"Who is your contact?"

The whip collided with his back making him cry out.

"Who gave you the information about our regiment?"

"I don't know. Please, I don't know what you are talking about."

"Ah, ah, ah, little pig," The Capitaine kicked Raphael's back with his booted foot, "how long will you make me wait for answers? You want to die, don't you? It will be just like going to sleep. You deserve to sleep, after all this hurt. Don't you want to sleep?"

"Please. Kill me. Please."

"Tell me what I want to know, little pig and I will."

"I don't know what you want from me. My name is Jean-Pierre, I am for Marseilles. Please. I have a wife and son, they will have no one without me."

The Capitaine let out a long, disappointed sigh.

"I just wish you would break already, I grow tired of you. You were a titillating plaything at first, but you've begun to bore me. Tell me what I want to know and I will set you free from this pain. Or, I can make it so that you die slowly, slowly, slowly over the course of a few months."

Raphael knew full well that the Capitaine would never let him rest. Knew that he would revel in taking away this promise, and would enjoy every day that Raphael lost his sanity, his humanity. Raphael would not break. He would not give him that satisfaction.

"Please. Kill me." But that was not for the Capitaine, that plea was for Death. The looming specter hovered close over them; after all, war was its domain. Mindless, senseless loss of life, thousands upon thousands of souls for the reaper to take to the afterlife. And yet, that specter refused Raphael his final release. He loomed and watched but never claimed.

Death was as merciless as God.

"And give you what you want without getting what I want? That's no bargain at all. Hit him again."

Raphael tensed in anticipation of the blow, the crack of the whip echoing in the room-

He sat up in bed, gasping for air, gulping it down as if he had been drowning. He scrambled for the chamber pot just in time to vomit into it.

He sat back, taking rapid breaths. He reached for his pillow and palmed the knife he kept there, letting the familiar weight of it anchor him to the present.

He was in England.

He was home.

It was the year 1823.

War had been over for eight years.

The war was over.

The war was over.

The war was over.

Just a nightmare. They always got worse this time of year, though it had been months since the last one. Probably had something to do with the fact that he had tried to see Thomas last evening, though it had been the same as last time; Thomas greeting him at the door, telling him he was close to finding proof but that he would not speak to Raphael unless Raphael believed him. As always, Raphael tried to get him to leave the investigation in his hands to which Thomas had pointed out that Rafe had not made any headway in a decade. They had argued, Thomas had become agitated and shut the door in his face.

God, what a mess. 

He needed to stop arguing with Thomas over this. There was no way to bring back the man whom Raphael had called a brother, in his place was a man kept alive only by his delusions. The real Thomas had broken in Belgium and now was lost forever. Raphael kept hoping to make him see reason, he should know now that Thomas was beyond his help.

He had been beyond help even when Raphael had disobeyed his superiors to rescue him.

Perhaps that was why he kept pushing, kept hoping that he might see a glimpse of the real Thomas, because if Thomas could recover, then everything Raphael had gone through would have some meaning. His crooked fingers that had never set correctly, the burn marks on his torso, the whip marks on his back.

Eventually, his body stopped trembling so he got to his feet and began getting dressed. He could not stay in on a night like this. There were several ladies who would welcome him at any hour of the night, he would go visit them. Since his friends from university had slowly begun to get married and settle down, he found that he was often without company for other entertainments a man might indulge in.

Lord Winter Hastings, the Marquess of Graham, could drink and fuck even Raphael under the table in their heyday but now the man was married to the woman he had rather inappropriately fallen in love with; a woman who was in no way his social contemporary, a cardinal sin where the High Society of England was concerned. They still faced a good deal of backlash following their wedding, but the couple was hardly bothered. They were more than happy to spend time with their son and now, they had another on the way.

The Earl of Stanhope was yet another one of his friends who had turned a new leaf, after spending several years in America the man had come back to England with a fiancé in tow. After that, it had come out that he had a son from a former mistress who was living in an orphanage near Stanhope's country seat and he had claimed his bastard in front of all of society. Then he had taken the scandal a bit further by taking in all the children in the orphanage as his wards. The man had even managed to win back his fiancé who had left him in the aftermath of his lies and secrecy and now the two lived happily all the way in Stanhope's country estate in Cornwall. They'd probably popped out a brat or two of their own by now, though Raphael had been unfortunately remiss in keeping in touch with him.

Raphael chose an emerald earring to complement his waistcoat and brushed his hair, then once he was satisfied with his appearance, he exited his home. He checked his pockets for the comforting weight of his dented pocketwatch, letting the cool metal soothe him. He took it out and checked the time, nearly two in the morning.

Tonight, he was dressed rather flamboyantly, with a bright waistcoat that was just short of dandy-ish. He wanted to be seen, wanted to be noticed. It was a sort of sleight of hand Raphael liked to perform; if the ton and gossip rags were so used to seeing him acting outrageous, dressed to catch other people's eye, they wouldn't notice when a man clad in dark clothes slipped from the servants' entrance. If they ever caught him somewhere he shouldn't be, he could just ask drunk and lost and they would never question it, he could pretend that he was leaving an assignation with a lover and no one would bat an eye. No one would ever question it and that was a decidedly powerful tool.

There goes Carlisle, what a dog.

Which lady has caught his fancy this time around, do you think?

Which gambling hells does he like to visit? Perhaps there is a particularly notorious one in this area?

Slipping back into his old ways after the war had been a strange experience, to say the least. It had been like coming home after a year at school to find that all of a sudden your clothes did not fit you the same anymore. They were serviceable, sure, and they had their use but they no longer fit the way used to. They no longer were as comfortable to wear.

That is not to say Raphael was particularly suffering with the whole useless libertine, ravisher of women routine. He liked to fuck. He made no apologies about it. He was always careful and discreet. Moreover, he was always dedicated. In Raphael's experience, if you showed a lady that you were worth her time, she was more likely to be accommodating if you wished to spend more time in her company.

How else do you think he gained surety that there were several homes where he would be received, no matter what time of the night he wished to appear?

"You've been reckless, Carlisle," The Major sighed at him from across the desk in his office as Raphael bristled at the use of his title instead of his codename. The disadvantage of being a public figure lay in the fact that everyone here knew who he was outside of the collective, whereas he did not even know many of his compatriots' names. Privy to his discipline were The Widow, The Doctor, and The Spartan; the three operatives other than Carlisle that were stationed in England.

With the exception of The Viper, of course, who had now been missing for over two months.

"I have not been reckless, sir. I know when and where to take risks. That is why you recruited me."

"No, you were recruited as a code breaker, your other talents came to light later on. But, that is moot. Your quest for vengeance has always been a problem, but I have been willing to turn a blind eye because you were not endangering the Collective. Getting yourself involved with a human trafficking ring? Infiltrating gangs? You aren't here to do the job of the River Thames Police or local law enforcement. You are here to find men who are traitors to England. Not just one man, who may or may not exist."

This again. 

The Major always had trouble believing that what had happened in Belgium had not just been a bad coincidence. No matter how many times Raphael and Thomas had tried to explain that something had been off the day Thomas had been captured.

"Someone betrayed us in Belgium. There is no other way Thomas would have been caught."

"To this day, have you ever found proof? You have been back in England for seven years and not a single shred of evidence that there was a French spy in our midst. It was an unfortunate incident, but you must stop wasting your time, our time while men who have caused the deaths of countless English soldiers. You serve one purpose here, I have no other need for you. You are intelligent, resourceful, and an important part of our organization, but I am at the end of my rope with you and your antics, are we clear? The next time you do something like this, I will have no qualms about cutting you loose, understood? You may be important, but not enough for me to risk The Collective. We do not need the local thugs asking questions about who you are and who you work for."

Raphael chaffed at the order, even more so because he had been given a dressing down in front of his colleagues. "Yes, sir."

The Major sighed and took off his spectacles, his hair now grey with evidence of his age. The Major pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. "Trentham has been spotted in India. He killed two of our operatives, but our representatives in Bombay are dealing with it."

All four of the people in the office took sharp inhales, shocked by the news. Trentham was the man The Viper had been hunting before he had gone missing. No one escaped The Viper. Ever.

"You all know what this means," The Major's voice was somber, his forehead creased.

If Trentham had made it all the way to India alive, it was all the confirmation they needed that The Viper was dead.

"Maybe he just..... left, you know? He had nothing keeping him here. Maybe he decided he wanted another life. Maybe even now, he's swimming in a lake somewhere in Turkey while we think he got killed. Can you believe that? Viper? A man like Trentham getting the jump on Viper?" The Spartan shook her head in disbelief that mirrored Raphael's own. That man was an instrument of death, with such acute killing prowess that most steered clear of him.

"He would not have left without his hounds, if there was anything important to that son of a bitch, it was his fucking dogs," The Doctor scrubbed his face with a hand and then accepted the glass of whiskey The Major had poured for each of them.

"I raised that boy since he was twelve years old," The Major sighed quietly, "trained him myself, saw him learn to read and write. After my own son died in the summer of '08, he was the closest thing I had to family. All of you who have become part of The Collective under my tutelage are my students, but that boy was something special. He was a good soldier, a good fighter, he sold his soul in service to The Crown. This world is a safer place because of all the atrocities he was willing to commit. I hope he rests in peace. May God have mercy on his soul," The Major raised his glass, and the rest of them followed suit. "Salud."

"Salud."

The Major knocked back his drink and then flung his empty glass against the wall. As shards of glass rained down on the floor, his four subordinates took it as their cue to leave.

Feeling disconcerted and slightly shocked, Raphael strolled into his study and poured himself a drink. Why did the confirmation that The Viper was dead leave him so shaken?

He was two years younger than I am.

Death was a constant companion in this line of work, that was the first thing that Raphael had understood when he had seen the aftermath of battle, bodies of young men lying strewn across grounds, trampled and beaten and dismembered. There was no honor in dying in pain, your last moments full of fear. There was no honor in war.

Raphael no longer feared death. He had figured that the Reaper would come to collect him sooner rather than later.

Raphael had lived a good life, though not a traditional one. He had enjoyed himself in his youth and then in his adulthood he had become a man that was not easily crossed. The only thing left to accomplish was to deliver the hand of justice to whoever had betrayed The Collective in Belgium. That man was responsible was what had happened to Thomas.

And for what Rafe had endured in his attempt to bring Thomas home.

As if in reminder, the whip scars on his back began to itch and burn. He had a special salve to keep the skin healthy and moisturized that he had been neglecting because he had thought he had found another possible lead regarding Belgium, only to find out the prime suspect in his investigation had died a year after the war had ended.

Raphael reached for his pocket watch, his fingers tracing the lettering on the dented lid in distress. 

He was getting desperate and he knew it. His leads had all but dried up and he was no closer to an answer than he was eight years ago. He had looked in Belgium, France, England and still, he had nothing.

What if it really was just a coincidence? That a group of French soldiers just happened upon Thomas as he went to exchange intelligence?

No, ever since the beginning his gut had told him that something wasn't adding up.

Thomas' suffering, Raphael's suffering could not have been for nothing. He refused to believe that.

A knock sounded on the door, making him scowl in irritation.

"Go away, Elmwood!" He snapped at his batman-turned-butler.

"Unfortunately, my Lord, I cannot. You have a caller."

"Goddamn it, is it that Mrs. Sherman? Tell her I am otherwise engaged and to stop hounding me! I ended our understanding weeks ago, I don't know why she keeps showing up at the front door."

"Ah," said another voice said softly, laden with amusement and affection. The door opened to reveal a well-dressed older gentleman whom Raphael had not expected to see until Christmas. "Not Mrs. Sherman."

Raphael's mouth dropped open in shock.

His father? In London?!