Re: [capital pawnshop: hannah & david]
Hannah was a thing crafted fearless. She was meant to please, to give, to want to give. She was an assembly line creation of subservience. She ticked and tocked for the wants of others, or that had been the goal. Somewhere, somewhere, it all went wrong, and here she stood, a girl upon a fire escape and witnessing something that didn't scare her. Somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong in her programming, and here she was.
She looked from man to man, and her head was tip-cock to the side, cornflower eyes curious. Who was the bad guy? There was one, she knew. Whoever lived here, he purchased boys that whirred and made them cry, and that was a monster. Hannah didn't want to save the world; Hannah wanted to save herself, and she was no caped vigilante with morals and a love for dramatics. She was a thing without rights, and she wanted rights. She wanted more for her own kind, and she needed to know who the bad guy was.
Consider, consider, and the night outside hummed. Inside, she watched finger bones become dust, and she knew the voice. She knew the voice, but it was like a voicemail not listened to in a very, very long time. Old and forgotten at the bottom of a list and only dredged up again when a new model of smartphone was released. Hello, and it took some thinking, recalling, memory banks and things that whirred unseen.
David?
He looked over his shoulder, this man who was married to Amy's sister.
Amy died while he still lived, but this man wasn't alive. His eyes were white things in his face, and black ash sat over hollows. David wouldn't buy little boys. That was her thought process. She didn't yet wonder why he was dead, how, or how he was here. But he wouldn't buy boys.
She climbed into the window daintily, a thing made for pretty places and prettier sins, and she reached for his hand. Amy. No one had called her Amy in chapters and chapters, and she turned the page and smiled at him. "I'm Hannah now." She glanced at the man being held up by his face. "Does he live here?" Simply, as if there wasn't death looming here and over their heads, and as if the man didn't kick and scream and beg. She looked at him, and then at David. "Why are you here?" There, there, a question voiced, and she waited on perch and with anticipation stuffed into her mouth in time bided.