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They meet in the oddest way. Meg is walking around her hometown, she is fifteen years old, versed in the world but not well enough. The streets are empty, a common occurrence in the city and neon floods from the windows in the bad part of town. She hears footsteps behind her, getting faster and faster and then someone is pulling on her backpack. She whirls around and is face to face with a scruffy boy who looks about her age, but it’s hard to tell with all the grime. His grip on her backpack doesn’t loosen.
“Fuck off, kid.” She snarls. “There’s nothing for you here.” The boy bares his teeth.
“Nothing anywhere else, though.” And she pities the boy, she shouldn’t but she does. She
smacks his hand off her bag and rummages through it quickly. She presses a twenty dollar bill into the boy’s hand and her heart flutters at the thought of that money not being hers, but the boy takes it and runs.
It seems that she’s made a friend because the boy keeps following her. At one point she leads him to an alley and makes him an offer.
“Kid, c’mon. Let’s do some small stuff together. You can be my foreign cousin or
Something.” There is grime on the bricks of the buildings and the boy hesitates, licking his lips. He wants to accept, Meg can tell, and they obviously both need the money.
“I’m Gavin.”
“Meg.” They shake hands in the dirty alley and it is the start of something amazing and horrible.
Meg brings Gavin home like a stray dog. She leads him through the darker alleys and into the condemned apartment building, cracked and falling apart. There are people in the hallway, moaning and begging her, she kicks one of them in the ribs and they all fall back. The pair sit in Meg’s horrible apartment and eat stale Saltines and drink small amounts of water.
The first small pickpocketing they pull off goes amazingly. They had scrounged for three weeks, getting enough money for decent clothes so they wouldn’t be suspected of anything and they enter the better side of the city. They select a target, and with a nod of Meg’s head, Gavin runs toward him. Gavin, Meg had learned early on, could speak fluent Italian, a skill which came in handy now, as he was shouting at the man in Italian and gesticulating wildly. The man is getting more and more confused and Meg steps in from behind him.
“Oh, sorry, sir! This is my cousin, he’s foreign. He’s just excited, America and all, you know?” The man nods and Meg slips his wallet from his pocket. “Sorry again.” She drags Gavin away into a side street and they laugh breathlessly, high on the adrenaline rush.
Meg goes into a shop on the bad side of town with the credit card and the fifty-three dollars cash. She buys as much food as she and Gavin can carry and they throw the credit card into an alley. They eat well that night and they sleep contentedly.
This continues, pickpocket after pickpocket, and the two children bask in the riches of this life, but they are young and new to the world of crime. They do not yet know the horrors that it brings, but they will soon.
They do more drastic things sooner and they are skilled at what they do. They’ll go to clubs in good, stolen clothes and Meg will flirt with the bouncer and get them in. They’ll select different marks and split. It’s a competition after that, to see who can get invited back to the target’s place first. Whoever wins will giggle off a “I just need to tell my friend I’m leaving” and casually alert the other one with a smug grin. The loser shadows the winner back to the hotel or house. From there, the one on the inside plays it up, pretends like they’re interested and older than they are, biting their lips and acting too drunk. They’ll bash the mark over the head with something, take all the money and valuables that they can find, and then go to the other one outside and make their getaway.
Tonight it didn’t go so well. Meg was standing outside the door when she heard a strangled yelp from inside the hotel room. In a solid movement she kicked down the door and snarled as she saw Gavin backed into a corner and the man he had seduced holding a gun.
“Pretty boy thought he could rob me.” The man smiles at Meg. “What are you gonna do, Dollface?” She launches herself at the man as Gavin does the same and they move in sync, working quickly to subdue the man. And then the gun goes off, shooting the man as he and Gavin were struggling for it. Gavin drops the gun like it had burned him and Meg pulls Gavin out of the room and away from the dead body.
She wraps her coat around Gavin and they take the bus as far away as they can. It’s a cold night and Meg would give anything to be holed up in her apartment, but she knows that it’s not a possibility. They are seventeen and the life of crime is starting to harden them.
They walk down the highway and are eventually picked up by a man with ruffled blonde hair and a deep voice.
“Need a ride?” He asks and Meg nods. “Where you going?”
“Anywhere.” Gavin answers, pulling Meg into the back of the car. “Anywhere that’s away.”
“Runaways?” The man asks, blue eyes reflected in the mirror. Gavin and Meg stay silent. “Hey, it’s okay, I won’t tell. I’ve had my fair share of bad times.” And Ryan tells them about his life, about all that happened during his twenty-three years, he is leaving things out and both Gavin and Meg know, but they don’t care.
They ride with Ryan for three days, stopping every once in awhile and Ryan pays for their food. On the dawn of the fourth day, they stop at a gas station and Ryan goes in to get some coffee. Meg sees the keys in the ignition and she sees her chance.
“We can’t just leave!” Gavin protests. “He’s helped us so much!”
“Gavin, he is going to turn us in!” Gavin bites his lip and nods.
When Ryan comes out of the building he will find a sticky note reading ‘sorry ryebread’ stuck to a gas pump.
“Meg, he’s got a laptop!” Gavin squeaks from the passenger seat.
“Not anymore.” Meg corrects. “It’s ours. Can you do anything with it?” Gavin huffs.
“Of bloody course.” Gavin had always been good with computers, it had helped them out multiple times before when they needed a PIN number to withdraw money.
Meg drives and they end up in Los Santos, a sketchy crime infested city. Perfect.
They become unstoppable so quickly, a young crime duo, but it scares both of them.
Meg is scared at how easily Gavin kills, how he put a bullet in the head of that guy in the alley without blinking, and how it doesn’t affect him at all.
Gavin is scared at how innocent Meg seems, laughing as she fires off shot after shot into waves of policemen.
But it’s fine and they own a nice apartment now, warm and airtight, and when the world becomes too much they curl up there together.
Gavin gets kidnapped and Meg goes on a rampage until she finds him, killing everyone in her way. She finds Gavin in a dimly lit warehouse, tied to a folding chair, and Meg doesn’t care that it seems like a trap. She unties Gavin quickly and looks around. There is a man above them, standing on a piece of railing. She snarls at him and she takes Gavin away.
They pull off a bigger heist and they are rolling in cash. They are no longer new to this life, they excel at it.
Gavin gets kidnapped again and Meg finds him much more quickly than last time. She enters the penthouse apartment, gun drawn to see Gavin sitting at a counter, being talked at by a man with tattoos and a lazy smile.
“Dollface.” He says, smiling at her. “My name is Geoff Ramsey.” Of course, the leader of the Fake AH Crew.
“What’s to keep me from shooting you?” She hisses, fingers curling tighter around her gun.
“Hear him out.” Gavin says, standing from the chair and gently lowering the gun in her hands. He leans forward and whispers in her ear. “It’s a good offer.” She looks back at Geoff.
“This here,” He says, gesturing at the man in the skull mask beside him. “Is Ryan Haywood. I believe that you’ve met before.” Ryan. Ryan the man that got them away, of course, of course, how could she forget? He was the man in the warehouse, too, watching them. “I also have Jack and Michael, but they aren’t here right now.” He leans forward. “I’ve been watching your work, I admire you both greatly. How would you like to join my crew?”