WARNINGS: mentions of shooting, kidnapping, people undergoing surgery and murder. Nothing graphyc.
3 (IV).
"Lola, here. How can I he-".
"I was passing by the Umbrella Academy and I heard shots!" a restless Diana tells her, sounding like she's suddenly developed asthma.
"Why on earth were you even there?". It's Marben's turn, to get worked up. Diana, however, seems to think she's the only one entitled to be scared, and makes it known by loudly screeching through the phone.
"I don't owe you an explanation!".
Marben jerks the handset away from her ear and mentally curses, forcing herself to calm down.
"…yeah, sorry. It's just that…those idiots bring trouble wherever they go and-".
"It's alright, I know you worry" Diana reassures her, in a suddenly conciliatory tone. "Lately you've been overdoing a bit, though. You sure it's not some sort of delayed maternity blues?".
"There's nothing wrong with my hormones, D-Bette. I'm fit as a fiddle".
"If it's your very fiddle we're talking about, then your health's integrity must be more endangered than Greta's last glimmer of bisexuality. You haven't played Ramesses II in years".
"Are you okay?" Marben hisses through clenched teeth, ignoring the reference to Lear's sexual orientation and her own violin's nickname alike.
"Of course I am!" huffs Diana. "I took cover right away, and even managed to see who fired: it was the two Uruks I stumbled upon this very afternoon!".
"One hundred percent sure?".
"Yes! A huge guy and a lady, both wearing cartoon masks over a suit and a tie…I couldn't se their faces, but I would have recognized the broad's bodice and heels among a thousand!".
Marben furrows her brow and shifts her weight from a foot to the other.
"…right. Overlooking the fact that you took a moment to dwell on an enemy's boobies…".
"Come on, who wears a bodice and heels during a home invasion?" Diana points out.
"That chick, apparently" sighs Marben, tiredly massaging her forehead with her free hand as she feels she's getting a headache. "Anything else?".
"Yes. The guy came out first, dragging along something heavy I didn't see clearly, and left in a blue car. The lady showed up after a bit, looked around, said a lot of bad words and then limped away".
"You made sure nobody followed you home, didn't you?".
"I'm not at home yet, I stopped halfway there to call from a random phone booth!" Diana urgently replies, and Marben allows herself a sigh of relief.
"Bang-up job, then. You know why? Because now we know that My-Tess' theory was correct, the four Dunlendings in the morgue were indeed working for Isengard, and most importantly, these two nut jobs aren't here for us! Isn't this a simply wonderful evening?".
"It will be, if you deign to come and help me with Mr. Blake, sunshine" grunts a familiar voice as a big, freckled hand lands with a slap onto the telephone's hook, breaking the line. Marben flinches and makes herself small when her gaze meets the Aspiring Chief of Medicine's furious one.
"Sorry boss, it was a matter of life and death". 'Literally', she thinks.
"My apologies, nurse Sexy Mama, but this too is a matter of life or death" he replies, embracing the entire intensive care unit with a wave of the hand he has removed from the phone.
'The call had nothing to do with my children', Marben thinks to clarify, but she then realizes it would only make him angrier, and decides it's better not.
"Yes. Right" she just says, and slamming the phone's handset in place, she grabs her stethoscope from the counter, rushing out of the nurses' station. The sound of tired footsteps behind her tells she's not alone.
"Don't sulk at me, Lola. You know I come looking for you because you're the best" the Aspiring Chief of Medicine tells her in a softer voice but without losing his gruff attitude, as he joins her at Mr. Blake's bedside. Their elderly patient is stable and asleep, almost ready to be sent to surgery, and despite herself, Marben smiles.
"Relax, boss, there's no need to feel intimidated. It's me, the one you took out for that fiasco of a first date three years ago. I've already seen your worst".
He looks at her with wide, outraged eyes, and she laughs.
"Yeah. Only you had short hair and your name used to be Stephanie, back then".
Marben's laugh instantly dies, and she looks away. Her desire to joke has vanished.
.oO°Oo.
As she finds herself on yet another rooftop, later in the night, to spend her brief and very much needed break, Marben thinks about how sometimes what feels right still finds a way to leave a bitter aftertaste behind.
It's sodding unfair. Because she deserves a little bit of peace, like everyone else, even though she's well aware of being as far as she could ever get from classifying as an indisputably nice person. So, as she considers the events of a day that has felt endless but, in fact, it's already been yesterday for a couple of hours, Marben pulls herself out of the skirmishes between her mind and her heart, sets herself up as mere spectator of their mulish battle and impassively watches them, on a metaphoric plan of existence in which she has renounced conscience and guilt and she's so unfazed by the show as to even nibble on popcorns.
The rush of solace that comes with that little peace offering to her own mental health is so strong that her eyes start frantically scouring the roof, in search of the pack of cigarettes she knows that from time to time someone forgets on the ledge…but then Turandot manifests, interrupting her quest and sending the usual thrill to run down her back, while her ears pick up a faint, to anyone else inaudible, sound of little bells. Along with the usual tell-tale signs of a spirit's presence, Turandot's rage is so overwhelming as to hit Marben with the strength of a billow.
The blond freezes, trying to remain unperturbed, and with a sigh braces herself for the argument.
"I'll apologize, if you want" it's all she offers as a greeting, "But you know where I stand. He earned himself a death sentence the day he killed you, over thirty five years ago".
The ghost woman says nothing for a while, and Marben perceives her change of mood as if it was her own: the bond connecting them keeps feeling scorchingly furious, but at the same time she can detect something akin to understanding dawning underneath it all.
"He still was my brother" Turandot eventually hisses, sounding betrayed and heartbroken.
For the first time since very long, Marben refuses to question herself, as well as to turn to look at the other woman. She's worked hard to accept her own guilt as well as to avoid being smothered by it, locking eyes with her lifelong friend would just make all her newborn certainties waver and throw her into despair.
When she replies, she uses her own anger to legitimize what she did and shield herself from the ghost's grudge.
"Yes, and he put a bullet into your head to work his way up, even though you sacrificed everything to raise him the best you could despite being a child yourself, when your parents died" she spits out with such a venomous voice that Turandot recoils. A moment later, however, the spirit's determination and anger are back and she retorts, even if from a safe distance. She's scared of being banned like her brother.
"The world is full of ungrateful brothers who trample their sisters' sacrifices! Would you want somebody to kill Oliver or Daniel, were they to turn their backs on you?".
"I can handle mistreatment toward myself. That done to those I love, I do not tolerate" Marben simply says, as if it could be such a valid reason as to justify any end and any mean.
Turandot knows how fiercely protective the blond child can be, there was a time when she too would have done anything to keep her brother safe and avenge their parents. Now, however, she's unable to empathize with Marben, despite - like Turandot herself - her being a daughter, a sister, a mother. It's as if they knew each other and at the same time they didn't. So, since Marben seems to be insusceptible to see her point, she tries to appeal to the other's biggest weakness: her loving nature.
"I didn't want his life to end like this".
"Well, as things go in his working field, I even granted him the favor of a clean and fast death".
Turandot enjoins Marben to shut up, in Chinese.
"What you did is still horrible! And now that he's dead you're even trapping him here for no reason! This is torture!".
"What's the matter, darling? Are you afraid I might develop a taste for inflicting pain on others?" Marben asks in a soft but deceptive voice, which sounds sweet while offering a glimpse into a part of her own being that the blond woman knows perfectly well to be terrifying to the ghost's eyes. As she delivers that verbal stab, Marben finally gives up and looks at the spirit, in a movement that engages only her eyes and leaves her face stubbornly in profile; she's aware to appear creepy when her pale irises rotate so much that it looks painful to force them in that position, a long stretch of white cornea taking up most of the gape between the eyelids. Her British accent is deliberately back, full-on, and Turandot's raw fear unconditionally surges through the link connecting them like a gush of blood.
As a rule, Marben is not susceptible to the charm of inflicting fear, even if she has occasionally taken a subtle pleasure from catching terror in the gaze of a dying enemy; it's totally unexpected, therefore, that Turandot's - not an enemy, indeed, someone she considers family - fear should make her gloat.
Unexpected, but not unwelcome. She wanted to be scary.
"Your duty is to assuage the pains of the dead, not to judge and punish. You're no god" the ghost woman, whispers.
"Of course I'm not. I do exist".
Turandot's voice gets back in full force, then, but with a strong panicked undertone.
"You're out of control! Are you gonna go after the woman who killed Fulv as well? Because as far as I know you might even go as far as to ask Myery's boyfriend to bring you back in time and help you make sure that Fulv never met his killer! By then you won't be too different from Sarum-".
Marben barks in a dry and hard voice something that both of them have not heard or spoken for a very long time, a Chinese word sounding poetic even from the mouth of someone whose native language is not Chinese. It has the desired effect, Turandot jolts and looks at her, flabbergasted, like a little girl who has just unexpectedly been scolded by her mother. What Marben hadn't foreseen, is that she winces too, hearing herself pronounce what is her middle name out loud. Somehow, it has the power to snap her out of the sudden need to be scathing, mean and dangerous, so out of character of her. "No-no one has called me that in…more than thirty five years, like you said" the ghost utters in a thin voice. Marben, who's finally found the guts to fully turn toward her, suddenly looks like a trapped animal.
"I know. You were the one to ask for a new name, to…to make this one exclusively mine".
"Yeah…it seemed like the right thing to do, give my name to you in exchange for one chosen by you".
The blond woman forces herself to soften her stance, her gaze and the emotions running through the connection that binds her to the ghost as well, then, sighing to muster all the calm she's able to.
"Look, I didn't necessarily want to kill your brother, I just took advantage of having to defend myself. He's the one who came looking for me" she ends up confessing in a much quieter voice than the one she has kept using until then. The bond tugs at something within her, vibrating in pain, shame, shock and guilt all at once.
"Can you at least promise me you won't let him wander this world without a friendly contact for too long?" Turandot asks after a moment, sounding impossibly frail.
"Of course. I'll ask Vanessa - Esterina's granddaughter - to take care of him for a while, then she'll be the one to send him to the other side".
When she sees how much Turandot is looking dejected, small and vulnerable, Marben feels herself beginning to break. She abruptly refrains from it, allowing only one of her thick walls to crumble and let compassion surge out like medication for both their hearts, and reaching out, she pulls Turandot into a tight hug. The spirit openly sobs onto Marben's shoulder, and returns the hug.
"I didn't…stay out of desire for ve-vengeance" Turandot stutters and sniffs.
"What is holding you, then?".
"Fear, at first. Then love". Turandot holds tighter, buring her wet face into the crook of her live friend's neck. "I'll never leave you, baby mine".
"Love you too" Marben whispers, caressing Turandot's dear nape.
"Promise me you'll never let yourself be tempted by revenge again".
"I…huh…".
"Please. Two wrongs don't make a right, and I don't wish for you to lower yourself to such a level, or that one day you may feel regret for what you've done".
Marben barely refrains form remarking how she's sure that she'll never regret killing Turandot's brother, because there's something monstrous stirring inside her chest, that behind her appearance of a petite, gruff but kind woman, roars triumphantly making her feel at peace for wiping a horrible man off the planet. She's sure Turandot wouldn't want to know about the existence of this awful part of her, even if it's not the first time it has asked for a blood tribute. So she's grateful that her inner turmoil doesn't seem to be passing through the bond.
And promises.