un_fallen | (no subject)

[From here.]

Raguel is very good, but he is not River Tam; in a physical fight his movements are strong, quick, but he lacks her unerring instinct, the unthinking grace.

At first it had been only four Reavers, then five, then all too soon it was ten... and twenty. Too many. A firestorm to destroy them all would also have destroyed any evidence remaining here, and would potentially have broken the Shé Xuán apart.

He'd searched it. He'd been ready to abandon it. But Destroying The Evidence is a repulsive idea that has been long entrenched in the very core of him. It was becoming clear, however, that he wasn't going to have a choice if he wanted to be around to find his target.

But then the flood had - suddenly - lessened. The nearest dock had been damaged when Raguel's skimmer had been rammed away from it, so that the moment he'd pulled the airlock's lever down to admit a torrent of madness and violence, the ship's air had begun venting out through a fracture. The Reaver ships had begun a sluggish process of undocking and abandoning their fellows; the lack of air had finally reached a critical point and one by one those on board fell, gasping, to the floor.

There'd been one more major change in the look of his surroundings. The door to that bizarrely well-organized room must have locked when it had swung closed, because he'd found a hundred new marks on it; dents and scuffs and smears were all over the door and extending for several feet around it. He'd gone to check the room again (stepping over a few new corpses) and found everything inside as he left it, with one exception. The strange stick with the button on it, abandoned on top of the folders, had retracted its prongs.

"Uh huh," he'd mumbled, and pocketed it.

There had been two inhabitable moons in an escape pod's range of the ship when it had been attacked, he'd remembered. One of them was a sparsely populated mining colony. The other was a moderately populous border moon with a budding economy and a promising climate.

He'd headed for the mining colony in the battered flagship. If you were going to crash-land a vessel (just as he was) on a moon, the last thing you wanted was pictures of it beamed around the 'verse by some technologically shrewd wunderkind. The colony might not even have had electricity, let alone have recognized the Shé Xuán from broadcasted pictures. If he'd been planning this sort of thing, he couldn't have wished for a better place. And it was beginning to look as though ELIZABETH RYDELL had planned this down to the second.

--

She does not stay long on either of the moons, but there are traces of the escape pod to be found there if you know what you're looking for. It's been disassembled, then certain parts melted down and 'found' in one of the mines with the rest of the ore. From there she leads him on a long trail winding from one planet to another, using a string of different names that he discovers when he bothers to check. But there are very few places that are not covered by surveillance of some kind; certainly not the places that ELIZABETH RYDELL frequents, and not all of them have been erased. They aren't centers of commerce, but there are crowds or centralized food and shopping, there are electronic eyes and there are people. Someone's always seen her, and Raguel doesn't have to rely on electronic records alone to know where she's been.

He knows what she looks like: young, fair complexion, blue eyes, hair falling in reddish-blonde waves past her chin. As the weeks pass, it falls down to her shoulders. She never cuts or colors her hair, which he finds odd. She's smart, that much is clear, but she's not a professional. Careful, but still makes mistakes. Moves around, but doesn't disappear. She relies on the kindness of strangers that she never trusts with more than a heavy bag, never for more than a moment. And she's finally found a place to settle down when Raguel arrives to highlight where she went wrong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

walk_ins

It's the way he strokes the gun. Or maybe the way he just takes it from her.

With it back in her hands, her chin dimples a little, her mouth trembles.

It passes. She mounts the stairs slowly, but not too slowly. They had training in this; the important thing is to stay calm.

Back upstairs, her music is still playing. Briefly, she thinks about slamming the living-room door in his face, of trying to knock the glass out of one of the windows and jumping. But she won't get away with another stunt like that; she can tell, the same way she can feel his eyes on her from behind.

In the center of the room, she turns around, hands loose and by her sides. The gun dangles uselessly from the right.

From:

un_fallen

By the time they reach the top of the stairs, his wings have disappeared again. There's still blood on his shirt, but he isn't even holding the arm stiffly, so presumably it's either healed up or he isn't affected by pain. He gestures, and the music turns off.

"I don't know why you're looking like that," he says, sitting in the same chair he'd occupied before. "Seems you knew what Crowley was, to some extent. You couldn't have expected that no one would come looking."

Given Crowley's public persona, that is actually a perfectly reasonable assumption. But Lizzie, he reasons, would know that Crowley's public persona was a bit of a jump from the reality of his existence. He'd had a long time to form acquaintances.

From:

walk_ins

She blinks twice, fast, and looks down at the carpet.

(She can't tell if he wants an answer, or just wants to hear himself talk. If the latter, that's - that's good.)

From:

un_fallen

"Sit down, you're making me nervous," he says, sounding anything but. Normally this would send him into peals of uncontrollable laughter, but today it barely gets a half of a smile. Concentration like this takes work.

"Did you think that? Why would you think that?"

From:

walk_ins

Moving slowly once again, Lizzie picks her way through the scattered boxes and lowers herself cautiously onto the edge of a chair. She keeps the gun in her lap, thumb tracing unconsciously over the grooves in the chamber.

(Once upon a time, it was believed that the miniaturisation of laser technology would make bullets obsolete, that - with the new generation of weapons flooding the market - guns like this would cease production, become antiques. Instead, they simply became Option B: weapons for those discerning customers looking to go back to basics, without all the unnecessary paraphernalia of things like registration, or electronic tags. Waste not.)

"It looked like an accident," she says. She's more composed now, and there's a certain sureness in her voice that's part real, and part projected.

It was supposed to look like an accident.

From:

un_fallen

"Yeah," he says derisively. "To people." He tilts his head, curious. "What did you think he was, then?"

A pause, and he grinds out his next words like he's forcing them past a blockade.

"Is. I mean."

From:

walk_ins

"Susceptible to a head-shot. Just like everyone else."

Only half consciously, her hand lifts, touches light fingertips to her right cheek.

"He obviously wasn't untouchable."

From:

un_fallen

He stares at her. It's incredible, he thinks, that she got certain things so wrong while her little caper had gone so smoothly. Until now, of course.

"Not that susceptible. Same as me." He jerks his head toward his bloody shoulder. "Still, might've got lucky. Might've killed him with an ordinary bullet, but you missed. As it was, there was just enough damage that he couldn't defend himself from creatures that would eat him alive."

He looks out the window at the gently waving tree branches, but he's seeing in his mind the condition of the bodies on that ship.

"Among other things."

From:

walk_ins

Lowering her hand, she follows Raguel's gaze, uncomprehending.

Lizzie's eyes are a clear, summery blue, almost as vivid as Raguel's own; as she looks back, they soften a little around the edges.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean for that to happen."

From:

un_fallen

"Well," he says, still looking at the trees. "That's something."

He refocuses on her, but his own gaze hasn't softened much. It's not particularly hard, either, just matter-of-fact and unmoveable.

"Murder by bullet to the head rather than murder by being taken to pieces, then. You know." He reaches into his pocket, but doesn't draw anything out. There's a dull rattling that doesn't sound anything like the bullets from the gun clacking together.

"Not that many people around that he actually gave a damn about. You were probably one. Saw the records."

From:

walk_ins

"Shì a," she agrees. Her voice is quiet - but that's not the same as cowed, or subdued. "Though maybe it depends on what you mean by 'around'."

From:

un_fallen

"Alive, is what I mean," he says, frowning a little. "Existing. Around."

From:

walk_ins

"By that definition, there are plenty of us. The records should have told you that."

From:

un_fallen

"Not plenty who worked for that company, though. Those were hand-picked. Takes something to stand out from that crowd."

His eyes narrow as though he could see it, maybe, if he looked hard enough.

From:

walk_ins

She holds her head high, making a clean curve of jaw and neck, but Raguel's focus centers on her like a weight; despite herself, she leans back a little, into the wicker embrace of the chair.

"I majored in civil engineering," she says.

From:

un_fallen

"Congratulations," he says, "but I bet he could've had his pick of civil engineers. What'd you do for him, anyway?"

From:

walk_ins

A little red rises in her cheeks, fiercely scarlet against her fair colouring.

"I was family. That's what you were saying, wasn't it?"

From:

un_fallen

"That's exactly what I was saying," he agrees, pleased that she got it.

"Family. And civil engineering. You don't think there was anything else?"

He's not really expecting anything else. But he feels like he should be sure.

From:

walk_ins

"No."

It's level, and she doesn't lower her eyes, but she's got no bullets in the chamber of her gun. It's not short, or rude.

From:

un_fallen

"Huh," he says. There's a pause.

"I'm sure you were a very good civil engineer," he says encouragingly. He does have his doubts that it was entirely nepotism.

From:

walk_ins

He's - insane. Tiānna. He's -

She feels another prickling behind her eyes, and swallows until it goes away.

"I am."

She mustn't listen to that voice, Lizzie knows. If she loses her head, that'll be it. Game over, insert coin.

From:

un_fallen

"So why do it? Nice job, doting... er, relative. You went to a lot of trouble. They all said it was an accident."

If his focus is a little sharper, a little more concentrated... well, he was focused before. It might not even be noticeable.

From:

walk_ins

"The money."

Even threatened, and even afraid, Lizzie Rydell is a remarkably self-possessed young woman. It's a trait that's not uncommon in her family, like the copper threading through her hair, and a tendency to freckle in the sun: a sort of centeredness, or clarity. A sense of purity and of self, that comes from living a life free from shame.

She says it simply - without apology, and without hesitation.

"I did it for the money."

From:

un_fallen

"Really. For money."

Vaguely, he wonders how much. People can be bought, of course, will sell their lives, hearts, souls for surprisingly little. But she is not. She is not even.

Demons can do that, sometimes: they can be absolutely comfortable with the horrors they've instigated. Sometimes. In truth, Raguel knows that it is less often than their bravado suggests. He tries to remember that, and to get a grip on his instinct to tear the girl to pieces in a rage.

"You killed your - you killed Crowley for money. And all those other people.

Who was paying it?"