Chapter 24
“Ugh. Harder.”
“Like that?”
“Not…”
She lifts Lena’s thigh higher up on her shoulder, leans back and changes the angle of her wrist.
“Better?” she breathes out, feeling the burn in her arms and abs.
“Yeah.” A sigh. The good kind, the kind Alex chases, the kind that makes her shudder whenever it escapes Lena’s lips. “Yeah.” Lena arches into her. “Fuck.”
A phone rings close by. The ringtone’s familiar.
Shit: it’s hers.
“Ignore it” a strangled command from under her.
She hesitates.
“Alex…” Another sigh. “I swear to God, if you don’t ignore it, you’re on your own!”
She’d like to. (She really really wants to. Fuck how she wants to.) But she can’t: what if it’s something important? You never know… She leans back with an apology on her lips and slowly withdraws her fingers.
“Alex!”
It’s the only warning she gets, before: “Ouch!” What the fuck. “Did you just…” She lets Lena’s leg fall rather unceremoniously down to the mattress and touches the blooming mark on her shoulder: “You bit me!”
Lena pushes her away. “I told you to ignore it.”
The phone rings on irritatingly. She presses down on the broken skin, hissing at the sting. “That’s no reason to fucking maul me!”
“Don't be ridiculous. One: I am not a rabid animal. I do not maul, I bite. There’s a difference. Two: you love it when I do. Don’t you dare try to deny it.”
“Not to the point of drawing blood! That’s… That’s… That’s fucking bodily harm!”
“Look, you’re either in this, or you’re not.”
What the serious fuck!
“Hello? You: the biggest workaholic I’ve ever met - and I mean that as a compliment, truly, I could wax poetic for days about your work ethic - are telling me if you get a phone call, you’re not going to take it?”
“Have I?”
“Have you what?”
“Well, have I?”
“I don’t…”
Lena huffs: “Has one of our trysts been interrupted by a phone call so far?”
“I… no. But…”
“There you go.”
“Wait, what are you saying?” Alex scoffs in disbelief: “You’re not actually claiming to turn your phones off?”
“Of course not. I mute them.”
“Lena, you sleep with all three of your phones on and unmuted. Every single night. I’ve seen you take a call from the White House at 3 in the morning. You take work calls while in the shower on the regular. But you’re telling me you mute your phones when we’re together?”
Lena looks just as bewildered: “How do you think we’ve had time for this so far?”
The ringing stops. In the ensuing silence, Alex sinks back onto her haunches, stunned. This is… unexpected. “I… I didn’t know.”
“Well now you do.”
Her throbbing shoulder reminds her of her earlier protests. “You bite a hell of a lot.”
Lena throws her a disarming look: “It’s been mentioned.” At Alex’ pout, she relents: “Come here.” She scoots forward and kisses the sore spot, then turns her head up towards her, with this look Alex finds impossible to resist.
But wait: “You weren’t really going to put me in the doghouse over a phone call, right?”
Lena frowns: “Sex is important, Alex.”
“Sex is important.”
Lena nibbles at her clavicle: “Orgasms are important.”
“Orgasms are indeed very important” she acquiesces, letting her amusement show.
“Are you done parroting me?”
Her smile grows: “I’m not parroting you, I’m agreeing with you.”
Lena shakes her head, exasperated: “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“You know what? I think you’re right.” She leans in: now, where were they before they were so rudely interrupted? “I’m enjoying you way too much.”
Natasha sneaks up on her: “Ah. Interesting one, that one.”
She jumps up in fright. No use hiding what she’s up to now. She tries to hide her discomfort: “Is it?”
“Ronin. The masterless samurai…” Natasha muses, stepping fully into the room, eyes on the projection.
She’s taken to revisiting her file in the Avengers library, as of late. (Well, not her official file. The other one, the incomplete one.) Except she’s usually careful to do so when everyone else’s too busy to stumble upon her.
“A vigilante” Natasha continues. “A vigilante with a mission: to kill prominent figures from the underworld, sometimes entire factions. A vigilante with a code: not a single innocent bystander victim, never anyone underage. And a vigilante with an unusual reach: vigilantes are often local, localised, phenomena. Daredevil in Hell’s Kitchen, Green Arrow in Star City. But this one… No, from what we can tell, this one’s operated at least all over Asia. And if my suspicions are correct: far beyond.”
Alex swallows: “You think all this should be attributed to just one person? And why assume it’s a vigilante? Could be a rival gang member or a gun for hire…”
“Mhh, they certainly have an assassin’s precision. But no. No, this one’s too dogged to be motivated by money. Plus the pattern wouldn’t fit any known criminal group (known to us at least). You see:” she opens a world map with a list of the various targets to the right, “it’s too indiscriminate. Every single major crime family’s been hit at one time or another.” She shrinks the map, switching to a close up of a blurry figure clad all in black. “As to whether this is the work of a single person or a group…” She walks in a circle around the projection. “Who knows. If all these hits are indeed their work, this versatility in choice of weapon and methods… It’d certainly speak for more than one person being involved, wouldn’t it? And yet… If the name Ronin is to be believed, then it’s someone all on their own.”
“What do you think?”
“My gut tells me it is. A single person. The methods, the weapons, the targets, it feels… personal.” She turns to Alex: “Impressive, no?”
“Dangerous.”
“Aren’t we all? The real question is: dangerous to whom? That’s where things get interesting. Anyway, even if they were dangerous once, it would appear: not anymore.” She switches to a timeline and points to the last registered event: Tokyo. “Nothing that fits the pattern since. They disappeared just as mysteriously as they had appeared in the first place.”
“You think they’re in hiding?”
“Two years’ a long time to be in hiding. A very long time.” Something in her tone makes Alex think she speaks from experience. “No. Either they’re done: done with their vendetta, done with vigilante life. Or they’re dead. All these groups our vigilante killed members of, none would take that lightly. They’d have gone after them, aggressively so.” Natasha’s use of “our” has Alex gulping. “They’re on their own. It must get lonely. And this level of drive… This level of obsession… Sooner or later, they’re bound to make a mistake, however careful they may think they’re being.”
“Sooner or later” Alex echoes, thinking back to Lena finding her in Tokyo.
“I like to think they found peace. I don’t much like the idea of them lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Did they at least… Their mission… Do you think it made a difference?” Did she?
“That’s the million Dollar question.” Natasha turns the display off, leaving her to face Alex once more: “Do we make a difference?”