Alice Munroe (![]() ![]() @ 2010-07-13 20:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 10, alice munroe, holland sharpe, jed bailey, | alice and holly, | alice and jed, | holly and jed |
Week Ten: Friday
Characters: Alice Munroe, Holly Sharpe and Jed Bailey.
Location: Siena Suites store room.
Summary: Holly has a bone to pick with Alice regarding her life choices, Alice is inexplicably nonchalant about it, and Jed comes when he overhears the ruckus. Everything is blown out of proportion before Holly leaves, most of his questions left unanswered.
Rating: PG-13 for swearing and graphic imagery.
Holly had been thinking about the move more critically since hearing about Jared, weighing his options in his mind. His first inclination was to stay behind, but after speaking to Bridget he’d been wishy-washy about that decision. The day came quickly where he had to decide for sure what he was doing, and so Holly waited for a chance to get Alice alone.
Everyone was busy loading the last of whatever they wanted to take out of Vegas, so it was easy to follow Alice into the store room and not have to worry they’d be interrupted. That could bode badly for him considering he had his gun in hand, and had it pointed right at Alice’s back.
“Got a minute?” he asked, to get her attention.
The calmness in his voice was enough to make Alice unsuspecting, but when she turned around her expression visibly shifted from the empty melancholy of the past few days to something more haunted. She didn’t move but simply stared, first at his face and then at the gun.
“Yeah,” she directed to the barrel.
“Who do you think you are?” Holly’s voice was still steady, but his eyes betrayed his anger. She remained silent, still staring at the barrel before finally closing her eyes and holding her breath.
Somewhere in her head, she couldn’t help but find irony in the situation. She’d met this boy by pointing a gun in his face, and here he intended to end her life with the tables turned. It almost seemed fitting.
“Maybe delegating jobs, keeping inventory, and recruiting people does make you the boss around here, but it doesn’t give you the right to decide who lives or dies. Do you really think he deserved that?” Alice’s demeanor was helping Holly keep his cool, but even so, he felt a pressure building within his chest, and his hand tightened around the gun.
“Are you going to talk me to death? Or are you gonna shoot me?” she finally asked him, her eyes opening, this time to focus on his face. Her tone wasn’t spiteful, or even angry. If anything, she seemed to be goading him into it.
“I’m going to talk to you, and after I get answers, then I’m gonna shoot you.” Holly took a step toward Alice, and his voice was raised when he began speaking again. “Start answering, because I want to know how you can kill someone and then come back here and act like it’s no big deal!”
So he hadn’t heard. Alice inwardly thanked Tom for not telling anyone outside of Jed what had happened with her; no doubt Holly would not be pointing a gun at her just then if he knew. Alice also took a step closer, so that the gun pressed against her breast.
“Do it,” she said, ignoring his questions outright and staring him straight in the face, her eyes starting to brighten with unshorn tears. “You’ll be doin’ me a favor.”
Holly’s eyes widened, and he began to pull the gun back, but rethought it and pressed it against Alice’s chest again. “Why did you kill him if you want to die?”
“What does it matter!?” she almost shouted, grabbing the barrel of the gun and forcing him to raise it higher so that it pressed to her forehead. She held it there, making sure he didn’t pull back. “From start to finish, everything was wrong! Everything! So do it! Just fucking do it!”
“Don’t tell me what to do! I’ll kill you when I’m ready!” His own words seemed to take him aback, but he quickly recovered. “It matters,” he continued, in a softer voice, “because he matters to me. When Searle brought him back, I didn’t say anything because I thought I’d be able to talk to him later. To tell him what a shithead he is -- was. But I can’t ever see him again, because you took it upon your fucking self to kill him. So I want to know why!” Alice didn’t have to hold the gun to her head anymore, Holly voluntarily pressed it against her forehead with force. “Why you thought you had the right! Why you even thought you had to when we were already going to leave the city!”
The raised voices had been muffled so Jed didn’t know what was said, but he did know it wasn’t a happy conversation. He’d been looking for Alice, to get a few more things sorted, but apparently someone else had found her.
Cautiously making his way into the storage room, he froze at the doorway. His first instinct was to dive forward and grab Holly, but that was too risky. She was too close to Alice to miss if the gun went off. Icy fingers of panic started crawling up his spine at being helpless once more, but he fought them down.
“Holly, don’t. Please.” His voice was firm but the rest of him tensed.
Holly was shaken by the new voice that suddenly entered the equation. He knew it was Jed right away, and just like that knew Alice would come out of this alive. Still, he didn’t lower his gun. “Would you have killed Jared too, Jed? Is this the kind of operation you guys run?”
Alice’s eyes moved to Jed behind Holly, and once again her expression changed, this time caught between guilt and grief. There was no trying to hide him from her suicidal inclinations now. Why did it have to be him? she thought, anguished.
Jed kept his gaze on Holly and tried to keep his voice even. “Yeah, I’d’ve killed him. He killed Luc, and damn near done for me if you noticed.” He checked himself and took a breath. “But that was after what we done for him. We gave a second chance. Hell, Alice gave him more’n that, she gave him a home, and he spat in her face. So yeah, she had ev’ry right to do it. Nobody cared more for that damn kid than she did.”
At his words Alice closed her eyes, and she felt a sob bubble up in her chest before she managed to silent herself. Tears came unbidden, rolling down her cheeks. He’d been right, and it seemed to awaken a new and different kind of grief at the realization; despite the short amount of time, she’d come to care for Jared almost as much as if he’d been her younger brother.
Holly watched Alice break down in front of him, and the sight of it made his stomach twist in knots. “I hope you don’t believe that complete and utter bullshit, Alice. If you really cared about Jared, you would have let him live.”
He lowered the gun and shoved it back in his shoulder holster as he turned to leave. Jed stopped him with a firm hand on the shoulder.
“You ain’t leavin’ ‘til we clear the air. I ain’t havin’ this blow up on us on the road.”
Alice slid her arms around herself and stared at the two of them, still crying quietly, though she seemed almost detached from what was happening. Like it was an out-of-body experience. Part of her felt inclined to stick up for herself, but she was so torn up inside that she wasn’t sure how to put everything into words. Feeling a shake developing in her legs she settled in the lone chair near the wall, putting her head between her knees.
“Alice isn’t talking.” Holly didn’t struggle to get past Jed, but he did sound frustrated. “It’s not on me to clear the air, either. I think she owes everyone an explanation about why she thinks she can go off and kill someone who’s been living with us without even mentioning it. What’s going to happen next time someone does something Alice doesn’t like?”
Jed’s grip tightened. “Doesn’t like? Jared didn’t throw away good food or pee in the goddamn pool, he attacked us! Derek shot, Luc dead, food gone; ringing any bells? Where do you get off, defending him? You planning on doin’ the same thing?”
“Where do you get off defending her?” Holly flung his arm in Alice’s direction, pointing at her. “She killed someone! Someone she supposedly cared about!
“Alice’s priorities have been fucked since I got here. She hates me because I lie to feel safer, but guys who beat up on little girls are A-OK. You’re letting her call the shots around here when all she wants is to die. Me and her fighting isn’t gonna do shit to this group. You’re all goners already!” Not wanting to stay any longer, Holly tried to twist out of Jed’s grip.
“Shut up!” Alice suddenly shouted from her chair, hands knotting up in her hair before she rapidly stood up. “Just shut up! You don't know anything! You stayed this whole damn time, and he stayed too, but he betrayed us! Do you think he cared about any of us!? All he wanted was to be with his own gang! He used us and spat us out! What makes you think you were any damn different from me!?”
The brunette turned and shoved at one of the now-empty shelves that had housed their food, knocking it over with a loud crash. “All I've wanted from the beginning was to protect us, and I let that little shit move in and ruin everything!” She shoved another shelf over, then turned to pick up her vacant chair and smash it down on the carnage she was wrecking. It took three hits before it started to splinter, then she threw it off to the side and sank to the floor, sobbing.
Jed was over there in three long strides, kneeling to wrap his arms around her, anger trumped for the moment. He glared up at Holly. “You ain’t better’n us, so stop actin’ like it. And if we’re goners, what do you think you’re gonna be alone in this town? With Jared’s gang and all those like ‘em. You wanna stay in hell, go ahead. You wanna stick with us, you gotta stop bein’ a bitch.”
Holly’s eyes left Alice the moment Jed said the word ‘bitch.’ His eyes narrowed and he glared hard, wanting to protest and lambaste Alice some more, but with everything that was going through his mind, he could barely think straight enough to do even that. And, even though he hated to, he had to admit that Jed and Alice both had points about some things.
“Just don’t expect me to take orders from her,” Holly finally said, using great restraint in order to make sure his voice was even. “And if I don’t like something that’s going down, don’t expect me to take it quietly. You don’t run my life, okay?”
“‘Long as you don’t kill anyone, we’re good,” Jed said, his expression tight. He rubbed a hand along Alice’s back, trying to calm her. Holly snorted humorlessly from his spot near the door in answer, then left the store room without another word.