#leatherforhell.

his stomach drops and his body goes suddenly cold. peter's head explodes into sharp, bristling pain, his spider-sense going absolutely haywire as his atoms are ripped apart and put back together in a completely different location. he lands on his feet, pinching the bridge of his nose and doing what he can to shake off the lingering ringing in his head.

one ( 1 ) new message from @leatherforhell : it’s a wonder she hasn’t been found out by now. clara stands behind v, making innocent and perplexed expression every time she’s looked at. poor v has been trying to work something in this computer for sixteen minutes now. clara’s not sure what the actual goal is, she just knows that every time v gets to another new page, she flicks her finger, and the whole thing crashes again. she coughs to cover a laugh. ❝ gotham library computers. gotta love ‘em. ❞

another minute of staring at flickering code on old ass computers from the stone age and she was going to start exploding every electronic around her until there was nothing left. not wanting to give clara the satisfaction of glaring back at her once more, v simply raises her middle finger over her shoulder. binary vision takes hold of her, and she watches as, once more, she comes so close to finally breaching the restricted files housed on the public library's private subnet just for everything to bluescreen.

she has to admit, the gotham public library subnet is a weird fucking place to hide things but hey, she isn't the one who did it. she just got hired for the extraction of the files. v groans loudly and bangs the top of the monitor with the base of her fist, ❝ 'm tryin' to do a job here, clara. you're not exactly helping. ❞

v scans the library and nestled in the corner is a guy sitting with a laptop that has a giant california state tech sticker on it. perfect. she breezes over to him and smiles, ❝ yo ! how's it goin' ? been tryin' to mess with the dinosaur computers to pay everything off on my ubill. any chance you could do a solid to another cal stater ? ❞

she had never been to university a day in her life, she actually had never been to school at all. but clearly, mr. cal state didn't care, cause he spun his computer around instantly. her fingers dance smoothly across the keyboard, her powers doing most of the work. without any outside disturbances, the file transfer is done in under thirty seconds. she gives the guy his laptop back and makes her way back over to clara.

✆ @leatherforhell ➞ you're just as broken as i am.

she wipes the blood from her palm, brushing it off on her shorts. the attacks had been gettin' worse and v had felt like this enough times to know she might not have many more days left. ❝ i'm fuckin' dyin', clara, and i'm startin' to think that there's nothing i can do to stop it. broken might be an understatement. ❞ walking, talking corpse might be a better description of her.

shit. her head's pounding, can't shake the spins, she probably looks like a mess. wake up, v. pull it together. she's still breathing, she might as well act like it. ❝ you're not broken. no chance. i look at you and y'know what i see ? opportunity. city is your oyster or whatever. that don't sound too broken to me. ❞

✆ @leatherforhell ➞ so... when do you leave ? what time ? so i can be ready.

v sifts through the duffle, retrieving the small handgun and examining it closely — wasn't an ideal piece all things considered but, it'd get the job done — before attempting to rub off the scratch marks on the grip with her thumb. ❝ not sure. hadn't decided. probably night, better for cover. why ? you thinkin' about comin ? ❞ it should be an easy gig, simple extraction for a shit ton of money. an anonymous source had contacted her, asked if she could nab some damning info from a high ranking politician. it was probably gonna be used for blackmail, but she didn't really care how it got used if it meant she got paid.

Well, that’s not quite right. Awake implies that she ever sleeps. Clara is aware of everything, all the time, and it is overwhelming and unbearable and constant, constant. Most of the time, she lets her old friend do the work. As prepped as she was in life, she is still a human consciousness, and she is easily exhausted. It is enough to stay wrapped in someone else’s grieving mind and try to stay afloat.

Sometimes, though, she gets a little poke and an area to focus on, and she can handle that for a while.

The garden was a fantastic idea. She’s almost mad he got the idea, except she’s so damn proud of him. And she does love to listen to him like this, though it makes her wish desperately to be able to talk back. When he hops down, she does what little she can— she pushes herself into that tree, poor thing, and lets the rhythm of her city beat through.

Unsustainable. The effort falls apart within moments, but she hopes he’ll hear it. She hopes he’ll let them take care of him like they promised.

Clara lets herself be swept up into her companion’s mind, safe and worried after and stuck.