chapter word count: 562
noir heart: ninety-four
The White Fairy fell from a rooftop much like this one.
Leaning with his forearms on the safety rail, the chain passing through one hand into the other, Jack internally remarks on the deja vu of it all. From up high, with the sounds car engines and horns below him and the wind rushing through his hair and whipping his trench coat into a frenzy, the city sounds and feels exactly the same as it did on that fateful day. Which means it's as pretty and beautiful when it wants to be; dark and corrupt when you're not looking.
It feels so similar, so acute that it was almost yesterday, even if the rooftop of Elsa's apartment complex isn't the same.
His right hand wrapped around the Fairy's wrist, the only thing stopping Evil from falling to his death. The other, hooked around the steel safety rail above him.
"So this is how it ends, Jack the Ripper? The valiant, tortured, lonely hero trying to save the despicable villain from death?"
Staring out into the rest of the city's skyline, his eyes lingering on the grey A.P.D tower in the distance, he remembers how all the Fairy needed to do to live would be to grasp the concrete edge of the roof with his free hand, rather than let it dangle uselessly at his side. Remembers how that was his design.
"Death is too good for you, you child-abducting bastard."
He chuckles once, a light scoff, and his eyes fall down to the chain in his hands. The Fairy had smirked at him, like it was all a big joke. Suspended by the grip of the man who found him, twenty storeys high.
"Maybe so, but you know you'll never be able to catch me."
Jack thought he was in complete control, but he's not so sure. Especially since all he could remember feeling at that moment was cold fury mixed with soul-destroying resignation. He was right - the Fairy's identity was never proven, and only Jack suspected who it was.
"You're assuming...assuming I'll...be arresting you."
There was only one way he could be stopped.
"Are you really going to let me fall? You'll never find their bodies if you do…"
And that way made him persona non grata in the building.
"You always did underestimate me."
He clearly recalls letting go, and watching the Fairy shrink further and further away until the moment he instantly stopped shrinking. Falling from a rooftop much like this one. Strange how one moment can change the course of your life.
He wonders if the next few moments will change it again, as the unfocused form of Elsa Black approaches from his right, distorted but recognisable in his peripheral vision. Maybe it'll even change hers. Who knows.
A hand roughly grasps his right bicep with vice-like tightness, and he feels the prick of something sharp being pressed against his abdomen. Wincing with the surprise pain, he glances down - a kitchen knife with a curved handle. Elsa is nothing if not pragmatic, it seems - and then looks back up into those rather captivating ice-blue eyes glaring into his with all the fury of a killer unleashed.
Her lips barely move as she speaks.
"That belongs to me."
smoke, toke, coke. Jack's belly's gettin' a poke. I should actually mention that this is taking place a couple of days after Aster sent him home.
special thanks to: hornedgoddess, anastasia, stefalove, oninoko, jpbake, ghost angel14 and doomstone for the reviews!