|
  |
Jamie is a shell of his former self. Pale, distracted, and visible shaky as he turns the knob and stumbles into the safehouse. Frankly, it's a miracle he made it back here at all. The drive from Brooklyn was touch and go for a while, as he almost blacked out several times, somehow managed to avoid being pulled over by the police, and narrowly missed a fire hydrant. The Impala's parked down the street, no worse for wear, but if ever Baby had a personality of her own, she'd be terrified to let Madrox into the driver's seat again.
He manages to get inside, and almost makes it inside before he just can't any more. Thud. Face first on the floor. Shag carpeting is soft, thankfully. Eyes open, but there's considerably less life in them than ever before. Blink. Blink. Why the fuck am I even still alive?
*
The days ran long at the Six Alarm Fire. Raven had her own mental mess to deal with, but it was few and far in between. She was stuck in the guise of the Woman, the Mistress with the clawed metal fingers, the Countess who lorded over her crew with an iron thumb and a twist of her hips. Gratification was long denied in a sense that once Madrox enters into the room and falls, one leg uncrossing from the other, her blood red lips forming into a thin line, blonde-ish white hair thrown over her shoulders as she takes in a breath, and sighs.
"Nephew." She states, the heels soon shucked off of her feet, her body rising to a stand as she slowly crosses the way over his form. It was bound to happen, and she knew what it was without knowing. The death. The death of many. It must have been a tragic thing to happen. With a kneel upon the ground, she gathers him up, her hands hooking beneath his arms to try to turn him over, and with a slow pull and a drag, she pulls him down the hallway, wordlessly and oddly silent.
*
"Aunt Raven," Jamie says with a hollow voice, eyes staring up at the ceiling as she drags him down the hall. There's no fight in him, no effort to do it himself. He made it here, that was all he had in him. If left to his own devices now, it couldn't even be certain that he'd make the necessary effort to keep himself alive. "It's all red.. and black.. I died. Twice I died. And I can't remember it. There's nothing there.. just.. red and black," he says, murmuring more than talking with any kind of purpose. As he speaks, bits of blood trickle from his lips, though there aren't any obvious injuries on his body.
*
There were really no designated rooms in the Six Alarm Fire, though hers was an obvious choice just because it was bigger. Her bottom bumps up against the door as it flies open, her footsteps dragging him backwards as she listens to him, pulling him back, up and up onto the bed with her as she releases him upon the mattress. Slowly she pulls her legs from underneath him, rolling back until she hits the floor at a crouch, a slight breath given as she rises to tug him upon the middle much more properly than she could with her firemans drag.
"It will be alright." She says in that singers voice of hers, moving to the foot of the bed to remove his shoes, each thumped to the ground one by one. Death, is like a trauma. And trauma was something she knew all too well.
*
Once properly on the bed, Jamie sinks into the mattress, his fingers weakly digging into the sheet. Soft. Softer than the floor, at any rate, so he'll take it. "It won't be," he murmurs quietly, eyes lifting to stare at the ceiling again. "He shot me. In the head. Bam. Red. And then black. And then nothing." And it happened twice. And then he re-absorbed the dead bodies, which is probably where all this existential crisis is coming from. To say nothing of the shattered bits of his psyche that were created when the duplicates in the collective conscious were killed. "I need to get waffles," he says, and leans up suddenly with purpose, as a thin line of blood drips from his mouth. His tongue dips out to taste it, and he goes even whiter, and flops back down on the bed. "I'm going to die again, Raven."
*
Once his shoes were off, Raven crawls upon the bed to grasp at his pants, undoing the buttons as she begins to shift him around, pausing once he sits upright, and once he's down again, she continues with the removal of his pants. She wasn't warded off by the blood from his lips, nor his rambling, there was just a job that needed to be done and it would get done whether he liked it or not. Shifting up further upon his hips, his shirt was soon tugged off from his body, tossed aside and thrown towards the floor before she leaves him completely.
Approaching the window, she opens it to let the cool air in, picking up the pack of smokes that she's left there to light. As she stares out towards the streets below, she glances back towards him again as she lets out a little sigh. "Yes. You are." There was no comfort there, and if it was.. it would have been hard.
"Perhaps that's what your gift was meant for. For you to multiply. Be fruitful with all of yourselves, and die over and over again while leaving the Prime to live out his life." Her eyes flit towards the streets below, her lips curling into a frown. "That is my fear. You know. Knowing that all of you were out there and that any moment, one of you, not the -real- you, but close.. would die. And it would leave you broken." She sniffs a little. "Jamie. You are going to die. And it is going to hurt. And then you will feel nothing, nor see anything. There will be no peace. And the peace that you think you would have after one of your duplicates die would be nothing but a dull roar of what's coming in the end. Do you understand."
*
Wow Raven. Bleak. Jamie lies still, eyes finally fluttering and closing. He's still breathing, though it's shallow and rapid, but at least he isn't shuffling off his mortal coil. Not yet at least. "I'm broken," he echoes her words quietly, eyelids flinching as he says it. "There's still.. eight.." And breathes out a sigh. "But I can't feel them. They're not with me. Do they know..?" Somewhere in Manhattan there are eight duplicate Madri, separated from the collective consciousness and common purpose they once shared. "I need to get to them," he say, even more weakly than before. Certainly not in any shape to do it now.
*
"We all are broken." She says quietly, finally tossing her cigarette out of the window as she moves over towards the bed. She always keeps a clean jug of water on hand, which was taken and poured into a cloth which was squeezed out upon the floor. Hearing that there were still more was a godsend, but she tosses away that thought for now to settle next to him, dabbing away at his cheeks and his lips, wiping the blood clean, and allowing some of the moisture to slip in between his lips.
"No. Where they are, they are fine. The only way for them to survive is if you do. You will not be leaving, not for a while." She purses her lips faintly, a slight buzzing going off in her head as she turns away to grit her teeth, her features crumbling. But she straightens with a breath, then with a turn, her hand extends as she gives him to harshest smack to his cheek that she could muster in such a position.
"SNAP OUT OF IT AND MAN UP."
*
Jamie may have been about to say something, possibly another complaint, another whine. Boo hoo, my life is so hard, I got shot and now I'm all damaged. Raven's not wrong. He needs to snap out of it. He need to man up. But right now, he just can't. Part of him died. Whatever words were forthcoming are halted by the sudden shock of her palm across his face. And then there are two of him; fortunately the bed is big enough that there's room. The first, the original, snaps his eyes open and looks first at Raven, with tears welling up. And then he looks over to see the duplicate. The duplicate looks back at him, blankly, and moves to stand from the table. "Seriously, Madrox. Get a fucking grip. You're acting like a baby. Fuck this," the duplicate says, and moves toward the door. "Get him a fucking reality check, lady. Bad shit happens. We deal with it. If this worthless little shit can't handle life, maybe we just smother him with a pillow." Madrox Prime remains on the bed, staring between both the new duplicate, and Raven, at a complete loss for words just now.
*
The shock of the slap allowed the other duplicate, but that didn't stop Raven from tending to the Prime. She could tell that he was close, even as the dupe rises and begins to speak, her clawed fingers snapping out with one pointed into the air, stopping him from leaving the room all together. If he was wise.
"Go to the kitchen. I'm hungry. Make yourself busy. And do as you're told or you'll suffer a worse fate than your brothers.." Her eye shifts, one yellow, one brown, as she looks towards the dupe in a more sinister light. "GO."
As she waits for the dupe to leave, Raven rises to her knees, the clawed fingers stripping away her dress so that her thighs would not be constrained as she mounts Madrox again. Her fingers join together and squeeze, knuckles snapping and crackling. "Let it out, Jamie." Her hand extends, slapping him yet again. "LET IT OUT."
*
The duplicate actually lets out a little laugh when Raven utters her threats and her demands. "Heh, no Aunt Raven. I'm out of here. Fuck this place. Have fun with baby boy there. Do us all a favour and cut his throat. Believe me, we'll all be better off for it," he says, and with a sneer on his face, turns the handle on the door, and leaves the room. There's a few seconds before the outer door can be heard to open, maybe as he finds some clothing, and then slams shut. What can't be heard? The sound of the Impala down the street revving its engine and driving off, when the duplicate gets there. Yup, just took the car.
The next slap has much the same effect, resulting in the loud sound of flesh meeting flesh, and the creation of another duplicate, who takes one look at the situation, and laughs. Not a mean-spirited laugh, either, but one who genuinely finds the situation funny. Half-naked Raven sitting on top of mostly-naked Jamie, slapping the ever-loving shit out of him? Comic gold. And then he realizes that he's mostly naked, too, and laughs even more. "Oh man, that's awesome. Hit him again!" Madrox Prime, meanwhile, just lays there limp, tears visibly streaming from his eyes as he stares up at Raven, practically whimpering.
*
Raven was going to remember that one.
But for now, her focus was the Prime. She was great at selection, at working with a narrow focus and tuning the other ones out. For hit, by hit. Slap, by slap, if she were to draw out another duplicate she would. She would expend the boy. Tear him down further. Give him no hope. And build him back up once again. This wasn't a lesson that was born from his childhood, this was a lesson that would cut him, carve him out of wood, and quite possibly.. draw him away from her as she does with all of her relationships.. Set him free and let him fly.
*
And with each slap comes another duplicate, each with a distinct, singular personality. Grumpy seems to have left the building, and taken the car, but Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Mopey, Scaredy, Weepy, and a whole slew of others are sticking around, each watching with various reaction to the whole affair. The room is getting crowded with naked Jamies. Each time a duplicate splits from him, it seems to take that part of him with it. The tears stop once Weepy emerges, and by the time no more duplicates are forthcoming, he's just laying there, taking it, without reaction, eyes open and staring up at Raven as his cheeks burn bright red from her work. "Stop, Raven," he starts to say between slaps, but he makes no effort to stop her physically. "There's nothing left," he says at last. "Let me go."
*
She could have slapped those fine cheeks all day if she could. But this was something that she couldn't do forever. There was nothing left. Nothing left of him. They all stood within that room as both hands drop to rest upon his chest, looking down towards him with those off colored eyes of hers. It was a slow move from dismounting him, rolling from the bed and standing. Her own hands shaking as she looks down towards her fingers which were curled into half fists. They hurt.
"Take care of him." She states to the duplicates, all that were standing around. "He needs you." She was going to go and find the other eight, to make sure that they were alright, and bring them back if need be. Either way, there was nothing left for her to do.
*
Jamie just lays there as Raven dismounts, watching her but saying nothing. The other duplicates in the room look at one another, at Raven, and at their Prime. Happy giggles. Weepy wipes away a tear. Scaredy makes a point of getting the hell out of Raven's way, because scary Countess is scary. Jamie heaves a sigh, and lifts a hand to touch his bruised cheeks, wincing slightly. No emotion. They're all in the room already, after all. "I'm hungry," one of the duplicates says. That must be Hungry. "We should get waffles."
*