Three loud claps, and all heads turned to their leader.

"I would like to raise a toast," he said over the rumble of the tracks beneath them. "First and foremost: to me."

Any other day, Ronan would have rolled his eyes, but he hadn't stopped smiling since they'd crashed the cargo train. And what a way to end the night – a perfectly timed jump with no room for error, the shouts of his comrades as they landed and rolled (and in some cases slammed) onto the aluminum floor of the compartment. A final rush to close out what could have been a disastrous heist, and now, the six of them, together in the afterglow.

So Ronan indulged his ego with a bubbling laugh, raised one closed fist, and shouted, "To Vito!"

Meeting his enthusiasm came a chorus of cheers: "To Robin Hood!"

Vito was laughing as he stood, beaming bright enough to catch the light of the moon through the open wall of the car. "I'm only joking, of course," he said. Long-escaped strands of hair whipped over his cheeks and clung to his forehead. He steadied himself against the bumps in the tracks with one hand pressed to the wall, and with the other, he raised an imaginary chalice. "A toast to the man with knuckles of steel, for coming to our rescue and knocking the unforgiving fuck out of that watchdog. To Sidney Mitchell!"

The compartment erupted in cheers and applause that drowned out the wind. Mitch made a self-satisfied show of basking in the praise before he gave into the excitement with a holler, pounding his fist into his own chest.

"To my beloved little sister, Antonella Romano," Vito continued, placing a hand atop her head where she sat at his side. She took a break from unbraiding her hair to swat him away and glare at the use of her name. Vito was undeterred. "For supplying the night's costumes and robbing the bedsheets out from under those aristocrats!"

"I didn't steal any bedsheets," Tony muttered at his feet, but her voice was effectively overwhelmed by five cries of, "To Whiplash!"

Make-believe glasses were raised. Tony returned to combing her fingers through her hair.

"To Felix Ashley!" Vito yelled. Mitch howled like a wolf, and Ronan slammed Felix in the back so many times, the poor boy toppled forward onto his hands. "The smartest person in any room, and the granter of our every wish. Twice, this kid saved our asses!"

Felix stared bashfully down at his lap, sweat from the run glimmering against dark skin. Ronan opted for a gentler pat to his back and was rewarded with an embarrassed smile.

Vito raised his arm again. "To our very own skeleton key, for getting us in and out of that cursed house and securing an epic getaway ride: to Ronan Hastings!"

Ronan's answering laugh turned into a wheeze when Felix returned the favor and knocked the wind out of him.

"God knows we'd never get far without you," Vito said as he crouched in front of Ronan. He reached out to vigorously ruffle his hair, and his hand came back dusted black. Judging by the pleased smile on his face, he'd removed most of the charcoal, revealing the tuft of white hair at Ronan's widows' peak.

It was a sad thing, for Ronan to lose his voice over an action that could only be described as brotherly. He cursed the shape of Vito's lips, cursed the squeeze in his chest, cursed the ghost of long fingers against his scalp.

"Moron," he grumbled. More than anything, he cursed himself for his weakness, for the smile he found himself fighting despite the tightness in his throat. "We aren't in the clear yet."

His hair was too identifying a feature to leave uncovered during a heist, and they were still a ways from home.

"Then I'll join you, and we can go down together, hm?"

Vito rubbed the back of his hand over the left side of his face until his birthmark appeared, blooming ruddy red from his temple and spreading over his eye. The mask was large enough to conceal it, but he always wore Tony's powder just in case.

He stood without saying anything else and turned his grin onto the only person left unspoken for. "And last, but certainly not least, raise a glass to the newest member of our dysfunctional family. To Amir!"

Amir gaped at him with eyes rounded wide, like he hadn't expected to get his own toast.

"It's only been about a month since you, ah, coerced your way into our group." Amir winced, but Vito was laughing as he said it. "I know we haven't given you the easiest time, but you proved yourself tonight. We might've never gotten into the house if it wasn't for you–"

Tony clicked her teeth indignantly.

"And we sure as hell wouldn't have gotten away from those guards. I think it's high time we welcomed you to the team."

Ronan turned with congratulatory smile, but Amir didn't see it, too busy staring up at Vito with those blown-out eyes. 

Or staring through him, maybe. Ronan wasn't entirely sure Amir was seeing Vito, either. He wore a faraway look that Ronan couldn't hope to place – yet another reminder that he was, before anything else, unknowable.

He had been that way since his first night, when he'd appeared like an apparition after their most recent robbery. 

The job itself hadn't been anything spectacular, just an evening carriage returning the Beckwith family home from an extended stay across the island. With the moonlight obscured by the trees lining the road, intercepting during a rest stop had been quick, easy work.

Perhaps they had gotten careless with success. They'd never failed to lose a pursuer before, but that night, they hadn't even noticed they were being followed until they were out of the woods, celebrating their success with their masks tucked away and their home in sight. Amir had looked like a nightmare as he bore down on them with the stars as his witness, most of his face hidden beneath a black scarf. He'd had a shotgun holstered at one hip, a sword at the other, and a bag strapped over his shoulder, carrying what they soon learned to be his arsenal.

Ronan had dreaded a fight just looking at him, but none ever came. 

Amir had arrived not to prosecute them, but to join them, boasting his skill with weaponry as an asset to the team. Thinking back on it, he had never threatened them with their identities or address, but he must have known that would be their fear, cornering them like that. The options had been to either send him away with information that could land them behind bars, or to kill him – assuming they could stomach it, and assuming he didn't take them all out first.

Or, of course, to heed his request.

So Vito had held out his hand for Amir's gun.

That version of Amir – flinching but not running as he stared down the barrel of his own gun, nervous but so strong-willed, forcing himself to be heard – was a far cry from the man who sat next to Ronan now, stunned into silence as his teammates worked up a ruckus and chanted his name.

"Hey, you hearing this, rookie?" Mitch threw . . . something at Amir's face to wake him. Up close, Ronan identified the projectile as Mitch's cravat, haphazardly removed and not fully untied.

Ronan nudged Amir's shoulder. That, of all things, seemed to snap him out of it. "I think this means you get a name now."

"Oh, I–" he blinked into focus over Ronan's face. "Do I have to?"

Ronan was too surprised to quell the laugh that jumped out of him. At that, Amir finally smiled. It lacked the charm he had used against Miss Van Doren; a touch more awkward and leagues more honest.

"Sure do," Vito sang, all-too pleased. "If I have to read 'Robin Hood' in the papers, I'm afraid you'll have to suffer too, my friend."

Ronan snorted, as he was wont to do whenever Vito complained about his alias. He had brought it upon himself, after all, proclaiming at random one day that he was just like the Robin Hood of lore, because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

"When have you ever given to the poor?" Ronan had ribbed, fifteen years old and still squeaky-voiced. (He had been a bit of a late bloomer, but not as late as Vito, eighteen at the time and still yet to hit the final growth spurt he needed to surpass his sister's height.)

"I'm poor," Vito had said. "And I give to myself."

That was right around the time the press had started murmuring of the mysterious figures in fox-shaped masks leaving a trail of robberies throughout Diverra's established upper class. It had only been only a matter of time before a witness heard one of their taunting calls to Robin Hood as they fled a scene, and before long, what Vito had intended as a fleeting joke had become his name, and the entire island had taken to calling them his Merry Men.

Vito had suffered while the rest of them laughed.

Still, the merit of a pseudonym had not been lost on them. Four years later, the aliases were as standard as nicknames; five lines in a functional inside joke.

Six, now.

"It has to relate to your weapons, of course," Vito mused, finally retaking his seat between Tony and Mitch. "Stiletto, like the knife– do you have one of those?"

"Uh . . . no?"

"You lie!"

"Rapier?" Felix offered, cut off halfway by a sleepy yawn. He canted sideways until his head landed on Ronan's shoulder.

"Sabre?" said Mitch.

"You're all just naming blades at this point," said Tony. "Cutlass."

Amir looked to his right. "What do you think?"

Ronan faltered for a moment, around his words and around Amir's full attention. He didn't know how to satisfy him and didn't want to be analyzed. "What does it matter what I think?"

Black hair tumbled around Amir's forehead, mussed from his princely sweep. When he leaned his weight onto one palm and tilted his head, it flopped to one side, messier than Ronan had ever seen it past noon. It took a second too long for Amir to come up with an answer, and Ronan wondered how, even now, he found reason to be calculated. "I don't know. Tell me anyway?"

And, well, Ronan hadn't been expecting that.

"I think it would be a waste to name you after some sword or knife," he said despite himself. "The rest of our names took a bit more thought than that. Picking any weapon you use that has a nice sound to it is just– it's not very creative."

"That's pretty much how we chose my name," said Mitch, deeply affronted.

"Yes, well that makes sense for you," said Ronan. When Mitch only blinked at him, he added, like it was obvious, " . . . because you're an idiot."

"You piece of–!"

"Down, boy," mollified Vito, blocking his charge with an arm.

"Knucklehead," Tony realized with a snicker.

"Something like . . . Mercenary," said Ronan. 

Vito made a face. "That's a lot of syllables."

"What does that even mean?" Mitch asked, then sounded it out.

"And, point," snarked Tony.

"I like it."

Everybody turned to Amir, but Amir was looking at Ronan.

Until Vito chimed in with, "Amir, give me your dagger."

Amir gawked. "You– excuse me?"

"Just give it to me!""

A laugh warmed Ronan's chest at the half-terrified look Amir wore as he reluctantly complied, like Vito might thrust it through his heart at any second. Instead, he rose to his feet with the blade extended – Amir winced as the train sent him stumbling – and tapped the flat of the dagger once on Amir's right shoulder, once on his left, and once on the top of his head. "I hereby dub thee Mercenary, the newest Merry Man."

Vito unceremoniously dropped the dagger – another wince – and thrust his hand into the air so hard, Ronan pictured beer sloshing over the rim of his cup. "To the Merry Men!"

The car dissolved in another uproar. Ronan watched Amir, waiting for the moment it hit him.

It went like this: his entire face lit up, first his eyes and then his mouth, bursting into a smile as bright as the moon. The laugh that followed was the close-eyed, head thrown back, full-body kind of laugh. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, carefree for maybe the first time, and Ronan joined him with his own howl. In that moment, every person in the car was feeling the same thing: the rush that came with every win, the dizzying sense of unity that kept them all here, coming back to each other no matter what. 

Mitch leaned across the compartment to clap Amir on the shoulder. It sounded like it would bruise, but Amir laughed from his belly as the impact sent him sprawling into Ronan. Felix went down like a domino, squealing as all three of them toppled over, and then everyone was laughing, drunk on victory and the imaginary beer in their imaginary chalices.

Behind money and maybe spite, this was the greatest part of the job. The high.

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Ronan slept like the dead that night.

That was the next greatest part of the job.

He had trained himself to stay alert, even during sleep, when his mother was sick, and had never quite trained himself back. He was a chronically anxious sleeper, easy to wake and impossible to relax.

But on nights like these, he was tired enough to sleep peacefully. After the excitement of a robbery, he hit his pillow and didn't wake up for at least eight hours. It would take an impressive amount of noise to rouse him.

Just his luck, he happened to have a very noisy friend.

He rolled over on his mattress, folding his pillow over his head to block out the repeated bang of metal on metal. At best, he muffled the noise. He rolled again like that would make a difference, only to send himself over the side of the mattress.

Across the room on his own bed, Amir didn't stir, the lucky bastard.

Stifling a yawn and rubbing at his bruising elbow, Ronan trudged to Felix's workroom. He knocked four times – after an incident three years prior, he had learned never to enter Felix's workspace without warning. It had taken months for the singed hairs on his face to grow back completely.

The pounding stopped. "Come in!"

Still wary, Ronan poked only his head in. He bit back a laugh at the sight of Felix sitting at his work table with a hammer raised in one hand, ridiculous goggles covering half of his face, and a dusting of white powder over short coily hair. "Somebody's hard at work."

Felix pushed the goggles up onto his forehead. "Did I wake you?"

Ronan shrugged. Felix's face sank, and he regretted making himself known.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry– I thought– it was only gonna take a few minutes, and you sleep like a rock after a heist, and–"

"Felix," Ronan cut in before the rambling could really take off, stepping fully into the room and leaning against the door. "I'm not upset."

"Well I am!" Felix insisted. He looked about ready to smash his own head in with the hammer. "You never get any good sleep, I know that better than anyone, and the one time you do. . ."

Ronan crouched down next to him, gingerly taking the hammer. "Felix, buddy, it's alright. I slept real well, I promise."

"Yeah?" He turned those damned eyes on him, and Ronan was weak. It was easy to forget he was the youngest when was so much smarter than the rest of them, but in moments like this, he seemed so thoroughly sixteen.

Ronan nudged his hip. "Yeah."

Felix's shoulders sagged, and he traded his frown for a tentative smile. "Wanna see what I'm working on?"

"'Course I do. Whatcha got?"

He held up the object on the steel tabletop. A dark metallic thing, curved steeply toward the center and connected at the ends by a strappy clasp. On either side of the center-line was an odd indented circle. "Very exciting," Ronan said without a shred of excitement.

"It's a mask," Felix giggled, holding it in place to demonstrate. It curved over the bottom half of his face. "To make us immune to particulates like my sleep mist."

Ronan flicked the metal. Felix glared. "Can you breathe in that thing?"

"That's the kick. See these little things?" He pointed to the circles framing the nose. His voice was comically muffled. "Filters. If I can get 'em right, they should let us breathe without inhaling the mist."

"Genius, as usual. Does this one work?"

"It should, I think, but I have to test it."

They exchanged a glance, then stood in sync and made for their room.

Saying Amir's name at his bedside didn't rouse him, nor did jostling his shoulder. Screaming risked waking Tony in the upstairs room, a fate Ronan never favored, so he settled for blowing the most aggressive puff of air he could imagine into Amir's ear canal.

"Glargh!" Amir jolted awake, horrified. "What on Earth–"

"Put this on." Felix shoved the mask toward him. Amir glared at it warily. "It's something I made. Test it for me?"

"Is it safe?"

"Probably."

Amir grimaced but resigned to his fate and clasped the mask behind his head. Perks of being the new blood.

He narrowed his eyes as his roommates backed toward the door. "Wait, what is this thing?"

"Sorry, can't hear ya," Ronan lied, gesturing around his mouth.

"Be sure to breathe!" Felix said cheerily as he threw a tiny ball toward Amir. They stood back, mostly out of reach and holding their breath, as Amir was shrouded in fog. He was still sitting up by the time he was obscured from sight.

Felix beamed. "I think it worked–!"

They heard a thud.

"–Is what I will say after a few more touch-ups."

Their experiment turned out to be a poorly-timed one. Not thirty minutes later, Vito called everyone to the living room for a "team meeting," which left Felix and Ronan tasked with undoing their mistake.

Waking Amir again was neither pretty nor easy. Felix's hammer was involved.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I've gathered you here today," Vito said gravely, folding his hands on his lap. He sat cross-legged on the patchwork rug while everyone else piled onto mismatched furniture. Ronan was fortunate enough to get the seat right across from the ceramic sculpture of a naked, demonic woman with a rat's head that Tony insisted on leaving on the fireplace mantel.

The house was riddled with many such unbecoming home decorations, evidence of the time they'd lived there. The interior was almost unrecognizable from its former state. From the outside, however, it looked just as it had when they'd moved in three years before: a narrow, two-story space propped in a small clearing in the woods.

The man they'd bought it from had built it for his family some forty years ago with a steep gabled roof and a minty green facade that had weathered over time to a muddled green-brown. With his wife passed, his daughters married away, and his own health dwindling, he hadn't the time, energy, or money for upkeep. He'd been more than willing to rent for the price they'd offered and help around the house.

Mr. Robinson had spent most of his time holed up in the second-floor bedroom during the six months before his passing. Ronan had a feeling he hadn't been as oblivious as he'd acted; he was old, but he wasn't stupid, and though he'd pretended to sleep soundly when they disappeared in the middle of the night and returned mid-morning, Ronan had always suspected that he'd known. Nevertheless, he'd been content with his situation and too close to death to care – in the end, he had passed away with five substitute children in his family home.

Oblivious or not, the old crone had given them the ideal situation – a home to themselves, close to town but hidden on all sides. They had buried him in the yard and sworn not to alter the framework he'd built in a show of gratitude.

Everything within that framework, they had taken some liberties with.

One of three bedrooms had been transformed into Felix's workspace. The dining room was littered with weights, notably table-less, and dusted with a permanent layer of sand from Mitch's punching bags. The living room had become a dumping ground for the strange items they threw their money at – the unfortunately large painting of a war between pigs and frogs Mitch had bought from some half-baked artist; the cat-shaped "immortal" candle a shady street vendor had scammed Felix into buying, which had melted down to the snout before Felix felt bad and refused to light it again.

It all really did wonders to compliment the peeling olive wallpaper Mr. Robinson had chosen some centuries ago.

Less glaring, but just as out of place, were the spoils of war. A crystal Ronan had cut from the Bradleys' chandelier, a rare foreign coin Vito had framed after a bank robbery, a book Felix had swiped from the Turner library. Vito sipped tea from Tony's stolen china cup as he addressed them now.

"And by you, I mean Amir; the rest of you know the drill," he said after a drawn-out mouthful. "The morning after a successful mission calls for a trip to the market. Three will go, as always. Any volunte– quiet, Tony, I know." He didn't hide his disgusted sneer. "Any other volunteers?"

Amir opened his mouth, then closed it again when nobody else so much as twitched to volunteer. His eyes darted apprehensively between Felix and Mitch, who gazed around idly as if they hadn't heard the question, and he eased back warily into his patch-covered armchair.

With no shortage of reluctance, Ronan wedged one arm from underneath Tony's legs, thrown across his lap. "I guess I'll go."

"I'll go, too," Amir decided.

Vito grinned. "Gorgeous."

𓃦𓃦𓃦

"Where is this market, exactly?"

Amir's voice was muffled by the scarf covering him from the nose down. Ronan had never seen him in public without it – another unanswered question – but for once, it was fitting for the task at hand.

"You'll see," Ronan dismissed, shrugging the knapsack on his shoulder. The ruddy brown cloth looked mundane enough, but inside waited at least a third of their haul from the night before. The rest was locked up – thoroughly, thanks to Ronan – in their basement.

They had been walking for upwards of an hour and still had plenty of distance to cover. Every time they approached a market, Amir would slow his pace expectantly, only to scramble when Ronan and Tony showed no signs of stopping.

Ronan had walked this path too many times to care for the scenery, but he was aware of it now as Amir took in the changing landscape. He watched Amir's face as grimy-shoed boys kicking around a ball in the town center turned into barefooted kids tossing waddled spheres of cloth down the street, and the tired mothers watching them with baskets of bread and fruit disappeared, replaced by gaunt men and women soliciting for change.

Small wooden houses on tiny patches of grass turned into rows of narrow brick homes stacked together, squeezing the street. Amir was good at schooling his expression, but he gave himself away in the way he stared at everything he passed and the slight jump of his shoulders when dirty fingernails reached out to him, a hoarse voice pleading for bread.

So Amir had never been around these parts, then.

Diverra was a kingdom with two social classes. There were the Van Dorens and the Carmichaels and their breed, then there was everybody else; any in-between sprouted and wilted too inconsistently to make up an established middle class. There were only the rich, the poor, and the poorer. The first: a tiny portion of the population that thrived so greatly, the island was named and known for their opulence. The second, the majority, lived day-to-day to just barely get by.

And the third–

"I hate this place," Ronan grumbled. He had grown up somewhere between poor and poorer. The smell of ale drifting from a man slumped against a stairwell, plastered by early afternoon, while a woman in a browning shawl tried to fuss over him and the baby wailing in her arms at once – it reminded Ronan too much of his own childhood. "I hate this island."

"If you plan to monologue," Tony said, "At least wait until we're on our way back, Ronnie."

"Eat a cock, Annie."

Tony looked over her shoulder just to smile and raise her middle finger.

"I'd actually like a monologue," said Amir, and really, that was all the encouragement Ronan needed. He took a readying breath in, but right before he could start his speech, he heard Amir snicker.

"For today's spiel: everything about Amir that makes me want to hit him. Number one: he thinks he's hilarious. Number two: he isn't. Three: he carries a sword around with him."

"I don't even have one on m–"

"Four: he snores. Five: he knows how to waltz. Six: he can't cook for shit. Seven: his hair is stupid. Eight: he's–"

"I thought it was 'whoosh'?"

"–an idiot. Nine: he says I'm ugly."

"I do not think you're ugly! When did I–"

"See, he just said it. Ten: he's ugly. Blindingly so. I can only look directly at him when he's wearing the mask."

Amir gave up on arguing and laughed along as the list stretched on. Ronan made it to thirty-four before he interrupted to screw up his face and say, "What's that smell?"

Tony laughed, not particularly kindly. "The market, love."

She crouched down, rucked up her skirt and her cloak, and reached behind the laces of her boots to pull out a gray kerchief. Ronan dug for his own in the pocket of his trousers and tied it behind his head; this wasn't the sort of place they cared to show their faces.

"Come," he said before Amir could ask. He turned a corner and started down a sour-smelling alleyway toward what seemed like a dead end. He didn't stop as he neared the stained-brick wall of a long-abandoned building. The only plausible path onward took the form of two windows: one, shattered and boarded up, the other barely ajar. So that was where Ronan went, pulling the greasy pane enough to climb through.

Amir followed close behind, but he hesitated halfway through and wound up stumbling into Ronan's back when Tony shoved him the rest of the way. Ronan grunted but otherwise said nothing.

The room they stood in might have once been a bookstore of sorts. Shelves lined the walls, but they were empty save for cobwebs, and the tables that checkered the floor carried only a thick layer of dust. More dust swam in the air around them, bouncing off the light from the window-and-a-half, and more still coated the floor, mingling with mud and ash and puddles of who-knows-what. It made the air heavy and hot, trapping the smell even more.

Ronan pushed forward across the room to a similar set of windows on the other side. Amir followed, tense as a bowstring. Tony tucked herself between them and tugged her hood over her hair.

They climbed through the window and Amir went still.

Before them was another alleyway. A network of alleyways, really, twisting and branching and extending farther than Ronan cared to explore. It was a far cry from the deserted streets they had just crossed – this place buzzed with clunking and scraping and the voices of dozens of people and animals.

It was a market for sure; everywhere you looked, a vendor bickered with a haggling customer or waved blackened hands over rows of merchandise. The more established of them stood behind booths and stands; others leaned over tables or perched on stools; others still had brought nothing but themselves and their merchandise. If Ronan stared straight ahead, he saw a woman with two teeth and one lazy eye who swept bony fingers over an array of jars and round flasks – potions and poisons, he heard her say. A little to the left, and he found a ginormous man with a braided beard and a similar setup, except his jars were large and filled with green liquid. Ronan squinted at their contents – organs of some sort. Hopefully, but not certainly, animal.

It really did stink here.

Amir looked like he might pass out. Ronan reached behind Tony to place a steadying hand between his shoulder blades. "Come on," he urged. "Where we're headin' is easy compared to this."

He wasn't lying to appease him. Amir only had to harden his stomach for the few minutes until they reached their destination. But he didn't move, and Ronan wondered if they had come all this way just to turn back.

Then Amir turned a smile toward him over Tony's head. It was forced, and sweat beaded at his temples, but still he said, "Of course. Lead the way." 

𓃢𓃢𓃢

Song for this chapter - Team by Lorde

there's a disproportionate amount of lorde on this playlist idk how it happened

next part coming in a day or two :)