Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ruby resolutely kept her back turned to her bedroom door when Hitch knocked. Her face was buried in the pillow, and even though she was struggling to breathe, she refused to shift, even to breathe. 

“I’m not going,” She said in her brattiest teenager voice. Her head was covered by her comforter and so she didn’t hear Hitch come up to her bed and prod her back with his hand. Or maybe it was his shoe, Ruby didn’t lift her head from her sheets to check. 

“Ruby, the Count is back,” Hitch said in an urgent voice that he clearly expected to have her leaping out of bed and into the corridors of Spectrum. 

“I’m not going into Spectrum. Or school,” She stressed to him. “I’m not going to go looking for him and you can go and drive around Downtown looking for him, but I’m not getting up.” 

There was a long silence and then Hitch leaned down to try and roll her over, to see her face properly. Ruby resisted for a moment and then rolled over, pushing the covers away from her face but making no move to get up. She knew her face was red from being trapped under the covers, and the frustration of Hitch not understanding her need to stay home was making her eyes prick with tears. 

She stared up at Hitch unblinking, so she didn’t start crying. Hitch was leaning over her bed, hands on his knees. Another beat of silence passed and whatever her face looked like convinced her. 

“You can stay,” He said softly, as if Ruby would have ever gotten up. “I know the Count coming back is scary, I’ll have someone watch the house to make sure he doesn’t come close.” 

Ruby nodded, blinked and rubbed her face with the comforter. She didn’t bother moving the sheet off her face after, and Hitch twitched it down to uncover her face again. He gave her a gentle, comforting smile and Ruby fought the urge to cover her face and slowly dripping tears again. 

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” Hitch asked, and Ruby knew that he would immediately call off from Spectrum– which she’d never seen him do, outside of a situation involving her– and tell LB to manage without him for once. But really, Hitch couldn’t do anything helpful sitting in her dark room alongside her. 

“Nah,” She said and quickly cleared her throat. “Go out and find him, I’ll be okay here.” 

Hitch responded by throwing the blanket back over her face, and she pulled it away quickly to see him heading for the door. “I’ll be on comms all day if you need me, and I’ll message you first if I see or hear anything,” Hitch promised and Ruby nodded again, mussing her hair against the pillow. 

“Watch out, out there,” She told him in a small voice. Hitch smiled again, a confident one that made her want to believe everything would be okay and she would be safe. 

“I’ll pick up Thai for dinner,” He promised her, an indirect way of saying he had every intention of returning home that evening. “Don’t leave the house. Please.” 

Ruby called out an affirmative noise, and then a proper ‘see you later’. She stayed staring at the closed door for a long time after Hitch closed it, before rolling over and trying to sleep through the day. 

About ten minutes into a long-winded thought spiral of every way she had failed in the past week-and-a-bit, she got up entirely, as if she could leave the self-loathing and fear behind her in the bed, anxiety wrapped up in the sheets. 

She pulled on a top printed with the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo Where Are You? and a pair of black corduroy trousers, refusing to put any effort into her outfit choices, but well-aware that Sabina and Brant did not allow pyjamas outside of bedrooms. It was a little quirk of theirs, in an effort to make sure Ruby changed her T-Shirt and pants every couple of days. 

The house was silent as she descended the stairs, with Sabina and Brant not yet up, and Hitch out on his own little mission. But Ruby was confident that there was someone awake in the house. 

Mrs Digby was in the kitchen, eyes glued to her small television screen and only half-paying attention to the eggs boiling in the pan on the stove top. 

“Hey,” Ruby greeted, slipping into one of the stools at the island. Mrs Digby turned her head with some surprise. She hadn’t heard Ruby come in, nor had she even expected to see her this early. “Can I stay home today?”

Mrs Digby was up every morning at 6 for the early releases of her shows. Normal people would record the showings, but not Mrs Digby. ‘Recorders are for people who can’t afford to live in the moment’ was her only response when Ruby tried to re-explain the purpose of the recorder and how to use it. 

“Hitch has already called you off sick for the day,” Mrs Digby informed her, reaching to turn the television volume down. She was watching the new episode of Murderer Among Us, which had actually aired late the night before, but Mrs Digby had been tucked up in bed at her usual bedtime of 8:00pm. 

“He didn’t tell me that,” Ruby was relieved that Hitch was still backing her up after she’d blown him off for going Count-hunting. 

Mrs Digby fixed her with a long stare, eyes narrowed. “I hadn’t expected you down here at all,” She told her. “By the way he was talking, I almost thought you were on your death-bed.”

Ruby couldn’t quite tamp down her smile at the thought of Hitch trying to lie enough that no one would go and bother her. It was pointless anyway; Ruby could have the Black Death and Mrs Digby would still be barging in to offer her chicken-noodle soup and a pint of banana milk. 

“That man does like to dramatise everything,” She agreed, and Mrs Digby huffed, turning away to scoop the eggs out of the pan, and reach to cut a loaf of bread into slices. 

“Well, you could do with a break from school. You’ve been in there at all hours, doing homework and what not. They should be paying you for the overtime you’re putting in.” 

Ruby laughed, resting her head on her hand to watch the images play on the muted television. “That’s not how school works,” She pointed out. What Mrs Digby didn’t know was that when Ruby said she was in school past 3:30, she was actually in Spectrum, gossiping with Blacker and pinching gadgets. 

“A long weekend will do you well,” Mrs Digby stated, like that was all to say on the matter. She slotted the slices of bread in the toaster, and stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing Ruby up. 

“Now, what do you want for breakfast?” 

Ruby normally rolled out of bed and straight out of the door for school, thanks to her chronic sleeping-in. Breakfast was often a slice of toast she demolished standing in the kitchen, or, on one memorable occasion, a bowl of oatmeal eaten in the passenger seat of Hitch’s car while he took bends at 20 miles an hour and begged her not to spill it on his leather seats. 

“I’m not that hungry, Mrs D. I’ll grab something a bit later.” 

“What about a glass of banana milk?” Mrs Digby very rarely took no as an answer. Ruby smiled at her again, chin leaning on her fist. 

“Of course I’ll have banana milk.”

Mrs Digby smiled, pleased with herself, and turned to start preparing it. Ruby went back to watch the TV with somewhat-glazed eyes. She was tired, bone-deep exhaustion, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she tried. 

A moment later a glass of banana milk was slid under her nose, and she moved to catch the straw in her mouth. “What are you doing today, then?” She asked, trying to fill the silence. 

“Keeping you entertained,” Mrs Digby said archly, but her eyes were soft. “I’m off to see Darla in the afternoon, but someone will be home with you by then.” 

Ruby didn’t need to glance at the meticulously kept whiteboard planner over the kitchen table to know that Brant would be home from 1:30 to 3:00, while Hitch came home at 3:45. However, that didn’t factor in Hitch’s day-long drive-by of every building in Downtown. 

It didn’t matter anyway, when the day ended at 4 now. 

Ruby listened idly to Mrs Digby explaining Darla’s entire life-story and how that led to her current problem (her cat, Mr Smittens, needed to go to the vets for a suspected pregnancy. Privately Ruby thought Mr Smittens could be whoever he wanted to be, but Darla was looking forward to grand-kittens) for however long it took for Sabina and Brant to rouse and come downstairs in search of soft-boiled eggs and toast. 

Both were surprised to see Ruby, which seemed a bit unnecessary as she also lived in the house, this was her kitchen as well, but moved on quickly in favour of directing Mrs Digby how to make their cafetiere coffee, despite the fact that Mrs Digby made it every morning. 

Ruby managed a couple of slices of toast, and within half an hour Brant was out of the door for an early-morning meeting and Sabina had drifted back upstairs to find the purse that matched her blazer. 

She helped Mrs Digby clear up breakfast, with a steady drone of true crime in the background and dried the dishes as Mrs Digby washed them. And after all that, it was only half seven and Ruby still had eight and a half hours to kill. 

She winced at her own wording, and mentally corrected herself. Eight and a half hours to waste. 

“Do you want to make sugar cookies?” Mrs Digby asked, once she’d changed the channel to the morning news. 

“I’m not five,” Ruby complained, and Mrs Digby gave her a very unimpressed look. “Yes please.”

Mrs Digby shook her head with a small smile and flicked the tea-towel at her. Ruby acted as though she’d been shot. 

“Before you do anything go and call one of those friends of yours to collect all of your homework for you,” Mrs Digby reminded her. Ruby remained face-first on the kitchen island, resolutely bleeding out. “Hitch told me to remind you before it got too late, and Clancy left for school. Now, I said that having to catch up another day is no big deal, but he didn’t want you to fall behind.”

For Ruby, rigour mortis had set in. And then Mrs Digby flapped a wet corner of the tea towel on her hand, and she yelped, sitting up properly. 

“He’ll probably do it anyway,” She said, suddenly not really wanting to speak to Clancy. If she spoke to him now, she would be reminded that he’d died only a couple of hours ago and would die again soon. Why ask Clancy to waste his last day on Earth gathering a bunch of homework she was never going to do? But she slowly slid off the chair to wander to the telephone in the hallway as slowly as humanly possible. 

Ruby typed the number in without even looking at the rotary pad. It rang for a few rounds before it picked up. 

“Crew residence, who am I speaking to?” Asked a voice on the other end. Ruby had really hoped that no one would pick up, too busy with the school rush of getting five children out of the house. 

“It’s Ruby, can I speak to Clancy?” 

“I’ll fetch him for you.” 

Behind Ruby, in the kitchen, Mrs Digby was pulling out scales and bowls and ingredients, pre-heating the oven. Ruby leaned her forehead against the hallway wall. 

“Ruby?” Clancy sounded out-of-breath. He always ran to the phone when he heard it was her on the line, no matter how many times Ruby said that she knew he had a massive house and that she very rarely had anything uber-important to tell him anyway. “What’s up?” 

“I’m not coming into school today,” Ruby said with her eyes closed. She could imagine him standing on one leg in the hallway to pull his socks on, shirt not quite buttoned all the way up, still untucked at the back. 

“Are you going to the Country Club?” 

The country club was a joke that had manifested somewhere around last June, where Clancy was spending more and more time at the Twinford Manor Country Club with his parents, first to play tennis with Lulu and then just sitting around so Lester could brag about securing membership for all seven members of his family. He’d spent so much time there that Ruby had been half-convinced that he was actually working at some super-top-secret government agency and ultimately confronted him for working at ‘Spectru’. Clancy had wept laughing and then taken Ruby to the club with him so she could sit poolside and eat the restaurant’s all-day breakfast. 

Ruby screwed her face up. “Yeah,” She said eventually and promptly ran out of things to say. 

“I’ll go ‘round and get all your sheets for you,” Clancy offered up willingly. 

“You have detention at lunchtime,” Ruby reminded him, and Clancy groaned. 

“Aw yeah, I’ll do it after school, promise. I won’t be able to drop them off until later this afternoon though, my dad’s got a work thing, but after that definitely.” 

“I’ll see you then,” Ruby said slowly, resisting the urge to bang her head against the wall until she woke up in bed again. 

“Uh huh!” Clancy chirped. “You can tell me everything later, I hope you have a proper story this time.” 

Ruby’s lips unwillingly twitched into a smile. She’d spent one day making paper aeroplanes out of case files to throw at Froghorn and apparently that wasn’t making the most of her time working as a top-secret secret agent. 

“Can’t wait,” Ruby told him, and waited for his ‘Catch you later!’ before setting the phone down. 

Heading back to the kitchen, she automatically reached to the larder’s top shelf, where the tin of cookie cutters was kept. “Clancy’s going to get everything and then drop them off this evening.” 

“Good lad,” Mrs Digby said approvingly. 

“His dad’s got some Duchess coming round this afternoon for dinner,” Ruby informed Mrs Digby, who got some sort of entertainment out of hearing about the Ambassador's schedule.

“We’ll save him a couple of cookies then,” Mrs Digby decided. “I’m sure they can’t serve anything filling at those things. You go to Pollo’s and all you get is some noodles of spaghetti on a plate, there’s no decent portions anymore.”

Ruby didn’t argue and began cracking eggs and weighing sugar at Mrs Digby’s instruction, while the older lady flicked through a copy of the Twinford Bark in a chair.

“Do you remember why we put eggs in cookies?” She asked her, eyes conveniently turned away while Ruby snuck a bit of cookie dough to her mouth. 

Back when Ruby was in pre-school, Mrs Digby would walk her home where they would make sugar cookies and Mrs Digby would teach her of the chemistry of baking: tricks and tips for making food tastier or more texturised, why certain recipes needed certain ratios and if one thing wasn’t added, the whole cake would fall apart.

“It’s a natural emulsifier and binds the flour and butter together,” Ruby listed as if by rote. 

“They add structure when mixed with the flour,” Mrs Digby added approvingly. 

“Flour adds structure too,” Ruby said quickly, to show that she had known that and didn’t feel like sharing. 

“What about butter?” 

“It coats the gluten strands in flour to slow down gluten formation. It makes cakes more tender. In cookies it adds more flavour.”

Mrs Digby nodded from where she was reading the obituaries. It was her favourite part of the paper. 

“And sugar sweetens everything up,” Ruby finished. “It stabilises egg whites when foamed, and leavens cakes when mixed with butter.” 

Ruby set down the wooden spoon and looked expectantly at the housekeeper. 

“A-plus,” Mrs Digby said warmly, standing up to come and inspect the dough. Now that the hard and messy bit had been done by Ruby, she could join in on her favourite part: actually, making the cookie shapes. 

Ruby rolled it out while Mrs Digby inspected the cookie-cutters. They hadn’t been used in some years; Digby favoured making chocolate chip cookies when in a rush. 

“How does it taste?” She asked wryly and Ruby did her best to look innocent. She had been certain Mrs Digby hadn’t seen, but she had eaten raw cookie dough every time they had ever made cookies together. She wasn’t as unpredictable as she imagined herself to be. 

“Good,” Ruby acquiesced, and the older lady rolled her eyes. 

“Better build up that immunity now,” She was clearly in a good mood with Ruby today, following whatever Hitch had warned her of this morning. Normally Ruby eating salmonella wouldn’t slide. “Get rolling child, I have six cat cookies to make for Darla.” 

Ruby began the task of rolling out the dough, letting Mrs Digby gauge the thickness by eye, rather than any real measuring tool. Finally, they were both able to get cutting, placing little moulds right by the edge of the dough to get as many shapes out as possible. Ruby made two angel cookies for both parents, and a little bowtie one for Hitch, a dog for Bug (Mrs Digby didn’t know that Bug got given a sugar cookie every batch they made. Or maybe Mrs Digby did know and didn’t feel the need to intervene.), a Tyrannosaurus Rex one for Clancy, even though he would never come to visit, and then used every single cutter left in the box to make sure they all had a turn. 

True to her word, Mrs Digby made six cat-shaped cookies to take with her to Darla and began loading cookies on the tray while Ruby finished her cookies. 

“There’s an episode of Kiss Marry Avoid; Kill Murder Arson on now, I think it’s a rerun, but there’s not much else on,” Mrs Digby told Ruby as she loaded the cookies into the oven. 

The whole time they were making cookies, Ruby had barely thought about the time loop or Clancy dying or Mrs Digby never remembering this interaction. A glance at the clock showed that it was eleven o’clock, and hours had slipped away between both of them going silent to watch a particularly bloody scene on the television or chatting about Mrs Digby’s various jaunts around town. 

“Kiss Marry Avoid; Kill Murder Arson sounds good,” Ruby said, and meant it. The process of making something, beating her aggression out on creaming the butter and eggs and rolling the mixture out had soothed nerves that had been raw since the first Monday she had woken up to blaring alarms. 

And they remained in the living room watching re-runs of terrible 1950s shows with minimal special effects budgets until the egg timer– shaped like a palm-sized rotary phone– rang, and then until the cookies had cooled, and there they remained as Ruby demolished nearly the whole plate of car- house- rhino- shaped cookies. 

Mrs Digby looked like she wanted to tell Ruby to stop eating the cookies but was holding her tongue. 

On their second episode of KMA; KMA, the phone rang. Ruby didn’t bother getting up from her armchair to get it. She was having a fine time criticising the quality of the fake blood and dead bodies that were clearly mannequins with Mrs Digby. 

“Ruby,” Mrs Digby stated, not wanting to leave the armchair either. “It’s probably your mother.” 

“It’s probably Darla,” Ruby argued back, reaching for a teddy-bear shaped biscuit. “Cancelling your coffee date to go christening-dress-shopping with Mr Smittens.” 

Mrs Digby laughed, but waved her hand at Ruby, reaching to confiscate the cookies and Ruby knew any protest was over. She dragged her feet to the telephone, eyes still on the television, hoping that whoever it was could sense that this was a bad time and would give up. 

She raised the receiver to her ear, ready to make some cutting remarks about tree surgeons and being ‘leaf’ed alone, when Clancy’s voice nearly blew her eardrum out. 

“Ruby!” He cried, and every muscle in her body seized up in fear. “Ruby, you’re not going to believe me, listen.” 

Clancy took a moment to heave a breath. “Ruby, it’s the Count. I’ve just seen the Count, he’s at the school I swear, I was heading to my detention, and he was at the reception desk, and I swear he saw me, I ran so fast–”

“Where are you?” Ruby asked urgently, pressing the receiver between her ear and shoulder to tap her watch frantically in Morse code. The school had no agents staking it out because Ruby was at home, and Hitch was all the way in Downtown, nearly twenty minutes away especially in a lunchtime rush. 

“In Mrs Greenford’s office,” Clancy was half-whispering now. “She was called out onto the football pitch, and she was the closest office I could think of with a phone, Ruby what do I do?”

“I’m getting Hitch,” Ruby promised him, holding the Rescue near her other ear. 

Even as she listened intently for the tiny speakers to start playing Hitch’s voice, trying to ignore Clancy’s fast breathing, she wondered what the point was. 

Clancy was going to die, and Ruby was going to have to listen. It was day ten, and Clancy was going to die in some horrible and unpreventable way like he did every day. 

But this was different. The Count had showed up to the Junior High. Was he looking for her? Was he looking for Clancy right now? 

She knew that no matter how futile it was, she had to help Clancy. The thought of leaving him to die on the wrong end of a telephone line, after he had called her with every belief that she would and could save him, made her sick to her stomach. 

“I can hear footsteps,” Clancy whispered, and there was shuffling on the other end of the line. “I’m behind the desk, he can’t see me if he looks in.” 

Ruby closed her eyes and lied. “Hitch is on his way,” She said with every ounce of confidence she could muster up in her voice. “He’s in the car, on his way to you, and as soon as he’s with you, I’ll come and find you as well. I won’t hang up on you, you just need to wait until Hitch comes.” 

“Okay,” Clancy’s voice wavered, but she could hear the relief in it. “Okay, that’s good, okay.”

In her other ear, the rescue watch beeped a ‘no answer’ or maybe a ‘no connection’ sound. 

“He’s only a couple of minutes away,” Ruby promised. “He’s got Spectrum too; they’ll come and get the Count.” 

In the living-room, police sirens played on the television. On the other end of the line, a door creaked open. Clancy didn’t say anything. 

“Nurse?” Called a distinctly adult voice. “I’m looking for Ruby Redfort.” 

The Rescue Watch presented two buttons to her. ‘Try Again?’ and ‘Maybe Later’. Ruby closed her eyes to listen to the line better, trying to pick noises out from the static. 

Clancy was silent. Clancy must be frozen in place, in fear. Clancy knew Hitch was going to come and save him. 

“Clancy Crew,” The Count exclaimed, and Ruby imagined him following the stretched cord of the telephone, over the desk and down into the footwell below it, to where all five-foot flat of Clancy Crew crouched. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Clancy said airily, and Ruby mentally begged him to run. Her feet were braced on the floor in anticipation of the flip-flop of the world righting itself, shoulders tensed to try and combat being suddenly back in bed. “We were just talking about you.” 

He was full of bravado that came only from knowing a six-foot-four super spy was currently racing towards your location with a loaded gun and a couple of witty one-liners. 

“Funny,” The Count said, and there was a rush of static and thumps against the receiver before it went quiet again. When the Count spoke again it was directly into the microphone. “Ruby Redfort. I appreciate your attempts to hide from me, but I will destroy anything you put between me and you. First your pet spy, and now Master Crew and any other of your little spy friends you think can act as a shield. We need to catch up.” 

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, and it sounded like Clancy was trying to argue back as well, before the phone clicked and the dial tone played in her ear. The Count had hung up. 

She placed the receiver down and turned away. Mrs Digby leaned forward in her chair to peer down the hallway at her. “Who was it?” 

Ruby opened her mouth, unsure of what her excuse was, starting back towards the living room. She only made it a few steps before the flip-flop feeling she’d been braced for hit her like falling out of a plane. 

She’d never even finished her cookie.