Dead.
Better than dead: buried.
Better than buried: cremated and splashed out over icy waters.
Fried and frozen.
Better than dead.
Alas, the world afforded little rest for the wicked. For, it was the wicked who earned the money for the hellish and it was the hellish that served the evil. Whatever deity recently came into fashion or fell out of fashion or neither, he always favoured the wicked, for he in turn favoured the hellish and the hellish the evil until the cycle culminated in mutual self-destruction. Out of the ashes, a new evil emerged and the retinues that followed after, each layer subservient to the one above it and so on. So, Ariel was the wicked.
The hellish always got what was coming to them. Always. The evil in this little ditty would be, of course, Madam Ana Levski whose drawers – the wooden ones, to clarify – were pilfered that very afternoon unbeknownst to the rosy, if not nosy, secretary whose other drawers were opened and explored to allow the far more important set to be understood. Out from inside, the wicked took his satisfaction – from both, in fact – and walked out of the Ministry a disturbingly familiar face that no one could quite place.
The hellish had risen to regard via other methods. It was the hellish who he regrettably served and it was into those slender hands that Ariel placed those papers she believed she was owed from Madam Levski. Of course, prior to the mutual self-destruction, the evil paid the hellish and the hellish the wicked and so it was a tidy sum that Ariel pocketed for what he could only comment on as child’s play. However, the price it commanded was not something he was going to sniff at in derision. No, those little jobs he’d covet eternally.
Emerging from Borgin and Burke’s, Ariel embraced the sheen of rain that trickled down off of the rooftops and onto the thick, padded shoulders of the coat that one of his employers had the grace to afford him, refusing to see his mutt go into an upmarket club in London dressed like he’d just finished busking in the East End for spare change. Thus, he’d earned himself a suit, a coat and a pair of cheap shoes and equally cheap cufflinks but, nevertheless, it purveyed an old image he’d once adored.
Suit or not, the fuzz on his jaw remained and the length of his hair, greased back into order or not, was an easy reminder of his reasons for his actions.
Money.
After depositing the newest cheque in his Gringott’s Vault, Ariel sidled down through the throng of people buzzing about the stalls outside the shops that lined the alley with every intention of exiting the confounded place and finding himself a nice breath of country air for an hour or so before his newest mark’s young daughter commanded his attention. It appeared as though the young heiress enjoyed slumming at the expense of her daddy. Ariel was content to reap the benefits of it, also.
He would have left, too, had it not been for a flash of red in a window which caught his eye despite all of the other dizzying colours that danced in front of his senses. This was a particular shade, though: one he’d never forget.
Jack.
Ariel swallowed, halting outside of the Lupin bistro that already made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck and on his forearms. He grunted, feeling someone bump into the shoulder that was still aggrieving him from his scrap a full moon ago. A lifetime ago, almost. He’d still been on ‘holiday’ then. Now he was in the cold, out in the cold: braving the ice, braving the fire.
It would have been easier to blame it on something else. Wrackspurts. Something unworldly. But he was unworldly too and his feet moved of their own accord.
“Was she worth it then?” Isabella asked breathlessly, tearing her mouth from his skin long enough to greet his gaze with her own. He shifted beneath her, his hips rocking against hers as he steadied himself, his chest heaving, meeting hers for every measured breath.
“What?” He gasped, his hands reaching up to press the wet tendrils of golden honey hair from her forehead.
“Jack.” Isabella pressed, her breathing slowing, returning from its freight pace to a slower chug. “Was she worth it? All the heartbreak? All that leaving cost you?”
His grasp tightened and with one fluid movement, Ariel threw her away from him, the gulf between them once again throwing them to convict and to detective. As his trousers came back up to his hips, the belt pin tightening into one of the holes, he found himself acutely remembering why sleeping with those trying to convict him was an awful, awful thing. They knew too much. Asked too many questions.
“Yes then. Yes, Ariel.”
“Can I help you sir?”
Ariel blinked, his eyes losing their glazed quality. He looked about himself, stealing a breath past his lips as he realised he’d come inside, traipsed too near. Far too near. Now he had to stay.
“Filet mignon… as rare as you can get it … hold the salad. Sweet potato.” Ariel cut out, reading out the first thing that caught his eye on the list.
“That’s for dinner, though, sir. It’s lunchtime.” The waitress protested.
“Then I’ll make sure there’s a good tip in it for you, won’t I?” He muttered testily, looking at her pointedly. “Go.”
The waitress had a look that for a moment suggested she was going to try to challenge him but she backed down as soon as she considered it, seemingly deciding it a poor choice to try and alter his intention. She disappeared into the back room, no doubt the kitchen, and Ariel huffed a sigh, wondering what his master plan was now. How had it even come to this?
She wasn’t meant to be here.
Neither was he, though.
He was meant to be dead.
by 
