"That looks bad." The woman leaning against the wall, nice and relaxed, smiles without sympathy.
"No fuckin' kidding." He raises an eyebrow and stares at her. She's tall and well-dressed and looks distinctly out of place in the filthy alleyway. "Who're you, anyway?"
The flicker of hesitation is barely perceivable. "You can call me Dove."
"And what business do you have with Caduceus here, Dove?" He nods at the dead end that will, if walked into at the right time of the night, lead to a doctor's shop. The bricks are stained, with blood and muck and God knows what else.
"He killed my friend." Her smile doesn't change, but her stance does. She's ready to run.
The man with no eyes looks up towards the heavens. "Don't tell me – you killed him."
"I might have." The smile widens, just a bit. "He deserved it."
"That he did. Thing being, little lady, he was the one that fixed me up in the first place. Shitty job he did of it too, but I was thinking of forcing him to try again, style of the thing."
"I'm sorry." There is no penitence in her voice, or in her eyes, and she walks away.
She looks up at the sky. It is a muddy gray-brown shade, almost like the place she is travelling through. There is no elegance to it, no refinement, and yet there is beauty.
It's going to rain in a moment. She ducks under the umbrella of a randomly selected passerby. It's a girl with bright red hair and a fearless smile. Dove's heart twinges just a bit as she looks at that smile.
"You don't mind if I hitchhike under the shade for a while, do you?" Her words she accompanies with a boldly challenging glance, a bittersweet taunt. If the girl has ever considered homosexuality, she'll be fine, and well occupied for the night. If not, she's in for a slap.
"Of course not! Where are you off to, stranger?" The smile is coupled with a tilted eyebrow and a hint of lust about the eyes.
"Anywhere!" Her laugh is mirthless, but not empty. Almost regretful, the girl with the umbrella thinks.
"So, just out of curiosity, whose name will I be screaming out?" Umbrella-girl's expression is impish as she holds out the steaming cup of tea. Her umbrella has long been shaken off and stowed in a rack, and they are now in her apartment. It is cheerfully cluttered.
"You can call me Dove, darling. I might well ask the same question, though." There is genuine affection in her eyes.
"Sofia. I'm Sofia."
As they kiss, Dove's mind flies back to the girl she's left behind, the girl with the pirate smile and the name that so echoes Sofia's. Sophie, she was called.
Dove had always carried a candle for her, even though she knew in her heart of hearts that Sophie could never, would never reciprocate. That had been the one time anything had ever come between them. They had been inseparable.
Until, of course, Sophie got knocked up by some guy, and killed by Caduceus, the bungler.
"Do you have a phone, Dove?" The question sounds asinine, but they both know what it means. Dove gives her lover a long look before she answers.
"Yeah, I do. Want the number?"
"Hey, you're that girl! The one who killed Caduceus!" The speaker is male, American, young, wearing sunglasses and not wearing a shirt.
"I might be. Did I ever admit to killing that fuckwit?" Dove smiles. "I never got your name, by the way, oh-wronged-one."
"I'm Sanguine. Billy-Ray Sanguine. Who's the chick?"
The Chick, as she has been dubbed, smiles. "My name is Sofia Toil. You wouldn't be Sanguine the hitman, would you?"
"Yeah." He puffs out his chest with pride.
"And you got screwed over by Caduceus, the greatest idiot of all time?" Sofia raises an eyebrow.
"Uh. Yeah."
Sofia giggles, and Dove casts him a look.
It's evening in New York. They're back in that alley, Dove in a dark suit and Sofia in a white dress. They're just wandering, after the ceremony. They're blissfully happy.
They wander out of the alley, after having looked at it with grave eyes. The sky is gray again.
"The first time I met you, I thought of you as the girl with the umbrella and the beautiful smile."
"The first time I met you, I thought of you as the well-dressed wanderer. You were quite a paradox, for a moment. I thought you might have killed someone." She smiles that fierce, wondrous smile. "Turns out I was right."
"You were, weren't you? And this is the spot, isn't it? This is the road. There's the café, and here are the frightened, huddling people." Dove casts her wife a long, smoky glance, and then kisses her. When they have broken apart, Sofia laughs. The sound blends with the frenzied calls of the various birds, seeking their shelter. Dove cannot help but to smile, listening to her namesakes.
"And here is the rain."
A/N: I was flipping through Dark Days, and noticed a comment Sanguine made about a 'back-alley moron', or somesuch. Obviously, since I think in song lyrics, this reminded me of the line 'she was lost to some back-alley job' from Cyndi Lauper's Sally's Pigeons. This was a logical extension of the idea.
How Sofia wormed her way in, I have no notion.
~Mademise Morte, August 12