Title: Butterflies and Bullets (1/1)
Summary: Asha on herself, Max and Logan--a less than coherent ramble.
Rating: R--violence, language, sex (mild F/F SLASH) and see note below.
Disclaimer: Cameron and Eglee.
Date: Dec. 16, 18, 2001.
Note: I'm feeling bitchy, Asha's not a nice girl, and a grumbled "frig off" to canon and plotting. You have been warned.
Asha had joined the S1W, all youthful enthusiasm and abstract anger. She had hated the abuse of power, needless pain, the truth of stories told only in whispers. Asha had learned to be a mechanic, a medic, how to rig explosives, how to shoot, to kill, to survive. It had been a story, unreal even as she fumbled a fresh clip into her gun for the first time.
She remembers the first time she was detained--and it had all been real and now and _her_ and she remembers the thought that the man she faced could do anything to her. Asha remembers that she choked back her tears when he grabbed at the back of her neck and brought her face down--hard--into the table before her. She remembers the rumble of his voice, her stinging forehead, bloodied nose and mouth, and the styrofoam cup had toppled as the table shook and cold coffee was soaking into her hair.
Asha can remember being shot: the first time, in the back--the last time, grazing across her hip. She remembers hiding in sewers, clutching an empty gun. She remembers sparking fear at calloused hands bunched in her torn shirt. Her memories are a reason not to like Max, and she doesn't, not Max, not Logan's reaction to her. Max uses soft kitten eyes and full lips and Logan is a sudden slave to people--soldiers!--made to survive. Asha is scarred, inside and out, and yet Logan treats Max's pain as if it is unique, greater somehow than that of those he's fought for in the past.
She doesn't know whether she has always had this harsh tangle of bitterness, anger, fear, hatred building inside her--whether this is her or the gun at her hip, the pain in her mind. She doesn't like Max but she presses her hands against Max's naked back and opens her mouth and kisses her in the darkness. Asha breathes against Max's skin: oh, oh God, even though she can't remember the word of God, recited in Church when she was a little girl with her mother and father and big sister; even though she doesn't believe any more, maybe never will again.
Logan's eyes are soft and hungry when he looks at Max and Asha's hands twitch against her sides at the sight of him. She wants him, might love him. Asha sometimes thinks about brushing her lips against Logan's stubbled cheek on her way towards his ear where she'll whisper that Max tastes like cinnamon. She doesn't say anything. She knows that she can hurt Logan. Asha likes having that option.
Autumn named herself after the season during which her brother had died. She had heavy thighs and thin lips and when it was cool and dark Asha would curl around Autumn, fingers laced together. There is a kind of triumph in the memory of the veiled uncertainty in Max's touch that first time and Asha doesn't know why Max lets this happen--doesn't really care. Autumn is dead, has been for years, and its been weeks now since Asha has gone out on a mission. Her nails are starting to grow, a bit crooked, a bit jagged, and Asha thinks that she could tear Max up from the inside.
Asha suspects that Max knows what she thinks about when her nails scrape along the inside of Max's thighs. Asha doesn't have to guess that Max's thoughts have travelled a similar route because sometimes Max's hands are so hard against Asha that she leaves bruises and her eyes aren't kitten soft--and Asha knows that look. They are all anger and muted violence together and Asha thinks about how her parents' hands would brush together when the walked, that their days were filled with small touches.
Logan's hands were steady and gentle and he had brushed away strands from Asha's sweat-slicked forehead as she heaved and shuddered and cried. She thinks that she could live with a lifetime of touches from Logan, but he looks at Max and Asha touches her instead--angry, angry, not pretending, not smiling, not caring.
It doesn't really matter, not now, maybe not again because she has been called and she has a weapon in hand--the world is waiting and she hasn't helped make it any better, she's too weary to care and she's never believed in luck.
~end~