thank you to 'Doqz, whose nostalgia for holiday cheer aroused the writing of what is perhaps the greatest affront to O. Henry ever, and whose encouragement is greatly appreciated. The other 2003 Holiday Fanfics are here.

The Gift of the Bad Guy

One tall styrofoam cup of American coffee and maybe a whole new life from the beginning. That was all. Seven months of tracking down the witch with the whispered name, another month of correspondence (all with careful secrecy, which made no appearance on Cain's short list of talents) and two hours of waiting in the small pungent Mala Strana tavern-- and American coffee was all Cain Marko could find in himself to want.

The tavern smelled like old wet wood and nothing seemed to move, nothing but dust motes wafting in the sunlight from paneless windows. Old men with curved backs hunched over their folded arms at the tables, muttering to themselves or each other, but they never moved. It was creepy. And the next day would be Christmas.

The witch, Lazia, had told Cain over the phone when to be at the inn, but he hadn't been able to clearly understand her heavily accented English, had felt pissed off and anxious anyway, so he'd only said, "thursday, yeah, fine." After an hour and a half, he wondered if he'd gotten even that right. The stillness, and the smell and the thick coffee all made the waiting torture-- along with Cain's tendency to want what he wanted when he wanted it-- but when the sunlight in the open doorway was replaced by the silhouette of a woman, Cain found that he minded the waiting less.

The old men moved finally, to cross themselves or to leave through side exits.

When the woman stepped out of the sunlight and into the dim light of the tavern, Cain saw the she wore a dark green suit, jeweled necklaces, rings, earrings, with dark hair and an olive-toned face. When she reached Cain's table in the corner, she inclined her head and said, "Bella ciao, Juggernaut."

"Yeah," Cain said, frowning up at her.

"May I sit?" she asked.

Cain nodded and said, "You Lazia?"

"I am. Have you been waiting long?" Her black hair fell down past the pointed shoulders of her suit jacket, and the curls seemed to shift and snake, even as she watched him quietly, politely, even in the still light.

"All fuckin' day."

She smiled. "Did you bring it?"

The acrid taste of coffee in Cain's mouth sharpened. "I wanna get some things clear first."

"You want to know about your payment."

"Damn right I do," he said.

She nodded and looked absently around at the tavern. "Did you bring the other things I told you?"

Cain took a tissue from his jacket pocket and carefully unfolded it on the tabletop; inside there were three twigs, a few black hairs and some leaves. The tissue itself was spotted with blood from one of Tom's coughing fits. It hadn't been hard to get, the soiled tissues were everywhere around the house now.

Lazia poked through the contents with a manicured hand and then nodded. "This will do." She gathered the tissue up and put it into her own pocket. She looked at Cain and said, "I have a room upstairs," with a question in her beautiful face. Cain's mouth curled. He stood up and let the heavy wooden chair and table flutter in his wake.

"So let's do it."

The witch led Cain across the room and up a staircase. As they made their way up to the rooms, voices started up in the tavern, and Cain didn't have to know very much Italian to recognize the hushed tones and the santa maria!s. Lazia led them into a small room where a woven rug covered the floor, red and green, mismatching the wooly bedclothes, which were themselves mismatched, and a stuffed chair in the corner. There was a window shuttered by a roll of thick cloth nailed into the wood above it, admitting a corona of early afternoon sunlight. The room felt strange-- warm, interrupted, half-awake.

Her stuff was already scattered across the bed and the bedside table. She motioned for Cain to shut the door; he did, and she said, "Show it to me."

Cain puffed a laugh. "I don't think so, sweetheart. First you do your hocus pocus, then we'll get to the good stuff."

Irritation flickered over her face. "I am a thief and murderer, but not a liar. I said I will help your friend and I will do it."

"Then do it."

Cain took a step towards her; he loomed over her in the small room. The flash of her sudden smile was too wide and too bright for the dim light from the window.

"It will be easy to heal your friend," she said. "The spell is simple-- but it requires a sacrifice."

"Fine," said Cain, thinking of the cluster of old men downstairs. He moved towards the door.

"It requires a sacrifice from your body," Lazia said. "It must be the Gem."

Cain turned back around. "Oh, that's real convenient. You're full of shit. I said you'd get it when the deal was over."

She shook her head. "It is part of the spell, sciocco. A hand or a foot might work, but the power of the Gem protects your hands and feet." She shrugged one shoulder under the expensive suit jacket. "It is not my fault if you have nothing else to give."

"Fuck you."

Lazia laughed. A moment passed in silence, and then Cain said, "Fine. But you fuck me over and there ain't no magic in the world that's gonna keep your pretty little head on your body."

She nodded. "And there are a thousand ways for me to make you crawl on your belly through the gutters of Hell if you betray me."

"I'm shakin' in my booties," Cain said, mouth twisting. Then, after another moment, he said, "Fine."

Cain cupped his hands together, one on top of the other. He closed his eyes and a red light ribboned through the cracks between his fingers; he opened his hands and the Gem of Cyttorak lie there, flickering, the size of an apple but dwarfed in Cain's large palm. He opened his eyes.

Lazia spread her hands and an inch of fire ignited on the rug in front of her, moved around her in a circle. "Let's begin." She took the tissue from her pocket and muttered words that Cain couldn't understand. Then, in English, she said, "What is his name?"

Cain held the Gem against his chest. "Tom Cassidy. Thomas. Black Tom."

She said the strange words again but this time Cain caught Tom's name. Lazia dropped the tissue with everything wrapped inside it into the fire and the whole room suddenly smelled like blood. Cain knew it was Tom's blood. The house smelled like that all the time. Lazia said more and there was a sound of someone crying out, Tom's voice from somewhere.

Lazia raised her head. "What will you give?"

"Huh?" Cain's eyes were riveted to the twigs that he'd carefully gathered from Tom's unconscious body, which were twisting unnaturally in the fire.

"Your sacrifice."

Cain looked down at the Gem in his hand. It was warm and it didn't reflect the firelight but flickered independently, inside itself. He took two steps forward and dropped it into her outstretched hand. As soon as the Gem left his skin it turned a lifeless dull red, almost black.

The witch cupped the Gem in her palms. She looked at Cain. "I will take this from you."

He half-nodded. His eyes found other things to rest on. A red velvet sack on the bed, the empty stone fireplace.

Lazia shook her head. "No, you must say it. Do you give this to me?"

"Yeah," said Cain, low, "yeah, I'm giving it to you."

Something, then-- movement at the joints of Cain's knees, elbows, wrists, knuckles; not trembling but actual vibration. The room moved. Lazia laughed and red light reignited in the Gem, shone onto her laughing face; and for a moment she wasn't beautiful, was old with sunken eyes and pointed teeth. She croaked, "Say goodbye to baby."

The slight sun from the window vanished and the only light in the room was the fire around the witch and in her hands. Cain fell to his knees and tried to say, "What," but breath left him; and anyway he didn't need to ask, had felt this before and knew what was happening. It was leaving, the one thing he had.

He slumped over onto his arm, which collapsed beneath his weight, and his face smashed against the rug in a blur of red and green. Strange syllables rang in his ears and spun the room. Lazia's voice grew louder, a sharp pain sliced into Cain's chest and he heard the sound again of Tom crying out.

Then it was over.

The fire went out and light from the window seeped back into the room. Lazia said in her normal voice, "Your friend is healed. Now he is a man like any other."

Cain made no response from the floor. Lazia moved around the room, gathering her things while Cain breathed. Out of the corner of his eye, she looked calm-- the Gem was gone but the witch hadn't gotten taller or broader, had no armor-- her clothes ash-free and unwrinkled, her long beautiful black hair was only a little tousled. She put everything into the red velvet sack, said words over it, and it disappeared. She paused beside Cain's body and nudged at his arm with her foot. "Sei storpio," she murmured. Then she left.

Cain stayed on the floor for some time. He tried to take slow, deep breaths, but it felt like he'd been punched in the chest. Worse than that, it felt like being punched in the chest had felt decades ago, in bar fights when he was nineteen, or when he was younger, hurt by his dad. He felt fragile. He pushed himself to one knee, planted a foot on the rug. He held onto the bedside table and stood.

The room didn't spin or pitch; but he grimaced against his new enemy, gravity, which he shared with those old men downstairs, who shuffled along and lowered themselves carefully into chairs. He took a few steps-- steps suddenly shorter, in a room that seemed larger-- and had to lean against the wall. After a decade and a half of opening doors, lifting cups, pulverizing trains with mystic energy, how much harder to use only his hand.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the door; he glanced down the hallway toward the staircase and sighed.



***



Cain managed to make it home by early evening: first by plane, then taxi, then by slow steps up the stone path and into the side door. He didn't bother going upstairs, but slumped onto the couch in the den.

A few minutes later he heard Tom's voice from the stairs.

"Cain?"

"Yeah," Cain yelled back. It made his chest hurt.

Tom appeared in the doorway but didn't turn on the light. "Where've yeh been?"

Cain held up a bag. He'd had the taxi go through the drive-thru, but he'd forgotten to get coffee for himself. "Taco Bell-- here." Tom walked over to the couch and took the bag but didn't open it.

"Somethin' happened, Cain," he said, voice low.

Cain pushed himself up on the couch. He let himself grimace, since he figured Tom wouldn't be able to see it in the darkness. "I know."

"What'd yeh do?"

"Nothin'," he said. "I found a lady who said she could fix you through magic."

There was a long pause. Then Tom said, "Sorcery isn't free, Cain."

Cain said, "I traded her the Gem of Cyttorak," because it was stupid to try and not tell him.

Tom went back to the door and flipped on the light. He came back and looked down at Cain, clutching in one fist the bag of Taco Bell.

He'd been growing out his beard to cover up the ever-increasing gauntness of his face; but his face was full beneath the beard now, pale but not ashen, and his long hair fell over eyes with no sunken dark circles. He wore one of Cain's shirts because his own were for a wasted body that wasn't his anymore.

He gazed down at Cain with no expression. "Yeh look different."

"Yeah," said Cain, "I had my hair done."

Tom let out a long breath. He stared at Cain, and Cain stared back-- because if he couldn't break through walls anymore, the least he could do was hold somebody's gaze-- even though it was weird to see Tom's eyes clear and bright, not rheumy, not fogged with pain.

Tom said, "Are yeh dyin'?"

Cain frowned. "No, I just gotta get used to it again." Then his eyebrows raised and he said, "No . . . shit, no, it wasn't that kinda trade. I'm fine, I'm not dyin'."

Tom nodded. He sat down on the couch, set the Taco Bell bag beside him. He let out a long breath. "Jesus, Cain." Then he glanced over and said, "Yeh've no powers now."

"'Cept for my good looks, no." Cain shrugged, and he was conscious of his shoulders being only a little bit broader than Tom's and of how much less room Cain now took up on the couch. "Don't really matter," he said. "You're back to normal and we've got plenty a'money anyway. And we can dodge the feds the old fashioned way."

"I'm back t'a little too much normal." Tom sighed. "My powers are gone."

"What?"

"Aye. The vegetation bit's gone and so is everythin' else." He grinned. "In fact I think I'm might be right-handed now."

"That fuckin' whore," Cain said, and his hand curled into a fist. He might have slammed it against the back of the couch but he'd accustomed himself as Juggernaut to not punching things he didn't want to demolish. He'd punch walls and cars and good guys, sure, but not his own walls or his own cars, not the computers, not Tom. And that was a bright side, perhaps: he could go back to hitting the computer.

"Tha's not the bad news, Cain." Tom sighed again. He rested his elbow on his knee, his forehead in his palm. He said dully, "I visited with Nick Fury today."

"Huh?" said Cain.

"Yeh've been granted full pardon for all your crimes, misdemeanors, and bad relations." He let out another long breath. "Happy Christmas."

"Wait--" Cain leaned forward. "What did you do?"

"I thought I was dyin' so it didn't matter. An' if I could bequeath yeh some peace an' quiet with my passin' then I wanted to do that." He laughed shortly. "I thought that when whoever came lookin', yeh could act like y'didn' know what I'd done, an' they'd just kill me, which wouldn' matter 'cause I was on my way out anyway. An' you could . . " He cut off. "But now I'm not."

"What did you do?"

Tom ran a healthy but shaking hand through his hair. "I told them everythin'. About everyone."

Cain looked at Tom for a long moment and then said, "who's everyone?" but he was already shaking his head. He closed his eyes and touched a hand to them, leaned back against the couch.

"Everyone I could think of. Everyone they could think of."

"Everyone who's now gonna hunt our ratting asses down."

"Our newly defenseless ratting asses. Aye."

Cain let out a breath to match Tom's. He thought about sting operations and calls being made all over the country, searches being run, dark-colored cars pulling out of driveways. He thought about going upstairs and packing a suitcase, maybe making a few calls of his own. He thought about his stepbrother. He thought about the four cars with untraceable license plates in the garage. But where would they go? They were the most fucked. Anywhere, they were the most fucked. Among the heroes, among the villains, they were the bad guys.

At last, Cain said, "I need. coffee."

Tom looked over. He sighed and nodded. "I'll go make some."