Lanny Zelkovii

Will you, walk me
To the edge again
Shaking, lonely, and I am drinking again
Woke up tonight and no one's here with me
I'm giving in to you

Still recovering from severely damaged muscles, tendons, and an unfortunate bought of infection following the attack several weeks back, James had been rather restricted in his dealings with the gang. There was no doubt that he was still the de facto leader, and regularly kept in contact with his members via phone messages, but for a while at least, his casts would keep him from strolling about town with any ease.

When Lanny failed to return any of his elder brother's phone calls in the last five hours, a frustrated James had finally contacted Cassidy to hunt down his wayward brethren and bring him back to safety.

Having brought the end of their last vehicle about by planting it fender-first into a light pole during one of his many binges, Lanny had settled for another vehicle. Driving an old, rough-and-tumble Bronco down the hazardous roadway, Lanny bounced along the the jarring ruts until he came across a set of four markers near the side of the road. Already glossy-eyed and unstable in his movements, he opened the door and stepped out, along by two beer bottles that had miraculously managed not to get wedged under the break pedal during his bumpy drive.

Accompanied by a half-empty bottle of Black Velvet, Lanny marched himself in a sway line towards the four decorated crosses and stood tipsily as he put the bottle to his mouth and downed a throat-burning swig of the dark drink.

Caught up, in life
Losing all my friends
Family has tried, to heal all my addictions
Tragic it seems, to be alone again
I'm giving in ... to you.

Cassidy

I don't know what to say,
I only know it hurts
To see my only friend
Slowly fade away...

Cassidy had been laying relatively low recently, letting Ben do his work and making a little money on the side in her somewhat questionable profession. But when she'd received a call from James, in reference to finding his errant sibling, Cassidy had responded dutifully... but her true reason was slightly more personal. She already knew that the death of the elder Savicho brother had done a number on the unstable young man's emotions, and could understand the kind of pain that made Lanny this way. But she didn't yet know, having been slightly out of touch with the main line of gang news, that Carl had been killed...

But as she pulled up the road in Johann's silver truck a few minutes behind the younger Zelkovi and parked it behind the scrap-metal Bronco, she was her thoroughly composed self. Today, her ensemble was a rich, chocolately brown one, with a scoop-collared, cap-sleeved silken shirt that just barely covered the top of the matching skirt, which was at once light as air and soft, swirling around the pretty legs that were showed to advantage by a burnished bronze pair of high-heeled sandals. She hadn't troubled to straighten her hair this morning, and so it fell about her shoulders and down to the waist in long, softly-curling layers which framed her face beautifully. She preferred her hair straight, as it was less bothersome and more functional, but what she didn't realize was that the curls made her infinitely more attractive.

She parked the truck and got out, and was not surprised to see Lanny nursing an already half-drunken bottle of what both the label and the smell told her was Black Velvet. She was behind him still, feeling something twist in her chest as he swayed before the four little crosses on the side of the road, but it wasn't for any sorrow over the loss of either Savicho. They had been valuable members of the gang, yes, but Cassidy had never been one to have a personal attachment with anybody other than Johann. Well... with one exception... but she knew well enough that he'd been hurt very badly when Carl's older brother had been killed, even if she didn't yet know about the younger brother's death. His visits here were so well known to her that this had been only the second place on her list of places to check, with the first being the night club.

She stood silent behind him for several seconds, watching him get progressively more inebriated in an attempt to drown the pain, until finally she spoke up softly, and amazingly, considering it was Cassidy, the queen of all manipulative wenches, almost gently. "Lanny..."

Lanny Zelkovii

The names on the crosses were well beyond his capacity to read at this point, though he knew precisely which one was which, and spent a fair amount of time turning his impaired gaze from one to the other. The bottle was upended for the umpteenth time, promising to ruin the better half of the next day for Lanny when he inevitably had to deal with one hell of a hangover in the morning. But that didn't matter now; the thought of the future didn't touch upon his intoxicated mind while the sharp memories of his family roiled so freshly there. They were all in the past, and that's where he let his mind travel now, seeking in vain to see them again, if only through painful memories of the times they shared together. And of the times they didn't.

Summer winds howled loudly through the wild, infinitely spooky woodlands, sending the twisting, gnarled grape vines and the black-thorned briars to dance about from their branch perches, and the leaves to flicker and flap against each other in a monotonous tone. Drowned out by alcohol and these noises alike, Lanny never once heard Cassidy, or knew of her presence until she spoke his name. He'd started at first, clumsily reaching for his holster, before the familiarity of her voice registered in his brain and he figured out just who was there.

"Cass? What're you doin' 'ere?" The words were jumbled and slow, rather than the assured, charming, and generally kindly things they normally were.

Cassidy

"You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn right now, Lanny; don't bother. When you're drunk, you're a worse shot than me, and that's saying something." Cassidy attempted to lighten the somewhat dreary mood with this, and quirked a half-smirk she didn't feel, as if she were amused over his drunkenness, rather than concerned and saddened.

But his clumsy question was easier to answer, and so she gladly took that opportunity to get onto a less personal subject. "Orders," she answered him simply, hefting her cell phone slightly to indicate how she'd gotten the information, and then elaborating, "James got itchy britches when you didn't return his calls, so he sent me to fetch you."

Lanny Zelkovii

Despite his mood, the teen couldn't help but offer a ghost of a grinning smile to both her comments and just the fact that she was here. For a spare moment of time, the emotional pain flitted to a distant place in his conscious, "Did 'e, now?" A little nonchalant shrug, "Didn' hear the phone." Of course, it was more like 'didn't care to find it when it rang'. "You know-" His words were in a thick drawl, while his usually complimenting blue eyes were bloodshot and glazed into a stupor, "-you're ver' pretty tonight. Now, now, I'm jus' saying;" He waved a hand up and furrowed his brows, as if trying to stop what he thought would be a refute on her part, or a message taken the wrong way. Horribly inebriated as he was, and potentially violent and unthinking as the drink could lead him, he was still a gentleman, "Jus' saying, you look good t'night."

Now and then, in times past, he might get caught staring at the lady, but this was one of his few outwardly spoken suggestions that he felt something for her. But just as quick as he had jumped to that topic, his thoughtfully furrowed brows hunched further together to draw his face into a more serious look. He turned part way, staggering a little and nearly falling before keeping his balance. Half turned away from Cassidy, the teen became silent for a few long moments, taking a swig now and then as his wavering sights turned back to the flower-laden markers clustered so neatly in front of a giant oak tree.

Cassidy

She knew well enough that his claim about not hearing the phone was a lie, not only because she could read it in him, but because she knew that when he got on a real binge, he usually didn't want Jame's well-meaning attempts to look after him. There were times when she understood that Lanny just wanted to be allowed to be depressed for a while. It was something she'd always respected him in, not following after him when she knew he was on a mission to drink himself into a stupor. It was only because she had orders that she'd come this time... she could understand the need to be allowed to be depressed if he wanted to.

His compliment was unexpected, for though despite his gang involvement, Lanny was actually a well-mannered young man, he wasn't generally a complimenting-type, particularly on her, as she was one of the rougher, harder members of the gang to get close to, and was liable to brush off any comments on her behavior or appearance. Low self-esteem, in spite of her forward confidence and control, was only one of a host of her problems, and getting the compliment from him when he was so obviously mentally unstable was something that twisted her heart. But not a hint showed on her face as she answered him calmly, "Thanks...but I really didn't put any effort in today. James was definite enough about me coming to get you that I didn't think it would be wise to take the time to change before I came." Neatly as ever, she brought the topic back to the reason she'd come, and then queried softly, "Come on, Lanny... what're you doin' out here by yourself in the dead middle of the night and drunk as stink? You haven't been out here in a couple of months... why the sudden change?" The tiny Italian accent was threading lightly through her words, giving them a small lilt.

Lanny Zelkovii

Staring unblinkingly forward, the man nodded his head vaguely toward the markers, and extended his drink-holding hand forward for extra emphasis, "Jus' thinkin', 'bout them." The arm lowered with a heavy swing, sending a bit of the ember drink splashing out the top and splattering Lanny's jeans with the stench of it. "Carl 'n Conner..." Dark shadows danced over his face as his expression twisted into something born of emotional pain, while the sickly yellow glow of a nearby light post accented his features and gave him a truly frightening look, "...Carl wanted nothin' more than ta fin' his brother's killer. We should'a acted sooner, Cass. Now we lost 'em both." His fists clenched tight over the neck of the bottle, turning his tanned knuckles a ghostly white with the pressure. "I swear, I'll make those sons'a bitches pay for this."

Cassidy

She hadn't noticed, with her attention on Lanny, that a fourth marker had been added to the collection, but his words soon revealed the identity of the fourth cross, as her eyes searched among the names to find Carl. True, she hadn't really been attached to their weapons officer, but he had always wordlessly respected her choice to go without the larger firearms, and without bringing up her lack of shooting ability, which he knew about quite well, as the first time he'd attempted to equip her, she'd very nearly shot him by mistake. But he'd never teased her about it, as he could well have. So she respected him, in her own way. But what she did know was, in the absence of Conner, Lanny had attached himself to Carl, as if to protect the younger sibling from a similar fate.

So his words bit into her as no carefully-planned attack of Ben's had yet been able to do, and pulled some of the resistance out of her. Up until now, she'd been standing by her car, watching him from the distance, but seeing his pain lit harshly by the lamp, she had to move forward, a task which she performed carefully, considering her high heels and the surface of the unpaved road. It took her a moment, but she pulled up beside him, and lay a hand softly on his arm. But that was the only gentleness in her otherwise unemotional actions. "Lanny, whatever it is you're trying to forget by getting yourself wasted, it's obviously not working. Now come on, I've got a job to do. My instructions are to see to it that you get home in one piece, and as soon as possible."

Lanny Zelkovii

Half-numbed by the drink, both emotionally and physically, Lanny didn't make any noticeable reaction to Cassidy's contact. He was still staring at the crosses, adorned with nick-knacks and flowers, in a complimenting shades of purple, blue, white, and silver. "I'm gonna catch them, sooner 'r later." The teen went on, blinking his eyes once slowly, and trying to refocus on the images that simply would not focus to his hampered sights, "You c'n tell James ta meet me here, if 'e wants ta check up on me." Pointedly not adding comment to her first words, he spoke purely on his current intentions, and made his actions clear by not turning or budging from his spot, "Th' Akatsukis did this." Another dark statement was spat out like a vile thing, "We're goin' after them."

Cassidy

She did not permit herself the exasperated sigh that wanted to form, telling herself that this would get her nowhere but in trouble. So instead, she answered his defiance. "That's not my assignment, Lanny. My orders are to bring you back, straight and simple. He was most insistent. Vulgar, really." She didn't detail the exact words James had used to vent his frustration with his brother, but Lanny kne whim well enough to come up with a few ideas, even in his state.

But when his face hardened and he informed her that they were going to seek out the Akatsuki, she spoke calmly. "Not quite so much heave-ho, please. Because if I'm to call your brother and tell him that you're not coming home tonight, I damn well better have a good reason. And that reason isn't 'Lanny and I are going after the Akatsuki with a couple pointy sticks and a gun that neither one of us can shoot.'" Of course, she had her daggers on her, much in the usual places, but she knew that even so, she and a drunken Lanny would be amusing pick-offs for the archery-prone gang.

Lanny Zelkovii

Lanny snorted in amusement, easily picturing the descriptive words that his brother may have used in the message. Still, his facade didn't relent to the humor, with not so much as a smirk to lift the tightly drawn corners of his mouth. He was in a mood, and a dangerous one at that.

"Who's James ta tell me what I c'n do? 'm not a damned kid." Honestly, he knew full well that James was just protective of him, and that's the only reason he continued to send people out to retrieve him from his drinking binges if he stayed out too long. Another part of the teen realized that, deep down, he was almost looking for trouble by coming out here in the late night hours, secretly hoping he'd cross paths with his family's murderer, and not really caring whether it ended good or bad for him. "You tell 'im, tell 'im we got business to take care of."

Cassidy

When her more lighthearted comments failed to prevail over his nasty mood, her voice rang out again, covering what wanted to be concern with anger. "Stop it, Lanny! Just stop. With the shape you're in, I'm not taking you anywhere but home. We can stand out here as long as you want, but at the end of it all, the only place I'm gonna take you is home. And don't think about trying to hop into your truck... I've got the keys." In his infinitely distracted condition, it had been a simple thing for her experienced thief's hands to palm the keys she finagled gently out of his pocket, and they were now tucked down into her bra with her primary dagger. But she was still covering her distress with anger. "I don't know why you're out here trying to get yourself killed, Lanny... but if you'd take just one second to look around you'd realize-" She cut her words off there, and her hand fell from his arm as she turned her back on him and paced a few steps away from him.

Lanny Zelkovii

Pressed far enough, he'd have been very likely to jump in his Bronco and take off driving somewhere else to blow off some steam, but he never suspected that she'd taken his keys. Her tone, more than her words, got him turning around to look at her full on, trying in his drunken stupor to figure out how he'd talk Cassidy out of complying to his brother's wishes. But as soon as she mentioned the truck, his hand patted instinctively at his pocket, and felt it lacking in the usual lump where his keys would have been. "Hey! Cassidy, you'd better give 'em back..." His grew into an ugly scowl, but there was no threat added to his heated words. And there didn't need to be; he knew as well as everyone else in the gang that he wouldn't turn his physical aggression out on a girl, especially one that was a member of their gang, and one that he was secretively fond of. "I c'n drive fine. I've done it a million times before."

His defense of his driving skills, which could easily be countered considering what he'd done to their last vehicle, was dropped when his fuzzy mind caught up with where Cassidy had trailed off in her words and abruptly walked away. "Cass, wait, wait up!" Stumbling forward and half tripping over his own feet, Lanny cursed loudly when he dropped his near-empty drink with a shatter of glass. "Realize what?"

Cassidy

Her own strategy had just backfired on her, something that had never happened to Cassidy in all her years. To avoid breaking into tears for what watching Lanny do this to himself was doing to her, she'd side-channeled it into anger, a favorite strategy that she shared with Ben. But that had unexpectedly allowed her temper to run free, and she had almost said something that couldn't be excused.

But she'd stopped herself just in time, as she now stopped as she heard Lanny's footsteps behind her, and she had just enough control and regained composure to pick up the pieces of her badly faltered statement. "Realize that maybe James understands the problem more than you think he does, and that he's trying to keep you from getting hurt. After all, you're his brother. They say that counts for something, though I wouldn't know." She said this all so evenly, in her everyday sort of voice, though a hint of that light Italian was still showing through the softened words. There wasn't even resent ment in there, s might have been suggested by her last words, which reminded that she was an only child, and wouldn't know what a sibling relationship was like.

Lanny Zelkovii

This time, it was Lanny that raised a hand and put it firmly on her shoulder, his face looking as stern and serious as his dilapidated condition could allow for. He completely missed where the topic could have gone too, and more than easily followed the edited response and forged in his mind that she was troubled about something. "If you wan' a brother, I c'n be a brother for you." Bypassing absolutely everything that had been said just moments before, and completely derailing for a few minutes from the depressing memories of his late kin that haunted him so regularly, Lanny began to talk on a rather random subject. It was one of his peculiar habits he had one he was as smashed as he was now - he could go from rageful, to depressed, to overly concerned and emotional about those close to him, "Or, whatever you want." Then, realizing what he'd said and potentially implied, Lanny blinked stupidly and shook his head, "I mean... you know wha' I mean." Trailing away from that awkward blunder, the teen shoved his hand into his pocket and stared banefully at his vehicle, "I can' jus' leave it there. Give me th' keys, and I'll follow you back. Promise, I'll be careful."

Cassidy

There weren't many people who could safely touch one of Cassidy's shoulders. Being a knife-wielder, her shoulders were one of a good conglomeration of trigger spots that caused a reflexive reaction out of her, usually ending up with her opponent being gutted. It was only with someone that she felt completely safe with that this reaction did not occur, and so it was speaking a good deal in silence that though her shoulder tensed briefly under his hold, after a few seconds the muscles relaxed under his touch, and he retained his intestines. She was also infinitely relieved that his plastered brain had picked up on the less awkward end of the conversation, and that soothed her more.

So she spoke softly to him, his reward for his effrots a hand that reached up to lay over his on her shoulder, in the sisterly-like fashion he was offering her access to, and said softly, "Yeah, Lanny... I know what you mean." She was quiet for a second before she turned to face him again, and offered him the smallest of smiles. "You don't honestly think I came out here on my own, do you? Johann's waiting for me, just far enough away to be out of earshot, as low as we've been talking. He'll take the truck, Lanny... I don't want to face James with yet another ruined vehicle."

And that said, she flipped open the cell phone and hit a speed-dial button, waiting for the other end to pick up before saying, "Found him, James. We're headed back that way." She offered him that, waiting for further instructions before she'd dare hang up on the elder Zelkovii.

Lanny Zelkovii

This, at last, perked a bit of a grin on his face. Had it been James or anyone else sent to retrieve him, there might have been a lot of cursing and potentially some flying fists before he could be 'convinced' to come back home. Even though James was no Benjamin, he had enough perception to send Cass out over anybody else.

"Ah, that vehicle was crap anyway." Lanny waved his other hand absently as he said this, dismissing the importance of him crashing into the light pole, "Joan-ahan is 'ere?" As the alcohol continued to catch up to him, his words and thoughts continued to crumble, until he butchered Johann's name something horrible, and even gave a bit of a snicker as an after thought to the strange name he'd conjured up. "Well damn, how c'n I argue tha'?" His temporarily rise in spirits would only be met by a drastic downer soon enough, but at least for the moment being, he was being reasonable and distracted from darker thoughts.

- "Alright. Take him down to the the Cafe, I'll meet you there in fifteen."

Cassidy

Now she managed her usual smile, that seductive smirk that had attracted the interest of Lanny and so many others before him, though she'd never cared for any of them as the expression might have suggested. This evidenced that she had returned to her normal self, that she again was able to pull up her smile, her 'blank face', and move on. So she muttered into the phone, "Copy that," and then hung it up, calling for Johann.

The man slid soundlessly into view, it his never-changing wardrobe of blue jeans, black sneakers, and long-sleeved checked-flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows for the midsummer night's heat. Fishing the keys out of her bra, Cassidy tossed them to the wizened old man, who caught them nimbly and offered both of them a solemn nod before hopping into the Bronco and starting it up.

"Come on then, Lanny... we're both in for a wailing if we're late." That she offered him as she moved toward the silver truck, unlocking her door and getting in and leaning across the seat to unlock the passenger side so he could get in. As soon as he had done so, the truck was revved, and with Johann following them closely, they were making for the Cafe.