No One Takes Down Hit Girl But Hit Girl
Author note: Please stay with me. I'll do my best to make the payoff worth it. Dedicated to those who are lost and never found.
Mindy is telling this story to someone, much as Dave does during the movies. Still dedicated to Bubbles, Wind to thy Wings.
Dave woke up before me the next morning, got dressed and headed off to what I was hoping was school. I wished I'd woken up with him. I would have given a lot to know how he reacted to my arms being wrapped around him. So, I spent the morning puttered around, cleaning, re-organizing, and doing anything that didn't involve too much thinking. I was leaning over some stacked mats to get a power bar wrapper that had escaped at some point and dizziness put me on my ass again. As usual, I decided to ignore it. Then I turned around and saw stains on the couch next to where I'd clean up Dave's hands. The mixture of Dave's blood and the bastard's blood staining it had already faded to a dark red-brown. Once blood dried like that there was no getting rid of it; I didn't care what Tide and Oxyclean claimed.
That man was dead because Dave had beaten him to death. Dave killed him in a way that I rarely do. Cuts, swipes, dismembering, stabs through the chest, I specialized in those. I'd aimed gunshots to either disable or kill. And while I'd even tortured a few people, pedophiles and the like mostly, it still had been separate. I'd hurt them and then killed them. Two separate actions. Dave had mashed it all together. Especially when he said he'd checked if the guy was still alive and when he was, kept beating him. I'd generally have done some sort of coup de grace at that point. Put them out of their misery. I wasn't sure what to think about this side of Dave.
Well, it wasn't as if the bastard hadn't deserved to die. So I couldn't find it in my heart to feel any pity for him. I guess I was mad because in the end, the cocksucker had still won. I had no idea how many girls he'd destroyed but at least the number wouldn't get any higher. It should have been 'bad guy removed from street, world is a better place'. But it wasn't. It had cost Dave a piece of his soul to kill him. And if someone was supposed to pay that price, I'd have preferred that it was me. So as I said, even in death the fucker had still won.
Luckily Dave came home before I had wallowed too much. His hands were splinted and I had to help him unpack his book bag. He said he'd been by the ER and they had taken x-rays of his hands. There was nothing broken, thank god, just tremendous bruising to his joints. Then he had to pee and I had to help him unbutton his pants. His fingers worked but couldn't handle too much pressure or fine manipulation. I was going to tease him about turnabout being fair play, but the joke just froze on my lips when I saw his still dead eyes. He was able to manage the rest and changed into sweat pants afterward so he wouldn't have to worry about it again.
He started on his homework. I just sat and watched. Half the time he was working on problems, the other half of the time he just stared at his hands. I understood and gave him his space. The first time you kill someone like that will mess you up. When we went to bed that night, I tried to hold him again but this time he was just limp in my arms. Finally I rolled over and went to sleep.
Nothing really changed for the rest of the week. Dave would talk some but not about anything serious. He didn't even bring up my dizzy spells or gun issues. That shocked me. I figured he'd be all over that. Not a mention though. By Friday the bandages were off and his hands were pretty much back to normal. I went to try to plan the weekend with him and he just closed up. Spring break had snuck up on us and Dave had the entire next week off. I even suggested we take a trip together, do something fun, but he refused. He said he wasn't in the mood. So I mumbled at him under my breath "Pity Party, table for one." It was just loud enough for him to hear.
He exploded. "You heartless BITCH! I'm sorry that I'm upset over having killed someone in cold blood. I guess little miss perfect killer doesn't give a rat's ass who she murders. You don't care how much blood is on your hands. Hell, you probably fucking get off on it! I've seen you looking all excited after a big fight, especially if you managed to send a limb or two flying! Well, that wasn't what I fucking signed up for, OK? I wanted to help people. Not murder them! How the fuck do you sleep at night?"
Anger. Excellent. Anger I could deal with. I shot back. "You want to fucking help people? Then grow some balls Dave! If you can't handle the real work, go back to working at soup kitchens and finding lost fucking cats. I do what needs to be done. Some of the people we fight against are truly evil and deserve to be put down like the rabid dogs that they are. Zip-cuffing them up for the police to find isn't always enough. You may hate it, but you did the right thing Sunday night. You took an inhuman monster off the street." I was yelling but not actually that upset. This was the best conversation we'd had all week. He needed this.
"Who says you get to play God? To decide who lives and who dies?" He screamed back at me.
"Play God? Holy shit, Dave. You're fucking delusional. I don't get to make those decisions. If I did, Daddy would still be alive. Your dad would still be alive. And that poor dumb girl wouldn't have ended up dead and stuffed behind garbage cans. I fucked up and she died. If I got to play God, she'd be somewhere safe with people who loved her. They all would! But, she's dead and I have to live with it. That's a hell of a lot harder than living with the knowledge that that you killed some cocksucker who didn't deserve to take so much as one more breath on this planet."
"You don't understand! " He spat at me.
"Bullshit! Dave, I've been doing this longer than you have. My Daddy taught me that every one of us makes choices. Those guys chose to be criminals and scum. They decided to rape, to molest, and to prey upon the weak. They decided to be gangsters, drug dealers, and real murderers. You didn't murder shit; you put down a rabid dog. Those people kill because they like it."
Dave replied. "But I liked killing that guy!"
We both stopped for a moment, shocked by what he had said.
I replied back in a quiet voice. "No you didn't, Dave. You liked that he was paying for his crime. You liked that he suffered like he made that girl suffer and who knows how many others suffer. You liked that you got to be the instrument of vengeance. I feel that way all the time. But you didn't like killing and neither do I."
"How do you know?" He replied, responding to my voice and calming down.
"Because you care that you did it. Because even though he was a complete piece of shit, you still care. You've been torturing yourself about it all week. A real murderer doesn't feel guilt. Both of us feel guilt for what has happened. But sometimes it's necessary. And I just have learned to live with it a bit better."
"How?"
"Daddy helped me. The first time I killed someone and ended up covered in blood, I couldn't seem to get clean when we got back to headquarters. Daddy almost thought I was going to drown myself in the tub and I wouldn't stop scrubbing. Finally he ordered me out and had me come with him. And he showed me a different way to look at things.
"What did he do?" Dave asked.
"Well, it's a little childish. I was only 8 at the time."
"Still, how did he explain?" Dave persisted, like the story was some sort of life preserver.
"Dave, I was eight. It was silly." I looked at his eyes. "OK. I'll do just what he did." I threw an ace bandage at him. "Wrap that around your eyes and tie it." He did. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of kool aid packets. Then I grabbed some tape and a binder from one of the taller shelves.
"What are you doing?" Dave asked.
"Like I said, I'm doing what my Daddy did." I taped up a bunch of pages from the notebook on the walls of the bathroom and then led Dave in there. Then I put his hands over the sink and poured the packets of dry kool aid onto his hands.
"You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
"No. It's just a visual demonstration. Now, look down at your hands. Don't look up until I tell you."
"How can I look at my hands? I'm blindfolded."
"Point your head at them, dumbass. I'm going to take the blindfold off. Don't look up." He complied and I pulled off the bandage. "Do you see any blood on your hands right now?" I asked.
"Well, no." he replied. "But it's like I can feel it there."
"Fine. Wash them. "He did, and within moments of them being under the spray, every bit of water in the sink was bright red and his hands were stained with it.
"What the hell?"
"Cherry kool aid." I said. "I was 8, remember? It's not like Daddy was going to stick my hands in actual blood. Anyway, so how do your hands look now?"
"Stained" he said. I waited. "And… "I prompted. After a few minutes, he continued. "All right. They look bloody."
"Exactly. And no matter how hard you scrub, that won't come off for days. Kind of like your imaginary blood."
"I'm still missing the point of all this." he said, trying to get off as much of the stuff as possible.
"Don't worry. It'll make sense in a minute. Now look up." Surrounding him were pictures of missing persons, crime scenes, and other images of what happens to the victims of the things we try to stop. "Dave, we can't get the blood off our hands. We never will. But it isn't the blood of the scumbags. It's these people's blood. It is the blood of innocent people that didn't get saved." I reached up and taped up one more picture in front of him. It was of the girl from the alley. "I'll never get her blood off my hands because I could have saved her and I didn't. But I'll always feel a little better knowing that you cared enough to make sure the fucker who did it is gone. That's what Daddy showed me. I don't feel bad about the ones I kill Dave. I feel bad about the ones I couldn't save." I kissed him lightly on the cheek.
I'd accepted it. I still felt awful for not having saved her. But I'd learned with Daddy that I couldn't save everyone. No one could. Her face joined the menagerie that stared at me when I closed my eyes at night. The ones I hadn't been good enough for. And Daddy was in that group because I hadn't gotten to him in the warehouse in time. I never prayed. But late at night, when I couldn't sleep, I sometimes apologized to those that I hadn't saved and then tried to focus on those I had. It helped a little. I hoped this would help Dave to put things in perspective.
He tried to protest one more time. I cut him off.
"Dave, you wanted to know how I felt? How I could sleep at night? How I dealt with the blood on my hands? Well, take a look." I gestured at the pictures. "Because every time I fail, every time I don't do EVERYTHING that I can do, a person like one of these pays the price. I don't answer to God, the police, or the pieces of shit I kill. I don't even answer to you. I answer to them." I gestured at the flyers again. "And so do you, Dave. Neither one of us can wash this off." I held up my hands which I'd also dyed in the kool aid. "When I became a superhero, I accepted the responsibility to take care of them. You did too. All we can do is our best and accept the fact that it will never be enough."
He turned to me and kissed me softly with tear filled eyes. "Thank you." He said quietly. We moved out to the couch and sat down together. And, even better than me finally getting hold him, we held each other quietly for a long time, quietly mourning our loss until we could let it go for a while. Our breathing sped up and we looked into each other's eyes. Finally he spoke. "OK, how do we get this red crap off our hands?"
I laughed. "Time, Dave. In time it fades away."
"Well, if it hasn't faded much, we're going to look pretty silly on Monday when we go to the appointment to get your head checked out." He said conversationally. I looked up at him sharply.
"Appointment?"
"Yeah. That's why I haven't bugged you about the dizzy spells all week. I couldn't get you in until next Monday." He said.
"And when were you going to tell me?" I asked with a note of panic in my voice.
"Monday morning. Seemed safer that way. But I decided you should know now."
"I'm not going!" I managed to spit out.
He just hugged me closer. "Yes you are. And I'll be with you. You helped me face my demons; I'll help you face yours."
"But…" I tried to say.
He interrupted. "You just spent the last hour helping me understand what we really do. And a way to not lose my soul while doing it. You owe it to those innocent people to find out what's messed up in your head so it can be fixed. You're not going to start arguing with yourself, are you?"
"Fuck. I hate it when it my words are used against me. "I said.
"Then let's stop talking for a while. I ignored you all week. I have some time to make up for." With that, he began kissing me. It started as kisses of comfort but didn't take all that long to heat up.
"Dave, I love you." I breathed to him. I moved my hands under his waistband and began to touch him.
"I love you too." He kissed me some more, his hands also wandering. "But you're still not getting out of appointment."
"Damn it!" I said. But I didn't stop kissing him or touching him. Because he was right and I needed to see that doctor. No more avoiding problems.
Plus, by then he had gotten most of my clothes off and it was strangely erotic watching his cherry red fingers pinch my nipples. And then he slid them down my stomach and under the elastic at the top of my panties. After that, I wasn't arguing with anything at all.