NO BODY.

@0azrae7 / SOMETIMES THE BEST THAT WE CAN DO IS T'START OVA.

they knew this could happen. it was always important to note all the ways shit could go wrong and this was one of them: their best and only lead, lying dead at their feet. suddenly, what they'd joked about in the dead of the night before didn't seem so funny. charlotte had figured that she'd could get the guy to turn; recent intel remarked that his relationship with the ultranationalists had soured, and a sense of loyalty turned brittle made for a tempting target. but offer the deal in the wrong way, SHOW TOO MANY TEETH, and no promise of reward or revenge could distract from the ugly truth: that either way, he was trapped. NO WAY OUT. ONLY DOWN. six feet under, to be exact.

CHARLOTTE: WE LOSE HIM AND THAT'S BASICALLY BACK TO SQUARE ONE. GHOST: SOMETIMES THE BEST THAT WE CAN DO IS T'START OVA. CHARLOTTE [LAUGHING]: YEAH? YOU THINK SO? CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, GHOST. IT MIGHT JUST COME TRUE.

it'd be easy to blame the asset for losing control of the conversation. but she could swear that she'd said all the right things, smiled, assured in all the right ways. he'd been nervous, sure. angry, too, but who wouldn't be? she'd understood where he was coming from, the unfairness of it all. yes, how dare they treat him that way, what, after all he'd done for them? sacrificed? for them! it wasn't right, no, but she knew how they could make it better. wouldn't that be good? to warm yourself by the ruins of the same empire that shunned you, knowing you're now set for life? time to look out for number one! that's right. it was all right. . . until the moment he, like a man possessed, reached for a nearby empty beer bottle, broke the glass on the table - edge, and drove the glass into his own throat before pulling it through and out with a guttural groan that sounded, to charlotte's ears, sickly satisfied.

she'd launched herself across the room with a shout, landing on top of the man, both hands pressed into his neck, blood gushing hot between her fingers. this is how ghost would find her mere moments later, straddling what remained of their best lead, uselessly ordering him to wait while his eyes slid over and in the last second of his life, saw the face of the grim reaper come to take him away.

as the body stilled, charlotte, still hunched over the dead man, heaved a deep breath, loosened her grip on the torn throat, and began to laugh. it was all giggles at first, the bubbly type of joy coming through clenched teeth and passed lips stretched thin into a grin. then, she straightened off the man's still torso and pushed back her hair with bloodied hands; pale flaxen strands greedily took up the crimson colour, her own temples now wet with smudged arterial spray. " Oh, I am in so much trouble! " the giggles returned, but the sound quickly mutated. next, charlotte was bursting with her usual, good - humoured laughter as she rolled her gaze upwards at ghost, her grin genial despite the pointed look in her eyes. " What you said last night. D'you get that from a fucking fortune cookie? Holy shit. Fuck me. Okay. "

it was a matter of convenience. as a body, as a force of an ancient kind of nature made real, ( though not really real, eh, charlie? don't get ahead of yourself now. ), this was something she had to reckon with a long time ago. over the years, she had come to learn what it meant to have belongings; to have places and objects that depended on her to take care of them, and that there was this truly fucked up way people liked to get to know about each other. how did the saying go? oh, yeah. YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT A PERSON BY WHAT THEY LEAVE BEHIND.

but what if what they left behind never made any sense? what if what they leave behind paints an impossible picture, of a woman who was never there, of a faceless, nameless body? she wasn't there even as she trekked through the fading twilight towards the building. the building winced at a phantom pain when she wrenched the first and second doors open, and ascended the curved staircase like a ghost on its well - trodden path, feet lightly pressing into the old, cracked marble. this place was nicer than what you might expect charlotte to be able to afford, but the unit that she moved towards was well and truly hers. ( or rather, a version of her. ) bought and signed for and the papers then buried deep - along with the news stories of. . .

no, never mind that. no, please, make yourself at home in the darkness; IT IS HAPPY TO HAVE YOU. the sound of the ice in your glass plays like music and the warmth of the lamp - light looks upon you almost lovingly. IT IS SO NICE TO HAVE COMPANY. it is so nice to have more than a mere body, for then what really is the difference between a house and crypt? a home and a grave. . .

charlotte keeps her hand on the doorknob as she stares back at mia, at first not believing that she was really there. herself, not mia. it occurred to charlotte that she might've opened the wrong door. her keys have been known to spontaneously change shape before. the wrong keys to the right doors, the right keys to the wrong doors. the entire world was her funhouse. WELCOME HOME, LOVER. she smiled at the words and figured that even if this place wasn't hers, she'd be hard - pressed to find a welcome like that anywhere else. so fuck it, this must be home. charlotte pulled the key out, and in a series of well - practiced motions, dropped her heavy backpack to the floor, shut the door with her hip, and ran her hands down the long column of latches, deadbolts, and locks.

It was becoming uncomfortably warm inside the kitchen, and it was only about to get worse. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Charlotte's face and she let it trace its line down the curve of her cheek to the point of her chin. The effort she poured into keeping her hands as steady as possible, was matched only with the effort she made to slow her breathing. SURE, THEY WERE RUNNING OUT OF TIME, BUT THAT WAS HARDLY A REASON TO PANIC. Beside her, a wood - burning stove crackled on cheerily, indifferent to the woman's predicament. It'd been fed recently, so what did it have to be worried about? Certainly it did not have any reason to be hissing curse after curse. Not like her, who had a very good reason and now here was another! Fantastic.

@ssuds / PUT YOUR WEAPONS ON THE GROUND, NOW!

" Alright! " Her voice rang out, loud and clear as a fucking dinner bell. Charlotte rose from her haunches and straightened onto her knees, the grooves of where the tiles dipped into a clean line of grout pressing painfully into her kneecaps. She regarded the mess of wires and gears from above. The wires seemed to spell out a message in a language she didn't read, but whatever it did say, she was sure it wasn't a fucking love letter. AND WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF HOTEL KITCHEN DIDN'T HAVE A WALK - IN COOLER? Briefly, Charlotte had considered picking up the bomb and making a run to the nearest elevator and sending it up where she knew the floors had been cleared, but then there was no telling what would happen if she so much as elevated or tilted the device the wrong way. It wasn't one of hers.

FUCKING FICKLE CREATURES, THESE EXPLOSIVES.

Later, the guards would argue that, technically, when they allowed the sombrely dressed woman with the beautiful bouquet of flowers in her arms in to see the old district attorney, the storm hadn't yet descended upon their dark island. They would claim that, technically, she'd allowed herself in with a letter straight from the mayor's office and that they had no choice but to allow the lady through security. They would plead that, ( hey! ), technically, the two were old friends, weren't they?Acquaintances, surely, at the very least.

WHY ELSE WOULD SHE BRING THAT MAN FLOWERS ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS? WHY BRING HIM ANYTHING AT ALL?

Motive remained neatly tucked away, sound and hidden, but certainly never safe, inside the folds of Charlotte's funeral suit. An effort had been made with her hair, which in the case of the chaos agent, meant she'd taken the painful steps of securing the sun - heavy locks in a tight ponytail, the mess drawn completely away from her face. There was nothing left, not even a shadow of gold or void, to disguise her grinning face. " They warned me you wouldn't play nice. Not that you ever really did. " The stark lights embedded where they had gutted the old Gothic walls and structures were not doing the old DA any favours. Eyes the same odd silver as the coin he still clutched in his good hand, held an unwavering gaze, trained right along the seam of where a wax - like imitation of handsomeness met harshly with a mess of dead flesh.

That coin twisted in the air, catching and releasing light, and still she didn't look away from the cold stare of his one good eye. ALL WAS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR, SURE. What most forgot was that, naturally, inevitably, all was fair in everything one could think of under the sun when one just waited long enough. It was true that Death did not discriminate, but that was because Death was a fellow agent. Death was nothing save for bodily entropy and entropy was. . . well, one example was one - half of Dent's face. They both now held something hidden from the other. He, her apparent fate, pressed cold into the back of his left hand. And she?

charlotte has a lot of phone numbers in her phone, but none of them are named or labelled. if you are someone she speaks to often or a friend ( or an enemy, for that matter), she will most likely have your number memorized.

char being an optimist is her finding herself in the most awful situations possible and still being like "it's not that bad it's really not that bad! it could totally be worse ok this is fine it's an adventure it's fine," even though she's probably taking in every single fucking detail around her, and her brain is steaming from her trying to devise a way out or through the situation, but it's still not really a lie to say she's still having a good time. as a reference, charlotte is always lying when she says "i'm sorry," and when she looks at you and tells you that "it's going to be okay," it's a fifty-fifty shot whether she's lying or being genuine, but when she tells you "i'll figure it out," that's always the truth.

if you were to empty char's pockets, you're most likely to find: a swiss army knife, a couple elastic bands, a hairtie (which is different than the elastic bands), spare change, a lemon drop or two, a bus or train ticket, a matchbook, loose pages of a notepad with various things written on the pages. these are what you usually find in her pockets. her bag is a different story.

Cozy. Yes, that was more like it. A smirk played its way across Charlotte's lips, the shape of her mouth seemingly cut in two ( mismatched, like a pencil dropped into a half - full glass of water, ) by a sliver of light coming in through a slit in the old linen closet door. No one should've been in the house and it had been empty when they slipped through an open window like smoke, like sunlight. More importantly, no one should've come home. This house sat lonely under a dead man's name. It has for years, and for years, no one had come to examine it, resurrect it, or speak to it. That is, until now.

@valereius / A HEART TO HEART

When a dead man's cold case of a murder suddenly became of interest again, his house would naturally become the first witness, approached for questioning. The good thing about a house was that it couldn't run. Burn down? Sure. Decay until it was so structurally unsound that it couldn't abide a LIVING CREATURE in it without moaning and threatening collapse? A common fate! But at least it wouldn't run. What Charlotte didn't see coming and yet, wasn't surprised to see happen, was the arrival of not one, not two, but three of the local gangs at the doors of the very same house for what sounded like negotiations over land and resource re - distribution. For years, no one had looked at this house that sat on the very edge of the city without a single standing neighbour. Not even those damn house - flipper sorts. Until today. Well, well, from lonely to all - too - popular.

Anyone else would be looking for someone to blame as unlucky, but Charlotte didn't believe in burdening one person with all the bad luck. It was never just one person, or just one thing. Misfortune was, more often than not, a group effort. So, she was more than willing to take on some of the blame. After all, it wasn't as if the detective was standing alone in this tiny, dusty closet. Even if there was only room for one.

Cozy, indeed. There hadn't been enough time to escape out the back door unnoticed. Three sets of enforcers, footmen, runners, and low - level yes - men had arrived near simultaneously, flooding the house ( not - so ) slowly but surely. A perimeter had been quickly ( impressively ) set and Charlotte could thought how lucky they were that David had parked his car several blocks away. The meeting was in the dining room and was approaching its first hour of minutes. The shadows of the restless patrol would go by and sink them into total darkness. As another passed, the floor seemed to tilt and Charlotte tightened the grip she had on David's jacket, leveraging her balance for a moment. The guard moved away, the house stifled a groan, and the chatter continued to flow without a hitch downstairs. This close, she could do little more than roll her gaze upward and peer at Loki through her lashes and a heavy lock of her hair that hung down over one eye.