CHAPTER 2

Despite Griffin's best efforts to track her after their first encounter, her Jumps were so few and far between that he had difficulty following her locations. Not only did her elusive behaviour bother him but he was infinitely more troubled that he couldn't forget about her. Griffin had no idea as to why he wanted her company. He was a lone wolf. He didn't play well with others. He worked better alone. And yet... He kept imagining what fighting at her side would be like and of the sheer number of dead Paladins they would rack up. He had lived alone for so long that the thought of a team seemed almost foreign. Of course, there was the time he had joined David Rice and that hadn't turned out well at all: he was stuck in that tower for weeks, not to mention the sunburn. But he was sure that this team up with Victoire wouldn't be a failure as she was such a talented fighter who didn't need babysitting and didn't seem driven by impulsiveness and an absurd need to protect anybody but herself. To his surprise, he noticed that his board full of pictures and sketches of Roland was becoming more and more cluttered by images of Victoire.

Victoire was having much of the same thoughts. She considered a team-up with Griffin. After having fought him, she had had a revelation. She blamed him for what she had become. She had turned into him; from the manic fighting that ruled her every waking moment, to the cold-hearted ruthless attitude, right down to the leather jacket she sported. Victoire realized that her hatred and dislike towards this man with whom she shared this isolated existence was becoming mixed with curiosity. She had learned a bit of tracking from some Jumpers in Tokyo and every now and then, she would see where Griffin was and try and find out what he was up to (although hunting Paladins was almost always the case). She did notice that he seemed to return to the South of England quite often where they had met. Victoire wondered if she had been imagining it. She tried to shift her focus from Griffin to other Paladins but somehow, he was able to wriggle his way into her mind more often than she was comfortable with. She still hadn't forgiven him for making her a killer, yet part of her wanted to thank him for making her stronger.

Victoire had been looking for a nice cottage to squat in near the wilds of Aspen, Colorado when she came across Roland Cox for the first time. She had been walking leisurely through the lush forest of firs and pines, casually looking into the sparse cottages she came across to see if they were vacant and if they were sumptuously furnished. She liked her luxuries. She came to an abrupt halt as a black man with white hair stepped suddenly around the corner of the nearest cottage. She eyed him, trying to assess whether he was another Jumper, a Paladin or maybe just the owner of the cottage. Before she could make up her mind, he spoke: "Jump here often?" So he was either a Jumper or a Paladin. She noted that he didn't wear the classic trench coat she so often saw the others wearing. It was such a giveaway.

"Do you?" Victoire asked in return careful to not let him back her up against a wall of the cottage or a tree.

"My first time here," the man replied, all affability, "I've never been here before but I've heard enough about it and thought I'd check it out."

It was then that Victoire knew he was no Jumper. You couldn't Jump to a place you'd never been to before or at least seen with your own eyes. Just looking at a picture wasn't enough either. Time and space was a static landscape in a picture and the fabric of time was always fluid: the two couldn't coexist. So he's a Paladin, Victoire concluded.

"And how are you finding it so far?" Victoire asked, playing along.

"It's lovely. Just look at that view," he gestured to the mountains that rose up beyond the trees. As if she was going to turn her head away from him.

Tired of wasting time, Victoire decided to Jump at him. She knocked him to the ground hard and pinned him down. Just as she went to draw her concealed dagger from her boot, she felt intense heat and pain sear through her thigh. She looked down to see the man had plunged a hunting knife through her leg. He took advantage of her stunned state and flung her off of him and into a nearby tree. Victoire shook her head to clear it after the impact with the tree trunk and opted to leave the knife in her leg. Pulling it out might sever an artery and cause her to bleed to death. She went to stand to ready herself for fighting but the pain was too great to put any weight on the injured leg.

Victoire let the pain take over as it caused her to focus on the Paladin. She Jumped at him again, this time with her dagger in hand and slashed at his midsection. He dodged out of the way and unstable as she was on one leg, her momentum caused her to fall into the branches of the tree behind him. She heard him laugh. She Jumped at him again, this time clinging to his jacket for balance while her other hand wielding the blade embedded itself in his shoulder. His hand found the knife in her thigh and he twisted the handle. The pain seared her and she made an involuntary Jump away from him with the knife still in her leg. She also still had her dagger.

The Jumper couldn't understand how this one Paladin was managing to best her. She had faced multiple Paladins before and they hadn't even caused her concern. She also realized how this man didn't use the electric devices favoured by the others of his kind. He's more the 'hands-on' type, Victoire realized. He likes to get his hands dirty. Fueled with rage, she flew at his neck as he grabbed her wrists and bent them backwards. Not enough to break them but definitely enough to cause her to drop her weapon. He flipped her over so that she was on her back.

Pinned to the ground, the man asked her, "Would you like to know how I killed your parents, little Eva?"

Victoire froze at the sentence and the sound of the name her parents had given her. The man smiled malevolently.

"You were sixteen when we found you. I'm really quite amazed you lasted that long. Most Jumpers are found far earlier. But your parents were careful, weren't they? Not letting you Jump if they could help it, moving you from town to town, trying to hide you. They should have known that the wrath of God would descend upon you. The unholy always get their comeuppance. I sent your wretched parents to Hell and that's where I'll be sending you. But before you go, just know that Roland Cox was the one to send you there."

At that, he placed his hands around Victoire's neck and pressed his thumbs into her windpipe. She looked into Roland's cold, dead eyes. Soon enough spots danced before her eyes and she couldn't even muster the concentration to Jump anywhere. Not even a few feet away. Her vision was going dark around the edges when she thought she heard her parents. She would see them at last. She closed her eyes and waited. Suddenly, she felt the pressure leave her as the voices got louder. Soon, hands were softly shaking her. Victoire knew it was her mother waking her the way she used to when it was time to go to school. Back when her life had been so simple. She eagerly opened her eyes, longing to see her mother's beautiful smile and loving eyes. To her immense disappointment, she saw a woman who was definitely not her mother though this woman's eyes were no less kind. They were also alarmed.

"Call an ambulance!" she yelled at the man who was crouching over her as well. The man pulled out a cell phone and dialed. He spoke frantically to the dispatcher on the other end. It was then that Victoire noticed how raw her throat felt as the woman told her not to move. The Jumper ignored the woman and sat up anyways. She gazed down at the knife protruding from her leg without really seeing it. She looked around sluggishly, taking deep rasping breaths. She couldn't believe how crushingly disappointed she felt to not have seen her parents. Roland had promised her she'd see them! At least with her death, she would be with them again. Even if they were in Hell, Victoire would have been satisfied to just be where they were. Instead, she had been brought back to life. It was a life she didn't want, a life where she was alone. Always alone. She was so tired of it; tired of fighting for her life. Why hadn't she been allowed to die? She had been ready for it, had welcomed it. Now even the luxury of death had been denied her.

She was taken to a hospital under a false name and her leg was looked after. She kept the knife, telling the doctors that it was a hunting accident. She figured Roland had run off when the couple had approached. On her hospital bed she was told that the couple that had found her had been the ones to own the nearby cottage. They had even come to visit her, bringing her some flowers, and she thanked them the way she knew she should. The way her parents would have wanted her too, when all she wanted was to lash out at them for ripping her away from a never-ending sleep.

She eventually healed and left the hospital without being discharged. She kept a very low profile while her leg healed completely, leaving her with a lovely, angry red scar to remind her how she, to her chagrin, had narrowly missed out on death.

Victoire vowed to kill Roland Cox. Kill him for taking her family from her and for not even granting her the mercy of dying. She would take his knife and make him beg for death before the end.

*********

It was many months before Victoire and Griffin met up again. They were both tracking Roland's movements and had discovered that he was hunting Jumpers in the rainforests of South America. Victoire had been on high alert while silently making her way through the underbrush, fantasizing about all the ways she was going to make him suffer. She heard a twig crack behind her and a rustling of some ferns. She quickly spun around, ready to fight, but neither saw nor heard anything but the mottled green light filtering through the foliage and exotic bird calls. As she turned back around to keep going, a man appeared before her and her arm recoiled and punched him in the face on instinct. The man hit the ground swearing, clutching his bleeding nose. Victoire noticed he was wearing dark jeans and a leather jacket.

"Sorry," she apologized before she could stop herself (sixteen years of being taught manners was not easily forgot, no matter how hard she tried), realizing she had hit Griffin. "But you know you really shouldn't sneak up on people like that." She made no move to help him up.

"Did you miss me?" he asked cautiously, testing the water, wiping the blood from his face.

"Not nearly. I had even forgotten of your existence," she told him with a one-shouldered shrug, aloof. It was the truth. She hadn't thought about him at all, what with the all-consuming hatred she had been harbouring for months after her little rendezvous with Mr. Cox. Now that Griffin was before her, she felt conflicted at his appearance. She despised him but she had to admit that she hadn't looked forward to facing Roland alone. Her embarrassment at having been beaten by him at their last encounter simmered just below the surface. She was also troubled by the fact that she could no longer deny she was indeed physically attracted to the rogue Jumper standing before her.

Griffin got up, dusted himself off and tried to staunch the bleeding with the sleeve of his jacket. He smiled tentatively and when she returned it – albeit with a frosty edge – he switched to a more self-assured personality.

"So. Come to like me, yeah?" he swaggered.

"Don't go getting conceited. I've come to merely accept your existence," she retorted.

"Fair enough," he conceded. He couldn't really ask for more than that. They continued to slowly pick their way further into the moist and muggy air of the rainforest.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, eyes narrowing at him.

"Looking for Roland Cox," he told her. That was partly true. When he discovered that not only was Roland in the jungle but that Victoire was as well, it was an opportunity not to be passed up. His time with her had been so short and now that he saw her again, it was as if the small spark he felt when he first met her had been rekindled. She just oozed confidence and danger and it was an immediate turn-on.

As Victoire ducked her head away from a low-hanging vine she vaguely recalled a Marvel Team-Up offer. She bit her lip, prompting Griffin to look at her alluring lips. She noticed him looking but said nothing. So long as he kept his hands to himself she wouldn't have to deck him. Did she dare take him up on his offer? A team was decidedly not her thing. She had no idea how to fight in a group and it was always risky. You had to trust the other person with your life. She didn't do trust.

She remembered how Roland had beaten her in Aspen as she felt the scar on her thigh through her pant leg and resolved to never let it happen again.

"Does your Marvel Team-Up offer still stand?" she asked him grudgingly.

He looked back into her eyes. "If you want it to," Griffin said, holding his breath.

"Then I accept," Victoire affirmed as Griffin visibly relaxed. "But only when we're looking for Roland and this still doesn't mean I've forgiven you for making me a monster."

He nodded but quirked an eyebrow. "What have you got against Roland?"

"Oh, you know, killed my family, didn't even have the decency to kill me too," Victoire brushed past Griffin. Griffin totally understood but said nothing, opting to follow the woman.