Author's Note: I've got 4 days to write 23 more femslash fics. Let's Do This!
Elle is halfway out the door of her current safehouse, packed suitcase in one hand and a fake passport in the other, when she feels her phone vibrate in her pants pocket. Seconds later, the device begins to sing Auld Lang Syne, and the blonde woman swears as she answers the incoming call.
"What is it, Sofie?" She doesn't bother to hide the impatience in her voice. She's itching to get to the airport, wants to be the first person on the plane, wants to be on the front lines working on their plan.
Sofie Fatale's voice is firm in her reply to her crass associate. "They're dead."
Elle's heart drops into her stomach. In her mind, she had just been in Texas with her target's neck snapping between her hands. She knows that she couldn't see it, but she looked forward to feeling the life escape her victim. The Franco-Japanese woman's statement was more sobering than a bucket full of ice water. "What the hell did you just say?"
Despite the barely concealed anger in Elle's tone, Sofie doesn't tremble when she repeats the news over the phone. "Beatrix and her daughter are dead."
"What happened?" Elle asks through gritted teeth. Her natural defense mechanism is already up after the shattering of her three month-long goal, so her words to Sofie are biting and sarcastic. "One of your people jumped the gun on the mission? Or did your phantom trigger finger get itchy?"
Elle can hear a lot of background noise on the other side of the conversation. Sofie's voice is clear and calm amidst the sounds of people shouting at each other along with sirens and the beeping of machines. "A drunk driver crashed into them while they were driving through Anderson county." She sounds mechanical to Elle, as if she's reciting words off a script. "They were both killed instantly."
"So someone else had it in for them." Elle hisses. Although she has no idea who could have gotten to Kiddo first, she begins to plot how to find them, and then how to most painfully destroy the person responsible for her death.
"I thought so at first," Sofie says, interrupting her thoughts. "But I've looked into every part of the driver's past. He has no connection to Beatrix, to Bill, even to Arlene Machiavelli."
Elle doesn't believe her. "Check him again," she orders. "Get him alone and interrogate him any way you can. But let me get down there to gut him myself."
"I can't do that, Elle," Sofie says. "He died from his injuries just before I called you."
The ugly, simple reality of the situation finally dawns on Elle. "So it was just an accident." Her knuckles grow white as she squeezes the phone. "A fucking accident."
Neither of the women speak for a few moments. "My flight to Los Angeles leaves in twenty minutes," Sofie says at last. "Am I still meeting you there to pick up the girl?"
Elle doesn't have an answer. What could she say, when months of planning and hope to end her greatest rival's life were snatched away from her by some idiot who had never heard of a taxi? And how could she think of flying out to California to pick up the kid?
Vernita's kid…
A scream of rage and disbelief climbs its way out of Elle's throat. The first casualty of the woman's fury is her cell phone as it flies across the room and smashes against the wall. Next goes an endtable, which is the closest piece of furniture to Elle's front door. Her fists pound the wall as she makes her way to where the televsision hangs on the wall, and when she reaches it the flatscreen falls to the floor and shatters.
Each thing she breaks has Beatrix's face, easy to imagine since that's all she's been able to see since she lost her sight. It will be hell to clean everything up and then relearn the placement of all the furniture, but she keeps destroying, killing, punishing, blaming.
Hours later, her voice spent and her hands bleeding, she lies on her side somewhere in her safehouse and starts blaming herself.
Elle Driver looked up from her magazine when the door to Bill's office opened. The woman that had entered the room had been stiff and on edge, her empty hands itching for a blade or two to defend herself in case of the worst. Now, after nearly an hour of sitting in an armchair and chain smoking her way through a pack of cigarettes, Elle saw the same woman leave looking much more relaxed, although still on edge, as though the walls might suddenly come to life and crush the life out of her.
Elle blew a cloud of smoke towards her face to get her attention. It worked. The woman's head turned in her direction, and the unattractive wariness that had occupied her face turned into the much lovlier expression of anger.
"Get that shit away from me," Vernita Green snapped. She placed a hand protectively over her belly, her t-shirt barely containing its roundness.
"So how'd the meeting go?" Elle asked, taking her cigarette out from between her lips. "You get permission to quit the squad like a good girl?"
Vernita glowered down at her. "I'm not willing to take any chances. Not after what happened with Black Mamba."
Elle laughed unkindly. "Don't flatter yourself, baby." She uncrossed her legs, resting her elbows on her knees."You wouldn't have been important enough for him to go after, even if you did go AWOL."
"Still," Vernita said, speaking softly, "keep your eye on him, okay? If it looks like he's going to try something, barge into my house with you and the others and shoot up my family, convince him to let it go."
Elle cleared some scraggly strands from blocking her shining blue eye with a sharp flick of her head. "The only thing you'll have to worry about," she said, "is me dropping in one day and giving your kid a fancy new knife for her birthday."
Vernita knelt in front of Elle, an expression of tenderness on her face that only looked good on this woman's face. "I love you," she said, and Elle snorted. "But if you ever come into my new life, I'll carve your bony white ass up and use it for a centerpiece on Thanksgiving dinners."
Elle put out her cigarette in a nearby ashtray. With her newly freed hand, she began to thread her fingers through the other woman's dreadlocks."I'm gonna miss your sweet talking," she cooed with only a hint of mocking.
Vernita took Elle's hand out of her hair, covering her white palm with her own two brown ones. "And if… she comes after me…"
The unfinished statement brought the same image into the two women's heads: a bleeding bride with a hole in her head, somehow still breathing. Elle leaned forward and forced her tongue past Vernita's pink lips and forced her to taste the cigarette she had just smoked. When they parted, Elle pressed their foreheads together and promised, "She will suffer until her last breath."