TITLE: The Immigrant
STARRING: Hellion and X-23
UNIVERSE: AU
RATING: NC-17
SUMMARY: Waking up in a new world with no memory, she learns nothing can stop her. Until she meets her old friends. X-23 and Hellion.
DISCLAIMER: Includes lyrics from NIN and Karen O's remake of Led Zeppelin's 'The Immigrant Song'- it's the song off the soundtrack of the new 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' movie.
THE IMMIGRANT
We come from the land of the ice and snow...from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow...
the hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands...to fight the horde and sing and cry...Valhalla, I am coming
On we sweep with threshing oar...our only goal will be the western shore
We come from the land of the ice and snow...from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow...
how soft your fields, so green can whisper tales of gore, of how we calmed the tides of war...
we are your overlords...on we sweep with threshing oar...our only goal will be the western shore
So now you better stop and rebuild all your ruins...for peace and trust can win the day...despite of all you're losing
(Immigrant song, NIN/Karen O. remake of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song)
-1-
The pale-faced girl looked out of the window of the bus at the slowly falling snowflakes, her expression calm and accepting. In her lap is a letter that has been folded and re-folded many times-a letter written on ruled notepaper. Fragile, easily destroyed.
Behind the letter is an envelope , and on this envelope-in loopy, backwards-slanted writing-is an return address that she has contemplated many times.
James Logan Howlett
The reason she has contemplated the address many times is because there is none, only the address of her PO box, located in Seattle. The letter doesn't offer much clue either to its location of origin.
She looks down at her lap and unfolds it again, her dark-painted lips turning downward at the corners.
You've got questions, and I've got answers.
Come and find me.
Two lines, two lines that has set fire to her mind. Answers. Something she has been seeking desperately for the last five years since her escape from...what?
All she can remember of her past is waking up on a bench near a bus station, shivering and hungry.
It had been snowing then, too. Much harder than here. She remembers the icicles clinging to the edge of the bench covering, the cold air stinging the end of her nose. How it had taken a very long time for her to thaw out again, and her fear that she would get frostbite.
Odd-she could remember what frostbite was, but not who she was or where she'd come from.
She looks out the window again, and watches the snow drift down.
Soon it will be cold enough for icicles to form.
Soon, the bus will start.
Soon, she will know.
She is not sure when she falls asleep, but she awakes with a jolt and looks around her, confused. Don't fall asleep, she warns herself, her slanted green eyes widened with alarm. Don't fall asleep. Not here.
It is a hard temptation to resist. She has been travelling for thirty-six hours already, without sleeping-and before that, she had also had little rest. Too much work, too many threats to quell. It is warm and comfortable on the bus. Her thickly-lashed eyelids begin to slide shut again, and she shakes herself. Don't fall asleep. Not here. She reminds herself of the last time she had slept, the state of the mattress afterward. Waking up to find her first imbedded deeply in the innards of the padding.
The backing of the seat ahead of her is about four inches thick-and each of the shiny metal claws housed in her forearms is about six inches long. They eject automatically when she sleeps-when the nightmares come. Nothing will stop them, and she can't allow this to happen here in the bus.
They would make her leave before reaching her destination.
She must know.
Forcing her eyes open, she concentrates on memorization, on inventorying the skills and knowledge she can currently recall.
International police procedures. UN decrees. Sabotage methods. One hundred methods of torture.
Forty-five ways to kill without leaving a trace.
She lingers on the last thought. She has since thought of this as forty-six ways, since she had inadvertently added a method about a month ago. It had been too effective to ignore. Too profitable. With silent satisfaction she thinks of the bank notes she'd added to her collection. English pounds, thousands of them, to do a clean and untraceable job.
Sometimes she wonders if she would do it for free. If they told her to.
They? Her customers-her clients. The men who approach her in alleyways, who put their lips against her ear and whisper tales of gore, tell her about people that need to die. Death is her gift, or so she has been told. Sometimes these men want her in other ways, and sometimes she lets them.
If they catch her right after a kill.
Her eyes slide back to the letter in her lap. Come and find me.
Does this James Logan Howlett know, exactly, what he is asking? Inviting her presence. Risking her presence, her gift of death that trails behind her-and ahead of her, in a wide arc. She wonders briefly if she will kill this Howlett man, when she has received her answers. No doubt he will want something of her-a service-in exchange, if he even has answers. It may well be just a trap.
She tilts her head. Why even question it? She knows she will kill him. The only question is when, and how. Her knuckles itch vaguely at the thought of carving, of separating, of deconstructing. Her nostrils can almost smell the blood. It has been too long since she used her claws to kill.
Her eyes slide closed, and suddenly she is asleep.
The dreams come.
...
The girl looks at the bus full of people, her features blank as she takes in the splatters of blood. She purses her lips, then retracts the shining blades between her fingers. Her eyebrows draw together. A tinge of remorse strikes her-there was a child near the front.
This is not right.
These people were innocents.
"I'm sorry," she says aloud.
No one answers, and she hadn't expected them to. Her senses are superb, and the only heartbeat on this bus of thirty people is her own.
She shoulders her back pack, then turns and walks down the bus's front steps, pushing the door out of her way, then jumping onto the dusty grass a foot below. Thud!
Looking around in either direction, she sees that they are in the middle of no where, with long plains that go on forever. Her dark hair flows slightly in the breeze, the sides of her leather bomber jacket flap ligtly. She purses her darkly painted lips again.
Then she begins to walk, leaving the bus behind.
She walks for a long time, through the night and well into the next day. After a time she reaches a town, and enters the McDonald's restaurant and uses the restroom. Looking in the mirror as she scrubs remainders of blood from under her black-painted fingernails, she notes the slight bags of exhaustion under her eyes, and notes that she looks thin.
Perhaps she should eat something. When was the last time she'd eaten?
Fourteen days ago, her mind whispers.
She is alarmed, actually stopping her actions. After a moment she reaches under the flaps of her jacket and raises her shirt. Her ribs stand out, in heavy contrast.
The shirt slips out of her grasp, and she lets it fall, then turns off the tap, unsettled. She has never forgotten to eat for so long before. Or drink-the last she'd had to drink was a bottle of water, on the bus...about two days ago. This is insufficient. She picks up her back pack from the floor, heads out into the restaurant and into the line-up.
...
The burgers take little time to consume, and the liquids cause her stomach to cramp for a few moments. When she finishes, she leans back in the chair and closes her eyes. She feels emptier than before, somehow, as if the food has utterly failed to fill her.
Sleep.
Too risky. The authorities will be seeking the murderer. But...if she does not rest, this will only happen again. Perhaps it would be better to stay at a motel for the night. Regenerate. Yes.
She nods to herself slowly, as if in agreement. After a few moments she crumples the napkin she is holding, gets up and takes her tray to the garbage. Shouldering her back pack, she heads for the door of the restaurant, her heavy-soled boots clunking on the tile floor.
They leave dark-brown footprints, that on first inspection appear to be mud. If one were to look closer, however, the substance is more of a reddish-brown. A rusty color.
Dried, congealed blood.