bChapter 1: Private Time

Sly had seen an old movie once, where a guy put in solitary confinement kept himself occupied by throwing a baseball against a wall. He glanced around, and noted that he didn't even have room to do that in the little armored shack that severed as one of the many solitary confinement cells in the gothic manor known as "The Contessa's Keep", Interpol's most notorious prison.

Sylvester Cooper, Sly to his friends and simply Cooper to the throngs of policemen he had left eating his dust in his three-year tour of duty as a master thief, scion of the Cooper line, was finally in prison. He was, to his recollection, the first Cooper to be put in such a situation. He had let down his family name, and what was worse, his friends.

And how? He had been tricked. No, tricked wasn't strong enough a word. He had been betrayed, stabbed in the figurative back by a traitorous dog of a tiger. Neyla. He cursed himself for believing her whole "I'm not so black and white" act. Now, there was a woman he never wanted to see, hear from or speak to again. What's worse, he had liked her. Not, perhaps, enough to consider a serious relationship with, but he had liked her.

She had caught him off guard. He had never met a cop who was so willing to talk to a thief. Even Carmelita's banter at the various crime scenes he had encountered her at was done with the motive of getting him to stop moving long enough to get a shot in. But Neyla would smile at him with those blue eyes, and Sly wouldn't know what to think.

His thoughts flew back to the dance they had shared in Rajan's palace a few days before his arrest, back when he had thought that she had been on his side. She had put on such a good show of pretending to help him, getting him into Carmelita's good graces. It was the first time he had ever seen her without her hooded scarf on, and her black hair had been beautiful in the low, soft light of the dance floor. He tangoed with her, enjoying the soft banter between them, and she had smiled, looking like the devil in her red dress. He only now realized how appropriate that statement was.

He should have known. He should have seen through her. Her being there was just too convenient, and her disdain for Carmelita should have tipped him off immediately. I mean, "Old Ironsides?" That was a real giveaway. Well, hindsight was 20-20. Whatever feelings he had for her, whatever plans for that date in Bollywood, whatever hopes he had for a good time with the tigress were ended by two little words: "Sorry, Cooper," she had said as she left him at the wrong end of one of Rajan's energy blasts. Mercifully, he had gone out cold before her betrayal registered, but when he woke up in chains, with Murray and, to his vast surprise, Carmelita locked to him, reality set in.

He had been a fool. And what was worse, he had gotten Murray thrown in jail, too. Murray, his friend, his partner, his brother, who could have chosen any path he wanted to, but chose to follow him. Well, Murray, look where it led you. Straight to jail. He had been caught saving Sly's life, that was the painful part. Saving him from Rajan, that's what Murray was doing. And now the gentle giant was sitting in a cell, probably scared out of his mind. Sly mumbled a curse aloud. It was his fault.

But the worst part of this ordeal hadn't been Murray's capture. It wasn't Neyla's betrayal. It wasn't even his own disgrace. It was that Carmelita got roped in too.

She had been framed, Murray had told him, framed with a picture of them dancing. Suddenly, Sly felt like taking Neyla's throat and crushing it slowly in his bare hands. He wasn't a violent person by any means, but in her case, he was more than willing to make an exception. Not for his sake, not even for Murray's, for Carmelita's.

Sly still found it hard to believe that Neyla succeeded in her ruse. Carmelita was, if nothing else, a good cop. Not only because she was one of the best out there, but because she was completely driven by her job and her (unfortunately very black-and-white) sense of justice. Carmelita, he had noted soon after they first met, was one of the few completely honest cops out there. The idea of her being a dirty cop was laughable. But there she was, in the same place as him, sitting in a cell instead of putting someone deserving in one. And what really made Sly sick to his stomach was that it was all his fault.

Neyla may have used the photo to get her into that mess, but it was Sly who put her in a compromising situation. He had used her, something he never had wanted to do, used her as a distraction. They had danced. God, had they danced. It was a wonderful, romantic tango, and, as Sly thought back to it, hearing the music in his head, one that he hadn't wanted to end. If he had only taken the initiative, let her whirl him around the dance floor for one more song, even one, he would have died a happy man. But no, like a coward, he had had to sneak away, leaving only a rose and a calling card in his wake. But it was enough. Enough for her to probably hate him, and enough for Neyla to snap that damn picture.

Sly closed his eyes at the memory of her face as they were dragged through the Indian jungle, Murray whimpering behind them. He had tried desperately to apologize, to assure her that this was not his intention. He didn't expect the hot-tempered fox to forgive him, why should she? He at the very least expected a curse or two aimed in his direction. But she had, the moment he woke up, the moment he had first spoken her name, she had given him a look that would have stopped the toughest crook in his tracks, and did not say one single word to him until they were dragged into the prison and separated.

He only heard her smooth, Latin-tinted alto once on the entire trek from Rajan's spice temple to the plane that took them to Prague. On the first night after their arrest, after the guards had chained them to a tree and taken their position around the camp and Murray had cried himself to sleep, Sly feigned slumber, knowing that Carmelita would never speak to him. After about an hour, he heard a soft sobbing coming from his right.

Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, the toughest woman he knew, was sobbing like a child, clutching the tarnished badge she worn around her neck to her heart.

Sly had never in his life felt so low.

For the first time, he felt like a criminal. He had wronged someone who never deserved to be wrong. He had hurt someone. Someone he…someone he cared about.

Sly's mind flew back unbidden to that cold night a year ago when it all came to an end. It wasn't the first time his mind had played such a trick on him; he thought of it more often than he would wish. Clockwerk was gone forever (or so he had thought) and all that remained was to get out of there. So he kissed the cop who was chasing him, distracting her long enough to handcuff her to a rail and get away before she noticed. Or so that was how the half-formed plan in his head had gone. In actuality, he had kissed her, fastened her to the rail, and kept on kissing her for what felt like hours. It may have only been a few seconds, but it was far longer than the simple peck Sly had intended. And it had been good. Even surprised like that, Carmelita was a good kisser. He had hoped to find out one day if she was a great one, but now…

A slight pain beginning to develop in his knees brought him back to a tiny cell in a castle in Prague. Sly sighed and shifted his weight. His cane scrapped the roof of the cell. When the guards found they couldn't break his mind, they tried to break his cane, but the metal was too strong to be snapped even by the likes of the Countessa's most brutal enforcers. So they had tied the cane to his back where he couldn't reach it, and then thrown him in solitary. The curved end of the stick was poking into his back, not painfully, but it was irritating him to no end. He was just lucky he was a high-priority prisoner, so the guards couldn't take a chance and beat him up. He was a good fighter, but he never would have had a chance.

Sly knew that the only thing he could do was wait. Bentley was out there somewhere, and he would surely, with all of his brains available, figure out a way to get him and Murray out of jail. Bentley always knew what to do.

CRASH!

Sly smiled as what sounded like a huge wrecking ball exploded through a wall in front of him, the impact shaking the cell door loose from it's hinges.

Right on cue, Bentley.

This is my first Sly Fic, one long in planning. Expect an update by Friday. Please click the little blue button below.

More coming soon,

The White Mask