The wind off Upper New York Bay stirred Skyl's wizard robes. To Fisk, the boy in black looked almost like fate itself, unreadable and impossible to grasp.
How old was this kid now? He still looked like a high schooler. But wizards' ages were always a mess. Maybe he had already lived for centuries, some ancient monster wearing a young face.
Back then, Kingpin had never cared much about fate. The day he saw his father die in the street, something inside him had snapped loose, like a length of chain breaking apart. What he gained was freedom, and a fire called ambition.
That fire started in New York, spread across the East Coast, then threw sparks across the whole world.
Fisk had imagined his own death plenty of times. Shot full of holes on a velvet bed. Dead in a plane crash over some jungle. Poisoned by a glass of wine at a high-society banquet. Or maybe, after retiring from the life, dying quietly on a ranch in Missouri.
No matter how it happened, he had always believed he would die a bastard.
But fate loved mocking people by dragging them out of their fantasies and throwing them into something else. Fisk had never imagined he would one day put on a penitent's robe and spend his days in the New York sunlight doing good deeds to atone for his sins.
A life like that did not belong to a crime boss.
He noticed a silver light rising in Skyl's yellow-brown eyes. His scalp began to prickle faintly, as though cool jellyfish tentacles were slipping through his eyes and into his brain.
"You're reading minds again?" Fisk met Skyl's gaze calmly. "Go ahead. Look over my whole life, then stand above me and pronounce the sentence I deserve. If this is the revenge you want, enjoy your moment of righteous judgment."
Skyl saw what Fisk's life had looked like over the past month.
After the former emperor of the underworld sleep-drove back to New York, he had fallen into a period of deep despair. An old pastor took him into a church, where many gangsters trapped by the Law had already gathered.
Their lives resembled those of terminal patients. Their sins made it impossible for them to eat. No matter how much they swallowed, it all came right back up. Worse, if they lost their temper and hurt someone, then every bite they had managed to keep down came back out too. It was torture.
The old pastor taught Fisk to do good deeds. Only by receiving forgiveness could he finally keep down a mouthful of food.
A lot of gangsters followed the pastor's advice. Most of them came from poverty. They had little education, empty heads, and a mountain of family problems.
A lot of them had joined gangs less out of personal grand ambition than because they were products of social tragedy. Even within gang hierarchies, they were the bottom rung, disposable lives with no discipline, vicious minds, and a strong streak of self-destruction. Asking people like that to go do good in the world was not easy. More often than not, they caused trouble instead of earning forgiveness.
The old pastor knew his own limits, so he set his sights on Fisk.
At first, Fisk refused to submit to the pastor's guidance. He tried to resist the curse of the Law through sheer willpower and the strength of his own diaphragm. In the end, he lost badly. Burning stomach acid surged up, scorched his esophagus, and hunger left him so weak he finally blacked out.
The old pastor found Fisk collapsed in his room and hung a glucose drip for him.
"Father," Fisk had said when he woke, eyes unfocused, "if you'd walked into my room ten days ago, you'd have been gunned down on the spot."
"I know. You're all villains. When you die, only Satan will take your souls." The pastor opened the window and let the Erdtree's radiance spill inside. "But God has decided to give you a chance to atone."
"God?" Fisk had burst into mocking laughter. "You think this is the work of that blind bastard? Not even close. The one behind all of this is a wizard. A damned wizard who ought to be burned at the stake!"
His voice rose with fury. He lunged forward and seized the old pastor by the throat like a saltwater crocodile locking down on prey. Blood vessels stood out in his eyes.
"You're with him, aren't you? You want to train me into a lamb, a loyal dog. I'm telling you right now, never. You people underestimate Kingpin."
He hurled the old man to the floor. The pastor lay there half-dead, barely clinging to life.
Fisk clutched at his own throat, trying to force down the tide of acid rising inside him.
"I forgive you!" the old pastor shouted.
It landed like a spell.
Fisk's convulsing stomach suddenly went still.
He felt peace.
"What did you say?"
"I forgive your sins."
The old pastor curled up on the floor, gasping in pain. That was when Fisk noticed the hint of a tattoo showing beneath the skin at the back of the man's neck.
Fisk yanked open the pastor's robe and saw the old man's loose, shrunken back. There was a weeping angel inked across it, along with dozens of skulls, each one marking a life taken.
"You? You were a mercenary?"
The old pastor forced out a relieved smile. "That's right. Me... a truly unforgivable bastard. And now it's my turn to tell you... the Lord is in heaven... and He is waiting for you to repent."
"Why aren't you affected by it?"
Just before death, something flickered in the old man's eyes. He told Fisk, "Because I spent forty years atoning. Now I'm a clean man."
The old pastor died. He was too old to survive being thrown around like that.
Fisk knew the man had held something back, but even so, the idea took root in him. He could not endure that kind of torment forever, but he refused to die a coward by his own hand. Life was more savage than any starving beast, and Fisk decided he would fight it to the bitter end.
The old pastor's funeral was simple, but many people came to mourn him. They were the living debts and gratitude he had left behind through years of repentance. They assumed Fisk was his successor, and they sincerely encouraged him to keep the church running.
From that day on, Fisk put on the penitent's robe and led a crowd of villains through New York doing good. The former emperor of the underworld showed all his old skill and force of personality. With him keeping the thugs in line, they transformed almost overnight. Their work became organized. They stopped causing trouble.
The gangland style remained, of course. Their charity was built around one principle: simple, brutal, and effective. If they saw something uncivilized, they responded with decisive force.
They flipped illegally parked cars onto their sides. They directed traffic in congested streets, and if a driver refused to cooperate, they dropped to the pavement and faked an injury claim on the spot. They took megaphones into supermarkets to help lost kids find their parents. If they found out a boss had withheld wages, they snuck a bloodied pig's head under the man's blanket at night and made the message very clear. If they caught a cheating husband, they plastered compromising photos all over the neighborhood. They dragged homeless people back to the church and fed them. They hauled addicts back to get clean. If they met someone in the hospital who was struggling financially, they pooled money on the spot. If they saw bullying at school, they showed up in person to stand behind the victim.
This overactive civic organization made a huge splash across the city. Because Fisk knew the law inside and out, they managed to use rough, unconventional methods while staying technically within legal boundaries. Nobody could find an opening to nail them on.
When a crowd of heavily documented ex-criminals started applying underworld tactics to legitimate causes, the results were immediate.
They truly did solve problems for ordinary people. They earned forgiveness, one sentence at a time. And eventually, people began respectfully calling him Pastor Wilson.
After seeing all that, Skyl found himself with a question.
"You already know there's a loophole in the Law, don't you?"
"Yes." Fisk smiled with open irony. "If a person believes himself innocent, and the public spontaneously rises to defend his actions, then even evil deeds can slip past the Law without punishment. That is what religion does. It wraps the most vile and contemptible acts in the language of the sacred."
He let out a quiet, mocking laugh. "I can smell blood in the night air and fresh ink on dirty money. I'm not the only one who found that loophole. New York looks peaceful on the surface, but all kinds of twisted cults have sprung up underneath it, and their victims usually volunteer themselves willingly."
"Why haven't you done the same?" Skyl stared at him. "The second you catch a whiff of corruption, you usually can't help throwing yourself into it. Isn't that just your nature, Mr. Fisk?"
"Because I'm tired. I can't see any path to beating you. All that waits for me is death. I know weak men hide their fear behind madness, but Kingpin is different. I've decided to accept my ending with dignity."
Pastor Wilson looked at the wizard before him and waited for judgment.
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