Mercenary Confession

October 14, 2017:

Regan seeks to enlist Rose Wilson in a dangerous mission.

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions: Enchantress

Plot:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

The door to Regan Wyngarde's room is…closed.

Not that this is particularly strange on any occasion. The multiple locks have only been a deterrant to keeping her band of fellow criminals out of her room, but opened doors invite a sense of welcome into privacy, which is, in fact, the least Regan Wyngarde state of things. She is lies, secrets, and multiple doors concealing the depth of a sociopathic soul.

Though, in Regan's carelessness, it's been left unlocked.

The once princess-grade room is in shambles. Tables and chairs have been turned over, scattering knives across the floor. The footboard to her precious four-poster bed is dented, giving the room itself the sense of a recent fight (or teenage-grade meltdown) having recently taken place. The casual order in which she keeps her things has been disturbed, and the mirror in her sitting vanity, a place she's spent much time dusting makeup onto her cheeks, is cracked into a spider web.

Regan has no care to look at herself. Not tonight. Not for a week.

Eyes puffy and stained from tears and black makeup streaking down her cheeks, the hellish blonde princess has stopped her crying and has entered a state of frantic internet use. The dimly lit room is awash in blue monitor glow, highlighting her face as she clicks through camera shots on a USB drive. Men in suits. Men with ear pieces. License plates. With shaking fingers, Lady Mastermind sneers past the burning in her sinuses and the swelling in her eyes to scribble notes furiously down in her notebook…all in a deathly silence.

Regan Wyngarde is at work, the centerpiece of her own damaged vanity.

*

Rose returns to the apartment of the SKWAD, and after a few days of ((mis(dis))adventures meeting a Red Hood, and another but by another name - the billowing tattered sleeves of the kimono are passing locks and keypads to allow her entry with ease into the main area that is in silence. But like an owner that comes home seeing an near invisible layer of smoke… smelling an unknown burning…. Rose's hand lowers and the final remnants of the bell-sleeve fall to the floor, the sword held in her grip and glistening against the filtering of lights through curtains.

Bare feet still covered in ash, blood (unknown hers or not), and laden in a mottle that shows where rubble once held and was shed.

No words of hello, or calling, instead silence guides her through the apartment despite the 'creepers' rising up the divet of silken-clad spine, leaving gooseflesh in the wake along exposed collarbones and up slender neck.

Taskmaster has not been here in weeks, nor has Harley and her "Babies". So the first door tried by free hand is Regans after ascending the stairs she has pitched things down in fits due to the very perdicament that brings Rose to this very reaction.

Regan's door is tried, and eyes widen when it gives way, but her peer within, followed by her entry comes to quickly narrow but the silence is not disturbed as she nears Regan's back, illuminated barely by the blue of the screen and the images, the flash along the sword's honed edge flickering as she twists it back to safeguard the front, but be ready for behind.

"…Dare I ask…" There is rage, concern, and a chill as cold as steel…

*

Wedding Ring - J. Greening.
Key fob lock alarm. License plate D-
Rotation? 3-4 days?

The pencil skitters over the paper, making scratching noises as the black and violet manicure — a match for the silken slip of a dress she wears — white knuckles the writing implement. The other hand on the keyboard presses the arrow keys, flashing back and forth between the image of one of Waller's security team and a security SUV.

Regan doesn't bother to look up when Rose enters. The effigy of bloody roses tattooed on her shoulder flexes with every scratch of the pencil. Straight backed, just like boarding school had taught her, she's crossed her heavy black boots at the ankle beneath her chair, click-click-clicking away.

"If you're here to use that, don't bother." Regan's puffy eyes flicker to the reflection of the sword in her monitor, then upwards to Rose's face. Tone as flat as some think the Earth is, she clears her raspty throat and goes back to her work.

"In fact, you shouldn't see any of this. Silly me being so drilled into this. I was considering making it look like I wasn't even here but-" Regan twirls the pencil around her ear and sighs a sickened laugh. "-one of those days where so much shit is clicking fast and fast. I know you have these days."

Regan clicks the arrow key, switching it back to the image of the security staffed SUV.

"Didn't feel like knocking tonight?" Regan asks, a mild tone of misdirected venom in her voice.

*

It does not take much of a 'lingering glance' of the screen for those eyes to parse what flickers there by the directive of the slender and softer manicured hand that clicks over a mouse 'dick' and pads.

One eye is a glassy surface reflection, and in a wink, the fall of white tress is loosed from the sticks in platinum, allowing a fall over that digital occular while the real deal does not bat a lash. "Another of your fits…?" The query is barely even there at the end as she finally looks over the room and draws in a deep breath to call in the Zen Rose has never really embraced in the past several years… Not since her mother's…

"I have plenty of days, Regan," Her eyes settle on the tattoo and then the crest of sob-swollen facade when Regan turns slightly her way. "But I don't think I have seen you have one… Until now."

There's the question, but in her eyes, not her words as she steps closer, the sword never sheathed, omnipresent for defense of "safety".

A slow blink and Rose feels the fisted grip of her own hand unburdened, but inked in petals that float down wrist to fingers and end in vitaen droplets along slender lengths of five, curl into a fist that tightens to the point of burrowing crescent moon prints into her palm. "Did rules change? I need to knock now? Let me go find the Anaconda…" and use its massive girth to do so….

But even as chin tilts away her gaze does not. "What. Happened." Still, no question.

*

Ravager Log NOTE: and use its massive girth to do so…, in the obvious 'fuck you' that is radiating here - or moreso 'go fuck yourself'?

*

Fits. FITS. The word brings a sharp, downwards tick of Regan's head, glancing through the sheets of platinum blonde hair to the silk of Rose's kimono. The streaked black mascara is a trail leading to so sudden a look of displeasure; a match for the curl of lip and flash of teeth that crosses into the realm of hostility.

"You know what?"

This never ends well.

The chair scrooches out from behind Regan as she pushes up and locks the laptop into an anime-themed screen saver, all in one swift motion. Regan turns and quickly jabs Rose in the center of her chest with a bony finger, sneering through the way she's avoiding eye contact.

"Fuck your kimono and fuck your attitude, Rose; I didn't ask you to come back from Japan or what-the-shit to get alpha bitch in my room." Regan bares her teeth, pointing to Rose's feet as if she's laying down two stone tablets' worth of laws.

"So just mind your own fucking business and stay out of mine unless I invite you in." A beat. "You got that?"

*

Awe… Sheeeiitt.. The mix of jest, sarcasm, and ice-breaking humor mingling with the un-admitted concern went right over Regan's head and into exactly what Rose is trying to avoid. Was trying to avoid. The screech of the chair says otherwise, though, and the moment of near silence in Regan's rise is equivalent to the pin drop before the explosion!

You know what?! Resonates…

The echo of the pin drop, then the words that may as well have been a heavy metal scream upon the heat of flames that impact her plexus just below the drop of kimono's crested drop that leaves her hidden, but the heave of chest exposed in a tightened draw as Rose stands her ground against the assault of Regan, her own restraint of 'dodging' the prod shown only in the tense flux of jawline.

"Alpha bitch?" A small interruption in Regan's Law Laid Down in a sweep between their feet that Rose barely spares a glance to. A small twitch to one corner of Rose's lips and when Regan's finger that prodded her 'center' seeks to fall away (if ever), is gripped in a wrap of thumb and index while remaining fingers attempt to clasp her wrist, that sword… Gone, while the inked hand that matches her Bleeding Roses tries to breach the path between, grip a length of regan's blonde hair and make that avoided eye contact happen…

… but not for justification of her words…

"Let me rephrase…" A stateent between the dual struggle if had. "Who hurt you?" Because if anyone was about to have a fit, that way that moment Rocked, may say enough.

The SKWAD, Regan… Is Rose's new Fucked Up Family Ties Movie.

2017(tm).

*

Bravado is something Regan excels at. Control in the face of someone truly stronger than her? Not so much. When her finger and wrist are grabbed in the attempt to pull away, Regan flinches and a quiet squeak sails past her gritting teeth. She pulls back at first, roughly, trying to get free and reclaim her space, but ceases her fighting when Rose helps her come face to face with the woman, even if it does require some hair pulling.

"Rose-" Regan fidgets once more against the woman's hold, growling against the way she's held into place like a bratty child, but it's no use. She raises her brows and sneers to the daughter of Deathstroke, putting on the same face she wears often before psychically killing someone with hallucinations of her own design.

Then a face of frustration.

Then a face of bitterness.

"I need the heart." Regan's eyes well up, then her neck muscles twist to try to look away, eyes fluttering to suck it all down once she's held eyes-to-eye with Rose Wilson.

"If anyone but me gets the heart, I'm fucked." Regan suddenly whispers. "So I mean this more than anything that I've ever said to you," Regan quiets, staring at the woman who has her under her claw. "I need it. If you get in my way, if anyone gets in my way, I'm going to kill them. Do you understand me?"

*

.. Don't wanna see another damn inch of my skull,
forget the poems of saints and ghosts.
I'm the one I fear the most…
…little did I know that I was only crying wolf!

The splay of massacred fingers at Regan's back rakes calloused fingertips across her inkwork, fingers that sought to burn away im'prints', dug six feet deep, surfaced…

Petals of blood…
To blood in the form of tear-drops.

Rose is staring at the swollen gaze of Regan's as it transforms… Transfixes. Resists…

Rose cannot keep her, can she even keep this? A family written in ink by a SKWAD that scrawls along her skin, a memory, a hope that perhaps ink outlasted scars.

A flash of bionic eye behind the veil of white razored strands. The harshness of locked gaze between them lost to the close of her eyes and the lowering of chin.

A hand rises and the bionic eye-piece fades, flickers in fingertips, and with a yank of cords pulled lower than fallen strands of white… It goes dark when tethers are severed in a yank.

No tethers. No USB. No 'Watchers'.

The other hand releases the hold on Regan as Rose steps back and eye(s) the digital eye handled like a single Ben Wah Ball between fingertips despite the tiny tentacles of cables.

"I am used to this." A slow swallow as she watches the eye pass between ripples of blood-petals and then that single real eye lifts to Regan. "Kind of."

"I understand." The eye drops to the ground and the ball of her bare-foot steps forward and with her weight she rocks into it.. Crushing it in a shatter that causes new stains of red across any carpeting in her path.

"I understood in Hungary. Choices have to be made." A deep inhale. "Please don't…" The tears Regan begins to bare have her biting something back.

"No one hurts those I…" A snap of teeth. A clench of jaw. A sweep of gesture across skin exposed in tatters that bears ink, by inked fingers.

"Not if I can help." Rose remembers the day this was discussed, the risks they all would have to take… The threat…

"Please stop crying. Tarte cannot cover that up tomorrow." Again with the sarcasm, the humor that slips a fleeting smile into a void.

*

"Fuck." Regan flutters her lashes harder as she's given control of herself again. She holds her wrist beneath her nose, frowning at the forgotten assumption that the eye can record. "Fuck, seriously, do you have to do that? It doesn't record and send signals does it? Rose-" Regan holds out a hand as the eye is crushed underfoot.

Regan Wyngarde slows her breathing and looks down to the crushed cybernetic eye. Her eyes drift closed, mouth hidden by the width of her wrist, brows clamping down hard at the rush of emotion she's fighting to keep back. The self disgust written in her posture is streaming over the edges of the pan, a pot left to boil for too long.

"It's not fucking funny!" Regan yells, stepping forward to bat the edge of her wrist against Rose's shoulder. Her head drops to the breast-line split in Rose's kimono, but the weak, senseless slappings of Regan's palm come down over and over again.

"You NEVER listen to me! You're so fucking stupid sometimes about listening to me! I told you to leave the heart thing alone and stay away from it and I swear I will kill you if you do whatever you want from it. Rose, you need to listen to me!" Regan tries to slam her wrist down harder at the last point.

The blonde with two eyes, streaked with black, jerks her head up quickly to come face to face with Rose.

"You should have listened to me when I told you to treat her with respect." Regan hisses, hysteria switching manically into rage. "I made deals, Rose. Do you think that she'd allow me to die? No. Fuck you for making me admit this shit to you!"

*

Rose rocks at the meet of Regan's wrist against her shoulder, collar, cusp, plexus…. Outlining where regan seeks to try and smother-out her lament upona bea(d)st never motherborne.

"I never said this is funny…" Rose exhales and lids shudder against every barrage of impact Regan sends upon her. It may bruise sooner than later, but for now pale skin is reddened by harsh assault she chooses to withstand while her lids remain sealed to block an emptiness and a gateway to a "soul".

Painted Black.

No colors anymore.. Lids open and with the rise of the dam(n), her own streaks of crystalline rivulets well, then build to fall over the crests even as Rose lowers to the rise of Regan's own revelation, giving her, her own. "She would kill Harley. Tasky. Ivy. My Father. My Friends. Nate. You." A flare of nostrils to draw ina sniff that conceals the wretched reveal of sorrow even if from nostrils.

Fingers clutch a strip of fabric and in her light turn away it is used like an uncerimonious tissue. "When it happens, June is already dead…." A drop of arm lamely. "Am I wrong…?" A whisper…

"AM I?!?!" A yell, one that is enraged at the impact that she was trying so hard to not show hit… But it did, and a missed flail of fist is met with a *crack* upon flesh when Rose is back facing Regan. "I've made deals with devils. I've lived…" The tatters of Kimono lift when Rose returns her forehead to Regan's and that hold trembles at her throat - a debate to end….
… or carry on…
It does. Now.

Fool!

"Ask my dad. Anyone still alive I care for. I don't listen." A smile and Rose presses a light kiss to Regan's chin. "Eye for eye."

A parting.

An attempted clutch to her. A hold.

"I won't die." A small smile. Wavering at best, even if it seems like an oath.

"Listen to you?? Bitch, please. You get your recycle bags for groceries from 'VL'." No… Loui V… Fuck it. Whatever

*

"FUCK JUNE. JUNE IS JUST A STUPID COLLEGE GIRL WHO WENT POKING INTO THE WRONG FUCKING CAVE!" Regan yells into Rose's face after a long moment of consideration. Once again, she bats down on Rose's shoulder, but something in the weakness to her wrist makes it feel like she's giving up on it. So Regan shoves, but slumps in against Rose with a tear-streaked growl. "Fuck, Rose, she doesn't even know how to enjoy her life unless with jam a tequila bottle down her throat; let the winner fucking win already and spare June the long, drawn out therapy sessions."

Regan drills her forehead into Rose's, brows furrowing quickly. One blue eye creeps open, considering her laptop, but closes once more.

"June died the moment she entered that cave, and there's no freedom for any of us so long as we can't get to space or wherever the fuck those Lantern dorks come from. We couldn't be safe in Madripoor. We're out of good options." Regan's voice is raw and scratchy, throat strained from an hour crying. "I don't want to wait until Waller blows my head off. I deserve better than this, and fuck, I don't have fucking Latveria on speed dial yet."

Yet.

Regan swallows, hard, then buttons her breathing down to a steady line. She curls her fingertips against Rose's shoulders and leans in, nuzzling the other woman's chin with her nose.

"Don't cry. Please." Regan whispers. "It's making me feel self conscious. You and everyone want the heart for leverage over the witch, over Waller, I just chose my own way." Regan sighs and presses a kiss down to Rose's collar. "So, please, just let me do this. Or help me."

*

Rose just lets her eyes close against the defensive barrage of justification regan yells in heated breaths that coat along her profile with proximity. There is a moment where lids clench. "…What if June is the winner and just walked into the wrong Abyss to see it staring back at her?"

The words are a low utterance, and when Regan looks back to seek Rose's eyes, they remain closed, because one is just as empty - for a reason. Every blow, every touch, every syllable had lashes fluttering against glistening ledges of cheekbones, and when demanded…

… Asked…

DON'T CRY…! The echo of those two words has her posture righting as the painted strokes of lips and wetted contours paint against her own, begging them to react.

Lips part and a slow… Measured… Exhale comes. Hands rise around Regan, fingers curl wanting to paint inked fingers in the real deal of blood…
… but can't.

Not here. Not now. Not her. Not them.

"Not crying. Shit hurts…" Truth covered in lies, covered in truth. Even as hands clenched, unfurl and draw Regan in. "Bitches… Get stitches." Blood pools over the fragments of bionic eye granted by Waller in replacement for Cyberforce's, in replacement/upgrade of X-Men's… No flinching as she tilts down to the nuzzle and draws lower lip along the bridge of Regan's nuzzling nose, pausing at the tip to open her eyes.

An empty pit, and pindot of pupil framed in arctic blue that mirrors the Wyngarde and her (mutual) plea.

When the kiss goes to Rose's collar that hold nearly clutches, almost afraid to let go…

but it does. A slow slide away that nearly shakes with the draw in of breath. "I need to find the right phone, and fix my clutch-foot." An answer?

Maybe…?

A slow draw away and Rose parts Regan with a drag of nails to raze skin in parting. A reminder? "You do deserve better than this. but this, is what I was born into."

Heading for the door every other footprint is painted a shadowed red.

"I'm helping you!" A beat of fist against Regan's door frame. "There. I knocked." A kiss is blown her way with a flick of fingers to wave in the parting.

"I'll be in my bunk." Queue the sound of a piratey-esque peg-legged hobble to her own quarters.

SLAM!

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