Author's Note: This story is a test to see how well I can write angst and/or tragedy. This story is not cannon to my other stories and is not as kid-friendly. Reader discretion is advised.
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Red X adjusted his grip on the lock picks ever so slightly, manipulating the last tumbler into place. He was rewarded when the previously locked doorknob clicked and pivoted on its hinge. After that, Red X simply grabbed the doorknob, turned, and entered the next room as silently as he had entered the last one, and left behind no trace. He even closed and relocked the door behind him.
Red X had come here, to Trusted Heart Memorial Hospital in Jump City, for his own purposes, the same purposes he ever went anywhere at night nowadays.
An old retired widow had found her way into Trusted Heart Memorial Hospital for some sort of heart disorder. As a result of her paranoia, which Red X wasn't going to help, the old bat had taken all her beloved jewelry with her to the hospital and kept it all stuffed in a jewelry box.
And Red X had nothing else better to do on a Friday night like this.
Trusted Heart Memorial Hospital wasn't by any means a large hospital. It was actually rather small as far as hospitals went. That's probably why the paranoid widow with the jewelry picked such a small and relatively secluded hospital for treatment, Red X figured.
Unfortunately, Red X couldn't simply crawl through her bedroom window while she slept and rob her. He had cased her the night before, as all smart thieves do, and saw her placing several jingling bells on the window, attached via Scotch Tape. Paranoid, but smart. It would be difficult to cut through the window and remove the bells without their annoying jingle awakening the old lady
He'd have to make his way to her elsewhere through the hospital in order get to those tantalizing rocks in the old lady's box. Which was just fine with Red X, might even be fun.
A little research had told the super-thief that a room in the psychiatric level below should be open and thusly a decent entrance point. It had been easy to enter the room, and use an optic cable peek under the door frame and find that the psychiatric level was unoccupied, other then the occasional coffee-deprived intern who made rounds every so often to make sure all was well.
After an intern in blue scrubs passed by and returned to his desk, Red X waited a moment before putting away the optic cable, opening the unlocked door, and entering the hallway.
Afterwards, he stealthily crept behind the poor intern and gave him a dose of knockout gas. Red X found humor in the fact that this was probably the most sleep the poor intern had gotten all week.
The rest of the psychiatric level was relatively empty. Red X did, however, have to stealthily knock out a security guard with a swift chop to the neck.
After carefully laying the guard's unconscious body aside behind a desk, he crotched close to the ground and began to quietly make his way for the door that led to the stairs.
From there he hoped to ascend the stairs to where his target was and face any remaining challenges upstairs.
Click.
Well, that's probably not a sound I like., Red X thought. The sound had been the trademark click of a gun, the hammer locking back into place and ready to fire.
Red X froze instantly but kept his cool. He slowly turned his head around to spy at whoever must be holding a gun at him.
A lady, slightly older then middle-aged and wearing your standard-issue hospital gown - the kind with a backside -, stood behind Red X with steady footing and steadier hands. Her hair, a light blonde that had perhaps once been dazzling, was now a frizz of split ends and desperately needing conditioner. Her face was just a little wrinkled, like old waterlogged leather, and her skin had an unhealthy pastiness as if it hadn't seen the light of day in ages. Her lips were curled tight as her eyes fixated a death glare on Red X, as if the object of her hatred was specifically that thief.
"You…", she slowly spit out with malice.
"I don't suppose you're here to complain about bedpans, huh?", Red X responded with a joke, a comical reaction that had quickly become second nature to him.
"Do you have any idea who I am?", she asked, still with enough spite and hatred to coo Hannibal Lector to sleep as a child.
"Not really.", Red X said coolly as he rose from his crotched position on the ground, his cape draping around his thin frame. "You wanna tell me?"
"You ruined my life." The lady gulped as she tighter her grip on the handle of the pistol.
"Oh? And how did I do that?" Red X wondered where she could have gotten the gun. Had she smuggled it in here when she was admitted to the small hospital? Or did she steal it off the guard that he had just knocked out? In the end, it didn't matter. He'd figure it out later after she was disarmed and in nap-nap land.
"You robbed me!"
Red X paused for a moment. "You'll have to be more specific then that.", he said in a deadpan tone.
"You don't remember me?", she asked while her head tilted lower to stare at him more menacingly.
"Should I?"
She half laughed and half scoffed, as if she should have guessed that Red X was that despicable. "My name is Marie Conner.", she said with an unstable smile. "Recognize me yet?"
"Marie Connner…", Red X mulled over the name in his mind. "Marie Conner… Sounds familiar, can't quite place it though."
"Let me spell it out for you then…"
-X-
A good while ago.
Jump City had recovered from Terra's and Slade's overthrow of the city, and their subsequent demise. The H.I.V.E. Academy had just stepped in to fill the power vacuum, and had already been dealt a blow by Cyborg's infiltration.
Widow Marie Conner had just tucked herself into bed and was about to turn off her bedside lamp.
The only other resident of the apartment was a lazy and spoiled cat named Priscilla, who received all the love and care a human child might receive. The cat had been named after an old friend of Marie, a friend who hadn't been around in a very long time.
A small picture frame rested facedown on the far end Marie's nightstand. The picture hadn't been lifted back up on display in some time. It would have gathered a layer of dust on its backside, if Marie hadn't been so obsessive with keeping her small little world impeccably clean.
The picture was of a man and a young man. The first and taller man was just slightly older then her, and the young man was no older then Red X himself.
Of course, that picture had been taken years ago, and both men were older. Both men had moved on with their lives, and Marie Conner knew in her bones that they didn't think of her nearly half as much as she thought of them. Or at least that's what she told herself to keep away the ulcers and other things that ate away at her stomach every day.
She hadn't talked to those two men, her ex-husband and disowned son, in a long time.
Tonight, as she did almost every other night, Marie Conner only glanced at the facedown picture and gave it no further thought. It had been a tough day at work.
She worked at some daycare service, displaying all the kind affection left in her too those children and to her cat.
She didn't realize it, but showing such kindness and taking care of small children was a vice. It was her way of validating that she was a good person. After all, who else except for horrible people could forsake a woman who children loved and adored? So that must mean that her family must have been the horrible ones who lied to and left her.
It must have meant that she didn't push them away.
Yep. That's what she always told herself, to keep her from braking down.
Marie Conner sighed heavily and called forth for her cat to come and lay down with her in her bed.
Of course, the spoiled cat didn't come, and Marie got up and brought the cat into the bedroom herself.
With the cat placed in Marie's favorite spot for it, on the pillow next to her own, Marie tucked herself back into bed and snuggled her five layers of blankets.
She reached over and turned off the lamp on her bedside table, and bathed her home in comfortable darkness. Eventually, she fell asleep while petting her cat.
She did not worry for her safety at night. Five different locks on the door, two on each window, and a security system all bought her peace of mind.
Or so she thought.
-X-
It had been nearly two weeks later when she realized she'd been robbed.
A simple vanilla envelope had been placed on her doorstep one day. Inside had been her engagement and wedding rings, and every cheap trinket ever bought by her once-adoring son.
But how can that be? All her jewelry was always safely stashed in a small chest in the back of her closet.
Quickly, she darted from her front door and into her bedroom. She opened her closet and opened the chest.
Inside, the chest was completely empty.
Normally, the chest held jewelry that had been passed down to her by her own late mother, jewelry that had been given to her by her ex-husband, and cheap plastic trinkets that her son had purchased for her over the course of his adolescence.
It wasn't all that uncommon for bitter old hags like Marie Conner to have stashes of jewelry from past social lives that no longer had any use. Like sparkling ghosts.
But there were no sparkling necklaces or glimmering rings left in her chest. None. Not a one.
She had been robbed.
And Marie Conner wouldn't have ever known her cherished memories had ever been touched, if she hadn't received some of them back in the mail.
She clutched the envelope of the most sentimental pieces, which her violating thief had been kind enough to return.
Then she called 911.
Police soon arrived.
And Marie Conner watched nervously as investigators probed her clean and once-private household.
She tried not to wonder if she had accidentally cleaned away a vital piece of forensic evidence.
The investigating police officer approached her and asked her the usual round of questions, and none of Marie Conner's truthful answers seemed to be much help.
The investigator asked her if he could examine the envelope and returned jewelry, for any evidence the thief might have left behind. Marie gladly agreed on the condition that every last piece would be returned undamaged. The investigator agreed.
Then the investigator told her that there had been a rash of break-ins and thefts of all kinds. He told her that the Teen Titans had recently identified the mystery super-thief as calling himself Red X.
She asked him what had happened to her jewelry. The investigator told her, judging by how long ago she was robbed and how quickly this super-thief worked… Her jewelry was probably already long gone. Disassembled, and sold off.
-X-
Now.
"So… I robbed you and that got you here how?", Red X asked.
"I'm not done with the story yet.", Marie Conner, the older lady holding the gun at Red X, said firmly.
"Doesn't it count that I sent back all the sentimental stuff?", X asked.
"They were all sentimental! There was a necklace in there that was from my mother!"
Red X looked off to the side awkwardly. "Well… The really sentimental stuff anyway."
Marie didn't look amused. "As I was saying…"
-X-
Then.
Marie Conner sat on her bed, leaning against the headboard, while hugging her knees close to her body. She hadn't taken a shower in a while, and it was evident in her frilling hair.
She wanted to leave. She didn't feel secure in the apartment she had once hoped to herself be a fortress.
But she couldn't stay with what used to be her family. The last time she tried to visit, she was thrown out quit rudely for wanting nothing more then to reconnect with her loved ones, and they disowned and threw her out once more.
Or at least that's what she kept telling herself, even as her cell phone logged the five unread voicemail from her son and two from her ex-husband.
They wouldn't have me. They don't care. They left me.
Keep telling yourself that, Marie Conner.
See what kind of sleep it brings you.
-X-
All it had taken was an inevitable bump in the night, to frighten Marie Conner.
Perhaps it had only been the building creeping and shrinking in the cold night air that caused the bump.
Or perhaps it was Slade himself stealing into her home to have his way with her. Then kill her cat.
Marie quickly grabbed the steak knife she kept by her bedside now, and got out of bed with the knife cocked in front of her and ready to stab anything she saw that she didn't like. For all the good it would do against someone like Slade, anyway.
After three complete searches of her apartment, and half an hour, she was finally satisfied that maybe she was alone after all. But she didn't go back to sleep.
In the morning she received a phone call from her supervisor at the children's daycare she worked at. The woman, a kind and gentle soul of course, asked Marie if she felt better and would be returning soon.
And Marie was happy to finally return to the loving embraces of the children, who's juices she prepared and who's videos she plugged into the TV. Even though Marie now regarded everyone as a possible criminal in disguise; criminals who perhaps meant to harm such children.
It got out of hand when one curious little girl looked in Marie's purse, withdrew Marie's steak knife, and ran off to play with the other little kids with it.
Horrified, Marie quickly snatched the knife from the little girl who thought it was nothing more then a shinny toy sword.
And, of course, the little girl told her father about it when he asked her, "How was your day, cutie?"
And another mother heard a similar story when she asked her son and his favorite action figure, "So did you and Tron-Man have a good day?"
Marie Conner made several apologizes, suddenly feeling helpless or like a victim even more, and her kind supervisor told that maybe she should rest up and stay away from the daycare a bit longer.
Meaning, Marie was laid off if not fired. Or at least that's what Marie heard when her supervisor told her to take a longer vacation.
Ever fearful and now panicking over whether or not she could afford her next rent, she desperately scratched her mind for answers.
If she was still in contact with her family, she might ask them for help. After all, a son should help to look out for his mother, shouldn't he?
She picked up her cellular phone and saw another three missed calls from her son, and gritted her teeth in annoyance. When the phone began to ring in her hands, the Caller ID telling her it was her son again, she howled in a rage and threw the phone at the wall. The phone broke against the wall and the pieces fell to the floor, which hadn't been vacuumed in a long time.
Marie Conner felt no need to clean her home if a burglar was going to invade it again.
-X-
Knock Knock Knock.
The sound of knocking on her front door woke Marie Conner from the only uneasy sleep she had all week. She grabbed her now coveted steak knife, and walked to the door with the knife tightly gripped in her hands.
"Who is it?", she asked to the door, which now sported two new locks to make a total of seven.
"Your son.", a slightly stoic but still very concerned voice said from beyond the door. It had been years since the down turned picture of him on Marie's nightstand had been taken, and since then he had grown into a young man and successful for his relative young age.
"Kenn? What are you doing here?", she said in a high-and-mighty fashion, as if he had no right to even look at her front door.
"I came to make you're alright. You haven't answered any calls, and you haven't been to work in nearly two weeks. I called and checked." While her son really was genuinely concerned, a childhood with Marie Conner had taught him to regard his mother with a sort of cautious firmness. That, and more then a little bitterness that he still wrestled to get rid of, even today.
"Haven't gotten your messages.", she lied to him. "What do you want?"
"You need help. I'm here to help."
"I don't need your help.", she said to him through the door.
"Open up, will ya? I'm not standing out here in the hallway forever."
"Then go back to work with… With… Satan!", she ordered.
"If by 'Satan', you mean Dad, he sends his concerns too.", her son said, not at all surprised.
"Then why isn't he here too?!"
"Because of the restraining order you put on him.", her son said half matter-of-factly and half accusingly.
"Leave me alone."
"You need help. The very least you need is a big fat rent check pretty soon and you know it."
Marie paused and didn't say anything.
"Let me in. I want to talk.", he said, pushing extra effort into sounding gentle and kind.
He was rewarded with the clicking and swirling sounds of his mother unlocking the barrage of locks on the other side of the door.
She opened the door about a foot and allowed her snarling face and frizzing hair to great him. "There. Happy now?"
"Plenty.", he said sardonically, gripped the edge of the door, and opened it more so he could enter. "Whoa.", he said quietly to himself when he saw her holding the steak knife ready. "Mom… What's with the knife?"
Marie backed up and held the knife up for inspection in her tightly balled grip. "It's in case I have to stab anyone."
"I'm your freakin' son.", he said. "Put the knife down. Okay?"
"So?! Son's attack their mothers all the time! It was just on the other night on Dateline!"
Her son rolled his eyes off to the side. "Don't tell me you watch that stuff…" He looked back at her strait in the eyes. "Not every son is a serial killer or had half his brain removed in the Artic, then comes back to blame the mother.", he said, enjoying his sarcastic summery of what, for all he knew, was the show's fifth season. "Those kind of things just don't happen that often."
"People don't get robbed by Red X that often! Some punk kid dressed in a costume.", she said while she adjusted her grip on the knife so that both hands were tight around the hilt.
Her son paused. Then he spoke somberly, "I thought that might'a been you I heard about on the news." The time for enjoyable sarcasm was over for now. "How ya holding up?"
"I'm fine.", she said stubbornly.
"Then put the knife down, okay?" He approached her slowly with careful hands resting at the level of his belt.
Marie continued to stare and hold the knife steady.
It was apparent to her son that his mother had now gone off the deep end again, a place she went so often he thought she should have a condo there.
He slowly approached still, hands slowly inching closer to her hands. "Okay? It's okay.", he said to comfort her.
Sarcastic and at times callous her son might be towards her, but not coldhearted.
His hands reached hers and gently gripped her hands.
"NO!", she shrilled in panic as she took a step back, broke her hands from his gentle gripped, and slashed the knife at whatever it could reach.
"Agh!" Her son quickly darted backwards, but not in time to avoid an awkward cut to his wrist. He quickly examined the wound, nothing serious, just a deep scratch.
She lunged forward at him, or perhaps at the door, and her son lurched to the side and then sent a hard uppercut to his mother's stomach.
For a son like him growing up with a mother like Marie, optimism and logic became his way of rebelling when he was a teenager. He had stayed fit, in shape, sharp witted, and swift. Ugly as it might have been, dealing a blow like that to his own mother's abdomen had been a simple, and slightly enjoyable, task.
Marie Conner doubled over and slumped onto the floor on her knees, the wind completely stolen from her lungs by her son's fierce blow.
Her son stood looming over her, but made no gestures or thoughts as to further attack. He simply stood and waited for her to regain her senses. Then he carefully squatted down next to her and held out his hand. Lovingly, he said, "You'll be alright. Give me the knife, okay?"
Marie quickly darted off through the open door of her apartment, her knife still in hand.
Her son hesitated only a second before deciding to sprint after her.
Marie Conner lived on the first floor of her apartment complex, because she was scared of tall man-made objects. Didn't trust people to do their jobs right and make a safe building from above the second floor.
She quickly reached the apartment lobby with her son hot on her heels, screaming, "Help my son's trying to kill me!"
"I'm not trying to kill anybody! I just want to talk!", he'd yell back.
She picked up a phone left pleasantly on a table in the lobby and dialed 911.
The next few minuets were a blur of shouts, pleads, and confused rants. Marie desperately screamed into the phone while holding her knife while her son stood in a standoff and tried to talk her down.
Soon, police arrived and wanted to know exactly what was going on.
Marie said he was trying to kill her, while holding a steak knife.
Her son eagerly told the police that his mother was having a breakdown, and displayed the "defensive wound" on his wrist.
It didn't take long for the police to decide the yelling lady with the steak knife might be a bigger threat then the younger man with a cut on his wrist was.
Pistols were drawn and the police ordered her to put the knife down.
After a few pleads and yells… Marie Conner eventually cooperated and put down the knife. Then she was arrested.
-X-
"Eventually they released me into this hospital…", Marie said with her stolen pistol still brandished and tightly gripped in her steady hands. "And here I am… Because of you!"
Red X stood tall and firm, his cape draped around him.
He wondered how much more ranting it would take before this crazy woman woke a patient up, or until another medical personal arrived to do normal rounds. But, there was no one around. It was just the thief… And his victim.
"They said I needed help.", she said spitefully. "Needed care. Do I look like I need anything to you?!", she screamed the last sentence.
Red X narrowed his eyes a little, and firmly said what he had wanted to say all night… "Shut the hell up."
Then, in that moment when Marie Conner might have contemplated a surprise… Red X made his strike!
His right hand burst from out of his cape and grabbed the barrel of the pistol, pushing it aside so that he was out of the line of fire.
The move had taken barely a blink of an eye, and it took just another blink for Red X to jam his index finger between the gun's hammer and the firing pin.
Red X had been slowly inching his way closer to her the whole time she had been ranting, close enough to safely grab the gun.
Marie Conner gasped and pulled away, but was tugged short by Red X's firm grip on the gun, as firm as hers.
And with one swift motion, and a supreme amount of satisfaction, Red X ripped the gun out of her steady grip. His finger under the hammer prevented it from discharging.
His left hand shot forward, grabbed her up by her gown, and wrenched her forward to him without a shred of mercy or compassion.
He looked at her, eye to eye, face to mask.
She snarled at him like a wild beast and swung her arm to hit his shoulder with her weak and tired arm. She hit him again. And a third time.
"THIS ISN'T MY FAULT!", he yelled in her face.
Marie stopped for a moment, stunned by the volume and by the statement.
Red X relaxed his grip and moved her a bit away from him. "Yeah, I robbed you! I admit it! But from the sound of things… You screwed up your own life way before I ever got to you!" He let go and threw her back a few feet, and she stumbled and wobbled to stay atop her feet.
He lowered his arms and tossed aside the gun.
"NO!!! NO NO NO! It was you!", she screamed.
"Then where's your family, hot shot?", Red X asked with a cruel sense of calm.
"You did this to me!"
"You ruined your own life."
"You did!"
"You brought a knife to a freaken' day care!"
"To protect myself from you!"
"I never hurt you. I robbed you. I stole some shinny rocks and then gave back the ones that should have mattered to you!", Red X pointed out.
"Your fault!", she screamed, as if not listening to X.
"Where are they?! Where's your family, you annoying old bat?! If they're smart, they're at the police station, right now, and making sure a restraining order gets filed against you."
Marie Conner sobbed, clenched her fists with her arms folded against her chest, and gritted her teeth into a look of painful agony on her face. "You…", she whispered.
"No…", Red X said, finally starting to pity her. "You.", he told her anyway.
Then he spun on his heel, his cape waving about his legs, and began to walk off. "I'm leaving now before you wake up everyone in the morgue."
Marie gasped for air past her sobs and tears and clenched body. Then she shot out across the floor, half tripping, and grabbed up the gun Red X had thrown aside.
Stupid. Red X berated himself for at least not disarming the gun first as he turned around to face her again.
Marie held up the gun and pointed back at Red X, barely just a few feet away from him, half knelt awkwardly on the hospital floor.
"You can't kill me!", he shouted quickly to pierce her clouded reasoning. "It's not a clean shot. You'd be taken to the slammer for murder."
"You hit me!"
"I pushed you. Get your story strait." Red X slowly pushed his arm out of his draped cape, and then quickly pointed the palm of his hand at her. The crimson x in his palm glowed in warning. "Drop the gun, or I drop you. And I'm pretty sure your gown isn't bulletproof like my costume." He half lied, from this distance a shot to the head might at least knock him out.
Marie gritted her teeth and clutched the guns handle.
"Bulletproof…", X said slowly and half-teasingly. "You can't kill me. Drop the gun and I walk away now. Deal?"
Marie inhaled sharply as she backed away onto her feet again, and pressed the end of the gun's barrel against her temple. "If I can't kill you, I'll kill myself! You did this to me!"
Red X blinked with slightly wider eyes. This lady couldn't be serious, could she?
"I'll do it! Oh, I'll do it! And it'll be… ALL YOUR FAULT!", She yelled again.
"I ain't the one holding the trigger.", he said as he lowed his hand.
"Your fault!",
"NO!", Red X said as he clenched his formerly glowing hand into a fist. "Get it through your thick skull!"
Marie was still awkwardly knelt against the floor, holding the gun to her temple. Sobs. Sharp inhales and exhales through the sobs. Tears down her tired cheeks.
"I got a lot to answer for!", Red X said somberly as he lowered his own fist.
Marie seemed to perk up with interest, and sobbed again.
"I've robbed people! Conned people!", X said half looking away. Then he looked back at Marie with a sense of resolve. "But I've also saved this stupid city and dealt with more idiots then I'd like to ever have to see again! And I'll tell you one thing I'm not responsible for!"
Marie sobbed with her gun.
… "You."
"What?"
"You messed up your own life way before I ever got to you."
"You robbed me… I can't do anything anymore! I'm scared! Because of you!"
"Scared women don't point guns. Desperate ones do. Quit whining.", Red X said with sneer and turned her back to her. "The only reason for you to blow your brains out now is because you don't even have enough of a spine to fess up to your family that you were a nag and you know it."
And then, with a strange sort of coldness, Red X began to walk off.
Marie watched him walk off, shocked.
"I live with what I've done every day, I'm not fooling anyone." He said. "I'm a thief. And just, a thief."
Marie dropped her gun, and it hung loosely in her weak arm, which lay limp on the floor by her knee. She hung her head and began to cry. Now lost beyond words, beyond reasonable thought. She was completely enslaved by her own sorrow, her own bitterness, and her own self-pity.
Which really wasn't any different then before Red X had robbed her. Only now nothing could cover it up.
Red X told himself to keep moving, to get out of there as soon as possible. One step, and then another.
Marie Conner cried. Kneeling over on the floor as she sobbed.
One step. Another step. Red X slowly walked off, making no effort to disguise the sound of his footsteps echoing through the empty hallway.
Marie cried… She thought about her son. And her husband. And the gun.
Red X walked. His back turned. "Ya know, for what it's worth…", he said, feeling a hint of remorse.
BANG!
Red X froze in mid-step, his eyes wide.
…
No…
She couldn't have been that stupid…
No…
He slowly turned his head around and looked over his shoulder, his muscles clenched.
Marie Conner was dead.
Her body lay across the floor, with the gun loosely in her hand next to her head, and blood pooling onto the floor.
Red X was stunned. Utterly, stunned. "No… You…" He managed to fully turn to Marie's body, his hands held out at attention but with nothing to do.
The gunshot had reported throughout the hospital. Other security guards had heard it. Patients woke up from their sleep at the report.
Red X had knelt next to Marie's body. "You idiot…", he said as he reached out and held her other hand in his own gloved hand. "You raging idiot…" He hung his head low.
And he grieved.
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Author's Note: I'd like to apologize to my fans for how long it's taken me to give you an update of any kind. But I promise I have lots of stuff on the drawling board, this little story having been one of them.
This was my first time trying to write a tragedy, and I wanted it to be deeply physiological, as I demonstrated with Marie Conner's life and how she reacted to Red X's theft. I hope I did well.
Again, this story is not cannon to my other stories.
And to anyone who might understand what Marie's life is like, or who has a mother like her, or knows someone like her… You have my sympathy, and my empathy.