free for all
.
And it's time for the regularly-scheduled free for all!
As ever, the rules are:
*No more than five prompts in a row.
*No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
*No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing. Use a spoiler cut as needed ( Read more... )
And it's time for the regularly-scheduled free for all!
As ever, the rules are:
*No more than five prompts in a row.
*No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
*No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing. Use a spoiler cut as needed ( Read more... )
[Bare-knuckle]
Magdalen Murdock has a degree from Columbia, a fledgling law firm, a kickass best friend and, in general, her shit about 85% more together than the majority of Hell’s Kitchen. But she’s got plenty of work left to do.
The Russians are the source of roughly thirty six sobbing cries for help down near the docks every night, so Maggie starts there. They have assholes with rock-solid biceps and machine guns. Maggie has purpose, love, the grace of a dancer and the fucked up sensory abilities that come with being blinded at age nine and reacting unexpectedly. It’s something like a fair fight.
Maggie knows she’ll only have the element of surprise, of hesitation, once. Because the only stigma worse than beating up on a one hundred and ten pound woman is getting parkoured into the gutter by her. Maggie thinks if she’d been a man, they’d have just stayed down. It wouldn’t have taken a KO each, split knuckles on every one of her fingers. She’ll need better gloves. She’ll need new glasses. Maybe a mask that covers her eyes instead of her chin.
“You look like John Lennon,” Foggy says, when Maggie debuts her new glasses at the office the next day, the lenses round like full moons. He takes her hands and says, “Jesus,” with casual blasphemy, touching the pad of his thumb against one of her scabbed knuckles. “What happened, Mags?”
“I tripped,” Maggie says, with a small, self-deprecating smile.
Foggy presses both of his hands over hers. He’s always so careful with her. Foggy calls her every night to make sure she’s home safe, that there wasn’t an open manhole along the route home and that she isn’t starving because the grocery store rearranged the produce section again and she can’t find the apples. Maggie wonders what he’d say if he ever found out, what will happen if she takes a hook and can’t get back up and he has to identify her body down at the morgue, kitted up in black spandex.
“We worry about you,” Karen says, more tentative. Their friendship is still new but Maggie loves her already. She thinks Karen, whose first question was how Maggie manages to get her eyeliner so neat, her lipstick so perfect, might suspect that she’s no klutz, that her new scrapes, the bruises under her makeup, have been purposefully inflicted.
“You don’t need to,” Maggie lies around her throbbing ribs and her plans for tonight. She hopes they’ll understand, if the worst comes to pass, that she’s doing this for them.
The Russians call her the bitch in black, grumbling as they clean their guns and sharpen their switchblades. The ones that weren’t there laugh at them.
Maggie knows they won’t be laughing long. She’s got her daddy’s devil in her and she’s going to make a better name for herself.
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