Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction ❯ No One Mourns the Wicked ❯ Chapter 1

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimers: Akita and Subu-chan own very little but a computer and a rather diminished anime and mange collection (Blame Katrina-evil hurricane)! We don’t own “Pet Shop of Horrors” or the lyrics from “No one mourns the wicked.”


No One Mourns the Wicked

“-No one mourns the wicked
No one cries, ‘They won’t return’
No one lays a lily on their grave
The good man scorns the wicked
Through their lives, our children learn
What we miss when we misbehave…”

“And goodness knows
The wicked’s lives are lonely
Goodness knows
The wicked die alone…
It just shows, when you’re wicked
You’re left only on your own
Yes, goodness knows
The wicked’s lives are lonely
Goodness knows
The wicked cry alone…
Nothing grows for the wicked
They reap only what they’ve sown-”

“-No one mourns the wicked-”

(Excerpted from “No One Mourns the Wicked”
Wicked soundtrack; Decca Broadway records)


It was a cold, blustery January evening, a rarity in LA. The wind had risen as the sun had set, sending clouds scudding across the surface of the moon. Leon Orcot hunched his shoulders in his battered leather jacket and scowled at the flickering neon that lined the streets of Chinatown. He’d ask himself what he was doing here, but the answer was the same since the first time he had wandered into one certain shop, and damn it all if he didn’t know that.
It was quiet in this small area, like even the tourists knew enough to respect what lay down a single flight of stairs. Leon caught himself and snorted in disgust at his own overactive imagination.
The scent of the incense reached him before he reached the door. It was a strange, alluring smell, one that he could never place. It called to places in him he didn’t want to admit to, especially not tonight. He should turn around and go back to his cold, empty apartment. He really should.
“Hello, Mr. Detective.”
Leon glanced up to meet the mismatched eyes of Count D, just as quickly looking away. “Hey, D.”
“What brings you to my door this evening?” D asked with his usual, inscrutable smile. “Sit down. I’ll start some tea.”
“Where’s Chris?”
“He wore himself out playing and fell asleep shortly after dinner.”
“Ah.” Leon shook his head. “Good.”
There was silence for a few moments, broken only by the soft sounds of the animals and the clatter of the tea service as D prepared a tray. Leon flicked his lighter several times but didn’t light his cigarette. He glanced up as D returned with the tray and tucked cigarette and lighter in the pocket of his jacket.
D poured tea with smooth efficiency and offered him the cup. Leon accepted it with a mutter of thanks and stared vaguely into the tea, lost in thought.
D took his usual seat across from him and studied the detective over the rim of his teacup. When it became obvious that nothing was forthcoming, D sighed and put his cup down. “So what brought you here, my dear Detective?”
Leon’s usual, snappish retort about knocking off that ‘dear detective’ shit was not supplied, earning an odd look from the count. Leon didn’t notice, enraptured by whatever he saw in the depths of his cup. His hand was shaking ever-so-slightly, barely enough to ripple the surface of the tea, but D noted it all the same.
“You are troubled?” Tetsu had joined him on the couch and D stroked his head gently, trying in vain to soothe away the low growl the Totetsu emitted.
Leon glanced up, his blue eyes dark and unsettled. “Yeah, a little.” He admitted reluctantly. He took a sip of the tea, not even bothering to grimace at the overly-sweet taste. “It’s been one hell of a long night.” He continued, blind to the presence of D except as an ear to listen.
Q-chan settled on D’s shoulder with a squeak and flipped bat-wings closed. D reached up to caress to little creature before replying. “Whatever could have troubled my dear detective so much?”
Leon snorted, then looked a little surprised at his own outburst. “What couldn’t?” He picked up a pastry, stared at it for a moment and replaced it, uneaten. “Shit.”
D waited patiently, knowing that explosion was the prelude to whatever was really troubling Leon.
Sure enough, Leon slumped back down with a world-weary sigh. “Dammit, why do I feel like the bad guy? I’m a cop. I’m doing my job, for god’s sake!”
“What happened?”
Leon scowled blackly at the ceiling for a moment. “You know anything about Brandon Rive?”
“Hmm. The so-called leader of the ‘Spanish Separatist Movement,’ if I am not mistaken?”
“Better to call it what it is: a gang of wannabe terrorists with some half-baked ideas about seceding from the US. Never mind that they’re square in the middle of Los Angeles, they want to have their own little armed nation there. ‘Rive the Reaver.’ Catchy, isn’t it?” Leon snorted again, empting his cup in one long swallow.
“Otherwise known as ‘Bloody Bones’ for his habit of sending bloody bits of his enemies skeletons back to their families, am I correct?”
“That’s him. Nice guy, huh?” Leon barked a bitter laugh. “Well, he made one too many mistakes tonight. Got in a little bit of a gang war over territory. They called in the riot squads, not to mention every available unit on the streets. Including yours truly.”
“I take it things did not go according to plan?”
“What plan? It was a huge fucking mess from the get-go. Teenagers with semi-automatics and armor-piercing rounds, waging a war on the streets. God, I never want to see anything like that again. Rive was in the middle of it in an armored limo, picking off cops and rival gang members left and right from the sunroof like a frigging gunlord. It was chaos out there. I was trying for a shot to disarm him when the idiot turned right into the shot.”
Leon made a gun out of his fingers and mimed firing a shot. “Blam! Right through his chest. He collapsed on the roof of the limo, blood going everywhere. It was like somebody had flipped a switch. Everything just froze for a minute, and then someone started screaming from inside the limo. Everyone but the cops took off running like someone had set their asses on fire.” Leon shuddered. “It didn’t take long to clean up the riff-raff after that.”
D poured him another cup of tea. Leon accepted it and stared in disgust at his shaking hands. With exaggerated care, he set the cup and saucer down on the table and stuffed the offending appendages in his pockets. He glared at D as if daring him to say anything. D calmly continued pouring himself another cup and after a long moment Leon resumed his narration. “I was there when they pried the limo door open. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, probably not even that. Rive’s little playtoy. She was crying and cussing in a mix of English and Spanish that would embarrass the devil himself. I don’t know how she knew I was the one who shot him, but she singled me out and started screaming at me. I didn’t get more than half of what she called me in Spanish, but I remember word for word what she yelled at me when they pried her off his body and cuffed her.
“ ‘You killed him, you bastard! You think my Brandon was a wicked man?! You are the wicked one, Gringo! You are wicked! You will get yours! No one mourns the wicked, rat-bastard Policia, and no one will mourn you!’ She kept on screaming until they stuffed her into the back of a squad car.” Leon shuddered again. “I can still see her there, covered in his blood and yelling at me.”
He reached for his tea and drank it in a few quick swallows, as if to wash a bad taste out of his mouth. “I’m supposed to be one of the good guys, D, but underneath it all, what am I? A killer? I don’t know anymore!” His laugh was so bitter and full of self-loathing that even Tetsu flinched from the sound of it. “Maybe she’s right and I’m ‘wicked.’ Hell.”
Leon rose unsteadily to his feet with another bitter laugh. “ ‘No one mourns the wicked,’ huh? How fucking appropriate.” He shook his head and caught himself on the back of the couch when that threatened to upset his increasingly precarious balance. “Crap. I really should get home.”
D rose and caught him before he collapsed.
“What did you do to him?”
D didn’t bother to look up at Tetsu’s query as he struggled to get Leon back on the couch. “Merely gave him a bit of something in his tea to help him sleep. He was clearly in no condition to go wandering around the streets unattended.”
“So? What’s one less human?”
“Perhaps you are right, but not tonight. Another night perhaps, but not tonight.” D was having a difficult time getting the detective’s unresponsive body onto the couch. He was surprised when Tetsu wordlessly assisted him. The Totetsu’s long-standing grudge against Leon Orcot was a source on no small amusement to the other inhabitants of the pet shop.
Tetsu shrugged off the count’s curious glance. “Tomorrow I’ll hate him. Tonight, he hates himself more than I ever could. That kind of self-hatred spoils my appetite. It makes for a bitter and unsatisfying meal. He’s safe from me. For tonight at least. No promises for tomorrow.”
Tetsu helped settle Leon on the low couch and silently vanished into the back, returning with a blanket. He passed it to D with a nod and returned to the back of the store without another word.
D sighed and draped the blanket over his human detective. Q-chan fluttered about his head, squeaking indignantly, but for once the count ignored the reprimand. In a huff, the small creature fluttered away into the darkness of the shop as its master regarded the sleeping form on the couch with peculiar smile. Sharp fingernails delicately lifted a lock of blonde hair out of Leon’s closed eyes.
“Poor detective.” D said quietly. “You are correct in that no one mourns the wicked. But the line is not so clearly defined as that. Who is to say?” D seated himself on the arm of the couch and watched Leon with shadowed eyes. “What is wicked to some is mere survival to others. It is all a matter of perspective. You have always understood one of the basic tenants of the kingdom. Survival is for the fittest. The weak fall so that the strong may thrive.”
He regarded the other occupants of his shop as they watched him speaking to the sleeping detective. As much as he hated humans and what they had done to his charges, it seemed he had a weak spot for this particular human. Not that he would ever admit to it. Not even to himself.
Leon moaned softly, and unthinkingly D stroked his hair as he would to soothe one of his pets. “Do not fall into that pit of dark despair, my dear detective. You are not one of the wicked, no matter what you may think of yourself at this moment. You could never fall that far. In your own peculiar way you are as noble a creature as my charges. For no one mourns the wicked, but there are those that would mourn you. If you remember nothing else, I bid you to remember that when you wake in the morning. Pleasant dreams, Leon.” He rose and extinguished the light, vanishing into the rear of the pet shop, leaving the sleeping detective to work through it on his own. He would either come to terms with his own failings or not. D could not help him there. No one could but Leon himself.

A/N

Subu-chan:Hello, loyal readers. This is the first PSOH fic I’ve ever written, so please let me know what you think of it. I was listening to the soundtrack of “Wicked,” when the idea for this fic came to me. The title, too, came from there. A little introspective mood for our ‘dear detective.’
Akita:You mean self-hatred? Call the kettle black, Subu-chan.
Subu-chan:Forgive Akita, please. She’s still upset that I wouldn’t let her turn this into anything more than a bit of implied shonen-ai.
Akita:(sulks) You just wait. Next thing you write, smut abounds.
Subu-chan:Promises, promises. Leon and D are safe from your treatment for the moment. I don’t have anymore PSOH fics in mind yet.
Akita:Come back tomorrow. I can already see the little wheels turning in his head. There’s more in store. And then, when he least expects it-D and Leon doing the horizontal mambo!
Subu-chan:Urgh. Thank you for that interesting visual, Akita. I believe I shall go and attempt to drive that image from my skull before I need therapy. By the way, thank you for lending me all of your PSOH Manga and your DVD for the research, ‘Kita.
Akita:Oh, you called me ‘Kita again! Do it again! (Glomps Subu-chan)
Subu-chan:That worked. She’s so easy to distract. She’ll have forgotten all about it by the time I do write another PSOH piece. Please review. Now if you will excuse me, I’m off to find my crowbar to remove the hyperactive growth I seem to have developed.