marlene mckinnon makes terrible life choices (pyrotechnics) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-04-21 21:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !scene, 1991 : 04, fenwick benjy, mckinnon marlene |
WHO: Marlene McKinnon and Benjy Fenwick
WHAT: Drunk people with nothing to lose planning vengeance. What could go wrong.
WHEN: Last night I think
WHERE: Marlene's pub in Dundee
STATUS: Complete narrative!
Saturdays nights were always the busiest. Marlene was relieved; it was keeping her distracted, and she desperately needed some distraction. Still though, her eyes kept drifting to the newspaper that one of the customers had left behind after they'd paid the bill, the faces that she'd spent almost a decade trying to forget glaring up off the page. They weren't supposed to be back. It was hard enough still having Sirius lurking around, knowing what he'd done. The Azkaban breakout, though, had caused a pit to form in her stomach that no amount of alcohol was managing to dull. Marlene had never quite managed to move on, but moving backwards was another thing entirely. Then again, if Evan Rosier and Rabastan Lestrange were out of Azkaban, if Bellatrix Lestrange was back, maybe it meant the others were still out there. And maybe the escape was their ticket to finally finding them. Or maybe Marlene really needed to stop drinking when she was working. Or she needed to drink more... It’d been a long day, unsurprisingly. With the breakouts, and the fallout, and the meetings and searching and prepping, it was going to be a long, long week. Month. Year. Life, at this point. It never ended, not when the ones that were supposed to be behind bars for the rest of time managed to get out. He dragged himself into the bar, late in the night. He needed the friendly face, and needed more the booze that was behind her, and he plopped onto his usual stool with all the grace of a cave troll. “Whatever you’ve got on hand.” He said flatly, looking up at Marlene. “Make it a double.” Marlene looked between Benjy and the wall of liquor behind her. Thankfully she had basically everything on hand. "Here," she said, grabbing an unopened bottle of whisky from the bottom of the shelf behind her, twisting the lid off and taking a drink straight from the bottle before sliding it across the counter to Benjy. "That's probably not sanitary." She added a glass to his order, just in case he was feeling fancy. "So what're you thinking? A week until they start trying to wipe the rest of us out? Enough time for the smoke to settle, not long enough for us to forget they're out there?" “Sanitary can go fuck itself,” Benjy mumbled, picking up the bottle and taking his own swig. “Put it on my tab.” Which was already embarrassingly huge -- much to Skeeter’s amusement, he was sure. He had no doubt just who she meant when she talked about disgruntled Aurors, and the looks he’d gotten in the department that morning had been enough to say others had made the same connection. “Two weeks,” he said, after a moment. “They’ll use the first week to gloat about this, then give a week for us to get complacent, and then kill us.” "Yeaaaah, that does sound a bit more like them," Marlene groaned, dragging a stool over to sit across from Benjy from her side of the bar. Thankfully it was getting late and most people were heading out for the night; less people around to overhear her and Benjy discussing their soon-to-be murders. "These... fucking fuckers," she glared at her journal, staring at the message Evan Rosier had written, and Bellatrix's reply to it. "Who DOES THIS. What's the POINT of being all I'M HeEEEEeeEEERE when they're on the run? I'd forgotten about how bloody frustrating this is," she said, slamming the journal shut and letting it slide down the bar. It knocked into an empty glass, which teetered for a moment before smashing to the ground. One of the last table's in the pub cheered. "Yeah yeah, shut up. Close your tab up, bar's closing," Marlene yelled over the noise to the rest of the people in the pub. "What's the grand Auroring plan for all this? Tossing up a "Lestranges Drink Free" sign and arresting them if they show up?" Marlene asked, turning back to Benjy. "Don't steal that; that's my plan." At this point, Benjy didn’t think he cared who heard them talk about their eventual deaths-by-Death-Eaters. The world had all but gone to Hell, anyway. Might as well stop pretending any of it mattered, he figured. “They do this,” he grunted, taking another swig from the bottle. “They insist on shoving the very fact that they exist in your face because they know it’ll bother you -- because that’s what they want. A reaction. Attention. They’re spoiled brats turned psychopaths and the world would’ve been a better place if their mothers had drowned them all as kids.” He sighed, lifted the bottle again. “That plan’s probably better than what they’ll end up doing. Even if we get them, locking them up clearly won’t work.” "We could drown them now," Marlene suggested, nabbing the bottle of vodka she'd been nursing all night out from under the counter. "It'd be easy. Trap their feet in some concrete blocks, drop'm right into the lake. It's all muggle. No magic necessary. Nobody needs to know. Job well done. That'll be $34.29," she said to the last customer of the night who'd wandered up to pay off his tab, who seemed completely unfazed by death plots being planned at the bar. "Get home safe, Rog," she called after the man as she shut the door behind him and raised the wards around the building, just in case any undesirables decided to forgo the week or two waiting period. "So. What's our plan then?" Anything they came up with would be superior to whatever the DMLE would be able to do with all their red tape and legislation-tied hands. Benjy couldn’t help but smile at the talk of drowning Death Eaters. The idea of Bellatrix -- dear old Trixie -- gurgling underwater gave him a bit of a sadistic thrill. They said drowning was one of the worst ways to go. He wondered if it was bad enough to fit what those bastards deserved. “I always figured fire.” He said after the customer had walked away, dropping his voice to avoid being overheard. “When I thought about it, at least. Fire. Phoenix. Felt appropriate.” Satisfying, too, as the mental image of a drowning Bellatrix was replaced with her brother-in-law, wrapped in flames and smoke. “Our plan,” he echoed, looking down at the bottle. “There isn’t an ‘us’ anymore, last time I checked. Dumbles made sure of that, didn’t he?” "You know how I feel about fire," Marlene grinned. It had never made much sense: the girl who spent so much time in the gardens spent nearly as much time trying to burn the world down. It felt right, though. Especially when she thought about burning all three of them at the stake with no flame-freezing spell to numb the pain. Fire would work better than drowning if they were trying to get information from them first; it was hard to talk when one's head was underwater. "Fuck Dumbledore," Marlene scoffed, hopping up to sit on the counter before taking another drink straight from the bottle. "I'm talking the us that's in this room right now. Us two right here. AND ANYONE ELSE WHO'S EAVESDROPPING!" she yelled into the empty bar, then waited for a response. Good, none came. "Yep, just us." Benjy laughed. Honest to God laughed, something he supposed only Marlene could drag out of him, nowadays. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I know how you feel about fire.” He kept nodding as she spoke. Just them. They were the only two that mattered, really. Gids had popped out before things had even really gone to shit. Fabian was in Dumbledore’s pocket. The Longbottoms were broken. The Potters were dead. It was Black’s fault. Their little family was gone, and now all they had, it seemed were each other. “Well,” he said, after a moment. “I guess the big thing is that we make sure we find them first.” He picked up the bottle again, brought it to his lips once more. “So we can give them real justice, instead of the low rent version the Ministry is slinging…” "Bellatrix and Siri-- Black," Marlene stopped herself short, his name catching in her throat and burning like the alcohol she was drinking, "were already going at each other in writing. They either in it together -- maybe they always bloody were -- or they still hate each other. Either way, they'll probably end up crashing into each other soon." Which didn't exactly help much, seeing as how Sirius had basically fallen off the map himself. "Or we can just try to smoke them out. It rarely works, and they laugh and send heads through the post instead," she continued, her thoughts drifting off to one particular incident from "way back then" that she had tried to forget. "We need something they want, and to make sure they know we have it. We just need to find out what that something is." “Even if we had something they wanted, we’re still outnumbered,” Benjy pointed out with a sigh. “Even if Black and Trixie are just pretending to be at each other’s throats, it’s her, Lestrange, Rosier, and all the other bastards who managed to avoid Azkaban. Against little old me, and little old you.” He took another, larger swig from the bottle. "Since when're you scared of being outnumbered?" Marlene asked with a grin. "The odds've always been shit, but we're both still here. I don't know how the hell I am." Not when Caradoc, and the Boneses, and Sturgis, and everyone else was gone. Not when the Longbottoms were how they were. "Maybe this is why. Somebody needs to finish the job." “I. Am not. Scared.” Benjy said, brow furrowing as he looked up at her. Some things you didn’t even joke about. Still, as she spoke, he had to admit she was right. They had always been the underdogs, the losers. Maybe it would kill them in the end. Maybe it would be better that way. But maybe, just maybe, they could get it done. “Somebody has to,” he agreed. “Might as well be us.” "Scaaaaaaared," she jokingly taunted him. Then she hopped off the bar, nearly falling over when her feet hit the floor. "Who put that floor there," she muttered as she steadied herself on the counter. "Come on. Bring your drink," she said, since her own bottle was still gripped tight in her hand. Marlene opened a door behind the counter and waved for Benjy to follow her up the staircase that appeared to head up to her flat. Once the door was shut behind them, Marlene kicked at the molding along the edge of one of the back walls, then shoved it to the side, unveiling a wall full of photos and articles all twisted and pinned together with string. "I've got a list of all the last known residences of the more puristy-inclined shitheads in here," she explained, pulling out a box that deserved to be much more dust-covered than it was. "They could be hiding at any of them; you know they're staying someone stupidly fancy after all that time in Azzers. There's some profiles on them all too. Not sure if it's stuff you don't already have, you've got more access than me, but. There's a few things I nabbed from Doc's place. Most of it's in academia code because of course it is, but I wasn't going to leave it there." She shrugged. "I dunno. It could be a start." Benjy was pretty sure the floor had always been there, but more than half a bottle of whiskey in such a short span had him wondering a bit, himself. He followed her with a sigh, bottle in hand, up the stairs and into what constituted her flat. It was a humble place -- they all had humble places, always had. Being Good Guys was seldom profitable. The map of articles and photos and string, however, was anything but humble. “And here I thought I was obsessed about my cold cases…” He mumbled, stepping up to the board and looking at it intently. Maybe the profiles were just the same as they had in the department, but there was something there, certainly. “This,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her, “Is definitely a start, Mar.” Marlene shot Benjy a grin. It was nice to have someone else not just see it as a wall of crazy. "It's just… I figured maybe being able to look at it would make things start making sense? And sometimes it does. Like, for a long time I couldn't piece together how Travers and this guy were connected until that article on the Transportation department and it was like fuck, it was right there the whole time," she explained, using her bottle as a pointer, gesturing to the things she was mentioning. "I should add in there that Bellatrix actually does eat mint chocolate chip." Benjy nodded, looking at the lines. Some of the connections were immediately apparent, others took a moment to understand. All of it, though, made sense. He turned to look at her, smiling as he raised his bottle for another drink. “Not sure if Mint Chocolate Chip is the connection that’ll help us take them down, but I guess it can’t hurt…” "She also mentioned legilimency. Which could be useful. It's only a few steps deeper than Obliviation, yeah?" Not that Marlene could actually do that anymore, what with losing her job and the magic restrictions, but if they wanted information, they were never going to get it from smirky assholes and their doubletalk and their lies. She sat down on the edge of her bed and drank again, still staring up at the web of pictures and names. "There are a lot more of them than there are of us." There always had been. And even though there were less Death Eaters still running around and kicking than there'd been in the heyday of the war, the Order's losses had always been felt much more deeply. "Maybe now with everything that's happened, maybe some of'm'll want to come out of retirement." “Kind of the opposite of Obliviation but… yeah.” Benjy agreed, nodding. That would be helpful -- any of Marlene’s skills, from before she and the Ministry had broken up, would be helpful, really. A mind was a terrible thing to waste. He paused as she spoke, though. He’d said that earlier, hadn’t he? They were outnumbered even worse than before. And yet… “Yeah?” He asked, looking over his shoulder at her. “Like who? The fucking Prewetts?” "Maybe," Marlene replied, moving to drink again but realizing her bottle was empty. "They're seeing what's going on. They keep popping up. Maybe they..." Miss it wasn't quite what she met. It was a hard life to miss, despite Marlene's determination to jump right back in where they'd left off. "Maybe if they thought we needed their help, they'd help," she said instead, remembering what Gideon had said earlier about how he'd never actually stopped caring. "People like Remus, maybe. Or we find new people. Dumbledore probably grabbed most of us right out of school for a reason. People with the right skills, and who won't end up fucking us over" Benjy held his bottle out to her when he saw hers was empty, stepping over to sit beside her on the bed. “Lupin?” He pursed his lips. Worth considering. Or Diggle -- they’re need someone capable of thinking outside the box, especially with the new restrictions that’d make vigilante action even harder to pull off. “Hard to know who won’t fuck us over,” he said eventually. “Black was Potter’s best mate. Gids was mine.” He paused, looked down. It hurt, saying it out loud, and he reached to take the bottle back, and drink again before continuing. “We’d need to some kind of security.” "Well. I'm glad things didn't go quite so far for you guys when Gid split as it did when Sirius family-treed out." Marlene understood, though. She got that same sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach every time she saw Gideon around, and that didn't begin to describe the multitude of emotions she tried to keep buried down deep every time she heard Fabian's radio show or he scratched something out that he'd started to write to her. "We need people who don't have anything to lose," she replied, pulling the bottle back over so she could take a quick drink before handing control of it back to Benjy. "And maybe... there's gotta be some way we can track down if they're lying to us or something. Or if they're telling other people things we told them. We can't end up with another Sirius situation." Benjy didn’t comment on the idea of Gideon going the Black route. He’d just as easily have trusted Prewett with being his secret keeper, if the need arose, but even after everything, his gut refused to believe he’d be betrayed. Not like that. If push came to shove, Gids would’ve found another way. He was smarter than that. Better than that. “Most ways of tracking require magic. Which would require illegal wands. Which… are possible to get but not easy.” He frowned, held the bottle out to her again. “But if we did get our hands on them, did find folks worth taking in… well. Could always make them take The Vow.” "I'm gonna need one anyway," Marlene groaned, flopping backwards onto her bed. "I can't bloody do shit with this thing except fix'm a drink and poke someone in the eyeball with it maybe." Restricting magic was all well and good (except it WASN'T) until a group of murderers broke out of prison, and you had no way to defend yourself if they attacked. Not even the excessive amount of alcohol could make that seem okay. "We could try. I think it'd be a hard sell. I mean, I'd do it. I'm not sure how many other people would." “I’ll look into it, for you,” he said, nodding. There was a fair bit he could get away with, as an Auror, but pushing too much would get him caught, eventually, and then he’d be in Azkaban with all the dark wizards he’d put there over the years. Less than ideal. New wands would be a better idea. “You say that like we’re going to give them a choice,” Benjy responded flatly. All hint of the smile was gone, now, as he felt himself building momentum. “We can’t play this like the old days. They play hard ball, we’ve got to play back. We take our potentials aside, we tell them the score, we tell them the plan, and in the end they get a choice. Either they make the vow, or we obliviate them and they get to walk away, truly no wiser for it. It’s the only way.” Marlene sat back up again slowly, trying to make sense of everything Benjy was saying despite her cloudy haze of alcohol. It made sense. It really did. If everyone in the Order had taken the Vow in the first place, a lot less of them would be dead. Or, at least, the ones that were missing would've had an easier time dying. Try to betray the Order, and it's like you'd managed to swallow the cyanide pill you weren't able to rescue from your pocket. It seemed harsh, and intense, but that's who they needed to be now. There wasn't room for anything else anymore. "That seems fair. If they refuse, we don't need them. We need people willing to do whatever it takes." “It’s better than fair,” Benjy said, all but jumping to his feet, pacing unsteadily. “It’s right. Betray your friends, die before you can even get through the act. Sell us out, and die for it. We’ll make it so they can’t recruit without us, either. Everyone comes through us, no weak links. No Blacks tagging along to the Potter party. No dead weight like that Pettigrew kid.” He nodded, turning to her. “We can put together a team that can do the job that needs doing, or at least support us along the way. If they aren’t willing to cast the curse themselves, they’ve got to bring something damn good to the table. This isn’t the minor league, anymore. We need to be the best of the best.” "It's right," Marlene nodded in agreement. "Even if it means that it ends up just being us, at least we'll know before it's too late." No meetings getting invaded because someone let the coordinates slip, no information getting leaked to people who would use it to always stay one step ahead. Knowing was half the battle. "But there's people out there who're seeing what's going on. They'll want to help. People get it. They just weren't all in the Old Order, and that's where we ended up fucked before we started." “Right,” Benjy replied. “We’ll get new blood. And some of the good blood from the old set. We won’t be the Order, we’ll be something new, something better, something that fights fire with fire.” He clenched his fists, turned to the wall, the network of photos and articles and string. The Longbottoms waved from their picture. Caradoc sat with in a grin in his. Meadowes and Podmore, before they vanished, had their lives ahead of them. The Potters held their child, at ease, and the Bones family laughed at a joke Benjy couldn’t hear. They were all happy. They were all wronged. They all needed to be avenged. “Last time, we were trying to stop them,” he whispered, turning back to face Marlene. “We were playing to break even. This time, we’ll play to win.” "This time we don't play," Marlene added. "We just win." Because if they didn't, Marlene doubted either of them would see the other side of things. She had a feeling that neither of them planned on it anyway. |