InsaneJournal

Shifting balances of power aside, there was one thing Anne could be reasonably assured of: no matter the hierarchal tug-of-war among their pseudo-commanding officers, there was little her fellow reincarnates could or would do for actual problems. They could bicker all they liked over Bryan's inadequacies and Diane's age; people were still being attacked and beaten and brutalized and killed around them, and the good majority were doing little for it. Vigilante was a dirty word, naturally. But it wasn't as if Anne could stand idly by.

Though she could have done without the titles. Miss Moxie, really?

Little to think about now, however. She and Avery had scheduled an investigative visit to one of Anne's particularly nasty parents: a gentleman by the name of Brigg, who felt it prudent to take out his daily frustrations on his wife and daughter. He never left marks, and they were dutifully silent whenever the social workers came around; Anne needed to be certain of his abuse before she took proper action. Of course, Brigg's home was some ways away from her own apartment. The streets were hardly quiet in between. Interrupting an impromptu mugging was just what masked street-heroes did, after all.

It hurt worse than she thought it would, which was more of a surprise than the actual stabbing.

Truth be told, Anne had never really considered what it might be like to actually have a knife inserted somewhere into her body. Certainly, Dinah had felt it, and in a detached, cerebral way, she was aware of how it would feel. But when the young man caught her from the side, as his switchblade grazed and turned and slipped itself in among the muscles and fat of her bicep, she was not fully aware that it was causing the searing pain. She must have hurt herself along the way; surely being stabbed didn't hurt this much.

Denial propelled her through the rest of the fight, and the man -- already caught unawares in his attempted mugging -- left nursing a broken jaw and three dislocated fingers. She would have to bin this shirt now, she realized, which was such a pity, as Avery had just had it reinforced. There was no possible way she was going to get all that blood out. And good Lord, did it hurt! How could this all be from one little stab wound?

It occurred to her, as she tore off the bottom half of her now useless shirt and tied it haphazardly around her arm, that, perhaps, this line of work was more dangerous than she had previously considered. She'd been punched and bruised and bloodied before, of course. She could certainly take a hit. But blood was dripping off her fingers to the ground now, steaming up like boiling tears on the icy pavement.

What if it had been more than a switchblade?

She tugged the edge of her makeshift bandage, slightly light-headed in something more than blood loss. Strange. Fragility was not something Anne Gardner was used to feeling.