Chapter 6
After all is said and done, Akihiko’s a rather easy kill.
She’s not a fan of Tokyo. There’s something suffocating in the overbearing concrete paired with aggressive neons as far as the eye can see. An assault on all senses. The last days’ relentless deluge doesn’t help.
She dispatches most of Akihiko’s men in the club, before charging him. He jumps out of a window, down to the deserted street below. She follows, hot on his heels and lands on her feet with a thud, water splashing onto her shoes and pants. He’s hurt: this won’t take long. She gets a first decisive cut in around his midsection, then slits his throat and executes him while he’s on his knees.
It’s done.
She wipes the katana’s curved blade on her sleeve, unaffected by the gore. Standing over his fallen body under the pouring rain, she feels a sting of disappointment: she’d expected him to put up more of a fight (had hoped, even.)
She stills. She can sense the same shadow behind her. And just like earlier, for some mysterious reason, she doesn’t feel threatened by it. Curious, she turns.
She squints through the downpour in the alley’s flickering lights.
This can’t be…
Classy beige trench coat in impossibly high heels, hair up revealing a jawline to die for: she’d recognise the familiar silhouette anywhere, despite the giant umbrella obscuring most of her face.
Seeing her after so much time brings up a jumble of emotions.
Why…? What would Lena be doing here?
She keeps her head down and raises her voice to be heard over the rattle of the metro: “You shouldn’t be here.” She tries to sound threatening, not bothering to mask her voice with the usual gravel: there’s no point, really.
“Neither should you. But here we are” comes volleyed back in too neutral a tone to be considered friendly.
Lena could of course be bluffing, but something tells her she isn’t. Which means: she knows who she is.
Fuck.
Of all the entities and people who must be after her, it’s Lena freaking Luthor who managed to unmask her. This is… an unpleasant development.
Fine.
She shrugs her hood back, uncaring of the unrelenting rain and lowers the black scarf covering her mouth.
“I’ve got a job to do” she replies, annoyed to feel like she needs to justify herself.
“Is that what you’re calling this? A job? Killing all these people isn’t going to bring Kara back.”
She looks away, irritation quickly replacing her initial surprise and grits through her teeth: “I serve justice.”
Lena bites, stepping closer. Close enough for Alex to see the judgement in her eyes. “This isn’t justice. This is murder. Cold-blooded, calculated” she counters.
Alex cuts her off: “Why are you here?”, unwilling to hear her actions referred to in such terms.
If Lena’s taken aback by her harshness, she doesn’t let it show. She gestures towards Alex: “Honestly? I wanted to see this for myself. The vengeful ghost that’s been decimating organised crime’s most established families the world over. I must admit, I didn’t believe it at first.”
It’d appear Lena’s aware of much more than her actions in Tokyo.
Double, triple fuck.
“Spare me the judgement. Was that all?”
She needs to go, the cops will be here any minute now.
“That man you killed.”
Her frown must make her confusion plain to see: which one?
“The L-Corp board member” Lena explains, agitated.
Ah. So this is why she came all the way. His name’s lost in the sea of criminals she’s had to deal with. But she remembers his face, remembers the kill. He had begged for his life. (They always beg.) She’d made it quick and painless instead. She hadn’t really registered his connection to L-Corp – to Lena – at the time. She’s now paying the price for that oversight.
“You’re welcome.”
Lena bristles, Alex’s flippant response visibly getting under her skin. Her eyes narrow: “He had a daughter.”
She stopped reading up on her targets a long time ago. Waste of time. She doesn’t need to know the specifics of their personal situation. He’d knowingly facilitated for years the financing of weapons for drug cartels in Mexico and beyond and in so doing, had landed on her radar: guilty is guilty.
“The same age as Ruby would be.”
She goes rigid. The parallel is unwelcome, the equivalent of a bullet to the gut. Then again, Lena always had a flair for the dramatic. The rain, the bodies, the alley, it all starts to fade away, replaced by the memory of another time, another place: a day she spent with Sam and Ruby, long ago. In an effort to ground herself, she tightens her hold on the katana.
“She lost her mother in the Snap.”
Her and half the world.
“And now she’s lost her father too.”
So what?
“No direct next of kin. She’ll be put in foster care…”
How is that any of Alex’s business?
Lena finishes: “This needs to stop.”
The rain’s slowly seeping through her pants, chilling her skin. She sets her jaw against the scream of frustration and rage that wants to come out.
“Or what?”
Lena sighs. Her eyes fall on her weapon, blood still dripping from it. They flit over something on the ground behind her, before coming back up to meet hers.
“This isn’t what Kara would have wanted, Alex. And you know it.”
Lena doesn’t wait for a reply: she turns away and departs, the sound of her heels muffled in the drenched alley.
Alex remains standing for a long while. Unseeing and soaked to the bone.