lunesque | VM: Here Mid the Ash Trees

Fandom: Violent Messiahs

Title: Here Mid the Ash Trees

Rating: NC-17, for violence and language

Pairing: Gen

Summary: The Family takes everything from Cheri Majors, leaving her with two things: the clothes on her back, and Pain.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to Image and Joshua Dysart. I wish they were mine, but you can't have everything.

Feedback: Please. Any feedback is appreciated.

Author’s notes: This was written for Comics Big Bang. I have the awesomest friends ever! Thank you,

lady_krysis, for being my cheerleader and a fantastic beta. I appreciated the way you kept up with my whining.

scheherezhad and

sweetnlow, thank you so much for your input. It really helped. Lastly, a special thanks goes to

dungeonmarm, who really helped me get my picky details right.

ETA: Actually, I have awesome friends, so now there are two fanmixes! Get them both, they're completelly different.

You can get

lady_krysis's fanmix here.

You can get the

dungeonmarm's version here.

Cheri Major wiped blood from her bottom lip with the palm of her hand and grimaced, the roar of the crowd a dull sound in the back of her mind. Her head was ringing from the last blow she'd gotten, and hell if that didn't fucking sting. She was a fucking cop—used to be—and she was getting her ass kicked by a whore with day-glo nails and a miniskirt.

"Yeah, you liked that, didn't you, bitch?" the day-glo whore sneered, her hands still curled into fists. She bounced around the ring like she was on speed. Who the hell knew, she probably was.

Cheri smiled, a fierce grimace of teeth, and picked up her badass motherfucker hat from where it had fallen on the concrete, stroking her fingers over the heart stitched onto the front as she planted it back on her head. "Tell you what," Cheri said, getting her feet back under her and standing. "That's your free pass. Now, I'm just gonna kill you." I survived two psycho motherfucking serial killers, Cheri wanted to say. I eat bitches like you for breakfast.

The day-glo whore feinted with her left hand, her right fist barreling toward Cheri; Cheri smoothly moved to the side and then rushed forward, thrusting the heel of her palm up and shattering the woman's nose. The woman snarled, hands grabbing at Cheri's hair and yanking her forward. Cheri hissed as her chin connected solidly with the whore's knee, her teeth making a grinding sound that thrummed in her head. The copper taste of blood and pain flooded Cheri's mouth, and she grabbed the woman's knee, toppling her onto her back. Cheri retreated, giving herself time to spit out another mouthful of blood, but her opponent was already up on her feet, darting forward into Cheri's space. Cheri stepped forward to meet her again, grabbing and trapping her arm before yanking it back. She jammed the heel of her palm against the joint of the elbow, hearing a satisfying crack as it gave beneath the force and bone broke skin. The whore screamed as a breathless hush fell over the crowd, and Cheri dropped her, adjusting her hat more comfortably as she stepped away. The roar of the crowd followed an instant later, these normal citizens by day sounding like nothing more than a zoo at night, just monkeys throwing shit at each other. Rankor fucking Island. Nothing here was worth puke.

Still, fighting was money, and Cheri was one of the dirty ones, too. It was illegal, what they were all doing here, but she had nowhere else to go, and the only time she felt alive anymore was when she was about to die. Her psychiatrist probably would have had something to say about that, but hell if she could afford private counseling now. The city wouldn't put out for her now, which fucking sucked, because she always put out for everyone else.

She left the ring, walked through blood like it was water, and got her money. She washed her shoes off in the back room with brown, sputtering water and left before the impromptu announcer was convinced by the crowd to con her into another fight. She didn't feel guilty about breaking that slut's arm, and the adrenaline had burned the fear out of her. Cheri thought that maybe she could get to sleep with her regular routine of a bath, wine, and soft jazz to fall asleep to. The dreams wouldn't get her tonight, and that's all that mattered.

Cheri zipped her jacket up against the late-night chill and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans, striding down the street, past dealers and all the filth that had accumulated since Citizen Pain vanished. Rankor Island and its people seemed to miss him, lights growing dimmer and the underworld rising up with a vengeance in his absence, but it didn't matter to Cheri. He had always been a symptom of the illness, never the cure.

"Hey, baby. I've got world peace in a bottle. I'll let you have it for five dollars a point."

Cheri cut her eyes to the side and stared at the man off to her left, noting the pinpoint shadow of his pupils and his gaunt cheeks. "I'm going to continue walking, and you're going to pretend you never saw me," she said, voice low and hard. The man raised his hands and stepped away, but it was too late—she could feel the hollow ache sinking in her stomach and her breath came faster and faster, despite her attempts to control it. She looked forward and only saw more of the same. Neon, weakness, dirt.

She splurged on a cab and kept her eyes straight ahead, the world protected from her by a chassis of glass and metal.

~*~

When Cheri Major was 19, she beat a man to death with a baseball bat.

When she was 26, she did it again.

She fought herself to exhaustion to make sure the dreams didn't come, but when they did anyway, they went like this:

Blue lights flashing, broken streetlights casting yellow shadows against the white of police cars.

Blood.

Court—a verdict of 'Not Guilty' although she caught him in the fucking act—a mistake in forensics, and the whole thing is blown sky high, and there's nothing she can do about it.

The perp in that dark alley, the firm wood of the bat gripped tightly between her fists, coming out of the shadows like the wrath of God and returning him to dust and blood and pulp.

That voice, dark and sizzling and warm and proud, whispering, You are like me.

~*~

Cheri woke up, her heart thumping in her chest, and she got out of bed, stepping quietly toward the bathroom and turning on the light before she gripped the edge of the sink in both hands and lowered her head. She forced herself to take each breath one at a time, slow and calm and sure. Her heart pounded in her chest like a racehorse galloping for the finish line, but there were no other horses. Racing against herself like fucking always. Maybe this time she would finally go to the damned glue factory.

When she calmed herself down so that she wasn't feeling so hollow and lost, she took a shower and let the hot water rinse away the cold night sweat.

When she decided to get out of the shower, the water had been cold for an hour and the sun had risen while she wasn't looking. The light on her answering machine was flashing a bright, insistent red, and she walked over to it as she toweled her hair dry, fingers hovering above the delete button before she sighed and pressed play. There was only one message—Ernest.

"Hey, Cheri, just calling to let you know that it's sunny and fantastic here," Ernest's voice was scratchy on the recording. "Still kinda wish you went with me. Give me a call if you're up for it." The line went dead, and Cheri deleted the message. She never returned his calls, but she guessed it just gave him comfort to hear her voice on the answering machine. She remembered how he had pleaded with her to leave, just pack up their things and quit the force, but after the surgeries had patched her back together and the drugs had worn off, she had declined.

There were times, though, when she wished she had said yes. But the Family would find her, and she just didn't want to subject her only friend to that horror. The man could barely fucking catch a jaywalker anymore without pissing his pants.

There was no end to how much Cheri Major hated this goddamned island.

Probably as much as it hated her now.

As much as she disliked thinking it, she actually missed her position as the lead detective of the Violent Messiahs Task Force. That just told her that she was fucking cracked in the head—it was a shit job in a shit city and it only fed her own darkness, but it was better than this. Better than existing from moment to moment in limbo, waiting for someone to cut her down. Better than hiding out during the day because she felt safer among scum at night.

She strode across the room to close the blinds against the glare of sunlight, casting her apartment in shadows, and then went into the kitchen. She ignored the piled dishes in the sink and opened her refrigerator, taking out a bottle of wine and popping the cork before going to a cabinet to get one of her wine glasses. At the last moment she stopped, belatedly remembering that all of her glasses were in the sink; she gave an internal shrug and turned on her heel, heading over to her favorite chair. She drank the wine straight from the bottle until it burned heat into her stomach, until reality was a little fuzzier around the edges.

Cheri carefully set the bottle down on the floor, sliding out of her chair in a haze, a small motion that had her swaying back and forth like a pendulum as she wandered into her room. In the top drawer, next to her badass motherfucker hat, lay the mask. She slipped it over her head, the fabric hanging in long folds down her cheeks, and slowly made it to her bed, curling up on the rumpled covers. She drew her legs to her chest, circling her arms tightly around them as she rocked back and forth.

When she eventually closed her eyes, she did not dream.

~*~

"It's nice to see you again, Lieutenant," Commissioner Brimer said softly, his dark eyes full of sadness, breath reeking of whiskey. That told her everything she needed to know.

"Cut the shit, sir," Cheri snapped. "You're not going to reinstate me, are you?"

Commissioner Brimer shook his head. "I can't, Lieutenant. Public opinion against you is too strong. There were riots when we acquitted you."

"I'm innocent," Cheri protested. "There were no fingerprints on the gun—"

"—You were wearing gloves—"

"—Detective Houston vouched for me—"

"—and he was well known to be working on the Family Man case, which crossed paths with your investigation more times than I could count," Commissioner Brimer said firmly. "Ernest left, Cheri, and the public took that as a silent admission of guilt. They blamed you for the disappearance of Citizen Pain, and they blamed you for the death of Scalpel. There would be anarchy in the streets if we let you back on the force."

"What about the evidence in Ling Kawaguchi's apartment?" Cheri demanded.

"We went over that apartment with a fine-toothed comb. There was nothing there regarding Citizen Pain at all."

Fuck. That was it then. They had her right back in the fucking box at the top of a hit list for the criminally fanatic. Just like The Family had said: The good citizens of Rankor Island will curse your name. Hell, she was cursing her name right now, cursing the fact that she was so good that this was her exile, prison, and punishment, all in one merrily-wrapped package. She missed the days when she felt like she was making a difference.

"Jesus Christ," Cheri finally said, falling back into her chair and staring up at the ceiling.

"Other than that, how are you holding up?" Commissioner Brimer asked. "That Scalpel really took a piece out of you before someone offed her."

"Managing somehow." Cheri removed her hat and ran a hand through her hair. "The doctors did good on my ear." She instinctively ran a finger along the thin scar that remained after the replantation, the sensation causing memories to flash before her eyes—the pain of Ling's whip, the agony of Scalpel's blade searing against her head. She rubbed the heel of her palm into her eyes and then shook her head. "So, now what?"

"Get out of here," Commissioner Brimer said. "Look at this like a second chance. Get off Rankor Island and don't look back."

It's too late, Cheri wanted to say. This city has seeped into my bones, turned my soul to fucking sewer. You try and salvage that. Instead, she turned her head to stare out the window.

"You look like you need a drink." Commissioner Brimer removed a small silver flask from the inside pocket of his jacket, sliding it over to her without another word.

"Yeah." Cheri twisted the cap off, taking a long, satisfying swig of whiskey before handing it back. It burned all the way down, just like she liked it. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Commissioner Brimer scratched his short hair, his eyes full of regret.

Cheri had no need for pity. "I'll clean out my desk then, sir."

"Stay safe, Cheri," Commissioner Brimer managed to say.

"Yeah.” Safe. She almost couldn't keep the laughter silent.

Instead, she stood, turned on her heel as she replaced her hat, and put everything that she vaguely liked off of her austere desk into a cardboard box. No one tried to talk to her; no one said goodbye. She liked it that way. Cheri tucked the box under an arm and strode out of the police station—she bypassed a stinking dumpster less than a block away from the precinct and chucked the box in there, turning around the corner and never looking back.

~*~

Cheri's luck didn't get better, not that she thought it would. She drove back home, stopping about a block away from her apartment for a parking space, wanting both to save some money and to get some fresh air. That was an oxymoron here—she figured she'd get cleaner air if she fucking smoked. She strode down the street, silent and no nonsense, when she felt a prickling between her shoulder blades, a sense of someone following her. Before she had a chance to do more than look around, a kid wearing a replica Citizen Pain mask shouldered past her, whispering something under his breath that made Cheri freeze.

"I wish Pain on you."

Her chest ached; her skin chilled and prickled with sweat. She stumbled back only to be elbowed aside by another and another and another. They all whispered the same thing, looking at her through masks that hid their eyes.

"I wish Pain on you."

"I wish Pain on you."

"I wish Pain on you."

"Fuck you," Cheri managed to spit out, and she pushed through them, taking the stairs two at a time until she was at the safety of her apartment, unlocking the door with shaking hands and bolting it behind her. She dropped her keys and slid downward until she hit the floor, covering her face in her hands and taking slow, deep breaths. I wish Pain on you. Bull-fucking-shit. "His name was Job," she whispered to her empty apartment. "His name was Job. He was lonely, and he l—he lo—" Her throat tightened against the words until she coughed on the air like it was poison. Maybe it was. "You win," Cheri whispered, and staggered up to her feet. "You win. You can have this infested hellhole. I'm outta here."

It was both calming and ridiculous to talk out loud, but she figured that if she were going crazy she may as well act like it. She took out boxes from her closet and dumped the contents on the floor to see if she loved anything in any of them; finding that she didn't, she used the new storage space to carefully place the things that she loved in their flimsy shield of cardboard and tape. Some clothes, her jazz, the bed sheets that she loved, the teddy bear her mother gave her when she was eight, the mask—these were the important things. The rest of it was just window dressing.

Cheri hefted her boxes in her arms and climbed down the stairs to the ground floor. When she made her way back into the street, the Citizen Pain fanatics were gone, and her breath loosened, coming slower and easier. She packed everything into her trunk and then headed for the ferry dock, tapping her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel as she inched forward in the traffic until she could see New York in front of her and Rankor Island in her rear-view mirror.

"Good riddance," Cheri muttered, and flipped the city off as she left.

~*~

There wasn’t enough room on the ferry for her vehicle, so she abandoned it in the parking lot. The thing was, she really didn't know where she wanted to go, although she had plenty of time to think on the ferry ride to the mainland. There was no place for her in New York anymore, not after those drug busts she did. No family. All of her closest friends had died of drug overdoses years ago. There were really only two paths in front of her then—strike out somewhere completely new, or go to Florida and hang out with Ernest.

When Cheri reached New York, she used some cash to rent a car and headed south. She drove until she was at a quarter tank and then stopped at a gas station to fill up. Before she got back on the road again, she went to the pay phone and dialed Ernest's number.

"Ernest's Chicken House of Hoes!" Ernest answered.

"Are you fucking serious?" Cheri blurted out. "I'm hanging up."

"Cheri? Holy sh—no, don't hang up, I'm sorry. I thought you were a police buddy of mine. I'm going to crawl under my bed and die now."

Cheri let a brief smile tug at her lips. "Make it snappy."

"It's good to hear from you." Ernest's voice was warm. "What's been going on? You never returned any of my calls."

"They kicked me off the force, Houston." Cheri laid her arm across the top of the pay phone and rested her forehead against it. "They said the public outcry would be too much for them to handle if they reinstated me after the Scalpel thing."

"Damn, Cheri, I'm so sorry. That fucking sucks."

"So, I was thinking about coming down to Florida like you're always asking me to," Cheri said. "How's that sound?"

"Well," Ernest drawled, "I'd have to get this place cleaned up and kick out my girl for the night, but uh, yeah—"

"Seriously, Houston, if you swing that dick at me one more time, I'm going to come down there just to cut the damned thing off." Cheri shook her head as she fought a bemused smile.

"Yeah, okay, okay. I'm looking forward to seeing you. You can crash on my couch for a while. I promise my dick will not go swinging in your direction."

"That's better," Cheri laughed, and this felt different—easier, relaxing, like the stress and the craziness were easing away. "Thanks, Houston."

"We're friends, Cheri," Ernest pointed out. "You can use my first name every once in a while."

"You're first name fucking sucks." Cheri laughed again, and it—it felt good. "Houston's much better."

"Are you coming down here to bitch at me?" Ernest demanded. "Because seriously—"

"You miss me. It's okay to admit it. I'll be down in Florida in about two days, and then I'll call and you can give me directions to your place. Sound good?"

"Sounds great. I'm glad you're out of there, Cheri."

"Me too, Houston," Cheri admitted. "Me, too."

After Cheri ended the call, she paid for her gas and got a soda, and then coasted on I-95 for a couple of hours, singing along to Nina Simone on the jazz station. The further she got away from the north, the more relieved she felt. It was a temporary relief, to be sure, but exactly what she needed right now, the lightening of her heart after so much hell. She drove down the highway for the rest of the day, traffic thinning out the farther she got from the constant jams of the city.

The next thing she knew, the sun was setting, the road in front of her was growing dark, and it was almost time to find a place to sleep for the night. Cheri shrugged—she didn't think she really needed sleep in the first place, since it was a relatively short drive, only twenty hours or so, and she'd spent enough sleepless nights with bad coffee to know she could manage this, especially since she had somewhere she could crash.

Something caught her attention in the rear-view mirror, and she narrowed her eyes, seeing an SUV speed up behind her. She signaled and moved into the slow lane to let it pass, but it remained behind her, gaining momentum. Cheri watched the wheels of the car behind her as they spun, but she startled out of it when the SUV practically crawled onto her bumper. She jolted against her seat belt at the small impact as she heard their bumpers colliding and gripped the steering wheel with both hands in order to avoid swerving.

"Jesus," Cheri swore under her breath, her hands tightening on the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.

The SUV tapped her bumper again, a little harder, and she stepped on the accelerator, pressing down until the engine roared and she shot forward. She reached a hand out to turn the radio off, not wanting the distraction, a sudden rush of adrenaline slowing everything down. She pulled her hat down on her head a little tighter and flicked her gaze to the rear-view mirror again, watching as the SUV sped up after her. The driver looked a little strange, but she couldn't get a closer look with what she had at her disposal. A couple of cars came into view in front of her, and the SUV slowed down to a reasonable speed as Cheri passed the two new motorists. She had to find a rest stop, or better yet, she thought she might be able to lose her pursuer if she found an area with enough places to hide. The SUV, however, was persistent. If Cheri hadn't known it was following her, the fact that it sped up on her tail immediately after passing the other motorists confirmed all of her suspicions.

Cheri was being followed.

And it sure as hell wasn't so they could get her autograph.

The SUV sped up again, and this time the driver wasn't playing around. Once the two cars were far enough away that they wouldn't have been able to tell what was going on, the stalker poured the heat on, ramming hard into the back of her car. Cheri gasped, her heart pounding in her chest, and she twisted the wheel, trying to get into the other lane. The SUV slammed into her again, and did a 180, now facing the asshole trying to drive her off the road. The headlights were blinding, but Cheri squinted against them, trying to carve any details she could into her mind. Their eyes met, and she couldn't see the driver because whoever the fuck it was, they were wearing a mask—it was always a mask—and there was no license plate.

She could see the tires speeding up against the asphalt.

She blinked, and the SUV hit her again, spinning her around in a crunch of metal and a squeal of tires. Cheri screamed as everything whirled around her, the world blurring into blotches of color spotlighted by headlights. She moved her foot onto the brakes and tried to turn into the spin, but the fucking SUV didn't give her any time, tapping her again. The damned rental car didn’t do anything the way her car did, and one of the tires went off the road, the steering wheel jerking in her grasp, wrenching her arm and causing a flash of pain to jangle its way up her shoulder. She lost feeling in her fingers just long enough to lose control of the steering wheel, and then the world was tumbling over her head like she was in a barrel. Cheri thought she made a sound at the contraction of her seat belt like a rope around her chest, and she closed her eyes, unable to help the shriek that worked its way past her lips.

The world stopped moving after what felt like decades. She felt like she was dangling in the air, but she couldn't tell what was up and down, not with her chest aching and lungs still fighting for breath, or, god, the way her fucking knee was jammed up against the dashboard. She begged not now, please not now as she felt the speed of her breath and the pound of her racing heart, and she panted as she lay there, tears burning behind her tightly closed eyelids.

She heard the crunch of footsteps off somewhere, outside of her car, and she opened her eyes, finding herself upside down, hanging from her seat by its belt. Her head spun as she searched for the release, and she punched the button hard, expecting it to be stuck. It gave way immediately, before she was ready, and she dropped down to the windshield, smacking her forehead against the rear-view mirror. Cheri moaned, her head pounding, but she tried to ignore it, craning her neck to look at the passenger side door. She found it useless, crushed by the wreck, and she rolled onto her back, cradling her forehead in her palm as she kicked at the door. She gritted her teeth against a jagged pain searing through her ankle and kicked again. The glass of the window shattered into small chunks and fell onto her, but at this point it was just another sting, and Cheri lay there for a moment longer, trying to catch her breath.

That moment was a moment too long, and a hand seized her ankle, yanking her through the broken window. Cheri scrabbled for purchase, for anything that would give her leverage, and she felt the round knob of the emergency brake at her fingertips, but the person twisted his grip, her ankle giving a loud, protesting throb as he pulled again, a sharp, inexorable tug. Her hands slipped away from the emergency brake, and she cried out again as her shirt rode up from the drag, leaving her unprotected from each scrape of glass against her skin.

Cheri squeezed her eyes shut until she saw red beneath her eyelids from the pain, and then she was nudged onto her back, a boot planting in the center of her chest. "I can't believe that a little girl like you did it." The man's voice was smooth and amused, and it sounded like it echoed—Cheri opened her eyes again, but she couldn't pinpoint the sound with the way her vision swam and her head pounded. "You're the one that took Job and made him a prodigal."

"He was crazy, just like you and your damned Family," Cheri spat. She turned her head to the side and coughed blood out onto the road, reaching for a handful of rubble, her gun if she was lucky, anything that she could use.

The man bent down and seized her hand, stopping its search, and he continued moving down, straddling her hips, his knees on either side of her waist. "You have caused a great deal of trouble for us."

"Good." Cheri gave him a fierce smile, flexing her hands against his grip and moving from side to side despite the jagged stab of pain each motion caused, trying to buck him off. "You haven't seen nothing yet."

"You have no idea who you're dealing with," the man said, and he slowly removed his mask.

Cheri's eyes widened, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled. His face wasn't human, a metal jaw glinting from the dim yellow light of the highway, one eye large and hideous in its socket, the other nothing more than an optic cable, maybe, or—Cheri didn't know, didn't want to know, wanted him to put his mask back on. "What are you?" she croaked, her throat dry from screams and dust.

"I have hidden my face where the oak spread his leaves over me, and the yoke of the old ways of men have I cast aside." His voice was almost melodic, something caught between music and the static you would hear on an old record player.

"Let me go." Cheri found tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, but she couldn't look away from this man, yet another monster made by the Family. "Please."

The man smiled, his pale skin shadowed by his hair. "You are ours now, Cheri Major. You have not yet learned madness." Cheri's breath rattled in her chest, coming faster and faster, not the fear but close. "Shhh." Another low croon, his gloved hands drifting down her arms to glide around her throat. His fingers stroked over the throb of her pulse and began to squeeze.

Cheri gasped for air, kicking out, unable to make contact as she scratched at his hands, and spots flickering in her vision as she pushed and shoved at him. She fought as the world blackened around her, but he didn't seem fazed by her actions at all, voice still soothing, still soft. "Men call me mad because I have thrown all folly from me, putting it aside to leave the old barren ways …"

~*~

Consciousness came to Cheri in fits and starts. Between each flicker of her eyelids she saw fluorescent lights as she zoomed beneath them, her stomach queasy. It was that same breathless nausea she felt when she had willingly let Ling tie her up that first time, when the caress of Ling's whip pumped adrenaline through Cheri's body. She heard the hiss of the oxygen as she inhaled past the stabbing pain in her side and she sounded—god, she sounded like that sick bastard in the wheelchair. She felt weight press down on her chest like a boot, like that man who was missing half of his face was still sitting on her, slowly taking her breath. She felt the hollowness of the fear inside of her. Citizen Pain was standing before her, huge and unknowable and like the fear personified, and fuck, what if this was dying? What if she were dead, and death was never-ending terror, never having enough breath unless she was looking out at the world through a mask, where her fear found form and settled inside her, entrenched itself so deeply that it started taking her over even as she tried to fight it?

Hell was thinking she could work past her fear and finding out that it was never ending.

There were other nightmares—her mother, hair falling out from chemo, her stepfather grabbing her wrist and the way the bones had ground together as she screamed back at him. It blurred into her mind, Citizen Pain looming over her with that same grip on her wrist, whispering, I would never really hurt you. But they did—they all did. She felt a band snap around the back of her head, and her eyes flew open—there were doctors, doctors everywhere and, "Breathe," they said, but they didn't know, couldn't know. Her breath fanned back against her cheeks, but she didn't feel any different. The hollowness inside her was all-consuming, and she thought for a moment that even if that feeling changed to nausea, she would only vomit darkness.

When Cheri woke up again, consciousness came in bits and pieces—the restraints around her wrists, the inhale and exhale of her breath rattling in her chest, the beep of the machine next to her. Her mouth felt gummy and dry, and she licked her cracked lips as she looked around. She was in a hospital—that part she hadn't dreamed. Everything was blinding white and pristine around her, and she felt a little confused, floating inside like she wasn't anchored in her body, like her skin was her only barrier from dissipating.

There was some movement to her left, and Cheri fought a wave of dizziness as she turned her head to follow the motion. It was like she was on a bad carnival ride and couldn't get off. As she continued to focus, the blurred figure at her side firmed into that of a doctor, and he smiled at her as he realized that she was tracking.

"Don't be alarmed, Ms. Major," the doctor said, his voice modulated and confident. "My name is Dr. Reynolds. You're at Rankor General. Can you understand me?"

Cheri nodded in response, but her mind was stuck on the words he had said moments before. Rankor General. What the fuck was this shit? She had been driving on that highway for hours—she shouldn't be back on Rankor fucking Island.

"You were in an accident on I-95," the doctor said. Cheri nodded sharply and hissed in a breath as the motion started a pounding in her head. The doctor frowned and looked at her charts for a second before turning a dial on a machine to her right that caused a sweet, drugged relief to sweep through her. "The trauma centers in New York didn't have any room for you, so you were airlifted to Rankor General. Welcome home, Ms. Major." Dr. Reynolds shook his head. "You should've known better than to run."

Cheri tried to keep her eyes open, but the morphine was sinking into her blood like it had found its new home, leaving her numb to the doctor's words. Fucking figured. Her psychiatrist, her doctor. There wasn't a single person on Rankor Island who couldn't be bought.

~*~

"Jesus, Cheri, you look like shit," Ernest blurted out when he saw her.

Cheri pushed herself upright for a second and then leaned against her pillows before giving him a sardonic look. "Well, if it isn't Houston, come back from the bright state of citrus. What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Getting the shit scared out of me is what I'm doing!" Ernest all but fell into a chair at the side of the bed and pushed his glasses up, giving her a hard look. "Last thing I knew, you said you would show up in Florida and maybe stay with me a while, and the next thing after that, you're in the fucking hospital back on Rankor Island. I thought you were dead!"

"Frankly, I feel like it," Cheri admitted. They were starting to wean her off of the morphine, but she knew that she had been in the hospital for at least a couple of days. She was wondering how the hell she would be able to afford all of this without a job.

Ernest heaved a sigh and ran his hand through his dirty blond hair. "What happened?" he finally asked, fixing his worried eyes on Cheri again.

"It's all the same old shit," Cheri sighed. "I was driving down the road and an SUV decided it was going to teach me a little something about off- road driving."

"You're kidding."

"Do I look like I'm a fucking kidder?" Cheri asked, her face creasing into a scowl. "Some asshole drove me off the road. That's all I remember."

"Do—do you think it had anything to do with—"

"Yeah," Cheri said, soft and bitter. "Yeah, I do."

"Jesus Christ." Ernest rubbed a hand through his hair. "You're lucky to be alive."

"It wasn't luck, Houston," Cheri said, her voice soft. "It was on purpose. They wouldn't kill me when putting me in a hospital without insurance would make me a hell of a lot more miserable." She raised one hand against the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital and paused midway, feeling the tug of her I.V. She set that arm down and lifted the other over her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief at the darkness.

"Go to sleep, Cheri," Ernest said softly. "I'll be here when you wake up."

"Do you think I need someone watching over me while I sleep?" Cheri laughed, the sound of her voice hard and brittle like broken glass—it sounded too close to crying for her comfort.

"How about this—" Ernest said. "I'm terrified of leaving this room. I think they're going to get me next. Knowing you're here is kinda comforting. You're my security blanket, you know? You're a tough chick."

"Pussy," Cheri said with another laugh and closed her eyes. She wouldn't sleep, couldn't sleep, not when the darkness was like a living thing behind her eyelids. But maybe she could pretend for Houston. She was good at pretending. Houston set his hand over hers and squeezed her fingers. His palm was clammy. Terrified. They both were.

~*~

The next morning, Cheri bullied Ernest into buying her some clothes, and once he came back, she limped to the bathroom and barricaded herself inside. The effort caused her to feel a little dizzy, but Cheri ignored it, leaning on the bathroom sink for support as she stared in the mirror. She looked like shit—her left eye was blackened, and she had a multitude of tiny little scabs on her face. Her bottom lip had a dark slash of a scab right in the middle, like someone was going for a bloody sort of symmetry. And that didn't even count the fact that she was pretty sure she had a broken rib and that her knee felt like it was being stabbed by a hot poker. Cheri carefully and slowly dressed herself and then unlocked the door, limping stubbornly back to her room.

When she got there, she found Houston flirting with a cute, red-headed nurse who immediately looked over at her and gave her a stern look. "What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded. "You're not thinking of checking out, are you?"

"Yeah," Cheri said in her best 'you-wanna-make-something-of-it?' voice. "I was thinking exactly that."

“It’s dangerous, honey,” the nurse said. “You’re really banged up. You should stay for observation at least a couple more days.”

“I can’t.” Cheri shook her head. “I have no idea how I can afford an extended hospital stay. I have to go.”

"But you have great insurance!" the nurse protested. "I mean, your bills practically paid themselves!"

"What?" Cheri asked, her face blank in shock. "I don't have any insurance."

"Then you must have some friends in high places," the nurse laughed. "Honey, I say take advantage of their generosity and take time to recuperate."

Cheri shared a look with Ernest, and he shook his head.

"I want to go," Cheri said.

The nurse shook her head and shrugged. "It's up to you, although the doctor will probably say you checked yourself out without approval."

"I don't care what the doctor thinks," Cheri said. "I don't like hospitals. I'll be leaving now." Ernest went to her side, unobtrusively squeezed her hand for some courage and helped her out of the room. Cheri finished the paperwork to sign out and turned it in. When she was about to leave, she found the nurse hurrying down the hall toward her and paused for just a moment to see what the nurse had to say.

"You forgot your key," the nurse said, holding up a metal key. Nickel, with copper overlay, Cheri found herself thinking as she accepted the key. She looked down at her palm, too numb to be curious, and curled her fingers around the key.

"Thanks," Cheri said.

"Did you have a key?" Ernest asked, leaning closer than he needed to.

"No," Cheri said. "I didn't." She looked at the key again. Safford's Storage. Her own internal voice was usually silent, but she couldn't help but laugh at herself as she thought, I guess it's to the storage unit next, huh?

Ernest looked through a phone book until he found the address for the storage unit, and then was nice enough to drive her to it, his eyes constantly flitting, constantly restless. It made Cheri tired, but then, she was doing the exact same thing. Even before she knew about The Family, Rankor Island was just one of those places where you kept your guard up.

The storage unit was in a pretty seedy side of town, even for Rankor Island standards. Cheri and Ernest managed to get there just after sunset, but fortunately, Ernest had a flashlight in his car, heavy duty and bright as hell. They silently got out of the car, Ernest looking longingly toward the driver's seat before he followed after Cheri. She would've teased him about what he was more afraid of—being alone or being with her—but the truth was, she was almost as scared as he was, not sure if she wanted to know what was in the storage unit or not. It was The Family, had to be The Family—they had paid her hospital bills and left her a present.

"A Christmas card would've been more appreciated," Cheri muttered to herself.

"What was that?" Ernest asked, his eyes swinging back and forth, following the flashlight's illumination.

"Nothing."

Cheri continued to move forward until she found the unit that matched her key. She unlocked the door and Ernest helped her open it. It was pitch black inside but for the flashlight. Inside were three boxes. They looked ragged, falling apart, and Cheri cautiously stepped forward, nudging one of the boxes with her toe. The box split and out tumbled her CDs: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong. She carefully lowered herself to her knees and opened the second box—her clothing, some of it torn hopelessly beyond repair, but some, perhaps even most, salvageable.

"What's going on here?" Ernest asked.

"This is my stuff," Cheri murmured. "The stuff that was in my car when they ran me over." She leaned back, hissed out a breath at the ache of her knee in that position, but it didn't matter. The pain kept her focused, kept her aware. "What the hell are they trying to pull?"

"So, what?" Ernest asked as he opened up the third box. "Are you saying they made you crash your car but paid your hospital bills and put all of your stuff in storage?"

"You're pretty sharp today, Houston," Cheri said, mock-affectionately.

"What're you talking? I'm always on the ball." Ernest went oddly still beside her, and Cheri turned her head to find Ernest looking in horror at the mask.

"Shit."

"Why do you have Citizen Pain's mask, Cheri?" Ernest asked in the kind of tone you would use if you were talking to a crazy person and didn't want them to eat you.

"I—" Cheri felt off balance, a little at a loss. She wasn't thinking clearly, or she wouldn't have let Ernest pry through her stuff anyway. She found her badass motherfucker hat and carefully put it on her head. She had felt naked without it. Now that she had it back in her possession, she felt a little calmer, a little more grounded. "I don't see why that's any of your business," Cheri continued shortly, taking the mask from Ernest's hand with a careless movement. "Maybe I just wanted to have a trophy. Why were you looking in that box anyway? My underwear's over here, you perv."

Ernest didn't look like he was fooled, and Cheri silently cursed a storm. How the fuck was she supposed to explain something to him that she didn't really understand herself? What, it made her feel safe? That was bullshit. She had never felt more terrified than when she had faced Citizen Pain for the first time, and considering what a shit life she had before, that was fucking saying something.

But Ernest didn't ask. He just gave Cheri a penetrating look and silently folded the mask up and put it where he found it. Cheri didn't want to say thank you, because then it would feel like he'd done something important, and—and she was thinking far too fucking much.

"Just—can you just take me to my apartment?"

"Yeah, no problem," Ernest said with another frightened look in her direction.

Cheri sighed. "What, Houston?"

"Get rid of the mask, Cheri," Ernest said, his voice wavering. He looked pale and washed out in the light of the flashlight, his glasses reflecting the shine until the lenses were luminous and obscured. "It's the only way your life's ever going to get back to normal."

My life has never been normal, Cheri wanted to say, but instead she stood, fighting against the pain, and pulled down the brim of her hat. "How's normal working for you these days, Houston?"

"I don't have The Family breathing down my neck."

"How the fuck do you know that?" Cheri demanded. "Maybe you just can't see them anymore."

"Cheri," Ernest pleaded.

Cheri tugged her jacket tightly around her and gave him a fierce, determined look. "Sorry. Fresh out of fairy dust. I don't get the luxury of pretending."

"I can't ever say the right thing with you, can I?"

Cheri took a breath and tried to quirk a smile. "You mean there are times you say something right?" Another silence fell between them. "Shit." Cheri breathed a sigh.

"Forget it," Ernest said with a shrug. "Come on, I'll take you home."

Ernest stood and went to Cheri's side and slipped an arm around her waist. Cheri leaned against Ernest with a sigh and nodded before they walked out and closed the storage door behind them. Ernest carefully guided Cheri to her seat in his beat up Volvo. Once she was seated, Ernest closed the door and went back down the narrow path of storage units until she couldn't see him anymore. When he returned, he was almost meticulous in balancing all three of her boxes, everything she had considered important in her life, and put them in the trunk. It made her feel like an even bigger bitch than she was.

She buckled herself in—she thought that having her seatbelt on was probably the only thing that had saved her life in that accident to begin with, so she wasn't about to stop wearing it now—as Ernest walked to the driver's side and she leaned back in her seat as he carefully maneuvered the dank streets of Rankor Island. Even in the daylight the scum was out, selling their shit on the fucking street corners. Not for the first time, Cheri wondered if Citizen Pain had the right idea.

He had given them a choice, after all. Be decent human beings or be dead. Couldn't get much more basic than that. He was fair in a city that had forgotten the meaning of the word.

Cheri just wanted to go home, take a shower, and go to bed. She was exhausted if she was thinking shit like that. She closed her eyes and drowsed a little, but she was too wound up, darkness flickering into images of murder behind her eyes, of the man that had run her off the road and his wide, mad eyes, the silvery metal speaker that had made up his mouth and most of his throat, the plate of his head. She had never thought that creatures like that could exist outside of ridiculous sci-fi movies, but she had seen these monsters with her own eyes. Seeing something like that changed the way she viewed her entire life. If monsters were real, after all, then what else could be lurking in the shadows? She couldn't expect Ernest to think about it like that, not when he was already jumping at the normal craziness they found in police work. Used to, Cheri reminded herself. She wasn't a police officer anymore.

The car stopped, and Cheri opened her eyes, finding Ernest about to set his hand on her shoulder. He dropped his hand awkwardly once he realized she was awake and said, "We're here."

Cheri rubbed her eyes and unbuckled her seat belt, getting out of the car. Ernest helped her, just like always, and she felt bad for ragging on him so hard, although she would never be able to bring herself to admit it. She ached to be home in her apartment, wanted to shut out the world for a while and find out what she was going to do next. She sure as hell knew she couldn't rely on Ernest forever; that much was true. Cheri was so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that she only noticed Ernest stopped because she didn't wander any farther.

"Thank god," she groaned, "I—what the hell is this?" She found a notice on the door, her body going rigid from tension so quickly that every single one of her aching muscles twinged in complaint.

"Uh," Ernest stammered, and he pushed his glasses up his nose, peering closer at the notice. "Eviction papers?"

"Eviction," Cheri said, numb and cold; she didn't even have the energy to raise her voice. "I was paid until the end of next month. How could I be—?" She felt the burn of unshed tears in her eyes and rubbed her forearm over her face, taking a deep breath to fight down the panic. "I need to go talk to my land lord."

"Yeah," Ernest agreed immediately. "Of course, Cheri. Come on."

They slowly made their way down to the office, and Cheri paused outside the office door, pulling away from Ernest and standing on her own two feet.

She fit a scowl onto her face and stalked through the doors, pinning the receptionist with a look. "I need to speak to Mr. Jankowski," Cheri growled.

"I'm sorry," the receptionist said sweetly, "but Mr. Jankowski is—"

"This isn't a request," Cheri barked, and she swiveled around at the sound of a door opening to her left. Mr. Jankowski was standing there, dabbing a handkerchief over his shiny, balding head, wiping moisture off of his skin.

"It's okay, Jen," Mr. Jankowski said. "It's Cheri, from apartment B-5. I'll talk with her."

Jen nodded and gestured at Mr. Jankowski like Cheri didn't know where the fuck she should go, and Cheri grit her teeth, her pulse pounding angrily in her temples as she and Ernest entered Mr. Jankowski's office.

"I haven't seen you around the last couple of days, Cheri," Mr. Jankowski said. He gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk before scurrying behind it, his throat bobbing with a nervous swallow.

"I've been in the hospital," Cheri said briskly. She ignored the implicit invitation to sit, choosing instead to slam the eviction notice on the desk between them. "I came home to find this on my door, Jankowski. I don't need to tell you how many ways this is fucking illegal in New York. This kind of shit doesn't fly, not even in this hell hole of a city."

"I know it's tough," Mr. Jankowski began, but Cheri shook her head.

"No. Try again."

"You—"

"No," Cheri said. "I've paid up my lease. I'm quiet, I'm well-behaved. I was a fucking cop. You can't do this to me!"

Mr. Jankowski's eyes darted to the door, and his voice lowered. "Please, Cheri, I know it's wrong, but I had to do it. There's this man, all right? Got half his face covered, and he sounds like he's talking through one of those old—you know, a tiny, record-player type sound—"

"Victrola," Ernest supplied helpfully.

"Yeah," Mr. Jankowski agreed. "He sounds like he was recorded and played back on a Victrola. You've never given me any trouble, Cheri, but this guy said that if I didn't evict you, he'd find my ex over in Idaho with my two boys and do awful things to them. He even had the eviction notice all signed and ready to go. I couldn't—"

"Fuck," Cheri set both of her palms against the desk, holding her aching body up as the anger flooded out of her, leaving her cold and empty. "I get it."

"Do you think—" Ernest began, but Cheri just shook her head.

"Listen," Mr. Jankowski whispered, going to the safe behind his desk and unlocking it. He retrieved something and then locked the safe again before turning back to her. "This money covers what you paid me on the rest of your lease. Take it and find somewhere else to stay, please. I just can't have you here anymore."

Cheri took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her hair. "I get it. Thanks." She slid the money off the desk and stuck it in her pocket.

"Thank you," Mr. Jankowski said. "I hoped you'd understand."

"Let's go, Houston." Cheri stalked out of the office, heading back toward the car and buckling herself in. Ernest followed a moment later.

"Well," Ernest said as he started the car. "It's nice that he gave you your money back."

"Are you that stupid, really?" Cheri asked. "He didn't give me money because he felt guilty, he gave me money to pay me off. He paid me to keep my fucking mouth shut."

"Why'd you accept the money then?"

Cheri rested her head against the cool glass of her window and exhaled a soft breath. "What else am I going to do, Houston? They've got me. And I need a place to stay."

"Let's find a hotel," Ernest said. "Get you to rest a little. How were you making money while you were suspended?"

"I fought," Cheri said softly. "Can we just shut up now?"

"Yeah," Ernest tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Sure."

~*~

Ernest found a cheap little place this side of decent on the strip of hotels and nightclubs that lined 22nd Boulevard. It was clean enough and had two beds, so Cheri had no complaints. Ernest let her pay for half the room with the money that she had gotten from her old land lord, and she claimed the bed closest to the window.

Ernest fidgeted a couple of times, opening and closing his mouth like he wanted to say something, but Cheri just ignored him until he heaved a sigh and kicked off his shoes. He turned off the light and slipped under the covers, turned away from her, and Cheri went to one of the chairs by the tiny desk next to the window and stared out.

The skyline of Rankor Island reminded Cheri of a two dollar whore who had her teeth kicked in, pointing like fingers, accusing and jagged toward the mouth of the sky.

Cheri rested her head in her arms and wept silently.

After about five minutes, she took a deep breath, flicked the tears from her cheeks, and continued to watch the city, wishing she were anywhere but here.

Ernest slept restlessly and ended up waking up a few hours later; Cheri could see the movement of his shadow from the light that came through the window. "What are you still doing up?" Ernest asked.

"I can't sleep," Cheri said quietly. "I haven't been able to sleep well since I was little."

"Oh." Ernest yawned and sat up. "Want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Oh." Ernest fell silent again. Then, softly, he continued, "I don't think I can do this, Cheri. I don't think I can go up against the Family like you're doing."

"I'm not trying to be a hero, Houston. I'm just trying to live. I'm starting to feel caged in, and that's probably exactly what they want. I feel like I'm being led around by the nose, but I'm blind. I don't know where the road goes." Cheri quirked a smile at Ernest. "You should go. Save yourself."

"What is there to save?" Ernest asked, and she recognized the cold, brittle sound of his laughter. It sounded like her. "I'm just a useless turd that showed up at the wrong place at the right time and I'm completely in over my head." He took a deep breath, and Cheri looked out the window again.

"Well," she said slowly, "not all of us can be tough as nails."

"I'd be happy to be as tough as tapioca."

"Good luck there, buddy," Cheri said wryly.

"Hey!" Ernest gave Cheri an injured look. "You're supposed to give me support!" Cheri gave him a disbelieving look, and he laughed helplessly and patted the bed beside him. "Come on, then. Us insomniacs will waste time by watching movies. We get free HBO."

"My life is complete." Cheri moved away from the window and nudged Ernest over, propping herself up on some pillows before settling to watch television.

Of course, there was nothing on. It wasn't like she expected anything different.

~*~

The next morning, Ernest paid for Cheri to stay another night at the hotel and helped retrieve her belongings from the trunk of his car.

"Thank you," Cheri said.

"Are you sure you don't want to leave with me?" Ernest gave her a hopeful look.

"I'm not taking the chance of getting you killed, okay? I'm not going to have your blood on my hands. I'll call you if this ever gets fixed."

"Every time you tell me to go away, I'm afraid that I'm never going to see you again," Ernest confessed.

Cheri patted Ernest's cheek—his skin was clammy and pale, his eyes behind his glasses wide with fear. "Que será, será. You're my only friend, Houston. It'll make me feel better to know that you're out of the way. Take the time to get tougher."

"You're asking the impossible, you know that, right?" Ernest laughed.

"Good-bye, Houston," Cheri said softly.

"Good-bye, Cheri." Ernest moved in like he was going to hug her. At the last moment, he dropped a hand to her shoulder and squeezed instead, and then he got in his car and drove away.

Cheri watched after him until his car was no longer visible and went back to her hotel room. There was an index card stuck in the corner of one of her boxes and she pulled it out, staring at the address printed on it.

It was Wednesday.

She was alone.

There was fighting that she had to do tonight.

~*~

It was a nondescript stone building this time, and Cheri took stock of herself as she walked up to the front door. Her ribs still hurt; she had to put an ace bandage around her knee, and she probably looked like an abstract painting from all of her bruises, but the door guard still let her in. She walked into a large, open room, and a girl stepped forward to lead her to a door off to the left to get ready. The girl didn't ask if she was a fighter or a spectator—Cheri figured that perhaps she had been a fighter for so long that it didn't even matter to them anymore.

Cheri warmed up in a series of long, slow stretches, listening to the growing roar of people as the main room filled. There was a knock on the door, and Cheri took a deep breath before opening the door and striding forward. The crowd parted in front of her until she reached the center, where there was now a chain link cage. She stepped inside and stretched her arms over her head as a second fighter entered, the cage door closing behind him. Her opponent was a scrappy, squirrelly-looking kid, but she thought that it wouldn't be too hard to take him. Another man, dark and tall, wearing a black mesh shirt and tight jeans, came into the middle of the ring with a microphone.

"First match, Cheri Major and Nick Scafidi," the man said. "Place your bets!"

There was a flurry of movement in the crowd, but Cheri ignored it, eyes focused on her opponent, all the pain fading away into single-minded focus. There was the ring of a bell, and she ignored the twinge of her knee as she circled around the ring. The noise of the crowd rose and fell behind her like the tide of an ocean, but she knew the game. The kid would get tired of the wait eventually, and he would charge her, and that would be his downfall. She was pissed off and ready to take it out on someone. Tonight was not a good night to fight Cheri fucking Major.

The kid feinted to the left—didn't anyone have any fresh moves?—so she stepped in, throwing off his aim, and jammed the heel of her palm into his chin, sending him reeling.

"I swear you guys all go to the same school of how to get your ass kicked," Cheri scoffed, shaking her hand to ease the buzzing in her palm. She gritted her teeth, a sharp jab of pain moving up her leg as she planted her boot in his midsection. She edged away with a small limp, waiting for him to get up and make another move. He scrambled to his hands and knees, but Cheri just kept it coming: a kick to his stomach, a punch to his jaw, a kick to the back of his knee to send him crashing to the floor, short, sharp thrusts that kept her from moving too much. The roar of the crowd was huge and angry, and although she knew she was a popular fighter, she never knew if it was because people loved her or hated her. She was pretty sure it was the latter.

She punched the squirrelly kid in the jaw again, and he went down.

Cheri was a little out of breath; the stay in the hospital had done exactly shit for her conditioning, and hitting a man hard enough to stop him upfront was tough work. The kid staggered to his knees, and Cheri saw the move half-a second before it happened. He got to his feet and lunged forward, circling his arms around her in a bear hug before lifting her off her feet and slamming her into the ground. She grunted, her head smashing against the floor, her vision swimming. She tried to catch her breath, her back and ribs aching from the impact, but the kid had left one major opening, and Cheri was nothing if not an opportunist in a fight. She fought against the ache of her body and wiggled her uninjured knee between his thighs, jamming it up and hitting him solidly in his privates. The kid screamed, and Cheri shoved him to the side before slowly getting up. He curled in on himself, hands covering his crotch as his chest heaved for breath. Cheri raised her fists, waiting for the kid to move again, but he shook his head, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. The bell rang again, the air alive with curses and cheers.

"You want to do the challenge?" the announcer asked.

Cheri took a deep breath and nodded. She knew he would be surprised, because she had never accepted the challenge before, but she needed money, and she needed it badly. She had never tried this before because a small part of her was terrified that everyone would come up against her, but she felt strong tonight, the pain taking away the fear and allowing her to center.

"We have a treat tonight, people!" the announcer said. "Cheri Major accepts the challenge!"

The crowd went silent and then exploded, money changing hands and the rich glittering like stars in the gutter of humanity.

"Who's going to be the first?" The announcer grinned, raising his arms to gesture people forward, and the crowd parted for a woman with light hair and skin. She towered over Cheri, and for one moment Cheri wondered how she could have missed the giant in the first place. In the end, it wouldn't matter. Cheri still had to take her out. "Ladies and gentlemen, our first challenger of the night: Heidi Newstrom!"

Cheri saw dismayed faces in the crowd, the ones that had already bid on her before seeing her opponent, and Cheri swallowed, her head swimming with a sudden rush of the fear, her hands shaking and her breath coming fast. Cheri bit her bottom lip hard, the panic attack beginning its hard writhe in her chest, but she ignored it, her nails cutting into her palms as she curled her hands into fists. Heidi came at her, more carefully than squirrelly kid had, but Cheri took advantage of Heidi's momentum to slip behind her, twisting around to jam an elbow into Heidi's back.

Heidi reached back and grabbed Cheri by the hair, pulling her roughly to the floor and punching her square in the nose. Cheri heard the crunch of cartilage beneath Heidi's fist and went immediately to the floor again, coughing blood out onto the cement. Cheri kicked out on instinct, foot landing solidly in Heidi's diaphragm, and Cheri scrambled, pushing herself up. There was a flash of pain burning white through her vision as her knee hit the concrete floor, and the fear surged. Her breath hummed in her throat, coming fast, her hands shaking, her stomach clenching, but she forced her way past it, wiped her nose and spat out more blood as it trickled between her lips. Heidi pounced and shoved Cheri back—Cheri growled in pain as her head clipped the floor again, as Heidi's fists smashed into her face again and again. Cheri took the pain, accepted it, inhaling one deep breath after another until the fear had crystallized once again into adrenaline, until all she focused on was her opponent and bringing her down.

Cheri twisted beneath Heidi, ignoring the twist of her knee and the pull of her shoulder as she drew her fist back and hit, causing Heidi to reel away in surprise. Cheri didn't let her have a moment, letting her fists fly over and over again. Cheri lived in the impact of her knuckles against Heidi's cheek, the clean, fresh sting as her knuckles split under the onslaught she didn't want to control, until Heidi finally went down, until Heidi's face resembled nothing so much as raw meat.

There was the sound of the makeshift bell again, and then someone was yanking her away, dragging Heidi out, and she was caught up in the adrenaline, climbing the wire cage from the inside and snarling at these voyeurs all around her, hissing at the pain of her knee, the ache of her hands and her heart. She climbed down the cage and started prowling again as soon as her feet had reached ground, her hair dangling in sweaty, bloody locks. She scrubbed the blood off her face with the back of her hand, spat more blood into the corner, fingers itching to rip into someone new.

Two, three, even four opponents didn't matter—she wouldn't rest until she had their blood on her hands.

Cheri nodded before the announcer could even ask, and there was a small pause as the next piece of meat came through. It was like a pure, perfect assembly line for her rage, and she breathed it, took every bruise and broke something in return to show her gratitude. So many fucking people and so few worth saving. Her stepfather, that fucker that beat her best friend until Cheri beat him down with that bat, Citizen Pain, Scalpel—they were all built on lies. Each punch she threw, each head she beat back into the concrete, it stripped something away from her—a wall torn down, a door opening at the end of a long hall.

Cheri backed off of her last opponent—number five? Number six? She couldn't remember, and it didn't matter to her—and looked warily around the makeshift ring, catching the eyes of a few in the crowd. They looked away, of course. Cheri supposed she looked terrifying. She didn't watch as this one was dragged from the ring either.

"You're doing well, Cheri Major."

That voice made her skin crawl. Metallic, sounding far away like a scratchily-recorded record, the man that had dragged her from her car and stolen her breath. Fuck. What was the Family doing here, out in the fucking open?

Cheri took a deep breath and turned to face him, hands clenched into fists. She relished the pain, slid the flat of her tongue along the split skin of her knuckles and spat out the blood. "Did you come here to finish the fucking job?"

He was as terrifying as ever, his jaw made out of the same chrome fixture as the last time she had seen him, a gear working at the hinge of his jaw when he spoke. When he had run her off the road, he had covered his face with a balaclava, and the sight of it now made her want to vomit.

"I have no need to step in when you're doing so well yourself," the man said. "I came with a gift."

"I don't want anything you have to offer, asshole," Cheri sneered.

"Ah." His metal jaw gleamed obscenely in the dim yellow light of the makeshift arena. "This fire. It's what I would expect of the one who murdered Scalpel and destroyed Citizen Pain." There was a ripple in the crowd, and Cheri hid a wince. To be called by name was one thing, but those who hadn't equated her name with the one who destroyed the vigilante justice in the city would despise her anew now. The man made a long, sweeping gesture, and four lithe men stepped out from the shadows. They could have been young, for all she knew, but there was nothing she could see besides the cut of their clothing and their makeshift Citizen Pain masks.

She was enough of a bitch to notice their stitches were wrong.

"I didn't kill Citizen Pain," Cheri said. "The Family did something to him, I know that much. And I know that he s—saved me instead of—"

"Instead of killing you, yes," the man said with a dismissive shrug. "Even Job was bewitched by you. You are not the first woman to be behind the fall of a great man."

"I—" Cheri began, but one of the masked Pain impersonators ran at her, darting in with a swift jab to her ribs. Cheri went down, coughing and unable to catch her breath.

"You took away the Citizen," the man said, kicking her in the same spot. Cheri curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her stomach as she struggled for air. "You killed Scalpel. You were a cop, but you just want to see us eat ourselves alive."

"Scalpel was wrong!" Cheri shouted. "You can't fucking amputate the poisonous bits! You can't—" Because it's a cancer, Cheri wanted to say, but instead she forced herself up, spun a chop to the man's throat that dropped him in a gurgling mess. It eats you up inside until there's nothing left. She kept silent, but the words bubbled under her skin, clogged in her throat. It sinks in you until you poison yourself in hopes it will go away. It's like Rankor Island, a fucking sociological experiment that eats at your fucking soul until you're nothing better than the scum beneath your boots. You wish Pain on each other like it's a blessing, when Citizen Pain was a man named Job who turned away from his actions because—she didn't know the reason why, but he did, and that's all that mattered. Rankor fucking Island.

"Rankor Island is filth," Cheri whispered. "You are filth. You can't amputate the poisonous bits. You can't save it." She tilted her head to the side, turning in a wide circle and staring at the crowd through heavy-lidded eyes until she spun around far enough to find metal jaw and his boys again. "All you can do is put it out of its misery." The fear was gone, burned out of her, and she had never felt so free. "You want Pain so fucking badly? I'll show you pain."

She darted forward and grabbed two handfuls of hair, ripping it out from its roots, and kicked hard and sure between the legs of the third Citizen Pain mockery still standing. Cheri was grabbed from behind, and she hissed out in pain at the jerk on her arm, the boot hitting at the throbbing mass of her knee. She went down to her knees, twisted to bite a chunk out of the guy holding her. She grunted as she was swung around, her face slammed into the chain links of the cage, and pushed back. The force was enough to dislocate her shoulder, and she howled at the new flash of agony even as she used the small bit of space it gave her to maneuver. She kicked at the guy's knee, hearing the satisfying sound of it shattering from the force, and bent down just in time to trip the third guy to the floor. She used her good hand, slamming his head into the floor again until he was unconscious, and whirled around to face the last one, who stared at her with wide, panicked eyes that she could see from the eye holes in his mask. She stalked forward, but the fourth Citizen mockery looked at the man with the metal jaw and silently vanished into the crowd again. Cheri turned to face the man with the metal jaw and took a moment to pop her shoulder back into place.

The man laughed, the tinny, metallic sound of his voice like nails on a chalkboard. "You are everything we hoped for, Cheri Major."

"Fuck you and that high horse you rode in on," Cheri snarled, and she reached up to grab his face, the tiny metal gears that somehow moved like they were a wound up piece of machinery mocking her with their movement, and she pulled with all of her strength, yelling fiercely at the clench of pain flashing through her arm, her body protesting, and she fell backward as the skin gave and the jaw came loose in her hands. She landed on her ass with a grunt, and then scrambled up to slam the metal jaw into the man's head, over and over again until there was red mist in the air, until her muscles pulled with the movement, until she was straddling his body on the ground and his face was nothing more than a gory red hole.

Cheri dropped the man's jaw.

It made a loud clang and then rolled against the man's body, rocking back and forth.

The room was silent.

"Any other challengers?" Cheri asked, her voice low and rough.

No one stepped forward.

She turned to the announcer, who looked vaguely green beneath the olive tone of his skin. "You owe me a fuckload of money." She walked back toward the room in which she had started, the crowd parting before her. She could hear the announcer scrambling to get the winnings from the bets of the night.

Someone began to clap.

Cheri closed the door behind her.

~*~

Cheri walked the streets of Rankor Island, her money safe in her pocket, whores crooning for her attention and the druggies hopping around her like they hoped sheer mania would convince her to buy their little trips to paradise. She ignored some of them, and the more persistent ones shied away with a look. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she stopped by the grocery store for a small sewing kit and headed back to the hotel. The three boxes filled with her belongings were sitting on the floor of the room, and Cheri carefully unpacked the clothing, ripped and tattered from having survived the car accident, until she found what she was looking for.

It was a gray pinstriped suit that she had bought for her first couple of job interviews, and she had secretly loved it. It was sleek and elegant, and she had only worn it once. She took the white thread from the small sewing kit and clumsily sewed all of the tears, the white standing out on the dark cloth.

The mask of Citizen Pain was folded carefully on top of her broken jazz CDs, and she shook it out, staring at the ripped hole of the left eye. Her head was smaller, so she carefully cut the sutures up the back of the mask and then pulled the fabric around her face, sticking a pin in the back before pulling it off. She stared at it for a long time before she cut away the extra fabric and sewed the mask back up.

A pair of sedate, comfortable black shoes had survived, and she put the repaired suit on, slipping her feet into the shoes. In another box, she found her weapons—her trusty Beretta 92FS and her Browning HP Mark III. She slipped her shoulder holsters on and then pulled on her suit jacket, buttoning up the front. The guns didn't show. Her hands shook only slightly when she slipped the mask over her head. When Cheri looked into the mirror, her green left eye stared at her from the ripped eye of the mask.

Rankor Island was begging for Citizen Pain.

She would give them Mercy.

*fin*