Out of The Frying Pan

It's hard not to feel like they're abandoning the children as they plod their way south of Colter, despite not knowing where they are. Leanna had claimed more than once that they would never find them if they didn't do precisely as she said, and it's the only statement to leave her mouth that Mia believes in, implicitly.

The mountains in Ambarino are littered with abandoned settlements, tucked away in snowy dells, cocooned in ice and perched on the edge of frozen lakes, any her daughter could be stashed away in any one of them.

Of course, that was assuming they were even in the same state. It was just as likely that Leanna had them spirited somewhere far away and beyond their reach. Maybe they were huddled in an old cabin in the deserts of New Austin, or perhaps cowering in one of Kilgrave's old hideouts in West Elizabeth. For all Mia knew, they had been stashed on a boat sailing towards Guarma, and they would never see them again.

The landscape changes with every mile that they put behind them, the frost and snow of the Grizzlies becoming the arid plains of the Heartlands, and eventually transitioning into the dense forest and mountainous terrain of Roanoake Ridge. Leon takes the lead, offering up his old childhood home as a safe haven to spend the night, a stone's throw outside of a trading post called Van Horn.

Her speckled Criollo trots languidly next to Jake's old mount, head hung low and his mane in his eyes like he understands the hopelessness of the situation they're all in. There's no skirting around the truth or painting the outcome in a prettier light, because even if they pull off the train heist without a hitch, Leanna will hold up to her end of the bargain.

They'll get their kids back, but at the cost of Jake's life.

Three years ago, she spent a night with him in a derelict hotel room on the outskirts of Saint Denis. They planned Alexander's murder down to the most minute of details, and as his blood spread across the marble floors of the mayor's mansion, she locked eyes with Jake from across the room, believing that she would never see him again.

She'd coped with the loss as best as she could, but things were different this time. She wasn't just losing an old friend -- she was losing the father of her child and the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

Reaching across the gap between their horses, she lays her hand over top of his. Glassy blue eyes threaten tears, but she refuses to let them fall.

Curling his fingers around hers, he presses his lips her knuckles.

"Not much further from here," Leon announces from the head of the convoy. They reach a fork in the path and he bears left. "Ain't a palace but it'll do right by us for a night."

A handful of days ago, as they'd crossed from the chill of the Grizzlies to the shadowy sanctuary of the Cumberland Forest, Ripley had told Jake that she hated him. It had been a mumbled hiss of a thing but the words had been unmistakable. They had sat with him ever since, and he'd done the best he could to keep his distance from the girl while navigating their course and keeping them on track.

It was as much for him as it was for her, if he wanted to focus and get them through the coming days. Do what had to be done to get his daughter back in to her Mothers arms, so at least they stood some chance at a life.

As they rode toward the run down shipping town of Van Horn, the air became almost stifling. A mixture of humidity and the smell of nearby marsh land unmistakable. It had been many, many years since Jake had last been this far East. So long in fact, he could barely remember what the place looked like, he was sure it hadn't smelled as rancid the last time.

Time did that to things. Ate away and rotted from the inside out.

He's pondering the end of everything as Leon hollers from the front of the pack that they were coming up on his old home. A place they could rest their heads for an evening. He isn't sure what he's expecting as they navigate overgrown trails on a path Leon evidently knew well, but it seemed like a joyless place.

"I didn't know Leon even had any family." Mia murmurs thoughtfully, still plodding along at his side.

Jake's brow hitches and he ponders. "He mentioned his father a few times. Apparently he was some kinda.. mad scientist. Sent to jail because of the things he was brewin' up in his lab."

Mia wrinkles her nose. "Like what?"

"Who knows." He shrugs. "Said he was in to experimentin' on things. Animals. People I guess, which is what landed him in the law's sights."

"Jesus." Muttering, she puffs a strand of her red hair that had escaped it's knot away from her eyes.

"He ain't told me much more than that. Other than the man is the reason Valerie is..." he pauses, searching for the words. Mia fills in the blanks.

"The way she is."

Jake lets out a small laugh, nodding. "Yeah, I guess."

"Wonder how he got out unscathed, then?"

Grimacing, he switches his reins from one hand to the other. "Father never wanted a girl, I think. So she bore the brunt of his madness after their Mother died."

Mia looks across at him aghast, it almost makes him feel guilty for being so blunt. "Thats awful!" She declares.

Jake just nods. "Some men ain't worth the skin they're usin'."

They agree on that as their horses reach the brow of a hill. Then, as the sun descends low in the sky and turns everything to gold, the house Leon spoke of comes in to view.

It seems to give everybody pause, a silence befalling their entire convoy as they ride toward what looked like the picture perfect description of a haunted house from a horror novel. With boarded up doors and windows, broken glass strewn and rot eating the paint away from it's once grand exterior. At some point, it had been an expensive, coveted home. But the miserable secrets it held within it's walls did nothing but cause decay.

Ugliness on the inside always showed through in the end.

"Yikes!" Ripley exclaims, far too loudly toward the rear of the ride. At the front of it, Leon hears her and bristles a little.

"We can always camp in the damn swamp, if you prefer." He calls over his shoulder toward her.

"Might smell better." Ripley quips, only for Faith to glance across to her from her lumbering mount and give the tiniest shake of her head.

Silence.

They hitch their horses where they can around the building, giving them enough room to graze and replenish their energies.

"There a creek around here?" Jake asks Leon as they gaze up at the house.

Thinking, Leon gives a small shake of his head. "Not for a few more miles. But we had runnin' water inside." He gestures. "House sits over a well, should still be good. Can get the horses a drink. Fill a few old tubs."

Agreeing, Jake returns to Yasha and takes the saddle and saddlebags from the aging mare. She puffs softly against his hair and he feeds her a couple of apples before rubbing down her legs. When he retired her, her joints had already been giving her trouble. He'd stopped as many times as he could on the way here to have her stand in the cool, flowing water of every river they passed.

"She's a dear, sweet thing." Mia announces her presence, stopping beside Yasha's head and petting her.

Jake looks up to her with a smile as he runs the brush over Yasha's hind leg. "still knock your teeth out though." He chuckles.

Mia smiles, remembering the horses hayday. She'd been as much a warrior as Jake.

To the side, a cracking, splintering sound reaches their ears. Looking across they see Leon and one of Leanna's men using a crowbar to pry boards from the door.

Jake gets to his feet. "Guess we check out this house of horrors, then?"

The crowbar makes quick work of the rotting wooden boards sealing up the front door, the rusted metal bar prying it away from the siding of the old house in an explosion of dust and splinters. Leon and Leanna's men cough and wave their hands in front of their faces to clear the air, squinting into the dark maw of the old house as the door swings open on loose hinges.

Someone produces a lantern and passes it up the line of people until it reaches Leon. He lights it, and bathed in a radius of flickering orange, he plunges into the darkness. One by one, the rest of the convoy filters in behind him.

Mia expects the inside to match the outside -- cobwebs as far as the eye can see, ransacked by thieves and infested with vermin. She's right about the cobwebs and the peeling damask wallpaper faded from the sun, but little else. The living room is still arranged exactly how the senior Valentine had left it before his arrest, not a book on the shelves out of place, not a single sign that anything had been tampered with.

Recalling what Jake told her about Leon and Valerie's upbringing, she supposes it makes sense that the people of Van Horn would give the old manor a wide berth. With a reputation for macabre horrors of Mary Shelley proportions, she would have steered clear of the place, too.

"Lay your heads wherever suits you," Leon announces, shrugging off the saddlebags draped over his shoulder. "There's plenty of space without worryin' about trippin' over folk. Just stay away of the room at the top of the landing."

Ripley's ears prick, and her attention flicks from an ornate globe next to the mantel to the second floor. "Why? What's in there?"

The look Leon flashes her is nothing short of a warning. "It don't matter what's in there. Just stay out."

"Why?"

Valerie looks visibly uncomfortable, trading her weight between her feet.

He grits his teeth with frustration, and Isabella steps in on his behalf. "You can abide by his rules, or you can sleep outside, Ripley. It's your choice."

Mumbling something under her breath, Ripley nudges a dusty ornament on the dresser beside her with her elbow and avoids Isabella's sisterly ultimatum.

As Leanna's men make themselves comfortable in what had once been a plush living room, Leon glances upstairs and then toward to Jake as he and Mia enter the musty smelling house last.

"If you two want some privacy, there's a guest room on the second floor." He offers it quietly, the undertones reverberating through all of their little family gathered in the dark and rotting hallway.

Jake blinks, saddlebags thrown over his shoulders and guns clutched in either hand. "You sure?" he asks, frowning a fraction.

"Sure." Leon nods. "You two should.. y'know. Have some peace for the night."

Being as it was likely one of his last. That was what he meant, after all. It sinks like a stone between all of them and beside him, Mia curls her hand around Jake's arm. He draws a breath, dipping his head in a small nod and gesturing. "Well then, lead the way boss."

The collective intake of breath between all of them is audible and Leon motions toward the creaky looking wooden staircase. Leading the way, the others trail up behind him as he cautions them near to the top step. One of them had always been old and on it's last legs, the last thing they needed was an injury due to someone putting a foot through the wood. Each of them skip it and end up on the landing hallway.

"End of the hall." Leon motions to Jake again and they step aside, letting him through. Jake and Mia pass with another nod of thanks. "Dunno what state it'll be in, maid ain't been round in a while."

There's a flutter of laughter at the feeble joke, but it was something.

Letting themselves in, Jake and Mia find boarded up windows over mercifully solid glass, affording them some warmth if they lit a few of the candles strewn around the floor now. Likely knocked down by squirrels and rats and anything else that had scuttled it's way in the years since the locals decided the place was cursed beyond salvation.

Jake sets the saddlebags and guns down on a decrepit old rocking chair and Mia nudges the creaky bed, rickety, it's metal frame creaking and rusted. The sheets and mattress sporting a thin layer of cobwebs and dust.

"Nothing a good shake won't cure." Mia smiles.

"What's that room?" Ripley gestures to the center door of the three that lined the hallway, while leaning against the forbidden door at the top of the stairs.

"Parents room." Leon mutters, starting toward the last of the doors that led in to what had been his old room. "You girls can have it, share it with Yuliy."

Valerie beams a smile at her friend, who stood timidly behind her peering out from underneath his cap. She grabs his hand, going to lead him toward a room that had once been forbidden to her.

"Wait, so where'd Valerie sleep?" Ripley asks, as always the elephant in the room.

If it was possible for Valerie to pale more than she already was, she does. Blinking and looking to her brother for help. Leon clears his throat as he puts his hand on the handle in to his old room. "Don't worry about it, okay. Just.. settle in and we'll see if the kitchen still function's. Feed everyone."

Ripley nods, then boldly turns and opens the door she'd been told not to. "It was this one wasn't i..."

"Ripley!" Isabella scolds, but it's all too late.

The youngster stops in her tracks and draws in a sharp breath, confronted by a beast straight out of a horror movie and a smell that hit their nostrils like rotting flesh and rubbing alcohol. It's stomach turning.

Gritting his teeth, Leon dumps his things on the floor and stalks over to her as she hesitantly steps inside.

"So much for mystery," he grumbles under his breath, reaching for the knob with the intention of slamming the door shut in Ripley's face. As he lays his hand on the dull brass, however, he sighs in defeat, sapped of the energy it would require to keep playing ringleader.

The despicable room is just as his father left it. His ghastly menagerie of fauna sits upon shelves or mounted to walls, incongruous combinations of limbs and wings and antlers sewn together, born from the most grotesque fever dream.

The head of a badger sits perched on the body of a golden eagle; a badger carcass sports the skull of a small gator, mouth agape and threatening rows of sharp teeth. There's half a salmon mounted near the ceiling, it's lower extremities replaced with that of a deer; multiple cardinals stitched together like Mother Nature had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

At the far end of the room, his magnum opus hangs suspended from the ceiling, a veritable beast that bears the head of a wild boar and the curled horns of a ram. Its torso once belonged to a grizzly, the limbs of a cougar and an alligator protruding from its ribs like cancerous growths. The wings of a vulture sprout from its shoulder blades, and the horns from an unfortunate proghorn jut from its knees.

Peering at the monstrosity from over Jake's shoulder, Mia's brain tries to make heads or tails of what she's looking at, and fails.

She tugs on the back of his jacket, urging him in the direction of their room for the night. "I don't want to look at that thing for another second," she murmurs.

Behind her, Valerie keeps her gaze trained on the floor, her hand next to her face to shield her eyes from the nightmares of her childhood. Yuliy grips her by the shoulders and steers her into her parents' old room, latching the door behind them.

Ripley, curiously, is nowhere to be seen.

Isabella sidles up next to Leon and tentatively gazes around the lab. Her jaw unhinges as she takes it all in, but no sound comes out.

He gnaws on the inside of his cheek, avoiding her gaze. "I never wanted to see this room again," he mutters, his fingers flexing around the doorknob. "Sure as hell didn't want Valerie to see it, neither."

Gently prying his hand away, Isabella closes the door for him. "You told me about the things your father did," she says, choosing her words carefully. "But I never thought that--"

"He was a literal monster?" he finishes for her.

Her silence answers his question for her.

Hanging his head, he plucks off his hat and scrubs his palm over his face. "First girlfriend I ever had, she got one glimpse at this room and hightailed it. Saw her in town from time to time, but she could never bring herself to look at me after that."

Turning towards Isabella, peering at her through strands of his hair, he swallows. "Think less of me for this?"

"Leon..."

Her brows knit together with sympathy, and she lays a palm on the side of his face. Lifting herself on her toes to match his height, she brushes a kiss over his lips. "It'll take a lot more than this to scare me off," she whispers. "You're not your father."

They stay there like that for a few moments, as if standing guard or barricading the door, so that the bad memories contained inside the lab would have to go through them to get to Valerie. They trade I love yous and one last kiss before they part.

"I oughta go check on my sister," he says, hitching his thumb over his shoulder. "Make sure she's okay."

Isabella bows her head in a nod. "Okay. I'll find out where Ripley's hiding."

In the guest room, Jake busies himself by stacking his arsenal of weapons against the wall, slinging his saddlebags over the back of a bergère armchair that had probably cost a pretty penny when it was new. Now it's withering like everything else in the old house, dulled by time and dust.

Behind him, Mia tugs the blanket off the bed and reflexively turns to the window to shake it clean, belatedly realizing the glass is boarded over. Surveying her surroundings, she shrugs and shakes it out onto the splintered wooden floor, instead.

She puts the bedding back into place, meticulously tucking the corners of the sheets beneath the mattress and decoratively folding back the quilted eiderdown. Dusting off her hands, she neatly arranges the pillows in her best attempt to transform the dim guest room into a luxury suite on par with the ones in Saint Denis.

"I wonder," she ponders aloud, "if there's a broom downstairs I could use to spruce up the place a smidge." Before she can locate Leon and ask, she notices that the picture frame on the wall is crooked, and she nudges the corner with her finger to straighten it.

"Mia..." Jake steps up behind her, gently taking her by the arm. "What're you doin'?"

"Just because it ain't a mansion, don't mean we oughta treat the place like a barn," she quips, flashing him a lopsided smile over her shoulder. The surface of the dresser is caked in dust, much like everything else, so she sweeps the underside of her forearm across it to clean it off.

"We're only stayin' the one night," he points out, reluctantly letting her go. "Place is gonna go right back to rotting the second we leave."

"Yes, and 'til then, why not make the most of it?"

Jake can't help but notice that she hasn't looked him in the eye for more than a fraction of a second since they arrived.

"Mia." He tries again, a little more firmly this time. "Look at me."

"Hmm?" She spares the briefest glance in his general direction, and goes right back to fiddling with a loose knob on the bedside table.

"Please?"

Tension creeps into her shoulders like frost across a windowpane. When she turns around, there are tears in her eyes.

The look on her face hits him like a punch to the stomach. He crosses the room in three strides and gathers her up in his arms.

"It's okay," he whispers against her ear, stroking his fingers through her hair. "You don't have to pretend like everything's all right."

With those words of permission, the walls she'd built up around herself to protect from the inevitable come crumbling down. All he can do is hold her and hold on to his own resolve - that this was for the best, that his sins had finally come to collect and he'd look it in the eye without flinching.. for them.

"I wish there was another way." Mia manages after a few minutes of unabashed sobbing.

"Me too." He murmurs against the top of her head, lips pressed to her hair. "But you're gonna be alright. The others.. they're gonna take care of you. You and Elizabeth. You stick with em and get some place safe, raise our little girl."

She whimpers and he finally releases her, stepping back a fraction to gently take her shoulders and look in to her eyes. "Live. For me."

She curls her fingers in to the leather of his vest like she was holding on to him, a life raft in a stormy sea. "If we even get through this." She mumbles, sounding defeated by her own outpouring of emotion.

The tiniest smirk of quiet confidence drifts across Jake's face. "Are you kiddin' me? Who's leadin' this thing?"

She eyes him and he bumps her chin carefully with the back of his knuckle.

"Have a little faith, woman." He winks and finally makes her laugh. It's a small thing but it's something.

There's a quiet knock at their door as he gathers her up in another hug, and Isabella pokes her head around with a guilty look on her face.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting." She says quietly.

Jake looks to her over Mia's head, offering her a smile.

"Leon's dustin' off the stove, it still works. All we got is cans of beans and bread but plenty of it if you're hungry." Isabella explains.

Nodding, Jake looks down to Mia. "Whatcha think? Spend the night fartin' together?"

It makes both women laugh and Mia shove him slightly. "Disgustin' man." She scolds.

"Least it'll warm up the house." He reasons.

Both Isabella and Mia make sounds of disgust, but it's lighthearted. She takes his hand and they follow Isabella downstairs, finding the others and the six of Leanna's men gathered around the kitchen and dining room while Leon heated a large pot of beans with bits of sausage or something in. Yuliy slices bread and doles out dishes as Leon fills them.

Somehow, it seems oddly familial. Even Leanna's men treating them all like friends rather than captives. They sit around a stoked fire and eat and plot the morning to come. Who would be doing what and going where.

Its a familiar feeling to Jake. So many robberies planned in his lifetime. So many 'night before's. A strange electricity to it all, the adrenaline and apprehension and even a little excitement.

One of Leanna's men - a large, stocky brute of a man with a strong Texas accent named Hank is the first to fart and dissolve the youngsters in their group in to giggles.

Breaks the tension, at least a tiny bit.