the door just now. He wondered idly if the Stunner had done some sort of damage he hadn't considered while under the influence, but that was a thought to explore once they were safe; for now, it was irrelevant. He looked around, debating hiding places that still kept him in range of the door, but nothing looked particularly spell-proof.
"Accio shrubbery," he called, without much forethought, and then belatedly wondered if half the warehouse full of plants was going to fly at him. Luckily, if there was anything else that fit the description, they were all contained enough that they weren't responding to his spell. What he got was a floating mass of the plants he'd ripped from the soil earlier. "Not good for growing healthy or useful plants, but hopefully enough for a distraction." He waved Will back and dropped them just beyond the entry point. "Engorgio," he murmured, pulling his final flick short so that their growth would be slow enough to not immediately fill the area.
He had only just managed to duck at least halfway behind the nearest shelf when a loud pop signaled that the wards had dropped, and the door began to slide open.
The general exclamations of disbelief as the door was opened to a small, but veritable row of wild-grown (except really not) hedges were extremely short lived. They very quickly turned to cries of alarm and fervent curses as Will let out a stream of hexes, jinxes, and curses from his position at the thinner edge of the shrubbery nearest the door. Two of their assailants/kidnappers dropped at once, but there were three more behind them, including the woman he assumed he'd heard kill one of their own mere moments before. A woman who looked way too familiar. They were already firing off their own countercurses and spells, and it was all Will could to get up the proper defenses in time. He just needed enough time to get Felix past that door. He could worry about Paloma Escobar later. If there was a later.
"Wilheim," her voice was a sultry sing-song, and Will cursed the day—so many, many years ago—that he encountered this dangerous woman and very stupidly let her go in a moment of romantic stupidity. She went on in Portuguese. "How is that little family of yours? Well, I hope. Tell you what, you give us Weissman, and you get to see them again You can say you tried your best."
Another bright flare left him very temporarily dazzled, but it was big enough that it would have blinded anyone else out in the open. Hoping and praying that this was the distraction Felix would have needed to make his run for it, Will stepped out with his wand lax in his hand and both hands up. "I can see when I'm outnumbered, Paloma. Let's talk."
It hadn't hit Felix just how out of his league he was until the bad guys started pouring in like they were in some sort of bad action movie. He did all he could to stay out of sight, keeping his wand in his hand but at his side, because there was no way he'd be able to use it for anything even remotely useful in a dueling scenario. If he got desperate, he'd try his hand at turning the shrubbery into something tangly, but even that was a worst case.
Strand-Weissman, he countered in his head, wishing this was a battle of wits rather than wands. Yet another reminder of what a so-called casual game of poker tended to get him.
There was a split second when all attention was away from his hiding place and away from the door, and Felix didn't hesitate to dash the five steps it took to escape the room. He halfway expected shouting in his wake, or someone grabbing him from behind, but there was such a lack of reaction that he actually slowed in confusion only a few feet down the hallway. He couldn't just leave Will there, star witness or not. He'd gotten in about half a second of psyching himself up to toss some spells around the door jamb when some sort of explosion had him ducking and covering instead.
A cloud of dust and smoke filled the hallway almost immediately, and a shadow loomed out of it, approaching Felix and fast. A hand caught at his arm and jerked him upright: it was Will. The dimmed light in the hallway reflected off a shiny line down the side of his face, and he was limping a little, other arm hanging lax at his side. "I bought us a few seconds," he growled, but mostly because his throat was irritated. He shot Felix a grim smile. "When in doubt, get your enemies talking. Exit's just up ahead. It's amazing what people will say when they think you don't understand the language."
True to the word he'd overheard, a broken exit sign marked their likely egress point. A swiftly cast spell revealed it to be unwarded, with no nasty boobytraps etched in anywhere around it. There were sounds behind them, shouts, and the air sizzled with sparks of all different colors. Will yanked open the door and practically shoved Felix out, following close on his heels.
"Might have used that one myself a few times," Felix said with a laugh that was more relief than real humor. It was all he had time to say before they were rushing down the hallway, only barely staying ahead of their pursuers. He stumbled through the doorway, and the sound of spells hitting the doorframe just above their heads had him grabbing for Will to make sure he made it through the door. The second they were beyond the edge of the building, he shouted, "Hold on!"
—and apparated to the front of the magical courthouse. Almost immediately, they were surrounded by onlookers, and more than a few cameras flashed in their direction. "So much for avoiding the press," he mumbled, though without any real animosity. He'd take someone wanting to write an inflammatory newspaper article over someone trying to kill him any day. "Pardon me," he said in Portuguese, brushing off his dress robes and keeping an arm under Will's in case the other man needed the support. "I'm afraid we're rather late for my testimony. Care to make a path?"