Fic: Time and Tide (Complete)

[silver_sun]

Title: Time and Tide

Characters: Lesley

Fandom: Rivers of London

Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings apply, spoilers for Broken Homes.

Word Count: 2750

Rating: PG (a little bit swearing)

Summary: Lesley's life isn't anything like she'd expected it to be. Everything since magic came into it has been a ridiculous mix of wonderful, confusing and downright awful. It's taking her places she'd never expect to go and pushing to make decisions that she never thought she would have to make. She knows how those choices must look to those closest to her, but they can't know the truth, not yet. Too many lives depend on it. Her own included.

 

Lesley had always felt she could think better by the sea. She'd spent a good few afternoons there when she'd been deciding whether to join the police, and if she did whether she should join the Met or the local Essex constabulary. More recently she had spent a great deal of time watching the tide drifting across the sand as she'd come to what was ultimately the biggest decision she'd ever had to make. The decision to throw her lot in with the Faceless Man and turn her back on everything in her old life.

The apparent decision anyway. If anybody really thought she'd side with a man who was a multiple murderer and who'd tried to kill Peter then they really didn't know her that well at all. No, it had been such a difficult decision because Lesley knew that if she was to keep her cover and protect them then she had to do it in such a way that they really believed that she had abandoned them for the chance at having her face returned to how it was.

The fact that it had worked hurt more than she had thought it would, and she wondered if her and Peter would ever get back the easy friendship that they'd had before. Lesley closed her eyes, feeling the late autumn sun on her face. Free of the mask for now, she could almost imagine that she was a teenager again, wondering what to do with her life. It was strange to think how everything had turned out. Going undercover and trying to bring down the Faceless Man and his select group of rogue wizards from the inside had never featured in her plans until a few short months ago.

At first all she'd wanted after the accident, as her family were calling it, was to stay the hell away from magic. Then the Faceless Man, as Peter had nicknamed him, had approached her soon after she had left hospital following her third reconstructive surgery. Not that she'd known who he was at that point. He'd been an average looking, forty-something bloke in a smart suit. He had called her remarkable. The energy that had been drawn from her just to sustain the Mr Punch face should have destroyed her brain as it had done to the other unfortunate victims of Henry Pyke. He’d told her she had power and that with training she could easily exceed what Peter was capable of. Nightingale would limit them both with his rules and adherence to a dead past, while he could give her a future. She could become anything she wanted to be.

It was just self serving flattery, Lesley had thought, it was little more than the sort of crap she'd got from drunks on a Saturday night who'd said she was too pretty to be a copper and that she should be a glamour model or something. She been ready to tell him to sod off or she'd make him sorry he'd ever shown up, when she realised a few of the things he'd said hinted at him having far greater plans than a making real-life cat people for a strip club. The fact that he'd just turned up and invited himself into her parents house was worrying. He could have killed her and left some nasty magical trap behind for her unsuspecting family if he'd wanted to and nobody would have been able to do a thing about it. But he hadn't and that had got her thinking about just what he did want.

Power seemed to be top of his list. Not necessarily recognition, at least not until he'd secured his position and became even more untouchable than he already was. He wanted the power to control all around him, to be above the law, he wanted to be feared, respected and admired. He was nothing but an old style gang boss straight out of the sixties. The magical worlds answer to the Krays.

Technically she was still on medical leave and would be for sometime, but sitting still and letting things happen had never been something that Lesley had been good at and watching Faceless' smug, self assured grin, she decided to play him. He'd pay for what he'd done. Peter had told her about what sort of things he’d done to people. Not just the magical quasi-justice that Nightingale would dish out, but proper court of law stuff. Who knew how many things Faceless was involved in and how he funded his schemes? Drug and gun running were pretty high on her list. Taking him down would probably help a hell of a lot of people live safer lives all across London.

Having her face fixed was a bonus, not the primary reason. Although not having people staring at her and then hurriedly looking away when they realised she could actually see them gawping would be good. Far better than that though would be the ability to chew properly without it feeling like her jaw was snap or to sneeze without the fear she'd tear the fragile reconstructed skin and end up with a massive, haemorrhaging nosebleed. The hospital had talked about her being a possible candidate for a partial face transplant once the issues with the underlying bone structure were rectified. That would take years and more operations than she wanted to think about.

No, what Faceless had offered to teach her, and which she was now doing, was to do was to cast a variant of Dissimulo on herself, to create tiny, subtle changes that would encourage the bone structure to heal itself. It worked, but it was painfully slow, a single minute change every couple of weeks or so. It might in the end take longer than surgery to see any results, but it didn't have the recuperation period or the fear that something would go wrong and her recovery would be set back weeks or even months. Not to say it wasn't bloody terrifying to cast the same spell on yourself that had made your face nearly fall off, but at least it was her own choice this time. To be able to be in charge of her own recovery helped to deal with it far more than she'd expected.

Part of her wondered if Faceless, who had told her to call him Christopher, could cast something that would fix her face immediately and if he was stringing her along for a reason. Did he expect her to be so grateful to him that she'd really turn back on her friends and the law? Magical gangster moll was not where she saw her future at all. He didn't seem to think of her like that either, and the fact he showed absolutely no sexual attraction to her was a massive relief. If he had Lesley wasn't sure she would never have gone through with her fake defection.

Opening her eyes again, Lesley watched a couple of gulls squabbling over a discarded sandwich for a moment before turning to look at the open sea. It was stupid she told herself, that simple, silly things like the gulls or old couple who'd been past earlier walking an equally elderly spaniel had started to get to her. All so utterly normal they reminded her of all she'd lost by going into hiding. She missed Peter, her family, even Molly, Toby and Nightingale. She missed her friends, the station house and even bloody awful excuse for coffee that was drunk in the break room at 2am because it was the only way you were going to stay awake until the end of your shift. With the choice to side with Faceless she had lost more of her life than she ever had when she'd lost her face.

Yet not all her ties to her old life had been cut. There was one person who knew what she was doing other than herself. Confiding in him and been a massive risk, but to get the taser signed out and to have somebody able to tell her family a version of the truth should something happen to her, Lesley had taken the chance. DCI Alexander Seawoll, for all his abrasive manner, was a damn good old school copper, and while he’d sworn and stomped about the room after hearing her plan he’d eventually seen it was the best option they had open to them. As when it came down to it he said he trusted her to do the right thing far more than he trusted Nightingale, who would pull some weird magic crap and they wouldn't be able to build a solid case to prosecute anybody. So he’d signed it off and told her get her arse back to the station if it looked like Faceless had rumbled her.

The fact was magic was coming back and Nightingale didn't have the first clue why or where it all would end. Faceless didn't either but he'd been studying it, tracking it, in a way that definitely owed more to science than magic. His willingness to adapt and utter ruthlessness in getting what he wanted made him dangerous. Whether he was more powerful than Nightingale, Lesley had no idea. The difference between them, compounded by Nightingale's hesitance to show them any magic that could actually be useful and Faceless's almost pathological need to show off what he could do, made for an unfair comparison. Even if Nightingale were more powerful Faceless wouldn't fight fair and her suspicion was that Nightingale would and Peter, believing all that Nightingale had shown him, would do the same.

There had been a choice, although in the end Lesley come to the conclusion that it was much of a choice at all. She could have gone to Peter or Nightingale with the information that Faceless had approached her and that she believed their best chance at bringing him down was her going undercover. The reason why she hadn't done so was down to Nightingale, as when it came down to it she found she couldn't trust him. Which was an awful thing to say and she didn’t mean it like that. Rather it was she couldn’t be sure that he’d let her do it, in fact she was sure he wouldn’t have. He’d have told her it was too dangerous. He probably wouldn't have said it was too dangerous for a woman, but he still might have been thinking it, and even if he hadn't, Lesley knew she'd always end up wondering about it. If she’d wanted a nice safe job she’d never have join the Met in the first place.

There was no way that she could have told Peter without telling Nightingale, as Peter had a serious case of hero worship where it came to his DCI and he would have eventually let it slip. He'd have done it because he thought he was helping her, protecting her, and he'd probably end up trying to do something noble and stupid and end up getting himself killed. Lesley didn't want that on her conscience.

The fewer people who knew what she was doing the easier it would be, she'd decided. Faceless had to believe she was loyal to him alone. And by the time the showdown happened at the Skygarden she had become his apprentice. It it hadn't all been so awful she'd have laughed, knowing how Peter with his love of all things sci-fi and geeky would be making the Anakin to Vader comparisons.

As it was he'd suspected nothing up to the moment she'd tasered him. She'd hated doing it, but it had been better than shooting him. The gun Faceless had given her had remained hidden and unused inside her coat. Now Faceless believed her loyal while Peter saw her as a traitor. She'd played her part well. Nothing like having to wear a mask all the time to have the ultimate poker face, Lesley thought bitterly.

Taking the hated piece of pink plastic from her bag, Lesley sighed. She'd have to go soon. Tonight she'd cast dissimulo again and a tiny fraction of her face would heal. Then she'd talk to Faceless about what the plans were for the day ahead, even though she knew what most them already were. In the morning Seawoll would get a tip off about a drug shipment, Faceless would believe that somebody was making a move on his territory and step up his campaign to secure superiority in all things criminal in London.

Kind of like a magical Moriarty. So what did that make her? Assuming Nightingale and Peter were Holmes and Watson? She shook her head and wondered this was what it was like being Peter with all his geeky observations on life. If she got out of this alive and got back to a point where they were friends again she'd have the conversation again. She wanted to think that they'd be able to laugh about it. She really missed his humorous asides to life. It made all the horrible things they'd seen just that bit more bearable.

That point was coming soon. Sooner than she was ready for if she was honest and that meant putting her last set of plans into action. Plans that might end up revealing herself to Faceless or to a confrontation with Nightingale and Peter if they didn't believe her. And then there would be one further choice she'd have to make: Whether to allow herself to get in deeper, placing herself to be the one to bring Faceless down alone or whether to push him into a position where he had no choice but to reveal himself and his plans to the wider world and effectively bring himself down. It was a risk, but then everything was a risk. Just crossing the road could be deadly if you didn't check to see if there was a bus coming.

Part of that last plan was reconnecting with Peter and hoping like hell he understood or she really would be on her own. Today's trip to the coast had been about thinking it though, and her decision had been made. She couldn't delay contacting Peter any longer. Not that she could tell him her exact plans yet, that was too dangerous for them both. All he needed to know was that they were fighting on the same side and always had been.

Much to Lesley's relief Faceless understood the internet only slightly better than Nightingale did, and he was mostly baffled by the sheer amount of pictures of cats that people shared and why they all seemed to want to share the minutiae of their boring lives with complete strangers. There was also the fact that you couldn't magic information out of a phone or computer, you'd just fry it. So ten minutes access to the Internet, a free paint app and some inexpert manipulation you get a rather wonky gif featuring grumpy cat, Darth Vader and Alan Rickman and saying, "Grumpy cat says think Snape, not Vader."

Peter would get it, she was sure of that. He'd understand. She smiled. How wonderful was it to be able to do that again? Not just that her face could manage it, but that there was something to actually do it about. There was still the chance that it might all go horribly wrong. Faceless might get what she was telling Peter, he had after all been the super geek who'd used Lord of the Rings Elvish on his demon trap. No, it would be a very bad thing to underestimate Faceless, it would probably be the last the that you ever did.

And that was it, you had to plan, you had to be careful and you had to recognise that that it might all go tits up at a moments notice and there was nothing you could do about it. Hopefully it wouldn't and she had to cling to that. That everything would work out in the end. She'd worked too hard, given up too much not to see it though now. And if there was any justice at the end of it she would still be around at the end of it to reconnect with her old life. It didn't matter that after all this she would probably get hardly any recognition. It wasn't like anybody could make a big thing of bringing down a wizard with delusions of grandeur. No, Lesley decided, as she threw the remains of her chips out to the seagulls, surviving and returning to her old life, with her family and friendships intact would have to be reward enough.

 

The End

 

Notes.

This is very much based on my hopes that Lesley does have a good reason for appearing to switch sides at the end of Broken Homes. I really don't want her to have gone over to Faceless to get her face fixed or because he's been controlling her. I'd like her to be acting off her own ideas and ideals. So far I have enough hope in Aaronvitch's writing/plotting that it might be the case.