Chapter 27. Author's note - sorry for the long wait! Procrastination got into me and I'm very sorry that it did. I will try to update sooner next time. Also: if anyone has any fanart or anything for this story(not expecting anyone to) I'd love to see it!

Update! Art on the side by Percikingdawn, many thanks to her! 

Sunday quickly slipped into Monday. Faster even than Nightingale seemed to blink, she was standing in the Club, waiting for government agents to arrive and reveal themselves. So far, she had spotted none, not even those from David's team.

Her sisters were ready, too. They knew what would happen - a client would approach them, reveal themselves to be a government agent, and then proceed to pretend to screw whichever lucky girl they had selected.

Now, as Nightingale stood in the Club between Mr. Foster and Mr. Kavanagh, she was wondering if an agent would show up and rescue her. After all, she was getting very tired of being grinded on by the two men, and was wondering if she could possibly go much longer without vomiting as they bumped up against her.

Steel had been right about that. Though she thought that she could handle her clients, that she was master of the pain they brought her, every touch and caress from the two men beside her was even more foul now that she'd been with Robin.

She had to grit her teeth and recite from Frankenstein - which she'd spent the better part of Sunday night chattering with Sparkle about - in order to prevent herself from imagining how her nails would bloody as she scratched Mr. Foster's eyes out, or how Mr. Kavanagh's face would turn blue as she throttled him.

Then came a distraction that was far better than Frankenstein. She happened to look up and, all of a sudden, she saw Michael standing before her.

Mr. Foster and Mr. Kavanagh noticed her fixation too, for they immediately scowled.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen. I'll have to leave you in the capable hands of another Inamorata," she said. And with no further ado, she pushed them aside.

Michael was not smiling. He was staring at her with wide, longing eyes.

"Michael," she murmured when she reached him, immediately taking his hands in hers. She kissed them. It was not as Clarence had kissed hers the previous day. That had been full of mockingly innocent seduction. Her gesture to Michael was entirely innocent - a desire to protect him and nothing more.

"Hello, Nightingale," he said. His shyness was like Robin's, but he had none of the other man's strange cockiness to temper it.

"I missed you," said Nightingale.

She felt her stomach twist nervously as a smile burst over his face. She had missed him, but not in a way that would make him smile so. It made her wonder if she ought to tell him of the fact that the bordello would be stormed.

"I missed you, too, Gale," he said. He leaned over and, as if fearing Nightingale were made of delicate china, kissed her mouth so delicately Nightingale barely felt it.

The childish innocence in his face was enough to give Nightingale pause. No, she must tell Michael. She would not have him hurt in the storming.

"I know. Which is why I have something to tell you, Michael," she said. To conceal her words, she leaned forward and kissed his neck, speaking when her mouth was close to ear.

He drew back, concern making the corners of his mouth turn down. "What's the matter, Nightingale?" he whispered urgently, taking her hand and squeezing it. "If someone's hurt you-"

Nightingale laughed scornfully. "All my clients hurt me, Michael. That's the fucking job description of an Inamorata. But no," she added, when his eyes widened with pain. His sympathy, as always, gave her pause. "No one has hurt me more than usual. Someone has, however, helped me. And I need to explain something to you. To keep you safe."

Michael jerked back and then laughed. His laugh, while bubbly and utterly pleasing, was not one of humour. It was one of confusion. "Keep me safe? What do you mean?" he said.

"Hush," said Nightingale. Though her mouth curved into one of her seductress's smiles, her tone was insistent. "Don't say anything so loudly."

"Then should we-" he began, but Nightingale cut him off.

"Come along, Mr. Castleman," she said, pulling him up by his tie, as she had the first time.

His face was bewildered. So Nightingale twined her arms around his neck, pulling him close so she could whisper into his ear.

"If you act like that, Bobby will be suspicious. Come, you must act like we're just any Inamorata and her client," she instructed.

"But we're not. Which is why acting like any other of these scumbags is so difficult," he murmured.

Nightingale had to bat her eyelashes to hide the tears in her eyes. So, the pair of them both acting, both betraying their strange companionship for Nightingale's safety, they made their way to her room.

Once there, Nightingale made sure the door was shut before seating Michael on the bed. He sat down, the confused expression returning to him.

"Nightingale, what's this about?" he asked.

Nightingale did not reply right away. She had begun to pace and even wrung her hands once or twice, as characters in the books she'd read were ever doing.

"Michael," she told him, immediately falling to her knees before him and clasping his hands in hers. "When I tell you this, you must swear to tell no one else. Not a soul. Not even Bobby. The only person with whom you may discuss this is Pierce."

"My brother?" said Michael. He frowned at Nightingale's familiar tone.

"Yes. Also, you must not come back to the bordello," Nightingale told him.

The expression on his face was piteous at her words. His eyes widened and filled with tears, his mouth fell slack, and his brows angled upward. He looked broken, sorrowful. "Nightingale, why? I thought you...am I-"

"It's for your own safety, Michael. The bordello won't be around much longer - it will be closed on Saturday, if things go according to plan - and if you come here again, you'll be in the way. And in danger, on Saturday night," she added, when he tried to speak.

"But Nightingale-" he cried.

She knew she must stop him, must prevent him from crying or raging or even telling Bobby. And so, with a heavy heart, she used the power she knew she had over him.

"Please, Michael," she whispered, as she laid her head in his lap, her cheek pressed to his thigh. She closed her eyes, knowing the gesture was working in the way he removed his hands from hers so he could stroke her hair. "Please, you've got to listen to me."

"Of course," he whispered.

She lifted her head. "Listen to everything I have to say and don't interrupt," she ordered, the authority in her tone at odds with the gentleness that had been there before.

Only when he nodded did she tell him. But when she did, she told him enough, though not the whole story. She left out her affection for Robin, Clarence, and David, and emphasized Pierce's role in the whole thing.

Throughout, she noticed that he remained fairly impassive. Either good at controlling his emotions - which she doubted - or in shock, he was quiet.

Only when she finished did he speak.

"So, I'm not to come here again?" he said.

Nightingale wondered if the poor, pathetic man had got anything else out of it. She doubted it.

"Exactly. If you come tomorrow, you'll be in Dav- Detective Beckett's team's way, and if you're anywhere near here on Saturday, you might be in the crossfire," said Nightingale.

"Do you expect there to be fighting?" asked Michael, his eyes wide.

Nightingale shrugged. "I haven't any idea. But I don't want you in the middle of it."

Michael smiled just a tiny bit. "I'm not a child, Nightingale. You don't have to protect me."

Nightingale, seeing that childish defiance in his face, that he was a big boy and she needn't care for him or fuss over him, felt a warmth permeate her body. She stood and, taking him in her arms, cradled his head to her chest.

"I do. I don't want to see you hurt," she told him.

His voice was muffled when he spoke. "So you care about me, then?" he asked.

"Of course I do!" said Nightingale, and it was not even a lie. Had he asked her anything else, if she loved him, wanted him, desired him, she could not have answered with anything but a falsehood. But that was one question she could answer truthfully. Though he might have taken her to mean something other than doting friendship, she did not have to lie to him.

There was a short pause. And then Michael asked a question that undid all the happiness Nightingale had got from her truthfulness.

"Do you love me, Nightingale?"

It gave her pause. She stood there, her heart beginning to race with panic, terrified as to how she should answer. Surely Michael could have heard her racing pulse, cradled to her breast as he was, for he looked up, accusation in his eyes.

"Do you?" he asked.

Nightingale did not know how to answer. If she lied as she always had, she would string him along cruelly until she was freed, whereupon he would think she loved him and be let down horribly.

But if she told him the truth, he surely would be angry and jealous and sorrowful. It would break his heart. Sparkle's story about the Inamorata from the Kensington Bordello came back to her and she very nearly bolted from the room in visceral panic.

"You don't, do you?" he murmured. Nightingale looked down into his brown eyes, the eyes that, unlike David's were always warm instead of always cold, and saw they were full of tears.

"No," she said, and stroked his face.

He nodded, looking down at the floor. Nightingale hoped that he was trying to conceal his grief, not that he was unable to look her in the eyes.

"Then you mustn't let me take advantage of you ever again," he mumbled.

"You never have," she cried, though it was only partly true.

He snorted. "I have. Every time I've come here, I've fucked you, Nightingale. Because I wanted you and I deceived myself into thinking, foolishly, that you might like me."

"I do-" she started, but he cut her off. He sprang to his feet and out of her embrace to stand quivering with rage before her.

"You told me once that you never even wanted me. If you don't love me, then I've done such horrible things to you. I've got to make it up to you, tell-" he began. Nightingale realized then that she had to stop him. Stop him before his yelling attracted attention, stop him before he tore his heart to pieces with sadness.

So she leaped forward and did the only thing she knew how to do - she kissed him. She grabbed Michael by his short hair and shoved her mouth roughly against his. Though she had once enjoyed kissing him, that was gone now. All she could think of was that his lips were not as soft as Robin's.

When she drew back, the pair of them were panting, their chests heaving in unison. Their heads bowed together, Nightingale was glad she could not look into Michael's eyes.

"Shh," she told him. "You never took advantage of me. Not the way the others did. Though I may not have wanted you, you never raped me like they did. You were kind and gentle and I liked you."

Michael snorted disdainfully and Nightingale bumped her nose against his.

"Believe me or not, I always looked forward to your visits," she murmured.

"Why?" he asked, voice bleak.

In response, she kissed him again. He did not protest to this, but when she began to unbuckle his belt, he stopped her.

"What are you doing?" he gasped.

"What do you think?" she growled.

"But Nightingale-" he began.

"Shut up," she snapped at him. She knew what she had to do. Sleeping with him was a necessity now. It would keep him quiet, make him happier, even stop him from going to Bobby.

Now it was not only her fate that hung in the balance in the possibility that Michael, in jealousy, might betray her to him. It was that of all her sisters. Though she did not expect Michael the gentleman, the delicate, innocent Michael to ever go to Bobby, she could not take any risk.

"I don't want to take advantage of you, Gale," he said.

"You aren't," she told him bluntly. To distract him, she took off her corset.

It did not work as well as it usually did, for he was distracted only momentarily before he went back to staring at her sorrowfully.

She kissed him again, guiding his arms around her so that his bare palms made contact with her naked skin. When she was in his embrace, she took his face in her hands, holding his head securely.

"If this is the last time you'll be in the bordello, don't you want to make the most of it?" she purred, her voice husky with seductiveness. "If you might never see me again - I'll be a free woman, you might not find me - don't you want me now?"

Nightingale would of been proud of how effectively that piece of allure worked had she not been so disgusted with herself for it. For Michael's eyelids fluttered, his eyeballs nearly rolling into the back of his head.

"Nightingale, are you sure?" he moaned.

She smiled even though she wanted to sob. "Of course," she said.

With that, she tossed him back on the bed. When she climbed in on top of him, he moaned again.

What Steel had said came back to her as Nightingale went to work on Michael. Every touch Michael gave her reminded her of Robin. The way Michael kissed her throat as she arched her back in a pantomime of pleasure was similar to the way Robin had when she had not been pantomiming with him, the soft, bashful cries Michael gave were almost the twins of Robin's, even the way he stared at her mimicked Robin's adoring gaze.

And it made it difficult for Nightingale, just as Steel had said. All she wanted to do was to grab Michael and shove him away from her. Had he been another client, one she felt no doting compassion for, she might have done so. Only the plight of her sisters and her affection for Michael stopped her.

When it was over, Michael curled up on his side and she drew him close. When his head was cushioned on her chest, the pair of them listening to the steady thumping of her heart, he spoke.

"Whether you love me or not, you ought to know I'm in love with you," he murmured. "Just...don't forget that, okay?"

"Okay," said Nightingale, and kissed the top of his head. She expected him to sigh with either sadness or pleasure, but she got nothing.

Looking down, she saw he had fallen asleep. She smiled a little. At least Michael would be safe if there were a firefight. She could not say that about everyone she cared for.

Then, content in watching Michael's breath come and go in slumber, she too slipped into oblivion.