Jason Todd is (thelazarus) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-07 00:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | fantine, plot: switch, red hood |
Who: Max and Jack
What: A meetup at Fantine's brothel that probably literally couldn't have gone worse.
Where: Fantine's brothel in Paris (Les Miserables Door)
When: After they spoke on the forums.
Warnings/Rating: Swearing.
Jack wandered out of his own door and into the hall, letting Jason make the resigned walk downstairs to an encounter that could not, would not possibly go well.
Jack and Jason generally had a quiet pact not to interfere in each other’s affairs. Jack had never really tried to take Jason over on his side of the door, and Jason had done him the same courtesy. They left each other’s lives alone as much as possible, and tried merely to exist, despite necessary interruptions.
That had changed after they’d died together and come back again. It seemed that the Pit hadn’t quite known how to reconcile two souls inhabiting a body simultaneously. Oh, the two were still separate, but emotions had become more difficult to sort out. There was more bleeding, more mess. There were holes in the walls. When Jason had talked to Max about Gus, for instance, it had been all he could do not to just endlessly scream at her.
So Jason’s better judgement didn’t much matter. Jack wanted to go, and that was enough to drive Jason there without too much of a fight. There was business to be taken care of, and Jack’s presence in his mind was a catching insanity. Right now, when he wanted something, it was difficult to disagree. Some of that madness ached in a familiar, gnawing way, and it made it harder not to listen.
The door was unlocked, and Jack stumbled through, looking left and right and taking stock of his surroundings. He was absolutely armed to the teeth, dressed as the Hood from heel to hilt. The mask was off, but the back and front hung separately from his belt, the facemask giving the unnerving illusion of a blood-soaked human face strapped next to the gun at his hip.
Or maybe that was just him - what he saw. Everything felt a little funny, right now, a little hysterical, very much off balance and entirely macabre. He felt like the dancing skeleton in a Dia de los Muertos parade, dead and alive, celebratory and morbid, beyond the reach of anything, anything really mattering. He was loose, at ease, and sprinting down the edge of the knife. Sooner or later, something would give.
He didn’t know what he was here for, or why he’d accepted Max’s offer to come. There was a blank space in his mind, smeary and gray, articulating what he wanted to do with her. Scream? Fight? Fuck? The halls of the beautiful house were empty, which tripped a distant alarm in his reeling brain. Empty meant suspicious. Empty meant Max was planning for something.
Jack walked upstairs amongst the lush surroundings, past plush cushions red and gold. He climbed up, into the dark, and walked past the long line of doors. The empty house with doors after doors reminded him of a dream he’d had, or used to have. In his dreams the doors never opened on anything good. He didn’t touch them.
This felt like a trap. The higher he climbed, the quieter at was, the surer he became that it was just that. Maybe she’d designed it with Luke. Maybe this was their plan - get him through a door where he didn’t know his surroundings, where the time period was obviously all wrong and he wouldn’t be able to get his bearings, and then keep him there, a prisoner. Until things went back to normal and he went back to behaving as expected. Until he stopped caring, again, that his head felt like it was going to split open, and that only one thing seemed to be of any kind of importance at all.
At the top floor, there was only one door to open. Nowhere else to go. He turned the knob, activating the mousetrap snap, and then pushed it open.
Jack’s eyes slid around the room, searching for the group of ambushers ready to jump. He was noticeably younger, fewer care lines around the eyes, though the look in them was all wrong. In his dark leather jacket, dressed for a war zone, he kept his finger on the buckle of the holster at his hip. His eyes were dark, and aimed anywhere that wasn’t Max, at first. Then they settled on her, just a little surprised that no one had tried to tackle him to the floor yet. That stare was deep, and dark. It looked like Seattle, distinctly, like someone who’d just jumped from a fire escape and crushed a man’s head into a hundred shards of bone.
“So? What’s the trick?”
There was no trick, but she didn't blame him for thinking there was.
After talking to Luke, Max had cleared out the brothel. It hadn't made people very happy, but she was willing to live with that. After all, if the kid was right (and Max knew he usually was when it came to Corvus), then she was about to play host to an armed crazy man with CIA training.
Somehow, this whole "vacation" from the chair wasn't actually working out how she'd planned. Not that she wanted it to end, because who wanted to go back to immobility and constant pain? Not her. But she was starting to worry enough about the people in her life that it wasn't as carefree as it had been in the beginning. Apparently having a headcase from Gotham led to insanity. Who would have thought it? And she worried, despite her best intentions not to. She even considered going over there. She could now, after all. She was pretty sure her legs would keep working, regardless of what door she tucked into. But Corvus had agreed to come here and, despite sounding seriously off, the kid didn't seem to be in any immediate danger.
After clearing out the brothel, she'd sent one of the kitchen boys out for a gun. She knew the thing was going to be a musket or something equally unimpressive, but she didn't have time for Fantine to navigate Las Vegas in a chair; she'd just have to make due with flint and gunpowder, if it came to that.
The gun had arrived two minutes before she heard Corvus' steps on the stairs, and she sent the kitchen boy down and out the back, before getting ready to make her stand. She was wearing a dress from the period. Red, off the shoulders, and with yards of skirts. She'd even given in and let the maid talk her into a corset, which hurt, but which reminded her that she could actually move; she'd kept it on.
Her hair was loose, in defiance of propriety, and there was red stain on her lips. She was counting on throwing Corvus off with her appearance and, if it didn't work, she wouldn't lose anything by trying. The gun was on the bed beside her hip, in plain view, and she was sitting there when he opened the door, bare feet poking out beneath the yards of red-on-white.
"Always so distrusting, Corvus?" she asked.
Jack stared at Max, in her long skirts with her red lips, and came to a logical conclusion. "This is a dream, isn't it?" he asked. "I'm dreaming." That was the only way any of this made sense anymore. Max in real life would never dress this way. So it wasn't real. None of it. Even the gun was ridiculous and period-appropriate, and Max would never carry such a thing. He stepped toward her. The soles of his heavy boots were unkind to the floor as he came nearer. His hand hadn't moved from the gun in the holster. He looked to the left and right again, but there was no one. They were alone. In a dream, that could make sense, that she wouldn't use the situation to get the drop on him, that she would confront him by herself. "I wonder how far back it goes?" Maybe all of this, being on the wrong side of the door, all of it was a dream. Or all of Las Vegas. Or Seattle before that. Maybe he was going to wake up in a few minutes with his face half-buried in Helen's long, dark hair.
Max was just starting to get the sense that maybe crazy ruled the roost, and that even anger took a backseat to madness. She was starting to wonder how quickly she could get her hand on the gun and pistol-whip him with it. Knocking him out would be the best thing, right? She could tie him up to the bed while he was out for the count - thank goodness for real, honest wood that was too heavy and thick to break through if she tied him to the four posts the bed featured. "How far back what goes?" she asked, senses attuned to every move he was making, every twitch that could lead to him palming one of those weapons. He was a walking ammo factory, and it reminded her of old warzones and being young. This wasn't good news and she was slightly pissed that Luke hadn't been a little clearer about what she was getting into here. Pissed off Corvus was one thing (she could distract him with sex), but this was something completely different, and she had no intention of dying somewhere without serious painkillers.
"The dream," Jack said. He paused, a few feet from her, and his resolve on that conclusion wavered. "If I'm dreaming." He stared at her for a moment, as if waiting for her to do something, or turn into someone else. Then he took a last step closer, and dropped his hand away from the holster of the gun. Then he reached out to touch her face. He needed to know if it was real or not, or if things really had gone back to the way they were in Seattle. Maybe now, instead of Helen, he'd start seeing Max everywhere, vividly imagined, but nothing there to touch. His expression twisted as he reached out - he wanted, so badly, for there to be something there when his fingers connected.
She watched the hand fall away from his holster with barely a flick of her brown eyes. The movement didn't minimize the danger, because he was still armed like an entire regiment, and she was vastly underpowered. It was only years of training that kept her from twitching when he came close, and she didn't jerk even slightly from the touch to her face. She realized, then, that she could probably diffuse him without force. But she had already figured out that "just sex" was never "just sex" with Corvus. They already had enough shit leftover from the last time he'd gone insane and she'd given into the desire to actually have sex with the man while he wasn't expecting declarations after the orgasm. No, she wasn't going to complicate things like that just now, despite the fact that she wanted to get laid before she went back to being an invalid in a chair.
It was supremely unselfish, which pissed her off, but she didn't take the leap and make this physical. Instead, she was perfectly still, without even a hint of warning before she closed her fingers around the horribly heavy musket and raised it, swinging the butt at just the right spot against his temple to render him unconscious without killing him.
She waited for him to slump over, and then she muttered an apology, one that was bookended by a lot of cursing. Luckily, her newfound dependance on her upper body meant she had an easy time lifting him onto the bed. She divested him of his weapons, unloaded every last one, and locked them in the trunk at the foot of the bed. Once that was all done, she went downstairs and found some sturdy rope in the stables used to house horses while clients were inside. The edges were jagged and scratchy, but the rope itself was strong and thick, and Max could tie one hell of a knot.
Which was what she proceeded to do; tie unforgiving knots.
His wrists and ankles were secured to the heavy, sturdy wood posts, and then she went and found some good red wine, which she set beside the bed. Then, goblet full, she sat at his hip, and she waited for him to regain consciousness.
Jack wasn't expecting the strike. He wasn't even sure if the woman on the bed in front of him was real. In her scarlet dress, with those berry lips, she looked more like the dark lady in a sonnet than a rough woman who he knew. He would have found out, too - his fingers were just an inch from touching her cheek when the musket came up out of nowhere, and then he was unconscious.
It was some time before he woke up. The musket was no light instrument, and when he finally did begin to come around again, it was slowly, in a series of impressions. Light, fuzzy and much too bright, came first. He opened one eye, and winced. Then there was mounting panic, as his thoughts started to stagger to their feet again. Someone had knocked him out. Someone wanted to kill him. He needed to get up. Get up. Get up now, before they came back, or hit him again.
Jack tried to sit up. He lifted his arms, and the rough rope bit into his wrists. Puzzled by the obstruction, he pulled again, harder, and found the same amount of resistance. Objects in the room were beginning to come into focus, but he still didn't remember who'd hit him over the head, or who would have tied him up, so he yanked hard on the rope, teeth gritted together. They were going to kill him. Or someone else. The last time he'd been struck over the head and then rendered immobile - he didn't let himself finish that thought, just pulled, sharply, with his legs this time, and was punished with a wrenching in his muscles and the sharp, spined rasp of tight knots over skin. He twisted his head to the left, trying to make the room settle, then to the right, and then he saw her, sitting on the edge of the bed like she was ready to tell him a bedtime story. What had been fear melted whip fast into anger, and he stared at her, still blinking and trying to get her to stop doubling. His body was too light, which meant the weapons were all gone. She'd stripped them of them after she'd knocked him out and tied him to this bed. What an idiot he'd been to walk right into it, let the surroundings short circuit his taxed brain, weary with shouldering the pain and anger of two men at once. He twisted up toward her, but, of course, he didn’t get far, coming to the edge of the rope before the sharp twist on his wrists forced him back down. ‘Livid’ wasn’t word enough, and though he wasn’t quite to the point of forming real words, something growled from down in his chest, furious curses in a slurred mess.
She expected him to be more articulate than that, and she gave him a few seconds after the growl to say something. When he didn't manage it, she sat back and took a sip of her wine. She was relaxed, secure in the ties that bound him; he wasn't going anywhere, that was for sure. "Next time, how about you don't bring an entire arsenal with you, Corvus. If I was a lethal threat, I would have killed you ages ago. I get that your door has made you aggressive, but there wasn't any need for that," she told him. She knew it would piss him off, but she didn't care. "Or, what? Yelling not enough for you anymore? Because, please, I'd love another lecture on all the ways I've screwed you over in the past five years." Another sip. She waited.
Jack hadn't actually armed up to come see Max. He'd been out on patrol, trying to shake off the words she'd hurled at him earlier, when she'd asked him to come here. But there was too much anger in him to tell her that, and it was a terrible excuse for knocking someone out and tying them up, and where she went with it next didn't make him much happier. "Cut me loose," he snapped, when he'd gotten his tongue fully under his control again. "Now." This was the kind of torture only Max could dream up, tying him to a bed and making him lie there and listen to her rehash what a sentimental idiot he was. Just thinking about it made him drag sharply on the ropes again, seeing red. "I came because you asked me to come. I should have known better. Should have known it was a trick." He smiled, teeth grated and eyes wild. "For someone who thinks she could take me out no problem, you sure do cheat a lot. And if you really wanted to shut me up, you could have just killed me. Saved the rope." His stomach turned, and everything that had been maddeningly hilarious a moment before made him want to shut his brain off. Then a thought occurred to him, and everything became funny again. "But if you kill me, I think Cerise is going to get her little firebug friend to burn the city to the ground this round. She loves me." He grinned, his lips drawn so tight that they cracked, and a weal of blood appeared in a crescent, smearing pink into his teeth. "Nobody gave her the memo, I think."
"No," she said simply, when he told her to cut him loose. She didn't even bother responding to that now. "I'm your superior, Corvus. You don't get to order me around," she said, taking another sip of the red, red wine. She could tell how angry he was, but it didn't worry her. It was a hint at just how much training she'd undergone in her life, the fact that she could sit there without batting an eyelash, all while knowing how completely lethal he was at the moment. Maybe there lived within her the certainty that she could keep him from harming her, even if the wood or ropes failed, too. Some vain conceit from all those years ago when he loved her without equal measure of hate to accompany the emotion. "It wasn't a trick," she told him plainly. "I just didn't realize your door had driven you insane at the time. Now that I know, I think it's best for everyone if you just relax until this thing passes, don't you?" She leaned forward and set the goblet down on the bedside table, the scent of rose water and the rustle of crinoline and velveteen red accompanying her lean. "Corvus, stop being so fucking dramatic. I've never tried to kill you, even when you deserved it," she said evenly. As for Cerise, that threat didn't mean very much to her just then. Maybe it should have, because if someone torched the townhouse there would be no chance in hell that she could navigate the narrow turns with the chair, not in time to get out. But she was fairly sure Cerise had heeded her threat, and she very much meant to follow through if the woman came near her again. She might not be able to kill her herself, but she'd find a way. "She does love you. That much is true. Thinking of going back to her?" she asked casually, entirely devoid of intonation.
Jack's response to Max's refusal was to pull on the ropes so hard that they bit a bright red weal into each wrist. He strained, as hard as he could. The ropes creaked, but the knots held, and the solid wooden bedposts stayed put.
"Insane?" he said, catching his breath again. That laughter was coming back. "Of course. That makes so much sense. Why didn’t I think of it? You’re right. I’m crazy, because I'm not tiptoeing around everything, or pretending it's all fine." Just what he'd expected. He watched her lean forward and stretched his hand was far was it would go. The tips of his fingers were still nowhere near close enough to even brush the fabric of her dress. He couldn't even shove her away with his body, his legs bound too tightly to allow for that much movement. "Don't think I don't know what's going on,” he spat. “You want to pretend nothing I say fucking means anything, so you call me crazy and tie me to this fucking thing to wait it out. Until everything goes back to the way it was and I go back to keeping my thoughts to myself. How fucking convenient for you. How nice for everyone."
"No," he snapped. The words hadn't been intended as a threat, just a statement of fact. After his last conversation with Cerise, he wasn't even sure if it was true anymore. "And I've just had a lecture about my inability to forgive from Wren, so never fear, you don’t have to tell me again.”
"You're only going to bruise yourself up," she said, and she looked unimpressed when she said it. Life in the military meant she didn't look at injuries in the same way other people did. The ropes would rub and bruise, but those weren't life threatening injuries. Those weren't even significant injuries, not when it came right down to it. The payoff was worth it, and she didn't feel sorry for him the way some other people might. If it was her, she would want to be contained until she couldn't do damage; she was only returning the favor.
"No, I think you're crazy because you're armed like you think you're a tank," she said bluntly, “and because you're about to start cackling like a maniac. Did someone tell you that you tiptoed?" she asked, seemingly entertained by the very notion. She watched as he tried to move his fingers, but not with any real concern. Even if he managed it, he wouldn't be able to hold her, not with his current angle. "No, Corvus, I remember everything you said, and I'm sure you meant every last word. Don't worry about that." And that was serious. Where the rest of it was agent-calm and nonplussed, that was serious and, even, a little angry. "Corvus, you can't be pissed at us if there's shit you never said. That's not fair, so shove it."
His no made her smile, and it was a confident smile. "No? Alright." As for forgiving, she wasn't sure if it was true or not. He could sure hold a grudge though, if the things he'd said were any indication. "Why are you angry at me, exactly? What did I do to you?"
Jack didn't care how bruised he was, or how badly he was hurt. He'd certainly been damaged worse than this in the past. "Good," he said, with vicious pleasure, to her assertion that she'd remember. If nothing else came out of this, at least there would be that. At least she wouldn't bury it, or try to forget. It still made her tying him up due to his apparent 'insanity' sting, but she'd remember what he'd said when he still had the tongue to say it. "So, what, you thought everything was fine? Thought I was holding together nicely? Thought now was a good time to cut me off? I died."
For the first time, he turned his face away from her. "I told you once already. If you wanted me to tell it to you again, you didn't exactly need to fucking knock me out to do it. Why don’t you tell me how you see things?"
She looked down at him, and she said nothing for a very long time. She was still and quiet, and she stood two minutes later. "I think you're being a selfish bastard, Jack Corvus. That's what I think. I'll have the kid come get you," she added, but she didn't turn away immediately. She knew he was right about dying, but it was so easy to forget about that after her months of hell. And she knew it wasn't his fault that he didn't know about it, but standing there, the last thing she wanted to do was tell him. If he didn't give enough of a damn to come find out what was wrong, then that was fine with her. Or so she told herself.
She turned. "Get some sleep."