{ w h o } Fox and Bailey. { w h a t } RESCUE MISSION. { w h e n } Thursday afternoon. { w h e r e } Police station. { r a t i n g } PG. { s t a t u s } Complete.
He should have quit while he was ahead.
Rigged poker games and pick-pocketing had netted him more money than he'd lost this week and he should have been happy with that, but noooooooooooo, Bailey had had to go after one last mark, just to prove he was on par with the more experienced sticky fingers of Ringo Riot. Unfortunately, unbeknown to Bailey, that final mark turned out to be the mayor of Toledo, and the police were on him before he knew what hit him. After a short chase, Bailey was beaten to the ground and arrested, while Ringo slipped away like the weaselly little rat bastard that he was.
After a perusal of his measly, drenched possessions turned up no ID, Bailey had spent the better part of last night being interrogated, and roughed up when interrogations went nowhere and sheer insolence was suspected. When the cops finally became resigned to the fact that their prisoner wasn't talking (with his hands cuffed behind his back, Bailey was never given the option of putting pen to paper), they decided to put him in with the other drunks and ne'er-do-wells for the night, though that was when Bailey made his situation decidedly worse by trying to make one final, panicked attempt at escape in which he assaulted the officers and bit three of them. Thereafter, he was committed to a small, damp cell in the darkened basement of the station, a place normally reserved for none but the most hardened psychopaths. The last thing he'd seen them say was that they were going to 'call around to the local loony bins, see if any of their idiots had escaped'.
Alone in the dark and facing the prospect of similar conditions for the rest of his existence, Bailey had never been more terrified - or felt more vulnerable - in his life. The thought of never seeing Fox, or his mother and father, or Evelyn, or Ishani, or any of the people he loved again was perhaps the most frightening part of all of this. He was currently facing his worst fear, and rather than being strong or stoic or facing it with a stiff upper lip, Bailey fell apart. He sobbed himself to sleep and woke up a few indeterminate hours later to face another day in what was surely the closest thing to hell he'd ever experienced.
By the time anyone came down to the basement again, Bailey probably looked every bit the part of the psychotic wild man they imagined him to be. Bloodied and bruised and stinking of booze and piss and mildew, Bailey was far from his usual dapper self. His hands had long gone numb from lack of circulation. He could only hope that someone would notice his absence from the afternoon show today, that never having missed a performance yet would finally do him some good, and tip someone off that he needed to be looked for. It was the only hope he had left at this point, and he really didn't want to consider the alternative right now.
He was left with some water and a small dish of what was probably supposed to pass as food on the floor of his cell (they didn't dare open the door this time), though he didn't make a move to touch either, instead opting to remain in the corner to contemplate his fate in silence, alone again.