#vigilanteverse

freedom in the 21st century

She's been reading up on her Siken when she hears the door open and shut. But it's not the regular way Anthony shuts the door. He's been closing it like any regular person would for the time they've been living in the house.

But this sounds like when they were on the road and there were bodies in the trunk.

"There's a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a      dead man at our feet

staring up at us like we're something interesting." 

says Siken, and damn if he isn't right. Because the click of the door being shut IS so soft and so careful, and it's like she's gone back to the time where Anthony was the black hole she couldn't avoid. She didn't know what vodka he liked or how he'd feed stray cats - and pet them when he thought no one was watching. How Anthony would light up, just slightly, if she made chocolate chip cookies just right at Christmas time, because it made him nostalgic.

The time when all she knew was that he had a gun and several knives and blood on his hands.

When she couldn't even avoid going after him, chasing him with all she had because he made things right on a really fucked-up subconscious basis.

But she knows him now, and that isn't how he closes the doors. That's not how he's closed doors for a good while now.

_____________________________________________________________________

Anthony looks like he's seen a ghost for the entire evening. He doesn't want to say what's wrong, but he lets her curl up against him, pulling him into a hug as they sit in silence in the living room. Catsby is asleep in the chair, but then he wakes from his deep feline slumber and decides he wants to go outside. His yellow eyes are large, and it's obvious. It's nighttime and he's a cat, he wants to hunt. Scout smiles and presses a kiss to Anthony's forehead; wraps the blanket they've had draped over them tighter around him before she gets up to let out the cat.

And then the thought strikes her. She's observing the cat going out to kill things.

It's random. It's a random happenstance, her realizing it, but that's what has happened.

_____________________________________________________________________

They pack their bags two days later and take off in the night, Catsby thankfully asleep in his cage. For a cat, he's remarkably calm in cars, and Scout thinks that's probably the best thing about the entire situation. She isn't sure Anthony would have been able to handle the wails of a distraught cat, because he looks like he's close to snapping. 

It's five days before she knows he's out to kill someone, and the weirdest part is how she knows he's doing it now to calm down. Scout is waiting in the car, Catsby probably wreaking havoc in their motel room, and then she spots her.

A relatively young girl, she thinks, who is walking in the dark towards the spot she knows Anthony's busy gutting the creep he chose to kill this time around. She's wearing black pants and a large hoodie, and Scout can't really make out her features, but she can see that the girl's a brunette.

"Fuck," she mutters, and then she gets out of the car, leaving the poetry book in her seat.

_____________________________________________________________________

She's carrying a shovel and a grim look on her face, and she can hear the horrified little gasp when the girl stumbles onto the scene of Anthony digging a grave, a hand sticking out of a black plastic bag.

The girl's about to scream and she can see the surprise on Anthony's face when the shovel connects hard with the back of the girl's head. Scout can hear the sickening crunch. Swears she can hear her own heartbeat roaring, her blood pulsating through her veins. Adrenaline is coursing through her, making her feel electric. Alive.

And then the realization hits her like a two-ton truck.

She's killed a person. She's killed a perfectly innocent girl to keep Anthony safe. To keep them safe.

_____________________________________________________________________

Anthony can't make Scout stop shaking. Her hands won't stop, even when they grip on tight to his jacket. The sleeves are hanging limp from her shoulders, because she didn't want to wear it - just wanted to wrap it around herself. Scout isn't crying, and he thinks that might be the most worrying thing of it all. A few years back he thinks the tears would have glistened in the dark, but she's quiet.

He presses a kiss to her forehead and hugs her tightly, makes sure she's wearing the seatbelt. Anthony closes the door to the car and walks around to the driver's side, feeling frightfully calm despite knowing there's a girl lying dead some twenty miles from where he buried a crook.

He thinks he might have gotten worse, and he's fearing that Scout might have gotten worse with him.

_____________________________________________________________________

Vigilanteverse Part 22: words win wars

The door is calmly shut before the discussion begins. Anthony knows Mitchell is still worried - frightened, even - and with good reason. If Mitchell hadn't been afraid, Anthony might have questioned the man's sanity.

"Why didn't you come talk to us before you got married?" Mitchell starts, and Anthony is pretty certain that the look on his own face must be incredulous. It wasn't the question he was anticipating. "Is there something you're not telling us?" 'What,' he's tempted to say, 'other than how I kill people?' But Mitchell already knows that part, so there's no need. The look on the man's face tells him a different story, after all - that's not what Mitchell wants to know. He wants to know whether or not Scout is as happy as she seems. If the reason for their marriage was because she wanted to, or because Anthony is some sick fuck who forced her into it. Sick fuck, sure, but he's pretty sure Scout's happy regardless. He didn't force her into it, after all. Even offered her a chance to get out of it, and yet here they are - Scout, Anthony and a cat, living in a small house in a small town with a white picket-fence and their family over for New Year's Eve.

"There isn't," Anthony replies finally. ".. I love her, Mitchell." Calling him Mitchell still feels foreign and strange. He'd much rather call the man Marrow and be called Barrett back, but they're family now, or so Scout says, so he isn't allowed.

"I didn't force her into it. She said yes. I won't hurt her or let anyone else hurt her."

Vigilanteverse part 20: Winter's Carol [x]

It's December and they're still in the small house from the 1950's. Snow has covered the small suburb they live in, and the entire neighbourhood is lit up by cheerful lights and decorations. It certainly combats the cold and the dark, and spending it with someone is a pretty new sensation to Anthony. It's cosy, really - how he'll wake up in the dark, his arms wrapped around Scout beneath their warm duvet. How it's instantly cold if he so much as moves his toe out from beneath it.

Neither of them are really big on Christmas - they've spent a few years without doing anything proper for the occasion. But this year, they receive an invitation from the local church - a midnight mass. They're not exactly religious, either of them, but they figure they might as well go big or go home. 

Small flakes of snow settle in their hair as they walk home, holding hands. He wakes up the next morning to the sound of Scout singing along to a record downstairs. [x]

She's not loud, but sound travels far in their little snow-covered house. Anthony walks downstairs, his feet cold. It's still dark out, and he sees Catsby asleep in his small basket by the kitchen bench. Scout's making tea, completely lost in her own world. She gives him a grin when he touches her shoulder gently. They dance for the duration of the song, Scout singing along as he leads them across the kitchen for a quick waltz. He kisses her as the song ends, both of them laughing into the kiss. 

Scout gives him a bottle of Stolichnaya Elit wrapped in a red bow, and he gives her a box full of her favourite movies. Catsby gets a small mouse with a bell on its tail, and Scout giggles as Anthony gives it to the cat. 

Vigilanteverse part 18: heavy in your arms

He has to ask her if she knows what her husband does before he's actually convinced she knows. It's awkward and it makes him feel numb and slightly sick when she nods. She knows. Scout knows that Anthony kills people - scumbags - and cuts them up before he dumps them. That he leaves behind nothing but occasional missing posters. Criminal scumbags that the system can't catch that later on go missing.

Scout knows, and somehow, Mitchell isn't surprised. She isn't stupid or delusional, but he worries. He did let Anthony go, but it wasn't so much for Anthony as it was for Scout. He wants her to be happy. He really does. 

But that won't ever change the fact that Anthony is a serial killer, more or less. A vigilante, some might say. He certainly has morals of some sort. A glorified murderer. The fact that he let him go keeps Mitchell up some nights. Makes him wonder where his own morals went. He didn't think he'd ever willingly let someone he knew was a criminal go. Had never done it. 

He can't help but worry that there's something other than the ring on her finger that's keeping Scout with Anthony. Is he threatening her? Is she afraid? She's keeping it very well-hidden, if so. Scout doesn't have any bruises that he can see, and it's not like she's covered up completely, either. She's wearing a dark blue t-shirt and a black skirt that goes down to her knees, but she doesn't look worse for wear. Doesn't act skittish.

".. Are you sure this is- is this what you're looking for? Really? Deep down?"

Scout just nods, unsure of what to say. She knows that this probably looks insane to anyone else. She's pretty sure she might have thought it was insane if she wasn't the one with a ring on her finger that has an inscription inside that reads las vegas june 30th yours forever. Because that is what a good idea is to a drunk Anthony Barrett; Stolichnaya, cats and cheesy lines that somehow aren't so cheesy when they're from him.

"Have you seen what he does?" 

She can hear that he's worried - for all his efforts, Mitchell can't keep his emotions from bubbling up to the surface sometimes. 

".. I have, yeah." Telling him that that's how they met doesn't seem like a good idea right now. At all. "I know what he is, Mitch. I- I know what he does." She can see that it's a bit hard to swallow for him. That her husband is a vigilante, that he's let that same man go despite being in the FBI. 

"If you ever- do you want to leave him, or is there anything I can help with? If there's anything at all, just tell me, and I'll-"

She shakes her head. No.

"Thanks, Mitch. I really- I appreciate it. But it's alright, honestly. He doesn't hurt me." Please don't send him to jail. "I know you're worried, and I.. I get why. But he's good, Mitch, he is." Despite the fact that he kills people, but really, somehow, that's become justified. She looks him in the eye before she continues. "But thanks."

Scout takes the bus home to the motel they're staying in. Meeting Mitchell had been a sheer happening of chance - they're not in Battery City, after all, and she doesn't know what he's doing here. He'd been as surprised as she was, however, when they ran into each other at the food court of a surprisingly large mall.

She opens the door to their room and finds her husband asleep in a chair, Catsby lying in his lap and purring softly.

Vigilanteverse part 16: hahah NO

present time

It's a very awkward silence that fills the abandoned factory when Mitchell Marrow, FBI-agent extraordinaire, finds the dead body of one Maximilian Guzman chopped to pieces. On one hand, he has a darkness inside himself that finds itself rather pleased with how the fucker who abused Scout is dead - it's a fitting end for such a scumbag. Ending up in a black plastic bag alongside the likes of the trash he belongs with.

On the other hand.. The man who has brutally murdered and dismembered the Guzman-swine is Scout's husband, and that makes him fear for her safety.

The cogs in Mitchell's mind turn and he finds himself pretty certain that the man before him is the vigilante the FBI have in their files - the unknown assailant and murderer who never seems to leave a trace save for the disappearances of various pieces of utter shit that the system can't catch.

He feels grateful and very, very terrified.

He isn't sure not killing witnesses - witnesses employed by the FBI at that - is part of Anthony Barrett's moral code. _________________________________________________________ 

two days earlier

Scout  feels a strange sort of shiver run down her spine before she's grabbed from behind, a rag covered in chloroform covering her mouth. She can feel her nails scratch skin before she blacks out, and her last thought is 'goddamn it."

She wakes up what she assumes are a few hours later, the street she'd been shopping groceries in replaced with a basement of some sort. Her wedding ring is still on her finger, and it makes her feel safer. Whoever the fuck it is that's kidnapped her this time will have to suffer Anthony's rage, and she almost feels bad for her kidnapper. Until she hears steps going down the stairs and they reveal themselves as Maximilian Guzman.

Scout would have thought once would have been enough, but no. She feels a tremor of satisfaction when she sees the scratchmarks on his face; red long streaks running down from beside his eyes all the way down to his chin. The notion of satisfaction is replaced by a chill inside her - she hopes to God Anthony gets here soon. Her hands are bound behind her back, so Scout draws up her knees to her chest. She'll stall him for as long as it takes. "What the fuck do you want?" Scout says, appearing a lot more tough than she feels. It's a sickening sort of numbness that runs from her toes out to her fingertips. Makes her feel detached.

Maximilian gives her a cruel glare. It's obvious what the swine wants. _________________________________________________________  

six hours earlier 

Anthony is driving faster than what is legally allowed. It's taken him longer than he hoped it would to find out where the fuck Guzman has taken Scout, but now he knows, and he's driving like hell is breaking loose. Which it probably will do, for one certain mister Maximilian Guzman.

He's not going to live after this.

_________________________________________________________

She's worse for wear, but Maximilian hasn't had a chance to repeat his earlier crimes against Scout. He would have taken the time to hug her and make sure she's alright, taken the time to get her out of here - but he can't. Not now. Not with Guzman alive. He has to kill him first. He has to make sure he can't hurt her ever again.

                                                   ~*~

Scout sighs in relief as she sees Anthony come down the stairs. He is as silent as ever, and Maximilian is nowhere in sight. He'd gone upstairs the last time she saw him, which was roughly half an hour ago, or so Scout thinks. Her husband cuts the ropes tying her wrists together and presses a kiss to her forehead. She gives him a nod and he goes back upstairs, knife in hand. She doesn't need to see his face to know what expression he's making. It's the one she saw all those years ago, the first time she saw him kill someone. She sneaks outside, and she can hear raised voices from further into the factory. Anthony has, from what she can hear, tied Maximilian to a table.

Scout finds Anthony's car parked in the forest, hidden from view unless you know where to look. She gets in and drives it further in, just in case. She locks the doors, too. It makes her feel safer, even if there technically isn't anything threatening her right now. Anthony is going to take care of Max. He's going to make sure he can't hurt her again, and there's a dark part deep inside her that smiles because of that fact. _________________________________________________________

an hour earlier

He's kicked and beaten Guzman until the bastard is hardly recognizable, and that's when he pulls out his knives and straps him to the top of the table again. The man has received the brunt of his pent-up issues - and not just the immense rage that coursed through Anthony in the two days Scout had been missing. 

Guzman isn't breathing anymore when Anthony opens his kit.

_________________________________________________________

present time

Of course it has to be Mitchell Marrow that finds them. Of course. Anthony grits his teeth. There isn't a way he can get out of this in good conscience. He doesn't want to kill the man - he doesn't have a reason to.

Doesn't have a reason other than Mitchell seeing him as a clear culprit in a pretty damn brutal case of homicide. You don't cut up people in blind rage. You cut up people and you have a purpose, and cutting up people is the entirety of Anthony's purpose these days. It's been that for years now. Other than making sure Scout is alright, this is what he does.

And now there's an FBI-agent staring at him, the table beside him and the black plastic bag on top of said table; the final resting place for Maximilian Guzman.

It's a complete stand-still until Mitchell breaks the silence, pinching his forehead between his fingers. Anthony suspects the other man is too shocked to barf, which he thinks might have been the initial reaction if the perpetrator had been anyone else.

He's an FBI-agent alright, but that doesn't mean he gets to see clear proof of people chopping other people into pieces every day. 

"Was it you?" Mitchell finally says. "Was it you who took out those other cases we've had coming in since last year?" Anthony nods.

"Yeah. It was." "Does she- does Scout know?" "Yes. She does." Anthony contemplates saying 'that's how we met', but decides against it. Mitchell is getting paler by the second. They're both quiet for a long time before Mitchell speaks again.

"I.. I won't tell anyone. Not for your sake, but for hers." Anthony nods in response and watches as the agent leaves.

                                                    ~*~

Scout has watched the entirety from a distance - knows that Mitchell saw the last few minutes of Anthony dismembering Guzman. She sees him leave, too, but she doesn't stop him or let him know that she's there. It doesn't seem right to do so.

She knows Mitchell won't tell anyone. But she still feels nervous when she hears the sound of his car-door slamming shut before he drives away. It's raining by the time they're back in the motel, their clothes drenched from getting rid of the remains of Max Guzman, alongside the man's car.

They take a shower together, and Anthony patches her up afterwards. She has mainly bruises, thank goodness, and not too many cuts - no stitches are needed, though he insists on disinfecting them. It stings, but not for long.

Vigilanteverse 14: Sadness Is A Blessing [x]

It's a small plus sign that elicits a scream as Scout Loken looks at a pregnancy test in the small bathroom of a shitty motel. She's been throwing up a lot more as of late, but it doesn't feel like the food poisoning she contracted a year earlier. That's why she ended up buying a pregnancy test in the first place. It should be impossible, but it was best to check all and any possibility, right?

It's that same small plus sign that makes Scout Loken buy two more tests. She takes them over the course of a few days and receives two more plus signs. It's when she misses her period that the strange panic starts settling in. She isn't supposed to be able to have children; the abortion she had years earlier had made sure of it.

And yet there she is, in a small bathroom in a shitty motel in Wisconsin, three positive pregnancy tests taken. __________________________________________ She doesn't tell Anthony immediately - waits five days in case she gets her period, which would disprove the whole thing. Five days pass without a single change. Continued nausea, no bleeding, and she discovers that she really likes Greek yoghurt. It's enough to make Scout Loken's heart flutter a little. What if this is actually happening? What if she is actually about to be a mom to some small, bright-eyed child they can name after poets and raise behind a white picket-fence? Though it's not often she likes to admit it, she likes to imagine a day in a completely normal future where Anthony doesn't kill people and they can live in a cute little house somewhere. Where they can wake up and their kids will be little rascals who won't ever have the misfortune the two of them have had in life.

Scout tells him when they're in Minnesota, snow covering up the land and making it seem like they're in a fairytale. She'd been nervous for days about how he'll react, but Anthony gives her the widest grin she's seen on him. While they're both initially very happy, it doesn't take long before the thought dawns on them - they're living in a car, and if authorities were to ask for papers, things might get ugly.

It doesn't take them long to come up with a plan either, however. Minnesota is cold and white, but it seems like a good place to raise a child - the snow is charming, and the rows of decorated homes make them think of Christmas commercials that normally make them bitter beyond belief. Now they'll have an opportunity at giving someone that life on the screen. Christmas trees and wrapped presents behind a white picket-fence and not a day of sorrow in sight.  __________________________________________ 

They've been in a motel in Minnesota for three days when Scout's own body shatters their hope.

She's crying her eyes out when Anthony finds her on her knees in the bathroom, hands curled into fists. He holds her tight and manages, by some miracle of a higher power, to understand what it is that has happened. Scout cries herself asleep and wakes up in Anthony's arms, feeling like her heart has been ripped out of her chest. She wanted it so badly, and she knows she can't have it. She knows he wanted it as well.

Lucky Ones

we were two kids, just tryin' to get out live on the dark side of the american dream  __________________________________________________________

Scout is lying in bed, her husband - and good god that word makes her feel older than she is - asleep next to her. It's not often she feels this at peace with the world, her serial killer of a romantic partner of choice looking far more innocent than he does normally. Like she hasn't seen him brutalize a man before. The thought of that makes her shiver, and not in a good way, so she directs her thoughts elsewhere. Like how amazingly adorable he is when he's asleep right next to her, or when she catches him singing to himself under his breath.

Even if she doesn't like to admit it, he sometimes frightens her.

Anthony has that dark side, and even if it's the one that more or less saved her all those years ago.. It's frightening to think of how the hands that soothe her when she's sick are used for carving people up and dismembering them in the dark of the night. How he loads up tranquilizers with the hands that stroke her back when she's had the Nightmare.

Sometimes, when he's out on a job and she's all alone in whatever motel they're staying in, that thought keeps her up all night. How he's out there, killing people. On some of those occasions, she'll think about how life might have been if she'd gone a different path. How life might have turned out if she'd traveled back to the Marrows. If she'd ended up marrying Mitch instead. But then she thinks about how she could just as well have ended up in the trunk of that car despite that. A lot of the assholes Anthony took out didn't discriminate, to put it bluntly.

She could have ended up in the trunk of that car and she could have died, if it hadn't been for the vigilante asleep beside her. She could have ended up as a dead body dumped in a ditch after going through every vile demeaning act possible, and yet here she is, alive and mostly well.

If she'd married Mitch, that probably wouldn't have happened. Anthony doesn't get involved unless it's clear that the system can't do shit about the situation, and if she'd gotten kidnapped by some creep while married to an FBI-agent.. The case would never get dropped. The downside to playing for the rules were that you had to follow the rules, and no FBI-agent with a decent sense of morale would do anything else. Opposite the ones who played for the rules, you obviously had the scumbags.. But you also had Anthony, who was more or less cleaning out the alleys of America one dipshit at a time. Where the system failed, Anthony was there to clean up after them.

Scout feels somewhat guilty for even considering being married to someone else. It isn't that she loves Mitch anymore - it had been a crush, certainly, but it hadn't been much more, and Anthony.. Anthony is so much more than just a crush. He is the one who had pretty much pulled her out a trunk. The one who holds her when she has the Nightmare, who knows everything there is to know and accepts her for it. 

He wakes up when she runs a hand through his hair. He gives her a sleepy smile before he pulls her into a hug and falls asleep again, still holding her.