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They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
Robert W. Service
Jackson doesn’t really like Brazil, doesn’t like anywhere that’s south of the equator and provides a nurturing environment for bugs as big as his head actually, but this is where he needs to be, so he’s here.
“Don’t be such a diva,” Stiles had told him, shoving a plane ticket into his hand and shooing him away. “They have great coffee there. And these awesome little chocolate ball things made out of fudge crafted in heaven or something, oh my God, so good – “
“Seriously, Stilinski,” Jackson said, “try and be more of a freak, why don’t you.”
“Just because you subsist on bread and weightlifting,” Stiles muttered mutinously, shuffling his files around like he always did when he was disgruntled.
Jackson thinks about him now, wandering around central Goiânia in the blazing sun. He’s probably sitting at one of the pretentious cafés he likes in Shoreditch, drinking mineral water and absolutely, completely comfortable, the son of a bitch.
“You could at least attempt to not look like a pouting toddler,” Lydia comments lightly, adjusting the patterned shawl around her shoulders with admiration. It’d been a gift from a street vendor that had spent almost fifteen minutes flirting with her in rapid-fire Portuguese; the guy hadn’t even let her attempt to pay for it. Jackson supposes that he should be used to how people throw themselves at her wherever she goes by now, but he just isn’t. “Stiles said this guy is kind of discerning; we don’t want to scare him off because tropical climates give you bitch fits.”
Jackson decides to take the high road on that one. “See anything?” he asks, wishing he’d insisted more firmly on a different meeting place, some place a little less exposed than a goddamn street fair.
“No.” To any passing observer, Lydia looks totally absorbed in a street performer juggling pineapples about twenty yards away, but Jackson can see the coiled tension in her gun arm, the way she’s angled herself toward the crowd, poised to strike. “Not yet.”
“I don’t understand why we need a forger anyway,” Jackson grumbles. “It’s not like this job is any more complicated than all the others we’ve had.”
“Yes, because we’re such seasoned veterans,” Lydia says crisply, rolling her eyes. She has the same look on her face that she does whenever Jackson tries to interrupt her in the lab, that expression that says, what I’m doing is much more important than you, lowly peon. “Three jobs with Stiles, six on our own? And we’ve never had a militarized mark before – “
“Just because this girl’s parents work in dreamshare doesn’t mean she’s militarized.”
“Yes it does,” Lydia replies. “Shut up, I think I see him.”
Jackson follows the line of her gaze across the street, to a muscular, bearded man in a black t-shirt and blue jeans, standing on the curb and surveying the crowd suspiciously.
“Yeah, that’s subtle,” Jackson bitches, but Lydia’s already off, darting through the crowd, heading in the man’s direction purposefully but still casually enough to pretend she isn’t. Jackson curses and heads after her.
The minute Lydia steps foot on the opposite curb, the man is off, turning heel and walking swiftly away from the crowd, toward a cobblestone alleyway. Ahead of him, Lydia turns her head slightly, her shoulders tensing visibly. Pausing in the middle of the street, she pretends to check her watch, waiting for Jackson to catch up.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” she murmurs, and takes off again. Jackson takes a second to admire the curve of her calves, the shine of her hair in the sunlight, before turning and heading in the opposite direction.
His blood starts pumping, the same way it always does when he’s dreaming – or the way it seems to when he’s dreaming, whatever. He loves this part of the job, the actual danger part, when he’s got a gun in his hand and a goal to accomplish. Maybe it makes him a traditionalist, or something, but there’s just something wrong with a death that doesn’t mean anything.
Out here, it still means something. And Jackson’s still a criminal. So sue him.
The man comes out on the other side of the alleyway and heads west, toward Buriti Park. Jackson doesn’t wait to catch a glimpse of Lydia; he just follows.
It’s getting on into late afternoon and the sun is turning everything into burnt gold, with long shadows to duck into. Jackson stays well out of sight, following the man – the forger, rather – to the mouth of the park. Jackson hesitates, but the man doesn’t, just walks inside without a care in the world.
“Fuck,” he mutters, it’s a great place for a clandestine meeting, he guesses, but he doesn’t know what they’re walking into, whether the forger’s got back up inside or what. He wishes he had another gun.
The decision is made for him when he sees Lydia walk in after the man, appearing out of nowhere from behind a parked car on the street. She’s turned the shawl inside out so that the colors are muted, not as bright, and tugged it up over her head to hide her hair. Jackson feels a fond stab of affection – she’s just such a girl, sometimes.
Wherever the man went inside the park, he’s long gone now, though – Jackson circles the damn place three times and there’s no sign. Lydia is still pretending not to know him, sitting on a park bench near the entrance with her hand on her pistol, but eventually even she gives up the ghost.
“We should call Stiles,” she calls across the road to him, voice clipped and irritated. “Tell him his man was a no-show.”
This next part is embarrassing, for Jackson, both personally and professionally. In his defense, he really doesn’t like Brazil.
“Don’t move,” comes a voice, along with the cool, stomach-dropping muzzle of a gun at the back of his neck. Jackson freezes in place and, still thirty yards away, sees Lydia do the same.
“Damn,” Jackson says. He hears a concurring snort from behind him.
“Weapons,” the voice orders. Jackson lifts his hands, debating the wisdom of going for the dagger at his ankle, but the unmistakable sound of the hammer clicking back stops him in place. Lydia’s pale face doesn’t help, either. “You too, girl.”
Jackson obeys, pulling the pistol out of the holster beneath his jacket, holding it out to his side, pointed towards himself. A split second later and it’s gone. He watches Lydia take her gun out too, unloading the cartridge and tossing it aside into the grass.
“Stiles sent you?” the forger asks.
Jackson nods slowly. “That was a decoy, wasn’t it,” he says, just realizing it. “The man at the fair.”
“Obviously,” the man replies, “and you both walked right into it.”
Jackson winces.
“Yes, okay, we’re stupid,” Lydia says, taking a hesitant step forward. “We’re also unarmed now, and we’re here to talk business, not kill each other. You wanna put away the gangster act?”
There’s an annoyed huff of breath, but Jackson feels the gun disappear nonetheless. He releases a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “You’re Whittemore,” the man says, and Jackson turns around to get his first real look – and blanches.
“And you’re Derek Hale,” he says. “Holy shit.”
Hale smirks, a dark twist of his mouth that looks positively feral.
“Were you expecting someone else?” he asks.
Derek Hale, as in extractor, point man and apparently also forger Derek Hale, jack of all trades Derek Hale, who terrorized the minds and bank accounts of corporate Eastern Europe for ten years with his sister Laura. He has a reputation that is amongst the likes of Dominic Cobb and Aurélie Miles, both for his skill and the mysterious fire that killed his sister over a decade ago.
How the hell Stiles Stilinski knows him personally, Jackson doesn’t know. And is a little pissed about, actually.
“We’re old friends,” is all Derek will say, settling into the arm chair in their hotel room with his back to the wall, narrowed eyes fixed calmly on the bolted-shut door. The absurdity of the idea of Derek Hale having old friends is only matched by how uncomfortable he seems with saying the word out loud.
“Stiles has lots of friends,” Lydia says cheerfully, completely unconcerned that there is a notorious, possibly homicidal thief with his boots on top of Jackson’s suitcase. “Are you one of those people he calls ‘friends’ because he doesn’t want us to know he’s sleeping with them, or are you actually his friend?”
Derek gives her an unimpressed look. “He usually only sends me competent people; are you two sleeping with him?”
“No,” Jackson spits, a knee jerk reaction.
Lydia rolls her eyes at him, then turns back to Derek and gives a winning smile. “You caught us on an off day. Jackson doesn’t do well in hotels without turn-down service.”
Jackson huffs, but stays quiet. He’ll only suffer more later if he doesn’t.
“Right,” Derek says slowly, obviously just as unimpressed as he’d been before. “So who’s the mark.”
“Allison Argent,” Lydia says, floating over to the desk and sliding a thin manila file out of her briefcase. “She’s in her third year at Oxford. Her mother is - “
“Victoria Argent,” Derek interrupts, expression a shade darker than it’d been before. “Works for Cobol. Yeah, I know her.”
“Right,” Lydia says, a little hesitant. “Well, our client thinks that she incepted her daughter. That’s why he came to us.”
“Inception?” Derek scoffs. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Where have you been?” Jackson asks, jumping at the chance to get the upper hand. “It’s been done. Twice, actually.”
“I didn’t say it had never been done, I said it was ridiculous,” Derek replies, cutting his eyes over at Jackson narrowly. “Victoria Argent couldn’t incept a toddler if she had Dom Cobb himself backing her up; she’s the most disastrous extractor I’ve ever met. Why do you think she works for Cobol? They don’t give a shit if she leaves her marks brain dead - that’s probably why they hired her.”
Lydia blinks at Derek, eyes a little wider than normal, the only visible sign that this has affected her. “Well, she’s been incepted by somebody,” she says, flipping the file open and thrusting it at Derek. “She broke up with her boyfriend Scott, who she’s been with for four years. She switched her major at her school for no apparent reason, she stopped hanging out with all of her friends, started exercising obsessively - “
“All suspicious behavior for a...twenty-two year old college student,” Derek says flatly, rolling his eyes.
“ - and two weeks ago had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a coffee shop,” Lydia continues, one eyebrow raised. “Witness accounts say that it was triggered when the barista asked her ‘what she really wanted.’”
Derek takes the file, brow furrowed.
“We’ve had surveillance on her ever since then,” Jackson interjects. “She’s not acting normal. By any definition. She’s acting like she can’t trust her own mind anymore.”
“Who’s the client?”
“Christopher Argent,” Lydia replies, digging through her briefcase to pull out another manila file. “Allison’s father, Victoria’s ex-husband. He used to work in dreamshare too - more our line of business than Victoria’s - but he was recruited by the Japanese military five years ago. Now he does consultations, mostly - training sims, that sort of thing.” Lydia flips through the file and pulls out what looks like Stiles’s background check on Argent, tosses it over to rest on top of Allison’s file, in Derek’s hands. “He wants us to go in and figure out who did this to her, nothing more, nothing less. He doesn’t trust us to try and fix whatever went wrong.”
“If there even is a way to fix it,” Derek comments darkly. “An Argent family squabble? Great. Sounds real safe. Why the hell is Stiles involved in this?”
“Because he’s our point man,” Jackson says blankly. “We’re a team, now. He goes where we go.”
“And vice versa,” Lydia rushes to add.
“A team?” Derek repeats, twisting the word sardonically. “Really.”
“Really,” Jackson replies, letting some hardness creep into his voice. Baiting Stilinski might be Jackson’s favorite hobby but he’s still their point man, still has come through for both of them in a million different ways since they started this bizarre experiment. ‘Old friend’ or not, Jackson’s not going to let Derek walk away not acknowledging that, because damn it, they’re good together - all of them.
Derek looks at him gravely; his face is unreadable but Jackson can see the tight grip he’s got on the files in his lap, the tension coiled in his arms. “And is there a reason Stiles has tied himself to your ‘team?’ The last I’d heard he could have his pick of anyone in the business.”
Jackson blinks, a little taken aback. “We’re his friends,” Lydia says, smoothly cutting in where Jackson has paused. “We may not be master criminals, no, but we’re good at what we do and we’ll always back him up.”
Derek swings his head around slowly, locking gazes with Lydia in an intense staring contest that stretches well past a normal exchange. Lydia doesn’t budge, staring back with her shoulders square and her jaw set.
After almost a full minute, Derek jerks his chin downwards and nods once. Jackson lets go of a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.
“It won’t be easy,” he says. There’s something different about his voice, now, some sharp point that’s now been dulled. “If she’s militarized, and someone’s been in there messing around - “
“We know,” Jackson says. “We’ve got her boyfriend, though. And everything her father’s willing to give us.”
“She might not be able to be saved,” Derek continues, as if Jackson hadn’t spoken. “Inception...it makes you less than you are. It changes the very root of you, twists you in a circle that you can’t always untangle yourself from.”
Lydia and Jackson exchange a wary glance. “We know that,” Lydia says quietly. Because everybody knows about Robert Fischer. “But we have to try. Not just because of the money - and there is a lot of it, by the way - but because of what’s been done to her. This is bigger than just the Argents. Or us.”
Derek doesn’t reply, flipping through the files quietly, his face angled down. Jackson watches him, almost curiously, seeing the very edges of a curling tattoo beneath the cuff of his shirt, the raised burn scar on the side of his neck, crawling up behind his ear. Jackson shivers, raising his eyes and finding Lydia’s gaze already on him, her face creased in something like worry, or maybe sadness.
“Okay,” he says, after a long moment of suspended silence. “Fine. I’m in.” He stands abruptly, moving with clear, solid control and Jackson sees plain as day how he was able to trick and trap them without much effort at all. “Can I take these?”
Lydia nods. “Stiles put them together for you.”
Derek’s mouth quirks slightly, almost a smile but not. “London, right? Give me a few days and I’ll meet you there. I’ve got things to wrap up down here first.”
“Don’t be late,” Jackson says, stretching a bitchy smile across his face. Lydia shoots him an unimpressed look that he ignores; nobody said he had to be nice to the jackass forger.
“Don’t lose your gun again,” Derek shoots back, turning his back to him deliberately.
“You didn’t give me my gun back, asshole,” Jackson calls after him, but Derek’s already gone, slipping out the door and halfway down the hallway before he’s even done speaking.
Lydia just looks amused. “Well, this will be fun.” Jackson shoots her a glare. “What?”
“The bait and switch? You fell for a bait and switch?” Stiles can hardly get the words out, he’s laughing so hard. “Oh my God, seriously? I’m a little worried, actually. That’s so silly, Jackson, honestly.”
“You didn’t tell us we were meeting Derek Hale,” Jackson accuses, scowling at the phone. Behind him, Lydia laughs to herself, reclining on the bed and tapping at something on her tablet. “A little warning might have been nice.”
“He doesn’t like it when I warn people,” Stiles says. “It’s part of his whole shtick, he likes to test them before he works with them.”
“Great. That’s wonderful.”
“Well, he took the job, didn’t he?” Stiles says, uncaring. “He’s good. Don’t worry, our chances of doing this thing and coming out alive on the other side just went up by like two hundred percent.”
“He can’t be that good,” Jackson grumbles.
“He was the extractor on that Middleston job last year,” Lydia says, helpfully backing up Stiles’s point and completely ignoring her loyalty duties as Jackson’s original partner, as usual. “You know that one we didn’t take because we were sure it was a suicide mission? And I hear Saito tried to hire him.”
“He also does car commercials in Japan,” Stiles adds.
“You’re both horrible,” Jackson says. Nobody can say he doesn’t suffer for his work. “Just awful people, seriously.”
“We try,” Stiles says, sounding amused. “Now get back here, I’ve got new intel from Isaac and I need you to start working on the first level. We’ve got to start moving if we want to make this work for next month like we planned.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jackson says, “we’ll be there, Mon Führer, keep your pants on.”
“I always do,” Stiles says cheerfully, “I’m a respectable boy.”
Jackson hangs up on him.
“You’re jealous,” Lydia needles.
Jackson collapses next to her on the bed, stretching out with a faint groan. Lydia leans her bent knees against his legs, not looking up from the equations scrolling across her tablet. “Of who?”
“‘Of who?’” Lydia mocks, making a face. “Please.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m wary. It’s good to be wary. And Derek Hale is a good reason to be wary.”
“Stiles trusts him,” she points out.
“Stiles trusted me, too,” Jackson says darkly, “and look where that got him.”
Lydia pauses, setting the tablet down and turning to look at him piercingly. Her hair scrunches up around her face weirdly, making it look like the pillow is made out of the pale, red strands. “He still does,” she says calmly. “And so do I.”
Jackson can’t look at her anymore, has to turn his gaze to the ceiling.
“Seriously, one job goes bad and you think you’re the Antichrist,” Lydia says flippantly, but she reaches out and takes his hand anyway, squeezing it hard.
Jackson squeezes back, takes a breath and pushes past the emotion deliberately, setting it aside to examine later. “You really think we can pull this off?”
Lydia shrugs, the motion of it jostling Jackson’s shoulder. “We have to,” she says. “He came to us because nobody else was crazy enough to take it on, but somebody needs to. There has to be consequences, for what happened to this girl. There just...has to be.”
They fall into silence together, and Jackson knows that she’s thinking the same things that he is, feeling the same press of dread about where things are heading, what could happen if they don’t figure this shit out. Worse than what happened to Fischer, worse than what Cobb and his team started. Worse than all of it.
“Yeah, okay,” Jackson says softly, smiling at how Lydia leans into him, pressing the long line of her body against his side. Sometimes, he thinks, life is terrifying. He’s pretty good at terrifying. “Then let’s get started.”