The last place Jane wants to be early Saturday morning is at school, and certainly not in detention. It’s bad enough she has to be confined to the place five out of seven days of the week; being forced to go there during the weekend is bordering on psychological torture. While her father drives her there, she fidgets in the passenger seat with her gloves and grouses to him.

“Daddy, are you certain you can’t get me out of this? There’s absolutely no need for me to go to detention at all, what I did was hardly punishable. And every weird kid at school is bound to be there. Do you want me exposed to those sorts of people?”

Jane senses some guilt in her father’s ensuing sigh, and almost gets her hopes up before Mr Porter replies, “I’m sorry Janey, but my hands really are tied with this. How about this; I’ll make it up to you by buying you something when we go out tomorrow. You did say you wanted new boots.”

She frowns at this, but the promise of new boots is enough to pacify her for the time being. When her father stops at the front of the school and she gets out, she notices someone else arriving at the same time; a girl who she thinks might be named Wendy but isn’t altogether sure, for they have never exchanged a word. All she knows about Wendy is that she never appears at any parties nor does anything worth telling on the grapevine. The girl is apparently far too busy with her study to have anything resembling a life. Jane is surprised to see someone like Wendy showing up to Saturday detention, and after a moment of reflection rolls her eyes and figures the girl is probably doing an extra-credit project.

To her amazement, she finds Wendy sitting in the middle-row of seats arranged in the library for the students in detention. Rather than ask her what she is doing here, however, Jane chooses not to acknowledge her and seats herself at the front. The sound of the door slamming open makes the two jump, and they look up to see the school’s resident criminal-in-the-making, John Smith, making a very disruptive entrance. The boy knocks almost every book off the shelves that he passes on his way to one of the rear-most seats. Unlike Wendy, John is someone that Jane had just about expected to see here today, although she still can’t help the shiver of apprehension she feels at having to spend an entire eight hours with him. She's heard the things he's done; they all have.

Another surprise arrives in the form of Thomas Towne, a guy Jane knows somewhat through sharing the same social circles. He is one of the school’s star athletes, having won every single track event he has entered since he first started attending. She can’t help but wonder what he might have done to land himself in detention. Once all four of them are seated, someone steps out from beneath the shadows near the back corner, and they are startled to see that Ms Tremaine has been in the library the whole time. Each one of them curses their luck in landing her as supervisor, for she is one of the most feared teachers in the entire school.

“I do believe one of our number is yet to arrive. …Though I can’t say I’m much surprised.” As if on cue, the library door opens once again to admit a figure swathed in black. They all watch as Alice Liddell, known basket case, wanders over to the corner and sits down with her back to them. Jane knows little of Alice save for what the girl spontaneously screams at intermittent points of the school day, in the classroom, in the cafeteria and sometimes even the girls' bathroom. If her words were to be believed, which Jane does not, then a madwoman has been after the girl's head for many weeks now. Jane and Thomas give each other an amused look. What a spaz. 

Ms Tremaine folds her arms, and continues as though uninterrupted. She steps impossibly slowly around each desk and gives them each a few leafs of paper. “You are here today to spend eight hours reflecting on your various misdeeds in the hopes that you may refrain from repeating them in future. I know better, however; none of you will ever change, so today may instead be considered an exercise in determining the length of my patience. You do not want to contribute to it further than you already have, I assure you.”

She pauses here to pull the chair on which John’s feet are propped out from under him. “Do not think you will be allowed to squander your time staring aimlessly at the ceiling. Your task is to produce a thousand-word exposition who you believe yourselves to be. Again, a fruitless exercise, but should you not hand one in at the end of the day, you will find yourselves here at the exact same time next Saturday. Are we clear?”

As Jane ponders the depths of hell her life has suddenly sunk to, she hears John clear his throat before saying, “I would just like to extend my deepest sympathies to you, Ms Tremaine, for clearly having no place better to be today than looking after a bunch of kids that aren’t even your own.” Ms Tremaine levels a glare at John, and Jane has to wonder how the boy hasn’t already gone up in flames, so intense is the fury in that glare. The woman refrains from responding and chooses instead to retreat into the library’s office, where she is no doubt watching them through the blinds of the office’s window.

“Wrinkly old bitch,” John comments mildly when she is out of ear-shot. Jane tries to ignore the four of them behind her, and focus her thoughts on the boots she will soon be in possession of. It is hard to ignore, however, when John begins tearing his paper, scrunching them into balls, and throwing them at her and Thomas. To their credit, neither of them react visibly, though Jane thinks she can see Thomas clenching his jaw to her left. When he runs out of paper, John slides to sit on top of his desk, where he begins kicking the back of Wendy’s chair, chanting the lyrics to “Like A Virgin” all the while. Jane, despite herself, starts feeling sorry for Wendy when she notices the girl’s pained expression, but in adherence to her “ignore them” policy does nothing about it.

A sudden noise from the back of the library has their heads all turning to see Alice sliding out books from various shelves and tossing them over her shoulder. No one knows what to say, aside from John. “You know, sometimes I wonder about you. Is the whole being batshit insane thing real, or are you just doing a bit?”

Alice, in lieu of a response, aims a book at him and throws. Luckily for John, her aim is shoddy and the book ends up about four feet to his right. Jane hopes to god that John’s attention will continue to be focused on Alice, but a few seconds later she hears the words, “So you, you two. Are you screwing each other or what?” slung at her back. She grits her teeth while Thomas turns in his seat and snaps back, “Shut up! Leave us alone, will you?”

Dread pools in the pit of Jane’s stomach as she feels someone gripping her shoulder, swivelling her round to meet John’s eyes a few centimetres away from hers. “Sweetheart, how long do you think you’re going to be able to ignore us, huh? We’ve got eight hours together today, and no matter how much you think you’re above us, you’re still here, stuck with us in Saturday detention. So really, you’re not so different from us at all.”

Bass pulsed and thumped all around them, strobe lights painting the world with streaks of green and red. Everything was a blurred mess to Alice, although she was so far off her tits it was a surprise she could even see anymore. A pre-swall at Thomas’ place had them half-drunk before they’d event been waved into the club; two hours later, as it drew closer to midnight, and she was staggering like no-one’s business. One foot in front of the other, she tried to tell herself, and she’d get to where she needed to go, no matter how unsteadily she walked.

She had no idea where the fuck her friends were.

Well, that was a lie – she’d spotted John and Jane in a corner of the dancefloor, lips locked together as they ground against each other, Jane’s hands firmly on her boyfriend’s ass. She had turned away from that, because the sight was making her sick. Or was it the Jack Daniels? God above only knew. She’d had five shots of it since she arrived, two of them blowjob style, and she’d gotten easily pissed on them, not to mention the bottle of Mickey Finns someone had pressed into her hands, that she had chugged in under thirty seconds. Oh, she was paying for it now, as the alcohol hit her like a truck to the face. The room turned and her stomach with it, and her eyes focused briefly on those on the dancefloor. Some were even dancing, hands up as they moved, but many and more were simply grinding against each other; boys on boys, girls on girls, boys and girls on top of each other, like Soddom and Gommorah packed into a box. It wasn’t even a box. Frankly, she had no idea what the fuck it was, but they were in it and God, she’d have loved to get a bit. Alcohol always had this effect on her.

Wendy. Thomas. Merida. The names floated to the forefront of her mind and she turned once more, trying to see through the coloured blurs to find them. She had no idea what she was looking for, or what her friends even looked like. That could have been Thomas and Wendy dancing together, alarmingly close, and that could have been Merida, lying on the bar and chugging raw vodka, but she just couldn’t tell. Colours were inverting – she had taken drugs too, hadn’t she? Yes. She had. The joint that had been passed around at Thomas’ place, and an LSD stamp in the toilets just after she’d come in. No wonder everything was spinning, changing, defying every law she ever knew. If she looked up and squinted, she could see vultures, but that didn’t matter. They were alright, those vultures. Dirty bastards who wanted to corrupt your head with terrible music, who wanted to cut into your heart and your mind, fill it with diamond mind control, but alright beyond that.

An arm around her waist. Where the fuck had that come from? She had been preoccupied with the voice in her head, the one that encouraged her every so often to just cut someone’s throat. Broken glass littered the floor around the bar, where she-who-would-be-Merida had flung the glasses off to make room. Find a sharp enough one, and she could be deadly. It was a shame John hadn’t brought his gun. The arm was still around her waist. Someone was kissing her neck, and she couldn’t help herself; her eyes closed and she tilted her head back, giving them more access to it. Some things were just irresistible, and for her, that was one.

Wake up. Roll out of bed. Stumble to bathroom. Wash or shower. Stagger back to bedroom. Strap on the same bland uniform they’d worn for the last four days. Add a few personal touches. Grab some breakfast, if they weren’t already running late, and race for the bus to take them back to the dull torture chamber that served as an education chamber. Dull, bleary eyes, still red with sleep, the thumping of footsteps in time as they traipsed through the doors to have knowledge they never wanted funneled into their heads as the government saw fit. First thing in the morning, they were tired, passive, unwilling to ever object.

Come three thirty on a Friday afternoon, things changed.

John was always the first one out of classes, and always the first waiting on the steps of St. Trinian's, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips as teenagers spilled out of the school doors. His eyes lingered on the flood of humanity, scanning it for a familiar face, when he felt a tap at his shoulder, knowing it would be Tommy. Sure enough, when he turned around, the ginger was falling onto the wall beside him, running a hand through tousled hair. His bag thunked to the ground, and John passed over the cigarette, taking a moment to muss up his own locks as he spotted the headteacher. For a second, there was fleeting eye contact, and John mentally dared him to say a thing about the two scruffy boys, but no action was taken. Teenagers were frightening enough to their own peers – to adults, they were abominations that were unable to be challenged, and no-one in their right mind was ever going to go up against John Smith. Another nudge at his shoulder, and Thomas passed back the cigarette, a hush falling over them as others milled around them, waiting for their own friends. Unkempt boys, with untucked shirts and loosened ties, girls with skirts hiked high and shirt buttons hanging open, they were a sight to behold according to their educators, and not in a good way.

“Heard that Adam kid challenged someone to a fair dig,” Thomas reported as he rifled through his bag for his own packet of cigarettes.

“Aye. Me, at six tonight,”

“…are you serious?”

“Yeah. He was talking shit, am I supposed to let him?”

“John, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Would I have said yes if I didn’t?”

“Yeah,”

Thomas shook his head and grinned around the cigarette dangling from his lips as he pulled a lighter out of his pocket, cupping his hand around the flame to ensure it wouldn’t go out. A few more students flounced out past them, a few foreign exchange students from France – in the eyes of the teachers, they were the only well-dressed students at the school, but that didn’t make them any less hostile. The two sisters who had come were constantly at each other’s throats, and the blonde one, Marie Bonfamille, had been involved in a catfight with Merida DunBroch in the canteen that left her with a broken finger, and Merida needing stitches. Thomas caught her eye as she walked out, the two of them trading a smirk, and John watched, mildly bemused. He and Thomas had been friends since primary school, but even he didn’t have an awful lot of faith in him ever getting anywhere close to Marie. She’d tear him to shreds before he knew what hit him.

“Well, boys,”

The familiar voice of Wendy darling reached their ears, and John raised a hand in greeting as Thomas continued to fumble with his lighter. Wendy plucked it from his grasp, clicking it on and lighting the cigarette quickly – they’d all spent one night watching Thomas try to light a cigarette for ten full minutes. He’d almost set fire to Alice’s curtains, and they’d made a pact after that that if he took more than four attempts to light a cigarette, someone else was to do it for him. Wendy seemed to be the only one who remembered.

“Well, Wendy,” John replied, throwing his own stub down and crushing it underfoot. “Seen the other two yet?”

“Alice is in detention,” she replied as she took a seat beside Thomas, fumbling in her pocket for her phone. “Threatened Ms. Hawkins with a chair today. She’ll be a while,”

“Fuck’s sake. Well, we’re going to the park at six, so text her and let her know to meet us there. I’m not waiting on her to come out again,”

“Who’s coming out? Is it Tommy?”

Jane appeared as if from nowhere, dropping into John’s lap and pressing her lips against his. Tommy’s ears started to go red as Wendy giggled to herself, but his comeback was lost to the wind; John and Jane remained glued to each other for the next five minutes, as they were every day after school. The conversation topic changed after they finally came up for air, with John informing her of their plans for this evening, and offering her a chance to get into the betting pool. Her refusal was accompanied by a demand to leave, to get ready, and they proceeded on the walk home, Jane and Wendy swapping gossip whilst John and Thomas weighed up the pros and cons of the boys who were to fight that night.

The group finally came together at five to six at the park, there to support their friend and also carry him off to the hospital if necessary. John and Jane had turned up first, the latter having commissioned the former’s leather jacket to protect her from the chill in the evening air. In all honesty, it wasn’t even that cold, considering how close to summer it was, but Jane’s own studded jacket had been ruined in an argument with a particularly snotty girl after the girl threw a smoothie on her and Jane socked her in the jaw. She hadn’t been able to get the stains out and had been borrowing her boyfriend’s jacket ever since, though John didn’t mind. He liked it when Jane wore his clothes, almost as much as he liked it when she wore nothing at all.

Thomas and Wendy showed up next, Tommy unable to get a word in edgeways as Wendy spoke of the boy she was sweet on, someone named Peter whom none of her friends knew. In all honesty, Thomas looked a little bored, shooting John and Jane a “help me” look as Wendy talked on, but neither of them did – John just slid his arm around Jane’s waist and smirked, making no effort to interrupt the conversation, and it carried on for several more minutes before Jane pointed out Alice drifting towards them. She looked terrible, as she always did these days – her recent diagnosis of insomnia was clearly affecting her, but that didn’t stop her from smiling brightly at all her friends as she spotted them and hurried her pace to catch up with them. The bags under her eyes were only emphasized by her copious amount of eyeliner, but she sounded as awake and alert as ever as she finally drew near.

“I haven’t missed anything, have I? Lorina tried to force me into a longer skirt before I left, I thought I was going to have to leap out the bathroom window again,”

“You haven’t missed anything,” Jane assured her as John passed a cigarette over to her, and they started towards the gathering crowd. Adam was already waiting at the centre of the crowd, his jacket dumped at his feet as he scanned the crowds, looking for his opponent. The crowd parted before the gang was they passed through, partly due to their reputation as being fucking insane, and partly due to their excitement over what was going to happen. Adam was on the wrestling team at the school, and hadn’t been nicknamed “the Beast” for nothing, but John also had a reputation for being a mad bastard when necessary, and everyone in the school knew about his skill with a gun. It was going to be a fun night. Neither of the boys said a word as John approached, and every eye in the crowd was on them. For a minute, there was silence – and then, as the town’s clock chimed six in the distance, Adam charged.

It was a bloodbath. Thomas shouted words of encouragement to John, whilst Jane and Wendy looked on in mild horror, hardly able to believe a broken nose could spout that much blood; Jane was yelling at the both of them, but what she said was incomprehensible and lost in the roar of the crowd. Alice had dropped onto the ground and currently sat cross legged, smoking something not quite legal as John’s fist crunched against Adam’s jaw – a second later, a tooth landed in front of her, though she hardly noticed it. The fight lasted only fifteen minutes, but it seemed like it went on for an eternity. Adam tackled John around the waist to finish it, after their trading of punches, sending them both crashing to the ground; unfortunately for John, Adam had him pinned, and the blows rained down, bone and cartilage crunching under the other boy’s fists. It was only when Jane herself stepped him and gripped Adam by the hair to get him off her boyfriend did it finally stop – Adam was declared the winner, but didn’t stick around long enough to revel in the glory. The others rushed towards where John rested, spitting out strings of saliva that painted the grass around him bright red. His nose was broken, and one of his eyes was swelling shut, not to mention the numerous bruises his face was covered with, but he struggled to his feet all the same, determined not to let it phase him. Jane repeatedly questioned him about whether or not he was alright, but he brushed her off as he began to stagger away, friends trailing after him.

“You know,” Alice mused as they traipsed after him, arms folded. “Some teenagers scare the living shit out of me,”

a bonnie & clyde au.

Naturally, they ended up in Vegas. They didn’t rush off straight away after their agreement, though – they were still checked into their hotel for another four days, and they fully intended to enjoy themselves whilst they were there. The remainder of the week was spent lounging by the pool or at the beach, and they even managed to risk a night out on the town at one point, stumbling back to the hotel half-drunk for a bit more fun together; they agreed the next morning that even though they were nursing exceptionally sore heads, it was one of the best nights they’d had since first going on the run. You didn’t really get to go out and have a social life after the third person you murdered, and so the opportunity they’d seized had definitely been a good one.

It was easier to lose yourself in Vegas. The drive from the hotel at Huntington Beach to their destination had taken under five hours, and they agreed that they would stay in just a regular hotel rather than anything fancy this time – after all, they were saving up for a wedding. It was at Alice’s insistence, as she stipulated that even though they couldn’t have a proper wedding, they could have something close to it. Bambi was going to get a suit, she was going to get a wedding dress, and there was no compromising.  They even managed to find a place that didn’t look too shady and would make the ceremony legally binding, which was a huge plus. Two weeks in Vegas, they’d decided, one to prepare for the wedding and one to start the honeymoon, before they’d drive up to Florida and spend however long they could there. It was a plan seemingly without flaws.

They married on the twenty second of June, at twenty past eight in the evening. The ceremony was hardly spectacular – they paid two people to stand in as witnesses for them, but, plain as their ceremony was, it was a fulfilling one for them both. True to Alice’s demand, Bambi stood tall in a brand new suit, whilst she donned a short white dress and veiled hat to walk up the small aisle in. It seemed like no time at all had passed before they walked back down it hand in hand, officially man and wife, and Alice had to take a moment to reflect on everything that had happened in the previous four years. She hadn’t expected to be married at twenty-three, but then again, she also hadn’t expected to have killed a man aged nineteen, or did she ever expect to be continuously on the run from the police. It was a strange existence, but one she was finally comfortable with, mostly because of the partner she constantly had by her side. That night found them locked away in their hotel suite with the “do not disturb” sign on the door – they’d finally figured out how to make each other happy in the bedroom, and if there was any night to put it into practice, it would have to be their wedding night.

Their luck took a turn for the worse just a few days later, and it could be said it never exactly recovered.

Money was beginning to run a little low by the time they were ready to leave Vegas. An attempt at a casino had them leaving with considerably emptier pockets than they had entered with, and they hatched a plan to stop off at a gas station on their way out of the city to take what they could get, before robbing their way up to Florida, as they had done manys a time before. It could almost be considered routine at this stage, but the banks had adjusted to them. Security was tighter; security guards were more in number, and buttons to alert the police of any robberies were installed under the desk of every cashier. They walked in with masks on and guns out, but within minutes, an alarm had been sounded and security guards advanced on them, guns drawn. They were at a standoff as the couple retreated, guns pointed at those who were targeting them, and it was in this situation Bambi saved Alice’s life. In all the years they had been on the run, he had only ever killed three people, and even then, it was entirely accidental; he hadn’t even stuck around long enough to know they were dead, preferring just to go for areas that looked non-vital, and get out before he could see the consequences. The day of the failed robbery was the first time he ever deliberately shot someone in cold blood, as he caught sight of an officer lining up his pistol with Alice’s head as she momentarily turned away. His gun discharged, the bullet tearing straight through the young cop’s trachea, and they took the moment of confusion to speed off, hoping that the young boy currently bleeding out on the ground would prevent the police from following them.

Instead, three cruisers came after them, chasing them out of Vegas and into the Nevada desert. Lights flashed, sirens blared, and Alice ordered Bambi to lower the hood of the car as she hastily slammed cartridges into all the guns they had on them. He complied, preferring to let Alice handle the bloody business – just shooting someone had already left a particularly sour taste in his mouth, and had it not been his wife who was threatened, he wouldn’t have done it at all. As it was, he simply focused on the road whilst Alice squeezed the trigger of the semi-automatic, aiming for the wheels of the cars that chased them, and occasionally the window screens. One of the cars was lost when one bullet burst through the windshield and hit the driver in the eye – her partner had to grab the wheel and swerve to stop them from crashing into the car ahead of them, and then there were only three cars, driving on into the sunset.

The chase came to a suddenly halt when Bambi pulled Alice down, raising the hood of the car and swerving so it sat with its side presented to the police.

“What are you doing?” she hissed at him, confusion and fear written all over her face.

“We’re out of gas – there’s no way we’re going to get away,”

“Then we’re going to shoot our way out. Get a gun,”

They both exited on Bambi’s side of the car, as it faced away from the officers who were drawing to a halt, and gave them a chance to take cover. Alice handed the semi-automatic to Bambi, preferring to use a pistol and a hand gun at such close quarters. The police mimicked their actions, taking cover behind their own cars, and the volley of gunfire began anew. Care was taken by both parties – not a bullet was to be wasted, as they each tentatively looked over their respective cars to aim, gun barrels poking over as a reminder that death surrounded them on all sides, waiting for all of one or the other to finally die. Reasoning was useless – any time the police tried to talk to them, Alice replied with a short, sharp “go fuck yourself!” The standoff lasted hours; the sun was going down  and the air grew chilly around them as they fired back and forward, until one of the police stuck gold – Bambi had peeked his head up over the car for only a second, to aim better, and the slug caught him in the middle of the forehead. His body toppled backwards, small fragments of brain and bone splattering the dirt behind them, and Alice screamed. Her own weapons were quickly discarded as she scrambled over to his body, lifting his head and cradling it in her lap, silently begging for him to still be alive, pleading with him not to leave her. Her hands ran through his hair as if that would revive him, and in one desperate moment, she pressed her lips to his, as if some sort of true love’s kiss would bring him back. Nothing work – blank eyes fixated on nothing, rolled up so that he could have seen the sky in his last moments, and his body cooled in her arms.

She didn’t even have time to mourn him. Tears flowed down her face as she picked up his gun, standing up and firing wildly at the officers, screaming all the while. She didn’t care about much anymore; her vision was blurred and her voice was hoarse as she shouted, her grief audible to the few who had gathered there that night. She made herself an easy target; she also didn’t care. Four slugs caught her, two in the chest, one in the abdomen, one in the throat. Like her husband before her, the recoil caused her to hit the dirt, as blood flowed from open wounds, and the spark of life faded from her eyes. She died choking on her own blood, and finally, it was all over.

Officers radioed for paramedics and within half an hour, the ambulances arrived, painting the night sky blue and crimson as their lights flashed. Other officers accompanied them for the preliminary report, one serious-faced young man watching as two body bags were loaded into an ambulance, ready to be transferred to a morgue. One of his colleagues had to call his name four times before he noticed it, and he felt almost ashamed by how distracted he had been.

“Son, are you okay? I know it was a hard day for everyone, but you can’t go letting two criminals distract you. They’re dead and gone now. They won’t be causing anyone anymore trouble,”

In everyone else's eyes he was guilty; nobody believed him when he told them about how she'd been so off her head on the drugs she was begging for death, just to get away from the hallucinations that haunted her. Nobody believed him when he told them that he had never meant to stab her, that he had been trying to wrestle the knife off her, begging her to please, please, stay alive for him.

a bonnie & clyde au.

Luckily enough, when the incident occurred, it wasn’t anything too serious. After the first time they had been shot at, they’d agreed to take some time to look up the different types of bullet wounds, simply because they couldn’t afford to run to the hospital for every little thing, just in case they were found out. They knew how to spot a through and through, and how to distinguish it from something more serious, though neither of them had ever actually experienced the pain of it until they made their trip to Ohio.

It seemed like another part of their good run at first – security guard taken out, cash being shoveled into the bag, and they didn’t even have to put down anyone who tried to act the hero this time. They were on their way out to the car when the shooting started. Evidently, someone had slipped under their radar and managed to get a phone call to the police, as sirens blared and lights flashed and somewhere, a gun discharged. The bullet ripped through the flesh of Bambi’s arm like a knife through butter, and after that, Alice honestly couldn’t recall what happened. A red mist came down over her eyes as the gun came up, and had Bambi not later recounted to her what went on, she wouldn’t have the faintest idea. She had fired until her cartridge was empty, and there were six bullet holes in the chest of the officer who’d shot first. She hadn’t stopped there – when the police came after them, as they sped off, she’d forced Bambi to lower the hood of their car and grabbed the semi-automatic stored under the passenger seat, firing wildly at anyone who pursued them, screaming as she did so. It was safe to say she’d become a little unhinged in the last few years, but then again, anyone would after spending so long driving about with the police after them, and besides, she was incredibly protective of her only companion. Had she come face to face with the person who had shot him, she would have most likely torn him limb from limb with her bare hands.

Instead, she unleashed her fury on the cops who tailed them. Civilians ducked for cover as they sped past, though whether that was because of the gunfire or the unsteady way Bambi was driving, no-one could be sure. Glass shattered, concrete splintered and Alice would have been content to keep on firing had Bambi not been able to shout some sense into her, arguing that if she sat down and let him close the hood, they could melt into the city and get away. She was unwilling to do so, simply because she didn’t feel the police been punished enough for the atrocity they committed against Bambi and her, but she knew Bambi was right. He always was. Grudgingly, she took her finger off the trigger and slid back down into her seat as the hood went up, taking a moment to examine her friend.

She didn’t like what she saw. His face was pale and the arm of his jacket seemed to be soaked with blood, and you could see quite clearly where the bullet had gotten him due to the tear in the fabric. Quite frankly, Alice was pissed off. Bambi was the only thing she had left in the world, really, and she’d be damned if she’d let anyone point a gun in his direction again. There wasn’t much said until after they were outside the city limits, when Alice demanded they pull over at a hostel so he could rest. A quick change of jackets hid the bullet wound and though the room was a piece of crap compared to the last place they had stayed, it was better than nowhere.

“Let me see your arm,” Alice asked, surprisingly gentle after her earlier burst of psychosis. Bambi complied, shrugging the jacket off with a wince as Alice moved to the bathroom, filling the sink with warm water. There was a bottle of vodka right next to it, just in case it was necessary, though she hoped it wouldn’t come to that; it would hurt like a bitch, and she wasn't willing to be the person who inflicted that pain on him. He followed her through shortly after, and she carefully rolled up the ruined sleeve of his t-shirt, unsettled by the blood that had run down his arm. He was still far too pale for her liking, but she wasn’t quite sure how to tell him that, so she simply dipped the washcloth the hostel provided into the sink and began to clean the blood away, a small fire burning in the pit of her stomach every time she had to brush the wound and he grimaced. To her immense relief, when the blood was cleaned off, it wasn’t anything serious.

“A through and through,” she informed him quietly, as she rinsed the cloth in the sink, watching him in the mirror. Like her, he seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief; he’d kept his head turned away the whole time she was cleaning it, but now he seemed able to look at it. Swallowing hard, Alice took a seat on the edge of the bath beside him, leaving the cloth in the water for now. She could clean it properly in a minute.

“I’m sorry.  I never meant for you to get hurt when we started all of this…  I never even meant for you to get involved at all,”

“Alice, ‘s’fine,” he assured her, shrugging. “We worked out our problems with it, remember? We’re in this together for better or worse at this stage, might as well just get on with it,”

“Yeah. For better or worse. It was better this time, but what if it happens again? What if the police get you with a slug, but it’s right through the arm, or the chest, or the eyes?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“But it might!” Her voice had been slowly rising in volume throughout the conversation and now she stood, beginning to pace the bathroom, emotion beginning to choke her. “It might, and then what happens? Because I can’t lose you, Bambi, alright?” She was on the verge of hysterics now, vision beginning to blur at the thought of Bambi closing his eyes for the last time. “I just… fuck.

“You just fuck?” Bambi repeated, a bemused expression on his face. Alice glared at him, not quite appreciating the fact that this was the moment he chose to make a mockery of, but she simply couldn’t stay angry at him for long.

“Oh, you know what I mean. I can’t lose you Bambi. I just can’t, because… because.”

She had backed out at the last second, but both caught what her meaning was, and Bambi immediately moved closer to her, just in time for Alice to fling her arms around him in a tight hug. For a moment, the hug was enough, until, in a moment of madness, Alice pressed her lips to his. It could have meant a number of things. It could have meant, I love you; could have meant, I’m happy you’re still alive; could have meant nothing at all. Whatever it meant, this one wasn’t a brief peck on the lips before bed. It was awkward and clumsy, but it was exactly what they needed in that moment, and kissing wasn’t the only thing they would do that night.

In retrospect, they’d both freely admit the sex was terrible. They weren’t entirely sure where to put their hands for the duration of the ride, or how to time it so that the sex actually started, they weren’t even sure if they were doing foreplay right. There were no songbirds in their heads or fireworks exploding behind their eyelids – just a lot of friction and moaning, that didn’t even last all that long. Truth be told, they were happier when the ordeal was over, simply because of how woefully unprepared for it the two of them had been. The aftermath, however, was nice. They managed to get themselves out of bed so Alice could finish bandaging Bambi’s arm, but after that, it was straight back into bed to hold each other all night, pointedly refusing to mention the sex and just enjoying the sensation of being in each other’s arms. The morning after, they agreed that while they could officially call themselves a couple now, they wouldn’t sleep together again until they definitely felt ready to do so.

They had sex twice more that week, and by the third time, they were even beginning to enjoy themselves.

Their relationship upgrade seemed to make them luckier, so lucky it bordered on unbelievable, how many small places they were able to hit and escape from in record time. For over a year, they worked their way up America, targeting isolated shops and small businesses after getting word that banks were beginning to tighten their security – evidently, they had finally learned their lesson, after the deaths of so many security guards, and the loss of so many thousands of dollars. They did just as well with their new targets, though; the money they stole on top of the money they had begun to save left them well enough off that they could get a decent place to stay every other night and still have enough to check into a fancy hotel whenever they felt they deserved it. After so long driving north, they decided that a place with some sun was more than overdue – mid-June found them staying in a beachside hotel in Huntington Beach, California, and celebrating the anniversary of their fourth year on the run.

 “Do you ever miss your family?”

Bambi was the one who brought up the topic, mumbling it into the top of Alice’s head as she lay curled up against him; it had just gone one a.m., and they lay together on the bed in their hotel room, hardly under the covers due to the oppressive heat they couldn’t quite escape. There was a moment of silence before she answered – it had been a conversation topic that was almost taboo for them since they had first run away, and she couldn’t quite find the words to talk about them. She had been pretending for four years they no longer existed; to confront the fact their lives were still going on without her was terrifying.

“Sometimes,” she eventually replied, trying to pick the words that followed carefully. “I try not to think about them. You know how I can get dreadfully emotional, so sometimes, it’s easier to pretend I don’t have a family. I’ve missed so much of their lives lately, it’s like they hardly exist to me... but sometimes, I wish I could just go back to them. What about you?” She moved her head so she could look at him now, and found he was staring at the ceiling.

“I miss… I miss visitin’ my mum’s grave. I don’t think she’d be proud of all this,”

Neither would mine, she wanted to reply, but she knew there was no point in it. Her mother was still very much alive and well, but Bambi’s was a completely different case. An uneasy silence settled over the both of them as time ticked on, and Alice wracked her brains for something to say to that. Usually, she had excuses that could justify their behaviour, but to say one of them now, it felt beyond inappropriate.

“Maybe we’re better off not thinking about our family,” She started. He still wasn’t looking at her, nor had he replied to her comment; swallowing down the lump that suddenly appeared in her throat, she dropped her eyes, her voice becoming almost a whisper. “Maybe we could just be each other’s family,”

“Aren’t we that already?” He asked, and Alice bit her lip.

“Yes, of course we are. We’ve been practically family ever since we were children. But we could be more,”

That, at least, had him finally stir. When she looked up this time, his eyes met hers, a quizzical expression on his face.

“How?”

“Shotgun wedding, maybe,” It was only half a joke, but the words sounded completely ridiculous rolling off her tongue, and she found herself giggling at the thought of it. It even made Bambi smile, and she was glad. She hated it when thinking about his mother got him down, she always had.

“It’s only a shotgun weddin’ if you’ve got something to tell me,” he reminded her, before sitting up suddenly, face going pale. Alice sat up with him, wondering if this was some sort of heart attack.

“Do you have somethin’ to tell me?”

She couldn’t help it – she ended up laughing. After a moment, he joined in, but she could see it was uneasy, and for some reason, that just made it funnier. Unable to talk, she just shook her head until the giggles faded away, although she couldn’t tell how long that took.

“No! No, God no. At least, I don’t think I do… no, no I definitely don’t,” she hastily assured him; colour had been coming back into his face until she’d made the joke, and he was quickly turning the colour of milk again. “I’m not suggesting it because of anything like that. I just think it… it would be nice, wouldn’t it?” It’s not like we’ll be able to marry anyone else anyway, not with this life, she said to herself as she waited for his answer.

“So, you wanna get married?” He asked as he lay down again; Alice followed suit, curling back into him, glad that he seemed to be taking the request in his stride. Reaching up, she planted a kiss on his lips, murmuring a quiet yes as she pulled away. Silence reigned for a moment, before the two of them smiled at each other, and Alice felt a bubble of happiness growing inside her chest.

a bonnie & clyde au.

Click.

“The money goes to the other one. Hand it over in stacks, bag it, and no-one else gets hurt,”

After a while, Alice had learned, you got used to the look of fear in their eyes. The bank teller, after all, had no idea what the hell was happening. All he saw was two maniacs with dark hair and porcelain doll masks coming in and shoving guns in people’s faces. The security guard at the bank was gone – Alice had gotten him between the eyes little less than a minute after walking in, before barring the doors. It had gotten easier since she had shot Phoebus almost three years ago; she no longer found herself retching over a toilet in disgust at herself as she tried frantically to clean out bloodstains, and pick bone fragments off of her clothes. These days, she could just afford to burn them and buy more. It wasn’t always that way – sometimes, she just had to scrub and scrub and hope the stains came away, but they were having a good run recently. They still had a good sixty thousand dollars stashed away in the car and in their bags, but while they were having a good streak, Alice had figured out they may as well make it last as long as possible. They had crashed everywhere from shitty hostels to the most expensive hotel in whatever city they currently occupied, and frankly, she felt they deserved somewhere good to rest for a while after a solid week and a half of driving across America to get away from their last crime scene. A little extra spending money wouldn’t go amiss, and there was a fancy place just two cities over she’d had her eye on for a while – they could be checked in by sundown and the police would still be scratching their heads over their whereabouts.

And scratch their heads the police would. They were officially wanted criminals now, but beyond the doll masks and their repeated assaults on banks, they had managed to remain well hidden from those who would pursue them. All the police had to go on besides the masks where artist’s sketches. Make-up and wigs had been essential to that. Over the years they had blown a ridiculous amount of money on them, but it worked. They knew how to make their faces look wider, skinnier, rounder, they knew how to darken their skin or lighten it, which hairstyles made them look unrecognizable, which clothes could hide their build… if it was part of a disguise, they could pull it off. They’d even been practicing how to alter their voices lately, and Alice was getting pretty good at making hers ridiculously high pitched – amusingly, so was Bambi. The teasing was endless, but they both knew it was just banter. You don’t steal over two hundred thousand dollars with someone without bonding.

Days like this, it was all easy. It seemed like it was only a matter of minutes before the bag was full, and Bambi zipped it up, immediately starting for the door whilst Alice swivelled, pointing the gun at everyone in the bank as a warning. She had traded the shotgun for a different model, one that fired more than two slugs at a go. Her current pistol had never failed her, and she was beginning to believe it could even count as her “lucky” gun, even though she did have an affinity for the machine gun stored in the car. That, however, was for emergencies only. With the gun still pointed inside the bank, she began to retreat. Bambi was already in the car, ready to go, and they were speeding off before she had even properly closed the door. Within ten minutes, they were lost in the heart of the city – within twenty, they were racing past its outskirts and headed towards their destination.

They’d stayed at fancier places before, but it didn’t matter. Checking in under false names had become second nature to them, and their false handwriting was getting better too. Bambi dealt with it this time, whilst Alice tossed the dark curls of her wig, standing with the bags and waiting for a concierge to take it to the penthouse suite. When they had the money for it, they only stayed in the best, and this was no exception. The suite took up most of the top floor of the hotel, and had everything they could possibly want, nevermind need. The best thing, however, had to be the bed. Though they’d had all that money stored up in the car, they’d been saving it just in case it was needed for anything, and had been mostly roughing it on their way into the city they had recently robbed. That night consisted of the two of them collapsing under the covers and refusing to move until the next morning. Sometimes, it was the simple things in life that meant the most.

“How long do you think we can stay?”

It had almost become a ritual, asking that question. It always occurred the morning after they found a place to stay, always over breakfast, be it the supplies they had stashed in the car for the bad weeks, or whatever was on the menu in the hotel where they were staying. It was always Bambi who asked, and, just like always, Alice simply shrugged. She let her eyes fall down to her tea as she stirred it, knowing that they couldn’t chance it for long. Usually they’d be further away from their target than this, at least four cities away. They were barely inside their comfort zone as it was.

“Two days. Maybe three, but I wouldn’t risk it. They’ll be looking for us soon enough, if they haven’t started already, and you know just how pushy they can get. Infuriating, how every rookie who knows how to aim thinks they’ll be the one to take us out. Are they ever going to learn?”

They’d had this conversation a few times, and it never failed to amuse Bambi just how outraged Alice got, that these people would have the audacity to attempt to uphold the law. The first shootout they had, she was like a woman possessed, hanging out the window and screaming bloody murder from behind her mask, barely even aiming as she fired back at the police. Had it not been for the fact their tank had more gas in it than the police’s did, they’d have been caught, but they got away, as luck would have it, and Alice spent the rest of the night furious, ranting and raving about officers being too trigger happy and how dare they attempt to take them down by force. He hadn’t mentioned the people Alice had killed to ensure them a quick getaway, or the number of cops who were turning up dead after attempting to apprehend them. She always had an excuse, and more often than not, she would simply tell him “it was them or us”; even he couldn’t argue with that. They were so entangled in a life of crime at this point, there was no obvious way to break free.

Two days was a short time in such a fancy place, but anything was better than nothing, and there were always going to be more hotels elsewhere for them. It wasn’t that long ago they had managed to stay in Miami for two weeks, at a beachside hotel, soaking up the sun and enjoying the brief respite from their hectic life. It was far better than anything they could have gotten for themselves if they had simply stayed in Disney, anyway, and that’s another conversation they’d had many a time, usually when it was late at night and sleep just wouldn't come. Had they stayed in Disney, they had theorized, nothing much would have happened. Alice would have gone to work in the tea shop she had applied for; Bambi would have juggled his jobs until he finally found a steady one; they’d have lived extraordinarily boring lives that were nothing like something out of an action movie, and their bond wouldn’t be half as strong. Sometimes, after these sorts of conversations, Alice would kiss him, but it never went further than that. There’s only so many times you can shoot someone dead to protect your partner without something developing between you, but apart from those brief kisses, nothing had ever come of it, not yet. It only ever happened on good nights, anyway, and for a while, there had been hardly any of those.

In the early days, when they were young and inexperienced and completely confused about life, it had been hard. It had been dark times for them both, and there had been more bickering than anything else. It had been the first time Alice had ever heard Bambi raise his voice, but not the last, and shouting matches had become frequent. Sometimes, they would have to stop the car so one or the other could storm out and scream in the middle of the road, for fear of punching the other if they didn’t. Some days, Alice had contemplated turning herself in and saying she’d kidnapped him, just to spare him an inevitable life of misery on the road with someone he hated. In all honesty, she wasn’t really sure how they had managed to overcome their issues with each other. The screaming had become less frequent, the arguments less explosive, and soon enough, they were hardly arguing at all. Call it a twist of fate, call it a terribly fatalistic attitude, but something had changed between them, so that they both accepted that a good portion of their life would now be spent on the run. It wasn’t something either of them were okay with until they came into their first really large sum of money, the first time Bambi had assisted Alice with a robbery. Usually, she did it alone, but she’d asked him to come in to bag the cash, so she could focus on the weapon and the people. They’d had to make a stop to get him a mask something like hers, but whatever they had done, it had worked. They’d escaped easily and when the recently obtained money was combined with what they had saved up from their last escapades, they had discovered over four thousand dollars, with which they could do what they pleased. It was the first time they checked into a fancy room in a hotel for the night, the first time they had gotten to properly relax since going on the run. It was also the first night Alice had worked up the courage to lean over and let their lips meet, the first time she had acknowledged to herself that, despite the arguments, she felt something a little but more than friendship for him.