A woman with an over-developed sense of morality who was apparently immune to bullets.
Sometimes Reaver suspected that the universe had created her specifically out of spite towards him.
He'd experienced his first inkling of unease when she had returned from venturing into the Shadow Court, aged-but-not, furious and silent. Though he could see the years that the Shadow Court had eaten away from her, it was as if the premature wrinkles and lines were refusing to stick. An unsettling development. He'd congratulated himself on having the foresight to sell her out to Lucien… right up until Lucien began to attack.
Watching her cleave through a veritable army of obviously-brainwashed, over-equipped louts had given him his second inkling of unease. It had been a long while since he had encountered anyone who might actually give him trouble in a fight. Nevertheless, he'd determined that the advantage remained his. Magic was unpleasant and brute force had its place, but there was nothing quite like a bullet for stopping even the strongest and most eldritch of foes in their tracks.
Admittedly, he hadn't been in the best frame of mind for situational analysis at the time, but it seemed to prove his long-held philosophy correct when Lucien had shot her dead between the eyes. She'd crumpled to the ground in an anti-climactic heap. He'd actually been mildly disappointed. Not for her sake, of course, but because she had been his only possible avenue of escape.
His unease had crescendoed into something remarkably close to outright terror when she'd come back. With a ferocious scowl and a tiny white scar on her forehead, no less.
The blind fortune teller wasn't an overly appealing character herself, but he'd almost been grateful when she'd offered to send him anywhere in the world. He had gone to Samarkand, and had immediately resolved to stay far, far away from Albion until Whoever-That-Was was good and dead. He was fairly confident that she would remain conspicuous enough that word of her general activities and demise would reach him no matter where he went.
And if word didn't, well…
Even Heroes had trouble living indefinitely, especially when dark forces beyond their comprehension had shaved a healthy number of decades off of their lifespan already.
Of course, he had no intention of wasting his own ill-gotten decades on watching his back and remaining excessively alert. After abandoning Samarkand for the abysmally dull place it had proven to be, he'd worked his way into a neighbouring nation of a considerably more appreciable nature. Damarakis was little more than a handful of rebel towns, ports, cities, and wandering nomad tribes who were only united insofar as their hatred of Samarkand was concerned. They spoke a dozen different languages between themselves, but seemed to understand the universal language of 'do this or I will shoot you' fairly well, and therefor got along just fine with him (barring a few minor incidents not worth remarking upon). The nomads proved a bit too dour and far too focused on survival for his tastes, but one of the port towns he found managed to boast an impressive array of alcoholic beverages and mind-altering substances for such a small population.
Making a name for himself had seemed unwise at the time. So, to stave off the looming threat of his own boredom, he had partaken.
Excessively.
Possibly too excessively.
Following a two-month long bender of diversions ranging from delightfully perverse to just generally weird, he'd found himself in a tavern two cities over, wearing a slightly rumpled overcoat with magnificent embroidery on it; delighting or, possibly, terrorizing the local patrons by shooting targets on the dart board with his eyes closed. After the fifth shot (from the gun – there had been considerably more shots of the other kind) he had stumbled slightly, turned sideways, and found himself staring at a distinctly unhappy, female face etched with garish, glowing blue lines.
Presented with such an unlikely and alarming turn of events, he had gone along with his instinctive reaction – he had shot her.
Not in the head, sadly. There had only been a split-second for him to move, and not enough space between them for him to properly angle that kind of shot. He could have attempted to ricochet it off of one of the metal fixtures, but his present state of inebriation had made that endeavour less likely to succeed than usual. Particularly because most of the tavern was made of wood and stone, crumbling around the edges, and while he could instantly see the angle that would have accomplished the shot, he was not entirely convinced that the fixtures would cooperate with him. Shooting off wildly into the rafters only to have the bullet sink into some cracked, rusty corner and stay put would have been an unacceptable embarrassment.
So he'd shot her in the chest instead.
She had looked annoyed.
"Ah," he had said.
Then he had tried to shoot her in the head.
Unfortunately, it all went pear-shaped after that. One of the annoying things about belonging to an elite group of genetically gifted specialists, in Reaver's own personal opinion, was that it was a group. As in, there were people in it apart from himself, and they had an infuriating tendency to not die as easily as everyone else. One of the particularly annoying things was that Reaver really was a specialist, whereas his opponent happened to be more of a 'Jack-of-all-Trades' type, though without the 'master of none' corollary.
Phrased more succinctly, before he could fire off a second shot she electrocuted him, stabbed him, and then, possibly just for giggles, shot him in the thigh.
There was a chance that she had been aiming for his groin. In this particular instance, Reaver found himself desperately hoping that she was more competent than he gave her credit for. He wasn't entirely clear on how the immortality clause in his contract pertained to lethal injury, but he was almost certain that if he lost any parts, they would not be growing back.
"Wait," he said, as the tavern patrons fled around them in a veritable stampede of terror. "Wait, wait, wait – you don't want to kill me."
Primarily, he said that because he hoped it was true.
"Yes I do," the woman of his nightmares countered succinctly.
"But just think!" he argued. Thinking was infinitely preferable to murdering him on the floor of some seedy tavern in the middle of nowhere. "All those lives I've stolen, all those years you gave up-" possibly not the best starting point; her expression became notably darker, and he hastened to continue, "-if you kill me now, all of it will have been for nothing! Whereas if you let me live, there is a fractional chance that I might actually do something, er, astoundingly useful with that time. You know. Along the way."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Did you actually think that would convince me?" she asked.
He used the momentary distraction to shoot her in the neck, throw a chair at her head, and bolt for the exit.
Or, well. It was possibly more like an agonized limp towards the exit, given the extent of his injuries. But the sentiment was there. He almost made it, too, before something bright and terribly hot collided with his back, and magical flames engulfed his very nicely embroidered coat. Fortunately it wasn't belted, or else he never would have been able to struggle out of it in time. What followed was, quite possibly, the ugliest, most unpleasant fight of his entire life. He gallantly attempted to figure out just how many holes he would have to shoot into his terrifying assailant before she would finally go down, and his terrifying assailant attempted to gut him with a small army of magical swords.
By the end of it, the tavern was in ruins, and neither of them could stand.
"Are you dead yet?" he croaked out, staring up at the large, smouldering hole where the roof had been.
"No," she replied.
"How massively uncooperative of you."
There had been a sound, then. It had taken him a moment to place the sound as laughter; laughter as filtered through several cracked ribs and a gunshot wound to the neck, but laughter nevertheless. He wondered if it was hysteria. Or maybe she was just crazy. Most were, in some fashion or another.
"Well I'm glad someone's entertained," he grit out. It was the second greatest pain he'd ever felt in his life, even with all of the alcohol and unknown narcotics dancing through his bloodstream, and he wasn't relishing the experience. Unconsciousness would have been preferable, but he had a feeling that if he passed out, it would be the last thing he ever did. And, as always, his survival instincts trumped all. On the periphery of his vision, he could make out a few hesitant shapes, lingering by the large hole where the door had been. Tentative, skittish little sheep peering in at the wreckage, probably trying to figure out if he was incapacitated enough to rob, murder, or otherwise dispose of. He wanted very badly to fire off a warning shot – preferably through one of their skulls – but his pistol was lodged on top of a wine barrel several feet behind him, and out of bullets besides.
Probably better to be charming, then.
"If one of you fine people could rescue me from my obviously deranged assailant, I would be remarkably grateful," he said.
There was a pause. Some uncomfortable shuffling. But ultimately, nothing.
Useless imbeciles. He vowed to memorize the name of their miserable little town and burn it to the ground at the next available opportunity.
"I… I think… they've got you pegged… Reaver," the still-breathing woman on the floor across from him managed to gurgle out.
"Of course they don't. I was the life of the party before you arrived to spoil everything."
"You shot… shot three of them… before I got here."
"Really? I must be drunker than I thought."
The burns were the worst of it, he decided. Although the broken legs were really quite terrible, too. And the stab wound. And the bullet wound. Mustn't forget those, although the bullet wound, at least, had stopped bleeding quite so profusely. He wasn't sure if that was a sign that things were looking up, or a sign that he was running out of blood. Another horrendous, gurgling laugh from the other end of the room caught his attention. He spied movement.
"Can't…" the woman said, her throat wheezing and bubbling. "Can't drink… drink the potion…"
With some considerable effort, Reaver turned his head, and saw what she meant. A slim, apple-red bottle was clutched in one of her hands, undoubtedly pulled from the recesses of her ludicrously unfashionable jacket. Her attempts to drink from said bottle, however, were impeded by a broken hand and, of course, the bullet-sized hole in her neck, which she was perpetually clutching. Any normal person would have been dead several times over. But there she was, flopping on the floor, laughing at herself as she tried to futilely drink a potion.
A wry chuckle of his own escaped him. Of course, if she actually managed to succeed, he was doomed. So that dimmed his amusement a little. But still. Never let it be said that he couldn't appreciate the black humour in a situation.
Finally, after several more futile attempts at doing things the old-fashioned way, she got creative and dumped half of the potion onto her neck wound. Reaver watched in fascination; either she'd just drowned herself, or that was brilliant. Success was difficult to gauge, what with all of the blood everywhere, but after a tense half a minute, the bane of his recent existence sucked in a deep breath. Then she guzzled down the rest of the potion.
Oh, this isn't good, he thought, and began dragging himself desperately towards the nearest window. His sense of impending doom increased exponentially as the woman managed to get onto her feet.
He'd barely made it to the shattered ring of broken glass before her shadow fell across his face.
Facing death with dignity was for people with an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation, however, and so rather than turn and accept his ignominious demise, he jammed one of the glass shards into her ankle and tried to keep going.
Unfortunately, he couldn't hit with enough force to break through the leather of her boot, so the effort was more or less wasted. She hauled him – painfully – upwards, her gloved hands fisting in his shirt, and slammed him against the nearest wall. Bright stars of agony danced behind his eyes. The only upshot of it was that she wasn't putting any pressure on his broken legs; she and the wall were doing all of the heavy lifting. So. Silver-lining and all that.
She looked at him, and she was absolutely terrifying. That is a fact that he knew he would never be able to emphasize enough. Physically intimidating people were common enough, and she had that way about her, certainly. And the glow-y Will lines of magical origin were not to be undersold, either. The scowl was impressive. The eyes were uncanny. There was something about her that Reaver never could place, an eerie disconnection that made him think of porcelain dolls and wax figurines, as if someone had shut off the lights in the main house, so to speak, but then hung around to watch passersby from a shadowy front porch.
The bulk of the terror in the experience, however, was almost definitely derived from the very low odds that he would survive it.
He didn't want to die. Not in any fashion. Not by the slow march of time, and not by the grisly vengeance of some wronged Hero. The very thought cut him deep, deep down, to places long buried, and froze him solid with terror.
She was going to kill him.
She dropped him like a sack of used condoms. It was unbelievably painful, but as he was still alive to feel the pain, he counted it as a win. An inexplicable win, but a win nevertheless. As he attempted to writhe his way into a less torturous position, she placed something onto the floor by his head. The soft tink actually drew his attention, though only because some part of him was convinced that she had merely settled on a more creative way to end things. When he looked, the first thing he saw was red. Given the amount of blood painted across the ruined tavern, that seemed fairly anticlimactic; but then his eyes focused, and he realized it was a different shade of red.
An apple-red, bright and smooth, captured in a long-necked bottle with a stopper jammed into the top.
She looked down at him, still bleeding herself, the mark on her neck closing into what was sure to be a tremendous scar. And then she turned and limped out.
So.
She was insane, then.
Well, he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, no matter what brand of lunacy the gift-giver subscribed to. It was always the do-gooders that laid claim to the lion's share of insanity anyway. Hardly surprising. He grabbed the bottle, briefly considered the odds that it had been sadistically poisoned somehow, weighed them against his chances of getting out of that wretched little town alive without its help anyway, and then down it all in one gulp.
He almost thought it was poisoned, considering how painfully it managed to knit his flesh back together.
But potions couldn't splint broken bones, of course, and as he had no intention of spending the rest of his unnatural life limping around like a common cripple, he used the extra boost to retrieve his pistol from the wine barrel, and successfully terrified several of the locals into fetching him a physician. He kept an eye out for her, but she seemed to have spirited herself away overnight. Even questioning the tediously dull-witted imbeciles who had witnessed their impromptu little bar brawl yielded no results. Rumours were already starting to go around that she was some sort of supernatural avatar of divine justice, come to collect on his debt of ill-deeds.
Fortunately, he was able to spin that around to his advantage, at least; the story soon became one about how he had earned his life from the 'spirit of vengeance' by fighting so fiercely that he gained her respect. A few weeks of acting appropriately penitent and suave, and he practically had the entire town eating out of his hand.
The niggling little voice at the back of his head that said that their ludicrous stories might be closer to the truth than he'd like was summarily ignored.
When he was well enough to travel on his own without risking death at the hands of the first idiot band of brigands to try him, he left the town, lighting the main hall on fire and shooting the physician as his going away present. He didn't quite have the wherewithal to raze every single building to the ground, but he felt that the sentiment was nevertheless conveyed. Damarakis lost its charm fairly quickly, then. After a while, even rampant diversity and national contrariness got a little bit samey. And if he developed a tendency to jump at shadows – or, more accurately, any glint of blue light reflecting off of the blown glassware that was so popular – then it was only an understandable repercussion of not knowing where that accursed woman had gone.
In a bustling port city to the south, an appreciably open-minded ship's captain offered to give him passage to some far-off place called 'Aurora', in exchange for the pleasure of his company (and enough coin to cover the cost of food). Being back on the open sea reminded him of how utterly repetitive the experience could be. Water, ships, storms, pirates. Cramped quarters, terrible food, worse hygiene. A week into the voyage, and he had already relieved the ship of the burden of all extraneous crewmembers, including the open-minded (but increasingly clingy) ship's captain. The crew was suitably terrified of him, and then in awe of him when an enemy pirate ship attempted to make a go of things and volunteered for target practice.
He shot the pirates. They died. The lack of variety was depressing.
Unfortunately, that was only after the idiots managed to kill the navigator, and so the voyage was… side-tracked. After several months of drifting through calm and stormy seas by turns, with supplies dwindling and the necessities of cannibalism becoming increasingly likely, land was, at last, spotted.
The fickle mistress of fate had seen fit to blow their sails back towards unwelcome soil. Namely, Albion.
He almost hesitated to get off of the boat.
A/N: This is so old, I barely remember writing it. But I thought it would be fun to post.