An Unquiet Grave

All she had to do was follow the scent. The blood... it’s not like the blood of the living. It’s like second hand clothes except it’s bodily fluid. It doesn’t belong to them, these beings who smell like a morgue and cemetery dirt who have invaded the city’s nighttime in overwhelming numbers in recent weeks. And with them? The girl who turns them into ashes in the alley below. 

Laura remains perched on the building overhead, waiting patiently for the girl to finish her fight. She always does. But only watching from a distance for nights on end can only give Laura so much information until it’s time for a much more direct approach. She rolls the loose threads of her torn up graphic tee between her fingers as she watches the scene below, deciding that tonight would be the night to make contact.

As the girl faces off against her final opponent, Laura lowers herself on the building’s edge and silently makes her way down, knowing that a lone enemy won’t last long against the stranger. Once she’s close to the ground, she jumps, landing with a soft ‘thud’ directly behind the girl. She slowly straightens her legs to appear as non-threatening as she can until further assessment of the potential threat. 

@anunquietgrave {laura kinney} is on a mission

Jess learned the hard way that you couldn’t really say no to Captain Marvel. Not only was she an expert pouter, but she was like… an All-American (okay, part Kree) darling and something something about disrespecting uniformed military. Red, blue, and gold was not a military uniform the investigator ever remembered seeing.

But at the end of the day, Jessica Jones was happy to take a case, nearly any case, if it meant she got paid, helped people, and got Carol off her back. (Really, she was more altruistic than the grumpy inner monologue would make her seem. It was all for helping the helpless.)

The intel was good, a clandestine warehouse of some sort where they were building a weapon (it was always a weapon. Boys and their toys) to utilize against the mobilizing youth- read: teenage superheroes, many of whom were mutants and Inhumans who just couldn’t help being born different. Yeah, Jess understood a little bit about being outcast, a weird kid growing up. (Echoes of the phrase ‘coma girl’ rattled in her brain, but she shook it off quickly.) She needed to get inside, figure out what was up, and take out the weapon if possible. Otherwise, blow the whistle and get the Avengers involved (and she really didn’t want to get the Avengers involved).

The facility was upscale, white and clinical and disguised as some sort of pharmaceutical depot. This wasn’t a ‘talk your way inside’ job, so Jess had to get stealthy. Unfortunately her powers of flight were anything but, but still she managed to pry open some roof panels and slip inside without arousing too much suspicion. Shortly after getting her boots on the ground, she knocked out a snooty looking laboratory aide, hair tightly pulled in a bun that seemed to double as an impromptu facelift. Jones stole the coat, the keycard, and the clipboard off of one “Alyssa Lorenz” and continued her search.

Eventually, she stumbled in on a metal shuttered room that her keycard wouldn’t provide access to- which meant it was something worth getting at. Thankfully, super strength was all the access she needed, and after prying the heavy door open just enough to slip through (think Indiana Jones levels of close call but a vertical wall) she was met with the sight of a woman restrained on a silver table. Oh yeah, that just screamed “pharmaceutical trials” and definitely not “bad guy with a laser weapon”.

“Hey. I don’t work here and I don’t think I have a lot of time before the tech I knocked out will wake up in a sanitation closet,” she began with a low whisper, her voice efficient like every second counted. “Have you seen the weapon they’re hiding in here? Assuming you’re about to be its test subject.”

Jessica added. “I’ll totally get you out of there, just…” She looked back at the door- all clear, for now. “Hold tight, yeah?”

Strong arms flexed uselessly against metal binds, one around each wrist and ankle and anchored her to the metal table. The collar around her neck– serving a purpose other than just a sick symbol of keeping an animal leashed and claimed by the highest bidder– seemed to be responsible for the steep decrease in strength, and possibly for the nauseous feeling in her stomach that stirred from something foreign and combative in her blood. The effects were slow acting– the collar must’ve been bought off some black market, along with the occasional tight-lipped tech that wandered the halls in their crisp lab coats that smelled like ethanol and fresh linen– but she doubted that they expected to need anything of higher quality so long as they could finish the task that would give them control over her as if she was a missile in the shape of a young woman. 

Laura’s nostrils flared and her family-trademarked scowl burned a figurative hole in the ceiling. Knockoff power dampener or not, she was weakening more and more as time passed. Didn’t matter how much adrenaline pumped through her veins at the familiar scenario, she wasn’t getting her strength back with that collar still around her neck. Whoever this faction was, they would all die for caging her like this. She had a promise to keep, after all. 

Her shallow breathing caught when she picked up a new scent. It smelled of the city, not of labs and molded warehouse wood and various chemical cleaners. She strained her neck to lift her head up and witness the stranger push her way into the room and approach what she must’ve assumed to be an innocent hostage. 

Definitely not innocent. 

Hey. The woman reeked of nonchalant experience in this sort of thing, despite the lack of colorful tights. In any other situation, Laura might’ve given her silent approval that could be deciphered by very few people left on this earth. She 'hmphed’ in response to the stranger’s promise. Her answer might not get her out of this any time soon. But for them to make their speediest exit, her potential rescuer needed to know the weight of the situation in its entirety. Laura stopped struggling for a moment, then braced, teeth clenched and fingers balled up into fists. The veins in her arms popped up as she flexed and a strained growl vibrated in her throat against the pain in her hands and feet. Slowly– excruciatingly– her claws emerged from between her knuckles at a staggered pace. On her right hand, only one claw fully extended. At her feet, two claws stood straight out from the toes of her boots. 

                 Rolling her eyes was the only thing she could do. It wasn’t like she would actually do it, at least not this version of herself. Maybe if it was a year or so ago she would have tripped the other and ran for the mausoleum herself. She wasn’t that person anymore, something she kept reminding herself of even though Cordelia was making it hard. “I was jokin’, jesus,” she hissed shaking her head.

When a sudden crash come from outside, the slayer turned her attention back to the threat on the other side of the door. However she caught sight of Cordelia making her way over by her and how she walked, her head shaking. “God you are such a girl,” she whispered, hand going to take hold of her knife, pulling it free before holding it up in the others face, “sharp end goes in demon. Don’t cut yourself or stab me by accident,” she said before handing it over. Her brow arches at the others words, jaw clenching as she did her best to keep it together. Angel warned her that she would forever be questioned and doubted. “You’re still alive aren’t you? Should be enough convincing,” she muttered before snorting, “My ass and your ass are nowhere alike. Trust me…you could barely bounce a penny off yours whereas you could bounce a handful of quarters off mine.” This clearly wasn’t the time to be debating about whose ass was better, but Faith was never one not to defend her best asset or at least one of them.

“Yeah… and don’t let me forget it,” Faith grumbled, reminded of the turbulence of her time in Sunnydale. It was almost a year since Buffy’s graduation and her involuntary check-in to the hospital. Felt hard to quantify any progress when ‘better than you were at your worse’ was hardly decent to begin with. Like crawling out of a deep, deep grave she dug herself, and her hands were already so tired with the effort.

“My trying is showing? Eesh, that’s embarrassing.”

The remark was far lighter than anything else, but still her voice didn’t exactly sound filled with self-confidence. But at least Buffy had confidence (or that unbridled, a bit unearned optimism) enough for the both of them. Faith wrapped her arms around the other Slayer’s waist as she was tucked in closer, hooked around the knees.

“Bad Buffy indeed,” she hummed. “I don’t know, I was kind of getting attached to the idea of cookies. The cucumbers, not so much. But maybe there’s a way for the both of us to get what we want, make the best of a bad night?” Faith put her hands on the small of Buffy’s back, sliding her closer, off of the pool table. The brunette Slayer held her companion close, resuming their kiss as Buffy’s legs wrapped around her hips.

“Mmmight not be a college student,” Faith said between breathy kisses, “but I’m not stupid. You put up a good fight, Summers. Made me work for it.”

“Mm. Yes. We can cookies.” She has no idea where to find cookies at this hour but at the moment she can barely speak let alone process a full thought. Faith’s hands and lips are on her and Buffy’s clinging to her like a monkey in a tree, if that tree only had an inch on her. She smiles into the kiss as Faith mutters her kudos when she can, when Buffy’s lips aren’t chasing hers down. Everything else falls away. And the things that don’t, she tries to heal over with each connection of their lips. She arches her back so as much of her is touching Faith as possible and in doing so she feels a tug from deep within her chest. Can someone long for another when they quite literally can’t get any closer? Is it insane to crave validation for an emotion that wouldn’t physically change a single thing in their current state? But... wouldn’t it? 

“You were... better than I... expected.” Her ability to keep talking is depleting fast, especially as she picks up the intensity of her movements with the reminder of her fear of rejection. She’ll bring it up soon. She will. “I couldn’t make it too easy.”