Chapter Text
It had been a while since you last remembered the night before. You’d get drunk off your ass, expecting some sort of rush, some sort of feeling. Emptiness would be better than what you felt when you were sober and coherent. You felt the regret raise on the hairs on the back of your neck. The guilt sliding down your face in your sweat. The grief that clung to your every breath. Every waking second was agonizing and you could only try and feel better by drowning yourself in booze and trying to move on with your never-ending search for a firm, an office, or even a gang that would take you.
How you got into this sad state didn't matter anymore- What mattered, was the note that you had in front of your door. Someone must have put it in that old, rickety mail slot no one used anymore. Who did you have that would send mail to you? You were groggy and hungover, and thus a tad cranky. You took a swig of whiskey to ease the throbbing in your head. Ear of the dog, or something like that. You were too disoriented to really care about sayings all that much. You bent down with a grimace and picked it up. You unfolded it and read as follows: ’Need assistance. You know where to find me.’ You rolled your eyes at the scrawled message, the writing was familiar. The signature completely gave it away.
“DeWitt. Always a curt son of a bitch.” You muttered to yourself, running your fingers through your hair. You made haste anyways, washing your face and taking another swig or two of cheap whiskey to quell your headache. You slipped on some half decent clothes, wrapping your chest best you could and throwing on some pants and a button up. As you tucked in your shirt, you thought to yourself about the times you'd had with your closest (and only) friend, Booker.
You had been there for his daughter's birth, a day that had once been joyful quickly turned to mourning as you both had watched the light fade from his wife's eyes and the midwives surround her frantically. There was barely enough time to snip the child's umbilical cord. It had felt desperately wrong, that day, to be the first one that the piercing blue eyes of the baby fell upon. Her father was still sobbing over the lukewarm corpse of her mother in the other room, so you had been the one to play with the baby, tears in your eyes. She had looked looked so much like Annabelle. Annabelle hadn't exactly been your favourite person in the world but- Booker loved her, and she was good for him. She helped both of you to make the decision to withdraw from the Pinkertons. She was someone you admired. And then she was dead. When he had somewhat gathered himself, he took the baby gingerly from your arms, he had announced that her name would be Anna, Anna DeWitt. In honour of the mother she would never know.
You shook these thoughts away to focus on getting your shoes on, and suspenders. You fiddled with metal and finally got the back clipped. For safe measure you stuffed your revolver in the back of your pants, and for even safer measure, your butterfly knife was slipped into your right pocket. Times were trying in New York, nowadays. Never know when you need to shoot some jackass between the eyes. You ruffled your short hair and stuffed the note into your other pocket. You had some catching up to do.