#valereius

The stopping of the truck doesn't jar the body awake from her drowned sleep.  She dreams of nothing, stays suspended in an unfathomable cold void which might’ve been the night lake another had drawn her last breath long ago, or it might have been some deep well with no surface, no bottom.  She slumbers until a rude voice cuts above the rumbling of a engine winding down inside an enclosed space, and the sharp clanking of gears as the transmission crunches.

Only the voice manages to awaken her.   It tells her to GET UP and GET OUT,   and then,   it’s gone.

Charlotte’s eyes snap open.     The doll is never truly asleep,   is she?        No,   she only pretends to sleep while she waits for a name,  a command,  a call into existence. Immediately alert, Charlotte winces and does her best to swallow a groan that rushes up her throat like bile.   She is only partly successful.   A pained sigh hisses past chapped lips as eyes, irises more static than heather grey, track the the silhouette moving across the front of the parked truck in the dark of… The dark of what, Charlotte wasn’t actually sure.   It could’ve been either a garage or a hanger, a cave or just another void within the maze of her mind.

She’s slow to carry out the orders given to her by this shape who was MORE ABYSS THAN MAN.   More abyss than even herself.    She was,   after all,   the one bleeding, wasn’t she?   In the time it takes her to rouse her right arm and hand to press against the passenger door and pry back the handle,  pain slipping back to the edge and into the mess of her wound like a duck to a pond with each passing second, all she can think of is the blood,  the cut, the mere inches that'd separated barely alive from certainly dead.  She,  for the bare thread of life that still ran through her,   could not remember who the man was and why he was disappearing into a dark tunnel without so much as a glance back at her: the near - corpse slumping ungracefully out of his passenger - side door.  Her knee buckles as she transfers her weight and she makes a quick grab for stability,   the door threatening the entire time to swing back with an impossible force.  She has no doubt that with how the night was going, that the combination of the force and some unfortunate angle would severe her arm from her body in an instant.

By the time she manages to get her other foot on the ground, Charlotte’s panting.  She’s quickly growing pale and leans against anything, everything she find as she makes her way through what she can see now is a small garage. Behind her,   the truck door stays open.  Not a single bit of light glints off its black paint.  It was all shadow,   a sharp thing lying in wait in the dark now.

Yes, it's coming back to her now.  They’d come here:  a safe house.  Not Walker’s necessarily, but a safe house nonetheless. Charlotte drags herself down the corridor, one hand pressed against her side, the other flattened against the wall that lead her uninterrupted to the kitchen.  She lurches around the corner just in time to hear Walker shut a drawer with a rattle and a bang.   “   Nice place,   ”  she says, although her voice is as wan as her exhausted, sweat - gleaned face, and she hasn’t actually seen much except for an old table with three chairs and the corner of thick wooden shutters over the kitchen window. A combination of Walker’s build and the fluxing shadows at the edge of her vision disguises the rest from her. 

@valereius / DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. I MEAN IT.

His voice sounds different than it did back in the truck,    she thinks,    as she watches him vanish down a different corridor. The house suddenly seemed more labyrinth than shelter. Leaning against the whitewashed wall,   Charlotte watches as the shadows enveloped Walker,  consuming him before filling in densely behind him like a collapse of the abyss itself into the space.  Don’t touch anything,  he said.  As if there was anything to touch.   Or was that only how it seemed? Looking about the small room,   many things seemed amiss to Charlotte.   It would’ve been easy to miss to the untrained eye. But absence…     strategic nothingness…   was something of a specialty of hers. This house wasn’t empty.   It was bare.   That is, it had been made bare.  Given her state,  Charlotte’s gaze should’ve fell greedily,  gratefully,   on one of the chairs set at the kitchen table. Better yet,   there was a upholstered chaise peeking into the room from around the next corner.   Yet neither could tempt her. Instead,   her gaze lands on the drawer she’d only just heard Walker shut a moment ago.   

Lurching forwards,   Charlotte makes her way towards the cabinet set. With only a crooked finger,  she pulls the drawer open and peered inside to find nothing but a bit of dust. This, she was expecting. With the same finger,  she presses down on the centre of the drawer’s floor until the blood shunted out from 'neath her nail,  leaving it a ghastly white.   Then,  she swipes the perimeter of the drawer.  If the bottom was FALSE, she couldn’t the find the point to unsettle it from its frame.    Quietly, she pushes the drawer shut and moved onto the cabinet above her head.

Three books lean against the thin,  cheap wood of the cabinet wall. Charlotte passes her fingertip over the spines of the books,  the first being an Italian cookbook. The second,  slumped and curled in between,   was a yellowed and peeling copy of an old car manual.  The spine of the third volume,   a fat mass produced paperback,  was so broken that Charlotte could hardly make out the title.  It was John le Carré’s A Perfect Spy. In that moment, the agent forgot about her wound and took the novel in both her hands, and stared at the smudge of fresh blood on its grey pages in confusion.

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.

@valereius asked: " you're a hard woman to find. " / cole!

she's overseeing important business for el sin nombre, paying a visit to a family within las almas. they have valuable information for her, regarding a possible traitor. a fellow family member, their fear respect for el sin nombre outweighing familial bonds, enabling them to give their relative up. from what she can tell, it appears darian soto is prepared to give information to los vaqueros in exchange for his family's safety. little does he know, valeria has eyes everywhere. even the street dogs know who they report to. today, she'll be getting details from this family on his whereabouts. it appears poor darian doesn't know of their betrayal. he would get over it — in his grave.

her mind is cast to alejandro, the image of his face in her mind, after learning of her own disloyalty... he's lucky she didn't kill him too. perhaps they would meet again, in a fiery display of venom and bared teeth. what would he think of her now? gaze has drifted, focus fixing on the cartel worker addressing her. valeria, estamos aquí ( we are here. ) a firm nod is given, appreciative of being drawn back to the present. those thoughts were for another time and another place, she decides, and hops out of the truck. her men create a perimeter, keeping watch for any signs of los vaqueros or other potential trouble.

valeria eyes the door to the family's home, noticing a small head peeking out from one of the thin curtains inside, a curious child that's quickly yanked out of sight. a huff of amusement leaves her. out of sight, the vehicle blocking her view, she can hear a commotion — audible threats from her guards. the sicaria moves around the obstacle and assesses the situation. at gunpoint, a familiar face calls out to her, demanding he be let through. with a heavy exhale, valeria calls to her men, " ¡oye! está bien ( hey! it's okay, ) " prompting them to reluctantly let him by.

@valereius asked: " what you want matters little. " / from soap!

it's less than fucking ideal, isn't it? crammed into unfamiliar aircraft, surrounded by unfamiliar faces... well, perhaps not so unfamiliar — for some of them at least. unfriendly is likely a better word. across and to the right of her sits alejandro, his expression revealing a bitterness that had previously laid dormant within him, blanketed and tucked away for years after she'd broken his heart, his trust and his ego in more ways than one. not that she would ever confess aloud to such an intimacy with him, the enemy.

she is indeed a ruler, prepared to dig her heels into anyone for purchase and proud to humiliate and tear down whoever stands in her path but the specifics were nobody's business but their own. they know each other. it goes as far as that, for this crew of misfits sat before her. his brows arch, proposing an unspoken question to her. are you ready for what comes next? his clenched jaw promises retribution but his vacant stare tells her there's more to this façade than first presumed. and she's not able to deny similar feelings, inwardly of course.

this is someone she'd shared so much with, secrets and sensations no other man knew... irked by the abrasive silence, save for the chopper's blades, valeria intensely misses diego's obnoxious ramblings through her custom headset. here, she feels like a common hostage, alongside men she once might've fought beside — that she'd now have no quarrels with driving a blade up into their skull. her sharp gaze lands on an already-acquainted mohawk.

naturally, this situation is far from appealing but she'd consider applauding him if her hands weren't bound. can appreciate the effort, the performance. thinks it's impressive he'd achieved what he had, especially because she'd severely underestimated him. hadn't expected such coordination from a gringo. in fact, she finds it hilarious to see alejandro's had to resort to keeping such company. were his own men not enough? how embarrassing for him, that his failures had led to the americans and brits stepping in. that's how she perceives it, anyway.

pinned between a behemoth donning a skull mask and the american, valeria hisses at an elbow digging into her bicep. " couldn't have brought something bigger? " she complains, shoving against the pointy limb to try and create some space. " can barely fucking breathe in this thing, eh? " what you want matters little, soap pipes up in front of her and she bares her teeth at him, a warning and a grin mixed together. how quickly the roles reversed. it's cute, that he thinks he has the power now. that she's no longer capable of clawing out his fucking eyes — binds or no binds.

@valereius asked: “ i have come here to kick ass. ” / from soap.

the asset makes a point of pausing, of studying the sergeant with obvious intrigue. truth be told, she'd not met anyone like him before. soldiers who tended to be boisterous and energetic equally were inclined to be pushy and obnoxious. soap was as easy going and playful as he was compassionate and genuine. he's a good guy, to put it plainly, which is why mara can't flatten her ever-present hackles around him. can't shake the feeling that there's much more to him than what he presents. after all, no one's good for the sake of being good.

those people don't exist, they're a myth, a fairy-tale. he kills and he sleeps at night for it — justification be damned. is he holy? his purpose that of righteous cleansing? has he been sent by a god? or is he another sucker who believes it's for a just cause? drip-fed lullabies by his superiors and nestled in the bosom of patriotism. she finds the idea of an angelic figure presenting as someone with an accent such as his to be an entertaining thought. no one would suspect him, mara supposes. " just don't go trying to kick my ass, chamo, or we're gonna have a problem, " she quips.

truth be told, crystal's encountered people ruder than matthew murdock in her life. hell, she's encountered people ruder than him today alone. she's starting to think that it's something that comes with the job. no one likes a nosy reporter, right? even one with pure intentions. so, she's learned to not take it too personally. at least, that's what karen tells her to do. and, despite it proving to be harder than she thought, she'll just have to take karen's word for it. she hasn't steered her wrong yet.

it's karen that led her to matt murdock, actually. she remembers the other reporter telling her that there was only a handful of people that could be trusted in this town. even fewer you could go to when you were in trouble. but, she remembers the name matt murdock being at the top of karen's list. and, considering the fact that karen wasn't answering and crystal was sure she was in trouble, she didn't have a choice right now.

crystal remembers the warnings that she got from her old boss ; don't let the story get personal. it's not something that she ever thought she'd have to worry about. not until this particular story. not when this story was revolving around her own father. secrets and lies coming out caused the reporter to struggle to think about anything else. to try and figure out how this just couldn't be true. but, the more she found out ; the more she realized that her father was at the front of it all. 

fingers moving through her hair, free hand clicking down the article shown on her laptop. work the story, don't let the story work you. a reminder that runs throughout her head this week, something that she was obviously failing at. the sound of matt's voice snaps her out of her thoughts, clearing her throat. crystal doesn't know why she didn't think anyone else was here. maybe because of the hour, maybe because she was so invested in her laptop these last few hours. 

crystal's had her job land her in some difficult situations before. most times, it's her own fault. she's smart enough to know that much. following a lead was one thing when she was naive to how dangerous it was, but most times she pursued these stories after learning what was happening. this particular story was different, though. in more than one way, actually. 

crystal's heard the rumors about hope's county. the rumors about the seed family, about a cult taking over the town. it's those rumors that interested her, if she's completely honest. though, she was convinced that's all they were ; rumors. it all was too insane for her to actually believe was happening. it wasn't until that she got here that she realized just how wrong she was. that, maybe, she got herself in something that she wouldn't be able to get herself out of.