#tippens

Corbin: Yeah.

Tippens: Do you... always kill them?

Kell: No, why?

HISTORY:

"I do what I must," her father had always told her, as if by repeating it, he would make Alexxis believe it more. Alexxis never responded, her eyes staring at her father for a few moments before she found her way out of the room. She never lost count of the amount of lives he'd taken or destroyed. The number would haunt her in her sleeps, along with the lifeless eyes of whoever he decided had wronged him.

When she was 5 her father was kind. Her mother told her so, smiling at her as she picked out a book from the shelf that had books of all colors. "Kind," her mother repeated later on, her voice sounding a bit off but Alexxis was too tired to ask anything before she fell into the hands of Morpheus.

When she was 7, her father was misunderstood. That's what her father told her, the anger slipping off his face when he caught sight of his daughter watching him from across the room. "Come", he told her, and she did, heart sinking every step she took along the way. "Misunderstood," he breathed into her hair as she sat on his lap, eyes wide from what she'd seen.

When she was 10, her father was a criminal. Her mother hissed that into her ears, trying to get her to understand why she wasn't allowed to tell her friends some things and not allowed to say she'd seen her father in the last few years. Her mother's hand on her face felt cold, like the way her father stared at her with a disappointed look in his eyes as she cried. She didn't understand. Not yet.

Later on he will go into her bedroom and tell her for the first time that she should always use her brain over her heart. Every time. So that she'll be safe and not get hurt by the cruel hands of the world. For the first time he'll tell her that he's doing this for her, and he's the only one who could love her this much.

When she was 16, her father was a monster. He passed a cup of gin into her hands and she drank the venom of the spider as milk that night, seeing his deceit and manipulation tactics and committing them to memory. They would come in useful later, because porcelain will shatter but stone will not. Her eyes, hollow and cold, stared at the body of someone who'd figured out the painting was a fake. Her loss of innocence felt as tangible as the blood on her shoes.

Her mother would never know that at the age of 17 she'd taken her first life at the guidance of her father. Her mother, who smelled of books and ink and rain, would never know her child had taken the same route as his father because it was one of the few things that made her feel adrenaline. For the first time in what felt like years her father smiled at her.

She didn't return it. She no longer felt the need to tend to his needs or feed his ego. She knew what he really was now.

When she was 18 she ran and never looked back. With Iain by her side, she never felt the need to go back. She doesn't attend her father's funeral just a year later; her father would be happy about the choice. She no longer did her jobs out of duty but out of financial interest and for the adrenaline of it; she did them for the enjoyment she gets out of them and to be able to limit the damage done. She picks and chooses targets that she believed were more trouble than they're worth, but never, ever, harmed a kid. She did most jobs with detachment and went home comfortable about what she did. The past was buried in the past where it belonged and the bad blood washed off her hands- finally.

She only returned home on the days she could get away from work so she could sit at her mother's bedside and read her a story from the books that her mother once read to her. Her mother, sitting pale on the hospital bed, never responded to a word she said. Alexxis never stopped coming to her to read her a story in the hopes that wherever her mother was in her mind, her demons would be silenced by the fairy tales.

At 21, Alexxis was approached by a man in a suit and she took one look at him and sneered. Suited men had caused her more trouble than anything else. She told him he had no need for him or his charity. The man left without another word.

At 22, another suited man with a mischievous smile on his face invited her to play and she was reminded too much of her father to say yes. Iain went missing within a week and she knew that she had no way of finding him without help. Mycroft Holmes was the only man who could help someone like her, so she ran back to the first suited man who'd offered to help her before. Pride be damned. He stood in front of her with a blank face this time, and didn't respond as she finished telling her story. He left without another word. Her cousin was returned to him unharmed.

It was then that she began to work for Mycroft Holmes to show her gratitude. Under him and his cause, she flourished, having an outlet and source of income.

 Under him, she doesn't doubt that what she is doing is right. She targets criminals, rapists, dictators and the other scum of the earth that do nothing but hurt others. In them, she finds her peace as she works as a vigilante type of job. Her father's memory escapes her mind as time goes on. In her crew, she finds the family she never had.