The Hedgehog and the Fox - Anti You

[x-roulette.livejournal.com]

Present Day, Jennie confronts her old lover in hopes of saving his latest victim, with Clint as backup. They quickly learn they are in over their heads



The whimpering was getting closer. Soft, exhausted cries that came from sheer terror. Jennie paused a moment to drop the larger of the bags she carried, then crept closer.

They’d been right about the cannery.

The days were short this time of year, and there was very little sunshine left. Jennie unshouldered her rifle and paused — the next room had been a large warehouse, the floors and walls now rotted through. A drop of several stories was in the center of the floor. Her target was on the side closest to the ocean...

So was his victim.

Alive and terrified — if Jennie was good enough, the woman would live to see the dawn.

A voice, deep, singsong, and off-tune, sliced through the whimpering — dominated the expanse of room; echoing off the walls and filling the space with a desperate anger, so intense it frightened the majority of the vermin away. "Baby, can't you see," it bellowed as the target ran a knife along his victim's cheekbone. "A girl like you should wear a warning." The girl was lithe but pale, her hair caked with blood — the same color as Jennie's, and she gasped sharply as he sliced her skin. Leaning in, he whispered, intimate. "Dangerous."

The sound of the gunshot reverberated through the empty warehouse — with luck, the bullet pierced the man's hand and forced him to drop the knife. Jennie's eyes, the same blue as the girl's, fixed on him. They were chips of ice.

Jennie pumped the cartridge out, and took aim again. "Hello, sweetie."

His hand began to knit back together like a time-lapse video. Donal did not play coy. His face broke out into a wide grin, shattered white-black eyes going wide with maniac joy. He threw both arms wide, grazing his victim with his other knife. Despite that, the man's attention was all on Jennie.

"Darlin — "

Her second shot echoed and the knife went flying.

"Let's make a deal," Jennie said, her voice calm. "You let the girl go, drop the rest of your weapons, I'll drop my gun, and I'll give you what you want.

"You disagree and the next round goes through your eye. I know how much that hurts." Jennie pumped the rifle again to punctuate her point.

"Darling," Donal enunciated the word carefully. "What I want is to hurt her. Badly." He gestured grandly despite lacking several fingers. "She's a dancer, you know. Or... she was." A casual inspection provided ample evidence of several series of incisions marring both of the girl's legs. "Say hello, Edith."

The girl choked on a sob, looking at Jennie with pleading eyes. They weren't as bright a blue as Jennie's — nor were they as cold.

Jennie stood as still as a statue. "We both know what you want," she said, quiet. The old Jennie, his Jennie, would have responded snarkily. She would have insulted him, looked at him with a wicked smirk, lunged into battle — with heat, with fury, with light.

Instead, she continued, "I know what you've been dreaming through all those long nights. I know what drives you, what you would love more than anything else in the world." Her light was gone. She had turned to ice, to steel, to stone.

"She leaves here alive, the thing you've ached for is all yours," Jennie stretched her neck, flashing the white expanse of her throat. It was a move that would have once caused Donal to press his lips to her skin to feel the beat of her heart.

She still knew how to torment him.

There was little use denying that it worked. Donal practically licked his lips in his eagerness. "Who wants an Edith when they can have the original, a chroi?"

He took a step away from the chair, a step toward Jennie. His wild, fractured eyes were focused, but there was a hint of something else there, too.

Longing?

Jennie swallowed her revulsion at the wrongness of that expression. None of this passed over her features. Everything she had done had led to this. Long, endless days of training, meditation to calm her nerves, and studying. Always studying moves and techniques — diving further into her power than she'd ever thought possible.

She would never actually be fully prepared for him, but this time she was shit-scared and broken as she faced him.

Him.

Her student — her friend — her partner. Her beloved.

"Do we have a deal, a runsearc?"

"Ah, a mhuirnín," the man stated, the pull of Jennie's gaze a magnetic force that drew him away from the woman in the chair. "Why not both?"

The next set of events unfolded in the blink of an eye, but would stretch long in Jennie's memory. Had she been too focused on their negotiation to notice Donal's right hand had fully regenerated? Or that he had a third knife on his belt? His broken, white eyes never wavered from hers. In the space of a breath, a dagger buried itself in Edith's chest.

"I already have what I want."

The next shot, as promised, went right through Donal's eye. While he reeled, Jennie pumped and shot out the other one for good measure.

A flash of white hit the girl — luck that the dagger would not kill her, would not puncture anything vital. The girl gasped, still alive, chest heaving.

Two more rounds knocked Donal from his perch. He plummeted down two stories to the floor of the warehouse below. Jennie approached the girl, one hand gripping the rifle, the other sliding a small knife from one of her arm guards.

"Okay, Edith, you're going to be very lucky," Jennie cut the girl's bonds and pressed a glowing white palm to her chest. "Very, very lucky," Jennie pulled all the ambient luck towards herself, careful not to use all of it, and pushed it into the girl. Improbably, impossibly, the knife had missed all of her organs, though it still protruded from her chest.

Edith instinctively reached for the knife, but Jennie stayed her hand. "No, you'll bleed to death if you pull it out, listen carefully — " She whispered quickly. "Understand?" The girl, wide-eyed, nodded.

"Go," the girl pulled herself to her feet, wobbling. She looked beseechingly at her savior. "GO!" Jennie implored, standing between her and the hole in the ground through which Donal had fallen. Below, he was righting himself, bones audibly snapping into place.

Improbably, Edith did.

Jennie paused briefly to collect herself before the low, ringing sound of a deep belly chuckle filled the interior of the warehouse. It was entirely too bright — entirely inappropriate for the situation at hand.

There was no question about who it came from. "Dance with me, a chroi."

Jennie took a deep breath, all the way through her stomach. She let calm wash over her. There was no running, not any more. She owed it to him, to the man he once was, to put a stop to the madness. And she owed it to herself, in order to stop living a shadow life of grief.

Still, this was going to hurt.

Then she reached for a chain hoist and carefully, gracefully, lowered herself the two stories that Donal had fallen, gun never wavering from his face. Then she stood and squared her shoulders.

She had prepared for him, wearing pieces of her uniform — not all of it, not so much that it could be recognized — the padded arm bracers, the boots that were built to move with armor in the shins and heavy treads. Her trousers and the armored undershirt were black fabric that had been prototyped at Xavier's, strong as Kevlar but flexible as spandex. She wore an overlarge white shirt to cover most of it, the sleeves rolled up for extra movement.

She took in Donal's face, splattered with blood, stretched by that manic grin, and those empty, ruined eyes. She couldn't help remembering him, so long ago, in that park — greasy and unwashed, probably still a little drunk, trying balefully to learn his first judo throw. She let that fall away, made her heart turn to stone.

"Puppy," she tsked. "I expected more from you sooner. Guess you can't heal everything right away. Sorry about that jacket, know it was your favorite."

"Mother demands sacrifices," he intoned almost automatically, eyes suddenly far away. It was only a second before he lunged toward Jennie, knives flashing without any stealth or plan — like he had no control.

Which, everything considered, probably wasn't too far off the mark. He may have been her puppy once, but now he was a rabid dog.

The blast of the shotgun rocked him backward and Jennie spun quickly, hitting him in the face with the butt to shatter his cheekbone. She only had three shells left, and she would use them wisely.

Donal stumbled from the force of the blow, taking another strike to his face gamely before his arm shot out and grabbed the shotgun, tossing it away like a child's toy. It fell through another hole in the floor and hit with a faraway clatter.

"Oh Jennie-girl," he said, slashing at her with his last knife. It caught her arm guard and sparks flew. "How many did I have to kill before you showed? Seven? Eight, sorry, me mind gets a bit blurry after the fifth. Only so much pleadin' and beggin' for their lives before it all gets so mundane." He feinted and stabbed down. Jennie dodged, the knife slid against the armored fabric of her stomach but couldn't draw blood.

"Are we monologuing?" Jennie asked, dodging again. There was a brief flash of red before the knife snapped against her other arm guard. "Sweetie — God — aren't we above that?" She planted a foot against his chest and kicked him away.

He slid backward several feet and looked up at her, face filled with manic glee. "Oh, you got better. Oh, oh, oh. This? This will be fun." He went for more knives, but discovered he had none. "Right, back to the old standby." He clenched his fists and went for her.

***

It hadn’t taken Clint long to find a good vantage point. Using a combination of stealth and parkour, he got himself up the side of the building, in through a window, and into the rafters. It was tall, this building, meaning he could see a good distance away, even by his standards. And now… he waited.

He wasn’t very good at waiting. Clint could do it — you didn’t get to be an agent at SHIELD if you hadn’t mastered the ‘hurry up and wait’ mindset some handlers seemed to love. He just didn’t like it. It felt like a waste of time more often than not. Still, the silence that fell over the area after no more than ten minutes made his skin crawl.

The distinctive reverb of Jennie’s shotgun had stopped long minutes ago, but Clint maintained his position in the rafters by a large, mostly-shattered window. He wished that he had Matt’s super senses, if only so he would know whether or not the Disciple and Jennie were still arguing or fighting… or if he was going to have to call in backup, even though he’d promised that he wouldn’t.

Leaning forward a bit despite the fact that the movement was completely unnecessary, Clint tracked the movement of a bird as it flew. It swooped down only to turn upward again, catching an air current and circling lazily. Wind blew, light ricocheted off broken pieces of metal, the water on the back side of the building crashed against the dilapidated pier and its pilings.

Clint waited.

***
Jennie ducked, dodged, and wove, avoiding Donal's powerful, uncoordinated attacks. He had slipped back into his old habits — the ones she'd tried to beat out of him — where he fought with tenacity but no skill or forethought — only the drive to destroy first, mop up later. But Jennie was rapidly losing momentum, no longer able to attack. All she could do was defend against Donal's relentless onslaught.

"Oh my darlin', oh my darlin'," he crooned as he swung again, landing a vicious hit to Jennie's midsection. Her body armor cushioned the blow, but it still felt like being hit by a cannonball. Jennie gasped and Donal grabbed her, flinging her against the wall. "Oh my daaaaaarlin' Clementine," he straightened and spat, blood hissing against the concrete. "You were lost," he cracked his neck. "And gone forever," he smiled. "Oh my darlin', Clementine."

He struck viper-quick.

***
Clint was getting antsy. The distant echoes of that creepy rendition of ‘Oh My Darlin’’had barely reached him, though, when he found himself more than adequately distracted. Despite his hiding spot, someone managed to get a shot off at him that very nearly took off his ear. It occurred to him that perhaps the miss was intentional.

Ducking, Clint scowled and shifted until he could see the area surrounding the factory. It was, in large part, barren. However, the question of who’d taken the shot was quickly rendered moot when a man slid out of the tall grass several hundred yards away. The fact that Clint hadn’t seen the grass move, that he’d had no indication of the rifle pointed at him, sent another chill straight down his spine.

Jennie had said they were good, these Disciples. Clint hadn’t disregarded the warning. He knew better than that. But it was highly, highly unnerving to realize just how good they were.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” the man called. The distance between them barely obscured the his eyes. Clint could catch just the faintest glint of black and white fractures. “Oh, c’mon. We both know I know where you are,” the man continued. “Let’s make it fun!” There was a long pause as the man continued walking toward Clint’s perch near the door. “Or do I have to go looking for your friends, too?”

The sudden switch to Russian had Clint dropping from the rafters without a second thought. Stupid, he thought to himself. This is stupid. Whatever the man thought the language meant to Clint, whatever reaction he’d hoped to garner, he knew he should have stayed in his nest. He should have taken a shot — why hadn’t he? Natasha would rib him for it later. Hell, if he didn’t make it out of this, she’d probably figure out a way to Ouija Board the fuck out of him — he’d have no rest in the afterlife if he died here today because he’d been an idiot.

True though that was, he also couldn’t let the man flank Jennie. She might be able to handle one of them, but he didn’t think she’d come prepared for two. Maybe. Maybe not — he didn’t know for sure. She might’ve come prepared for all of them. But based purely on what she’d told him about them, he didn’t think so. Which meant… he needed to stall the man.

“Aw, there he is,” the man cooed, tossing the sniper rifle away from him with a careless sort of flare. “Come along then. I’m bored, could do with a bit of entertainment while Mother’s favorite wraps up his business.”

Clint was used sparring with experts, people with advantageous mutations and enhancements. His time at the mansion had only expanded the variety of mutations he’d encountered. He’d sparred with Thor, for Christ’s sake. He knew better than to let himself get cornered. He knew better than stand still long enough to allow the man to land a solid hit. Evasive tactics were on the menu for him for the day — and if he could get a few hits in on his own, all the better.

***

"You know," Donal said as he slammed Jennie against the wall again, keeping her pinned this time. "I would've thought your man'd be doin’ better now. He's handsome, that fellow. Have you fucked him yet?" He pulled her toward him, then slammed her into the concrete slab again, her head smacking it with a loud thunk. "I'm hurt you've moved on already. I've not forgotten you. I left you so many presents. Monika, Astrid, Agnes, Ingrid…" He smashed her against the wall once more, and Jennie screamed. "Oh, you liked them? I worked so hard to make them pretty!" He threw her away from the wall and she managed to roll, skidding to a stop on her hands and knees despite her aching skull.

Jennie spat out her own mouthful of blood. She couldn't bother to deny that Clint knew her and cursed at herself — of course he would engage.

Fucking men and their hero complexes.

"You want to know the best part, Jennie-girl? Have you guessed yet? You're so smart, surely you know by now!" Donal put his hands on his hips and tsked like an old grandmother.

Jennie's exhausted, terrified mind flicked through several scenarios. What was he even talking about? Then...

"Oh, shit."

"Ah, there it is! The light in her eyes, that spark! That's my girl," he smiled, slow and sharp.

"They were a distraction — the girls," Jennie said, stumbling to her feet. She held her bruised ribs with one arm. "You're not here for me."

"Well, I certainly am. Mother has come to love me as one of her favorites," and a look of pure ecstasy flashed across his face. Jennie had to swallow against the taste of bile on the back of her tongue. "This was my treat — to kill you, however I desired. As long as I was... loud."

"As long as you took the police's attention," Jennie said softly.

Donal formed a gun with his fingers and pointed it at Jennie, winking as he pulled the trigger.