Yet another Beretta magazine made a sharp clack as it was smacked on the table to seat the rounds. Ethan looked at the stack, as Revy had their guns disassembled cleaning them. Everything had to be right for a meeting of this magnitude.
Even if Rock was technically their employer, the fact that the four major players in Roanapur were going to be there made this a chance to prove themselves worth hiring to any other organizations that might have work for them. Meaning no more skip tracing and doing shakedowns.
They could not afford a mess up of any kind.
"Hey Ethan, I haven't had a good chance to look at these, but something is off about your Berettas," Revy said as she held the slides up to compare them.
"Mine aren't 92s, they're M9s. US Military issue, though mine came straight from Italy. Slightly different slide profile so I don't think an M9 Slide would fit a 92, you can try it if you want though. Something about it being simpler to machine so they would fit the frame of any other M9. I don't know. I've never had a 92 to compare them," he said as he picked up another magazine and began pressing cartridges in it.
Revy continued looking at the two slides, but couldn't find anything obviously different, "Ah, who cares anyways. Ethan, how do you think it is going to go?"
"Long, and by the grace of God, boring as anything can fucking be," he replied without looking up.
"I hear that. Hey, just a weird thing I noticed, and it probably doesn't mean anything, but we say fuck a lot. You ever think about cutting it out? Just not saying it," she said as she started reassembling one of Ethan's pistols.
This did make the other mercenary look up, "Revy, fuck, is the single most useful fucking word in the English fucking vocabulary. It is noun, verb, adverb, adjective, subject, object, and action. It is the only word that exists that can be used to make a sentence that makes complete sense by itself. Fucking fucker is so fucking fucked. I refuse to stop saying the word fuck, even if my daughter is around. I will encourage her to not say it in the next decade, but I will remain steadfast in my usage."
"Ok, here is another question I have wondered about. How are you this well spoken, you didn't finish school either. Yet, here you are sounding like you are, uh what do they call it," she couldn't think of the word.
"A scholar. I actually liked school. I missed it after I ran away from home. Manuel encouraged me to study when we didn't have a job going on. Knowledge is power and all that. I didn't study like, calculus or bullshit like that. I know some trigonometry, enough algebra to deal with logistics, and I know at least some of the major languages in the world. I can speak English, Spanish, and Russian fluently. I keep up with current events where I am. I also didn't want to disappoint him after he died," he looked at the cartridge he held, seemingly thinking back on his past.
Revy wasn't good at reading emotions. She hadn't been in a place that she had to, and she didn't have the chance to learn when she was a kid. Her old man and the shit people in Chinatown hadn't given her the chance to even think of learning it. At the moment though, she thought she could read the sadness in his words.
"You were really close with the dude that took you under his wing, weren't you," she asked.
Ethan grimaced as he answered, "Probably closer than I should have been. As far as the relationships between mercenaries go, it was pretty unnatural. The first time I met him he had just finished torturing a sicario who thought that it would be a good time to rape a girl, not knowing that it was the Jefe's granddaughter. It wasn't for information, just to cause the man pain. To make him suffer for the sin before he was forced to endure a slow agonizing death. To Manuel, it had just been another Tuesday afternoon. I was put under his charge like most of the other mercenaries were, and he just, it was different. For one I was the only mercenary under the age of twenty five."
"You made it sound like he was a really good guy when you talked about him in the past," Revy remarked as she moved on to the next weapon.
"He wasn't at first. He was getting old, tired, and he honestly looked down at most of the people he was in charge of. With me though, I think I was a both a blank slate he could mold as he saw fit, and a piece of life he had wanted, but never had. Within a few weeks, he always had me by his side. He made sure that I was the deadliest person in the room, right after him. He also made sure that I was safe, at least as safe as that life allowed. He honestly treated me like his own son. The other mercenaries were happy that I showed up, because he mellowed out so much, and really became a much better leader overall," Ethan smiled a little as he reached for another magazine.
"So, him becoming less of a hard ass, and bastard, ended up being better? That doesn't sound like how reality works. God dammit, where did it go," she started looking for the recoil spring that shot out of her hand.
Ethan gave her a bland look at the incident, "Turns out, if your men actually like you, they will work harder, and fight harder. We started showing up the cartel's own sicarios, made them look like children with water guns. Eventually we worked ourselves out of a job, and me and Manuel started doing whatever we could find. He kept molding me into this perfect image of a mercenary, and like I said before, he started looking for a way out for us. We were so close to it as well. I miss him everyday, and I wish that I could leave this life, and live out his dream."
Revy found the spring as he finished. She looked down at the coiled piece of metal. It, sounded really good. Like a life she would have liked to have had. Chang had never tried to find a way out for her, he just made her into what she was now.
"Ethan, has it all been worth it? Every day you have lived up to now," she said as she stood up from her hands and knees.
"No. It honestly hasn't. There have been times, that it seemed better than others. Meeting Manuel, falling in love with Adira, and finding out that Hannah existed. Making up with my family, meeting all of you in Lagoon company. There have been the moments, but the most of it was nothing but hell. I wouldn't even try to count the corpses I left behind me. I try to, put on the best face that I can , but I hate this life. I really hate it," Ethan looked down at the cartridge he held.
They were silent for a while. They didn't do anything, or move from where they sat. They were needing to come to terms with their own lives in that moment.
The amazing thing, was that Revy was the one to bring it up. She had always seemed to not care how she lived, or even if she did live. She wasn't going to try to go out and get herself killed or anything like that. She just, wasn't sure that she wanted to live like she was at that point.
"Ethan, where would you go if you could leave all this behind now," Revy picked up the frame to one of her pistols.
She had carried these pistols for a long time at that point. She had lost one, and had it remade, because those guns were what she felt defined her. Why did they feel so hollow now?
"That is a damn good question. I don't know. I, don't even know if I could leave all this behind now. Sixteen years, it is hard to leave that much violence in the rear view. Revy, I'm a killer, and I will always be a killer. Even working the engines, I ended up with a gun in my hand. I could run away a thousand times, and I don't think anything would change. I would always find myself bathed in blood and burnt powder. It is part of the reason that I want to send Hannah way. I'm not going to die an old man in my bed, I'm going to die bleeding out in the gutter. That is the only place for someone like me to end up," he finished loading the magazine he held and set it down.
Revy looked at the pile, "Does it really have to end that way though?"
Ethan took a deep breath, "Revy, like I have said more than once, even if we aren't blood related, you are my little sister. I wish I could do like an older brother and say that everything is going to be ok, but you know it as well as I do. You know that we probably don't have that many years left in this world. Things are changing, it is getting harder to move around without being noticed. How long until we see a bunch of nations come together to hunt down people like us? Put us in a prison so far away from people, that we are, just forgotten. Rock might be able to adapt, Benny too. Dutch, you, me? We don't know how to do anything but fight back. Besides, we represent something here in Roanapur, that governments hate."
"What is that?"
Ethan reached over the table and picked up on of his guns, "We represent the fact," he picked up a magazine from the pile, "that people can live," he slammed the mag home and let the slide slam forward, "without their boots upon our necks. "
Revy looked at him confused, even if she did understand his words, "What?"
"All governments are basically gangs that exist because the people agree they exist. They make laws that people agree to follow. They try to maintain a monopoly on violence so that people have no choice but to agree with the government," he repeated his previous actions with less fanfare with his second pistol.
"Roanapur doesn't live that way though," Revy understood then.
"Right. This city will tear itself apart a dozen times in a night. Its people will murder, rape, and steal without consequence from those who claim to rule. Those people, they can't force it on us, because we know what the consequence of refusal is, and still yell fuck you. You've been here much longer than I have, you understand it better than I do, you just never thought about it I'm guessing," he stood up and walked over to a peg his gunbelt was hanging on.
Revy knew he was right. She hadn't ever thought about it. Why would she? She had never been given a reason to think about things like that before. She didn't need to think about those kind of things before. She only needed to think about getting drunk, and who the next asshole she was about to shoot in the face was.
She looked over at a mirror that was on the wall next to the door to the room they were in. She looked intently at the image that came back at her. She saw the greatest monster that she could imagine now staring back at her.
Herself.
"Ethan, I don't know how to be anything but a stark raving bitch. I don't want to be that way anymore though. Ever since you came here, I have only been able to look at you, and realize that I am headed to that same place you have ended up. If you hadn't come here, I would have just stayed the same person I was. Now, I see myself as nothing but a monster, and that scares me. With what happened to Rock, I just started getting more and more scared," she never took her eyes off her reflection as she spoke.
Ethan snapped the strap on one of his guns, and turned around to look at her. He could see the difference now, to the woman he had met just a couple of years earlier. Maybe she did have a chance to put all this behind her, and find a way to live without the death and violence.
He walked over and took her in a hug, "Don't worry about it ok. We have a job to do, and if we start torturing ourselves over things that aren't easy to change, we are going to fuck it royally. Like I said Sis, all we know how to do is fight back, so let's get ready to be bored, and hope we get to shoot people tonight."
Roberta finished laying out the suit that the Young Master was going to be wearing that evening. It was a deep gray linen suit that he had complained endlessly about having to stand there getting poked as the seamstress did her best to fit it. She walked over to the case it had come from, and pulled out a box about a foot long. Opening it, she pulled out a crimson tie. It had been one of the Master's favorites. He always had worn it during business dealings. It was fitting that the Young Master should continue that tradition.
She smiled as she laid the tie out next to the suit jacket. Even if she wasn't happy with the circumstances of this meeting, she was proud of the Young Master for having pursued it of his own accord. He was showing that he was truly ready to take over where his father had been so suddenly forced to leave off.
"Head Maid, would you like to use the shower first, or would you prefer I did," she looked back at the door to see Fabiola at the door to the Young Master's room.
She looked over at the door to the room's private bathroom where the sound of running water emanated from, "I will use it first. Please supervise the door to the hallway while I am indisposed Fabiola."
Giving the clothes laid on the bed a final look, she walked past the young girl. She was a good kid, and truly was better suited to staying at the Young Master's side than she was. She had many less sins to burden her soul, than Roberta did.
She retrieved her clothing from her bag, and entered the bathroom. It wasn't as well appointed as the same rooms at the Lovelace estate, but it was to be expected. At least she had been able to find the two poorly hidden cameras in the room and remove them.
A strange weight lifted from her shoulders as the uniform fell from her shoulders to the floor. More and more, she had begun to feel that she no longer should be in this life. She was beginning to feel that she no longer belonged to the peace that she kept falling from.
She reached into her bra and pulled out the picture of her comrades and Manuel. She looked at the faces, and she realized how few of them there may be left. Two she knew were dead from a mission years earlier, another from her hand, and the last by suicide before she left. She was the only one left. Maybe is was just well, and when she finally closed her eyes for the last time, justice would have finally been served.
She removed her undergarments, and placed them neatly in a pile along with her uniform. She stretched her back a couple of times, trying to work some stiffness from it. Despite how much pleasure she and others found from them, she sorely, and with much soreness, wished that her breasts were somewhat less impressive. It may have also been age, and bodily abuse that was also catching up to her. Regardless, it felt better to be free of that trussing for a moment.
She ran her hands down her body, and couldn't help but to continue to be amazed at how few scars her body held. So many sins forgotten by time, even if not by her. Maybe that was for the best now, and may she begin to forget them as time came and passed.
She sat down on the toilet and picked the end of her braids up to untie them. She couldn't help but suddenly realize that she had no reason to allow her hair to remain as long as it was. It was childish, and more than a little inconvenient to maintain. She would have to see about getting it cut shorter when they returned home.
Once her hair was freed, and tucked up under a shower cap she reached up to touch the one thing she most hated to remove. She had to remove it though, otherwise it might be damage. She just hated the face that was revealed.
She finally pulled the glasses from her face. This was the thing that most separated Roberta, from Rosarita. The thing that hid that face, that collared the dog.
She stood up and stepped into the shower, and sighed once the hot water started to cascade down her skin. The drops of water seemed to drown out even her thoughts. Times like this were the only real moments of peace that she could find.
Once she felt she was clean she turned the water off. Steam continued to rise from her body, and her breath came in deep heaves. She felt much better than she had earlier. In the back of her head she knew that she would start dealing with the demons stalked her soon enough, but for now she felt better.
Reaching for the towel she made one mistake. Looking to one side she faced the mirror. A drawn and decayed face looked back, and over her shoulder looked a distinguished man, with blazing red eyes and a satisfied smirk. The Devil himself, waiting for the moment he could claim her soul.