Title: How Mol Lost an Eye and Other Tales
Words: a little over 2,000 words
Rating: R
Summary: The title says all!
Notes: I posted this to
supersciencefic and thought I'd post it here too. IN FACT, I WAS ENCOURAGED NYAH. Now with typos fixed D:
The Charger sped through the night, aided by its twin beams. Moths danced in front of them, flitting in and out like balls of light themselves and it was as if the darkness were nothing and the headlights matter, everywhere they shone trees appeared. It was that dark, that kind of dark moonless night. Trees and trees and trees; the landscape was nothing more than trees on either side of the winding road, bristled pines gleaming but opaque, illuminated for an instance and then gone.
Brock didn’t care at the moment and steered the car at a reckless pace, not thinking, driving with instinct as if the car was part of himself. He lit a cigarette and forgot it was in his mouth. He only realized his naked hands were freezing because the window was rolled down, billowing chilly air in great gulps. With numbness he rectified this and rolled the window up. It was the last bit of detail to reality to he partook in for the moment. Every single thing, from the smell of smoke, to the blossoming scenery, to the fact that the clouds were so thick tonight it appeared clear but starless, became nothing and he was engulfed solely in the past.
The past hour. The past hour and he couldn’t believe he was here. The realization that he was here, driving, minus a shirt, and cold snapped him back to the present long enough to take stock of the important things: he was bleeding, from his right eye and he had a stab wound in his back. The remaining bits of his shirt formed a tourniquet on his leg, which had been nicked with a bullet. He needed to get that checked out. Last thing he needed was to die bleeding somewhere in Eastern Europe.
It occurred to him he had no idea where he was, just what section of the continent he was on. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t even feel the pain, he’d separated himself from that. He felt nothing, no memories until the last hour, no feelings. Emotional gangrene.
And there was that thing, that thing he needed to take care of … .
He wasn’t stupid. Hunter wouldn’t have called it stupid, he knew Brock better than that. He probably would’ve just found it … maybe he would’ve found him being stupid. He didn’t know; Hunter was dead. Hunter had been dead for months and Brock had watched him die. He could never know what Hunter would’ve thought.
Only that the entire night, all of it had been a bad idea.
Brock lit another cigarette and taking a drag, felt a sudden soreness in his chest where he was sure there would be an impressive bruise tomorrow. He didn’t seem to be losing a lot of blood, but it was enough that there was cause for concern. There was one person in the world who could spill so much of his blood and he still wouldn’t be angry at that.
*
“You’re late,” Molotov had said.
She was sitting on the old bed, in that leather get-up, but her hair tied back tightly, no-nonsense, no smile on her lips. He was used to her indifference, but something in the way she tossed her hair when he shut the door, the way she threw her head back to draw attention to that one detail … she knew he loved her hair in a ponytail. It now coiled on her shoulder and her tongue was poised at the corner of her mouth in thought.
“Yeah, it’s a little hard, this being not even on the map.”
“Are you sure you’re alone?
Brock folded his arms.
“Look, why am I here?”
In the blink of an eye, she had snatched out her gun and focused it with surgical precision on his groin, still sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at him coolly.
“Are you alone?” she repeated .
Brock unfolded his arms and held up his hands.
“Jeez. Pretty sure. Kinda hard to follow someone out here.”
Molotov did not move the gun. She merely smiled and said, “You know I must ask.”
She cocked the gun now.
“How armed are you?”
“Why the q--”
A bullet zinged through the air and punctured the thick walls of the shack, not before it grazed Brock’s calf.
“Jesus!” he roared. “What the hell?”
“What the hell, nothing, Samson. I ask the questions.”
“Fine.” Wincing, but keeping his eyes on hers, he held up his knife. “This armed.”
“Good.”
There was a tense moment as she surveyed him silently. He sheathed his knife and returned her stare, hard. The wind outside howled. It could snow soon. He wondered how she had arrived here and how she was leaving. And honestly, what the hell he was doing here. The latter seemed to matter the most at the moment. But he had an idea.
She’d left him breadcrumbs for the past few days leading to this shack, the invitation only, “Finish what we started.” He wasn’t afraid, he could handle her. He went with something not unlike excitement. There was a lot of things to finish. He could count at least three and four if you included what happened last time they’d had a collision. He’d been waiting on edge, tense for years, for this to come up again. He wondered, but not worried, if it would come to a head tonight.
“Why is that good?”
She glared. “Questions, Samson.”
“All right, ma’am,” he said dryly, “may I ask you a question?”
She motioned with her gun in a bang gesture.
“What the hell is this all about?”
He’d arrived here with several scenarios in mind, all of them ending with no clothing and post-coitus cigarettes. He obviously knew that wasn’t the case and knew in the back of his mind, in an indistinct manner, what the case actually was. He had been on his guard and not lost his head completely. He knew who she was, knew how deadly she was, but couldn’t help but hope.
It had been so long.
Of course he’d come.
She slid off the bed and walked towards Brock, never letting the gun stray.
“That is a good question,” she said. She bit her red lips, paused and continued as she came face to face with him. “I am so glad you asked.”
She looked away for a moment, out the window where a few flakes of snow drifted past. She closed her eyes. The gun never left its target.
In an instant her eyes had snapped back to his.
“Don’t you remember?”
There was something in her voice now, like a snake coiling. Something that long to bite, hiss, sting, but instead kept in the grass or the shallows of a pool, waiting for the right moment. Sinister. She was enjoying drawing this out, that much was obvious. It was obvious because it was Molotov.
“It’s been three years,” he said quietly.
“You fool!” she hissed. “Do you remember what happened the last time we met, don’t you remember? It has been three years but I will never forget.”
“What,” he said directly. “That I killed your father?”
Her eyes widened and she gasped. She honestly didn’t think he remembered and he knew instantly his inkling was correct.
“You bastard!” she cried, then calmed herself by drawing a deep breath and moving the gun to his heart. She pressed the cold metal as hard as she could and leaned forward on the tips of her boots until their faces were inches apart. “You bastard, you killed him,” she whispered. “And now, I’m going to kill you.”
“You really think that’s gonna work out for you?” Brock asked.
“Questions!” She leaned back and stepped away from him, stowing her gun.
“I will allow you to fight for your life, to die with honor and then I will shoot you in the head and send that head back to your OSI.”
She moved into fighting stance, the tiniest indication with her finger signaling him forward. He backed against the door and held up his hands.
She was the first to strike; her boot pierced his eye and through the film he saw well enough to grab that boot and slam her into the crude table in the corner. She fell through it as if it were paper. This shack was obviously incredibly old and very abandoned.
From her place on the floor she shot out a leg and tripped him, and in an instant had her boot on his chest, blood pouring from her mouth onto his leather coat, a chunk of the table in her hands. Moving her foot before he could react, she hit squarely in the chest with the block, knocking out his breath.
Still bleeding from the eye, he wheezed and made to grab for her leg, but seeing through one eye was difficult; she transferred the block to another hand and hit him again on the chest.
Recovering quickly the second go around, Brock grabbed her hand and hit her in the head with her own hand still clutching the wood. She shrieked and in her momentary distraction, he pulled his knife and pressed it against her neck.
“You want revenge for revenge?”
She looked down at the knife and went for her gun. He was quicker this time and kicked her shin, her legs toppling from under her and pinned her to the cold wooden shack floor.
She spat in his face.
“Your partner,” she said snidely and laughed. It was an utterly joyless sound and Brock had only heard one laugh before like that and it had come from her.
“Yeah.” Holding her with one hand he pressed the knife into the back of her neck, drawing beads of blood.
“Not a fair trade,” she said quietly.
“Have you had enough?”
“Have you?”
“Are you really going to kill me?”
With a fluid movement, she lifted her leg and stabbed Brock through the back with the sharp tip. He dropped her and she spun out from under his grip, kicked him in the mouth and pulled the gun once again.
“What did you really think I brought you here to do?”
Brock stood under the barrel of the gun.
“Not kill me.”
“And why not? Why not kill you?”
Her hair had fallen from the ponytail and blood smeared her face. “Why, Samson?”
She cocked her head, narrowing her eyes. Every breath he took, he could feel the blood gush from the wound on his back. And he was panting.
“Because … you love me?” She sneered as she said this. “Then you are a fool.”
It had happened quickly, but not quickly at all.
He had not known why he had done it. There were so many other things he could’ve done at that point. As he sped through the night later, safe in his car, he recounted them. But at the time, it seemed the only thing to do.
He could’ve kicked the gun out of her hand, tied her up and threw her in the snow.
He could’ve kissed her and then kicked the gun out of her hand, tied her up and threw her in the snow.
Instead, before he knew what had happened, his hand shot out and his fingers plucked something soft from a socket. There was a second’s pause as the blood ran down her face, and blood slime ran down his fingers before either of them realized what had happened.
In her confusion, her gun wavered and he kicked it out of her hand.
She let it fall clutching the spot where her eye had once been.
“You … my eye!” she screamed. “You pulled out my eye!”
He surveyed her coldly, as the blood poured over her gloves, over those red lips, into that red hair. Blood, red the color of their relationship.
He’d left her and she had said nothing as the door banged loudly behind him.
*
He turned the heat on in the car, as the snow had began to fall, undistinguishable from the moths dancing in the headlight. He pulled around another corner and felt around on the seat next to him and recoiled slightly. It was still there. His trophy.
He hadn’t looked at it since he’d plucked it but now, steering with one hand, he glanced down at the green iris, staring into his own face and thought of Mol still screaming in a shack somewhere.
He’d need to put this on ice. And find a jar.