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“Tangerine, I’m going to need you to turn around.”
Careful to keep your voice steady and calm, you watched as Tangerine’s form retreated, shifting between security cameras to ensure he remained within your line of sight at all times. Keeping a steady connection to the train had proved to be more of a challenge than any of you had expected.
Something about this job hadn’t sat right with you from the beginning. Yet, in the wake of the Bolivia Job, it was like the Twins were on a natural high. Finally, they were getting some of the recognition they felt that they rightly deserved. The respect that was their due. Perhaps you should have pushed harder, should have insisted on taking longer to scope out the contract. It was too late for that now.
Flicking between one camera and the next, you swallowed past the lump in your throat. You didn't have time for tears. At that moment, Tangerine needed you.
“Bit busy right now, luv,” came Tangerine’s terse reply. He held his hands up, his phone almost going flying as his foot slipped on a smeared trail of blood in the aisle of the train, a water bottle skittering halfway down the carriage. Blue eyes cut towards the dark streak.
You knew that look.
The annoyance bled from his face. His attention sharpened. His gaze flicked between the empty seats, the blood on the floor, the abandoned bottle. He was putting pieces together. There weren’t anywhere near enough people left on the train. Something had happened while he'd been fighting his way back onboard.
“I don’t know if you realised, but I kind of had to improvise after the last stop, on account of that fuckin’ arsehole kicking me off the goddamned train,” Tangerine said, moving more quickly down the carriage. You swallowed past the lump in your throat.
“I saw.” Of course you saw. You had already sent Maria at least a dozen tests about her goddamned bad luck magnet. If you had known her little pet project was running a job anywhere near Tokyo, you wouldn’t have let the Twins say yes to this fucking contract. Hell, you wouldn’t have even told them about the job.
A cruise, you thought to yourself as you flicked between cameras on your second monitor, ensuring that Tangerine had a clear path ahead of him. I don’t care what the job is; their next contract is going to be on a cruise, and I’m going to be required to join them. For safety reasons. And I will deal with Maria myself if that pesky little bug of hers is within a hundred miles of my boys.
“Oh, great. That’s real fuckin’ great ta know. You an’ Lem have a laugh about that one while I was trying to get back on the fuckin’ thing?” Sarcasm dripped from Tangerine’s voice.
A steady hand ran through sweat-slicked curls. Blood clung in dark, congealing threads at his knuckles, tugging at torn skin every time his fingers moved. You could hear the strain in the silence between his words more than in the words themselves.
Eyes flicked across the screens, taking in empty carriages, bright lights, a single ticket conductor making his way towards the rear of the train. Your attention snagged on the feed.
Counting. Empty seats. The blood trail. The locked door at the far end. Something in your chest tightened, sharp and immediate. Of course Tangerine would put it together so quickly. Or at least, would spot enough pieces to know that there was a bigger puzzle waiting for him at the end of the line.
“Stop.”
The phoneline crackled.
For a long, endless moment, you were convinced that the connection must have cut out again. Tangerine kept moving. Relief curled at the back of your mind. If you could just buy a little more time, you could find a better way to deal with everything.
Shoulders back, head forward, Tangerine reached the doors.
“Trust me. You need to turn around. You can still–” Your voice held steady, a tightness beneath it as you forced yourself to remain calm in the face of disaster. You couldn’t allow Tangerine to go through that final door.
“I can’t hear myself fuckin’ think. D’you want me to turn this thing off?” Tangerine snapped, as the door between carriages slid open seamlessly, revealing the empty area beyond. His head remained down, following the dark, slick trail to the closed toilet door – the source of the coppery tang filling the air.
“Tan, please–”
He wasn’t holding his phone up anymore. Not even pretending to listen.
You muted yourself, hand rising to press against your mouth as something sharp tried to force its way up your throat.
You already knew what was behind that door.
You had seen Lemon go down.
You hadn’t seen the shot land, but you’d seen the way his body folded anyway, the borrowed vest doing nothing to change the outcome you’d been trying not to accept. After that, there had been no clean feed – no camera inside the bathroom, no angle, no certainty, just the locked door and the aftermath you could only partially reconstruct from movement, blood, and timing.
It wasn’t enough. None of it was enough.
And that was the problem.
Tangerine couldn’t see it like this. Not with anger and frustration already starting to tilt him off balance, not when one wrong move would send him spiralling. You swallowed hard, forcing your breathing to stay even, because if you lost control now, there would be nothing left to anchor him with when it mattered.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The thought circled around and around in your head.
You had taken every precaution – far more than usual. You had told them both to wear goddamned bulletproof vests, though it would seem only Tangerine listened to you. To take back-up guns along with their favourites. You had slipped a spare pair of brass knuckles into Tangerine’s kit yourself, and extra bullets for Lemon who never seemed to have enough (along with an extra set of Thomas the Tank Engine stickers, just to ensure he didn’t run out of those, either).
You had watched through the live feed as Tangerine stripped off – just enough to take his own vest off, to press it into Lemon’s hands with a level of insistence and care that would never get old.
Something isn’t adding up. You tried to push the thought down, to dismiss it as no more than wishful thinking, and yet… how had a bullet to the chest taken Lemon down, if he was still wearing Tangerine’s vest?
You forced your attention back to the other feeds, searching for answers.
Screens surrounded you on all sides, the bank of monitors lighting up your room, pulling you back into the space you knew too well. This was where you belonged when the Twins were on a job: tucked away behind the safety of half a dozen screens a thousand miles away in London, waiting for them to come back home.
Two monitors showed eight cameras from the train, rotating through the different views, giving you a steady overview of anyone coming their way. Two more tracked news feeds, weather reports, world events – anything that might shift the environment the Twins were moving through or heading towards. Another sat open to your emails and messages, a constant flow of information and deals and job offers and warnings, all of it traded and weighted and never truly quiet.
A message popped on your main monitor, the familiar name enough to bring a scowl. You ignored it, your focus locked on the feed of Tangerine trying to gain entry through that damned door.
It pinged again.
You unmuted yourself. You had a job to do.
“Do not open that fucking door, Tangerine. That’s an order.” If it were any other time, Tangerine would remind you that they are freelance contractors. That if anything, he’s your boss; you can’t give him orders.
Gold glinted around his wrist, chains shifting as he moved. The medallion at his neck lifted briefly when he threw his weight into the door, forcing it open with a controlled violence that left no room for hesitation. Tension thrummed through every inch of him, coiled tight beneath the surface. And still – he hadn’t said a word about his suit.
Not the bloodstains soaking into his collar. Not the missing buttons. Not even the state of his shoes, scuffed and ruined in a way that suggested he’d stopped caring about anything except getting back here. That silence said more than anything else.
“Tan–”
You could tell the moment he saw what was inside. The camera feed remained unchanged – not frozen, the little clock at the corner marching on in the way that time is wont to do. But the man on the other side of the screen was.
Seconds stretched into infinity as he stood in place, unmoving. You wished you could see what he could fully. When at last shoulders went back and he crouched, moving so slowly, with such care, you knew without a shadow of a doubt that whatever state he had found Lemon in was not good.
Something in your chest tightened hard enough to make breathing feel like a choice you might not get to keep making. You forced your hand to stay steady on your keyboard, forced your eyes to keep tracking the feed instead of flinching away from it.
“Tan. Tan please, pick up your damn phone. Listen to me. Please. You don’t have time for this.” Each word cut that little bit deeper. You hated yourself for it, but you couldn’t afford to lose both of your boys. Not now. Not while there was still something you could do about it.
You watched as Tangerine pulled off his medallion – the one thing you had never seen him without in all the years you had known him. He slipped it around Lemon’s neck, hands moving with a care that never seemed to belong in moments like this. You forced yourself to bear witness to it. Lemon didn’t deserve to go out like this.
“Tan…”
Words failed you.
Tangerine didn’t look up. His hand rested on Lemon’s shoulder, fingers curled tight in the fabric of his denim jacket like if he held on hard enough, he could stop it all from being real. Dark curls hung limply around his face, hiding his eyes but not the way his shoulders had gone frighteningly still.
He stared down at the man he had spent more of his life with than without. Lemon liked to joke that you were the other half of Tangerine’s heart, but you both knew that he was the one who truly kept Tangerine grounded – kept him sane. If either of them believed in a higher power, Lemon would be the other half of Tangerine’s soul.
You watched, helplessness and shame bubbling in your chest, as Tangerine had to be the one to find the other half of his soul slumped in a dirty bathroom nearly six thousand miles from home.
It’s not fair.
You should have been able to do more for them. What was the point of you, if you couldn’t be there to stop this? If you couldn’t help save him? You opened your mouth anyway, searching desperately for something useful to say. Something that could help hold his shattered pieces together.
Nothing came.
The icon in the corner of your screen pinged again, sharp. Loud. Insistent.
Your jaw tightened. Not now.
Another ping followed immediately after, bright against the dark feed. Demanding your attention while Tangerine sat on the floor beside his brother, looking like the world had just split open beneath him. Like there was nothing and no one left to live for.
You swallowed hard, forcing your breathing to slow. One breath in. One out. Calm. You needed to stay calm.
One of you had to.
I’ll get him home, Lem. For you.
Your fingers didn’t stop moving as you typed, the loud clacking of keys filling the spaces between the quiet hum of your apartment. Stopping would mean dwelling, and you couldn’t afford that yet.
You could put in an alert for an ambulance at the next station – Tangerine could get off with Lemon, could leave it to the experts to see if there was anything still to be done – but looking at the routes, it wouldn’t get there in time. And, you realised, you couldn’t rely on Tangerine to get them both off of the train without assistance. And alerting someone… that could pose an entire new range of problems, should The White Death’s men catch wind of a problem with the delivery of his money or heir.
Who else was still on the train? You ran through prebooked seats. A nurse was in carriage 15, but– no, she had departed on the previous stop. There was a teacher still in carriage three. They would probably know basic first aid, right?
No more than Tan would know, you forced yourself to admit, searching, searching, searching for any other way that things could go. You refused to acknowledge that Lemon was far past that stage. Your mind kept circling uselessly through options you already knew were impossible. Too late. Too far away. No signal worth trusting. No miracle coming.
And Tangerine still hadn’t moved.
You had never seen him like this. Not even in the aftermath of the Bolivia job – one that, for all their bravado, you know weighed heavily on their minds. Could he come back from this? Would he even want to?
You clicked to open the line between you again. “Tan. I need you to get up. There’s a stop coming up in a few minutes. I think, if you can get Lemon off the train… I can call in a few favours. Get someone there off the books to check him over. But you need to get up.”
The screen pinged again.
Something inside of your chest snapped. Heat flooded through you so fast it made you dizzy – anger, sharp and ugly and helpless. At the people messaging. At the train. At the stupid fucking girl who had done this. At yourself.
If you had only been better, this wouldn’t have happened. It was your job to keep them safe. To tell them what to do, and where to go, and how to get the job done. The still figures were burned into the back of your eyes even as you screwed them shut, trying to banish the image from your mind. You had failed them. Had failed Lemon.
You couldn’t fail Tangerine again.
Nails bit into your palms hard enough to hurt. You adjusted your headset, panic clawing higher in your throat with every second he stayed silent. Fuck the job. I’m getting them home.
Switching between lines, you pulled up the number from memory, not bothering to open her messages at all. The call connected on the first ring: M. Beetle.
“What the fuck do you want, Maria?” you asked in lieu of a greeting, eyes flicking between camera feeds.
“Hello to you too, sunshine.”
“I don’t have time for niceties.”
She paused, no longer than a beat, before asking, “Didn’t you check my messages? I’m calling about a favour.”
Laughter crackled down the line, low and sharp and bitter. You shook your head. “Fuck you. Do you know what your little bug just did to my guys?”
There was another pause. “I’ve been a little busy. I heard that the Twins are on the train.”
“I don’t give a fuck that he’s your favourite. I don’t care that this is his first job after rehab, or whatever fucking therapy you sent him to.” Of course there had been gossip about one of the top agencies top assets taking a sabbatical. Things like that just didn’t happen in their line of work.
On the other end of the line, there was a brief shuffle – papers, maybe a chair shifting, the faint clink of something being set down too firmly. Maria didn’t interrupt. She never did, not when it mattered. You had always respected that about her; keeping someone like Bug operational was no small thing, and it took a particular kind of handler to make that look effortless.
“If he comes anywhere near–”
“So you know that Ladybug is onboard.”
You hesitated. “Of course I fucking know. It’s my job to know.”
On the screen, Tangerine takes a gun from a second body, emptying the bullets, reloading with ones of his own.
“Then you should know that he likes to use sleeping powder on his jobs.”
There was a pause on the line. No more than a beat, but enough that you noticed it immediately. When Maria spoke again, her tone hadn’t changed – but something beneath it had tightened, her careful control beginning to fray. The pieces began to click together: it wasn’t just a courtesy call, or another handler trying to build up favours owed. Clearly, she was worried about her operative, too. “He won’t use a gun unless he has to. Wouldn’t even take the one I left for him. I told him not to use it this time, but…”
“There’s a possibility he might have used it on Lemon,” you finished, eyes wide. Your mind flashes back to Lemon falling asleep on the job – something that you have never seen either of them have to do in all the years that you have worked with them, no matter how exhausted they may be.
“Last time he used sleeping pills on a job, his target nearly stopped breathing.”
Your hands moved faster than your mind could keep up, pulling up the footage to retrace Lemon’s footsteps. With the two of them having split up to cover more ground, it was possible, between tracking them both, keeping an eye on the other carriages, and trying to track down what the hell had happened with your client’s son, you might have missed something else.
“All we want is the briefcase. At this point, we are willing to split the contents with the Twins and to call it a wash. As far as we are concerned, our client has nullified their end of the agreement. We don’t take contracts stealing from other contractors; it’s bad business.” There was a tightness to Maria’s words that barely registered, your focus lost on retracing every moment back to when the twins first boarded.
“I can get my guy to your guys if you give me your word he isn’t going to shoot first and ask questions later. I know his reputation.”
Silence hung between you as you finally found it: the moment Ladybug slipped something into Lemon’s water. Your eyes cut to your top monitor, the one displaying Tangerine – barely keeping his broken pieces together, trying to force himself up. To find the strength to do what needed to be done. For Lemon.
Hope sparked in your chest; you tampered it down, forcing yourself to stay calm. There was still so much that could go wrong – still no guarantee that it is the drugs, not the bullet wound, that was keeping Lemon down. Would it be cruel to give Tangerine hope only to snatch it away?
What's the alternative? Pretending you hadn't put the pieces together? Pretending there wasn't still a chance, however small?
If Lemon was alive, Tangerine deserved the opportunity to try and save him. You weren't going to take that away from either of them
“Deal,” you said, running through the calculations. If you could get Tangerine’s attention for long enough, you could get him to listen to reason. Probably. If there was a chance that it could help Lemon. “I can probably manage that.”
“I need more than probably,” Maria said sharply.
A little incredulous huff fell from your lips. “And you’d have more than probably if your guy hadn’t drugged mine. More than once. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Her silence spoke volumes. You continued watching the footage, pulling up multiple cameras, fast forwarding to see if there was anything else you might have missed. Frustration began to rise as the footage cut out again, the connection struggling to keep up.
“I can’t guarantee anything. Your guy just kicked mine off the train, and then he thinks come back to– a dead body. I’d be more worried if he was thinking clearly right now…” You trailed off as the video feed came back into view, quickly flicking through the cameras to find Tangerine. You bypassed Bug, the teacher still in carriage three, a girl wandering the isles with something stuck to her back. You flicked back, squinting at the screen.
Is that…?
“New plan. Tell him he’s after a girl. Wearing pink; he can’t miss her. She has a train sticker on her back. Have him keep her out of the way while I get the Twins out of there. If you can do that, your guy can have 75% of what’s in the case – but only when the Twins are safe.”
Static filled the line. For a moment,you thought you had lost your connection to Maria, too. “Well?”
“Are you even authorised to make that kind of financial decision?” she asked at last. “That’s a lot–”
“Do you want to get your guy out of there or not? Because I don’t know about you, but our job’s been fucked from the beginning. There will be other jobs. I can help them rebuild their reputation. But I can’t do anything if they’re…” You swallowed hard, your fury snuffed out in the fact of the real possibility that you might lose them both.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The line disconnected before you could say a word. You took a steadying breath, giving yourself only half a beat, before you, too, clicked disconnect – this time, on the call to Tangerine. You clicked to redial.
On the feed, he didn’t even flinch, thumbing open the revolver and checking every chamber was loaded.
You hit disconnect. Clicked reconnect again.
A hand automatically reached for his pocket. He glanced at the screen. Lowered the phone.
“Shit.”
Disconnect.
Reconnect.
Disconnect.
Reconnect.
Disconnect.
Reco–
At last, you watched the graney figure lift the phone to his ear.
“Not now,” he snapped. No luv accompanied his words, no softening, no little edge of apology. Before he could hang up on you again, you spoke.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Tangerine! I need you to get back in there and– ”
He didn’t let you finish.
“I can’t.” The words cracked on the way out. He sucked in a shuddering, wet breath, bloodied fingers tangling in his hair as he shoved dark curls back from his face. For one terrible moment, the mask slipped. Grief flashed naked and raw across his expression before he forced it down again.
“You need to get back in there.”
“You don’t understand.” His laugh sounded wrong. Hollow. “I can't. Can't you see the blood on that fuckin' thing?” He turned towards the nearest security camera as though you were standing in front of him instead of thousands of miles away. “Lem, he–”
“He has your vest.” The words landed between you. Silence followed. “You didn’t check his pulse.”
Tangerine stared at the camera. For a moment, you thought the feed had cut out again, or that he might hang up. “You think I don’t know what I saw?”
His voice went quiet. “I know what a fuckin’ gunshot to the chest looks like. I know how much blood there… is…”
His words faltered. You watched his gaze flick back towards the trail running across the floor. Back to the bathroom. Back to the blood. You could practically see him replaying it. The amount smeared across the carriage. The vest. There was a lot of blood – enough to be noticeable, but nowhere near enough for a man of Lemon’s size. “FUCK.”
The following minutes were a blur. Through the feed, you watched as shaking hands pressed to Lemon’s neck, holding it there, counting. Hands moved to Lemons’ cheeks, tilting his head up and back. Tangerine pulled his arm back, letting his open palm fly as he slapped the – dead? Unconscious? – man.
He scrambled for the phone.
“He’s breathin’ – pulse is weak, but it’s there. He’s not wakin’ up.” Hands pulled at Lemon’s shirt, tearing the fabric without thought. Beneath, the familiar dark fabric of a bulletproof vest came into sight. Fingers probed the hole, searching. Tangerine pulled his hand back. No blood. A laugh echoed, broken and bright and filled with relief, it was a tangible thing. “He hit his head. Fuck. He’s not bleedin’ out.”
Your eyes slipped closed, relief surging through you. You hadn’t lost them. There was still hope. You didn’t allow yourself more than a moment before pressing on. You pulled up the message thread from Maria, scanning the information sent across to you.
“There was something in the water. Depending on how much he drank, it could wear off anytime between the next fifteen minutes, and the next six hours.” Your mind flashed to the bottle Tangerine kicked an eternity ago, the thing going flying. It had to have been at least half empty, maybe two thirds. He could be out of things for a while longer.
“I need you to get him to the door at the next station. I’ve called in a few favours. You get him out, and someone else will take care of the person who tried to shoot him.” You were careful with your words, not wanting to give Tangerine anything more tangible to go off of.
Even now.
Despite everything, despite the blood and the panic and the possibility that he had very nearly left his brother lying unconscious on a bathroom floor, some part of him was still trying to think three steps ahead. Still trying to weigh up the costs and the benefits, to protect them both in the long run.
“Fuck the job. We can deal with the fallout later.”
A strained laugh escaped him. “Love your enthusiasm, luv, but The White Death–”
“Can wait.” The words came out sharper than intended. “What matters more? Your reputation and the possibility of getting fucked over if he finds you? Or getting that headwound checked and getting Lemon somewhere safe?”
For a moment, Tangerine didn't move. You watched your question land.
The briefcase. The son. The job. The White Death.
Years of careful reputation-building, of contracts and contacts and whispered recommendations. On any other day, it would have been a difficult choice.
Then his gaze dropped to Lemon.
There was no decision at all.
Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. Not because he had relaxed – if anything, he looked more wired than before – but because he finally had something to do. Something tangible. A problem he could solve with his own two hands.
He crouched beside Lemon, sliding one arm beneath his shoulders and another around his waist before hauling him upright. The movement looked awkward, but not difficult. Tangerine barely seemed to notice the extra weight as he steadied Lemon against his side, one hand immediately coming up to check that his head wasn't lolling too badly.
“I've got him.” The words were quiet. Certain. Then he glanced towards the nearest camera. “What's next?”
Relief hit so suddenly that it almost hurt. An hour ago, that question would have sent dread coursing through you. Without Lemon, could there even be a next? But now? Now it was about getting home.
“I've got you,” you said, swallowing around the tightness in your throat. “Both of you. Now move.”
Tangerine adjusted his grip on Lemon and headed for the carriage door without another word. The tension remained in his shoulders, grief and relief tangled together into something raw and ugly and human, but he was moving. Breathing. Thinking.
Lemon's head lolled against his shoulder.
"You absolute fuckin’ idiot," Tangerine breathed, forehead pressing briefly against Lemon's temple. The insult lacked any real bite. "I’m not lettin’ you outta my sight again.”
You watched them disappear from one camera feed and reappear on the next.
Moving. Alive. Together.
For the first time all night, you stopped fighting the tears.