Two: Haunting Me

She went back to the old haunts.

To the lamplit dance of painted smiles in grimy alleys blackened with smog, where handshakes in the dark spelled ruin; where poison and pleasure and violence all meant the same thing.

To the dark places where Hopes and Dreams were exchanged for Madness; the Madness of a Mad Dog, foaming at the mouth as it chokes on its own blood.

She went home.

To the city were she'd been born, where she'd fought and bled and killed with the abandonment of the forsaken.

She bought herself a gun and the irony of it brought a bitter smile to her lips. How long had it been since she was both weapon and miester? But it was well-made and felt cold and smooth and wrongwrongwrong different from Patti in her hand, so she would never mistake it for anything but the lifeless tool it was.

She went back home and found their old apartment building burned to the ground, a dry husk of what it used to be. The place had held memories, yes, and nightmares too, but more than anything it had been a place to sleep.

So she found a modest apartment on the cleaner side of town, too big for one but perfect for two.

And then Liz reconnected with old acquaintances.

She found them in the dark where she'd left them, the liars and back-stabbers, whores and dead men: her friends. The ones who'd sold them out, killed them, if not for Death Himself. Even if he was only a pale imitation, a child in comparison. And through them she put out feelers and the information trickled in.

Who was who, what was what. The men and murderers, monsters both, who'd risen from the ashes of that day; the day Death came to town and took two sisters away. Familiar faces, old faces, and some new, but behind it all was the vicious truth; whispered in the night like a prayer:

Power, Wealth, Prestige.

Kill, or be killed. Eat, or be eaten.

And she found fear. "The Thompson Sisters" had made an impression that fateful night and rumor had done the rest. Liz was a myth in her own city. And myths aren't supposed to live and breathe and walk the streets in the flesh.

So they came for her. After, when she cleaned their blood from her shoes and the smell of vomit and piss from her clothes, Liz marveled.

It had been so...easy.

He had seen to that.

The sisters time with Kid had tamed them. Molded them into more than just rabid dogs, all bite and meanness. All the missions, the lessons meant for self-control, the agony of learning to work with more than just themselves. Learning to trust. She'd willingly put the glasses on her brow and had seen the world through a lens of the deepest rose.

But the viciousness of a Mad Dog never truly leaves. He'd simply cultivated it, reigned in the wildness of their souls; made them faster, stronger. Better.

It wasn't a good thing; the Madness. But it wasn't bad either.

Her "little show" got her a job with an old enemy. The Mob. She was a hit man in the guise of a girl, an unassuming face. Her targets never saw her as a threat and the men who supplied her paychecks praised her for it.

Never mind that without Patti she was only working at half power, half capacity, half of her potential.

She didn't particularly like killing, but she was a weapon trained by Death. How could she not be good at it?

And the pay.

Oh, the pay.

Death paid her bills; for her apartment and food and bullets.

It paid to keep the authorities away, the Meisters unknowing and off her trail.

It paid for the room in which Patti slept, the air that pushed into her lungs and kept her alive. It paid when the stipend the DWMA had given them as students ran out, when the little money they'd put away from missions wasn't enough.

Death paid.

And sometimes, after a really bad day of a heist or game or murder gone wrong, Liz thought she felt familiar gold eyes watching from the shadows of her dark apartment, judging.

'You did this.' She'd whisper, 'You made me do this.'

And then she'd flip the lights on to greet her empty home and wash the death from her body. But not from her soul, never from her soul.

Days, weeks, months, pass in a blur of red and black, Blood and Death. Liz wonders why Kid haunts her thoughts, why he's here now, when she doesn't want him.

Then, eight months after the disaster that ruined everything, Patti woke up.

AN: Heh, a cliff hanger. Had inspiration and wrote this on my phone.

Review?

~Delgodess