Who: Eli Bryant and Tawny Strange (w/ NPC’s Sarah and James Miller) What: Eli and Tawny get their revenge. Where: The Bahamas. More specifically, Sarah and Jay’s honeymoon suite When: Late Saturday night, July 10 2010 Warnings: R for language, extreme violence, and two character deaths.
They’d been planning all week for this. Eli had been waiting for this moment for a week and as he gave the man on the ground a swift kick to the stomach, he relished in that swelling feeling of utter triumph. He had come a long way with Crane, but this. This was more Eli’s vendetta then Crane’s. Finally, finally he was living up to his head mate’s name. Maybe even more. He and Tawny had reached the Bahamas by the middle of the week and for a few days, they’d stalked. They’d waited. They’d calculated. They were patient, hell they’d held off this long. What was a few more days spent so close to the enemy that Eli could practically taste them? Saturday night, they finally made their move. It’d been quick and easy, for a couple of Robins they were definitely not that up to snuff in Eli’s mind. How disappointing, Eli had remembered thinking as he’d come up behind them and gassed them both.
The room was soundproof, thanks to the generosity of the hotel owners who knew a thing or two about honeymooning newly weds. After an hour, there still hadn’t been one knock at the door inquiring as to what was going on in there and Eli and Tawny were still going strong. The room was thick with body odor and the scent of blood, the only sounds now indicating any sign of a physical struggle were the occasional grunts of the two people now lying on the ground. The male Robin was down for the count, he’d put up a pretty respectable fight despite being fear gassed and screaming his head off. But he’d been on the ground for about ten minutes now and it didn’t look like he was going to be getting back up any time soon. Eli made sure of that with a kick to his face before looking over at Tawny. “Think it’s time, my love.”
Tawny had never been happier. Never in her life. She was good at petty crime, needling (ha) her sister and her family, but causing pain? That she was great at. She’d just never gotten a chance to shine before, to really shine. She swung her crowbar with the skill and precision that only an artist could possess – she supposed she had the Joker to thank for that, but she didn’t care. Now that she’d found it, she put that muscle memory to good use, delivering blow after blow after to blow to the blushing blonde bride. Well. Not blushing. Bloodied, more like. Red was a good color on her.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes she forgot to keep going. Eli was so distracting. He’d never been more fascinating than when he was beating the shit out of a Robin. The look on his face was indescribable, and he was so unrelenting, so powerful. There was no way she wouldn’t be jumping him after this was all over. All the more reason to hurry. “Yeah?” she said, grinning wickedly and tucking her hair behind her ear. She didn’t realize it, but that one simple act smeared the girl’s blood both on her face and in her hair. Truth be told, her blood was everywhere. It was hard not to spread it around. “Want me to go first? This one’s just about gone.” She kicked her stomach and laughed maliciously. “Look, she’s not even screaming anymore!”
Eli smirked. As immature as it sounded, he felt invincible. To be able to inflict this kind of pain on someone, it was exhilarating. He felt like a god. For the last hour all that had been filling his ears was the sound of the Birds screaming in fear, then in pain. The sound of hands, feet and blunt weapons connecting with human skin. It filled his ears and left him wanting more, and at the same time curiously and utterly terrified to continue. That only made him angrier. He was full of a hatred that even Eli knew wasn’t just his, it was Crane’s too. He wanted to make them suffer almost more than Eli did. So very suddenly, it was Eli who was along for the ride. Or had he been all along? Sometimes it was so hard to draw the line between him and Crane that he just didn’t at all.
His target was on the ground and writhing, groaning. Not quite in as bad of a state as the blond yet, but he was getting there. Circling around him, Eli made sure to step on his hands until he heard the crunch of fingers breaking and flashed Tawny a wicked smile, one of complete satisfaction as he made his way over to her. He wasn’t concerned at all about his charge getting up and trying to make his escape, the man could barely stand. He wasn’t going anywhere. So Eli walked over to Tawny and with a certain twisted fondness he wiped some of the blood off her cheek, kissing her briefly before letting her go and backing up to a safe distance. He didn’t mind a little blood on him, but he wanted to give Tawny space to finish the job.
“Do your worst, Tawny Strange,” he murmured, borrowing Josia’s words as he looked on at the increasingly bloodied scene in front of him. For a moment his thoughts briefly went to his sister and what she would think if she could see him now. But that thought passed almost as soon as it came, because then James Miller was stirring on the ground, still shaking with fear but struggling to right himself so with a wide stride and swift kick from the Scarecrow, he was down again.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Tawny replied darkly, and not a little absentmindedly. She was too focused on the whimpering woman in front of her to really pay attention to what she was saying to Eli. Her worst. What was her worst? She twirled the crowbar thoughtfully as she considered her options. She had her knife, she had her hands.... and hey, she had this crowbar. She’d done plenty of damage with it already – one or two more swings, and ta da! Dead bird. Simple, easy, and definitely painful. All three were important. Simple – no need to overdo it, not when she was already mostly dead. Easy – even though it’d been a few weeks, Tawny still hadn’t completely recovered from her run-in with Superman. Her ribs were still sore, and she was breathing pretty heavily from the past hour’s activities, but she had enough strength left in her to finish the job. And painful... well, that was self-explanatory, wasn’t it? The pain made it all worth it.
Gripping the crowbar tightly, Tawny swung once. Twice. Three times. By the third blow, there was no more writhing, no more whimpering. There was just nothing. She did it. She killed somebody. And it felt amazing. She started laughing, breathlessly echoing the gleeful, demented laughter in her head. She started laughing, and she couldn’t stop. God. She felt incredible. She felt like herself. Laughter really was the best medicine.
Finally, after a long minute or two, her hysteria subsided, and she plopped down on the floor, totally wiped. She had never felt so loose, so free, and it showed as she spread herself out on the bloody carpet, still holding onto the crowbar with one hand. She sighed, indescribably happy, and glanced at Eli wickedly. “All done. Beat that, professor.”
Eli was fairly certain he didn’t get quite the same sort of enjoyment out of a kill as Tawny and the Joker did. Crane was always more about the inner workings of the mind rather than the body. Everyone has their strengths? Still, he got the job done quickly, and with a little bit of style all his own. The very small part of Eli that was still Eli, that Crane had never been able to touch, trembled for a moment at the destruction he’d caused. He even experienced a rather uncharacteristic moment of feeling sick to his stomach before Crane so expertly pushed it back into the deafening din of his mind. James Miller’s blank and bloodied face stared up at him, the expression on his face frozen in open-mouthed fear, from where it lay lifeless on the carpet. Eli tucked his mask and the can of fear toxin back into his coat with a satisfied smirk on his face.
“Now that’s what you call being scared to death,” he quipped, finally turning to face Tawny again and for a moment glancing down at the crumbled, very dead body near where she herself lay sprawled out on the carpet. What a picture. He sidled over to her and plopped down beside her, laying back and nuzzling her shoulder with a chuckle. Sarah and James Miller were dead. In less than twenty-four hours, all of their annoying super hero friends would know about it. Their revenge was complete. Eli didn’t feel happy, per say, just a general feeling of cold indifference. “We should get to abandoning the crime scene before room service starts getting nosy.”
Tawny laughed again, once, and she rolled onto her side and settled in next to him, stroking his chest soothingly. She could tell that he was getting antsy, and, well. She couldn’t have that. They were untouchable, she and him. No maid would ruin this for them. “In a minute,” she purred, smiling vaguely. “I put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. No one’s gonna bother us for awhile.” Half a second later, and she was straddling him, hair wildly falling in front of her as she leaned forward and kissed him fiercely. The fact that in the space of five minutes she’d gone from mere criminal to brutal murderer – the fact that she was kissing a murderer didn’t trouble her in the least. In her mind, nothing had changed. She was still Tawny, he was still Eli. They were just doing what they were supposed to be doing. Being themselves. How was there anything wrong with that?
She pulled away from him and sat up somewhat, still leaning forward, but not quite so vertically. She had a wicked grin on her face and a cold, calculating gleam in her eye. God, this was great. No wonder the Joker loved killing people. “Enjoy the moment, babe. And besides, if we’re going to do this, we gotta do it right. Take a shower, get cleaned up. Then we can go.”
Eli smiled and kissed her back, digging fingers into her back and in her hair as he relished in their moment together. After a few long minutes, he managed to tear himself away as she sat up on top of him and a hum sounded in the back of his throat. She was always breath taking, but especially now. He cocked his head to the side to eye the bodies that were no longer moving and after another moment nodded, mostly to himself.
“Right. Shower first. Let’s get you naked,” he grinned, planting both hands on her hips and gently lifting her up and off him so he could get to his feet and get moving. “Then we’ll clean up the mess we made.” If there was one thing Eli was sure of, it was that the fun was just beginning.