This is sort of AR, since I figure this couldn't possibly fit with their dynamic in-game. Or maybe the complete lack of dynamic (besides, presumably, Ben hating Reaver out of principle) is because Ben was trying to stay far, far out of Reaver's way after this incident…

(And if you're wondering: Of course violence turns Reaver on!)

I'm meh on this, but I feel like it had enough good bits to post. Please review, but also be gentle with some of this fic's rockier bits. It was more an effort in completion and an experiment in characterization than anything else.

Marksmen

It was around this point in my life, during my time in Bloodstone, that I had one of the queerest incidents of my life. It's not one I care to remember, much less repeat.

It was, in fact, this incident that set me off my wayward course and back onto the true and steady. Nothing like meeting a sociopathic criminal to prove exactly what you don't want out of life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go get another ale and try and blot the bloody memory out.

Ben didn't quite know how he'd gotten to where he was that instant, but he was trying very hard to remember.

Something involving… alcohol. Big surprise there. A bar. A tavern. He remembered the smoky dim of The Leper's Arms, but all he could remember was Caroline, his latest love, on his lap, and a good pint of ale in his hand. The second good pint, he recalled. Much too early to black out. Maybe she'd drugged it. Bloodstone prostitutes were never what they seemed. Least, that was what the stories said; their desperate multitudes drove Ben to think otherwise, though he would admit that Bloodstone's seemed to have an unusual sense of glee and audacity.

Oh, balls. His hands were tied, and he didn't think it was Caroline's doing because there was no half-dressed woman in the vicinity. Even worse, he was so dizzy he could hardly begin to process how to stand without them. The hands. Not the half-dressed women.

He traced his thoughts again, frantically: he'd won the sharpshooting contest, which had brought on a bit of trouble with a couple of grumbling bandits, but Ben was liked well-enough, and they hadn't dared throw more than a few punches. That explained the sore eye, then. It had also brought Caroline to his lap, a fact that made him smile even in the midst of his current situation. He could understand her pragmatic concern for her own livelihood, but he still hoped against hope that his running out of gold shouldn't mean an end to their relationship.

Groaning, he pulled himself up against the wall of wherever he was and shut his eyes tighter against the pain that ran through his entire body. He realized, with some relief, that he was merely sore; not battered. Whoever had abducted him had handled him no more cruelly than they would a sack of rotten potatoes.

Ben twisted his neck, waiting for the crack. He took a deep breath in. He wished he were home. As though he had a home, when the best he could hope for was a semi-clean bed on the second floor of The Leper's Arms.

He breathed in again, this time through his nose. He felt his body strain against his breath. The room smelled… good. Not a normal Bloodstone smell.

He opened his eyes, hoping they would have adjusted to the darkness by then. No luck. Fear gripped him suddenly: he was in a place without windows, without light. Trying to keep his calm, he cracked his shoulders.

There was a simultaneous crack in the corner. Ben froze. He would recognize that sound anywhere, and it was no cracking of joints.

It was the cocking of a trigger.

"Lovely to meet you." A match lit, illuminating a white coat; no sooner did Ben catch this glimpse than did the match light a candle, which the figure held from his face. Ben squinted to make out the figure, but the figure was clutched in shadows.

The room, he noticed, was shabbier than he'd expected. By the glimpse he got, the good, red walls were peeling in wisps of the corrosive sea air – they were still in Bloodstone, then, he could smell that, along with what he then identified as a strong cologne and years of dust.

The light disappeared briefly into the fireplace, then ate something up to become a small fire.

"There. A bit of light to examine you by."

His voice. His voice was, like the room, unlike anything Ben had ever experienced in Bloodstone. There was an odd – what was the word? – inconsistency in it. Maybe Ben was still a little drunk, because he laughed. No sooner did he laugh than the figure strode over, yanked him up by the hair, and slammed his face into the ground.

Ben felt the hard pressure of fingers pushing his neck down, but hardly felt the crack of his nose. The floor – he felt that. He winced as he heard the distant, splintering sniffed, then swallowed, wincing at the familiar tang of blood slipping down his throat. The threadbare carpet, now, it smelled like an old brothel. That was something Ben could identify a little more with Bloodstone.

The figure was tall and lithe, but Ben was tall and muscular, and he didn't expect it. That was it. He didn't expect it.

"Believe me when I say that I've been looking forward to having a little chat." He felt the long-fingered hand, cool, leather, as it slid up his neck. It gripped his hair like the fibers of a net and tugged up, just enough to assess the damage to the carpet under its catch. "Oh dear," it said, "Blood on the rugs again. That would be a problem if I'd planned to stay long." The voice made a tsking noise.

The pieces were starting to come together, even in Ben's disorientation. But – then – it had to be some kind of dream. Or maybe Caroline had tried to cheer him up by slipping something a little bit strange in his drink?

"This can't be happening," he muttered, and only then, when blood trickled down his lip, did he realize he also had a split lip from his earlier fight. He tried to get to his feet, but he remembered the rope around his wrists. He just flailed on his stomach, leading to a rich, self-satisfied laugh from the man – it couldn't be him – who tugged Ben up by the hair and took a closer look at him.

Ben was relieved for about two seconds, until he wasn't.

It really was him.

The man frowned, a petulant child regretting an earlier decision.

"I shouldn't have broken your nose," he said distantly, "you're pleasing enough." His face lit into a smirk. "Then again…"

"You -," Ben spat out and then choked, not because he was livid, but because it was hard to form words (had they knocked a tooth out?) and because he had a lot of blood in the area of his mouth and his nose wasn't working.

Definitely something Caroline had put in his drink, he reassured himself, but the possibility seemed ever more remote as the fog in his mind slowly dispersed.

Ben felt the fingers abruptly unweaving from his hair. The man stood. From his vantage point of belly-flat on the carpet, Ben saw him gesture grandly to the crumbling room. "Welcome to my home. Or, my former home. You can tell your grandchildren about this – oh, should you live to have any – but please add that it was quite a bit lovelier when I maintained it. It would seem your cow of a Hero allowed it to decay." He sighed dramatically, as though he could imagine no harsher punishment. Ben felt some shriveled up little part of his honor cry out weakly in protest. He mustered what he could and said, "The queen-"

"The queen!" Reaver repeated loudly, adding quite a different tone to it. He threw his hands in the air. "An explanation for her little feat yet eludes me. I suppose when one sacrifices one's entire family and amasses that kind of conspicuous wealth – mmm, a bit tacky, don't you think? Buying the Bowerstone manor like that? – power is soon to follow." He went quiet, as if pondering on this for the first time. "Hmm. Yes. Still would've chosen the gold were I her. Much quicker. Less work involved. Silly cow." He laughed lightly, but it was a laugh that belied a special kind of dislike.

"You don't – like her," Ben managed, choking on blood. Time to stop talking, Ben Finn. Ben liked her. Very much. He'd seen pictures, on coins, and she always looked very strong and regal, a gentle giant. Like Albion itself. She'd been on great adventures, they said. They said she could shoot a bullseye from hundreds of paces.

She treated the common folk with kindness. The salt of the earth were her kin, they said. Said she'd grown up on the streets starving and begging. Ben wasn't sure he believed those stories, although he always wanted to.

Ben wanted to look at her and see all he could be. Then came Bloodstone and then Sarah, Joanna, Caroline and –

"Trust me," Reaver said suddenly squatting back down next to him, "If you met her, you wouldn't either. She's quite ugly. Scarred up." His touch flickered to his face. Ben noticed, but he didn't think Reaver himself did. "A poor portrait of a Hero."

A true Hero, Ben thought, but he said nothing aloud, partly because his mouth was full of blood and he didn't want any more there. Reaver was looking at him as though he'd very much like to strike him again, if only for fun.

How had the queen met Reaver? Reaver, disappeared legend of the seas. Hell, he thought, how am I meeting Reaver? The longer and longer he stayed awake, the more the pain of his nose cut through the haze of the drugs, and the longer this lasted the more he became convinced that he wasn't going crazy. The downside was that if this was reality, he was scared. If this was reality, it meant he was shut somewhere without sunlight, ready to die at the hands of a maniac for some transgression he couldn't so much as recall.

Reaver smiled suddenly, and leaned in very close, where he brushed Ben's ear. Ben felt very uncomfortable. "And do you try to paint yourself in her image?" he whispered. His breath was hot and strangely wet against Ben's ear. "A hero?" He chuckled again, this time low and beguiling. Ben felt immensely uncomfortable.

He felt a bit better when Reaver's fingers – bruisingly forceful, accustomed to pulling triggers – went to Ben's chin and yanked Ben's face toward his own. Ben struggled against the rope at his back, but with no luck. Something sharp, he thought, I need something sharp. He wondered if he was supposed to get out of this alive. In all contexts he had heard of Reaver with admiration, even city pride. Bloodstone hadn't forgotten him in the past thirty years.

Meeting him was proving to be far less fun than listening to tales of him. It was like meeting a monster the monster. In real life, the teeth flashed like death.

"Tell me," he said, from a reasonable distance, "Do you have any idea as to why I would dirty my hands with you myself?"

Ben's neck strained as Reaver stretched him. He stared at Reaver's face, half darkness and half dim firelight, and fought through his mess of a face to answer.

"My pretty face, 'course."

Reaver chuckled at that, but Ben's heart continued to flutter like an old man's. He tried to lick up some of the blood around his mouth to keep it from dripping unpleasantly down his chin – it didn't matter anymore, all the blood tasted the same to him – but Reaver's grip only tightened unpleasantly. Definitely not a jolly kind of chuckle.

He brought his face very close to Ben's. Ben tried not to blink and marveled, detached, at Reaver's intimidation skills. His split lip stung.

"Tell me, boy," he said, "Do you know how to use a gun?"

Ben felt his face contorting into something between a smile and a disbelieving grimace. Did he know how to use a gun? How did that have anything to do with… anything? His stomach dropped briefly to his feet while he wondered if Reaver was trying to recruit him. But no. No. That couldn't be it, Reaver wouldn't need recruits. Anyway, he doubted recruits got locked in a dark room and tied up. Unless it was some kind of freaky hazing ritual. That might not be too far off the mark, actually, according to all the stories he'd heard…

The frenzied tangents in halted when Reaver pressed his hand to Ben's chest and pushed him to the ground. In the same moment that Ben thumped, Reaver jammed his in Ben's mouth and leaned over him. "Did your smart red mouth suddenly go dumb?"

Ben suddenly felt angry, but there was nothing he could do. Reaver handled his gun like a wrench, like a psychotic dentist. Pain shot through Ben's mouth. Blood pooled out of its corners. He tried to move his head, but that only made the pain worse. He could taste metal more acutely than ever, but he couldn't distinguish between gun and blood; both had the same metallic tang.

Reaver's hand pinned to his chest didn't help matters, either. If Ben had learned anything about the man, it was that he was surprisingly forceful, and the gloved hand pinning him was no exception that rule. Ben could have bucked him off if he'd been less out of it. Probably. Maybe. He remembered he hadn't eaten properly for a week or so, since ale and stale bread didn't quite count, and thought that might have had something to do with it.

He looked up. Reaver's hair was askew, and his face contained barely controlled annoyance bordering on something unsaid.

"I said," he whispered, "do you know how to use a gun?"

He sounded almost happy now, angry to the point of deranged glee. His cheeks had a faint flush in the firelight. He almost looked like he was having fun. There was a suggestion in there somewhere; his voice lingered over it.

What alarmed Ben most was that his voice could still have passed for appropriate in a tearoom.

He twisted again, and Ben let out a cry of pain. That hurt. If he got out of this alive, he promised, he would change his ways. Repent. None of his brothers had ever gotten in this much trouble. Except when they died.

A sociopath had a cocked gun in his mouth.

Balls.

With a hideous popping noise, Reaver yanked the gun out of Ben's mouth. He didn't move away, however, and his cloying presence more than made up for the lack of metal in his mouth.

Ben ran his tongue over his tooth. Reaver looked calmer as he watched, a smile ghosting his lips. It was still nothing more than a mask, his face. Ben had the sudden, hideous feeling that Reaver's entire human skin was nothing more than a cover for some demonic insides.

"Let's just say-" that whisper again, hot and wet; he hadn't moved away "-that I dislike competition in my area of, ah. Skill."

"Useless," Ben croaked out, "'m useless with a gun an'-"

"Liar," he said. His voice was smooth, conversational, even amused, indulgent. He wiped his bloodied gun on the carpeting to get the worst of it off. It was a beautiful gun. In better circumstances, Ben could have admired it. Reaver caught him watching and smiled. "I don't think I'll be coming back here soon. Things are only just getting off the ground. But I may as well give the carpeting some color, no?"

Ben breathed in and out, the breath itself an affirmation of his temporarily prolonged existence. What now, Ben Finn?

"It really does pretty you up quite well," Reaver said, cocking his head at him. "A spot of damage like that." He slicked his gloves in Ben's blood to grip Ben's nose.

Bloody fucking –

Ben clenched his jaw against the dizzying pain. His vision speckled. He felt his loose tooth ache to its roots.

He felt the pale brush of Reaver's fingers across his; felt the strokes of bright, cooled blood Reaver left all across.

"There. So you're straight for another day."

He'd put his gun down.

It seemed a silly thing to do. But Ben had his hands tied together; shooting in this state would have been something out of a penny dreadful. Something for a hero. Something for someone Ben Finn was, evidently, not.

He saw Reaver grin.

The gun was, deliberately, just out of his reach.

"Thousand," he answered, shaving two hundred off his number.

"Lying to me again?"

"'en why'd you ask?"

Ben stared up at him, his mouth set against the blood. The edges of his visions crackled; the blood slid down his face. He didn't care anymore. At that point, all he knew was that he was face-to-face with his own death.

He would go out fighting. He could face it with dignity. If only not the way his father faced his (and wasn't it drunkenness, that got him into this whole mess?) – if only in spirit.

But he would go out fighting,

One of Reaver's dark eyebrows raised.

"Not a way to earn my mercy," he said glibly, "with a look like that. One might mistake you for something you're not."

He set the barrel of his gun to Ben's throat. The pressure left the mark of a barrel, one that Ben could already count among his many other bruises.

It was then, when Reaver shifted, that Ben realized his assailant was… hard.

In that way.

Reaver pushed him face on the floor again.

Great.

Ben really, really didn't want to think about what was about to happen.

His mind went blank.

In that still moment, he felt his blood wetting a small spot on the floor. What remained pounded through his body. He tasted metal and dirt, heard the sound of something sliding off, lightly falling to the floor.

He felt Reaver pick up his hands with his own bare ones. They were calloused, hard, in a way that Ben would not have expected. He remembered the gun, the tales. Hundreds of years of marksmanship didn't make for soft hands.

Ben jutted two fingers out.

Reaver laughed. "Is that an invitation?"

There was a strange, tense moment where Reaver caressed his hands. Less caressed, really, than examined, the way a doctor might examine a patient with his bare hands. Clinical, quick. He was looking for something. Ben focused on his breath, loud against the floor.

"No calluses on these hands. At least, not enough to cause reason for concern."

He sounded cheered. His voice had gone down a couple notes, almost a purr.

His hands lingered on Ben's wrist, but then he got up. His erection brushed against the side of Ben's leg, but only briefly, so briefly as to not bear thinking about. Ben felt, for the first time in what felt like eternity, like he could breathe.

"No," Reaver finally said, "Not a hero after all, then." For a scourge of Albion, Ben thought, Reaver certainly seemed to have a fixation with heroics. Besides – what did he expect? For Ben to beat him hands down? There was no way he was going to act heroically when he had his hands tied. Literally.

In fact, coward that he was, Ben was already saying prayers of thanks in his head.

Reaver almost sounded disappointed, but the smug pleasure showed in his voice. "I told my men that your exploits were exaggerated, and sure as rain they were. You're no more than a man with a bit of cheap talent."

Good, Ben thought, let me go, then.

"Not a hero in the end," he repeated, sounding more pleased at the sound of his own voice, his own correctness. "I might rest with some measure of tranquility after all."

He left Ben dizzy and drained.

When Ben awoke and shifted his wrists, the fire had gone out in the fireplace, but the door was open, allowing some evening dusk to spill in – just enough to barely follow.

When he shifted his wrists, Ben found that they were free.

He managed to bring himself to his feet, his head pounding, a sense of déjà vu overwhelming him. He began to sort through the… day? Night? But it came to him as a haze, a jumble of events he could neither comprehend nor believe.

He stumbled out of the door, into the deserted mansion. The place had seen better days. He didn't dare look at the rug (threadbare), but the grand marble fireplace was dusty; the chandelier hung limp and lopsided, looters had stripped the bed of sheets, left only a ripped mattress and a wooden post with profanities chicken-scratched into the wood.

The balustrade was a joke, rickety, not stable enough to support Ben's unsteady weight as he shambled down. The tiles, too, looked dusty, with random footprints and mud scattered. He saw vomit decaying in a corner, but he opened his nostrils anyway, trying to glean a whiff of the sea air. It was on the tip of his nose, almost there, almost out, to the light, now -

Something dimly shiny caught his eye.

He came to a stand-still, his groaning limbs protesting. To the light, they told him. He picked it up.

It was a coin, on tails; a griffin. He turned it over.

The queen.

Memories flooded back, more vivid than before, less dreamlike, still out of sequence.

Was it really…?

He reached for his neck: the barrel bruise was still there.

His face was still sticky with blood.