Beatrice Dayspring (charmedlife) wrote in marvel_nextgen,
@ 2010-09-27 01:45:00

Entry tags:

bea dayspring, crosshairs, inactive - melissa frost

The Perils of Knowing Stuff (open to Kelly and Melissa)
Not long after her arrival in New York, Beatrice Dayspring was walking down the street to her hotel after handling some business at the local SSI office.

Sometimes she hated 'conveniently' knowing all kinds of things about the people who passed through her Personal Space. That cutie over there had some unfortunate medical conditions, for instance. And the guy who just passed was on heroin, and -- and the two women over there were carrying a total of seven guns, four knives, and not a single permit.

Beatrice couldn't help but slow down to give them a second look.

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 07:27 am UTC (link)

I am /not/ going to cry.

Kelly's words are the sweetest she's ever heard, mostly because she /understands/ where Melissa is coming from. She didn't take offense about being kept out of the loop and she still loved her anyway.

Wait. Did she...did she say loves me?

A tear slides down Melissa's cheek and she smiles, wiping it away.

"I...I love you, too, Kelly." she says, before continuing on.

"But yeah, King sold my dad out to Fisk to save his own ass. It makes me a special kind of sick that King is second-cousin of mine, because I hate being related to garbage. Anyway, Fisk hired a bunch of outlaw bikers to hit my dad during work. Mom had stopped in to bring him something to eat, which was unusual for her. She was never really domestic." Kelly says, remembering her mother as the woman who taught her that one always made sure to slide a knife blade between the second and third rib, then twist.

"They showed up and sprayed the place with bullets. Dad took a couple, but Mom and a few of his co-workers took the rest. She died at the scene. He never explained she wasn't coming home; our lawyer, Diane, did the honors. Diane's been his lawyer since he'd made enough money to keep her on retainer, and she's handled my finances and things ever since.

Meanwhile, Dad put the hood and boots back on, grabbed his guns and started the Bloody Summer of '03. Anyone who even had a peripheral connection to the Kingpin's operation got splattered all over the pavement. I rarely saw him much, even after Bree showed up wanting to live with us. Bree's mother had taken her and moved to California right after my dad went to prison. She and I got close out of necessity, because Dad was never home, even when he was in the house. He spent three years trashing the New York Underworld for what they'd done to them, but he never went after John King, which was probably his second biggest mistake." Melissa says.

"Because King also sold him out to the demon he'd stolen his gear from. Apparently, said demon didn't die when Dad thought he wasted him. Three days after my sixteenth birthday, while Dad was at work and I was at a friend's house, Kastorax the demon came to set a trap for Dad.

Unfortunately, Bree came home first. I'll never know what he did to her in full, but I guess Dad walked in mid-way through whatever level of hell was giving Bree and they fought.

By the time I got home, Bree was alive, but she wouldn't do anything but scream and cry. Dad was nowhere to be found. He'd left the hood and boots at home, like he always did when he went off to work, so they were there. Diane helped me get Bree into a hospital when it was clear she wasn't going to speak anymore and...the rest you can guess." Melissa says.

"I'm telling you this stuff because super-powered bio-agents are pretty shitty to run into, but what comes after me is likely to be just as bad, if not worse, and I wanted to offer you the chance to walk away now, before...before the /really/ bad things start happening." she finishes.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 07:46 am UTC (link)

Kelly considers a few moments. Genuine sentiment is hard to express sometimes. Its easier to read the tics in someone's face and tell them what they want to hear, or to come up with something flip.

"Until a bit before we met, everything in my life was decided for me. I had no choice... loyalty was programmed into my brain, somewhere in the nodes in between Laverne and Lumpy, I think. And even after that, until recently, the one thing in life I never had to think about was consequences. You've seen what my dad survived. Far as I can tell, I'm just this side of the Juggernaut for unkillable. And then, as my half-sis pointed out, I'm lucky. Preturnaturally lucky. Things fall my way, especially the harder they are in the first place. That one-in-a-million shot or something you hear about in the movies to define somebody as total badass? Yeah, that's what I call Thursday. Between these things, consequences was just a word with too many syllables to bother with. And then I met somebody... who, for some reason that made no sense to me, was the person I wanted to call when I got home with my dad's head in a bag and a lot of pirates dead or swimming home to my credit. And she answered the phone, and had a place for me even though I was a fucking lunatic. She listened to me yammer, and didn't tell me to shut up. And then she got hurt, because of me and my past, and it was the weirdest feeling... like all of a sudden I had some idea what those guilt and loss things people keep talking about were. And they sucked, they hurt in a way bullets and acid and grenades don't. So you know, super powered bio-agents and demons and vengeful second cousins with crimelord connections? Yeah, they don't scare me or bother me. The thought of losing you? Yeah, that I'm not sure I know how to deal with. This whole vague emotional maturity is kind of new."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 08:10 am UTC (link)

"That right there is the reason I love you." Melissa says.

"So you might be a little left of center. Okay, maybe a lot. I'm a lot to the right of center, so...we end up in the middle eventually. But nothing you say is ever useless, Kelly. You teach me new stuff all the time." Melissa says, taking her hand.

"You're really smart and totally hot and that thing you do with a machete gives me goosebumps. Every time you get shot or cut or hurt, a part of me freezes up, because I get scared about what happens if you /don't/ heal this time. But even when you're full of bullet-holes and slash marks, you're still checking on me to make sure I'm okay. That means more than you know, Kelly. You're really the only person I have, because Gramps doesn't want anything to with me unless I'll consent to leading the Maggia." she says, her expression one of consideration.

"Kel, do you think either the Thunderbolts thing or the Wild Pack thing is going to work out? Both of these groups might have some okay people and they may pay decent...but they've also both got a metric fuckton of rules they want us to obey to be part of the club.

What happens when it's not okay anymore? I mean...do you want more than what we've got now?" she asks.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 08:25 am UTC (link)

"Baby, since we're being totally honest with each other, I'll admit, I don't know what we've got. My psych reports characterized me, per the DSM-V guidelines as having antisocial personality disorder of the psychopathic type, characterized by a profound lack of empathy, amorality, inability to process guilt and a profound disassociation when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I don't know if what I feel for you is genuine love or a feeling of possessiveness because of the sense of security and connectedness to an external constant you represent. I've never felt either one, so I have no standard on which to judge. I'm not emotionally or mentally ok by any reasonable standard. I'm never going to be. I'm smart because I was programmed to be. I know mission reports and dossiers and targets and weapon specs and criminal organizations. Even my 'family' are DNA donors, and people who happen to be related to the donors. I had test tubes instead of a mother and a father, and co-workers, most of whom I was vaguely or openly antagonistic towards instead of friends. So I have no standard upon which to judge what we are or what we've got or what I'm feeling. None of that is ever going to change. So taking all that into account, I think its only fair to give you the same chance you gave me... is that enough for you, now that you know I'm a four year old, sociopathic clone? Because if we're going to be totally grown up serious and honest, I want to give you the chance to walk away if its not. If it is, then we can start figuring out what we've got now and where we go next."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 08:43 am UTC (link)

"I'm not scared of what some report says about you, Kelly. Yes, you exhibit the traits you just described, but when I was lying on the floor dying, you were worried. I'm not looking fix you or make you into some 'normal' girl. A normal girl wouldn't have caught my attention the way you did." she says.

"And even if I didn't love you, there's no way in hell I'd let you go up against those Weapon X creeps by yourself. I'm serious about you, no matter what comes next. I've never been in love myself, so we've got that in common. I've gotten really good at pushing people away. The few people who know me only know the parts they want to know, like Diane and May. They'd both freak out if they knew who and what I really was.

You saw all of that and came back for seconds and thirds." Melissa smiles.

"So, I'm here as long as you want me to be. And...if you decide you want to stay mercs forever, I can probably live with that but...my old man nearly took New York by the time he was thirty-five. I don't know if I can take orders forever. We've both go it in us to run things if we want to, to make people asking us 'How high?" when we say jump. But it's going to mean a lot of changes, if we ever decide to do it." Melissa says.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 08:58 am UTC (link)

"Baby, going back to that whole reading people thing... and I hope you'll forgive me for saying this... who and what you really are is someone who lost everything she held dear. All her security, all her family. And then she replaced it with anger, because anger is easy. Someday you're going to kill John King, and then you're going to feel profoundly and totally empty because ever since you realized no one was coming home, and your sister wasn't going to get better, you let that replace everything else. You don't trust anyone because they're not your father or mother... and yet you value trust because its rare and precious and associated with them to you. You're cold and bitter and keep people at arm's length because, well, then they can't hurt you. But sooner or later, John King will die, and there'll be nothing left unless you find something to replace it with that means something to you... because that's how psychology says rational human beings operate. I can live with being a merc forever, bouncing from job to job and living for the moment, because its what I do. Its the fun of being amoral... I can go hunt nazis and serve a grand cause with Silver Sable just as readily as I can feed a bad man to the pigs and fix my makeup while they kill him to death. You can't... and that's part of what I... ok, let's assume the best possible scenario and call it love, love about you. You /want/, somewhere deep down, to feel good again. You're ok doing some rough things to get there, but you admire May and her outlook. You want your sister to be safe, and maybe someday be ok. You can look at the videos of Kine doing terrible things to little girls and be revolted, wheras I'm just critiquing his skill with a cat o' nine-tails. If there's going to be an us, baby, and we're going to talk long term, since we've established I can go any which way and live with the decision... let's do what would really make you happy. The TBolts... might be a little rules heavy. They won't let you go after King without frowny faces and maybe trying to take us in. Sable... would not only let you, but give you the intel to do it with if not lend some fire support. Despite which, at some level, the Wild Pack still rate themselves the good guys. They've even employed a couple Avengers. I think... maybe, if we went that way, we could maybe build something, make the world a little better while shooting really big guns. It'd mean sidetracking, taking a while longer to get to King... but I think you'd be happier when we got there."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 10:01 am UTC (link)

"There are a lot of times that I wish I could be like you, Kelly. I mean that in the sense that I wish I didn't /feel/ things. I wish I didn't feel like I'd lost everything when my parents and sister were taken from me, I wish I didn't get angry or pissed off when people stare at us. I wish I didn't hate John King. Some days, I think what killed my dad was his emotions; he let revenge become his life when I wished to God that he'd have made my sister and me his life instead." Melissa says.

"Sometimes, I think my parents would be ashamed of me if they saw me now, if they could see the person I've become. I've had demons offer me more power than I could ever ask for if I sold them my soul. And I've been /so/ tempted, just because it might mean that I can make the bad people out there hurt as much as I do.

Some days, I wake up and think I could be one of the good guys. Other days, I know I'm just one spell from going over the edge and not coming back, Kelly. And the sick thing is is that I can't tell who I want to be more." she says.

"But it felt good making Kine pay for what he did to all of those young women. It feels good when we bury some son of a bitch who gets off on misery and death. I'm not one of those people gets off on the suffering of innocent people who've never wronged me, so I hope that makes me okay." Melissa says, thinking over everything Kelly has said.

For years, killing both Wilson Fisk and John King has been her sole priority in life. She's put it above finding a way to help her father, above aiding Bree, or establishing any meaningful friendships or relationships, other than the one she's created with Kelly. It's even gotten in the way of her friendship with May, who was really the best friend anyone can ask for. She'd seen what the desire for vengeance above all else had done to her father. It made him a shell of the man he once was, a ghost. It made it easy for his enemies to surround and destroy him.

And Melissa had spent the last three or four years of her life making sure everyone remembered the Hood--no, remembering Parker Robbins--because if they forgot him, then she would forget him, too, and then he really might as well be dead. She'd spent so long hero-worshipping and building up the memory of her father that she was now forgetting herself.

"Killing King would probably make me happy for a while, but not forever, but he still has to pay. My mother's killers have to pay, too. But...I can hold off on it to set up the kills and get the right people in place.

Someday, I won't need revenge to get by, Kelly...but I'm pretty sure I'll always need you." she finishes, finally getting into the bed fully to curl up with her girlfriend.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 10:18 am UTC (link)

Kelly curls up with her girlfriend, holding her close.
"King still has to pay. The Kingpin still has to pay. I'm just saying, and thinking outside the box here a little... that maybe when its all said and done, that maybe you'll be happier when its done if you do it for the so-called right reasons. From a certain perspective, yes, John King backstabbed your father. But your dad still wronged a demon, backstabbed people... some people would say he got what was coming to him. I'm not calling anyone right or wrong... I'm not going to make any value judgments. But I know I'm happier when you're happy. And I... god baby, I don't want to see you become me. I don't ever want to see you get that cold and distant, because its not you. And so maybe, I'm thinking, you might be happier if by the time you get to King, you're hunting him down not because, or not just because he betrayed your father, but because maybe without people like John King, or the Kingpin, or the rest, there'd be less little girls who need to grow up without a father. That maybe if the world were actually a little bit more like the sunshine and roses May sees when she wakes up, that you'd, I don't know, want to be more like her, instead of more like me. Part of what I love about you is that you're so vital, so passionate... I want you to get to the point where you /want/ to feel again. I don't know, I could be wrong, but I think maybe seeing what Symkaria has to offer would be good for us... but I'm going to let you decide, because honestly, I just want to see you happy. If you decide that's seeing King fry as soon as possible, I'll go get us a couple aprons and oven mitts... but I don't think it is."

She sighs. This thinking things through to logical conclusions thing is hard. There's a good reason she doesn't do it very often.

"But no matter where we go, baby, you're not alone anymore."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 05:03 pm UTC (link)

Melissa listens as Kelly speaks, fighting the reflexive urge to defend her father. Parker Robbins was about as far from perfect as men could get, but she'd also been a Daddy's Girl; no one could ever tell her he hadn't hung the moon. Still, Kelly is right about the things that he'd done to get where he was. The man who came home with ice cream and cookies and read her bedtime stories was /vastly/ different from the man who'd fought down a demon and murdered hundreds of men in cold-blood for money and power.

If her dad had become the Kingpin there would have been no end to the violence, the death, the bloodshed. Moreover, there might have been other angry young women and men trying to bring /him/ down the way she wanted to bring down Wilson Fisk. King was always a gateway to getting Fisk. Though she'd heard that Rose Red had succeeded in her bid to take New York, Melissa still didn't feel that the Kingpin had paid enough.

She nuzzles Kelly's neck, kissing at her jawline gently.

"You're right. I'm not ready to get rid of King yet; he's probably thinking that he's in the clear and no one can ever touch him, so he'll keep. The info on the Wild Pack seems solid and I'm not one to turn down good money for a good job. By the way...you are /so/ sexy when you get all analytical and philosophical." she says, moving to kiss Kelly's shoulder.

"Symkaria it is." she whispers, before kissing her fully on the lips.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 05:22 pm UTC (link)

Kelly returns the kiss, getting comfortable in bed. "Eh, its a thing. Common trait among sociopaths... all those reports after they catch a serial killer where no one expected it because 'he was such a nice, quiet boy', or all the victims who get away talk about how someone doesn't seem like a psycho because they were so charming. We recognize emotional cues and tics in people without empathizing, and react appropriately, kind of like actors with cues. Except genuine distress and pain cues... apparently we have trouble accurately recognizing those compared to the rest of the population." she muses aloud. "I just have a little bit of training and read all the psych manuals. Helped a little being in an org where they considered sociopathy a job skill instead of a hindrance."

Self-analysis done, she switches back to the topic at hand. "Red's takeover and the fact I talked with Red about King means he'll be looking for a new job if she's smart. I called in a favor in lieu of my last paycheck from Red though. If he tries to use any of her network, she'll hire him on and keep tabs on him for us... he's probably smarter than that, but you never know. Odds are he'll move somewhere else outside the east coast, so looking for him right now probably wouldn't help anyway."

She's quiet for a bit after that, considering something while snuggling. "Baby? I make no guarantees, but I might know something that'd help your sister."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 07:23 pm UTC (link)

Melissa was content to doze off in Kelly's arms, her body conforming to Kelly's as they lay there together.

The idea of something that could ease Bree's pain brought her back to attention.

"What are you thinking, sweetie? I admit that I'd practically given up hope of finding anything like that, ever...and I've been afraid to use my magic to help her, too." Melissa says.

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Re: Back at Home...

goesbothways
2010-10-03 07:26 pm UTC (link)

"When the X-Men had me prisoner, prisoner in the loosest sense of the term... they had healers there. And not just wound stuff or normal psychologists. Apparently psychics or a special healer or something who specializes in... well, stuff like your sister. Some of them know who I am, sort of. I could probably trade them information about Nicholas and Weapon X for trying to help your sister."

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Re: Back at Home...

lady_hood
2010-10-03 08:04 pm UTC (link)

Melissa now props herself up so that she can look directly into Kelly's eyes. The surprise was evident, but there was also a kernel of hope beneath it. The only information that Melissa had on the X-Men is that they were outlaws. Of course, it was easy to call them that when they couldn't defend themselves from the charges.

"Do you think they'd take information on Weapon X? Or do you think money might sway them at all? I'd do anything to help Bree, but I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position." Mel says.

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	Re: Back at Home... goesbothways 2010-10-03 09:55 pm UTC (link)
	Kelly sighs, she wishes it were that easy. "Their place is /really/ fancy, I think they have money, lots of it. They might just want to take me prisoner again, since I've shot some of them. I /think/ they'd want Weapon X more after some of the stuff that's happened, especially Nicky. But I can't guarantee it. Its a risk, but its one I'd take for you." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Back at Home... lady_hood 2010-10-04 04:35 am UTC (link)
	"Well, I'm not letting them take you. No information is worth that much, baby." she says. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Back at Home... goesbothways 2010-10-04 04:40 am UTC (link)
	"I'd just escape again, unless one of them has learned to tie knots of they've gotten real restraints. If it'd make you happy though, I'd like to try and help your sister." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Back at Home... lady_hood 2010-10-05 12:38 am UTC (link)
	Melissa smiles brightly at Kelly. "Yeah, baby, it would make me really happy if you'd try. A slim hope is better than none at all." she says. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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