just ashe, honey (wearsthehat) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-10-11 09:03:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ₴ inactive: calamity ashe, ₴ inactive: jesse mccree |
Her high-heeled boots clinked along the walkway to the hotel. B.O.B., burdened by a truly massive bag of dynamite, clomped serenely behind her. Ashe wasn’t all that mad that Jesse had tried to talk her out of it - Jesse wouldn’t know a grand plan if it hit him upside the back of his ten-gallon. As for the hotel’s reputation, Ashe wasn’t worried about it preying on her worst fear. What could the hotel do? Forget her birthday? Pfft.
The Overlook loomed over her, its edifice silent. No birds chirped. Ashe smiled to herself, rubbing her hands together. Wouldn’t stay silent for long.
“Okay, B.O.B.,” she hollered, “Let’s plant these babies.”
Jesse wasn’t thrilled about being here, but if he’d learned anything about Calamity Ashe, it was that the second she decided to do something, it didn’t matter if the goddamn world ended - she was gonna do that thing sooner or later. No doubt there was some risk here for himself, having been the victim of this sort of thing once before, but he wasn’t too scared. He’d survived after all, and maybe even learned a little about himself or something cheesy like that.
He did expect to hear from Syd about all this later, but there hadn’t been time to get into so he had to hurry up and track Ashe out to the hotel or risk losing sight of her period. B.O.B. was nice and easy to follow from a distance but he stopped stalking and started talking when Ashe bellowed her orders.
“Seriously, you’re not even gonna peek inside to make sure no one’s there?” His spurs kicked up a little dirt as he hurried to get closer. “I coulda been inside for all you know.”
“You weren’t though,” Ashe answered, squinting into the dying afternoon light as she surveyed the exterior of the hotel. She figured that he’d show. Jesse wasn’t much of a fan of not having the last word; she knew that because neither was she.
For maximum blast, she’d need to take out multiple stories. It’d be all but impossible to do that without going inside herself. She wasn’t worried about it, though - B.O.B. would make sure no ghosties would get her. Shooting a smirk back over her shoulder, she tossed Jesse some dynamite. “Are you here to help me or to moan and groan? ‘Cause if it’s the latter, I might gotta ensure you leave the premises.” She cleared her throat significantly. B.O.B. looked at Jesse, and shrugged good-naturedly.
Jesse rolled his eyes and scoffed. It was a cheap nonanswer and it made Jesse glance towards the hotel a little nervously. People had ended up there without meaning to, plenty. Syd could be fighting off something awful in there right now and he’d have no way to know. He frowned as he caught the dynamite Ashe threw at him, barely managing not to let it tumble into the grass.
“I’m here to make sure you don’t do something real stupid just trying to be impressively destructive. Don’t particularly mind the idea of getting rid of this monstrosity neither. But we gotta look inside.” He raised his eyebrows pointedly as he tipped his hat at B.O.B. “For the sake of your business. Ain’t nobody gonna buy dynamite if you blow somebody up in there.”
“Do you think I’m stupid or somethin’?” The huffed question was clearly rhetorical. Ashe fiddled with some dynamite, frowning at the hulking hotel in her peripheral vision. “You heard him, B.O.B.”
B.O.B. jumped a little, and looked at Ashe, then back at McCree, then back at the Overlook.
“Git,” Ashe spelled out. “Make sure there ain’t nobody important in the hotel. If there are, drag ‘em out. Nobody’s got any business wandering around that place while I’m blowin’ it up.”
B.O.B. looked at her again, silent, fiddling his metal thumbs against one another.
Ashe exhaled. “What?” She asked, never a particularly patient soul.
B.O.B. shrugged.
“Are you scared?”
B.O.B. nodded his head so rapidly something in his gears squeaked.
Ashe sighed, her cinnamon eyes narrowing. “This is all your fault, you know,” she said to Jesse, though it wasn’t clear how this was his fault in the least so much as he was convenient. She tossed some dynamite over her shoulder and started marching into the Overlook. From this angle, she was reminded of one of those menacing old mine shaft entrances where she and the rest of the Deadlock gang used to have to hide before they got big. She nonetheless didn’t hesitate to kick in the front door with her booted heel, her pretty mouth twisted into a “don’t-fuck-with’me” snerl as she surveyed the dated interior of the lobby. “Well, this is uglier than I thought it’d be.”
“Ya know, if it’s my fault B.O.B.’s got some self-preservation instinct, I’m gonna call that a win,” Jesse grinned. He patted B.O.B. comfortingly on the back as he followed Ashe and he could hear the omnic move into place behind him. It was almost like old times. If the hotel had an arms cache or a shady corporate representative looking to make a deal for one anyway.
The inside of the hotel gave him a chill though. They stayed in some real dives over the years and this was clearly a nice enough resort once. It just felt like stepping through a time machine and forgetting to bring some bell-bottom jeans.
“Can’t say I disagree,” he replied to her assessment. His hand rested over his holster and he moved with the careful precision of a man who’d been taught a few things by a real soldier. “Ya hear anythin' noteworthy?
“Don’t hear a thing,” Ashe answered, squinting down a hallway, before taking a huge breath and screaming: “IF ANYBODY’S HERE, HOLLER BACK.”
Her voice echoed violently for several seconds, but she didn’t hear anyone shout anything in return. She glanced back at McCree just long enough to look smug before slinking through a doorway, trying to figure out just how big this place was. It was, she had to admit now that she was looking closer, a little beyond her abilities to blow up with what she’d brought. Maybe she should go get more dynamite?
“Hey B.O.B.,” she yelled, “head back to the apartment and pick up some more sticks, ya hear?”
B.O.B. apparently didn’t hear - at least, no one replied to her. Frowning, she walked back inside the lobby where Jesse and B.O.B. stood, looking at the strange interior. “Hey,” she said, snapping her fingers. “This ain’t Better Homes and Gardens. Let’s git, and bring back some more goods, yeah?”
But neither acknowledged her.
“Can’t believe you’re already making him fetch things you could carry yourself,” Jesse teased, looking away from the check-in desk in the lobby to smirk at her. Ashe snapped her fingers like she didn’t even hear him and he frowned as she kept talking.
The hair rose on the back of his neck but he needed confirmation. He tapped B.O.B.’s metal arm and pointed towards the door.
“You want us to go, let’s go.” He kept his squint on Ashe, waiting to see how this went. “The faster we get outta here the better.”
“Hey. Hey.” Ashe didn’t like being ignored. Her voice grew sharper, more shrill, like it did when she was on the hairy-edge of losing her temper. “Jesse. B.O.B. Can’t you hear me?” She could see Jesse’s lips move, but no sound came out of his mouth. Was he just faking? Whispering to her omnic? Conspiring against her? What was happening? She marched up to Jesse, and attempted to flick that stupid hat of his right off his stupid head. Not only did it not flick, but her hand went right through his hat into where his brains were supposed to go. Later, when Ashe wasn’t half-panicked, she’d remember to make a good joke about how of course her hand went through it; weren’t nothing there to begin with.
“Jesse McCree!” Ashe all but stomped her foot, stricken between fear and fury. “Hey, stop it, I’m right here, why am I… did I die? What’s happening!” She didn’t realize it, but her accent faded just a hair when she forgot to put it on, and it went up several income brackets.
Jesse looked to be trying to say something, but she’d never been all that good at reading lips, and now she wondered - Jesse had showed when she was already here in the hotel grounds, hadn’t he? He could be part of the Overlook. One of the demons or ghosts sent to trick her into thinking she’d died or was invisible or who the hell knew. “You- you- you give me a sign right now!” She hollered, reaching for her shotgun. “A sign that you’re Jesse McCree, the pain in the ass that I know! I-“ Hell, she just realized that the bullets would probably go right through him.
This seemed to be getting more unsettling by the minute. Ashe wasn’t even facing Jesse. “Easy there, Calamity,” he tried, only to be cut off as her ranting continued and she made a swipe at the air. He was getting real worried now. The hotel was clearly fucking with her, but him and B.O.B. wouldn’t be much help if she couldn’t even see them.
He moved in front of her waving his arms stupidly for a second and yelling her name until she reached for shotgun.
“Shit.” Jesse moved out of the way and B.O.B. stepped closer, half a barrier and half a protector. “She’ll be real upset if she hurts you fighting the ghosts in her head, bud.” She’d probably be real upset about this whole business either way, no matter how she played it. He just didn’t want it to get worse. B.O.B. looked like he meant to pick her up and carry her out the door, which might just have worked if she wasn’t such a damn livewire.
Ashe pumped the shotgun once, twice, her mouth a thin line as she attempted to look totally in control and not as if there were tears at the corner of her eye threatening to ruin her carefully-placed eyeliner. “I mean it!” she hollered. “I’m not afraid of you, I’m not afraid of nothing. Just-- say something! I’m right here!”
One of Ashe’s earlier memories was a dance recital. She’d talked about it for ages, hyping it up to her mother and father as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She had had, after all, a whole solo sequence in the climax of the dance number, all eyes on her, and she desperately wanted her parents to see it because then they’d realize how unique and special and talented she was.
“It’s tonight, Mom,” she reminded her mother before she left for work. Her mother had nodded.
“Don’t forget - seven o’clock,” she’d said to her father right before he took an important phone call, and he’d given her a pat on the back that was half affection and half get-out-of-my-study.
And when the recital had rolled around, and it was time for her solo, she’d danced up to the edge of the stage and had peered through the spotlight, trying to find her parents in the crowd. They weren’t there.
Her chauffeur had picked her up. Her parents hadn’t bothered to give an excuse or even bring it up. They had just moved through the rest of the week on their phones, in their board meetings, in their own lives, and she’d realized that unless she was big, loud, and completely impossible to ignore, she’d go through her life here as little more than a ghost.
In the Overlook, Ashe shook her gun demonstratively, tears finally releasing from her eyes and flowing down her cheeks. “This ain’t funny,” she yelled, but it sounded less threatening and more pathetic even to her ears. This was it, this was the moment where she could face her fear and stare down placing so much of herself in another person’s perception.
Elizabeth Caledonia Calamity Ashe took a shaky breath and ran out the front door of the hotel, instead.
Jesse wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Ashe cry. It, honest to God, scared the piss out of him. He cast a sharp glance at B.O.B. - who also looked startled (as startled as his metal mustached face would allow anyway). He decided to risk the shotgun and try to grab onto her but he was just a little too slow getting around the lobby furniture he’d put between them the second the gun made an appearance.
“Ashe! Wait! Christ on a cracker.” Jesse picked up Ashe’s pack of explosives and tossed them at B.O.B., who caught them with old practiced ease. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go chase her down.”
He jogged out the door, adjusting his hat as he went. Here was hoping she didn’t blow it off his head if they managed to catch up.