Jason Todd is (thelazarus) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-06-04 21:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, jason todd |
narrative: jason todd, marvel, new york, midtown library
Who: Jason Todd
What: Checking out the crime scene at the Midtown Library.
Where: Midtown Library, Marvel
When: Tonight.
Warnings/Rating: Gore. Sad.
Jason knew he'd been pushing hard since he got the news about Gwen, but what was the point in stopping? What he'd told Bruce was true - there was work to do, and no time to stop for anything else.
For someone who hadn't really slept in days, he dealt with the unexpected presence of guards at the library pretty well. They looked official, and their uniforms screamed government agency, but the library was still roped off to protect the murder scene. Closed for the week, until the police could finish collecting evidence.
Thankfully, the guards had been standing there long enough that they'd gotten comfortable at their posts. There was nothing to steal at the crime scene, nothing worth taking, so their presence had to be more about keeping Carnage under wraps than anything else. Could be they thought they could catch anyone who knew anything about the symbiote that way, too - keep the crime scene locked down, and someone curious was sure to come calling.
He approached from the rooftops.
The guard slumped on the roof with a sniper rifle and camera was first, obviously appointed to watch comings and goings. A good crack to the back of the head was all it took to put him out. He'd probably even survive it. Jason liberated his key to the rooftop hatch and slipped down into the building, glossy red helmet disappearing last through the gap, the hatch shut and locked behind him.
Down and down, far as he could go. He peered through the small window in the stairwell door and spotted a guard patrolling slowly through the main room. His slouched posture and low-slung gun read bored and pissed to be put on crime scene duty. There was no sign of another guard in sight, though he assumed there would be a couple by the front doors. The skeleton crew around the scene somehow managed to make him even angrier.
And he was angry, make no mistake. Only constant motion was keeping it down. If he never stopped, he just felt at the edge of his endurance, but wakeful and alert. It was useful, actually, since it gave him more than enough precise energy to get shit done.
When he wanted to, Jason could move pretty damn quietly. Blame it on a childhood where soft footsteps could be the difference between getting a crack from mom's latest boyfriend or getting to bed safe and sound. The guard only half-heard anything when Jason was directly behind him, and he had just started to turn when he cracked the man on the back of the head. The man dropped with one blow, not even conscious enough to moan.
Jason threaded his arms under the guard's and dragged him into a nearby quiet room. Most of the lights in the library were dimmed or turned off this time of night, so it was easy to conceal the guard inside just by shutting the door.
There was no time to waste, and he still didn't know exactly where it had happened. He moved away from the stairwell, back toward the stacks. Gwen had been headed in this general direction when they stopped at the front door. Hours ago. It had only really been hours.
Caught up in the adrenaline of breaking in, still trapped in his own building momentum, he almost walked right into the crime scene without realizing where he was. He stalked quickly down the aisle toward the claustrophobic stacks, searching for a pin out of place, a single book on the floor, let alone -
He heard something click under his boot as he reached the doorway of the stacks. Gingerly, he lifted his foot back up.
There was a cell phone sitting there. He felt something drop through his chest, throwing him momentarily off balance as he stepped back so he didn't crush it. Gwen. Gwen's phone. A memory of her holding it and messaging someone, her hair sliding down toward her eye. Yes, hers.
He picked it up, gingerly, and touched the power button. It turned on, cleanly and normally. It still had a quarter of its battery left, and it displayed a series of text messages, still live on the screen.
Can you do me a totally tiny favor?
Two feet away, there was Gwen's bag. Gwen with the bag slung across her chest. Want to tell me about your dream? Ten minutes, twenty. So close. It was like she might be just inside the door. She had just dropped her bag, just started to run from the thing that had appeared at the window. There were her papers, in a scattered burst. They were spotless, but in complete disarray.
Jason stepped inside.
It was obvious that SHIELD had touched nothing after they retrieved Carnage, which made sense - you never knew what might be important after the fact. There was a web slung over his head, between the edge of the stacks and the wall, still clinging tightly. There were webs everywhere: slowly melting on the floor, tacked to the wall, thick on the carpet, strung between books, attached to shelves clearly pulled over with a sharp yank from a web at the top. She had tried to use the environment to slow Carnage down. That was smart. It looked like her.
Looking up, he could see a smear of red on the ceiling, and droplets quivering on the wall. Not blood, it was too red for that. It was carmine colored, like his helmet, and slowly dripping into a puddle on the floor. It was around the broken window, too, and splashed in every direction, marked in heavy claw prints on the edges of the shelves. She had pulled the shelves down, but it had clambered over, undeterred.
The trail of toppled bookshelves led in one direction. Jason followed.
If you're not there, I'll use my totally awesome powers to break in quietly.
Here, in the corner. There was a burn in the carpet the size of a full grown man, and the ashes of scorched books. The thick, sticky, scattered remnants of Carnage were nearly solid in the burn, caramelized in the heat. He could almost hear the thing shrieking yES! lIke a MaGIc CaRPet!, and then the screaming when the sonic hit, the screaming.
There wasn't much left of the man Carnage had used as its host for the evening, just scraps of burned flesh embedded in the residue and a frayed, smoky wallet. He picked it up and flipped it open. The brittle fold split in his hands. Through the warped plastic window, yellow and gray, he could see a man's picture and a name. He'd run it when he got back.
Jason turned to look at the rest of the mess.
The blood had soaked so deeply into the carpet that it was still tacky under his fingertips.
"I didn't argue, but for once I didn't agree that my death was grossly imminent."
In the drying pool, clinging to the fabric, was the pink sonic that had created the scorch mark. It was almost more brown than pink, bits of the plastic shining through its grisly coating.
For a long while, Jason knelt there. It got quiet in the room, and his eyes weren't focused on anything in particular. He was thinking through how it had gone, but eventually, those thoughts went quiet too.
He wanted different things. He wanted to pick up Gwen's papers, sort them together, and put them back in her backpack the way she'd want them. He wanted to wash the blood off the walls and the floor. He wanted to scorch the whole building and every book in it, and raze the place to the ground.
At the same time, he wanted everyone to see it. He wanted pictures dropped from planes. Gwen Stacy went down fighting, they'd say. It seemed important that they know. And she did it for you.
Now Carnage was in a box somewhere, waiting to get free again. It was settling in, still alive, the thing Gwen had been willing to get killed to kill. They would wipe what she did away by letting it live, and once they did that, what was left of her? What was there still here that was Gwen when what she did was gone?
Death was rarely clean, but it was rarely this brutal. It wasn't often that you were left with nothing but a smear where a human had been, clotted knots of blood and skin and a path of destruction to read intentions by. Blood could be abstract. It could have no meaning. This broad stain had been Gwen Stacy, and maybe that seemed like the greatest injustice, that someone who had meant so much had left nothing but a gruesome blot behind.
A hand on his chest. A kiss on the cheek. "Shoo." The blood that had been in that hand was here, in those lips, behind her eyes. It was here, sticking to his gloves.
The remaining guards came around, looking for their friend who hadn't reported back to the front desk. Easy chatter, the one filling in the other. They had their eye on Carnage forever, but it had always been in the hands of somebody they couldn't touch - the Osborns, an Avenger. This was a break for them. Just lucky that the police had called one of their people in the FBI when they saw the insanity in the next room. Had the new guy seen it? No? Well, he had to go in there and at least take a look. He wasn't likely to see anything like it again, not even in this job. He should go on, get in there, yeah. It was over there, in the back.
When the rookie didn't step back out into the hall, his mentor poked his head in. His curiosity earned him a sharp handful of fingers through his hair and an elbow crack to the face, shattering his nose.
The man shouted, short and loud, as Jason dragged him by the hair toward a bookshelf, then slammed his skull into it. The man slumped to the floor. The bookshelf wobbled, but it didn't fall. It would be hard to pull one down, he thought. It would take somebody strong.