Disclaimer: I'm still gonna say it, though the truth is obvious. I. Don't. Own. The movie. :D Oh, and BTW, my old readers? This story is being edited as we speak, so I just thought I'd let you know in case you wanted to read the actually moderately okay version of the story. Trust me. This version is better than the other one, though a little shorter. Which is fine by me. Go, read, my minions!
Chapter 4: Kickin' and Screamin'
Anastasia
oOo
Location: The Four Horsemen's Mansion, outskirts of Crows Landing, Florida, USA
City Population: 248
Current time: 6:37 am, Eastern
Current date: June 3, 2013
Current alias: Random boy
I'd never seen such a beautiful house-I'd thought this just as soon as I had stepped inside.
You came face-to-face with the most beautiful grand piano right in front of the door, backed up behind it with a large L-shaped couch that could have fit four grown men lying down on each side. The downstairs bathroom, dining room and kitchen to the left; living to the right, equipped with yet another couch, coffee table, rocking chair, love seat and a very, very expensive-looking 10-foot, flat-screened TV with built-in speakers and movie shelves. I knew I was going to have a hard time concentrating when I hadn't seen a real movie since I was seven, at the most.
Beyond the initial shock of the L. Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik grand and the TV and the fancily-decorated rooms, two sliding glass door opened to a backyard of grass, stepping stones leading away from a porch just as big as the front one, except screened. Smart. This is Florida, nearly as famous for its mosquitoes as Minnesota. There was a garden back there, plants flowering amongst their confines and gardenias blooming up against the fence.
Upstairs were the bedrooms-four had balconies looking out into the backyard, a bathroom in the middle joined to the two rooms on either side of it. On either side of that were two more bedrooms—one was mine and the other was guest. They each had connecting doors—mine to the laundry room and a large closet, while the guest went to the upstairs bathroom. A cut-out in the middle of the second floor dividing it directly in half allowed you to look down over the banister onto the piano and front couch. That is, assuming you could see past the enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
Black had just bust out laughing when I had stopped to look around at just the pure… I didn't even have words for it. I'd had asked what was so funny.
"You." I'd narrowed my eyes to slits and raised my eyebrows. "After all these years hiding in crappy motels, and now you're staying here. It's like one of those rags-to-riches fairy tales!" I had punched him on the arm.
My room was so much larger than anything I had stayed in previously, enough so that it made me slightly uncomfortable. One look at it and my head had automatically been organizing it to fit my needs, if only for a few months. Bookshelves with music scores and sci-fi novels crammed in would be smashed up tight against a nice dresser with a great big mirror across the back. I'd have to get a bean bag chair of course, but that'd probably take the magic of the Internet to get one of the super nice ones, which would take a while to ship to the closest town.
I realized the irony later-I was off the grid once more. Still in hiding. Maybe slightly less, now that I had Black here with me and didn't have to worry about him anymore (I still didn't know why I trusted him). So. This is my destiny. Hiding and not existing, not even a library card to give myself an identity, one that would match up on an FBI database with a picture of my face and my blood type and my medical records. A real-live ghost striding alongside the living.
"The Eye has promised a shopping trip for all of you to get clothes and room decorations and what-not, so you can go crazy. But not too crazy, if you know what I mean," he added after seeing the mischievous glint in my eyes.
oOo
My legs crossed and arm curved around parallel to my body, watching the seconds tick away on my watch, I leaned against the door frame leading to the kitchen that was only a little ways away from the church-like front doors.
The lock clicked and said heavy oak wood slabs opened slowly. I shrunk back a little to watch from behind the door frame, the shadows and my black attire making me just near invisible.
The first to enter was a woman, my senior by maybe five years. Her hair was a flaming, fiery orange color, while her lipstick was a deep pink that matched the fingerless gloves covering her small hands.
Must be Henley Reeves, I thought.
Reeves was closely followed by two more men, walking side-by-side. One was much older than her, but would not be considered "old". He sported a black dress shirt and matching pants, along with a black fedora. I recognized him as Merritt McKinney, the mentalist. Beside him was a boy, dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes all tired and worn out, but in that 'I've-been-stuck-in-a-car-for-a-day-and-slept-the-whole-way-here' kind of way. Jack Wilder.
And here enter the man that had caused me all these years of trouble in the first place. J. Daniel Atlas. I knew that he was one of the Four Horsemen when Black had told me, but I had hoped it might be some other J. Daniel Atlas. I mean, I had met a few others with the same papa-name on my journeys, so I had hoped beyond hope that it wasn't him, though I really didn't know why.
It was when the last person made the scene, shutting the doors behind them, trapping all five in the same room as me,that I was able to forget how badly I wanted to bash Atlas's head in and knew I was very much capable of doing so without even touching him. But this last one-I wondered if he realized how much trouble he would be in. My big brother, Dylan Rhodes, or shall I say Dylan Shrike? My stomach did flip-flops, but whether in excitement or anger I didn't know.
Soon, I didn't care.
They were standing there, looking around the house in awe, and I wondered if I had looked that stupid when I had walked in. Probably even more so. This just made me angrier, but I tried to hold it at bay as I slipped along the wall, flipping on the same baseball cap I used to hold up my hair and cover my face when I "borrowed" from people or places.
Well, this is going to be really simple if haven't even noticed me yet-I'd think the mentalist might have sensed something. Eh, maybe they're just sluggish from the car ride. I'll try to take it easy on them...
I checked my watch, an urge to see how long this took compelling me to do so. It was 6:43 am, Eastern Standard. Great.
The Wilder kid made some remark somewhere along the lines of "this is AWESOME!", but I quickly cut off anybody else's comments by launching my first attack.
The wall acting as a spring-board, I jumped up, twisting in the air, landing in a crouch next to McKinney. He looked mildly surprised, not sure what to do, and he didn't really understand until I had helicoptered around with one leg straight out in the air, knocking his legs from behind and sweeping him off his feet where he landed on his back. It gushed the air from his lungs and he coughed for breath, rolling onto his side.
"Oh... Lord, Almighty..." He sputtered.
Having decided he would be down for a while yet I turned to Henley, who had gotten a hold on the situation faster than the others. She ran at me (yup, this was going to be so much easier than I had originally thought if they all went into combat like that), all fast-like as if she could do something wither her momentum.
I placed a hand on her shoulder (so what if it bruised?) when she'd gotten close enough to me and gripped her wrist in my hand, leaned forward to push her weight backwards. Then, using my own leverage and her rather handy rush speed to propel her, she went spinning off behind me and onto the couch, where she lay, stunned and dizzy.
The kid (I realized this was very hypocritical of me) and Atlas had teamed up and were standing on either side of me: Wilder at my back and Atlas in front. Dylan stood, mouth agape, beside the door, most likely wondering what the hell was happening. I guessed that he hadn't known about this part of the plan. Typical Black.
I turned sideways so that I could see both of my attackers. I leaned against the side of the piano, which I had handily made my way over to, picking imaginary lint from my shoulder and keeping the hat tiled down, casually. I adapted a British accent and deepening the sound resonating from my throat. I must say it was pretty persuasive, and if I didn't know any better, I would have definitely been convinced.
"Come now, Atlas. Surely you remember me?" If possible, he looked even more confused than he already was, and I rolled my head over dramatically to see Wilder mirroring his expression. "Aww, are the kids confused? Well, Atlas," I turned my back on Wilder, "allow me to jog your memory."
I held out my hand, palm-up, and brought it up to my mouth to kiss it gently, upon which hundreds of Illustrated butterflies erupted from my hands and fluttered directly into his face. He yelped, swatting at the imaginary creatures as they flapped in front of his eyes and messed with his hair.
I laughed heartily, keeping the illusion just around his face and in his eyes enough so he couldn't see anything unless I dropped it. I faced Wilder, who was staring at me like an idiot.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, tutting. "Yeah, irresistible and impossibly sexy in leather, I know, but try to keep the mouth closed. Flies will get—" I trailed off when I saw him flip his hands around, playing cards fanning out between his fingers.
I heard Dylan snort, and I made a mental note to find out why later, after this fiasco and probably a good kick to the groin.
In the meantime, I gave Wilder a 'seriously? Playing cards?' look.
He shrugged. "Why not?" He then proceeded to fling them at me, one at a time, with practiced aim and simple, sharp flicks of the wrist.
As much as I hated to admit it, this surprised me, enough to drop my guard and let the Illustration attacking Atlas fade away. I vaguely heard him stop dancing around in circles behind me, but didn't really think about it as one of Wilder's cards hit me just below the eye, slicing the skin. I felt a little bit of blood trickle down my cheek, the cards still coming until he ran out, at which point I felt myself back into the man who screamed at butterflies.
I sighed, knowing that I might as well let them win. I didn't really register, but let Atlas push me to the ground, and I felt a pain in the back of my head as the hair piled on top of my scalp under my baseball cap (which somehow had still not fallen off) pressed into my skull. I was pinned to the carpeted floor, his hand crushing my wrists to the floor, one by my side and the other above my head and one of his legs was thrown across mine to keep them from moving. Jack stood above us, panting, more playing cards already aimed.
I felt a hand leave my wrist, hearing the bone-crunching fist connect with my eye before I felt it, and it took everything I had to not scream in pain once I did. I very suddenly wished that I hadn't made myself male—probably wouldn't have gotten punched then. It's the sad truth of American culture.
I lay there, not meeting anyone's gaze, waiting for something to happen or for someone to do something.
For all the time I'd been away, I still remembered the basics of the rule book: patience is key
And so I waited until my wish was granted.
"Take off the hat, boy," Dylan growled.
I giggled, letting the alias drizzle away. "I am not a guy."
By now, McKinney and Reeves had managed to get up and were standing over me. Wilder leaned down and grabbed the rim of my cap, yanking it off my head. I raised up a bit towards Atlas, shaking out my long, dark hair from its uncomfortable balled-up spot on my head. I heard at least two groans of embarrassment, but my vision was fast fading and I could pinpoint who.
"Gee, sorry to disappoint!" I looked up at Atlas, who was still holding me down, though I wasn't going anywhere. "Hey, think you can let me up? The shiner's gonna need icing, and I'd rather not have to clean blood off the carpet from cut by playing card."
He didn't look convinced, nor did he didn't relax his hold. I looked around at all of them, seeing that they were staring at me expectantly.
"Do we get a name?" Dylan asked pointedly.
My eyes narrowed and my jaw clenched. "Really? Okay, I wouldn't exactly expect you to remember. Not really. But you!" I scoffed, looking between my brother and the magician pinning me down. "I mean, I can't have changed that much since you last saw me, Atlas. I didn't even dye my hair!" They both looked very, very confused, more so than the other three Horsemen who standing in a semi-circle around the scene in a way that made me feel like a human sacrifice. "Can I have my hand back?"
"Sorry, but no." Atlas gripped my arm harder, twisting it to the side just so—I heard a snap and I winced, though obviously if it had been heard by the others they thought nothing of it.
My eyes closed over an the yellow haze covering everything depended and dark spots seeped around the corner, but I willed them to go away. "Well, sorry to be Johnny Raincloud here, but now I really need to get up."
"Oh, yeah? And why's that?" Wilder asked.
I shifted my gaze and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to keep from screaming at the sheer agony produced by the tight hold Atlas still had on my wrist.
"Because, Wilder, you're idolized playboy magician here just did something awful bad to my wrist, and it hurts far worse than you could possibly imagine, especially with him still gripping onto me like that. Now…"
I smacked the top of my head into Atlas' chest, finally forcing him to let me go so he could clutch his ribs. I kicked him off of me, shifted my weight onto my uninjured arm, rolled over and sat up so that I was on my knees.
Atlas finally stood and looked like he wanted to reach down and pin me again, maybe throw another punch, but he rationalized.
"Don't… even… think about it," I stuttered, feeling them all advancing in on me. I'd bitten down too hard on the side of my mouth and could feel blood pouring from a gap in my cheek, filling fast enough to begin to dribble from the corner of my mouth. I knew it would hurt me more later than now-with the rush of adrenaline, I barely felt anything.
I looked up from my wrist which I was now cradling against my chest, prodding gently and invisibly with my thumb to find the injury point. Not broken, then, but probably dislocated. I tried bending it, but found that it was immobilized. Yep, definitely dislocated.
"I'll ask one more time, and one more time only. Who. Are. You?" Dylan shouted, stepping around the piano to be directly in front of me.
I snapped my gaze back to him, right into his eyes.
"May third, two-thousand-four: 'Dear Sister. I miss you so much. I wish I could see you and get to know you.' It was in black ink, old-style print, and I liked to think you had a typewriter."
The brown in his eyes had long past the dark shade of anger, now lightening and narrowing, the crows feet nearly drooping from the corners, into confusion that was more trying not to believe something than anything else. I continued when he tried to shake his head, make me stop.
"October seventeenth, two-thousand-seven: 'I've joined The Eye. They let me in, after all these things I had to do. Why can't you tell me where you are, or what you do, or anything about you? Maybe you dye your hair blue and love jazz music. Or you lounge around in you wear great big glasses and do extra calculus homework.' That one was in red pen, and it took me three tries to read your handwriting."
He had nothing to say, and I had nothing more I could tell him, because now he knew. I didn't know whether the (tiny, very, very tiny lump at the back of my throat had formed from the pain of my mouth, the blood now making its way between my lips and down my chin, or Dylan. He'd seen a picture once, when I was fourteen, only two years before I fled. I personally hadn't thought I'd changed that much.
"Anastasia, I—" He reached out his hands towards my face, but I scuttled backwards on my knees as far as I could, looking away, keeping my wrist still and my bloody mouth turned away.
"Just… no." The sound bubbled when I tried to speak, and I searched for a good spot on the hardwood to spit what iron taste my mouth still held out onto the floor. I wiped the side of my face on the leather jacket covering my shoulder in an attempt to clear a little bit off but only succeeded in smearing the red liquid further back onto my cheek. I gave up and tried my best to finish.
"You stopped writing. I was all alone, for sixteen years and I had no reason to think that I would never not only family member I had to hope was still alive told me that he was changing his name and he would write again soon, and he wished me a happy fifteenth birthday. I started my life on a doorstep in a bread basket with a golden locket, and I got adopted by a murderer."
Dylan shook his head as though he was trying to shake off an earwig. Atlas, Reeves, Wilder and McKinney had backed away but still looked on with shocked expressions. I met Atlas' gaze once again, cursing the blood but taking pride in shoving the stinging lump far back down.
"Atlas, you too. After all, you seemed very, very intrigued by the little trick I could do."
I nodded over to a spot on the white carpet, words forming from what looked like little birds flying in all around the edges of the invisible frame.
What'd I tell ya? We did meet again.
The Horsemen gathered around the message, though it was really only meant for Atlas to understand. I could already feel the ink wriggling around underneath my clothes and begin to make patterns on my skin. The tattoos would be on the top of my foot this time, but it didn't even feel strange anymore. Atlas looked over at me and I smirked, my tongue moving to the bleeding spot in my mouth in attempt to make it stop.
"You're that… that girl! From the park, the one who left me the note on the bench!"
"Oh, now he remembers!" I spat, sarcasm dripping from my demeanor. "Who knew, huh?"
I was glad to see that Dylan had finally caught up.
"The day I stopped writing you, The Eye found something on you—an operation you were in on-and they wouldn't give me any information. Apparently there was bad blood between the two or whatever. I tried to contact you, but there was always something in the way. I figured it was either The Eye or the people you worked for. But you have to believe me: I never stopped trying to find you." My breath hitched and my stomach tightened. Just the pain, it's only the pain, nothing else… "It was like you didn't even exist, and I started to think that maybe you were… just a part of my imagination."
My eyes widened and I could feel the cold pit of hatred I'd held for him all these years (then why'd you agree to help him? You just wanted to kick his ass. Yeah. That's it.) slowly beginning to warm around the edges. But I had boundaries and limitations and I had points that I was more than careful not to go beyond.
And when it came to my brother, I was hastily speeding away from a big, gaping hole of nothingness, forcing myself to look at a WARNING-KEEP RUNNING AND YOU WONT BE TEMPTED TO TURN BACK sign every once in while. I would not allow myself to slow down, because I'd already done enough of that in the last two days than I was prepared to admit, and that gaping hole of all that I didn't know was beginning to close in.
But until it did and I tripped and fell over the edge, I wasn't about to forgive him for what he'd done to me.
"You didn't recognize me. You had a picture for all that time, and it's only been a few years."
"Seven is not 'a few years'."
"I killed people in order to live. All that time kind of passed and I wasn't sure whether I was having a nightmare or up and walking, living it all the time. The lines kind of blurred-time means nothing to me."
"It does to me, because you were fourteen last time I saw what you looked like, and I'd never met you in person more than ten months old. The last time you saw him," Dylan vaguely gestured to where he presumed Atlas stood and was actually on the other side of the room, but I got the idea, "you were sixteen."
"And still wearing pretty much the same thing you were then," Atlas added, not helping either case at all. I turned my head too swiftly to glare at him and the throbbing and the ache there took the consequence like a double-edged sword in one side and out the other.
I winced and closed one eye as I inclined my head towards the chandelier, willing it to tune down its brightness. No such luck, so I brought my gaze downwards once more. "Not true. I had on a fedora and a scarf last time, and my pants were denim, not leather."
Dylan ignored the quip, instead pleading with me to understand, forgive and forget. You're out of your damn mind if you think I would do any of that after all that's happened to me, the majority of it because of you. I knew it wasn't true, and it was either that or the pain that cut me short from slicing the words at him.
I could only nod, simply in too much pain to concentrate or care about anything other than keeping my insides in or stop the blood in my mouth or the hair in my face or anything else that might have mattered before.
This all was occurring to me when I fell to the floor with a sound that seemed a mix between a grunt and a groan, flipping onto my shoulder so as to avoid crushing what was already damaged and causing anything permanent upon impact. Granted, the injury was already pretty bad, but at least not having bones deformed or contorted.
I flopped onto my back, not trusting myself to keep my muscles moving and working long enough to hold me up. Even my lungs were having trouble taking in oxygen now, and I was noticing the black ring around the edges of my vision moving inwards. Everybody was leaning over me, and I'd squirm uncomfortably under their gaze, and I wasn't able to keep my body from going into shock this time. Too much adrenaline too soon, it seemed, and everything, things I hadn't even upset, were hurting far worse than I thought possible.
Funny-Black had said be easy on them, and here I was, blacking out because of something they had done to me. It was embarrassing, really.
"Ice," I managed.
Wilder seemed the least affected by the news of my relations or my argument with Dylan out of the other three, nodding at my request. My body was shutting down, physically and emotionally, and there was no way I could fight off the mind-bending state of total, utter blackness.
oOo
I awoke feeling like I had ice on my head and a strip of cotton tied up around my wrist. Throbbing. Everywhere. I felt like dying, but I'd woken up too often like this think that I would anytime soon.
Everything was unclear at first and a bit like swimming underwater with your eyes open, things got clear in about three minutes of blinking. I was flat on my back, one leg bent and one straight out, both irritated by the amount of time and how much work I'd done in the same pair of bad-breathing pants, and I found I had been right about the ice. On my forehead. Freezing my brain cells.
I looked around a little, trying to remember what had happened. Dylan… attacking… Atlas the Ass… That was a really bad rhyme… wrist… passed out… Oh, yeah. That.
There was too much weight on my stomach, an arm across it, perhaps, to push off in my current state when I tried to sit. Panic! At the Disco.
I struggled to be released, only finding my attempts calmed by hand holding my chin and guiding my eyes to meet with too-dark brown. I remembered them being desperate last time I saw them, confused and then angry even before that.
I didn't have the energy nor the patience to tell him that it was doing nothing to calm me down. Not when I wasn't about to exonerate him for another twenty-one years at best. I must have, at some point, decided that I was going to make him pay for what he'd done to me for exactly as long as it had been. But not right now. Not when my mouth was saying things my brain wasn't fully computing.
"Hey, big bro. Atlas… tell'm said thanks for'm wrist."
Dylan smiled down at me nervously, and somewhere back in the fog clouding everything that I knew, I might have thought something along the lines of I sound like a goddamn drunk.
"Tell him yourself, little sis."
Atlas sitting beside me, rather guilty, and then I was grinning at him, just as insane as I felt. Out of character and just plain idiotic. I'd have to work extra hard after that to gain back the respect I lost. If I'd ever had it. Had I? I couldn't remember.
"Hey, Atlas! Sorry, didn't see'a. Thanks for'e wrist and'e shiner, by the way. I c'n show off ffffor days!" He swallowed, not really knowing what to say at my sarcastic remark or the slur and incoherent-ness that accompanied it. "I would say d'nt worry 'bout it, but I can't. So I'll say d'nt worry 'bout'meh hurtin' you 'cause of ih. 'S not m'job."
He nodded (probably trying to decipher), and I closed my eyes, keeping them that way as I spoke to Dylan.
"Dylan, keep yer hands 'way from m'face for a few secn's—I tend to bite hard whenin s'cruciatin' pain."
It was difficult to grip my wrist in the right way with so much swelling, but I found the dislocation point in the many, many, many bones and jerked it. Hard. Very, very, very hard. I heard a loud crunch then a pop, and that combined with the feeling of the bones and cartilage and other unpleasant pieces sliding around beneath my skin were enough to cause me to scream. I. Don't. Scream.
I brought my uninjured hand down to the floor and the carpet found itself in a death grip by my nails.
Tossing and turning with my eyes still closed and head in Dylan's lap, it was all I could do not to have a mental breakdown, because this was the most pain I had been in since I sixteen years old. And I'd forgotten just how little pain it takes to wish for just a few moments of unconsciousness for it to all go away. Either that or a large dose of morphine.
It seemed forever until I could take my mind off the pain and think about the situation. Everything about it was screaming 'AWKWARD', and I didn't appreciate it.
The cold the ice brought when I grabbed it from the floor beside me was bliss the moment it touched the hot, swollen skin. It only took a little push-off from Dylan to be able to get myself onto the piano bench, and I felt a cotton sleeve, Dylan's, wiping blood away from my mouth, and I resisted the urge to either punch them or spit in their face. It'd been too long since somebody had cared about me enough to wipe blood off my face. 'Every man for himself': I'd lived up to that all my life, and relying on somebody to something for me, simply out of kindness, felt like a burden brought down upon both of us.
I leaned back against the key-cover, keeping the ice on my leg and my wrist resting atop it. Dylan sat beside me, though i tried to take up as much room as possible, and arm shaking as if trying to decide whether I would allow him to touch me or not. It finally went around my waist; I was proud and he was lucky that I was still delirious enough not to run the other way like Hades' hellhounds were breathing down my neck.
I shook the sleeve that was still wiping off my face away from me, and it soon found a place gently touching the bent crook in my elbow, playing absentmindedly with my jacket's fabric there. I wiped my tongue over my teeth to get what lacing red I could off, breathing deeply at the steely taste it brought back.
I smiled at the half-circle that had once again formed in front of me, and I once again had that sense of being a sacrificial lamb, and the creepy flood of relief that overtook them when I flashed them a grin made it seem even more so.
I mentally shrugged the thought off and said in that annoying, stereotypical first-grade teacher voice; "So. Who wants to be the first to ask our special guest a question, class?"