fridgetothefire | 074 ☣ Snicker-snack

[Public video]

[The post comes thirty, maybe forty-five minutes after Kara's. Even with the major broken bones and butchery repaired, from just the shoulders up, Anya looks an absolute wreck. She has a swollen, mottled lump at her temple, ugly purple dripping under her skin like a watercolor stormcloud. Her throat is bruised too, the wide brumous darkness there slashed through with line of red lightning, gleaming and raw rather than simple rusting scab, where she thrashed against the rough iron wire binding her neck. Her mouth has a dab of blood that wasn't all washed away, her lip ragged where she chomped partway through it. Her hair is a sweat-matted mess. Most of all, though, is the look in her eye, an unhinged lurching snarl.]

This. Is done. Now. This thing, with Dean, it's me and him, and we are square. Whatever private wars you've got to settle, I don't care, but any one of you touches him in my name - no vengeance. None.

Or I will take it out of your fucking hide.

[She is not entirely sane right now. And she is not even remotely fucking around. The feed cuts out. And then, fifteen seconds later, still broadcast to everyone.]

Including you.

[Private to Ricki]

[Slumped, quieter]

...except you, I guess. Sorry.

But please don't.

[Private to Stiles]

[Also quiet, eyes downcast, exhausted.]

If he can't be bothered to tell you, I think he thought I was the admiral. That he could get free, save the people here. I know you have to do something, I know you'll do. Whatever you decide is best.

But I'd like to be. Informed.

[Private to Iris]

Thank you.

[Infirmary spam]

[She stays there about thirty-six hours, too worn out to do very much, letting the minor surface wounds that didn't get mended with magic stay cleaned and bandaged and iced. She'll see visitors if they come, will be wan and weary but lucid, without the vicious freneticism of the immediate aftermath. After that, she can't stand it any longer despite the advantages, retreats to the sanctuary of her cabin.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, yes. I know that one.

[Steepling his fingers, watching her over them.]

[She sighs, tips her head back.]

I knew he was getting worse. Getting ready for something. But then all the rest of this...

I saw something too, but I wasn't sure what. No one could have expected it would be this.

[He assures her, quietly, objective and professional. He manages, he observes, he foresees for a living, and no- she can let herself off the hook for this one.]

Trust me.

I know him better than anyone.

[She sighs. No, she couldn't have predicted this, not exactly. But it seems so purely, sparklingly obvious in hindsight.]

It was a bloody brilliant plan, too.

You hear that, boss?

[This louder, and consequently hoarser, projected at the ceiling.]

If he were right, he'd have had you by your own rules.

Edited 2015-06-29 02:41 (UTC)

I respect you, so I'm not going to do anything.

[He says, very, very levelly. But good god, it's hard.]

[She is dissuaded from her one-sided conversation with the admiral, breathes out in a soft huff, shoulders dropping, eyes warm, like something locked up and icy in her melted a bit more.]

That means a lot to me, Rikki. Really a lot.

Your sake, darling, not his.

[Ricki promises, with a little shrug.]

Only because it matters to you.

Do you remember, when we met, and I told you about my father? How everything started falling apart because of what happened to me?

[Dean took her jacket; her interwoven tattoos and old burn scars are bare on her bloody arms. She traces a shiny pink ridge.]

He cared more about protecting me as a thing than he ever considered what I wanted, whether I was ever happy.

I know what you mean, and why. And that means the world. Thank you.

[He reaches, very gently, to rest his hand on hers.]

My feeling powerless isn't enough of a reason to add to what is your pain.

[His mouth twitches, a tiny little smile.]

I'll console myself with imagining that you know I'm big and bad enough to do it.

[Another crackling laugh, like dry bark breaking, a single brief snap of it. She covers her mouth afterward, rueful, but it is funny, because none of them are, none of them at all. Kara was mad because she couldn't scare Dean, and she could punch small planets out of orbit, probably. Jean and Morgana could scare him, getting into his head, healing him like he was never hurt so he could suffer again. But it wouldn't stop him once he was set, not either of them.

Rikki could wound Dean, or kill him. Maybe even make him suffer, if he brought his spy conniving properly to bear, though it would take a hell of an operation. But not punish him for it, not really. The reality of failure is already punishing Dean, and she only hopes he survives it.]

Sorry, I'm sorry. It's just very -

[It's just that none of them know him at all, bar Iris.]

It's not about being big and bad. But I definitely want you at my back next time.

[He'll ignore the laugh, then. Because;]

That's what I need to hear.

Now. What do you need? A little quiet? Your next visitor? A guard on the door? Long, rambling stories about getting drunk in Kowloon?

[She nestles back against her pillows, lets her eyes drift closed.]

I love long rambling stories.

[Take me away somewhere.]

Edited 2015-06-29 03:54 (UTC)

The Kowloon Walled City was an old military fort. After Hong Kong was leased to the British, it was abandoned, but quickly became a mecca of the ungovernable and vice ridden. No one ever really had a good population read on the place, but it was in the hundreds of thousands, maybe more. Controlled by the Triads, too, as nasty a set as you could imagine. Kowloon was a glorious place to be a young person with a little money. When I stayed there it was in this seedy hotel called the Golden Gate. I had a mark I was trailing, and every night he'd start at this nightlife place called the Cat's Cradle, and then when he'd gotten good and buzzed there walk down the main strip to a back alley dive called Angelika's. He liked girls, even though he was married, and drank brandy and vodka, and he kept his receipts.

[Ricki murmurs, because that he can do. He tells her, and tells her, everything he remembers about Boris. The way he sat, the lines between him and the door, learning to leave the places ahead of him, how to work as a pavement artist in a city that is all towering structures, unforgiving neons. He'll transport her for as long as he can, anywhere but here.]

[She drifts off, eventually, the lull of it soothing away the edges of panic like ocean waves against rocks. She'll have nightmares later, no doubt, will claw herself awake long before morning, but right now, there's a tiny smile on her battered smile.]