Blood Bourbon

Before

The next couple of meetings were probably the longest and most tortuous in Ryker's memory, and it was only the taste of Daryl on his lips that kept him from yelling at someone to sum up. He glanced at his watch as the last one of the day was wrapping up, smirking when he saw a message from Daryl saying something about staying in town to wait for Janek to be done with something. He didn't like the thought that Daryl was wandering around the city crawling with Hunters and other Supernaturals that now had been exposed to whatever Daryl was. But the message told him that Daryl was safe, and thinking about him.

The team shifted around Alesky, who was still scowling about the fact that he was being 'protected', making their way towards the stairs that led to the parking garage.

Shiloh scowled for a moment as she listened to the radio chatter in her ear, then glanced towards him, "apparently traffic is backed up bad, there was an accident down the street. We'd be sitting in a parking lot."

"We can walk. It's near enough to dusk." Alesky shrugged, but paused, looking to Ryker curiously.

"Either scenario, we're being funnelled into a situation we don't like." Ryker nodded at that, falling into step beside Alesky as they turned towards the front door and started out down the street towards the Knight Corp building. Unless they ran it, it was still a walk that would take them nearly an hour.

They walked in silence for a couple blocks, before Ryker caught sight of a poster pasted to the side of the wall. He scowled at the black and white picture of children huddling in the streets, ignoring Alesky's look and turning back to the job at hand until they passed by a couple young humans handing out pamphlets.

"This is supposed to be a very moving exhibit." Alesky offered, glancing to the poster, though Ryker took the offered pamphlet before it could reach his boss' hand.

He scowled down at it, and ripped it to pieces, glaring at the young man. "Art? You call that art, because you're removed from it by a couple hundred years?"

"It's meant to invoke your humanity, man." The kid shrugged, though he did reek of fear all of a sudden.

"Yet you hand out these god damned flyers, while people beg for food and shelter on the street beside you?" Ryker snarled, nodding towards where an older woman sat not far away, holding out a used coffee up, begging for change from the very people who were looking at the posters and pamphlets with an air of concern.

"Ryker..." Alesky murmured, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the display. His boss wasn't rough about it, but Ryker wasn't able to get his arm free of the man's grip until they were a decent distance away. "Those children don't know any better."

Ryker narrowed his eyes, feeling his ire raise, "I had left childhood behind at half their age. I think I'd killed several times by the time I was there."

"For pleasure?" Alesky murmured softly, though there was surprisingly no judgement in it.

He forced himself to watch the street, searching for threats, wanting one, wanting a battle to make his sudden fury justified, "to prove a point... to survive, to make a statement. A thousand different reasons. Life was cheap. The streets taught you that. Those kids... they died. People took pictures of them.. And then left them to freeze to death. People talked about religion and charity, but we starved... and froze, and chose between horrible things to survive. Religion, Morals, Charity, that bullshit, that's for people with a roof and a meal..."

"Where were you?" Alesky should have censured him about the violence, about the fact that he had murdered people without caring about who he hurt, but the man seemed to almost understand.