As they walk, the team bantering and questioning and arguing amongst themselves, Goodnight walks alone, lost in her thoughts. Even Natasha only warrants a glance now and again, the cold and dark of Widow's Way seeping into Goodnight and robbing her of her cheer as well as everything else. Her mind was a swirl of emotions even as her body aches and throbs, though she can't tell if it is desire, need, pain, or anger that caused the sensations. She knows it is the catacombs that sap her soul and hurt her body, the flitting ghosts and deeper darkness all around her in the astral taking tiny pieces of her vitality for their own, and it is only with a supreme effort of will that she reins in her anger and doesn't lay about her with spellfire and rage.
How dare the Harlequins judge her?! What do they know about pain? About loss? About losing everything and everyone, about being used by powers greater than they, about having to embrace the traits and qualities of a monster in order to survive? They, with their pretty suits and masks and expensive gear, their art and their perfect language and their friends and their damned "inspiration!"
As if they could be a tenth of Harlea'quinn!
Pale actors, just painted clowns apeing something far greater than themselves, were they. And yet they judged her for the tattered horrors that she wrapped around her like a cloak. A grim smile creeps to her lips as she contemplates what they would say if they saw her as Macha in the fullness of her power and her panoply. Would they still judge? Would they respect her? Would they fight and die, screaming, at her hands? That would please her, she thinks, to teach these pale, pretty troubadours that they are not the masters of their fate that they think they are. Especially the dryad of the sensuous laugh and hooded eyes. That one would make fine sport...
In a fit of pique, Goodnight triggers her SecondSkin's circuits again, turning parts of it transparent and matte, vanishing to expose perfect, pale skin and changing the pattern on the rest. When it setlles, she appears to be wearing bicep-length gloves and thigh boots, as well as a singlet that covers her torso and groin but leaves her thighs and shoulders exposed, and the whole thing is patterned in black and gray diamonds, a deliberate mockery of their garb.
Her small barb cast, Goodnight returns to the dreamscape of thought and memory, her thoughts spiraling back to when she was taken...
Sunday September 22nd, 2069, 22:31, Lambeth Containment Zone, London
She held the chip in her hands, turning it over and over again as if the motion could help divine its purpose. She'd gotten it only a few days before, scavenging in the hot places in Lambeth. She'd found the body, dead from a single bullet to the forehead that blew out the back of the big Russian's skull. She recognized the acid tats that denoted the Vory in the LCZ. The blood was still wet and warm, but there was no sign of the shooter.
Fianna didn't spare a thought for the dead man hurried to the corpse, picking his pockets clean and cursing the slot for not carrying anything of value. Some fragging shestrioka without even a commlink. All she found was the chip, unmarked and unreadable by her scavenged 'link. Now she held as a curio, just another reminder of how short and brutal life was in Lambeth. She hid in her tiny room, away from her mother and Vicki, and dreamed of a life far away, a life with hot water and food that wasn't expired, where she wasn't just a half-grown piece of exotic ass that had to dodge every fragging ganger and slot on the street that wanted her, and where she could sleep without worrying that she might not wake up in the morning. She dreamed of a clean, nice apartment in Greenleaf, of going to school and having friends, and her eyes closed against the tears of frustration at her life.
Then her door exploded inward, the chromed ork with the combat armor and the hard look following the massive boot through the splinters of the cheap plastiboard.
The shooting started only a second later.
The ork rattled something at her as she cowered against the wall, clutching the chip out of reflex, her oversized, ratty t-shirt flaring around her thighs. She shook her head, and he swore in frustration, then grabbed crossed the room and grabbed her by the arm, lifting her up and dragging her toward the door. She didn't fight, too scared and surprised to resist as he dragged her into the hall. There were two others out there, a human and a troll, both pretty banged-up, and a couple of drones behind the human. They conferred in a language she didn't understand, then nodded and rushed for the stairs to the roof.
The next twenty minutes were a haze of panic and gunfire. The troll died first, crossing from roof to roof, blown to a red-and-white spray by something massive and loud, but the team didn't even slow down. She knew what they wanted, the chip in her hand, because she could hear shouting in Russian from the ones pursuing her abductors. She shook and cried but did as she was told, running and hiding and cowering in fear, her body covered in dirt and sweat and ash and blood.
They almost made it out.
She was halfway down the ladder when the blast took out the ork, the explosion shredding his body and twisting his chrome into wreckage. She was knocked free of the ladder, landing in what was left of the ork with a thud and a splat and a scream of fear and disgust. On her back, she could see the soldiers closing in, see the human at the top of the ladder, his face twisted in anguish as his elven friend died with a ragged line of holes in her chest, gunned down saving his life.
He left her there, with the Vory, and the expression of frustration and regret on his face had been etched into Fianna's memory ever since. She wondered, in the following years, what had happened to him. Did he regret leaving her, or blame her for his friends' deaths? Did he know what had happened, the rapes and beatings, the drugs and pain, the fear and fall into darkness that she'd taken to survive? Did he care? Did he even remember her?
What had become of that 'runner?
