Hello darkness my old friend....

[doomedtheworld]

Characters: Vin and Elaine. Open to people coming to find her.
Time: Evening of February 15th. Immediately after she, Thomas and Kitten find Thomas.
Location: Between the Blackstone and Millenium Park
Content: Finding evidence of Elaine's presence in Thomas' apartment, Vin sets off in hot pursuit.
Warning: Some disturbing content.
Format: Prose.

Comments

[thisoneis]

Granny nodded to herself at Vin's words. Pain was good. It meant that she was at least still alive. Alive for how much longer, well, that was the question and Granny knew she wasn't going to be able to convince Death to leave this one well enough alone. But she had not and would not accept failure. Not here and certainly not now. The day a Weatherwax accepted failure would be the day you could put her in the ground.

"Some blasted fool got themselves twisted up in what they don't understand," she answered, not even trying to hide the sharpness in her voice. Nor did she both in the least to explain whether or not she was referring to Vin or not with her comment about fools.

The question about whether or not she had a phone, on the other hand, was ignored. She hadn't had any idea what one one was, to start with, and there was something far more important to tend to at any rate. She couldn't have said what was twisting Vin inside out, or near enough, but she didn't need to. There was already someone there who knew well enough enough had happened. All she needed... was a moment to think for herself.

A moment free of pain, and with a muttered complaint she went to her knees and laid a hand on the cold stone of the street.

There were no words said. Granny needed no words. There was simply a moment of silence and the pain - the physical pain - simply lifted away from Vin and vanished, while the stone around her hand began to spit and hiss under the rain that continued to fall around them.

[legallygreen]

Jennifer winced as Vin took her hand, squeezing it painfully hard, but she made no noise, more so just wanting her to find some relief. This was magic, she was out of her depth, there was nothing that she could do. There was nothing to fight, nothing to make hurt as badly as Vin was hurting. But she could find help.

The elderly woman answered her cryptically, but aside from actually being dressed like a witch, she seemed to have an idea of what was going on as she leaned down next to Vin. Jennifer huddled over her friend, shuffling around and placing her head in her own lap, as soaked as it was, hunching over her to keep the rain off her face.

"Vin...come on honey." She said softly. "Deep breaths. You can do it."

[doomedtheworld]

Why wasn't she dead? Her insides felt as though they were being torn apart and burned to ash and it hurt. It hurt like nothing else she had experienced, like nothing she could have imagined. Right then, in that moment, Vin would have suffered every beating she'd ever endured in her life again and done it gladly if it could put an end to this pain.

Even death. She was dying, she knew it, she had to be and she wished it would happen already. She wished that final darkness would finally fall and sweep her out of her body, away from the suffering.

And then the pain simply ended. And she was alive.

She nearly screamed from the shock of relief alone, and did let out a ragged cry as her lungs filled for the first time in what felt like her entire life. Immediately, the tension flooded from her body and she slumped on the ground. Pain was exhausting and her eternity of torment had leeched the strength right out of her, but she didn't care. She only breathed, basking in the ability to draw breath and in the frigid water seeping through her clothes, so different from the burning that had raged in her just a moment again.

"Stupid." She managed after a moment, her voice cracking and hoarse. "I'm so stupid."

[thisoneis]

She wasn't dead because whatever that had been hadn't wanted to kill her, if Granny had anything to say about the situation. Magic that sharp around the edges was killing magic and no two ways about it and if she'd walked into circle time again there would be hell to pay for whoever had been stupid enough to bring the Gentry into the world again.

"You should be glad you're alive, girl," she answered, making no attempt to hide the sharpness of her voice or the related fact that she quite agreed with Vin's assessment that she was stupid. Not that most young people these days had the sense that they were born with, as she saw it, but that didn't negate the underlying fact that whatever she'd tried had been boneheadedly stupid by the best of definitions.

Meanwhile, the stone of the street continued to crackle and hiss under Granny's hand.

[legallygreen]

And as harsh as Granny's voice was, that was how gentle Jennifer's was as she put her free hand on the side of Vin's face and spoke to her. "Regrets later, Vin. I want you to try and tell us what happened? Who attacked you?"

There was no way that this was metal fatigue, Vin was too smart for that. But Jennifer knew that it had to be something horrible to have taken down her friend like this. She looked back at the elderly woman again, noting the spell.

"Ma'am? Are you going to have to let that go back to her again? If so I want to call for some help as soon as possible. Please let me know."

[doomedtheworld]

Regrets? Jenn didn't understand, neither of them did, this wasn't about regrets. Vin had seen what they were up against, just for a moment, and she had seen the sheer scope of their enemy. She had thought she understood, thought she knew power, but she was wrong.

As Jenn asked her question, Vin's mind was already working, trying to think back... and immediately reeled back as the memory flooded her mind. The memory of that darkness, raging and all-consuming, clawed at her and she fled from it, pushing it away.

"I don't know. A woman... I can't remember who." She answered, blinking slowly, suddenly wondering why she felt so numb.

Her eyes flickered back to the pavement under Granny's hand, watching it hiss and crackle and she was aware of her breath quickening, her heart pounding, aware of the panic at the sight of that energy coiled just within reach and waiting to strike. The memory of the woman she'd faced threatened again and the breaths she'd once been relieved to be able to take now came too fast, making her lightheaded.

But still, Vin was only aware of the panic seizing her body without feeling it. She needed time, quiet, she needed to be away from that spitting ground. She felt detached, like she'd disconnected from what had happened to her and what was happening around her now.

"Jenn." She said suddenly, turning to look at woman again, her eyes and voice quiet and disconnected despite her own panic, almost analytical. "I have to go back to my room, can't be here." One of her arms shifted without realizing it and she continued after a second. "I have metals in my pockets... I can't bring them with me. They hurt."

[thisoneis]

Metal. The metal hurt. Thus far Granny's mental compass was rapidly turning due Elf.

"If she wants to be goin' anywhere," Granny answered.

It was, perhaps, not quite the truth. She could probably have found a way to keep the spell running while they moved. But she wasn't here to solve people's problems for them. Give them the chance to get there, yes. But that was what they needed. And nothing here said that this girl needed to have the pain taken away for good. Not at her age.

[legallygreen]

"Okay Vin. Okay."

Jennifer glanced at the elderly woman and nodded, and fiddled one handed with the coat over Vin. She called the first person she could think of that might be able to help. Someone who knew magic, who could remove magic. Someone who had tried to help her before. She called John, and told him the situation.

When she was finished, she stroked Vin's cheek again, and spoke quietly to her. "I'm going to change now, and carry you to someone who can help. Then we'll go to your room."

With some effort, Jennifer released her hand from Vin's, and glanced at the other woman again. "Ma'am, I'm going to carry her to someone who can help. I can carry you too, if you want to come with us. Thank you for your help so far."

It was then that she kicked off her shoes and stood barefoot in the street for a moment, concentrating. It had been so long since she had done this. There was the anger, bubbling up inside at whoever had done this, so easy to access. But she had to push that aside. Anger would not do now. It would only hurt. She had to find something else.

Care for Vin, love for a woman she would consider as sister. Righteous anger was better than pure rage, and she grabbed that. Her eyes bled away to emerald green, and her body shifted and changed, growing tall and broad. Her clothing tore away, revealing the dark suit she always wore beneath her normal clothes, covering her arms but leaving her legs bare.

There was a moment when She-Hulk lost control, that the figures on the ground meant nothing. The idea of tearing through buildings until she found whatever did this to Vin felt pretty damn good. But she pressed that down, and leaned over, picking up Vin as carefully as someone might pick up a piece of spun glass.

"You hoppin' aboard, lady?" She-Hulk asked.

[doomedtheworld]

Jennifer and the older woman were talking but Vin was having trouble focusing on the words, hard to focus on anything. It was as if her mind had stepped back and she had become just an observer. The terror at what she had seen was still there, but she wasn't a part of it she knew it when the old woman said something suggesting the pain returning if she moved. She knew she sucked in a sharp gasp at the thought, knew her breath was coming in short, panicked gasps. But she didn't feel any of it.

"Okay." She said when Jennifer told her she was going to change and wondered if her voice was really as small as it sounded to her. Her hand released Jenn's and sank beneath the coat again, the motion dreamy and slow.

She'd felt something like this before, when she was very young. She'd come across some bread and was bringing it home when two men came and knocked her down, punching and kicking her until she started coughing out her own blood and released it. She'd then watched the men turn on each other, fighting over the loaf of bread until one of them got the upper hand and started smashing the other's head against the street until he died. Reen had found her not long after, curled against the alley wall and staring blankly at the corpse. He'd beaten her after she recovered.

She was snapped out of the memory as She-Hulk picked her up, and she huddled closer to the taller woman as if her presence would banish those bad memories. She turned her head slowly, studying the old woman for a moment before glancing at the ground beneath her hand and swallowing.

"If you're going to let that go, at least do it now so I'll be ready for it...." It was the least she could ask.

[thisoneis]

Granny had seen a lot of things in her life. A dead man carrying all the power of a swamp. A cat that had become a man. A man with two holes where his eyes should have been. Compared to those, someone ending up as a larger, greener version of themselves wasn't anything to bat an eye at. At least, not physically. The comment, on the other hand, deserved her attention.

In one fluid motion that belied her age, Granny rose to her feet, drawing herself up tall and proud, before fixing Jenn with a stare that could have split diamond. Left unattended, the spell she'd been holding broke, and little by little the pain returned to Vin as Granny spoke up.

"I ain't so old that I can't walk." Her voice was cold enough that it could have raised icicles on icicles, and anything that Vin had said was ignored in favor of the slight that had been (perhaps unintentionally) offered to her.

[legallygreen]

"I didn't say you couldn't walk. I offered you a ride." She-Hulk replied, shaking her already soaked hair. "We're headed for the Hard Rock Hotel. John's meeting us there."

Unphased by the glare or the cold tone, She-Hulk took a running start, Vin held tightly in her hands. As she built up speed, she lept into the air and came down a block further in half the time that even her huge legs would have carried her in a run. Using the momentum of landing, she kicked off again and was launched through the air again, coming down.

Each place she landed was marked by a crater, but she was less than concerned about that. She could feel the young woman in her arms in pain, and that was enough to push aside the fury and drive her forward, right into the doors of the Hard Rock Hotel. She stopped only to look around and find John.

[doomedtheworld]

Vin could care less how offended the old woman was by Jennifer's comment at that point. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away when that spell broke and she began to feel the pain returning, reaching over to clutch tightly at She-Hulk's arm as she tried to take steadying breaths before it came back to full intensity.

She did her best to steel herself against the pain, she really did. She reminded herself that it was just pain, that pain always passed one way or the other, and that she could handle it. But as the burning rushed through her again, the defenses she'd put in place against it collapsed and a long, sharp cry tore from her throat. Fire seared through her again, choking off her breath again and making tears fall from her eyes.

Except this time she wasn't alone, wasn't suffering on the cold pavement, and somehow that made an important difference. She buried her face against She-Hulk's shoulder as the taller woman leaped across the city, borrowing whatever strength she could. It was just pain, she could handle pain.

Jenn was here.

[thisoneis]

"I heard what you said," Granny snapped back. Of course, it was already too late by that point, but she wasn't going to go without getting in the last word in whenever she had the chance.

She knew she was being a fool. She hadn't the slightest idea where to find a hard rock (as if rock could be anything else) in this place. But between pride and stubbornness she'd gone and turned away an honest offer. Still, if it was walk or be carried, she'd much rather walk. She'd been walking all her life; no sense in stopping now.

Besides, she was leaving a simple enough path behind as she went. All Granny had to do was follow it.

[johntaylor_pi]

John didn't like waiting. It meant not doing something and sometimes not knowing what might happen. He resisted the urge to use his Sight to see Vin or Jenn because he might need his abilities to help Vin when she came in. He still wasn't sure why Jenn was bringing her to him. He'd already failed with Thomas and failed to find the answers to who or what was doing it. He still had the vial of hair in his pocket, just in case, but it had already proven useless.

He should never have let Vin disappear like that.

The private investigator sighed and waited in the lobby with his hands in his coat pockets. He barely even moved when the doors suddenly burst from the wall and a tall green woman landed in the hotel lobby. Oh, so it was She-Hulk now. Perhaps he should have figured that would be the case.

"What did it do to her?"

[legallygreen]

"She's in agony. She says her metals are burning her." She-Hulk said, the few people in the lobby having fled.

Setting Vin down gently, she began cleaning out her pockets, fast as any pickpocket, removing the vials of metals her friend kept on her. She-Hulk repressed a growl as John came towards them, and let Vin hold her hand and squeeze as tightly as she needed to, feeling nothing, not the cold from being soaking wet as she dripped on the carpet or the clench of the weakening hand.

"An old woman helped us at first. She used magic and was able to transfer the spell away for a short time, but she had to release it. You offered to detox Jennifer at one point in time, I vaguely remember. I figure you can do that with magic too." She continued, her hand surprisingly gentle as she pushed some of Vin's wet hair away from the girl's face.

[doomedtheworld]

Vin clenched her teeth every time She-Hulk jumped, her hand tightening and her body curling up a little more with each one. It had never really occurred to her but leaping through the air without steel or iron to catch herself with if she fell was terrifying. Keeping her eyes shut, she focused on breathing as steadily as she could and tried to ignore the feeling of arching through the air and the helpless drop that would come if she slipped from She-Hulk's arm.

She was aware of being placed on the ground again, and of the rain stopping abruptly, and opened her eyes slightly to see John looking down at her. She opened her mouth to say something, to tell him what she saw but nothing came out but a small, pained sound and she clamped her teeth together again. Who had she been looking for? Who had she found? Every time she tried to think back all she could remember was looking into that endless darkness, the shadows that threatened to rip the courage and strength from her heart.

Vin fell silent again, trying to banish the memory, and breathing harshly through the pain.