Chapter Eleven- The First Step
A/N: First chapter of Part II! This next sector takes place eight years later. Todd is 25, Fred is 27, Pietro is 26, and Lance is 28. I’m so sorry for lack of updates! It’s been mad crazy for me, but I think I’m getting my butt back into gear. I’m really going to try and finish this and "Bizounce" (whose third chapter is out). Besides making up for my really slow updates, I also have a new fic I want to start featuring Rogue/Gambit after "Day of Reckoning" (so excited for season 3!). We’re going to need some good post-Season 2 fics to tide us over till next season! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter!
A young man with dusty blond hair stood in position next to the doorstep in the side alley. He nodded to his partner, who stood poised in front of the doorway.
"3, 2, 1," Todd hissed.
Bam! His partner kicked down the door and they both drew their guns.
"Freeze! NYPD!" His partner yelled as they both moved into the building.
There was a table in the middle of the dirty room, where three men – 2 Asian and 1 white – were dealing a card game.
Todd and his partner both drew their guns on the three men. Three pairs of hands went into the air. They quickly handcuffed all three of them and his partner waited for backup while Todd went to examine a locked door in a corner of the room.
"What d’you got in here?" Todd asked, jerking his head toward the door. Of course the three men didn’t answer. But he already had a good idea what these men were up to. He kicked down the door.
His eyes had to adjust to the darkness. He saw several moving figures on the floor and saw that they were women who’d been roused from sleep. "Nam ja ya?" One murmured quietly.
There were several bunk beds along the walls and many ragged blankets on the floor. The room was full of Asian women wearing thin clothing and each woman’s face had a haunted look to them. Forced prostitutes. Obviously brought to America with promises of jobs, only the jobs were to sell their bodies to pay for the passage. They were even moving into the Atlantic.
Todd didn’t understand what she was saying, but he felt a wave of sickness in his stomach. He turned to the three men who were watching him with remorseless faces. "Dealing prostitutes who can’t even speak the language? Your type of garbage is even infesting the East Side now." He said to them in disgust.
"It’s okay now. It’s NYPD." He told the women inside. He had no idea if they spoke English. And here he’d thought they’d busted a crack house. Only this was a lot worse.
"John, you might want to tell the station what we got."
"All right." His partner radioed the station. Todd continued to scan the room. There were about twenty women inside. They were all watching him, so he managed to offer a small smile. They seemed to know he wasn’t there to pay, though they looked tense nonetheless. Everyone stood in awkward silence until backup finally came. His partner took the three men outside while Todd waited for his superior to come in.
"It looks like we got onto a prostitution ring running through Chinatown." Todd told his boss.
"Huh, looks like."
One of the policemen, who was Chinese, came in and started talking to the women. They got up and filed out of the room. There were two vans outside to take them.
Todd stood with his boss while the women went outside. "What’s going to happen to them?" Todd asked.
His boss shrugged. "They might get asylum, but they’ll probably be deported back to wherever they came from."
"After everything they’ve been through, I think they paid their passage here. They should be allowed to stay." Todd said shortly.
His boss looked at him and grinned. "Don’t lose sleep over it, Tolansky." He clapped him on the shoulder. "These women aren’t innocents. It’s illegal to come in on the boats anyway. And we don’t need any more prostitutes that are only adding to the ranks of the underworld. There’s already enough dependents out here."
"Right." Todd said quietly. He turned a last glance to the departing vans that held the women. "I’m going home now." He walked out of the building and headed towards his car, where his partner was waiting for him.
Todd dropped into the passenger seat. His partner, John Allerdyce, looked over at him. "Hey, you all right man? You look a little pale."
Todd just shook his head. "Drop me by my apartment, will you?"
"Sure." The two drove in silence until he got to his apartment building.
Todd climbed the stairs to the third floor and wearily took out his keys. He’d been in NYPD for three years now. He’d joined out of desire to help people, especially those that were poor. It was why he’d opted this over the Reserves. But the cases of actually helping someone were practically nothing compared to how many monsters he locked away. Like those men that ran the prostitution ring. God, how could you take advantage of women like that? It just wasn’t right.
Todd walked by the phone and noticed he had some messages. His hand hovered over the PLAY button, then brushed past it. He sighed and took off his shirt and walked toward the bathroom. He needed to shower first. For some reason, he felt extremely dirty.
* * *
Fred opened the front door to the house and was greeted with the smell of thick cheesy lasagna and meat sauce. Breathing appreciatively, he walked inside. "Chelsea, I’m home." He called out.
He found his wife inside the kitchen, huddled in front of the oven. "Oh hey, honey." She came up to give him a kiss. "I wanted this to be ready before you got home." She said fretfully as she took out some oven mitts.
"It smells great. Don’t strain yourself. You’re on maternity leave. You’re supposed to relax."
Chelsea laughed. "That reminds me. Freddy Jr.’s been really active today. He’s going to be strong, that one."
"Oh really?" Fred ran his hands over his wife’s bulging stomach. She was about eight months pregnant. It would be their first child.
The two had gotten married over five years ago. They’d already been going out for more than two years, but it had taken Fred that long to get up the nerve to propose to her. He’d been so used to being rejected that even with Chelsea, he hadn’t been certain. But he was glad he had.
The two lived in the house that the entire Brotherhood had once lived in. Todd had gotten an apartment in Brooklyn since he worked in NYPD. He still came back to Bayville frequently. Fred had arranged for Chelsea to move in with him once Todd had left. Lance and Pietro hadn’t been back for eight years, though Freddy still talked to Lance. As for Pietro, he had no idea what had become of the speed demon, though he suspected that Lance knew.
He could hear Chelsea calling to him. "Hey, wash up so we can eat."
"All right." He headed towards the bathroom to wash his hands. As he looked up at himself in the mirror, Fred was suddenly jolted with the memory that he’d broken this mirror once when he’d first moved in here when he was angry about something. It had long ago been fixed, but he was surprised that he’d remembered.
The house had grown with the occupants but he realized that he hadn’t thought of it as "The Brotherhood" house in a long time. The holes in the wall had been patched up and neatly painted over. The broken doors and cabinets had all been fixed. And the kitchen had been remodeled in a floral design to suit Chelsea. Who could have imagined the teenage Brotherhood living in that sort of kitchen!
For the first time in eight years, Fred realized how much things had changed. He’d noticed it before to be sure, but everything had seemed so natural at the time. Now…it was so strange to look back on things. He remembered what had once been Pietro’s bedroom. That would be the baby’s. They’d gotten ducky wallpaper and a new crib. He didn’t even think of Pietro when he walked into that room anymore. He thought of it as his future son’s. But it had once been Pietro’s room. The room he’d slept in, studied in, and lived in.
Fred hadn’t thought about Pietro and Wanda and the others in a long time, except in practical terms. There’d been so much going on towards the future that he hadn’t had time. But now he suddenly had a desire to know again. Before he started his new family, the Dukes, he had to remember his old one, with its assorted members all scattered and gone. What had once been known as the infamous Brotherhood, and what had happened to it after.