Disclaimer: I don't own Sin City, its characters, places, or storyline. All rights belong to the much-esteemed genius of Frank Miller, Dark Horse Comics, and Dimension Films. This story follows both the graphic novel and film adaptation.

Summary: He wanted her to live, and so she does. For after all, an old man's life for a young woman's is a fair trade indeed. Hartigan/Nancy

Her Guardian Angel

To say that Nancy Callahan is just a sweet dame in need of some protection would be a grievous understatement. She is so much more than that. Or, at least, she likes to believe she is.

Living in a place that holds a disreputable reputation as Basin City—Sin City, to all who know its secrets and miseries all too well—she has to be. She likes to imagine herself of average intelligence, who can hold her own against any thug who might think otherwise. She entertains some of the most hardened hearts and hands out there, as she dances and strips down to her angelic, naked core, bearing her innocence for all to see. She receives cat-calls and rounds of grateful applause for her nightly contribution. But then, she's not a commonplace stripper that Bible-toting hypocrites love to plaint her as.

No, she's quite pure for one of her age, an innocent, who still clings onto to some semblance of a fraying notion of what love is and can be. But she isn't stupid. She knows what boundaries not to cross, knows her limitations. In order to survive, and keep herself intact, she must adhere to those unspoken rules that ensure her living another day.

And she does.

She lives each day, in that dismal, dirty representation of a life she's always known to the fullest. It's all she can do. For her friends, whom she considers her family. For all the beautiful possibilities of a life she could have if she wanted. For the one who saved her. Ending her life prematurely would be considered too cowardly, too selfish for everyone who ever gave a damn about whether she breathed another breath of the poisonous gray fumes that congest the city or not.

And so she lives among the black and white tones of her film noir life, living each day only to grieve amidst that otherwise perfect pedestrian existence carved out by someone else's hand. After all, she is merely a stock character shifting from one silent ink-stained page to another, the internal monologue rippling inside her pretty head extolling glorious lines of poetic, heartbreaking prose that speak of an epic hero who died in order to protect the one he loved most.

It is a story she often engages herself in, when she feels the grief tug at her like the winter night's chill lapping hungrily at her dark overcoat. She instinctively wraps it around her, trying to savor what little warmth it offers as she walks down the street, perfectly alone. It's the same coat he returned to her, although it's a little worn now, the edges unraveling at the seams, the buttons scuffed and hanging loosely from the many times she's fastened them. She doesn't dare give it up, though, since a new coat could never replace the sentimental value this one radiates. It reminds her of him. And that is enough to sustain her until she returns to her apartment.

It's the same place she's had for years—the same damn one that some pathetic bastard would break into and steal what few things of value she possessed. Of course, that little grievance has finally been put to an end. She shakes her head at the thought. No one has ever dared break into her place since that whole messy affair with the Roark family. She looks down at the sidewalk for a moment, its dirty cracked pavement reflecting the dynasty that could have been, yet would never come to pass. Marv and Hartigan saw to that, she thinks quietly to herself, and she pushes on to her apartment.

Her high-heeled shoes click softly against the pavement, their shiny ends contrasting a seemingly endless line of gray that stretches out into the infinite. She looks up. It's beginning to snow. A few white flurries darting here and there. One collides against the tip of her nose and she shivers at the feel of it. Like a lover's kiss. A ghostly sensation that she so desperately longs for, yet never finds amid the sea of faces that frequent Kadie's Bar. She isn't surprised. Since the face she wants to see most isn't there. Will never be there.

Her composed expression falters a fraction, the sadness that she secretly keeps closed inside that heart-shaped lock box in her chest opens, revealing its solemn existence to a cold and uncaring world. She refuses to cry. Since there is no need for the tears that she's already quenched herself of so many times. He wouldn't want her to cry, anyhow, since an angel's tears should never be shed for a hardened ex-cop-turned-con.

Of course, even that is a lie.

Since lies seem to be all she knows anymore. She frowns at the realization, however bleak and terribly clichéd it assuredly is to someone who lives her life wearing the face of an angel. She's living a lie right now. But what she felt during that one instance of time at Kadie's and then at Mimi's Motel wasn't a lie. It is perhaps the only truth she's ever known, what happened that night at the Farm only confirming that innermost, sacred truth. And yet, even more truths emerge from it—truths, she wishes, were lies.

She is the would-be fourth victim, the one who got away. But she can't escape the nightmares. The faces of the dead won't let her. For even during her waking hours, when she is perfectly sober and aware of her actions, she still feels those black eyes of Junior Roark sear her with their burning, dark intensity. Sometimes she feels the marks where his whip has left scars, the phantom pains reminding her that she will always be his in some way. His final victim. The reality of it almost makes her want to heave over and vomit.

But then, as she did with not crying out during the flogging, she suppresses the need, since he would still win if she did. She refuses to afford him that luxury. Bastards like Junior Roark, after all, are never worth the blood, sweat, and tears they want to inspire in the short, compacted, pathetic little lives they lead. Or so she believes. It's a philosophy she lives by, anyhow.

Everyone in Sin City lives by some kind of philosophy, whether it's clinging to a tarnished moral code of chivalry, or simply living a life of chaos for the sheer hell of it, the philosophy behind both is still there, both slightly moral and corrupt in some way. Nancy's own philosophy naturally borders on the former, since the only good things in life need to stand against the darkness that shields indecent pricks like those of the Roark family. It's no less than she can be. No less than what he'd want her to be.

She suddenly turns her head toward the adjacent sidewalk, her hooded eyes almost catching something against a brick wall. A shadow. A sound. A movement. She again shakes her head, and assumes nothing. She already knows what she's seen, and it's enough…for now.

The steps that lead to her apartment creak underneath the pressure of her footsteps. She pays the sound little mind. She's not worried about some unseen assassin hiding in the shadows, ready to take her out with a .45. She's not running from anything. The Salesman hasn't come to her door, ready to offer absolution in the form of a cigarette and a bullet to the heart. She lives her life as any other trying to exist in a world bordering on collapse. It's her perfect little piece of forever, wrapped neatly in a dog-eared graphic novel. A pleasant little form of pulp fiction that has somehow taken center stage in her life.

A strand of pale blond hair, bleached of its original darkness, collides against her face, and she shudders at the cold wind that besets it. She mouths an angelic line of profanity. Only in a place like Sin City does it always seem cold, a perpetual winter with no hope of ever seeing spring outside an otherwise arid wasteland. Not that Nancy has ever seen spring in the form of a budding tree or a warm, windy breeze. For just like her parents, the springs in her youth have long since abandoned her, as only winter remains—a cold, barren place where hope of leaving the city grew, yet withered on the stem—in her heart.

Now, at twenty-five, she no longer fancies that foolish belief. She'll never escape the city that has spawned both heroes and villains alike. She's only a lovely fixture in a rundown mansion, a byproduct of the madness and chaos surrounding her. She can be nothing more than what she already is, no matter the years she's thrown into studying to better herself.

She turns the key that she's gotten out of her coat pocket, and opens the door as the silence of her home greets her. She stands in its darkened threshold—if only for a fraction of a second—before going in. She closes the door behind her with a soft, unobtrusive click. A lamp is switched on soon after, although she prefers the darkness. She's become half-sick of sunlight. Though, without it, she can't see the shadows. It's a slight irritation, a necessary evil. So, she keeps the light on.

A few minutes pass before she retreats to her bedroom, turning on another dim lamp, the coat still clinging to the sinuous curves it conceals. She hesitates in removing it, knowing that she will feel cold once again. But then, out of instinct, she reaches out to undo the buttons, her hands then grasping the contents in its pockets. Two twenty dollar bills come to grace a nearby nightstand, pocket change and a pack of matches soon following suit.

They fall against the coffee-stained table like the dulcet song of an angels' chorus, the greatest treasure of all remaining in her hands. A grave black barrel stares up at her solemnly, the end promising the same fate that it once bestowed on its former owner. She ignores it subtle danger, and holds the Blackhawk close, caressing it as she would a lover she's not seen in years. A tear brims at the corner of her left eye.

One of the girls had somehow managed to acquire it before the police confiscated it as evidence. She recalls it being wrapped in an old white handkerchief, stained dark-red by the blood of the man who had wielded it. She pulls out the handkerchief from her other pocket without another thought, holding both as one would a sanctified relic. She prays to neither, although holding them makes her feel closer to a man she loves even now. As Wendy does when she wears Marv's crucifix.

She closes her eyes, imagining what was and could have been. She imagines a world without guns, bullets, and bloodshed. She imagines the world she would've wished for, a world in which their time wasn't cut so damned short. But that's not the world I live in, is it? she questions herself. After all, no one lives in the perfect world they wish for; and she certainly isn't any different, since the world itself feels on fire, the main players on the board changing places like in a game of musical chairs.

Her gaze returns to the Blackhawk. She studies its long black length in cold, calculating silence. The weapon has not been fired since it left Hartigan's hand, and Nancy intends to keep it that way. But then, again, she wonders if that's the truth. Rumor had it that the avaricious Senator Roark died of a brain aneurysm—behind his desk, of all places to die—at his mansion in Alexandria.

But Nancy knows better.

The pressure of the hemorrhage was much too severe, too damaging to have come from an aneurysm. It appeared that the old Senator had suffered from a massive trauma to the brain, like from the blunt force firing of a heavy duty handgun—or so the state coroner had suggested—off record, of course.

Either way, the autopsy report had concluded the Senator's death was from natural causes, and that was enough to put a lot of minds—particularly those at Kadie's—at ease. Nancy finds herself able to sleep at night, although she still wonders about the Senator's death, since rumor—always a trustworthy device and a great source of information—ruled in favor of some kind of phantom hand that had done the deed. There is little doubt in her mind that the deathblow inflicted came from the Blackhawk. Or a ghost of it, she thinks, before setting the gun down on the nightstand. She fingers the handkerchief, her small hands cradling the bloodstained cloth for a moment until she folds it neatly and places it underneath her pillow. She cannot sleep without it. Like the Blackhawk, it's become a security blanket for her.

She then becomes thoughtful in the growing stillness. Without Marv to serve as a protector, she, like the other girls, has to depend on herself, as well as her skill in using the Blackhawk, to ensure what Marv once freely offered before he met his end in the electric chair. She pauses at the thought of the behemoth of a man whose reputation it was that did not involve abusing women. Although he took no hesitation in beating that cannibal serial killer into a bloody pulp.

It had served the bastard right, although the former Cardinal Roark would gladly deem such feelings and aspirations as sins of the mind. Her expression darkens. She's glad that Goldie's murderer is dead, just as she is for every dirty bastard who's ever harmed one of the girls in Old Town. She secretly revels in the fact that Hartigan's old partner, that traitorous, cowardly bastard, Bob, found his own tragic end, although she's probably damned for feeling as much. For if it's a sin, then it's a sin, but she's glad his partner's dead all the same. Betrayal is something few get over. It's a concept that she's long come to understand and accept.

She almost smiles, dispelling her present musings. She's wasted enough time ruminating over the past as her eyes look figuratively toward the future. She sits on her bed, perfectly made and without another occupant to fill its other side. Or so it would seem.

Sometimes she feels she's not alone. She doesn't feel that aching stab of loneliness tearing away at her all the time when she's walking alone down the street at night, or when she's with a group of men at the bar who eye her with something more than appreciation for her company. She doubts Hartigan would allow them the chance to get any closer. Because there are times—times when she should be alone but isn't—that she can feel him there, walking beside of her, only the breath of a whisper away from being there for her.

And she's uttered his name a million times since.

Such a habit is not what is considered natural, certainly. A visit from some quack shrink would prove as much. But then, it's not entirely hero worship that keeps her bound to a dead man. She doesn't take antidepressants to ease her loss, even though the good doctor she sees time and again tells her otherwise. She simply cannot bring herself to swallow those sweet little pills of soul-redeeming sanity; she knows he'll disappear along with the nightmares if she does. So she doesn't, even though the idea of forgetting what happened near the docks and the Farm is tempting. She refrains, choosing him over a reprieve from the nightmarish insanity that he so often shields her from. Both know that she still needs him—will always need him, perhaps—to remain by her side until the nightmares leave on their own. It's why Senator Roark is dead, after all. She doesn't doubt for a second that Hartigan had something to do with it, since he couldn't beat the Senator at his own game alive. Death had provided that crucial move, however, his queen's sacrifice effectively winning the game.

Though at a great cost.

For with his death, Hartigan had separated himself from the love of his life forever. Death had only returned a mere shadow of that life, since he only returned in a half-living state through shadows and dreams. It's not enough for either, but it keeps Nancy going, living on as he wanted her to. She refuses to allow his sacrifice to be in vain, so she breathes for the both of them, her good heart beating in place of his dead one, just as she continues to dance at Kadie's Bar, if only for him alone.

She thinks of his suicide, however, knowing well enough that the church dictates that all suicides are bound for the lowest regions of hell, but she wonders if the same applies to a man who killed himself in order to save another. She refuses to allow herself to believe in the church's—that goddamned, son of a bitch Cardinal's—condemning doctrine; she cannot believe it. She dare not, since she forgives him for doing it, for lying to her. She can do nothing else but forgive him.

Her entire existence is composed of him, although she sometimes wonders if she is imagining everything. Perhaps it's only wishful thinking, as Dwight often tells her. Shellie, naturally, as always, rejects that line of thinking, for she remembers the way Hartigan looked when he saw Nancy dancing at the bar. Either way, Nancy chooses to believe in something that may not exist, rather than to simply continue on in the belief that she is, in fact, alone.

Of course, that latter possibility doesn't account for all the shadows shaped in his likeness, following her like a silent sentinel. Nor does it explain the ghostly echo of the cocking of a revolver when someone gets a little too close. Though most of all, she can feel his presence in the solitude of her bedroom. Since there are times, she knows, that someone has sat on the other side of the bed while she sleeps, with deep impressions that only someone as heavy and drawn as Hartigan could make.

And yet, the most damning piece of evidence is the many times when she's felt him near and asked him to hold her as he had at the motel. She never compares it to the last kiss they shared at the Farm before he was put on ice, as that last, desperate embrace leaves her crying and half-sober by morning. No, that embrace wasn't the last, per se, since he holds her whenever she asks him. For when she's wrapped in the thin gray blankets on her bed, she can sometimes feel him, wrapping those strong arms around her, those phantom touches he elicits by a pair of ghostly hands leaving only the faintest impressions of what could have been if he'd lived. He's one of the ghosts of Sin City, who lingers ever still as the world passes by him in a flurry of movement, and he, no longer fully able to indulge in those fleeting moments of life that so many often take for granted.

She finds herself in tears, her heart breaking for the both of them. Drinking with friends to ease her pain is out of the question, just as the idea of drinking alone leaves her feeling hollow. No, she won't bury her sorrows in alcohol tonight. She'll fight through that black miasma of emptiness she feels by sheer determination alone. She must. Her sanity—and heart—depends on it.

An hour later, and she loses her resolve, since she does what she so often finds herself doing on nights like these—nights that remind her of that one night, in particular—as she says his name in a single, breathless whisper.

And he comes.

Or so she believes.

The snow is falling heavily now, the streetlights from nearby the only source of light. She turned out the lamps an hour ago, no longer wanting to see the shadows of things that simply are and nothing more.

She's in bed now, her coat lying on top of her like a virtuous death shroud. She trembles at the feel of it as she hears the silence, and then a slight groan the bedsprings emit from the mattress. A deep impression is made on the place beside of her. She watches the adjoining wall as a shadowy facsimile of the Blackhawk is placed beside its material twin. It's doubtlessly the very instrument that ended Senator Roark's political existence. But she isn't afraid. In fact, she smiles and closes her eyes, reveling in the almost tentative touch that consumes her until the contact becomes something more. After all, it's all the little things he does that make her love him so damned much.

And so she indulges him, allowing what she never allows any other man who undresses her with his eyes, those hypnotic hips rocking, to and fro, in the semi-transparent darkness with some dusky exotic dance she's choreographed solely for his pleasure. Her siren's voice cries out his name in the sacred tones of an angel's whisper before a satisfied silence lapses between them. Only the shuddered hitches in her breathing hint at the ecstasy she finds in the midnight hour with a man who is nothing more than a shadow of his former self. Not that she minds, of course. It's all he can be to her now, the sole reason why she's stayed awake so many nights since meeting him that first, fateful night when he saved her life and stole her heart.

The age difference between them is completely irrelevant at this point, that paternal connection he once shared with her severed, because he no longer hesitates in making his intentions clear. She pauses at the thought. He is nothing like that child molesting bastard, who she hopes is screaming in the worst side of hell. No, it's so much more than that, this thing between them. She's twenty-five, and he is ageless now. It's a perfect match in every way.

She whispers his name, and she feels a hand, hard and imperceptible, yet still there, cup her cheek. She smiles again, her dark eyes glinting against her blond bangs in silent wonder. "It took you long enough," she teases, and then feels a pair of intangible lips press against hers, silencing her completely. She doesn't complain. Hallucination or not, she wouldn't trade this momentary figment of her imagination for a thousand free shots at Kadie's. After all, he promised her that she'd never lose him, and she hasn't. He's made sure of that, even in death.

He'll be with her tomorrow, and the day after, and so on until her own life comes to an end. But until then, she allows herself this single moment caught up in the arms of a man she's loved since childhood. She hadn't lied when she said it had always been he that she loved. She still does, and doubts she'll ever love anyone with the same intensity ever again.

She could leave, have a normal life with a husband and kids. The future is still ahead of her, and can provide as much. And yet, she realizes that, as much as what such a plausible future offers her, it's complete and utter bullshit. She should study, and make something of herself, like she had once planned. But then, she has no intention to leave the city. Ever. Her life is as inexorably tied to those dilapidating streets and buildings as she's tied to the shadow of a man who follows her around like some sort of guardian angel. She almost laughs. Funny, how most people laugh or baulk at the idea of angels existing, especially those of a protective nature. But she, if in this single instance alone, believes in them, albeit her own angel's halo is tarnished, his wings tattered, and the overcoat he wears has seen better days. His very image contradicts the pretty stained glass likenesses found in some of the rundown churches she so often passes on her way home from Kadie's.

That kind of perfect image doesn't suit someone like Hartigan, anyhow, since the man has been anything but traditional. And although Nancy doesn't know much of his past, save for what little she's learned or heard from the others, she knows she's far from crazy. For if she knows one thing, it's that she believes in angels.

She smiles once more as she watches their silhouettes move against the wall, whispering his name, as the snow and the darkness envelope them in a cold, grey blackness that leaves both silent. She looks to the nothingness that holds her, imagining his face, as her fingers caress an invisible crisscrossed-shaped scar on his forehead. She hears him say her name, a faint whisper beyond the shattering silence, and she finds a strange comfort in the knowledge that she hasn't lost him after all.

Moving closer, she allows that listless sentry claim her mouth once again, a kiss of life and death, to be savored until dawn. And she does. It's all she can have now; for just as those letters she used to write sustained him, his enduring presence sustains her now.

He can offer her no less.

And she is fine with that, for now.

She'll live, just as he wanted. An old man died, and a young woman now lives in his place. It is a fair trade indeed. She nearly breaks under that cold, hard reality, where, as before, she curls into that self-made personification of comfort she's always found in his arms, looking up into a hardened, yet loving, face she imagines there, her smile returned in full as she watches their silhouettes move and shift like two lovers intertwined until the approaching dawn dispels them completely from her mind.

…

Author's Note: I hope I got everything about the storyline correct for this oneshot, since the chronology of the graphic novels confuses the utter hell out of me. I've really only glanced through That Yellow Bastard's graphic novel, although I have seen the film. Either way, this story is set after To Hell and Back, which, I believe, takes place a little over five years after the events in That Yellow Bastard. I know the Salesman is dead by the end of the former, but I decided to mention him anyhow, at least figuratively.

I also, literally, wrote this story in a day, which is quite surprising, given my laxity in finishing anything. Really, this oneshot was something I simply had to write, since I've completely fallen in love with the Hartigan/Nancy storyline. God. It's just so bloody heartbreaking, yet beautiful, by turns. I simply love the pairing!

This story also seemed to write itself, since I had no intention in writing a Sin City story until a few days ago. Call it inspiration, but writing a rather mercenary, quasi-phantom Hartigan from Nancy's perspective was just too tempting to pass up! :D I'd love to write something about Marv and Wendy, but it would probably end up being rather angsty and tragic, which is my general writing fare. Maybe one day in the future I will. We'll see.

The sentence fragments and split infinitives are also done on purpose. I've decided to go against tradition, since something like Sin City feels exempt of that kind of thing. There's that, and there's also the fact that I'm just so tired of following the rules that some know-it-all group of dumbass scholars decided to throw together.

Alexandria is a city outside of Washington D.C., where a lot of real, dirty politicians actually live. As such, I decided to give Roark a residence there. I also wasn't for sure whether the Senator died or not in the graphic novels; I know that the Cardinal did, but I decided to off the Senator, too, since it seems fitting that Hartigan would silence him if he had to.

As for whether Hartigan is really there or not, I leave that up for everyone to decide. I mean, Nancy really could just be imagining the whole thing. But again, it's the reader's call.

Oh, and I was also inspired by Clemsou333's Hartigan/Nancy video. It can be found on YouTube, just as her song choice, Blaqk Audio's 'The Love Letter,' for the video is truly amazing, if not fitting for the overall context of Hartigan and Nancy's story.

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed reading this. Good or bad, please let me know what you thought of it! :D

Best wishes,

— Kittie