“Borden?” Emma pressed from behind him.

“The ones at the top are always the worst, Emma,” he simply told her as he opened the door. “But you already knew that.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder right before he stepped out.

The image of her burying her face in her hands haunted him.

*

The man was in bad shape before they’d even knocked him around.

Hawke had handed the gun over to Borden. It was a nice gun, a Heckler and Koch USP, certainly not cheap. He told Borden he was likely in his fifties, in good health, and dressed in a nice looking suit.

“Definitely not a druggie,” he explained, baffled. “But you could tell he’s had a lot to drink.”

They’d transported him into one of Borden’s abandoned warehouses miles out of the city on an isolated bit of land. He hadn’t been in this location for a very long time. He should have known it was only a matter of time before one of these assholes tried getting at him.

From a distance, Borden gazed at the man. At his unkempt bearded face and matted blonde/grey hair. He was on his knees, hands tied behind his back, staring off into space like he’d already made his peace. Hawke handed Borden his gun, and he walked to where the man was.

“A gun in your underwear,” Borden boringly remarked, approaching him. “I wish I could say that was a new one, but I’d be lying.”

Borden stopped in front of him, and the man’s eyes flickered up at him. The second Borden met those green eyes, his blood ran cold instantly. His whole body seized up, and his breath felt like it’d been knocked out of him.

No. This wasn’t possible. Surely he was hallucinating.

He blinked hard, trying to grasp reality. Borden could see so much of her in this man, which meant…

The man chuckled sardonically. “What’s the matter, Marcus? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Borden took an unbalanced step back, blinking rapidly at Kate’s father. “I don’t understand.”

“You understand perfectly,” he retorted.

Borden took a few breaths. “You shouldn’t have done this, Doug.”

“I should just let you live then? You killed my daughter. Don’t think I’ve let that go. Nothing will bury the past. It will always find you, Marcus, and it will make you pay.”

“I’m still paying.”

“No, you need to pay with your blood. You don’t deserve to live. You’re a monster! My baby girl would have still been alive had you never returned! Our lives are broken. Forever and always!”

“And what was a bullet to my head going to do, Doug? Make it better?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t fucking care either. I can’t be in this world knowing you’re still breathing the same air as me when it should be her! They should have come after you! Why didn’t they come after you?!”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I was taking over their turf, and they wanted to scare me off.”

“And they killed my daughter!” Doug shrieked in his rage, his pale face turning red. “Monsters like you, they strangled her and dumped her like trash!”

Borden numbly said, “I found the two men that took your daughter’s life, and I made them suffer.”

“What about my suffering? Or my wife’s? You will never ease our pain –”

“You think I’m not suffering too?” Borden cut in, raising his voice. “You think I don’t mourn your daughter every single day? That I don’t blame myself? I loved her, Mr Davenoth, and I wish it was me instead. I know I don’t deserve to be here, and if I could choose, she’d be here instead of me. I’d take the worst kind of death just to make that happen. Sell my soul to the fucking Devil if he could make it happen, but it’s never going to fucking happen, and I can’t change the past no matter how many times I blame myself for it.”

Doug didn’t expect Borden’s response. He went still, and his eyes rimmed red. He was vulnerable and broken, Borden realized, and in his rage for justice, he did something he would never have done. Now he was staring emptily at the gun in Borden’s hand, suddenly sober.

Borden’s grip on the gun tightened and he shook. He was usually calm in these situations. There was usually no feeling involved. But that was back when his world was black and grey.

It wasn’t black and grey any more.

It was filled with fucking colours again.

And who had to stand in front of him now to shake him up even more? None other than the father of the woman he’d loved before her untimely death.

“I’m sorry,” Borden whispered to him, the ache in his voice present.

Doug tried his best to glare at him, but even under the raw hatred, Borden could only see pain. It never occurred to him that he wasn’t the only person putting up a front, pretending to the world that he was impenetrable.

Doug was suffering more than he was. He’d only tasted a short year in Kate’s life, and even in that short time frame she’d left a permanent footprint on his soul. But her father…he’d had her all his life. He’d seen her from baby to woman. His suffering was unimaginable in comparison to Borden’s.

They weren’t just two angry souls clashing. They were two souls hurting, and they recognized that in that moment. Doug looked away from him and stared down at the dirty floor, his shoulders heaving up and down as he sobbed.

“I miss her,” he cried breathlessly. “I miss her, that’s all. I just miss her.”

Borden’s eyes pained. He let out a shuddering breath. “Yeah.”

He missed her too. Always.

“I keep thinking of what I could have done differently. I was too hard on her. I stifled her.”

“You loved her,” Borden said. “She knew that.”

Doug continued shaking, a man reduced to this was hard for Borden to watch.

“You can’t let this happen again,” Doug then said, looking at him. “You can’t.”

Borden went still. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone talks, Marcus. They all know about the girl.”

He looked away and down at the ground. “Is that why you did this, Doug? Tried silencing me because you think it’ll happen again?”

“It will,” Doug returned. “It will, Marcus. You have too many people who want you dead. Every day people. It’s going to happen.”