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whatamidoingwithmylifeman · 4 years ago

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MK 11 Nozomi vs Canon intro fight dialogues part 1

Hey o, finally got part one of the Nozomi intro fight dialogues done. Same rules for the replaced guest character apply like the first time.

tw/cw: small implications of abuse and trauma

@yuvononik

enjoy below the cut

Barka vs Nozomi

Baraka: You took Shariah away!

Nozomi: She was left for dead! I saved her!

Baraka: Why should I trust what Quan Chi’s spawn says?

Baraka: You are not welcome here in Outworld, Nozomi

Nozomi: I think your Kahn would beg to differ.

Baraka: Kitana doesn’t speak for Tarkata!

Baraka: I know your dirty tricks, Goddess

Nozomi: Comparing me to that bastard necromancer isn’t a reliable source of information.

Baraka: Your personality and eyes are the near image of him!

Cassie vs Nozomi

Cassie: You don’t dress too fancy for a Goddess

Nozomi: Why should I? I’m only a Demi Goddess

Cassie: Stop the presses. We have a humble God.

Cassie: Wait so you’re like Kronika’s granddaughter?

Nozomi: She must not know I exist!

Cassie: Don’t you think it’s a little too late for that?

Cassie: You’re with the good guys, right?

Nozomi: As long as the “good guys” don’t hurt my children, then yes.

Cassie: Give me names, and I’ll make it an official SF order to bring no harm to them.

Cetrion vs Nozomi

Cetrion: My sweet niece, have you come back?

Nozomi: To try and close void again

Cetrion: Ah. So you aren’t going to stay

Cetrion: What does your mother say of your proposal?

Nozomi: As long as Rain makes me happy, then she’s fine with it.

Cetrion: Well if she’s fine with it..

Cetrion: The One Being calls to you.

Nozomi: Oh no! Not again!

Cetrion: Again? What do you mean again?

D’vorah vs Nozomi

D’vorah: The lost world’s demi-goddess

Nozomi: Not really lost if I never intended for it to be found

D’vorah: Kronika will merge it with this one in the new timeline.

D’vorah: Why refuse Kronika’s offer?

Nozomi: Kind of hard to accept someone's offer when you're being held prisoner in a cave

D’vorah: You should not blame Kronika for the One Being's rashness.

D’vorah: This one does not fear you.

Nozomi: Good for you? Look I really don’t care.

D’vorah: Not the reaction this one was expecting

Erron vs Nozomi

Erron: You and Rain sure are quite the match.

Nozomi: What do you mean, Black?

Erron: Two demi-gods with daddy issues.

Erron: You really ripped Kotal a new one.

Nozomi: There are two types of people I can’t stand. Argus and liars.

Erron: Give me one good reason to pray to you.

Erron: Y'all really have it in for Argus, don’t you?

Nozomi: If you don’t want to do so, then don’t.

Erron: You’re not good at this god thing are you?

Frost vs Nozomi

Frost: Since Michiko’s my mom, does that make you my platonic grandma?

Nozomi: Stardust Frost, I’m not old!

Frost: Aren’t you ageless?

Frost: What can you offer me Nozomi?

Nozomi: Love. Safety. Revenge.

Frost: I already get love and safety from mom and Reiki. But about the revenge thing.

Frost: Mom warn you about me?

Nozomi: Yeah. She said not to keep you up past 9, otherwise you get really cranky.

Frost: Very funny, grandma!

Fujin vs Nozomi

Fujin: You’re the one helping Michiko in her quest for vengeance!?

Nozomi: I am the Goddess of Revenge.

Fujin: You have another goal in mind. What is it?

Fujin: Nozomi… is there a reason you weren't there in the fight against Kronika?

Nozomi: No reason you need to worry about

Fujin: Nozomi, talk to me.

Fujin: Raiden cares a great deal about you.

Nozomi: Even after helping Michiko in her quest for vengeance?

Fujin: He understands why. He doesn’t blame you or Michiko.

Geras vs Nozomi

Geras: Nozomi, creator of the world below

Nozomi: And what of it?

Geras: Creationism was always your destiny

Geras: The One Being, The Morai, and The Reapers

Nozomi: Enough with the trying to make me remember that life!

Geras: I am sorry you had to meet him like that again.

Geras: Kronika will give you anything you wish.

Nozomi: She didn't seem to care about me when I was trapped beneath the sea of blood

Geras: Even Kronika cannot oppose the One Being

Jacqui vs Nozomi

Jacqui: Where’s your mom?

Nozomi: She said she had some family matters to attend to

Jacqui: Shouldn’t you be with her?

Jacqui: Kronika might not be finished

Nozomi: Lucky for us, I got my mom on our side

Jacqui: So is she gonna be our secret weapon?

Jacqui: Haven’t seen you since you found your dad’s decapitated body

Nozomi: Out of all the deaths I have witnessed, why did that one bother me the most?

Jacqui: I’m sure your dad’s out there somewhere.

Jade vs Nozomi

Jade: I found your mother’s temple

Nozomi: So Michiko has told me

Jade: Your mother was quite the informant

Jade: Will you help Kitana Kahn?

Nozomi: I don’t think I’m the right Goddess to ask

Jade: Then who do you suggest?

Jade: Are you really Raiden's daughter?

Nozomi: Platonically I am.

Jade: Platonically?

Jax vs Nozomi

Jax: I hear you’re related to Kronika, Shinnok, and Cetrion

Nozomi: Unfortunately, yes, and yes

Jax: Family get togethers must be a nightmare

Jax: You’re a weapon of mass destruction

Nozomi: I lose my shit once, and everyone calls me unstable

Jax: You lost your shit more than once Nozomi

Jax: I hope your union with Rain straightens him out

Nozomi: There’s no point in the union if I’m going back to my world.

Jax: Have you talked to him about this?

Johnny vs Nozomi

Johnny: I’m confused. Is Quan Chi or Rai-dude your dad?

Nozomi: Biologically or?

Johnny: With as protective as Raiden is of you, I'm going to assume it's Raiden.

Johnny: Earthrealm’s savior has arrived!

Nozomi: Oh, what a pleasure it is to meet the famed Johnny Cage.

Johnny: Finally! Some recognition.

Johnny: You control lighting!?

Nozomi: ehh, sort of.

Johnny: Are you sure you aren’t Raiden’s daughter biologically?

Kabal vs Nozomi

Kabal: Nozomi? What kind of name is that?

Nozomi: It means hope.

Kabal: That all? Could’ve sworn it meant more

Kabal: What deal did Kristy make with you?

Nozomi: Who said she made one with me?

Kabal: Bullshit! Kristy wouldn’t lie to me!

Kabal: You can bring people back from the dead?

Nozomi: Yes. Why?

Kabal: Do you make em revenants like your dad?

Kano vs Nozomi

Kano: Heard you were the Devil of Deals.

Nozomi: And Debts! Name your price.

Kano: Now we’re talking!

Kano: Well color me gobsmacked. You and Rain?

Nozomi: What of it?

Kano: Kind of thought it’d be you and that old sorcerer

Kano: What are you here for sheila?

Nozomi: Has nobody ever taught you not to cross a devil?

Kano: Guess yer about to teach me that lesson?

Kitana vs Nozomi

Kitana: If it wasn’t for you.. Mother would still be..

Nozomi: A corrupt, money grubbing, backstabber that lies through her teeth?

Kitana: Thank you so much for your help Nozomi.

Kitana: My revenant and Liu’s is really attached to you huh?

Nozomi: I blame my dad.

Kitana: Well that, and Liu Kang himself thinks of you as his sister.

Kitana: Are you leaving soon?

Nozomi: Once the portal’s fixed.

Kitana: Liu Kang and I will miss you

Kollector vs Nozomi

Kollector: Are you also a collector, Nozomi?

Nozomi: Yeah. Of debts.

Kollector: You and I would make great business partners

Kollector: What is Shariah’s status?

Nozomi: Her wounds are healing tremendously. Nyx is keeping her company.

Kollector: If that Saurian tries anything with her..

Kollector: How is it Mileena, Tanaya, Skarlet, Nyx, and Phantos get to see Shariah, but I can’t?

Nozomi: She requested them. And I know they wouldn’t try to take anything from my world.

Kollector: So she’s still mad at me?

Kotal Kahn vs Nozomi

Kotal Kahn: So you're the Nozomi Raiden has bragged on so much.

Nozomi: Leave it up to dad to be the embarrassing one.

Kotal Kahn: Dad? I did not know Raiden had a daughter.

Kotal Kahn: Is Shariah doing alright?

Nozomi: Didn't think you'd care.

Kotal Kahn: She helped Jade free me.

Kotal Kahn: Do you also practice the dark arts?

Nozomi: I practice all sorts of magic. Wanna see a card trick?

Kotal Kahn: Your character slips my mind day by day.

Kung Lao vs Nozomi

Kung Lao: My hat tricks, your card magic.

Nozomi: Together we’d make great great entertainment for a kid’s birthday party.

Kung Lao: Or anybody’s in general!

Kung Lao: You dated Shang Tsung?

Nozomi: Yes?

Kung Lao: Hate to break it to you Nozomi, but Rain’s not an upgrade.

Kung Lao: Are you going to leave once the void is sealed?

Nozomi: It’s what I intended to do from the start

Kung Lao: You’re the best sister ever. Please don’t go.

Liu Kang vs Nozomi

Liu Kang: Madam Nozomi.

Nozomi: Liu, you know you can just call me Nozomi

Liu Kang: Well I haven’t seen you in so long, I feared you’d think me a stranger

Liu Kang: You have poor taste in partners.

Nozomi: Oh? What are you, some expert?

Liu Kang: You met Kitana. I rest my case.

Liu Kang: Are you really going to leave us once the void is sealed?

Nozomi: That was my plan from the start, Liu Kang.

Liu Kang: You’re my favorite sister. Please don’t leave.

Mileena vs Nozomi

Mileena: How’s Shariah doing?

Nozomi: You and Tanya just saw her!

Mileena: That was an hour ago! I need a new update now!

Mileena: I’m glad it is you who Rain will wed.

Nozomi: Why?

Mileena: You make him the happiest!

Mileena: Tell me, does my sister actually like me?

Nozomi: She worries for you and Tanya everyday

Mileena: You mean it?

Nightwolf vs Nozomi

Nightwolf: Why do you hate that spot in the Netherrealm anyway?

Nozomi: Something bad happened there.

Nightwolf: Great Spirit Nozomi, are you alright?

Nightwolf: You’ve met the Great Spirit before.

Nozomi: No, she's met the Great Spirit

Nightwolf: You are her Nozomi.

Nightwolf: Raiden spoke a great deal of you.

Nozomi: Oh? Enlighten me?

Nightwolf: Like a father bragging about his daughter.

Noob Saibot vs Nozomi

Noob Saibot: Quan Chi spoke a great deal of you, daughter of Fuyuka.

Nozomi: I doubt it.

Noob Saibot: He’d sang your praises to everyone in the Netherrealm.

Noob Saibot: Tell me why Michiko hates me.

Nozomi: I don’t think she hates you, Bi Han.

Noob Saibot: I have seen that rage in her eyes before. There is no mistaking it

Noob Saibot: As Quan Chi’s daughter, you will take over the Brotherhood of Shadow.

Nozomi: Shouldn’t that technically go to Melantha instead of me?

Noob Saibot: Shinnok’s daughter has chosen to stay in Orderrealm.

Raiden vs Nozomi

Raiden: Out of all the gods, you led Michiko against Flamus and I?

Nozomi: You and Flamus need to atone for what you did to the Karasugawas!

Raiden: I cannot blame your anger or hers.

Raiden: I hope Rain will be a good husband to you.

Nozomi: He was my best friend and greatest boyfriend.

Raiden: Should he hurt you, lighting will strike more than twice.

Raiden: Are you going to leave?

Nozomi: Once the void gets closed again.

Raiden: You know there are a lot of people here that will miss you Nozomi.

Rain vs Nozomi

Rain: Nozomi are you really going back to the world below?

Nozomi: You can come with me Rain!

Rain: But wouldn’t it be better here?

Rain: Is it true you do not have followers my cosmic queen?

Nozomi: I have no need or want for them, love.

Rain: All the realms should worship you and your generous beauty.

Rain: I don’t feel comfortable with you going to Orderrealm alone

Nozomi: I’m just visiting my cousin Rain.

Rain: Melantha isn’t the problem. It’s Hotaru

Scorpion vs Nozomi

Scorpion: So you’re the reason for Michiko’s wrath against the gods!!

Nozomi: I am the Goddess of Revenge! Why does everyone forget that?

Scorpion: Because that is not the impression you give Goddess.

Scorpion: Tell me, why does Michiko hate me?

Nozomi: She’s just afraid Reiki would leave her for you.

Scorpion: Reiki leaving a wonderful woman like Michiko? That’s impossible.

Scorpion: I am sorry for acting so hastily back then.

Nozomi: Because of you, we almost didn’t find Charu!

Scorpion: Hurting anyone else was never my intention.

Shang Tsung vs Nozomi

Shang Tsung: We’ve danced this dance a thousand times.

Nozomi: And yet you still miss the steps.

Shang Tsung: Forgive me, I’m still learning.

Shang Tsung: You and the Edinan demigod?

Nozomi: Rain was my friend for as long as you were.

Shang Tsung: Should we hurt you, his soul will be mine.

Shang Tsung: I’ll miss you when you leave.

Nozomi: You’re usually not this direct Shang.

Shang Tsung: I have no need to be elusive with you.

Shao Kahn vs Nozomi

Shao Kahn: That sword will be mine!

Nozomi: I’d like to see you try and take it!

Shao Kahn: I’ll enjoy cutting you up with it when I do.

Shao Kahn: You took Sindel away!

Nozomi: She never loved you in the first place.

Shao Kahn: You’ll pay with your life!

Shao Kahn: It’s a shame your mother isn’t here

Nozomi: Mother doesn’t need to waste her time with you.

Shao Kahn: A shame she won’t get to see her precious daughter die!

Sheeva vs Nozomi

Sheeva: Thanks to you Sindel is reunited with her daughters.

Nozomi: I know what it’s like to live so long without a mother.

Sheeva: I hope you and your mother get a chance to catch up.

Sheeva: How is Shariah doing?

Nozomi: Her wounds are healing tremendously!

Sheeva: That is good to hear.

Sheeva: So you are also a devil?

Nozomi: Of deals and debts.

Sheeva: How many are in your debt?

Sindel vs Nozomi

Sindel: I thank you for waking me from my corruption

Nozomi: It wasn’t an easy task.

Sindel: I imagine it was not

Sindel: If you are to wed an Edinan then it would be wise to do so in Edenia.

Nozomi: Queen Sindel, I’m not staying long

Sindel: Please stay in this world with all of us Nozomi.

Sindel: How is she?

Nozomi: Shariah is healing pretty quickly.

Sindel: Shao Kahn will pay for this.

Skarlet vs Nozomi

Skarlet: So you’re the famous blood-bender?

Nozomi: You’re the Skarlet Michiko has mentioned?

Skarlet: How have we not befriended each other already?

Skarlet: My sister, how is she?

Nozomi: Shariah is healing well.

Skarlet: I shall visit her soon.

Skarlet: If Reiko bothers you again, I’ll deal with him

Nozomi: I might have to take you up on that offer

Skarlet: I’ll bloodbend him til he breaks in two.

Sonya vs Nozomi

Sonya: Did you honestly make a deal with Kano?

Nozomi: Heard he was a crosser. Thought I’d teach him a lesson

Sonya: You are some sadist.

Sonya: What’s Kronika’s deal with you?

Nozomi: She thinks being nice to me will make up for what her husband did.

Sonya: I didn't know she was married.

Sonya: From the way Raiden spoke about you, he seemed really proud.

Nozomi: So I’ve been told.

Sonya: You should stick around, for his sake.

Sub-Zero vs Nozomi

Sub-Zero: So you are the one who saved Michiko all those years ago?

Nozomi: She was so scared when I found her.

Sub-Zero: Did she ever tell you why?

Sub-Zero: Is Michiko going back with you?

Nozomi: That is for her to decide

Sub-Zero: So that is a no?

Sub-Zero: You control all the elements?

Nozomi: Their khaotic forms.

Sub-Zero: What are you Nozomi?

Shinnok vs Nozomi

Shinnok: My dearest niece, it’s good to see you again

Nozomi: I’m only here to seal up the void Shinnok

Shinnok: Won’t you stay?

Shinnok: So you’re marrying Rain?

Nozomi: Yup.

Shinnok: He will know death should he bring you harm.

Shinnok: Nozomi, your father has told me this isn't the first time you have been held captive in my realm

Nozomi: I don't want to talk about the first time.

Shinnok: Nozomi. Who else hurt you?

Quan Chi vs Nozomi

Quan Chi: Starlight. You and your mother’s return fills me with such joy.

Nozomi: Didn’t think you really cared.

Quan Chi: When you left, I nearly died again.

Quan Chi: My daughter, are you not happy to see me?

Nozomi: Your return could mean Isaac’s return!

Quan Chi: Nozomi, what did he do to you?

Quan Chi: If Rain hurts you, I will see to it he is tortured beyond death.

Nozomi: You’re actually accepting of the engagement?

Quan Chi: I trust your judgement.

Hotaru vs Nozomi

Hotaru: Madam Nozomi.

Nozomi: General Hotaru.

Hotaru: Here to see Lady Melantha I presume?

Hotaru: Nozomi, I love Melantha. I’m not going to hurt her.

Nozomi: One mark on her, and your soul won’t live another life.

Hotaru: You have my word.

Hotaru: Melantha wept when she heard you were going to leave.

Nozomi: I have no reason to stay.

Hotaru: Leave, and I will hunt you down and kill you for making my beloved Venus cry.

Reiko vs Nozomi

Reiko: If it isn’t the gorgeous blood bender.

Nozomi: An engaged blood bender, Reiko.

Reiko: Not for long.

Reiko: Honestly, why settle for that demigod?

Nozomi: Cause he isn’t a scheming little shit!

Reiko: That tongue is sharp. I like it.

Reiko: May I have this dance?

Nozomi: You can have a seat.

Reiko: Only if you take one on my lap.

Meat vs Nozomi

Meat: Is Shariah here?

Nozomi: Yes she’s healing- son is that you?

Meat: I want to see her. Then we’ll talk.

Meat: Are you mad at me for leaving?

Nozomi: I just want to hold you again.

Meat: Your hugs were my favorite.

Meat: No flesh please. I don’t want any.

Nozomi: Anything, just please don’t leave again.

Meat: Then you stay too.

32 notes · View notes

potatocrab · 4 years ago

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Salvation is a Last Minute Business (11/18)

Chapter 11: In the Name of the Law

After the media helps expose the truth about Boston’s corruption and crime, Eddie Winter finally comes out of hiding. On the steps of the courthouse, while waiting for an indictment to be brought down, the city’s crime-lord attempts one last coup, but Nick intervenes. Later, while Madelyn and her partner discuss the future of the agency, Deacon appears with a lead on an old cold case.

“In the name of the law.” - Inspector Karl Lohmann as played by Otto Wenicke (M, 1931)

Because of spoilers recapped in the first paragraph, the entire chapter is under a cut.

[read on Ao3] x [chapter masterpost]

April 21st, 1958

“I don’t like this.”

Clutched in Piper’s hand was the Sunday edition of Publick Occurrences—the previous day’s bombshell announcement that the District Attorney was moving forward with a grand jury trial against Eddie Winter after pressure from Chief Sergeant Danny Sullivan. That, and an exposé from Buster Connolly from the Boston Bugle—a listing of every corrupt cop, lawyer and government official that had been in Winter’s pocket and had worked to cover up the crime family’s business operations for years. More than that, it explicitly placed the blame of Jennifer Lands’ murder on the police—they had known about the holotapes and Eddie Winter’s recorded threats and had chosen to do nothing. Now, it was in the court’s hand. That was the good news. The bad news?

Eddie Winter had yet to show himself.

Madelyn stood on the courthouse steps, underneath the umbrella clasped in Deacon’s hand. Fitting, that on this day of reckoning, Mother Nature saw fit to bring down her wrath. Even though their partnership—relationship—had been mended, he kept his hands from her—now was not the time to give Piper any ideas. Though, knowing the reporter and the way she continued to flash them curious expressions, her head was already full of them—but now was not the time.

“I know,” Madelyn responded, digging her hands deeper into her coat pockets, desperate to keep warm. She looked over to where Piper was staring down the gathering of newshounds, barricaded off in the plaza near the street. Together, they were all waiting on bated breath for news of an indictment.

“What if the jury’s been rigged?” she asked, twisting her umbrella in an anxious gesture. “Can we really trust these guys to get the job done?”

“You can’t trust everyone,” she replied, noting the small pull at Deacon’s lips. These were the same lawyers that had booted her from the District Attorney’s office, handing her off to Valentine’s Detective Agency because of her fairer sex—but as far as Sullivan was convinced, they weren’t dirty—just jerks. “But there’s enough evidence that you’d have to be blind not to indict.”

Piper nodded, but her frown persisted. “Even with a grand jury indictment and arrest warrant in hand, Sullivan would still have to find the bastard.”

“Speak of the devil,” Deacon mumbled, gesturing with his free hand towards the crowd.

Madelyn had barely registered his words over the media’s simultaneous excitement, voices yelling and cameras clicking as reporters clamored to get a clear photo of the newest arrival to the courthouse—Eddie Winter himself. Surrounded by four bodyguards and one well-dressed man that was obviously his lawyer, the mobster gradually made his way up the courthouse steps. He was wobbling ever-so-slightly, clearly still suffering from the gunshot wound she’d inflicted upon him just a week prior. As his entourage approached she reflexively bristled, biting her tongue in frustration at the fear that crept up her spine. Deacon gripped her elbow, touch softening to support her as Winter stopped to stand before her. The faded bruises on her neck burned under his evil stare.

“Miss Hardy,” he greeted.

She glanced to his side, stone-faced. “How’s the stomach?”

He let out a low growl, eyebrows knitted together in frustration. “I should ‘a killed you when I had the chance.”

“Likewise,” she replied. Deacon’s grip on her arm tightened, and while she appreciated the subtle show of his anger towards Winter’s threats, she could handle herself. If anything, she was emboldened. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face here. The minute that indictment comes down, you’ll find yourself in a pretty set of bracelets. I’ll give you a hint, they aren’t from Tiffany’s.”

“Oh, they’ll be no verdict today, sweetheart,” he grinned, his bodyguards instantly mimicking his amusement. “Not on my watch.”

“Don’t you know who I am?” he continued, laughing softly to himself. “I got the whole city in my pocket, the judge, the jury—don’t matter how many of my men you take out of the precinct, there’s always someone that gets left behind.”

Almost immediately, Piper’s hopeful expression dropped, though Deacon remained skeptical. Madelyn didn’t budge. She didn’t want to believe it—so she didn’t it. Eddie Winter was bluffing, and she knew it. This was just one last gamble, one last intimidation tactic against a foe he thought he could outplay.

“Even now, I see my good friend the police commissioner coming down to give me the good news—”

Madelyn turned so she could keep him in her sights, glancing over her shoulder to spot not only the commissioner but Sergeant Sullivan and a few members of his task force following behind. Confusion muddled her mind—she had just read the commissioner’s name in Buster Connolly’s report the previous day. Only when she realized the commissioner was in handcuffs, head hung low as he was escorted to the patty wagon on the street.

Winter’s expression faltered. “The fuck—”

“As I was saying,” Madelyn continued, resisting the urge to smile at the obvious anxiety in his gestures.

Sergeant Sullivan and his officers soon surrounded Winter and his bodyguards, ensuring Madelyn and her colleagues were separated by the uniformed men. He pulled a folded document from his jacket pocket, handing it off to a detective with an umbrella to keep it dry.

“Edward Winter, this is a warrant for your arrest,” he explained, loud enough so that the reporters in the crowd could hear. “You are under arrest for first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, bribery, and fraud.”

He held up the metal handcuffs, and Madelyn had to give it to Danny for asking the dumbest, or bravest question to the mobster’s face. “Will you come with us quietly?”

Eddie Winter was defiant as ever. “The hell I will.”

He backed away, the bodyguards making a path for him on the stairs for a quick escape. As soon as he turned around, however, he froze, surprised by the sight of the man at the bottom of the courthouse steps.

“Nowhere to run, Winter.”

Nick Valentine—alive and vengeful as ever. Madelyn was alarmed to see him standing there—he should still be in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wounds inflicted from Winter. Then again, it wasn’t surprising that Nick hauled himself to city hall after learning about the grand jury, taking a gamble that Winter would show himself to the world and he’d have the chance to face him down once again. Her biggest fear, however, was that his lust for revenge would cloud his mind and he’d forget that he couldn’t just kill the man in broad daylight. Even if that man was Eddie Winter.

A stand off in the rain.

Nick slowly climbed the steps—steady and calm without a flicker of fear in his features. If anything, he was smiling, bright green eyes shining as they remained locked on his prize. Winter, meanwhile was shaking, frantically turning one way or another as he looked for a way out. To both sides were officers and the media, and behind him was Sullivan, offering the shackles. As Nick said—there was nowhere to run.

A desperate man always made desperate actions.

In one swift motion, Winter pulled the .44 pistol from his jacket and arced it towards Nick, finger squeezed around the trigger.

The detective was faster.

A single gunshot echoed through the plaza, the noise amplified by the sound of scurrying feet as people simultaneously rushed to get away and come closer for a better look. In the chaos, Madelyn couldn’t see a thing, blinded by the flashing lights of camera bulbs. Deacon yanked her aside, holding her tightly—protectively—to his chest as he surveyed the crowd, waiting, listening for another gunshot. Sullivan’s officers tackled Winter’s bodyguards to the ground, he lawyer tripping down the stairs as he tried to escape. A minute—five minutes? Madelyn wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when the panic settled just enough, there was only one victim.

Eddie Winter’s body lay on the pavement, crumpled across the stone steps of the courthouse, motionless. Blood seeped out onto the cobblestone beneath him, swept away by downpour of rain. Sullivan was the first to move, kneeling down to check the man’s pulse—he shook his head, staring up at the group before glancing to Nick.

It was over.

Eddie Winter was dead.

Nick stood back, expressionless, and looked towards the statue of Lady Justice in the plaza. “Long time coming.”

April 22nd, 1958

That rainy, Tuesday evening was the first time Madelyn had returned to the Valentine Detective Agency in over a week. The last time she had been in the offices had been before her and Nick made the fateful decision to go after Eddie Winter—back when their working relationship was as strong as ever, back when he hadn’t been shot—back when Jenny was still alive.

A lot could happen in ten days.

Ellie had kept the office open, mostly to field the incoming calls and solicitations from news agencies. The agency had seen a lot of foot traffic since word of Nick’s hospitalization and Jenny’s death got out—daily visitors stopping by with bouquets of flowers and sympathy cards—proof that the community he had served for so many years still supported him, and hadn’t forgotten about his plight. Even Vadim had shown up with a cask of freshly fermented moonshine, weeping endlessly into a delicately embroidered handkerchief until Yefim had to escort him back to the Dugout Inn.

That Tuesday, however, was quiet. Nick had returned to the office after the events at the courthouse and being cleared by the District Attorney, informing everyone that if they wanted to find him that’s where he’d be. While it was refreshing to know the agency wouldn’t be prosecuted for their involvement in stopping Eddie Winter, Nick’s behavior was troublesome. Madelyn knew better than anyone that he needed time to mourn—it was time to heal.

Public Occurrences Special Edition—Winter vs. Valentine: A Detective’s Hunt for Cold Justice Finally Ends

“Piper delivered it this afternoon,” Ellie explained with a grim smile. “Her proudest work yet. Produced in record time. Limited copies, she said.”

“Piper thinks they might sell for a fortune one day,” Ellie softly laughed, rolling her eyes. “Wanted Nick to frame his copy, but…Here.”

Madelyn looked over the newspaper the blonde handed her. Apparently, the detective had other ideas, leaving the print with their receptionist so he wouldn’t have to look at the headline, or the perfectly timed photo of gunning Eddie Winter down on the courthouse steps.

“Will you talk to him?” Ellie asked next, in a whisper as she stole a quick glance to his office. “He needs a break. We all do.”

“Yes,” Madelyn answered, though she wasn’t sure how convincing she could be. She read over the newspaper again as she walked towards Nick’s ajar door.

Sure, Boston’s notorious crime-lord was dead, and his hold on the city was no more. The police corruption had been exposed and was painstakingly being cleaned up by Sergeant Danny Sullivan and his task force. Nick Valentine—in the public’s eye—the detective was a hero for putting Winter down once and for all. But at what cost?

Their so so-called victory felt hollow.

Madelyn loitered in the doorway of Nick’s office, unsure if she had the right to enter. She hadn’t spoken to him since visiting the hospital, the same day she told him Jenny was dead. He had understandably lashed out, placing the blame on her—she had done the same, and still held a considerable amount of regret—wondering if her past actions could’ve resulted in a different outcome. No amount of reassuring words from Piper, Deacon or any other person in her close knit-circle would convince her otherwise—not until she cleared the air with Nick himself. So, she lingered there, chewing at her bottom lip until it was raw, fumbling with the newspaper in her hands.

“Hey doll,” he spoke, not lifting his head from the mess of files and paper on his desk. “You going to stand there all day, or help an old man out?”

She hesitated, noticing the hint of sarcasm in his tone and the flash of a smirk that pulled at his lips. It harkened back to a familiar banter they used to share, but she was still uncertain. Slowly, she entered his office, eyeing the two armchairs but decided to stay standing before his large, oak desk. Nervously, she swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’re hardly an old man, Nick.”

He sighed, flicking his gaze up to her. His light green eyes were bloodshot, dark circles from an obvious lack of sleep. “I think I’ve added a decade or two in the last week,” he replied. “That or lost some off the back end.”

Madelyn didn’t know what else to say, “I’m sorry.”

Nick was quick to respond, shaking his head as he pushed himself up to stand. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“But I do,” she insisted, even as he rounded the desk to approach her. Before she could stop them, tears started flowing down her cheeks and she used a free hand to wipe at her eyes, ashamed for shedding them in front of him. “F—for everything. If I had just shot Winter—”

“Stop—”

Nick’s voice was more stern than she expected, one hand gripping her shoulder, the other gently petting at her hair as he angled her head back to look at him. She sniffled, struggling to keep her eyes locked on his.

“What’s done, is done,” he sighed. “If there’s anything that Jenny taught me, it’s to live life with no regrets. Even…” he took in a shaky breath and Madelyn saw the haze of tears in his eyes. “Even when you’d give your life to start over.”

Madelyn had similar sentiments—for a long time after Nate’s death, she’d had done anything to bring him back, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. A gamble with God in prayers, until she ultimately stopped praying altogether. This was a pain she never wanted to share, especially with Nick. He’d always supported her—been her closest friend—and now it was her chance to repay the kindness tenfold. But first—she needed to stop blaming herself.

Nick moved to wrap his arms around her in a tight hug, and Madelyn quickly returned the gesture, burying her face in his shoulder. They stayed like that for a long time, silently mending their bond while mourning their losses. Eventually, he pulled away, wiping at his face and offering a shaky smile.

“Whiskey?”

Madelyn breathed a laugh, swiping away the last of her tears. “God, yes.”

He nodded, breaking away to move back behind the desk so he could fetch the glasses from the drawers. Madelyn briefly considered stating it was a from-the-bottle kind of night, but held her tongue, finally deciding to take a seat in her favored armchair to the left. Nick poured much more than a regular serving for them both, circling back to hand her the glass before leaning against his desk. They raised their cups in a silent toast, unable to speak the name on both their minds—for Jenny.

It wasn’t the most content silence she had ever sat in, but the whiskey helped—a delightful burn as she drank the amber liquid in tiny sips, sighing as the alcohol helped numb the lingering pain in her heart and mind. The last few months had been a testament to her emotions, but she had come out on the other end—a brave new Madelyn, ready for anything life was ready to throw at her.

In the lobby, the chime of the front door rang out. Nick and Madelyn exchanged a look, both glancing to the clock on the wall—midnight—before listening to Ellie’s cheery greeting. Madelyn was slightly surprised to find Deacon standing at the door to Nick’s office—last she understood, he was running a last-minute operation with Tinker Tom, and the only reason why he was absent from her side in the first place.

“Hey,” he greeted, not moving from the doorway. His hesitation to enter was understandable, considering his rocky relationship with the detective. If it wasn’t how they felt about Madelyn, it was now Jenny—Nick had trusted Deacon to keep her safe—and he’d failed just as spectacularly as Madelyn had.

Evidentially, however, the detective decided not to hold a grudge. Nick nodded his head, silently beckoning him into the room. The Railroad agent sat in the opposite armchair, leaning forward instead of relaxing against the cushions.

“Didn’t mean to intrude,” he started, before pulling a small notebook from his coat pocket. “But I figured you’d both be interested in seeing this.”

Madelyn was intrigued, shifting so she could take the papers from him when offered. “What is this?”

“Remember our first outing? The Switchboard?” he asked, holding back a grin. Fond memories, yes—but now was not the time to reminisce. “Tinkers’ has been hard at work decoding the files we recovered—this is just some of what he’s uncovered.”

She looked over the information, scribbled notes that were hard to read due to Tom’s messy handwriting, but one name stood out. Shaun. “Wait—that name—”

Madelyn passed the notebook to Nick, who took one large gulp of whiskey before setting his glass down. His eyes widened in realization. “The baby? Is this the same kid that was kidnapped in 1947?”

Deacon nodded. “Think so.”

“What is his name doing in Railroad intelligence files?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered with a shrug. “Tom is still working on deciphering the rest. It’s a slow process. Hell, it’s taken months just to get this much. Could be a missing person’s list from ten years ago, for all we know. Or…”

Madelyn swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’d tell me if the Railroad had baby Shaun disappeared, right?”

It wasn’t exactly fair to put him on the spot—especially in front of Nick—but he surprised her with a swift answer, tilting his head just enough so she saw the flicker of his steely-blue eyes. “Yes.”

“There’s another name here,” Nick tapped the paper, passing it back to Madelyn.

She squinted at Tom’s inked squiggles, mouthing the letters and words before landing on a name. “Preston? Preston Garvey.”

“Is that another missing person?” Deacon asked, looking to Nick, who shook his head. “A suspect then?”

“It’s a lead, if nothing,” she responded. A name could be anything. For all they knew, Preston Garvey could be another sandwich shop, or a bowling alley…or a museum. Deacon shrugged. Amongst their exchange, Nick had been silent, rubbing at his chin in thought.

Madelyn glanced to her partner with a hopeful expression. “What are you thinking, Nick?”

The detective glanced over to the notebook in her hands, and slowly a smile pulled at his lips. “I’d say our cold case just heated up.”

#fallout 4 #noir au #deacon x f!solesurvivor #madelyn hardy #deacon #nick valentine #piper wright #eddie winter #danny sullivan #end of act 1!#shorter chapter to tie up the winter arc #I can't believe I managed to finish this today

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themaddeningscience · 6 years ago

Photo

Originally published in “When the Villain Comes Home” (Dragon Moon Press, 2012) and “Hero is a Four Letter Word” (Short Fuse, 2013)

Warning: This story contains profanity and sexual situations

Bullets fired into a crowd. Children screaming. Women crying. Men crying, too, not that any of them would admit it. The scent of gun powder, rotting garbage, stale motor oil, vomit, and misery. Police sirens in the distance, coming closer, making me cringe against old memories. Making me skulk into the shadows, hunch down in my hoodie, a beaten puppy.

This guy isn’t a supervillian. He isn’t even a villain, really. He is just an idiot. A child with a gun. And a grudge. Or maybe a god complex. Or a revenge scheme. Who the hell cares what he thought he had?

In the end, it amounts to the same.

The last place I want to be is in the centre of the police’s attention, again, so I sink back into the fabric, shying from the broad helicopter searchlights that sweep in through the narrow windows of the parking garage.

If this had been before, I might have leapt into action with one of my trusty gizmos. Or, failing that, at least with a witty verbal assault that would have left the moron boy too brain-befuddled to resist when I punched him in the oesophagus.

But this isn’t before.

I keep my eyes on the sky, instead of on the gun. If the Brilliant Bitch arrives, I want to see.

No one else is looking up. It has been a long, long time since one of…us…has donned sparkling spandex and crusaded out into the night to roust the criminal element from their lairs, or to enact a plot against the establishment, to bite a glove-covered thumb at ‘the man.’ A long time since one of us has done much more than pretend to not be one of us.

The age of the superhero petered out surprisingly quickly. The villains learnt our lessons; the heroes became obsolete.

A whizzing pop beside my left ear. I duck behind the back wheel of a sleek penis-replacement-on-wheels. The owner will be very upset when he sees the bullet gouges littering the bright red altar to his own virility.

I’ve never been shot before. I’ve been electrocuted, eye-lasered, punched by someone with the proportional strength of a spotted gecko and, memorably, tossed into the air by a breath-tornado created by a hero whose Italian lunch my schemes had clearly just interrupted.

Being shot seems fearfully mundane after all that.

A normal, boring death scares me more than any other kind—especially if it’s due to a random, pointless, unpredictable accident of time and place intersecting with a stupid poser with the combination to daddy’s gun drawer and the key to mommy’s liquor cabinet. I had been on the way to the bargain grocery store for soymilk. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get any now.

Because only the extraordinary die in extraordinary ways. And I am extraordinary no longer.

I look skyward. Still no Crimson Cunt.

Someone screams. Someone else cries. I sit back against the wheel and refrain from whistling to pass the time. If I was on the other side of the parking garage, I could access the secret tunnel I built into the lower levels back when the concrete was poured thirty years ago. But the boy and his bullets are between us. I’ve nothing to do but wait.

The boy is using a 9mm Barretta, military issue, so probably from daddy’s day job in security at the air force base. He has used up seven bullets. The standard Barretta caries a magazine of fifteen. Eight remain, unless one had already been prepared in the chamber, which I highly doubt as no military man would be unintelligent or undisciplined enough to carry about a loaded gun aimed at his own foot. The boy is firing them at an average rate of one every ninety-three seconds—punctuated by unintelligible screaming—and so by my estimation I will be pinned by his unfriendly fire for another seven hundred and forty-four seconds, or twelve point four minutes.

However, the constabulary generally arrive on the scene between six and twenty-three minutes after an emergency call. As this garage is five and a half blocks from the 2nd Precinct, I estimate the stupid boy has another eight point seven minutes left to live before a SWAT team puts cold lead between his ribs.

Better him than me.

Except, probability states that he will kill another three bystanders before that time. I scrunch down further, determined not to be a statistic today. This brings me directly into eye-line with a corpse.

There is blood all around her left shoulder. If she didn’t die of shock upon impact, then surely she died of blood loss. Her green eyes are wide and wet.

I wonder who she used to be.

I wonder if she is leaving behind anyone who will weep and rail and attend the police inquest and accuse the system of being too slow, too corrupt, too over-burdened. I wonder if they will blame the boy’s parents or his teachers. Will they only blame themselves? Or her?

And then, miraculously, she blinks.

Well, that certainly is a surprise. Perhaps the trauma is not as extensive as I estimated. To be fair, I cannot see most of her. She has fallen awkwardly, the momentum of her tumble half-concealing her under the chassis of the ludicrously large Hummer beside my penis-car.

I am so fascinated by the staggering of her torso as she tries to suck in a breath, the staccato rhythm of her blinks, the bloody slick of teeth behind her lips, that it’s all over before I am aware of it.

This must be what people mean by time flying.

I’m not certain I’ve ever felt that strange loss of seconds ever before. I am so very used to being able to track everything. It’s disconcerting. I don’t like it.

And yet the boy is downed, the police are here, paramedics crawling over the dead and dying like swarming ants. I wait for them to find my prize, to pull her free of the SUV’s shadow and whisk her away to die under ghastly fluorescent lights, too pumped full of morphine to know she is slipping away.

I wait in the shadow of the wheel and hope that they miss me.

They do.

Only, in missing me, they miss her, as well. She is blinking, gritty and desperate, and now the police are leaving, and the paramedics are shunting their human meat into the sterile white cubes, and they have not found her, my fascinating, panting young lady.

Oh dear. This is a dilemma.

I am reformed. I am no longer a villain. But I am also no hero and I like my freedom far too much to want to risk it by bringing her to the attention of the officials. What to do? Save her and risk my freedom, or let her die, and walk free but burdened with the knowledge of yet another life that I might have been able to save, and didn’t?

I dither too long. They are gone. Only the media are left, and I certainly don’t want them to catch me in their unblinking grey lenses. The woman blinks, sad and slow. She knows that she is dead. It’s coming. Her fingers twitch towards me—reaching.

A responsible, honest citizen would not let her die. So I slink out of my shadow and gather her up, the butterfly struggle of her pulse in her throat against my arm, and slip away through my secret tunnel.

I steal her away to save her life.

It occurs to me, when I lean back and away from the operating table, my hands splashed with gore, that I’ve kidnapped this woman. She has seen my face. Others will see the neat way I’ve made my nanobots stitch the flesh and bone of her shoulder back together. They will recognize the traces of the serum that I’ve infused her with in order to speed up her healing, because I once replaced the totality of my blood with the same to keep myself disease free, young looking, and essentially indestructible. The forensics agents will know this handiwork for mine.

And then they will know that at least one of my medical laboratories escaped their detection and their torches. They will fear that. No matter that I gave my word to that frowning judge that I had been reformed, no matter that the prison therapist holds papers signed to that effect, no matter that I’ve personally endeavoured to become and remain honest, forthright, and supportive; one look at my lair will remind them of what I used to be, what they fear I might still be, and that will be enough. That will be the end. I will go back to the human zoo.

And I cannot have that. I’ve worked too hard to be forgotten to allow them to remember.

I take off the bloody gloves and apron and put them in my incinerator, where they join my clothing from earlier tonight. I take a shower and dress—jeans, a tee-shirt, another nondescript wash-greyed hoodie: the uniform of the youth I appear to number among. Then I sit in a dusty, plush chair beside the cot in the recovery room and I wait for her to wake. The only choice that seems left to me is the very one I had been trying to avoid from the start of this whole mess—the choice to go bad, again. I’ve saved her life, but in doing so, I’ve condemned us both.

Fool. Better to have let her died in that garage. Only, her eyes had been so green, and so sad…

I hate myself. I hate that the Power Pussy might have been right: that the only place for me is jail; that the world would be better off without me; that it’s a shame I survived her last, powerful assault.

When she wakes, the first thing the young woman says is, “You’re Proffes—”

I don’t let her finish. “Please don’t say that name. I don’t like it.”

Her sentence stutters to a halt, unsaid words tumbling from between her teeth to crash into her lap. She looks down at them, wringing them into the light cotton sheets, and nods.

“Olly,” I say.

Her face wrinkles up. “Olly?”

“Oliver.”

The confusion clears, clouds parting, and she flashes a quirky little gap between her two front teeth at me. “Really? Seriously? Oliver?”

I resist the urge to bare my own teeth at her. “Yes.”

“Okay. Olly. I’m Rachel.” Then she peers under the sheet. She cannot possibly see the tight, neat little rows of sutures through the scrubs (or perhaps she can, who knows what powers people are being born into nowadays?), but she nods as if she approves and says, “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

“The Prof would have.”

“I’m Olly.”

She nods. “Okay.”

“Are you thirsty?” I point to a bottle of water on the bedside table.

She makes a point of checking the cap before she drinks, but I cannot blame her. Of course, she also does not know that I’ve ways of poisoning water through plastic, but I won’t tell her that. Besides, I haven’t done so.

“So,” she says. “Thank you.”

I snort, I can’t help it. It’s a horribly ungentlemanly sound, but my disbelief is too profound.

“Don’t laugh. I mean it,” she says.

“I’m laughing because you mean it. Rachel.” I ask, “How old are you?”

She blushes, a crimson flag flapping across a freckled nose, and I curse myself this weakness, this fascination with the human animal that has never managed to ebb, even after all that time in solitary confinement.

“Twenty-three,” she says. She is lying—her eyes shift to the left slightly, she wets her lips, her breathing increases fractionally. I see it plain as a road sign on a highway. I also saw her ID when I cleaned out her backpack. She is twenty-seven.

“Twenty-three,” I allow. “I was put into prison when you were eight years old. I did fifteen years of a life sentence and was released early on parole for good behaviour and a genuine desire to reform. The year prior to my sentencing I languished in a city cell, and the two before that I spent mostly tucked away completing my very last weapon. Therefore, the last memory you can possibly have of the ‘Prof,’ as you so glibly call him, was from when you were six.” I sit forward. “Rachel, my dear, can you really say that at six years old you understood what it meant to have an honest to goodness supervillain terrorizing your home?”

She shakes her head, the blush draining away and leaving those same freckles to stand out against her glowing pale skin like ink splattered on vellum.

“That is why I laughed. It amuses me that I’ve lived so long that someone like you is saying thank you to me. Ah, and I see another question there. Yes?”

“You don’t look old enough,” she says softly.

I smile and flex a fist. “I age very, very slowly.”

“Well, I know that. I just meant, is that part of the…you know, how you were born?”

“No,” I say. “I did it to myself.”

“Do you regret it?”

I flop back in my chair, blinking. No one has ever asked me that before. I’ve never asked myself. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Would you?”

She shrugs, and then winces, pressing one palm against her shoulder. “Maybe,” she admits. “I always thought that part of the stories was a bit sad. That the Prof has to live forever with what he’s done.”

“No, not forever,” I demur. “Just a very long time. May I ask, what stories?”

“Um! Oh, you know, social science—recent history. I had to do a course on the Superhero Age, in school. I was thinking of specializing in Vigilantism.”

“A law student, then.”

“Yes.”

“How urbane.”

“Yes, it sort of is, isn’t it?” She smiles faintly. “What is it about superheroes that attracts us mousy sorts?”

“I could say something uncharitable about ass-hugging spandex and cock cups, but I don’t think that would apply to you.”

“Cape Bunnies?” she asks, with a grin. “No, definitely not my style.”

“Cape Bunn—actually, I absolutely have no desire to know.” I stand. I feel weary in a way that has nothing to do with my age. “If you are feeling up to it, Rachel, may I interest you in some lunch?”

“Actually, I should go,” she says. “I feel fantastic! I mean, this is incredible. What you did. I thought I was a goner.”

“You nearly were,” I say.

“And thank you, again. But my mom must be freaking out. I should go to a hospital or something. At least call her.”

“Oh, Rachel,” I say softly. “You’ve studied supervillians. You know what my answer to that has to be.”

She is quiet for a moment, and then those beautiful green eyes go wide. “No,” she says.

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to trade my freedom for yours. I thought I was doing good. For once.”

“But…but,” she stutters.

“I can’t.”

She blinks and then curses. “Stupid, I’m not talking about that! I mean, they can’t really think that about you, can they? You saved my life. This…this isn’t a bad thing!”

I laugh again. “Are you defending me? Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Don’t condescend to me!” she snaps. “That’s not fair. You’ve done your time. You saved me. Isn’t that enough for them?”

“Oh, Rachel. You certainly do have a pleasant view of the world.”

“Don’t call me naive!” The way she spits it makes me think that she says this quite often.

“I’m not,” I say. “Only optimistic.” I gesture through the door. “The kitchen is there. I will leave the door unlocked. I’ve a closet through there—take whatever you’d like. I’m afraid your clothing was too bloody.”

“Fine,” she snarls.

I nod once and make my way into the kitchen, closing the door behind me to leave her to rage and weep in privacy. I know from personal experience how embarrassing it is to realize that your freedom has been forcefully taken from you, in public.

I built this particular laboratory-cum-bolthole in the 1950s, back when the world feared nuclear strikes. I was a different man then, though no less technologically apt, and so it has been outfitted with all manner of tunnels and closets, storage chambers, libraries, and bedrooms. The fridge keeps food fresh indefinitely, so the loaf of bread, basket of tomatoes and head of lettuce I left here in1964 are still fit makings for sandwiches. I also open a can of soup for us to share.

She comes out of the recovery room nine thousand and sixty-six seconds—fifteen point eleven minutes—after; a whole three minutes longer than I had estimated she would take. There is stubbornness in her that I had not anticipated, but for which I should have been prepared. She did not die in that garage, and it takes great courage and tenacity to beat off the Grim Reaper.

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” she says, and sits in the plastic chair. I suppose the look is called “retro” now, but this kitchen was once the height of taste.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” I set a bowl in front of her. She doesn’t even shoot me a suspicious look; I suppose she’s decided to take the farce of believing me a good person to its conclusion.

“It sucks that you’re so sure people are going to hate you.”

“Aren’t they?”

She pouts miserably and sips her soup. It’s better than the rage I had been expecting, or an escape attempt. I wasn’t looking forward to having to chase her down and wrangle her into a straitjacket, or drug her into acquiescence. I would hate to have to dim that keen gaze of hers.

I sit down opposite her and point to her textbook, propped up on my toaster oven for me to read as I stirred the soup. It had been in the bloody backpack I stripped from her, and seemed sanitary enough to save. Her cell phone, I destroyed.

“This is advanced, Rachel,” I say. “Are you enjoying it?”

She flicks her eyes to the book. “You’ve read it.”

“Nearly finished. I read fast.”

“You didn’t flip to the end?”

“Should I?”

“No,” she blurts. “No. Go at your own pace. I just…I mean, I do like it,” she said. “Especially the stuff about supervillain reformation.”

I sigh and set down my spoon. “Oh, Rachel.”

“I’m serious, Oliver! Just let me make a phone call. I promise, no one will arrest you. I won’t even tell them I met you.”

“You won’t have to.”

She slams her fists into the tabletop, the perfect picture of childish frustration. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

“I can,” I say. “It is physically possible. What you mean to say is, ‘You don’t want to keep me here forever.’”

She goes still. “Do you want to?”

I can. I know I can. I can be like one of those men who kidnaps a young lady and locks her in his basement for twenty years, forcing her to become dependent on him, forcing her to love him. But I don’t want to. I’ve nothing but distaste for men who can’t earn love, and feel the need to steal it. Cowards.

“No,” I say.

“Then why are you hesitating? Let me go.”

“Not until you’re fully healed, at least,” I bargain. I’m not used to bargaining. Giving demands, yes. But begging, never. “When no trace of what I’ve done remains. Is that acceptable? But in return, you must not try to escape. You could hurt yourself worse, and frankly I don’t want to employ the kind of force that would be required to keep you. That is my deal.”

“You promise?”

I sneer. “I don’t break promises.”

“I know,” she says. “I read about that, too. Okay. It’s a deal.”

I spend the night working on schematics for a memory machine. I’ve never tampered with the mind of another before—I respect intellect far too much to go mucking about in someone’s grey matter like a child in a tide pool—but I have no other choice. Rachel cannot remember our time together.

Rachel sleeps in one of the spare bedrooms. She enjoyed watching old movies all afternoon, and I confess I enjoyed sitting beside her on the sofa. We had frozen pizza for dinner, and her gaze had spent almost as much time on the screen as on my face.

In the morning, my blueprints are ready and my chemicals begin to simmer on Bunsen burners. I leave the lab and find her at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and flipping through my scrapbook. It’s filled with newspaper articles and photos, wanted posters and DVDs of news broadcasts. I’ve never thought to keep it in a safe or to put it away somewhere because, besides Miss Rachel, no one has ever been to this bolthole but me.

“You found the soymilk, I see,” I say. She nods and doesn’t look up from her intense perusal of a favourite article of mine, the only one where the reporter got it. “And my book.”

“It’s like a shrine,” she says. “I thought you’d hate all these superheroes, but there’s just as much in here about them as you.”

“I’ve great respect for anyone who wants to better the world.” I touch the side of the coffeepot —still warm. I pour myself a cup and sit across from her.

“See… that’s what’s freaking me out, a bit,” she says. “You’re such a…”

“What?”

“You seem like such a sweet guy.”

I laugh again.

“What?”

“Don’t mistake my youth for sweetness.”

“I’m not, but…I don’t know, you’re not a supervillain.”

“I’m not a superhero, either.”

“You can be something in the middle. You can just be a nice guy.”

“I’ve never been just a ‘nice guy,’ Rachel. Not even before.”

“I think you’re being one now.” She leans across the table and kisses me. I don’t close my eyes, or move my mouth. This is a surprise too, but an acceptable one.

When she sits back, I ask, “Is this why you were studying my face so intently last night while you pretended to watch movies?”

She blushes again, and it’s fascinating. “Shut up,” she mumbles.

I smile. “Are you a Cape Bunny after all, Miss Rachel?”

“A Labcoat Bunny, maybe,” she says. “I’ve always gone for brain over brawn.”

“Who are you lashing out against,” I ask calmly, my tone probably just this side of too cool, “that you think kissing the man who has kidnapped you is a good idea?”

Rachel drops back down into her seat. “Way to ruin the moment, Romeo.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No one!”

“And, that, dear Rachel, is a lie.”

She throws up her hands. “I don’t know, okay! My mother! The school! The courts! The whole stupid system! A big stupid world that says the man who saved my life has to go to jail for it!”

“I am part of the revenge scheme, then,” I say. “If you come out of your captivity loving your captor, then they cannot possibly think I am evil. You have it all planned out, my personal redemption. Or perhaps this is a way to earn a seat in that big-ticket law school?”

She stares at me, slack jawed, a storm brewing behind those beautiful green eyes. “You’re a bit of a dick, you know that?”

“That is what the Crimson Cunt used to—”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Why not? The Super Slut won’t hear me say it. Not under all this concrete.”

“Shut up!”

“Why?” I sneer. “Protecting a heroine you’ve never met?”

“She deserves better, even from you!”

“Oh, have I ruined your image of me, Rachel? Am I not sweet and misunderstood anymore?”

“You still shouldn’t—”

“What, hate her? She put me in jail!” I copy her and slam my fists on the tabletop. My mug topples, hot liquid splashing out between us. “I think I’ve a right to be bitter about that.”

“But it was for the good! It made you better.”

“No, it made me cowed. I’ve lost all my ambition, dear Rachel. And that is why I am just a normal citizen. I am too tired.”

“But Divine—”

“Don’t say her name, either!”

Rachel stands and pounds her fists on the table again, shaking my fallen mug, and I stand as well, too furious to want to be shorter than her.

“Asshole!” she snarls.

“And she was a ball-breaker on a power trip. She was no better for the city than I! The only difference was that she didn’t have the gumption, the ambition, the foresight to do what had to be done! I was the only one who saw! Me. She towed the line. She kept the status quo. I was trying to change the world! She was just a stupid blonde bimbo with huge tits and a small brain—”

“Don’t talk about my mother that way!”

Oh.

I drop back down into my seat, knees giving way without my say-so. “Well, this is a turn,” I admit.

“Everyone knows!” she spits. “It’s hard to miss. Same eyes, same cheekbones.”

“I’ve never seen your mother’s eyes and cheekbones.”

“What, were you living under a rock when she unmasked?”

I smile, and it’s thin and bitter. “I was in solitary confinement for five years. By the time I got out, it must have been old news. And I had no stomach to look up my old nemesis.”

Rachel looks away, and her eyes are bright with tears that don’t skitter down her cheeks. I wonder if they are for her mother, or for herself, or because I’ve said such terrible things and her opinion of me has diminished. They are certainly not because she pities me.

Nobody pities me. I got, as I am quite often reminded, exactly what I deserved.

“What does your mother do now?” I ask, after the silence has become unbearable. There is nothing to count or calculate in the silence, besides the precise, quiet click of the second hand ticking ever onward, ever onward, while I am left behind.

“Socialite,” Rachel says. “Cars. Money. Married a real estate developer.”

“Is he your father?”

She swings her gaze back to me, sharp. “Why would you ask that?”

“Why does the notion that he might not be offend you?”

Her lips pucker, and with that scowl, I can see it: the pissy frown, the stubborn thrust of her chin. There is the Fantastic Floozy, hating me through her daughter.

“It doesn’t,” she lies. She twists her hands in front of her again. “Fine, it does. I don’t know, okay? I don’t think she knows. She wants it to be him.”

“So do you,” I press. “Because that would make you normal.”

She looks up brusquely.

“Please, Rachel,” I say. “I am quite clever. Don’t insult us both by forgetting. The way you do your hair, your clothes, the law school ambitions, it all screams ‘I don’t want to be like my mother.’ Which, if your mother is a superheroine, probably means that you are also desperate to not be one of…us.”

“I’m not,” she whispers.

“I dare say that if you have no desire to, then you won’t be,” I agree. I lean forward to impart my great secret. She’s the first I’ve told and I don’t know why I’m sharing it. Only, perhaps, that it will make her less miserable. “Here is something they never tell anyone: if you don’t use your powers, if you don’t flex that extra little muscle in your grey, squishy brain, it will not develop. It will atrophy and die. Why do you think there are so few of us now? Nobody wants to be a hero.”

“Really?” she whispers, awed, hatred draining from her face.

“Really,” I say. “Especially after the sort of example your mother set.”

Rachel rocks back again, the furious line between her eyebrows returning, and yes, I recognize that, too, have seen that above a red domino mask before.

“Why do you say things like that?” she asks, hands thrown skyward in exasperation. She winces.

“Don’t rip your stitches, my dear,” I admonish.

“Don’t change the subject! You wouldn’t talk about the Kamelion Kid that way, or Wild West, or…any of them! You’d have respect! What about The Tesla? You respect him. I’ve seen the pictures on your wall and you—why are you laughing?”

And I am laughing. I am guffawing like the bawdy, brawling youth I resemble. “Because I am The Tesla!”

She rocks back on her heels, eyes comically wide and then suspiciously narrow. “But you…Prof killed The Tesla.”

“In a sense, he did.”

Her eyes jump between me and the door to my lab—the only door locked to Rachel—and back to me. “You were a hero first.”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t work, did it?”

“…no.”

“Because people…people don’t want to change. Don’t want to think.”

“Yes. My plans would have been good for society. Would have forced changes for the better. But people just want a hero to keep things the way they already are.”

She looks at her law textbook, which rests exactly where I had left it the night before, propped on the toaster oven.

“So you made it look like The Tesla was dead.”

“Heroes can save the world. But villains can change it, Rachel.”

She looks up. “I think I want to hate you, Olly, but I can’t figure out if I should.”

“It’s okay if you hate me,” I say. “I won’t mind.”

“Yes, I think you would,” she says. She flattens her right palm over her left shoulder.

We sit like that for a long moment. I forget to count the seconds. Time flies when I am around Rachel, and I find that I am beginning to enjoy it.

Rachel sulks in her room for the afternoon, which bothers me not at all, as I’ve experiments to attend. When I come back out, she is sullenly reading her textbook on the sofa, and she has found the beer. One open bottle is beside her elbow and three empty ones are on the floor.

“It’s not wise to drink when you’re on antibiotics,” I say, wiping my hands on my labcoat. They leave iridescent green smears on the fabric, but it’s completely non-toxic or I would not be exposing her to it.

“I��m not on antibiotics,” she mutters mulishly.

“Yes, you are,” I counter. “There is a slow-release tablet under your skin near the wound.”

She makes a face and pushes away her textbook. It slaps onto the carpet.“That’s just gross.”

“But efficient.”

She looks up, gaze suddenly tight. “What else did you put in me?”

I walk over and take away her beer. And then, because it would be a waste of booze to dump it down the sink, and I have been on a limited income since I ceased robbing banks, and because I enjoy the perverseness of having my lips on the same bottlemouth as hers after having so recently admonished her for kissing me, I take a drink.

“Not that, if that’s what you’re implying, my dear Rachel,” I say. She blinks hard, my innuendo sinking home.

“What? What, no! I didn’t mean…”

“I’m more of gentleman than that.”

“I get that!” she splutters. “I just mean…where did you get the replacement blood? What kind of stitches? Am I bionic now?”

“No more than you were before,” I say. “Nanobots are actively knitting the torn flesh back together, but they will die in a week and your liver will flush them from your system. The stitches and sutures are biodegradable and will dissolve by then. The rest of the antibiotic tablet will be gone in two or three days, and the very small infusion of my vitality serum only gave your immune system a boost and your regenerative drive a bit of extra gas. You are in all ways, my dear Rachel, utterly and completely in-extraordinary. Your greatest fear is unrealized.” I finish off the beer with a swig, liking the way her green eyes follow the line of my throat as I swallow, and then go to the kitchen and retrieve two more.

I hand one to her and flop down onto the sofa beside her. She curls into a corner to give me enough room and then, after eyeing the mess on my coat, thrusts impertinent—and freezing!—toes under my thigh. “Dear me, Rachel, stepping up your campaign?”

“You started it,” she says. “Re-started it. With the…bottle thingy.”

I arch a teasing eyebrow. “Bottle thingy?”

She shakes her head. “I think I’m a little drunk.”

“I think you are,” I agree.

“Enabler,” she says, and we clink beers. She drinks and this time I watch her. Her throat is, in every way, normal. Boring. I cannot stop looking at it. Her toes wiggle. “How can you read me so well?” she asks. “I mean, I didn’t even have to say, ‘I’m scared of turning into my mom,’ but you knew.”

I shrug. “I’m a great student of the human creature. We all say so much without saying a thing.”

“Do you ever say more than you want to?”

I smile secretively, a flash of teeth that I know will infuriate her with its vagueness. “Rarely, any more. I’ve had a long time to learn to control my, as poker players would call them, ‘tells.’”

“Hmph,” she mutters and takes another drink. I swallow some of my beer to distract myself. She wriggles her toes again, and pushes them further. Soon they will brush right against my…but I assume that is the point.

“Careful, Rachel,” I warn. “Are you certain this is something you want to do?”

“Yes.”

“You are drunk and you want revenge on your mother.”

“Maybe. Maybe I want to thank you for saving my life. Maybe I want to reward you for being a good guy.”

“What if I don’t want your thanks, or your reward?” I ask.

She smiles and her big toe tickles the undercurve of my testes. “Don’t you?” she asks, and her expression is salacious. I provided her with no bra, I had none to give, and under my borrowed tee-shirt her nipples are pert.

“I do.” I set aside both of our beers and reach for her. She comes into my arms, gladly, little mouth wet and insistent against mine as she wriggles her way onto my lap. Iridescent green smears up her thighs. “But maybe…oh!” I gasp into her mouth as clever little fingers work their way inside my waistband. I return the favour. Intelligence must be rewarded.

“Maybe?” she prompts, pressing down against my hand.

“Maybe I just want revenge on your mother, too.”

She jerks back as if I’ve bitten her. “Oh my god, how can one man be such a dick?”

I press upwards so her pelvis comes in contact with the part of my anatomy in discussion. “I am honest, Rachel. There is a difference.”

She sits back, arms crossing over the breasts I hadn’t yet touched. “An honest supervillian,” she scoffs.

I stand, dumping her onto the floor. “I think we’re done here.”

“Are we, Profess—”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that!”

She cowers back from my anger. Then it fuels her. “Fuck you, Olly,” she says, standing.

“I thought that was the idea,” I agree, “but apparently not.”

“You’re nothing like I thought you’d be!”

I laugh again. “And how could you have had any concept of how I’d be? Did the Dynamic Dyke tell stories? I bet she did. And you felt sorry for me. The poor Professor, beat up by mommy, hated – like you were. An outcast, like you were. Not good enough, like you were. Was I your imaginary friend, Rachel? Did you write my name in hearts on your binders? Did you fantasize about me?”

“Shut up!” she screams.

Her cheeks are red again, her eyes glistening, her mouth bruised, and I want to grab her, kiss her, feel her ass through the borrowed sweatpants. Instead I fold my hands behind my back, because I told the truth before—I am a gentleman. I say nothing.

“You’re not supposed to be like this!”

“Be like what?” I ask, again. “Explain, Rachel.”

She collapses. It’s a slow folding inward, knees and stomach first, face in her hands, physicality followed by emotion as she sobs into the carpet. I stand above her and wait, because she deserves this cry. Crying helps people engage with their emotions, or so I’m told.

When her sobbing slows, precisely one thousand six hundred and seventy-three seconds later—twenty-seven point nine minutes—she unfolds and stands, wiping her nose. I offer her a handkerchief from the pocket of my labcoat, and she takes it and turns her back to me, cleaning up her face.

She picks up the textbook. She opens it to the back, to those useless blank pages that are the fault of how books are bound, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I am shocked.

The back of the book has been collaged with photographs. Of me.

Computer printouts of me when I was the Prof. Newspaper clippings of my trial. Me, walking down the street, hunched into the shadow of my sweater’s hood. Me, buying soymilk. Me, through the window of the shitty apartment on which Oliver Munsen can barely afford to pay rent. Me, three days ago, cutting through that same parking garage.

Genuine joy floods my blood. A small shot of adrenaline seethes up into my brain and I can’t help the smile, because I missed this, I really did. “Oh, Rachel. Are you my stalker? How novel! I’ve never had a stalker before.”

She snaps the cover shut. “I’m not a stalker.”

“Just an admirer?” I ask, struggling to keep the condensation out of my voice. “Or do you want me to teach you how to be a villain? Really get back at mommy dearest?” Her expression sours. “Ah. But you already know that you can’t be. You knew before I told you that you were born boring. So this is the next best thing.” I reach out, grasp her elbows lightly, rub my callused thumbs across the tender flesh on the inside of them. She shivers. “Tell me, how were you going to do it, Rachel? Were you going to accidentally bump into me in that parking garage? Were you going to spill a beer on me in a bar? Buy me a coffee at my favourite cafe? Surely getting shot was not in the plan.”

“It’s not like that!” she says, but her eyes are closed, her lashes fluttering. Her chest bobs as she tries to catch her breath.

“Then what is it like?”

“I don’t know! I just…I just saw you one day, okay? I recognized you, from mom’s pictures on the wall, and I thought, you know, I should tell her. But I thought I would follow you first, you know, figure out where you live, or something.”

“Except that I wasn’t being dastardly and villainous.”

“You sat in the bookstore and read a whole magazine. And then you paid for it.”

I smirk. “How shocking.”

“For me it was.” She tips forward, breasts squishing, hot and soft, against my chest. “The kinds of stories I heard about you as a kid…”

“And you were fascinated.”

“And I was fascinated.”

“And so you followed me.”

“I followed you.”

“And then what, my dear Rachel?”

She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down for a kiss I don’t resist.

“You seemed so lonely,” she says, breath puffing into my mouth. “Are you lonely, Olly?”

“Oh, yes.” I pick her up and carry her off to her bedroom.

The mattress is new, she is the first person to ever have slept on it, but it still squeaks. After, she drops off, satisfied, mumbling amusing endearments about how wonderful it is to make love to someone who is so studious, makes such a thorough examination of his subjects.

Tonight I decide to sleep. I don’t do it very often, but I don’t want to be awake anymore. I don’t want to think. I close my eyes and force my dreams to stay away.

In the morning, I’m troubled. I think I’ve made a very bad choice, but I’m not sure how to rectify it. I am not even sure how to articulate it.

Rachel was right. I am lonely. I am desperately, painfully lonely. And I will be for the rest of my unnaturally long life. But Rachel is lonely, too. Desperate in her own way, desperate for the approval of a mother I can only assume was distant and busy in Rachel’s youth, and then too famous and busy in her adolescence. Rachel wants to be nothing like her mother, wants to hurt her, punish her, and yet…wants to impress her so very badly that she is willing to take the ultimate step, to profess love for a man her mother once hated, to ‘fix him,’ to ‘make him better.’ To make him, me, good.

Only, Rachel doesn’t understand. I don’t want to be better, or good, or saved. I just want to live my boring, in-extraordinary life in peace and quiet, and then die. I don’t want to be her experiment. And yet her fierce little kisses…her wide green eyes…

I look down at the schematics under my elbow and sigh. The scent of burning bacon wafts in through the vents that lead to the kitchen, and the utter domesticity of it plucks at the back of my eyes, heating them. I ‘m still a fool, and I’m no less in over my head than I was two days ago.

I abandon the lab and rescue my good iron skillet from the madwoman who has pushed her way into my life. When she turns her face up for a kiss, I give it to her, and everything else she asks for, too.

And I can have this, because I am not a supervillain any more. But I am not a superhero either. If I was, I could turn her away, like I should.

After lunch, I hand her my cell phone. It has been boosted so that the signal can pass through concrete bunker walls, but cannot be tracked back to its location.

“What’s that for?” she asks.

“Call your mother,” I say. “Tell her you’re okay. You’re just staying with a friend. The shooting freaked you out.”

She frowns. “What if I don’t want to?”

“You were arguing that I should let you call.”

“Yeah, before.”

“Rachel,” I admonish. “Do you really want her frantically looking for you?”

She pales. I imagine what it must have been like for her when she ran away from home for the first time. “No, guess not,” she mumbles and dials a number. “Yeah, hi Mom. No, no, I’m cool. Yeah, decided to stay with a friend instead of coming home from campus this weekend. No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine. There’s no need for the guilt trip! I said I’m fine! God!…okay. Right. Sorry. Okay. I’ll see you next…” she looks at me. “Next Saturday?” I nod. “Next Saturday. Right. Fine. I love you, too.” She hangs up and places the phone between us. “There, happy?”

“Yes. I am curious Rachel, how do you intend on springing me on your mother? And how will you keep her from punching my face clear off?”

She picks at her cuticles. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”

“I gathered.” I stand from the table and go to do the dishes. I can’t abide a mess.

She comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek against my back, and asks, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Whatever you want,” I say. “I’m all yours.” I turn in her arms to find her grinning. She believes me, whole-heartedly, and she should. I never lie, and it’s the truth. For now.

When the week is over, I sit her down on my operating table and carefully poke around the bullet wound. In the x-ray, the bones appear healed without a scar. Her skin is dewy and unmarked. The stitches have dissolved and a scan with a handheld remote shows that the nanobots are all dead and ninety-three percent have been flushed from her system. I anticipate the other seven percent will be gone after her next trip to the toilet.

I do another scan, a bit lower down, but there is nothing there to be concerned about, either. We have not been using prophylactics, but I’ve been sterile since I used the serum. It was a personal choice. I had no desire to outlive my grandchildren.

Rachel hops from the table, bare feet on the white tile, and grins. “It’s Saturday!” she says.

“Yes, it is.”

“Time to go!”

“Yes.”

She takes my hand. “And you’re coming with me, Olly. You’re coming with me and then they’ll see, they’ll all see. You’re different now. You’re a good man.”

I smile and close my fingers around hers and, for the first time in many decades, I lie. “Yes, I am, thank you.” I use our twined fingers to pull her into the kitchen. “Celebratory drink before we go?”

She grins. “Gonna open that champagne I saw in the back of the fridge?”

I laugh. “Clever Rachel. I can’t hide anything from you.”

Only I can. I am. When I pop the cork she shrieks in delight. Every ticking second of her happiness stabs at me like a branding iron and dagger all in one.

I thought I would need a whole machine, a gun, a delivery device, but in the end my research and experiments offered up a far more simplistic solution: rohypnol. Except that it is created by me, of course, so it’s programmable, intelligent in the way the cheap, pathetic drug available to desperate, stupid children in night clubs is not. My drug knows which memories to take away.

Clever, beautiful, dear Rachel trusts me. I pour our drinks and hand her the glass that is meant for her. I smile and chat with her as she sips, pretending to be oblivious as her eyelids slip downwards, giving her no clue that there is anything amiss.

I catch both her and the glass before they hit the floor. Tonight she will wake in her own bed. She will honestly remember spending the week with a friend she then had a fight with, and no longer speaks to. She will wonder what happened to her backpack, her cell phone, her law textbook. She will not remember the Prof, or The Tesla. Her mother will be annoyed that she will have to tell her the stories over again, stories that Rachel should have internalized during her childhood.

And I will shut down this hidey-hole and go back to my apartment and cash my welfare cheque and watch television. And it will be good. It will be as it should be.

The stupid boy with the gun might have been the bad guy in our little melodrama, but I am the villain.

I am the coward.

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smoaking-greenarrow · 7 years ago

Note

#13 if you're still taking prompts?

Arrow Out of Context Part 2!

“Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.”

(Post 6x20 fic!)

Felicity’s words circled his mind over and over, a never ending loop that had him spiraling downwards, his carefully constructed walls crumbling to the ground around him just like his city.

She was his glue. His foundation. His rock. And she had warned him.

He didn’t listen.

“Oliver, I love you. And I trust you, but this plan is crazy. What makes you think Anatoly will forgive and forget?”

“I’m hoping he doesn’t forgive and forget, honey. We need to find Diaz. Anatoly will take me right to him.”

A long silence filled the space between them, ringing through his ears in their apartment that felt so much more like home ever since she’d come to call it hers, too. “Diaz is not Slade Wilson, Ra’s al Ghul, Adrian Chase, or Damien Dark.” She argued, crossing her arms.

He could see that she was getting upset, and he closed the distance, standing in front of her and rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “I know,” he said, offering her another smile. “He’s a thug, Felicity.”

“Exactly, Oliver,” she snapped. “Slade had his revenge, Ra’s had a code, Adrian had a plan, and Damien had a method to his madness. Diaz has none of that.”

He stared down at her, stepping closer and wrapping his arms around her. “Right,” he said carefully, “Diaz has narcissism…and that’s about it.”

She shoved him backward, pushing on his chest until he let go of her, “it’s not funny, Oliver! This isn’t a game to me.”

His eyebrows shot up, and he raised his hands in surrender, surprised by her temper. “Okay,” he nodded, “okay, you’re right. Felicity…you’re right. Diaz isn’t like the men we’ve been up against before.”

“You underestimating him is going to be what gets you killed.” She fumed, her anger bubbling up more than he’d seen it in a long time.

“I’m not underestimating him,” he defended gently, ��I see him for what he is.”

“A thug?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

Oliver hesitated, seeing that she was challenging him, that it wasn’t the answer she wanted, but he shrugged anyway. Because it was true. Diaz was child’s play compared to other people they’d encountered.

His wife nodded, glancing away from him, “and how many thugs have you known who fight fair, Oliver?”

After that, she’d walked away, heading into their bedroom, leaving the door open for him. Always. And he knew that he could follow her. He could curl himself around her in their bed, hold her while they went back and forth like this for a few more rounds. Disagreements always felt better when she was between his arms…but he didn’t have time. He had a meeting with The Bratva to get to.

Step one had been clearing Anatoly’s debt. Getting him back into the graces of The Bratva. Step two was pretending to believe it was enough to mend their friendship.

He’d expected that Anatoly wouldn’t accept the olive branch. He couldn’t say he predicted getting tazed, but the outcome remained. Step three, of course, was getting himself in a room with Diaz. Even the fight he saw coming. If there was anything he knew about Ricardo, it was that the poor guy always had something to prove. And he always had to use his fists to do it.

Oliver never hoped that Diaz would keep his word. Men like him didn’t go by any kind of honor or respect…Felicity was definitely right about that. But he’d felt good, the whole thing had gone as he’d expected it to. He just needed Diaz to yield, and for Anatoly to realize that they were brothers, they’d always been brothers…and then he’d be exactly where he wanted to be. It was all working…until he’d felt Diaz stab him.

So now he stared at the wall of his holding room, his hand cuffed to a metal bar, and his wife’s words running through his head. “And how many thugs have you known who fight fair, Oliver?”

He should have known better. Every mentor he’d had had drilled it into his skull; expect the unexpected. He’d known that…but his problem wasn’t that he’d underestimated Diaz. It was that he’d overestimated him. He’d expected the man to hold himself with the same pride and dignity as The Bratva. He’d expected his opponent to fight with the same honor and morality as The League of Assassins.

He’d kept telling Felicity that Diaz was nothing more than a thug. Yet he hadn’t walked into that battle prepared to fight a thug. He’d prepared as if he was about to face Ra’s on a mountaintop, when he should have had his eyes open and his instincts ready to fight a cheap-shooting loser.

Thugs don’t fight fair.

On the other side of the door, Felicity was sneaking her way through the precinct. She’d called in a fake sighting of Black Canary and Spartan that half of the crooked cops took off to deal with, then she’d set off one of the armed doors on the other side of the building, distracting a few more. The security cameras were feeding a loop from an hour ago, so the hallway was clear.

Aside from the two stooges guarding the room where her husband was.

Having no more tricks up her sleeve, Felicity simply approached them, watching as a smile spread across Anatoly’s face and Black Siren arched an eyebrow. “Open the door.” Felicity demanded, ready to show Black Siren how her punch had improved since the last time her fist met the woman’s mouth.

Anatoly stepped aside, still smiling, even though Felicity was ready to knock some of his teeth out, too.

She glared, her eyes shifting from Anatoly to Black Siren. One guard dog was already yielding as soon as he’d seen her. But Black Siren was a little more hesitant. She didn’t want to get in trouble with her Diaz, and Felicity had a hard time holding in a sadistic laugh at the idea of Black Siren being his pet; one who barked, or screamed, on command…one who sat when told to sit and bit when told to bite.

The woman had already tried to kill Felicity once, and her friends a handful of times more. There was no point in playing nice now. Black Siren was a whole head taller than her, but it didn’t stop Felicity from lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders, stepping close until she had to look up at her. “If I let you in there,” Black Siren seethed, “he’ll kill me.”

Shaking her head at the frightened, unbelievable tone, Felicity rolled her eyes. Did Quentin actually buy this act? She’d tried to play the same card when it was Adrian Chase’s thumb she was under.

But this woman was no caged bird.

She could sing and shatter the eardrums of any man who tried to control her…going along with them was her choice. It was plain to see. “You know,” Felicity said, stepping closer to her, “I’m sure you’re sick of Quentin comparing you to the Laurel from this earth. Trying to force you to be like her.” Black Siren’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if she thought Felicity was sympathizing. A look flashed in her eyes as she stared down at Felicity; a predator who believed she had her prey exactly where she wanted it.

But she couldn’t be more wrong. “When I look at you, I don’t even see our Laurel. The Laurel I knew was full of compassion, motivation, and kindness. I think you know that from the moment I saw you…the night you came to the bunker claiming to be her…I didn’t see you as the Laurel I knew. Do you want to know why?” Felicity asked. Black Siren cocked her head to the side, listening. “Because you’re not her. You never will be. You’re a sick, sad woman and that’s the reason you align with men like Ricardo Diaz, Cayden James, and Adrian Chase.”

Black Siren scoffed, fighting not to be offended. “Telling me that I disgust you isn’t going to help you get into that room.”

A flash of anger ignited Felicity’s next words, “once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.” She shook her head, “I’ve watched every hero I know try to fight that darkness…slay their demons. But you? You are your demons. And I feel sorry for you.” Felicity exhaled, seeing that her words were melting the anger right off of her. “You don’t have darkness inside of you, Laurel. It consumes you.”

The woman in front of her was taking too long to get the hell out of her way, and Felicity was really considering how many options she had to remove her from the path to her husband. But Anatoly reminded her of his presence before she had to put any of her ideas into action.

He came up behind Black Siren, catching her neck in a choke hold that quickly had her eyes rolling back. As the woman passed out, Anatoly dragged her weight over to a bench along the wall, mumbling “your husband taught me that one,” as he left Black Siren in a slump.

Then he walked back over to the door, pulling out a set of keys and opening it for her.

Shouldering past Anatoly, Felicity came into the holding room and her eyes immediately found Oliver. He blinked at the sound of someone coming in, but aside from that, his face and his body remained motionless.

She closed the door behind her, leaving Anatoly in the hallway to take care of Black Siren. “Hey,” she sighed, coming around the table to kneel in front of Oliver. His face looked worse in person than it had on TV, and she gently ran her fingers over the gash on his eyebrow. “You okay?”

Oliver’s eyes finally shifted to look at her, but it was only for a moment, then he closed his eyes, not meeting her gaze. “What are you doing here?” He asked instead.

“I’m checking on my big dummy of a husband,” she teased, nudging his knee. But he didn’t smile. He opened his eyes, but only to stare at the table in front of him. She cringed, “Oliver…it wasn’t stupid, bad joke…sorry. You took a risk.”

He shook his head, “and look where it got me.”

“I know it seems bad right now-”

“Felicity,” he cut her off sharply, leveling her with a look. “I’m about to be put on trial at the hands of the most corrupt officials this city has ever seen.”

“They don’t have any solid evidence, Oliver,” she argued, her hand sliding up his thigh, trying to comfort him. “You’re the mayor and a bit of a media attention hog. There’s nothing they can do without every news station broadcasting it to the world. Diaz is an idiot…he can’t go anywhere near this trial unless he wants to be next on Samanda Watson’s list.”

He glanced down at her, “they don’t need evidence. Not real evidence, at least. Diaz can do whatever he wants. I’m sure he has a judge in his pocket that would gain a nice paycheck for this trial.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged, “then we’ll just have to make sure that we can prove without a doubt that you aren’t The Green Arrow.”

Her husband hesitated, glancing at her like she was crazy for a moment before he finally moved, leaning closer to her. “How are we going to do that?” He asked lowly, raising a blood-soaked eyebrow at her. “I am The Green Arrow.”

“Says who?” She asked, a slow smile spreading across her face as she got an idea. “The only photo Diaz has was fabricated.”

“I know,” Oliver mumbled, his hand finding hers, “but how are we going to prove that I’m not The Green Arrow?”

She smirked, “by showing the city who is.”

He cocked his head to the side, and then his face fell, his eyebrows furrowing, “No one else is taking the fall for me, Felicity…especially not John. I let that happen with Roy, and I will never do it again. I don’t want any of this to be happening either, but we can’t let him do that. Do you hear me?” He asked, his eyes pleading, “I know you love me, and I love you too,” he rambled. “So much, honey. But I would confess to everything…before I let Dig or anyone else give up their life for me again.”

“Slow down,” she chuckled, rubbing her hands over his legs. He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes on her face as he stopped to listen. “I didn’t mean John. We have a certain friend who takes bullets for a living?” she prompted, “can make himself look like anyone we choose.”

Narrowing his eyes, he considered her words. “Christopher Chance…” he nodded, “but who? Felicity, even if you called him, even if he crashed down into the courtroom and-”

“Oh,” his wife interrupted, her eyes widening, “I like that idea.”

He sighed, because he’d meant for it to sound too dramatic, but he could already see the wheels turning in his wife’s head. “Even if we ask for his help…” He mumbled slowly, “Chance has to take on someone’s face…we’ll be putting a bounty on that person’s head. Every criminal who felt wronged by The Green Arrow will know his face. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to let anyone, not even a stranger, be a scapegoat. Are you really ready to paint a target on someone’s back like that?”

She chewed on her lip, considering his words, and he could see that she already had at least a couple of ideas. He trusted her, he really did, and he knew that she would never let someone get hurt, not even to save him.

“Hey,” he whispered, interrupting her thoughts, waiting until she met his eyes. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

She smiled, nodding quickly. “Always, baby.” She said with a wink, making him shake his head, amused.

“I’m being serious here…Felicity, you were right. I should have just taken Diaz down when I had the shot. I shouldn’t have bothered with all of these games. I played right into his hand.”

“No,” she soothed, standing up just so she could move over him, taking a seat on his lap. He wrapped his one free arm around her waist, balancing her on his knee. Felicity hugged him, her arms winding around his neck, and he made sure to inhale, to take a deep breath in as her hair grazed his nose. He wasn’t sure how to tell his wife, but he was afraid of how long it’d be until he got to breathe her in again. “Oliver,” she whispered in his ear before pulling back to look at him, “you were right about Anatoly. Your plan worked. He let me in, and he’s outside that door right now, making sure we’re safe in here.”

Oliver’s eyes closed at that; the slightest relief, the smallest victory in a war he shouldn’t be losing. “And we’re going to be fine, Oliver.” Her hands ran through his hair, her cheek pressing against his head as she murmured to him. He leaned into her, resting his head on her chest. “Diaz was a fool to speed up your trial. He clearly doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. You and me?” She squeezed him a little tighter, “no one has a shot against us when we’re on the same team.”

Pulling back, her husband smiled up at her. “We’re always on the same team, honey. Forever.”

She chuckled, leaning down to kiss him. As she pressed her lips against his, he slid his tongue across her lower lip, tasting her…again, out of fear he might be able to for a very, very long time. It wasn’t the time to think about that, though. “I love you,” he told her instead.

She nodded, pushing her forehead against his. “I love you, too.”

“Well isn’t that sweet,” Diaz’s voice made Felicity gasp, whirling around to look at the doorway.

Oliver didn’t react aside from his back stiffening, but when Felicity tried to jump out of his arms as if she was going to lunge at Diaz with a sharp “you sick son of a bitch,” he gripped her tighter.

Ricardo just raised an eyebrow at his firecracker of a wife, nodding as if he was impressed with her temper. Oliver wasn’t. Her habit of antagonizing psychopaths would never be okay with him. She tried one more time to wiggle off of his lap, but he honestly had no idea what she would do, so he held tight.

With a huff, Felicity relented, her tiny hands balling into fists in her lap instead. “What do you want?” She spat, “because my husband might have one hand cuffed to this table, and you might think you’d actually have a chance at beating him without having to cheat like the scum that you are-”

“Felicity,” Oliver hissed.

“I promise you’d be wrong, though.” Her eyes never left Diaz as he paced in front of the table where they sat. “He’ll kill you with one hand if he has to…” Felicity whispered, “but you’ll be especially sorry if my six inch heels happen to find themselves in your eye sockets.” She finished, flashing the man a sarcastic smile.

Diaz just watched her for a moment. Felicity’s anger was enough to make her stare back, but Oliver could see the cold and calculated assessment behind Ricardo’s eyes.

He was studying her. For what? was the question that had his heart beating a little too fast, that had his fingers gripping into her waist a little too tightly. “I’m not a monster, Miss Smoak.” Diaz said lowly. His voice and the emotionless look in his eyes said the opposite. “I have compassion for your situation. You must be frustrated and upset…to see your husband so emasculated. I’ll give you a moment to say goodbye.”

Oliver’s eyes narrowed as Diaz crossed his arms, backing up until he was leaning against the window. His lips twitched with a grin as he waved his hand in front of him, “go on.” He winked.

“You’re disgusting.” Felicity seethed.

Oliver sighed, “hey,” he spoke to her. Only her. Putting his index finger under her chin, he softly guided her gaze back to his own, giving her an ‘it’s okay’ smile. And then he nodded once, her eyes on his the whole time as they came to an understanding. She’d call Christopher Chance, whether he wanted her to or not. But it wasn’t a bad plan, and he trusted her to find the best way to make it work without anyone he loved suffering because of him.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to kiss her while the sick freak in the corner watched, so he pressed his lips to her cheek, shifting his eyes to Diaz as Felicity hugged him one more time.

But then Oliver wondered where she was going to go. He didn’t even want her to have to pass by Diaz on her way out of the door, let alone have him leaving with her. Would he follow her home, try to hurt her?

Oliver was just about ready to refuse to let her go, to make good on her words that he’d kill Diaz with his hand cuffed to the table if he had to.

Before he had to worry about it, the door swung open and Anatoly appeared, his hands behind his back. He was flanked by men that Oliver recognized from Russia…and he couldn’t help but smile in relief.

The Bratva were here.

“Mrs. Smoak,” Anatoly spoke with the confidence that made Oliver proud to call him a friend. The honor that made him admire him from the day they’d met. “Car is ready to take you home.”

“I drove myself,” Felicity frowned, glancing from Anatoly to Oliver.

He looked up at his wife, “let Anatoly and his men drive it, and you, home…please?” Felicity searched his eyes, finally nodding in agreement, probably hearing the desperation in his voice.

“What the hell is this?” Diaz asked, still leaning on the window as if the sight of the Russian mob wasn’t intimidating him.

Oh, but it was.

“This is Bratva, Mr. Diaz.” Anatoly said proudly, giving Diaz a smug smile.

“You said that they cast you out,” Diaz replied.

Glancing at Oliver, Anatoly winked, “Friend of mine fixed mistake, so I suggest you stay away from Queen family now.”

Ricardo’s eye actually twitched. Having The Bratva on their side, between Oliver’s contacts and Anatoly’s, they were already a step ahead of Diaz. Add in his brilliant wife and whatever she’d scheme up with Christopher Chance to drop a bomb on Diaz’s plan for the trial, and he felt more confident than he had since Diggle left the team.

He was proud, too. Of his friend and his wife. His friend, who he knew would keep Felicity safe, nodded to him in a silent promise. She was safe with Anatoly. The Bratva may be criminals themselves, but they could protect her and William. It lifted a burden from his chest to know that they could step in during his absence. And then there was his strong wife…and god, if that woman wasn’t the love of his life…she kissed his forehead before standing up and straightening her dress.

Felicity only allowed one glance to Ricardo Diaz, her eyes shifting over him as if he was the gum on her shoe as she walked by.

The Dragon noticed, and he wasn’t backing down.

As Felicity moved past him, she was conscious not to let any part of her touch any part of him, squeezing between the table and where he stood. But Diaz grabbed her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. She froze for a moment, and Oliver did too.

Felicity tried to pull her arm away, and Diaz’s grip tightened.

Anatoly took a step closer, and Oliver yanked on the cuffs, preparing to break his thumb and slip out of it if Diaz kept his hands on her for one more second…

“I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, Miss Smoak.” Diaz said, ignoring Oliver, ignoring Anatoly. His gaze and his words were focused on Felicity. “Maybe under less…hospitable conditions next time.”

Felicity stared back, her own voice dropping to match Diaz’s, “wouldn’t that be unfortunate for you.”

#arrow #olicity #olicity fic #arrow 6x20 #6x20 #i tried y'all #gif not mine #gif by olivergifs

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lyonrhodes · 6 years ago

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One Bad Day #5: Paint the Town

Red Hood x OC, Batman/DC Fan Fic

Summary: Dora has lived in Gotham her whole life and is accustomed to the rampant crime and corruption. Her life gets worse when Black Mask takes over the city. She thinks all hope is lost but a new vigilante appears, calling himself the Red Hood. However, he’s not your typical knight in shining armor. Dora must decide: does she dare fall in love with a revenge-driven killer? (Romance, Crime, Action)

Chapter 5: Paint the Town

Two days later, Dora went to One Police Plaza to make her official statement—Red Hood was that big of a deal, there was a task force dedicated to taking him down working out of the GCPD’s central headquarters in Old Gotham. Dora arrived at the giant building only to find the entrance roped off by yellow tape. There was a crime scene right on the front steps. Cameras flashed and people chattered in the large crowd that had gathered as close as they could get. At the fringe of the scene, news reporters discussed the event in front of cameramen. The crowd was so dense, Dora couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

“Hey, you!” Bullock stomped up to her from a food truck he had been standing by, tossing aside his half-eaten gyro.

“What?” she asked.

Bullock snarled. “What do you mean ‘what?’ Your boyfriend dropped off a little present for the GCPD.”

She had no idea what boyfriend Bullock was talking about because she had been single for well over two years. However, the familiar contemptuous look on his face quickly made her realize he was talking about Red Hood—and she didn’t like that.

“What’s going on? Why the crowd?”

“As if you don’t know,” Bullock spat impatiently.

Bullock was too bitter to tell her, but after he escorted her inside the GCPD building—roughly by the arm—Montoya took over and shooed Bullock away. He snorted and stomped away, muttering under his breath. Although Dora wasn’t fond of either of them, she preferred Montoya over Bullock. She was still wary not to be fooled by their good cop/bad cop routine. At least Montoya believed Dora hadn’t deliberately sicced Red Hood on the men harassing her—she hoped.

While recording her statement and filling out a stack of paperwork with some mousy intern from the DA’s office, Dora learned from Montoya that Red Hood wasn’t keeping every head he took as a personal trophy. Regarding the incident she had walked in on when she arrived at the GCPD, Montoya told her—over her morning coffee—that it appeared Red Hood had dropped off the head of a corrupt businessman named Adam Hunt on the GCPD’s doorstep in order to send a message. This Adam Hunt had allegedly—and Montoya emphasized the word allegedly—laundered money for many of Gotham’s criminal organizations. He had been on the GCPD’s watch list for years, but they could never gather enough evidence for a solid conviction, let alone enough to charge him with any legitimate crime. When the DA intern left, Montoya offered her theory that Hunt’s lawyers were just too damn good, and revealed that she suspected the ADA and a few judges were in Black Mask’s pocket.

“I guess Red Hood doesn’t care about the burden of proof,” Montoya told Dora while they filled out yet more paperwork in the bustling bullpen. Uniform cops, detectives, and jail guards were scrambling around the office, shouting at perps, into their phones, radios, and each other. “This Red Hood guy considers himself judge, jury, and executioner. I’m not sure if he’s deranged or just sick of waiting for justice to be done. If the latter’s the case, I can’t blame him cuz kinda get it. Pero no le dices a Bullock que yo te dije eso.”

Dora didn’t promise anything, but she and Montoya shared a lingering look that made Dora think Montoya was as frustrated with the corruption and ineffectiveness of Gotham’s law enforcement as she was.

After filling out all the paperwork, the detectives set Dora loose and didn’t bother her again. She assumed they were too busy chasing after Red Hood, who was literally painting the city of Gotham red and watching it burn.

Day and night, everything Dora heard and read on the news was about either Red Hood, Batman, or Black Mask—or any combination of them. It was a veritable free-for-all, each one pitted relentlessly against the other two. However, it was plain to see that who everyone feared most was Red Hood. As the newcomer, he was the most unpredictable and therefore the most dangerous. There had been dozens of arsons in his name. In some cases vehicles and whole buildings were blown up. Gotham’s citizens were afraid to leave their homes for fear that any public place they visited or transportation they used might be rigged with one of Red Hood’s bombs. The city was being terrorized and demolished, one building at a time, by an unhinged pyromaniac in a red helmet. Wherever Firefly was nowadays, Dora mused, he was being put to shame; and Batman was struggling to keep up.

What the media didn’t know (and apparently the cops were keeping quiet) was the fact that most of the buildings that were bombed were fronts, hideouts, drug labs, brothels, casinos, speakeasies, and stashes of Gotham’s worst gangs. Not to mention the steady stream of severed heads that were dumped almost daily on the steps of One Police Plaza were those of crime bosses and their highest-ranking lieutenants. Dora knew this because it was all the Alibi’s customers would talk about. She even noticed that the shadiest and most delinquent of her clientele weren’t coming around the bar as often.

It was plainly obvious that Gotham’s criminals were scared shitless. They were scrambling, like rats trapped in a box, panicked into a frenzy, desperate for survival.

Despite the seemingly rampant destruction reported in the news, all the innocent Gotham citizens that lived on Park Row and the other impoverished neighborhoods were beginning to feel safer. Outside of Red Hood’s own crimes, organized and petty criminal activity in Gotham had actually decreased since his debut. In the week after the massacre in the alley, it seemed like Red Hood was gaining more notoriety, yet getting further away from being caught.

The streets were buzzing with support for Red Hood, and Dora noticed it everywhere—from bargoers in the Alibi to people waiting in line at Starbucks and all over social media. The common topic of conversation now was whether you should support Batman or Red Hood. The people that favored Red Hood had taken to wearing red hoodies and baseball caps. Still, some people insisted neither Red Hood or Batman were the answer, believing that the GCPD and the courts were the only legal way to fight crime and protect the innocent.

But to Dora, there could be no mistake. Her neighborhood of Park Row was now a safer place to live. Whenever she needed proof to reassure herself, all she had to do was open her bedroom window at night and take a moment to listen to the city. She no longer heard drug dealers and addicts yelling at each other in the alleys, the hookers and johns catcalling on the street corners, or gunshots and sirens echoing through the air—all things she used to hear on a nightly basis before Red Hood came along were now gone. No one had to take her word for it, everyone in Park Row noticed how quiet it had become.

And Rochelle thought so, too. After initially being scared—literally to death—of Red Hood, it seemed like Rochelle had become one of his biggest fans in the weeks since his first appearance in that alley. She wore red to work nearly everyday.

“Well, he comes on a little strong, yeah—but you can’t deny the effect he’s had on the town, Dee,” Rochelle told Dora one night at the Alibi after last call. “Crooks are too scared to try anything. Maybe that’s just what it takes in a shithole like Gotham. The city’s so infested with monsters, we needed a bigger one on our side. Batman and his crew weren’t enough. And I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems like he’s sighted around here in Park Row more often than anywhere else.”

Dora found Rochelle’s about-face somewhat confusing, remembering just how afraid she had been when she first encountered Red Hood, the same night Dora had. When Dora asked her about that, she answered, “Well that was before I realized what he was doing, y’know? He’s made life much better for Ben and me.” (Ben was Rochelle’s fiancé.) “I’m not sure what Red Hood did, but he came around our building once, then our landlord suddenly wasn’t threatening us to call ICE on me anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s great, I guess,” Dora replied. The jury was still out in her own mind. In the days since Sergei’s murder, she had felt the relief that came from knowing she didn’t owe Black Mask half her profits every month, but it was only because of a vigilante that was basically a terrorist and mass murderer, nevermind that he only targeted other criminals. She still had nightmares and recurring pangs of guilt about what happened that night. And she hadn’t forgotten that she owed Red Hood protection money instead of Sergei and Black Mask now, however much less it was. She didn’t want to think what Red Hood was capable of if she didn’t pay up. What made it worse was that for some reason she still hadn’t quite figured out, she had hidden that fact from both the police and everyone else, including Rochelle and her own family. Dora had no idea what kind of trouble she would be in if they found out. It was like she was in the middle of another gang war, and she had barely survived one already.

After relieving Rochelle for the night, Dora was in the process of locking up, when someone knocked on the Alibi’s front plate-glass window. Dora saw Holly’s face beaming at her through the smudged glass pane. She undid the locks and let her in.

“Damn, Dee. How many locks do you have on this door?”

“Six deadbolts,” Dora replied, exasperated as she locked them all again. “Can never be too careful in this neighborhood... But hey... I haven’t seen or heard from you all week.” She noticed that Holly was favoring her right leg as she walked in. “Are you okay? What happened to your leg?”

“Oh? This? It’s nothing. Half-healed already.”

“Why haven’t you been replying to my texts?”

“Texts?” Holly looked confused for a moment. She felt around her pockets for a phone but came up with nothing. An amused expression appeared on her face. She said, “Oh. You only had my old work number. I threw that phone out.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t need it anymore. Gotta get myself a new phone, I guess...”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’m no longer turning tricks!” Holly pulled Dora into a tight hug, giddy with laughter, a bubbly noise that Dora had never heard from her before. Holly seemed like a wholly different person.

“What? Are you serious?” Dora pulled Holly away, and looked her up and down properly. The younger girl wasn’t dressed in her usual outfit—a form-fitting dress that left nothing to the imagination. Tonight Holly was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt—and no make-up whatsoever. She looked like the sixteen-year-old girl that she actually was—poignantly reminding Dora of just how far Carla could fall if she didn’t get her act together soon.

“Serious as a heart attack.” Holly laughed again. “This Red Hood guy, Dee… He saved my life.”

“Yeah, I was there, remember? He saved my life too. And Rochelle’s.”

“No, I mean aside from that first time. You know Stan, right? My pimp?”

Uh oh. Dora felt her stomach drop. She could only nod, but the feeling of dread was already weighing down her stomach. Red Hood killed him.

“Well, Red Hood came around and… just…” Holly rolled her eyes, but the smile never left her face. “He tore Stan a new asshole, let’s just say—”

“Is Stan still alive?” Dora had to ask. Does he still have his head?

“Yeah, Dee, don’t sweat it. He’s still breathing.” But Holly snorted and shook her head, smirking. “Barely.”

“And you saw him? You saw Red Hood do it?”

“Yeah! After taking care of Stan and his goons, he rushed all the girls out, and rigged the brothel to blow.” A blush bloomed on Holly’s face as she massaged her ankle. “I tripped down the stoop and hurt my foot, so he picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and fucking parkoured his way down the block until we were safe!”

Taking a second to imagine it, Dora found herself impressed. The next second, she actually felt a twinge of jealousy. Rochelle and Holly had both been helped by Red Hood, both once more than she had. But almost immediately she was ashamed of herself. Get your head out of your ass. Think straight. That dude is dangerous.

Then something else occurred to her. She frowned. “Wait. Hol, what are you going to do now? With Stan gone, you’re out of a job, aren’t you?” If Holly were a little bit older, she would offer her a job at the Alibi, but it was already bad enough that she had let her drink there.

“Not quite.” Holly grabbed a bottle from the bar shelf and some tumblers from the counter. “Red Hood took over. With Stan gone, he set the girls up in a new place, with a new front, and a new madam. We have a madam, now, Dee! Not a slimy old pimp! How classy is that? Her name’s Ma Gunn. I’ve never heard of her before and she’s super old, but she’s legit as fuck. Turned tricks herself back in the day, was in the high-end escort biz for years. She’s Australian and posh as fuck, and doesn’t traffick and doesn’t force anybody on dates they don’t want to go on.”

“That sounds great, but if you’re not going on dates, what kind of work do you do for her?”

“I’m too young for dates she says, so I take care of matchmaking and scheduling mostly.” Holly put a cup of vodka in Dora’s hand, her smile beaming brighter. “Ma’s still having girls work the corner and the bars and her new brothel but she’s trying to set up an escort service for the whales and high rollers. I set up dates, book drivers, restaurants, hotels... I guess I’m basically a sex concierge now.”

Holly clinked glasses with Dora and downed her shot in just one gulp. However, Dora didn’t do the same. She never had a taste for vodka thanks to Sergei and his men. “Congrat—” Dora was interrupted by a loud bang muffled by the walls.

Holly wheeled around. “What was that?”

“I think it was the backdoor. Sometimes it swings open when it’s windy.”

Holly frowned. “I was just outside. It’s not windy tonight, Dee.”

Dora recognized the sound of the back door slamming closed. Someone had come into the kitchen. “Maybe it’s Rochelle,” Dora wondered aloud. “Or my mom.” Those two were the only other people than Dora that had keys to the Alibi. “I’ll check it out.” Dora made sure her pepper spray was hanging from her belt loop, then grabbed the aluminum baseball bat from under the bar. She had almost reached the kitchen door when it swung open. A short person burst out of it.

It took Dora a moment to recognize the figure because they were wearing an orange hoodie with a backpack strapped tightly to their back. “Carla?” Dora gasped.

Her little sister slid to a halt, pulling off her hood, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.

“Carla? Your sister?” Holly asked, head bobbing between her and Dora. “Aw, she’s so cute, Dee. She looks just like you. But, oh… Hey, what’s wrong?”

Carla was frantic, sweating bullets, out of breath, with a bone-chilling look of dread on her face.

“What are you doing here?” Dora asked. “What’s wrong?”

Her little sister didn’t answer any of their questions. Instead she vaulted over the bar and pulled open all the drawers and cabinets.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dora yelled. “You’re not allowed back there! Stop!”

“Where’s Dad’s gun?” Carla shouted desperately. She fumbled underneath the counter. “Where is it?”

“What the heck do you need Dad’s gun for?”

“I…” Carla looked up at Dora, finally holding still for moment, but the quivering tears in her eyes made it clear she was panicking.

She looked her age now, or less, Dora thought; every part of her was shaking. “Carla, talk to me,” she asked as gently as she could. She handed Holly the baseball bat and held Carla’s face, wiping the sweat from her forehead and the tears from her cheeks. The girl trembled in her hands. “Talk to me, it’s okay.”

Carla didn’t look at Dora, but at Holly instead, blinking her wet eyes in confusion.

“That’s Holly. She’s my friend. She’s cool,” Dora explained.

Carla whimpered and shrugged off her backpack. “I’m sorry, Dee…” She unzipped it. Dora looked inside and her jaw dropped.

Holly peeked over her shoulder and gasped, “Holy shit.”

The backpack was stuffed full of bricks of white powder, tightly wrapped in plastic.

“That’s a lot of fucking coke!” Holly exclaimed. “What the fuck, Carla? How’d you get your hands on all that?”

“I was running product for my crew, but then some guys from another crew tried to steal it… I ran… but I don’t know if I lost them. I’m so sorry, Dora!”

“You’re part of a gang?” Dora didn’t know whether to feel angry, sad, or disappointed. What was certain, though, was how worried she was about her little sister. “Carla…”

But a loud banging penetrated the walls again. Carla yelped and jumped out of Dora’s grasp. “No! They found me! Fuck, Dora, we have to get out of here!” She grabbed a handful of Dora’s t-shirt and pulled her toward the front door. “They got guns! We have to run!”

Ptnng! Ptnng! Womp! The sounds made it clear that the men after Carla had shot the lock or hinges off the back door. The sound of several heavy footsteps came from the kitchen.

Dora looked at the six deadbolts locking up the front door all the way across the bar. She cursed. At the rate it usually took her to fumble through them, they would never escape in time. They were trapped.

[v0.3.15.1]

#red hood #redhood #jason todd #jasontodd #dccomics #dc comics #batman #red hood x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x oc #jason todd x oc #fan fiction #fanfic #fanfiction

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Without Remorse Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/3t8m3pU

This article contains Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse spoilers. You can find our spoiler-free review here.

For the most faithful Tom Clancy fans, it’s probably not the ending they anticipated. Amazon’s adaptation of the author’s John Clark origin story, Without Remorse, ends not with a justification for Cold War paranoia but instead with a greater fear of the enemy within. Defense Secretary Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) swore to uphold the Constitution and American interests. But in the end, the only oath kept was the one Michael B. Jordan’s then-John Kelly made to his late wife Pam.

“Her name was Pam, and [I swore] you’re going to say it before you die.” And so Clay did in his final moments after John drove the secretary’s vehicle off a D.C. bridge and into the cold waters below, drowning the old man and making it look like a suicide.

It’s a relatively downbeat climax to a movie that’s featured high octane shootouts, fisticuffs, and one gnarly torture sequence in a burning car. Yet it’s worth considering how the movie got to this watery moment, and how it appears to be intentionally tweaking Clancy’s worldview.

Throughout much of Without Remorse, viewers think they’re watching a simple revenge movie. At the top of the film, John led his team of Navy SEALs on a mission to Syria on the pretext that they were rooting out Syrian sanctioned murderers and thugs. Who they really left dead, however, were Russian spies. Afterward, every member of Kelly’s team was murdered seemingly by Russian agents, as was John’s wife and unborn daughter, who were executed while Pam slept.

Following the assault on his wife, Kelly went into Jack Bauer mode and killed every Russian official and underling who could bring him closer to Viktor Rykov (Brett Gelman), the alleged Russian operative who led the attack on John’s home at the beginning of the movie. And to be sure, Rykov was certainly there, as both John and the audience saw him with his mask off when John was shot during the home invasion.

However, the big twist of Without Remorse is that Rykov was not a Russian asset; he was an American one. When John, Naval officer Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), and CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) track Rykov to a Russian apartment, they discover the whole movie has been an elaborate ruse, played at the expense of American intelligence and (soon) the public. John and his family were just collateral damage.

“There are no other ops, John,” Rykov says when the American special forces team corners him in an apartment, revealing he’s been lying in wait with a suicide vest. “You and me being here is the real op.”

As Rykov explains before pushing the button, he fancies himself a true patriot, even more so than “those behind us in Washington.” He’s been convinced that the best way he can serve his country is by dying in a fiery explosion in Russia. His goal isn’t to take John Kelly or his team with him either. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Rykov is working for “those behind us,” and those D.C. insiders needed John, or an American soldier like him, to be in the building when the explosion went off. That way it’d look pretty damning to Russian authorities, especially since snipers working with Rykov murdered the first Russian cops to arrive at the scene.

This plan was executed on the assumption that an international incident would be created when it reached the press that American soldiers were killed on Russian soil while performing an illegal operation—which itself would be seen by the American public as retaliation for the illegal operation on American soil that killed John’s wife.

That perception is why Rykov personally executed the man who actually shot Pam in her bed. Rykov didn’t know John would take more of their men down, but the trigger man handed Rykov his gun, ready to die because it would build the narrative that Russian agents murdered an American family in their own home. If Americans then died in an even bigger clusterf*ck in Russia, the ensuing chaos would usher in a new Cold War. Hence rather than Russians being the bad guys, the villains of Without Remorse are Americans who want to pretend the 1980s never ended.

John, Ritter, and Greer figure out this much when they let John go ghost and report back to Langley he died in the explosion. John “being dead” gives him the freedom to sneak up on the Defense Secretary and test whether he actually had knowledge about Rykov’s op. The fact the Cabinet member didn’t balk when John mentions the suicide vest—a detail Greer intentionally left out of her report—is all he needs to know. Soon enough, with threats against his family, Clay plays ball and spills his guts about the whole setup.

“You know who won World War II?” Clay whines. “It wasn’t the generals or the admirals, it was the economists. War, tanks, planes, and all that spending lifted this entire nation out of poverty, freed the world from tyranny. A big country needs big enemies. The best enemy we ever had was the Soviet Union. Our fear of them unified our people, gave us purpose. The problem today, John, is half this country thinks the other half’s its enemy because they have no one else to fight.”

In other words, the shadowy conspiracy (which is still not fully unmasked) involved high ranking officials in the executive branch engineering a phantom menace out of Russia by killing a few Americans and a few Russians in both hemispheres. They only failed to anticipate how hard John Kelly would be to kill. Yeah, that’s definitely worth a dip in the drink.

What’s interesting is that this ending pretty much flies in the face of Clancy’s literary Without Remorse and his generally Cold War-attuned worldview. On the surface, this could be viewed as a naked attempt to play into the worst cynicisms of our age. While the movie was filmed before the Covid pandemic and 2020 election, it very much was written and produced after the 2016 one where Russian intelligence mounted a disinformation campaign designed to sew division in the U.S.

When a newscaster says in Without Remorse that this is the lowest moment in relations between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War, a viewer doesn’t have to imagine what that plot point feels like. Some might therefore read Without Remorse’s ending as a subtle play on the conspiracy theories in the U.S. (some of which were propagated by a former American president) that suggest any reports of Russian election interference are exaggerated.

However, I would disagree with that reading of the Without Remorse ending. While the film certainly plays fast and loose with “ripped from the headlines” plotting, the film feels as much a subtle critique of Clancy as any sort of movie about modern realpolitik.

It is indeed worth noting how much the cinematic version of Without Remorse differs from its source material novel. As with all Clancy page-turners, the narrative of Without Remorse is arguably too dense to transfer to a two-hour film. So gone are entire subplots involving prostitution rings and the historic crime of funneling Asian drugs to the U.S. inside the corpses of dead American soldiers (the book is set in 1970 during the Vietnam War). But also gone is the fact that the bad guys really are the Russians.

On the page, the man Kelly killx turns out not to be a KGB mole, but there is indeed a Russian asset high up in the U.S. government: he’s a senator’s aide who is cooperating in Russian efforts to sabotage the Vietnam War effort. And by working for an anti-war dove politician, one can sense the disdain in Clancy’s politics, which imagines anti-war leaders at least playing into Russian interests to undermine American foreign policy. (Oh, what he might’ve thought about his political party in 2020?)

In Clancy’s novels, the villains are almost always the Russians or other foreign threats attempting to besiege Fortress America. For all their technical authenticity and understanding of late 20th century spycraft, they’re very much fantasies tailor-made for the era Clancy found his initial success in as an author: Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America. In fact, what turned his first bestseller into a bestseller was President Reagan enthusing how satisfying the plot is in The Hunt for Red October.

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This is not to say that Clancy’s worldview was as simplistic or jingoistic as his critics might suggest. After all, that first novel which birthed the best Clancy adaptation to date, John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990), is about a Soviet submarine captain attempting to de-escalate the Cold War by defecting and funneling a nuclear Russian sub to the Americans. Of course, this is also because he and most of his officers secretly covet the freedoms borne from the democratic and capitalist West.

Other Clancy novels are not quite so nuanced in their view on Cold War politics, including literary Without Remorse. Yet the movie version of the film ironically brings it closer to the first novel, as well as another book/film which introduced fans to John Clark on screen: Clear and Present Danger.

That tangled narrative involves the perceived menace of South American narcotics at the height of America’s drug war and the criminal empire of Pablo Escobar. However, the greatest villain in the story, particularly the movie adaptation released in 1994, turns out not to be drug lords but a corrupt president who uses the War on Drugs as an excuse to turn American special forces into a personal hit squad out for his revenge—he then leaves those soldiers stranded to die.

The ending to Michael B. Jordan’s Without Remorse very much comes in line with the wary cynicism of Clear and Present Danger, which also feels a lot timelier after the last four years than it did in the ‘90s.

In fact, 2021’s Without Remorse leads fairly well into the Clear and Present Danger movie. At the end of Without Remorse, John Kelly drowns the Defense Secretary, making it look like a suicide. He is then saved by Karen Greer, who must’ve known about John’s plans to drive off the bridge. Remember, she helped set Clay up by omitting Rykov’s suicide vest.

She then escorts John to the airport and gives him his new CIA sanctioned identity, John Clark. Clark is of course the more famous name of Clancy’s protagonist. He is also introduced by that alias in Clear and Present Danger when Robert Ritter, now Deputy Director of the CIA, travels down to Panama City to meet Clark and enlist him in the corrupt POTUS’ secret war against Colombian cartels.

Barring the differences of actors and eras, one could even watch 1994’s Clear and Present Danger movie (also on Amazon Prime) and see a pseudo-sequel to Without Remorse. In the ‘90s movie, Willem Dafoe plays Clark as a hardened and skeptical expatriate who’s been living in South America for some time. He and Ritter have a long off-screen history, with the CIA bureaucrat eventually persuading Clark via the government’s checkbook to lead an illegal special ops team, which has eerie parallels to the Reagan administration’s own South American misadventures with the Iran-Contra Affair. In the ’94 film, Ritter is a slimy middle man for the corrupt interests of the White House, and it is not hard to imagine Jamie Bell’s 21st century Ritter from Without Remorse going along with a similarly corrupt fiasco.

Of course Clark is still a hero in the earlier movie, eventually teaming up with Harrison Ford as CIA analyst Jack Ryan. They even build trust over a mutual friendship with Rear Admiral James Greer, who is mentioned as Karen Greer’s off-screen uncle in the Without Remorse movie.So in the end, it’s all connected. Or perhaps this can just become the sequel crossover with Amazon’s Jack Ryan TV series?

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flukeoffate · 7 years ago

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Governor Pryce Appreciation

(Contains spoilers for the Thrawn Novel)

There has been a few anti-Pryce posts on my dash this week and My thoughts on her spiraled out of control. I just wanted to throw my two cents in without making a mess of those posts. This is in no way meant to attack other people’s opinions, just studying what I like and dislike and considering reasons for the various reactions she gets.

(Extremely long character examination essay that I may have spent the better part of three or four hours on under the cut.)

I like Pryce. And I admit, the more I thought about her story and personality while writing this, I have maybe even grown to love her.

Is she a likeable person? Well, by the time of Rebels: no. Definitely not. But how many villains are likeable within the time of their introductory story? Few, I think. What I believe makes a villain likeable is their backstory, and also how charismatic they are during their screentime.

I want to examine some famous Star Wars villains. IMO there are very few Star Wars villains that are interesting until you dig deeper into their characters.

Unpopular opinion time: Vader and Tarkin are stupidly boring characters in A New Hope. They show up, kill some people, then lose a battle. We don’t know about Vader being Anakin Skywalker. He just looks cool. And Tarkin-well, I frankly think his interest came more from Peter Cushing’s acting more than the character itself. It is no secret that I’m a huge Hux fan, but the thing that drew me to him initially was his screaming speech. Other than being the ‘Tarkin’ of TFA, (and I use this description begrudgingly for the comparison) Hux doesn’t do much more than Tarkin ever did. All three of these guys are boring cardboard villains until you delve into their histories. Vader=Anakin? Holy shit, tell me more! Tarkin is classy AF and came from Space Australia? Sign me the fuck up! Hux has an abusive father and the weight of the First Order’s future on his shoulders? Damn, that is something to examine!

Pryce has the same problem as the above three: when they are introduced, they are already fully formed villains. You don’t see their developement. It’s done. Their story is pretty much over. No development is expected within their initial debut, their sob stories are not the focus of the plot. Like the aforementioned three, Pryce is 2D boring until you read her backstory. Why is she singled out as terrible compared to the others?

Well, without playing the gender card, I want to say it’s because she doesn’t display the charisma of the others. She is cold, doesn’t look flashy, and lacks charisma in Rebels. She just has one thing going for her: a generally evil and contemptuous thirst for authority and control. It’s standard and boring. I will grant that.

Where I differ from a lot of readers: I think she is a fantastic villain after reading the Thrawn book.

The most popular villains are either someone who has characteristics that you either identify with, or you aspire to have. And the more I think about Pryce, the more I realize that her story is actually very relatable, at least to me.

Pryce starts out as a member of a prominent family with a profitable mining company. She has aspirations of getting away from her backwater planet. Fuck, a lot of people have that urge. It’s not an evil trait in itself. When it the mine is forcibly taken from her family (more specifically her parents are threatened) she vows revenge, and it catipults her into motion. She gets out of there and to Coruscant. Ok, pretty basic. A lot of people hold grudges, it’s not super villain stuff yet. It’s a pretty simple vendetta focused on destroying one obviously corrupt and dislikable government official. (Which, seeing as the entirety of Star Wars is based on fighting evil and corruption, I find it ironic that her initial motive has come under scrutiny.)

All things considered, Pryce is pretty crafty in her plans. Sure, she can be devious. She has the makings of a good spy if she were properly trained. But for the most part, her plan revolves around using the established system against her enemies. THAT is a direct parallel to Thrawn himself. He makes his plans work through ingenuity and finding loopholes. But where Thrawn lacks the ability to manipulate the politics of the system, she can. But more importantly, she grows: she isn’t perfect at navigating the political system to start. It takes a fall from grace to lead her there.

And here we come to the crux of her relatability: her biggest downfall was betrayal from those she trusted the most. People she worked with, people who claimed she was their friend, people who claimed the friendship was genuine even after their schemes had been revealed.

I have had ‘friends’ betray me. Let me tell you it is a mind-blowing and traumatic experience. My therapist actively made me recognize my ex-friend drama as a real traumatic event that should not be trivialized.

And Pryce faces trauma. She was betrayed in the worst of ways, systematically and over a period of years. Pryce was physically, emotionally, and professionally assaulted. When she was drugged during ascension week and threatened? Holy shit, that is the kind of scenario associated with kidnapping and rape. And it was used as blackmail. You don’t shrug something like that off. I felt genuine disgust and fear for her in that scene. Then later, her ‘friends’ involve her in a plot that mixes her up with SAME PERSON who attacked her? Holy shit, wonderful way to reinforce that trauma. And then her friends bring her deeper into their plot by actually endangering her in order to manufacture more trust. And that same plot was made to FRAME Pryce in the event of a take down. She could have been imprisoned or worse, all because of her ‘friends’.

But you know what? Pryce overcame all of this. She fought any fear and pushed it down. She took control of the situation with grace and dignity. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. She manipulated her attackers, destroyed them with cleverly obtained evidence, and took them down with the law at her side. And she never forgives them.

I think that is something people don’t like. That she doesn’t forgive.

Frankly, she doesn’t owe her ‘friends’ a goddamn thing. They are as brutal and manipulative as Pryce becomes. They don’t get a free pass on this for being on the “right” side of things. They are horrible people. Good on Pryce for letting them rot. They fucking deserve it.

I often find myself wishing I could do the same to the people who hurt me. I’m glad she got the opportunity and took it. I would not have the same courage. Fuck all that nonsense about forgiveness being the brave thing to do. In my experience, forgiveness is a lip service phrase followed by a societal pressure to ‘be nice’. Fuck that. I want to be angry. I want them to suffer. But I don’t follow through—because revenge is seen as a negative trait, especially for a woman. There is a reason women resort to sneaky tactics for revenge: it is unbecoming to outwardly express our rage.

Pryce is never shown to have more than a few friends. All of them betrayed her trust.

I relate to that. Viscerally.

You know who has not betrayed her?

Her parents.

We don’t have the full scope of their relationship, but from the getgo we see that Pryce is ready to pounce on anyone threatening her parents. That is a constant through the book. And her parents obviously love her at least as much as any parent should be expected. They are concerned for her wellbeing, and are generally in touch with her. And by the end of the book, she isn’t the same person who vowed to ruin a corrupt official. She has taken up her mantle of anger and distrust. She discovers that she is ready, willing, and able to kill for her family and damn the casualties. She doesn’t care about other people. Other people never cared about her. Her life has proven to her one truth: trust no one. Beyond her parents, she has no love for anyone. The times she tried were a disaster.

There is a tragedy in that. I have experienced betrayal. But I have also had true friendship. We have no indication she ever had the good with the bad. I’m pretty sure that if I can pity Hux for having a shitty childhood, I can pity her for the events that left her so jaded.

So, yes. I like Pryce. I think she has damn good reasons for being the way she is. Do I condone her actions at Batonn? Hell no. Do I hate how she affects Thrawn? Yes. But Batonn is her Anakin to Darth Vader moment, the point where she truly goes to ‘the dark side’. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see it unfold. She can continue to be the frigid flat villain in Rebels, because now we know where she comes from. Rewatching Rebels shows her in a new light just as much as it changes how we see Thrawn. And we might see her comments now and think: you evil bitch! But damn, if that doesn’t make me like her more. Before the book, she was a generic Imperial baddie. Now I actually have an emotional response to back it up, and that is WAYYYYY more interesting.

I think the one big thing that prevents her from getting more love is that she doesn’t have the traits that fans typically like to explore in fanfic. She is closed off, and has no real big candidate for shipping purposes. And she doesn’t have any meaningful commonality with the heroes in Rebels beyond being the Governor of Lothal and therefore the enemy. She doesn’t have a specific vendetta driving her actions, she is just doing her job. By the time Rebels takes place, Pryce is not making impressive plans of destruction and she is done with any self reflection that might garner sympathy. But I don’t think she needs it. The book is enough.

With characters like Kallus, you could see than he had a sort of joy for the hunt in the first seasons. Then you learned more about his personality and he grew. Pryce doesn’t get the same treatment. Some people love Phasma for being an absolutely cold monster with no emotion. But Pryce isn’t cold or monsterous enough to have the same level of ‘wtf?’ that makes Phasma interesting (again, adding to the list of boring characters that are only great with their backstory considered...) Most of us can’t relate to the sheer heartlessness of Phasma and are compelled by it. Both Pryce and Phasma are self centered and power hungry individuals. But where Phasma has no conscience or hint or moral code, Pryce does have the capacity for such things, and that make readers see her selfishness as a negative trait to be hated instead of studied.

Maybe people find Pryce’s motivations too easy—a lot of us have friends who aren’t friends, and love our parents. Maybe her relatability is so common that we forget that these still qualify as three dimensional traits. Maybe we are afraid to admit that we have anything in common with her.

Pryce is a good character. I liked her parts in Thrawn. I was scared for her when she was drugged. I felt her loneliness when she couldn’t confide in her friends. I laughed my ass off at the unemployment office scene. I felt her shock and sorrow when she realized no one could be trusted. I envy her tenacity and bold resolve. I don’t have half her courage.

I like Pryce.

#arihnda pryce #governor pryce #pryce appreciation #anti-pryce #pryce love #tw: rape #a strong comparison but I felt it needed to be addressed in this so the R word stayed in.

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nico-meridius · 7 years ago

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Afternoon Fic - Option 3 (Timestamp - Part 1)

Okay so technically this Afternoon Fic finished on Part 15 ... But of course they just couldn’t stop there - so there is two Timestamps.

This is Part One

***

It had been six months since they were officially married.

Six months of dealing with the Numbers, building assets, and the CIA.

Harold wasn't thrilled Nathan had gotten involved in their little scheme, but he had to admit he had taken to helping the numbers with gusto. Nathan became their ace in the hole, much like Zoey, the fact the two are still dating shocked the two of them.

Lionel was starting to show his cop colors. He was a good man - John just needed to drag him out of the corruption of HR.

Elias was something neither wanted to talk too much about, especially his interest in John. Harold took to growling when the man's name was even mentioned.

Joss Carter had proven a good asset, understanding over time the need to slide across the line to get things done. Unfortunately, her realization came with almost handing John over to the CIA.

They hadn't realized that John's prints were run through the system, after the bar fight on the night they were reunited. They sent enough flags up, that she'd been assigned the case.

It was enough to alert Snow that one John Reese was not nearly as dead as they had hoped. As they wove their tale to Carter, she had suspicions about the whole thing. She had seen the wedding ring on John's hand, when he had saved her from her informant, and knew this wasn't a 'cold blood' killer they were making him out to be. Their mistake had been when they mentioned he had killed his partner … lover Kara Stanton.

If there was one thing Carter had figured out, John was loyal. She at that moment didn't know who he was married to, but knew there was no way he would betray them.

When he had called to hand over the suspects at St. George hospital, she warned him. The problem was the CIA had bugged her phone. That night she learned who wore the matching ring, and part of her wanted to laugh at how obvious it was … Burdett aka Finch.

Harold had snatched his bleeding husband from Snow, while Nathan picked up Megan and got her to the safe house. She patched him up, and while he recovered she yelled at him for scaring Harold. John just held her hand, while she ranted.

Their friendship fascinated Harold.

The fact she was dating Grace still threw him for a loop.

In a few weeks he was back working the Numbers.

Then came Caroline Turning.

John found himself in the back of the squad car with Fusco and Carter, both yelling at him about them not knowing about the other. He introduced them to each other, getting double glares, and with a smirk he blew the HR car behind them.

"It's been a pleasure how about coffee later?"

Carter shifted in the driver's seat to stare at him. "What I can't tell is if you're being serious."

Lionel snorted. "Well at least he talks to you more civilized. I get the creepy stalker voice."

"Seriously coffee, next week." He got out of the car, and made his way towards parking lot, in search of a car.

Just as he slid into the nearest Camry, his phone started going off. He glanced down to see 'Admin Locator App' going off.

"Harold?" He opened the application, street map popped up showing a car moving out of the city. "What's going on?"

'Caroline Turning aka Root.' The Machine sent a text message. 'Did not see threat until too late. She used my system against me.'

"Dangerous."

'Quickest route to intercept.'

"I'm going to need a bigger car." John looked up to see some skinheads get out of their hyped up truck and headed into some dive bar. "That works."

***

Harold sat in the back of the town car, wondering exactly how he ended up in this situation. First there was Alicia, who was not dealing with the concept of 'The Machine' at all. Though he had no love loss for the woman, seeing her shot in front of him had shocked him. Enough of one, that Miss Turning had been able to pull him out of the car, handcuff him, and push him into the back seat … well at least she put on his seatbelt.

Which was good for him, because he had no idea how John was going to react to his kidnapping.

No, he took that back.

He knew exactly how his husband was going to react to his kidnapping, and it wasn't going to end well for Miss Turning.

He knew how he reacted to the CIA shooting his husbands. He broke enough traffic laws, and hadn't really cared. John on the other hand … traffic laws were the least of his worries.

"This is going to be great Harry!" She smiled over her shoulder at him. "You'll see we'll be one happy family, you, me and your machine. She's so beautiful. So much better than humans."

"I'm already spoken for."

"You mean the redhead that dumped you?" She gave him a smirk. "I know all about Grace, and that she broke up with you."

"Actually…"

"Oh you mean your puppy." Root rolled her eyes. "He's good and all, but he's got no real bite. By the time he figures out I'm not a sweet and innocent victim, we'll be out of the city. He won't be able to find you."

"Obviously you don't know anything about Mr. Reese." Harold's eyes narrowed at the woman.

"Harry. He's a grunt, a dime a dozen…." She turned her head to face him, ranting off about the inability for someone like John to think ahead. He was only meant to point and shoot, and look pretty if you liked that kinda of thing.

Harold tried to relax his body.

He saw the impact coming.

Root frowned at Harry's expression forcing her to focus back on driving, only to see a large black truck in the middle of the road, she slammed on the brakes skidding straight into it's side, rocking both vehicles.

John had watched the car slam into the truck, he cringed only slightly at what the impact would do to Harold. He was moving towards the sedan before it came to a shuttering stop. Without thought he pulled his gun, and shot through the driver's side window, finishing off Miss Turning. He settled the gun at the base of his spine, and made his way around the car, opening the back passenger door.

"Hey honey."

"John." He looked up at him cringing.

"Let's get you out of here, and take a trip to see Megan. She can yell at you this time." He gently helped Harold out of the car, unhooked the cuffs and slipping them into his coat pocket. "What did she want?"

"Me and The Machine."

"You're already spoken for." John wrapped an arm around his husband leading him across the street. He leaned him against an old Pontiac as he shimmed the lock to get Harold inside.

Root hadn't noticed that the lights and signs had led her into a deserted area, straight into John's trap. The Machine was also spoken for, and didn't appreciate it's Admin being kidnapped.

He buckled Harold in, ran a hand down his chest and side, making sure there were no broken or cracked ribs.

"I'm fine," he assured him.

"I'll let Megan see to that." John stood up and whistled.

Harold watched as a big brown dog came from around the corner, straight for them. John opened the back passenger door and commanded him to get in. He then made his way to the driver's side, and slid behind the wheel. A few seconds later they were leaving the scene, all footage from the cameras in the area had been deleted.

Harold looked at the panting dog, then at his husband.

"I stole the truck from some white supremacist. Bear was in the back seat, decided to keep him. Figured I could train him to eat people who get too close to you."

Harold looked at the dog, then at his husband.

"He needs a bath."

Bear whined, laying his head on Harold's shoulder. He only sighed, before reaching up and petting him softly. The grin on John's face was enough to make him take the dog in. He couldn't help the snort, only married six months and already with a kid.

John got out of Megan's way as she pushed past him to get to her patient. "I'm going to be working for you two full time if you keep this up!" She gave Harold a glare, shutting him up instantly. "Did you have to ram him with a car?"

"I didn't." John shrugged. "She wasn't paying attention to the road."

Megan wanted to be pissed, but she was more scared that someone had actually kidnapped Harold. "Well at least you had your seatbelt on."

Harold just nodded, knowing not to argue with his doctor.

John looked down at his buzzing phone, stepping out of the small clinic room, moving towards the front lobby. Harold had set Megan up in a clinic in an area it was much needed. Andrea was working next door, for legal purposes, and Josef had taken to guarding the area. John was kinda proud of the guy, and didn't mention that between the cameras and security system Harold set up no one was breaking in to the growing clinic.

"Carter, didn't I just talk with you?"

'I'm going to take a while guess that the stolen truck and dead woman has nothing to do with you?' She barked into the phone.

"Why would you think it would?"

'Description of a man in a suit who beat the crap out of some white supremicists, who said you stole their truck and dog.' He could hear the exasperation and humor in her tone. 'And look I find the truck at a scene of a hit and run.'

"Wow Detective seems like you're having a bad day."

'John!'

"The woman took Harold."

There was a pause, then cursing. "I'm not going to find any evidence."

"No." He answered honestly.

'Where's the dog?' She asked with a sigh.

"Getting a checkup and a bath. He's ex-military, you know how Harold is about taking in former military."

She laughed. 'Is Harold okay?'

"He's in good hands detective."

'You owe me more than coffee!' With that she hung up.

John chuckled, he was halfway out the door to talk to Josef, when his phone buzzed. He glanced down to see a picture of Kara Stanton.

'Regency Hotel Room #334.'

'What does she want?' He typed back, moving towards Josef, knowing he was going to need some weapons.

'Revenge.'

He couldn't blame her not really, but she was a threat to him and Harold. He texted Megan telling her he had a Number, and to take care of Harold. Grabbed Josef, told him to watch the place then took a few of his weapons.

The Machine guided him into the hotel, avoiding detection from all the cameras. He slipped into the hotel room, slightly startled to see Snow tied up to a chair. Mark's eyes narrowed at him, then he began to demand John to release him.

He gagged him instead.

It was an hour later, when the door opened.

He gave her credit for not flinching outwardly, only way he knew she was startled was by the way her hand gripped the door.

John was sitting in the chair gun resting on his knee, he gave her a big smile. "Hello Kara."

Continued

#rinch #harold finch #john reese #afternoon fic #option 3 #poi husbands #alternate universe

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mikanrulz · 8 years ago

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Gundam ibo s02e17: on tekkadan vs arianrhod vs mcgillis

This is Yamazin, Arianrhod’s Head Mechanic. Even though she only appeared for, like, 0.05 second, she’s pretty great. Also, her and Julieta’s scene is totally the highlight of the ep.

GAE & MCGILLIS VS TEKKADAN: firstly let me answer these asks:

The two asks combined makes me think there’s a theory out there that say Gaelio is going to be the big bad last boss together with McGillis lol

…the sad thing is I wouldn’t even be surprised if that’s what’s going to happen since the confirmed good guys in the show is ONLY tekkadan, and any other groups are automatically ‘not good guys’ or ‘bad guys’.

But to reply to your ask, yes, I can’t stomach Gaelio teaming up with McGillis for whatever reason, and so far McGillis hasn’t given me any reason to sympathize with him or his cause at all. It’s one thing to explore in fics, but I truly think it’s unacceptable to happen in the show itself – as it would be a great disservice to all party involved.

Does that mean Gaelio is the bad guy now? His is a rather special case. As of this ep, while both McGillis and Rustal are gjallarhorn, McGillis is in good guys camp for the simple reason he opposes Rustal, whose subordinate (Iok) killed Turbines and generally be a pain in tekkadan’s ass. Gaelio/Vidar alone might be considered ‘not enemy’ to tekkadan, but his affiliation to Rustal is kinda a nail in the coffin, so to speak.

While so far in S2 Gae as Vidar is quite inconsequential to the plot and pretty harmless to tekkadan, let’s not forget Gae actually still harbors some leftover grudges over Carta and Ein from S1.

He may have understood McGillis is supposedly the culprit and Mika is just a tool, but it doesn’t erase the fact that Mika is personally responsible for Ein and Carta’s deaths.

Esp now, when tekkadan has officially joined hands with McGillis. He has no reason to think this alliance is a new thing and not actually formed from way before the events in s01ep17.Esp also since in ep25, the mobile suit McGillis used to defeat Gaelio is the same one used to defeat Carta’s men in ep19.

Gaelio was THERE. There’s no way he doesn’t remember that that particular red mobile suit aided Barbatos and killed some of Carta’s men.

In this ep, Teiwaz leader actually compliments tekkadan for taking revenge for Naze – which implies, if nothing else, that revenge is the way to go and actually honorable. So far, the show also already painted Gaelio in honorable light, so I fully expect him to try to take revenge on Mika.

Does that make him a bad guy? Yes, as in the show, all that opposed Tekkadan (and Mika) are automatically the enemy.

Do I think him a bad guy? No, bcs I still think even if he tried to destroy tekkadan now, he’s rather justified in doing so.

Gae’s tie to Arianrhod rather complicates things, bcs Arianrhod as an organization is a contradiction, in that while officially the strongest and the most brutal fleet, they’re also to be (Iok’s stupidity aside) the most honorable, with Rustal shown to be valuing and mourning the lives of his subordinates.

But back to the question: is Gaelio gonna be the big bad last boss now? Looking at the direction of the show so far, the potential’s there, I’m afraid. The thing is, it’s not Gjallarhorn vs Tekkadan, it’s McGillis’ Gjallarhorn vs Arianrhod (Gae) vs Tekkadan. Each side would try to eliminate the other two even if McGillis is ‘friends’ with Tekkadan now.

“COMRADES”

Perhaps this is just me being petty, but the middle guy’s character design so resembles Jasley are we sure this middle guy spokesperson is not part of Jasley’s group? Also, those creepy eyes designs, while not as scary as Isurugi’s demon eyes, aren’t those designs usually used on morally wrong scumbags characters (e.g. Todo, Jasley)???

McGillis using his “comrades” to air Gjallarhorn’s dirty laundry to the public at large is as good as him admitting he’s desperate and has no confidence in winning against Rustal, hence recruiting the public’s help.

Who are these comrades anyway and where the hell did they come from??? No introduction, no names, just faces to put on screen and probably would disappear soon??? They’re really taking the ‘plot device’ expression too literally aren’t they

Also, despite speaking, the middle guy’s VA is not credited in the ED (although this is probably just an oversight since Yamazin, Arianrhod’s Head Mechanic lady, also spoke this ep but not credited)

Did these “comrades” actually say they’re (1) from McGillis’ faction, or did they just (2) introduce themselves as ‘we’re Gjallarhorn’?

This is important bcs, if they said (1) they’re McGillis’ faction, it means it is perceived that for the masses, McGillis is more reputable than Rustal, and therefore they really expect ppl to believe them at their words even with no evidence. Because in the masses’ mind, McGillis is trustworthy.

Bcs srsly, they only provide rhetoric without an iota of evidence. “based on our intel” is not evidence, esp when they have nothing to show for it, not even a glimpse of released documents/investigations.

It’s even worse if it’s (2), since it means some random Gjallarhorn with no visible backing is warmongering and instigating discords and chaos and somehow still expect to be taken seriously. WHO IS THIS GUY. It’s one thing for other groups to accuse Gjallarhorn for being corrupt, but it’s entirely stupid for some part of Gjallarhorn to accuse one of its own branch of it while the accusation is all based on hearsay and investigation is (presumably) still underway.

It basically screams you’re trying to use public both to destroy your rival and eliminate internal discord in your organization – even though all the conflicts are, once again, INTERNAL, and doesn’t actually have anything to do with the public at large.

Middle guy: “…they only cared about internal political dispute.” YOU are trying to resolve INTERNAL DISPUTE by whistleblowing your own organization’s dirty laundry. Hypocrite much?

It’s like they don’t even realize they’re part of Gjallarhorn??? By accusing Arianrhod, a part of Gjallarhorn, you’re also accusing yourself of the same thing as you’re also part of Gjallarhorn.

But, like, once again: WHO IS THIS GUY. Are we really supposed to believe some rando lowrank whistleblower with no status and no connection would be taken seriously at his words by the the citizen of Earth, Mars, and all the colonies in between? like, really???

This infuriates me to no end.

(this also reminds me of ep25 when we’re supposed to believe Ku’s nonsense in front of the parliament actually managed to sway the members to vote for Makanai. That was total bullshit. If anything, the members only voted for makanai bcs they fear for their lives if they did not. I mean, look at it from their POV: Makanai entered the room accompanied by guys with guns and some rando girl spouting about how they’re FIGHTING for independence and some shit while the girl’s BIG ASS ROBOT is destroying the city in the process. They wanted to live, so of course they chose the side with the big ass powerful robot. It’s as simple as that.)

MCGILLIS VS ARIANRHOD VS TEKKADAN

Also why is Arianrhod’s brutality (in this case, Iok’s) a point in the Comrade’s presentation? In s01e16, Gaelio made it clear that Arianrhod are infamous for being Gjallarhorn’s strongest fleet and also the most brutal in their subjugation methods.

You can’t actually say the public didn’t know this, since the chief rebellion in that ep actually trembled at the mention of Arianrhod - meaning ppl knew about Arianrhod’s brutality.

And yet the “comrades” presented Arianrhod’s brutality in their rhetoric like it’s actually a new thing??? I’m just??? Consistency where???

Also, middle guy: “Gjallarhorn is the keeper of peace and order—” BITCH WHERE.

Gjallarhorn is not some selfless space police. They’re also not some United Nations organization thing. They’re pretty much the same as Tekkadan, an independent military organization for hire, only difference is Gjallarhorn has like 300+ years of experience and reputation under their belt.

Gjallarhorn is not some charity organization. They’re HIRED by all four economy blocs to maintain peace in the region. McGillis also makes it clear that Gjallarhorn actually won’t make a move unless asked by the representatives of the region.

Meaning, rather than blaming Gjallarhorn for acting, maybe it’s best to question each of the blocs’s leaders for the reason they’re employing and asking help from Gjallarhorn.

Eugene/Chad/Dante + Hush: “If we don’t kill them, they’re gonna kill us.” Again, middle guy: “Arianrhod’s Iok’s agents killed without mercy (even non combatants)” The double standard here is just. Ugh.

While I can’t agree with the way Iok killed everyone, I think Iok’s action still falls within “kill or get killed” category. Keep in mind Iok actually got his intels from Jasley; for all we know, Jasley could have fed Iok false info like ALL members of Turbines are combatants and they’re a fighting group instead of some glorified delivery guys. I’m not trying to defend Iok’s ignorance. I’m just trying to put some perspective here: we the viewers know Turbines is not all that dangerous, but Iok don’t. For him, it’s kill or get killed situation.

So why are they giving Iok grief for killing while all the tekkadan members get away scot free for the exact same thing?

(in defense of Iok Kujan: his heart is actually the right place, even if his hotheadedness and his ignorance get in the way.)

Also WHAT IS ISURUGI. We still don’t know shit about him and his connection to McGillis.

Also McGillis’ attitude here goddamn. What a total turnout from s02e01. Finally showing his true color huh.

Speaking of total amount of soldiers and ships, considering Arianrhod’s an Outer Orbit Fleet that handles interplanetary disputes and everything in between, they would win hands down against McGillis (Orbital Fleet) and Tekkadan combined. So it’s in McGillis’ best interest to keep allying with Tekkadan until Arianrhod’s (partially) destroyed. God knows he totally needs Tekkadan’s fighting power since his own is shit anyway.

Weekly reminder that McGillis actually got knocked out with one hit and yet we’re stil expected to believe this loser is some strong tough guy like F*** YOU

Speaking of Julieta, her doomed fate is pretty much sealed when the mecha design guy said he designed mobile suit JULIA to be FEMALE GRAZE EIN. You can’t get worse fate than that. Although I’ll admit it’s more shocking that the guy basically admitted mobile suits have *gender*.

You’d think Julieta would actually take something from her fight against Amida, since they’re both women and while Julieta’s suit is far more advanced, Amida’s the more experienced one and it *shows*.

Alas it seems Julieta’s gonna take her defeat in literal sense to mean *she* is not enough in skill when in fact that’s not the point of Amida’s little speech to her at all I mean ow my heart

Her confidence is all time low and it’s already in progress way before she fought Amida. Probably Mossa, someone whose skill she regarded so highly, getting killed has something to do with it. I also feel she may have felt threatened by Vidar? Like, while it’s obvious to Vidar and Rustal that Vidar’s not going to take her spot as he’s not here for *that*, Julieta doesn’t know that. She’s Arianrhod’s best pilot until Vidar showed her what he’s capable of, and while she acknowledged him, at the same time she also admired and envied him. in the sense that, if he’s this skilled, then it’s only a matter of time before Rustal replaces her with him.

I think this is also one of the reason she looked so shocked in s02e12 when Vidar told her to go alone, bcs she fully expected him to try to take glory for himself there. Yet he defied her expectation by removing himself from the upcoming fight.

by 'something', I wonder whether Yamazin actually means 'human body' or 'humanity'.

Either way, Yamazin’s words worry me here. Like, is she talking about it as a concept in general, or is she specifically talking about Graze Ein? How did she know then, since it’s supposed to be super secret? Who told her, Vidar? Or worse yet, could she actually be talking about *Vidar*?

I mean, we know Vidar wears his mask to hide his identity, but Rustal did ask in early eps “how’s your body” like. Is he part machines now after all???

the overall conflict in gundam ibo's world amuses me bcs they all make it sound like this is some interplanet war the scale of gundam seed's earth federation vs ZAFT or UC's 100 years war when it's actually not??? You've got some mercenary group (tekkadan) fighting another military group (gjallarhorn) and actually that's it??? Mars independence doesn't depend on Gjallarhorn, it's actually on Arbrau as the bloc ruling over Mars. And considering Gjallarhorn supposedly holds no sway over Arbrau anymore, it's all on Makanai and Makanai alone.

on perspective it's all really ridiculous honestly i can’t believe it all.

#tekketsu no orphans #gundam ibo #replies #i swear this is not actualy vidar/julieta ship manifesto

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emulatingrizal-blog · 7 years ago

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In Time

A Short Story by S.Y. 2015-13458

Remember students, Con el tiempo todo se consigue.

This is what Prof. Sebastian Sanchez always tells his students. It means that in time, everything is gotten. You can have it all but we all need a little patience. This is what motivated Sebastian in pursuing his career in law and in the academe. Sebastian Sanchez is a famous professor in Ateneo Municipal. He studied college and law in the University of Barcelona in Spain but still chose to work in the Philippines. Because of his well-known achievements in Spain, Sebastian was well acknowledged and respected by both the Spanish government and community. That is why many people wonder why this person with such high social status in the community, chose to stay in a small town called San Diego.

The town of San Diego is almost on the shores of the lake and is surrounded by vast fields and paddy fields. Its inhabitants are farmers and their crops are rice, sugar, coffee and trees. Dating back in the year 1500s, San Diego is one of the most famous towns in the country but now is has been leeching with drug criminals, inequality, and corruption among the Spanish government officials. His neighbors can only think that San Diego may be the place where he met the love of his life, Isabella Rodriguez.

Sebastian and Isabella have been dating for eight months already. They accidentally met in San Diego. During that time, Sebastian was visiting a friend in that place before while San Diego is Isabella’s hometown. She has been constantly visiting her sickly grandmother. Isabella is a Lola’s girl. She was raised under her Lola’s roof ever since she was three years old. It has been her tradition to visit her there every weekend. One weekend night, Isabella’s grandmother had a very high fever. Isabella had to run to get medicine for her to a nearby pharmacy just across the street facing the shore. She was running so fast, she bumped into a guy’s back real hard and the medicine she bought all fell to the ground. Little did she know that the guy back then was Sebastian.

“Can’t you see I’m in a hurry?!” said Isabella.

“Oh sorry. I did not see you. Let me help you.” apologetically said by Sebastian.

“Huh, so much for a guy. Too bad you’re blind.” Isabella hurriedly said as she picked up all the medicines on the floor and ran again.

This is how Sebastian and Isabella first met and a second meeting followed two days after in Ateneo Municipal. Isabella was running late that morning. She was carrying a lot of books and papers when she bumped into a person’s back again. The books fell and papers were flying around the hall way.

“Excuse me mister!” she said. Then the person she hit turned around and she noticed that it was Sebastian….again.

“You again?! Have you been following me?” she said angrily.

“Oh, you? Who are you again? Ohh, you’re that girl from San Diego. I am not following you. I teach here.” Sebastian explained.

“What?” Isabella said surprisingly.

“My name is Sebastian Sanchez, college of law professor.”

“Oh you’re that famous professor everyone is talking about. Sorry, I thought you were a stalker. Anyway, my name is Isabella Rodriguez, professor at the college of education.”

“You’re from the other side of the campus that’s why I have not been seeing you around here. What made you come here? Were you looking for me?” Sebastian said jokingly.

“No way! I came here because my co-professor asked for some help in a research she has been doing.”

The conversation went on and on. Until they started dating a month after they met. Both of them love each other. San Diego indeed has a special place in Sebastian’s heart because of Isabella but people do not know that there was something else in that place.

***

A few months after Sebastian and Isabella started dating, Isabella noticed that every time she asked Sebastian where in San Diego is his house, he would dodge the question or change the topic immediately. Out of curiosity, when Sebastian brought her home to her Lola’s house one night, Isabella decided she would follow Sebastian so she would know where he lives and that she could surprise him if ever. As she was following him, Sebastian stopped at a bamboo house just three blocks away from Isabella’s house. She was supposed to get inside but she got startled and hid in the bush when a person dressed in black with a mask and a farmer’s hat came out of the house. She did not know who it was immediately but upon looking closely it was indeed Sebastian. With a lot of questions in Isabella’s mind that time, she continued to follow him but she lost him in the middle of the woods as the person in black was walking fast.

“Hmmm. What am I thinking, that can’t be Sebastian. I must be tired.” she said to herself as she hurriedly went back home.

Little did Isabella knew that behind the gentle façade of Sebastian lies a dark past he has been hiding to her and to other people.

***

Twenty years ago, Sebastian Sanchez originally lived in San Diego. His name before was Joaquin Reyes. He is from a well-known family. His family is known for their farming business and they own a lot of lands. He was the only son of Don Ramon Reyes, the richest person in San Diego that time. His family was wrongly accused by the Spaniards because his father’s business competitors were so jealous of him that they gave the Spaniards wrong information that his father, Don Ramon Reyes, is a Drug Lord and it is through drug transactions that made his family rich and that the farming business was just a front act to keep the “true business” hidden.

His parents were immediately put to death. No trial was done.

Luckily, he was able to escape with the help of his Uncle. He was immediately sent to Europe for his safety. Ever since this incident, he has promised to himself that he would avenge his parents’ wrongful death.

It was Sebastian’s uncle that lived in San Diego. This is why he was originally there even before he met Isabella. They have been planning for years on how to take down and make his revenge on the Spanish government. Being a professor was just a front act to accomplish what he has always desired the most, which is to bring down the Spanish government who has ruled the Philippines for quite a number of years. In the morning he was a professor, but at night he was one of the notable leaders who wanted to start a revolutionary act against the Spanish Government. He is the one feeding them information and tactics on how they can bring down the Spaniards.

Not only did he study law in Spain, but he has mastered the process of making bombs. The plan is to wait until all prominent leaders in Spain would gather in a feast for appointing the new Governor of the land. And then blast of the municipal hall with very high-powered bombs that Sebastian had made that would make all of the people inside die.

It was on the 16th of December, same year. That is the date where the plan to blast of the hall will be executed.

***

Around the third week of November, Sebastian told Isabella that he would be travelling back to Spain to present a paper there. And that it would take him two weeks to accomplish everything. He told Isabella to just stay in San Diego to accompany her Lola as it was also the school’s semestral break that time to give time for Christmas season.

“Are you sure you won’t come to San Diego? My father will be visiting us for the Christmas season. He only comes once a year.”

“Oh your father resides in Spain right?” Sebastian asked.

“I think it would be better if you spend the holiday with your family first. I will join you next time.” Sebastian said.

“Are you sure? Will you be okay?” Isabella said worriedly.

“Con el tiempo todo se consigue. In time everything is gotten. I always wanted to present this paper. And I am glad one of my goals in life will now come true. Don’t worry about me. I will be okay. After this, my next goal is to be with you for real…” Sebastian explained.

Sebastian never told Isabella his past and never planned to share it to her in the future for he was afraid Isabella will stay away from him once she knew the truth he has been hiding.

***

The time has come. All preparations have been set up already to accomplish the plan. Sebastian and his comrades have always visited the city hall to do school works but mainly to plant the bombs in the building. The guards have never noticed Sebastian as they trust and respect him. He can freely go anywhere which was a huge advantage for their side.

That night they just have to wait until everyone is at the dinner hall and so they can bomb the building. Sebastian Sanchez is invited in the feast as he was one of the prominent citizens in the capital city. The plan is to signal the other team that everyone was there and that he would leave then the other team can bomb off the building. Sebastian was about to leave as he double checked that all the leaders were there already, but she noticed a familiar girl in the building dining with the other official leaders. Sebastian hopes his suspicion of who the girl was incorrect so he looked closely. He took a few steps to get near to the girl; it was indeed the love of his life, Isabella Rodriguez. Isabella noticed him and their eyes met. He tried to look away but Isabella went after him.

“Sebastian! Sebastian! What are you doing here? I thought you were in Spain?” Isabella asked with a heavy breath from running towards him.

“I thought you were in San Diego together with your Lola and your father?!” Sebastian responded.

“I am with my father. See?” Isabella pointing to an old guy at the dinner table with the other government officials.

“Your father was Don Miguel Rodriguez?!”

“You did not tell me that!” Sebastian said with a high voice.

“Well you did not ask. We were supposed to be in San Diego but father’s friends insisted that we should accompany them tonight for the feast.” Isabella explained.

“Come, sit with us! So, you can meet father!” Isabella said excitingly.

Sebastian knew that Isabella was a mestiza but he never knew who her father was.

Sebastian was silent for a few seconds as this was not included in the plan. He was panicking and he was sweating real hard. It was just three minutes away before his comrades would make the building explode and put it to ashes.

He has two options, either to leave with Isabella which is a fifty-fifty chance of surviving or run with his life for a 100% chance of survival. He knew that time what was his priority.

The bomb exploded. He ran out of time to signal his comrades that he was still there.

***

There was not enough time to save both of them. Only one of them survived when they were sent to the hospital. Isabella was the one who lived. Sebastian used his body to protect Isabella from the blast.

Two months after the incident, Isabella went back to that old bamboo house where she saw Sebastian before. She went inside and just checked the house when she saw a letter tucked in between one of the clothes inside his closet. It was a letter from Sebastian to Isabella.

“Just writing this in case something happens to me.”

The letter contains an explanation of what and why the incident happened. The letter expressed Sebastian’s love for Isabella. He indeed truly loved Isabella. That might probably be the only thing that was true.

She read out loud, “Just living is not enough….one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. I never knew what Hans Christian Andersen meant by that until you came to my life. You were those three. You are my sunshine, freedom and, my little flower that I cherish the most. You gave me another reason to live aside from the revenge I want to do for my parents. Somehow your love helped me become free. In time, you helped me feel free from this feeling of hate I had always carried…I love you with all my life.”

Isabella fell to her knees and she cried as if there was no tomorrow.

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