NINE

“She’s a kid!”

“You think I don’t know that? Look, just… just ask, okay?”

“I don’t know, Mel…”

She was growing bored with eavesdropping. The two women; Mel – who she had recognised immediately – and a vaguely familiar looking brunette, had paused at the junction of the street corner to smoke and gossip. It hadn’t taken her long to realise Mel was telling the other girl about her. It had been a little bit of an ego stroke at first; Mel was being very liberal with several embellishments to the story of the altercation of two nights ago – but then Mel had started not-so-subtly hinting for the other girl to ask something.

And she couldn’t shake her own curiosity.

She unfolded from her curl around the bar of the fire escape, and swung herself over the railing. She dropped, landing with a thud atop the lid of the dumpster beneath her. Her landing made the two women flinch, Mel letting out an aborted scream, as they both whirled to face her.

“Good evening.” She greeted, and jumped to land in front of them. Mel’s glittery eyeshadow was smeared a little, and for a moment she thought the other girl’s makeup was similarly ruined, when she realised the darkness around her eyes were bruises. “My ears were burning.” She continued, looking away as if she hadn’t noticed, as if her gut hadn’t begun to churn again.

Mel blinked, clearly at a loss for words. The other girl though, face a strange mixture of sceptical and desperate, stubbed out her cigarette and stepped towards her. “Is it true?” she asked bluntly.

“Which part?” She hoped she sounded casual. In her back pocket, the knife seemed to be burning an accusatory hole into her skin.

The girl took a shaky breath, loud with her restrained nervousness, even as the city pumped with life. “The part where you kicked his ass, and he stayed down.”

She couldn’t help but look at the bruises again. It was clear that the heavier patches of makeup across the rest of her face and neck were clumsy attempts at hiding more. “It’s true.”

“Ask her.” Mel whispered, nudging the other girl forwards. The girl blinked and stared and breathed, and Alley stared right back. “Ask her, Kelly!”

Ask me.

The knife in her back pocket burnt, and her skin began to prickle.

Ask me.

“Y-you’re just a kid…” Kelly stuttered, still with that desperate, hopeless look. “You-” she paused, and instinctively, her breath caught too. Ask me. She could see it, visually, the second Kelly decided to ask. “My boyfriend.” She said, a little helplessly, hands fluttering to her face nervously, before settling back on her hips.

“He hits you.” She said. Kelly nodded, and Mel took a long drag of her cigarette, casting a look over her shoulder, back at the street, at the silhouettes of the other girls, at the endless stream of traffic.

“I tried. I tried to leave! I really did.” Kelly pressed her lips together, shaking her head. “I tried…” again, she did the nervous twitch between her face and hips.

She nodded. “I believe you.” She wondered if Kelly had been forced to explain herself, prove herself to someone before.

“The cops- they didn’t- they just left me with him.” And there it was. Kelly sounded wounded, and she tucked her hands in her pockets as her body sang with the prickling feeling of need. “I don’t have anything… I can’t pay you.”

Pine and frost and blood-

“Address?” She spoke loudly, trying to startle the odd sensations away. Don’t shake anything loose.

Kelly burst into tears. She was forced to awkwardly embrace the rattled girl, trying to stretch up on her tiptoes to embrace her better. Mel quickly came to her rescue, and handed her a slip of paper. On it was Kelly’s address, one request and a name.

“Thank you.” Mel whispered, meeting her eyes over Kelly’s shoulder as she patted the crying woman soothingly. She nodded, and slipped past them both.

Kelly’s apartment stunk.

It smelt like cheap cigarettes, cheap perfume, cheap beer and cheap takeout.

She hadn’t had any trouble getting in. They were only on the third story of the apartment block, and she had been able to jimmy open the simple lock on the window. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the open window, and a small digital clock on the nightstand.

But she had gotten used to the dark, and it wasn’t hard to make out the sprawled figure on the double bed.

Silently, she slipped from the windowsill to the floor, bracing herself with a palm flat to the carpet, holding herself still. The snores emanating from the bed continued uninterrupted, and so she straightened. Snuffling from the kitchen, animalistic and quiet, made her change course.

She stepped over a pile of crushed beer cans, around a threadbare armchair, until her feet hit tile. The small dog sleeping on a single, ragged blanket, perked up at her entrance, and before she could stop it – began to yap loudly.

“Shhhh!” she hushed the dog furiously, darting towards the white-furred Maltese and scooping him up as he squirmed and barked. From the other room, the snoring stopped, and her heart skipped a beat.

“Shut the fuck up!” A heavy set of feet hit the floor, and she turned, still clutching at the dog, as Ralf Walsh stomped into the kitchen. The light flickered on. His face, set in a scowl, went through a series of contortions and emotion as they made eye contact. “Who the fuck is you?” Slowly, she set down the dog again. It kept yapping, bouncing around her feet. “What the fuck you doin’ in my place?” his voice was growing in volume, and it only served to excite the dog further, and it gambolled happily towards Ralf. “Shut up!” Ralf turned his ire on the dog, and kicked at it. She blinked, gut twisting, skin tingling. The dog whined, and limped out of sight. Ralf advanced on her. “You have five sec-”

Quicker than she thought herself capable of, she had the knife between them. “You’ll be leaving Kelly alone.” Ralf’s eyes widened, travelling between her face and the blade. Then, he began to laugh.

“Kelly? That slut sent you?” He actually doubled over with the force of his mirth, but when he straightened, his eyes were glittering with a darkness she could recognise. She had seen it in the eyes of Mr. Lee, in the eyes of the man in the alley, had heard it in the laughter of the man that had-

“You’ll leave her alone.” She repeated, gritting her teeth against the feeling of frost, the dangerous teetering sensation racking her core. “Or-”

He grabbed at her. She wasn’t expecting it, and he caught a fistful of her shirt. He shook her, drawing her close to his face, forcing her to her tip-toes. “Listen, you little fucking bit-” She slammed her forehead into his face gracelessly, and he grunted in pain and released her. She danced away from him, watching as he wiped at the trickle of blood coming from his nostrils. Her own head was a little tender, but it wasn’t enough to dull her senses.

This time, when he reached for her, a snarl twisting his face, she avoided him. This time, when she levelled the blade at him, it was no longer just a threat, and she lashed out at him. It went tearing into the flesh of his forearm, but she wasn’t able to keep her grip on it, and he wrestled it out of her hand. He had a tight grip on her wrist, squeezing tight enough to hurt, and she twisted and bucked, trying to get away from him.

He was yelling, so loud she was surprised there had been no reaction from the neighbours. Then she remembered Kelly’s bruises and understood. Cowards.

Her other fist was free, and though it was her less dominant hand, the punch she landed upon his cheek was enough of a surprise that he let her go. She didn’t back away this time, didn’t give him anytime to get his bearings, and landed a solid kick to his sternum. His yelling cut off abruptly, and he stumbled back, winded.

Again, she advanced, and again, and again, until he was slumped against the fridge. Cowards. Cowards. Cowards.

His eyes were already swelling shut by the time she stilled, body crying out for rest, legs trembling slightly. She crouched over him, thighs protesting the movement, and gripped his chin with shaking fingers.

“Leave her alone.” She whispered to him, and imagined his face with the twin black eyes she had given him. “Leave her alone, or next time, it’ll be Manfredi’s men with me too.” He twitched, a low, frightened noise escaping him.

Manfredi. Shit. She didn’t know why she had used his name. But it had worked – Ralph was trying to nod, desperate to assure her of his understanding. The thought of New York’s largest and most infamous crime family tended to do that for people. It was impossible, in the dirt that she and the other undesirables and criminals lived in, not to know the name Manfredi.

James Manfredi held the current position of power, lived in the best suite at the Hilton when he wasn’t at one of his mansions, and regularly flexed his power over the city for simple enjoyment. The family’s riches and influence stretched back generations, and she’d heard a rumour that they had once been entangled with SHIELD and had still escaped with their empire unscathed.

Tom had cautioned her against them. She knew that he had borrowed money from one of their loan sharks, back in the years just after his return from the war. She had also seen the stump on his foot, where his smallest toe had once been.

She tried to ignore the pit of nerves that was forming in her gut, instead heading into the next room to collect the dog. It had fallen asleep again, perhaps too used to the sounds of combat to notice. It made her feel sick.

“Marvy!”

Kelly burst into tears again, and she watched as the woman sunk to her knees on the cool tile, the little dog rushing towards her. Kelly sobbed openly, seemingly enjoying the way Marvin was slobbering all over her, yipping and barking.

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she tensed and spun. Mel’s wide eyes met her own, and she dropped her hand from her back pocket. The knife was gone anyway. “Are you alright, kid?” Mel asked tentatively.

“Yes.” She said. Mel frowned slightly, her glasses slipping down her nose a little. She looked right back at the older woman, unsure what she wanted. “What?”

Mel’s mouth twisted for a moment, hand rising again and hovering in the space between them for a moment. “You just- did you want to sleep here? It’s late…” Mel’s apartment was tiny, and already housed Annie, sleeping in the second bedroom when she had arrived. Kelly’s things were next to the couch and there was a pillow and blanket on the sofa. “It’d be cramped, but I don’t mind sharing the bed, really. Or you can have the chair-”

“No.” She cut Mel off, some old impulse making her soften, “Thank you.”

“I don’t want it! It’s yucky!”

“Ally!” Her mother is cross, a furrow between her perfect brows, and her cheeks are coloured with a faint embarrassment. Guilt blooms in her young stomach, and she lowers her head under Felicity’s gaze. “Where are your manners?”

She looks up, meeting the eyes of their elderly neighbour over the bowl of soup she’d been served. “I’m sorry Mrs. Jones, but I do not like this. No thank you.”

Mrs. Jones seems to be more amused than offended, and Felicity sighs. “I swear she’s usually well behaved, Helen. She seems to have left her manners at home today.” Felicity says pointedly to her, and another wave of guilt tamps down on any impulse to kick up more of a fuss. She hates when her mom is upset with her-

“Are you sure?” Mel was speaking still, but she felt the shuddering loosening of her tight hold, and took a large step away from the woman, panic starting to bite at her. “Kid?”

“I need to go.” She said, and pretended she couldn’t smell pine and blood. Mel started towards her again, and she flinched back. It made the woman halt in her approach, and she took advantage of it, turning and heading back towards the window she had entered through.

She didn’t think she could stay a moment longer, not when Mel was looking at her with that warm concern. It was too familiar and too overwhelming.

Tom was still awake.

She could hear him moving around in the tower, could see the orange tendrils of the lamp light extending from the holes in the door. She paused, curling her fingers into fists and feeling the way the split skin over her knuckles stung.

He began to cough; loud and wetly. For a moment, she thought it would pass, but as the breaths he was catching in between the hacking came shorter and shorter, she threw caution to the wind. She hurried into the tower, throwing the door open. Tom was hunched over the tiny table, face screwed up with the shuddering coughs, and she hurried towards him.

“Are you okay?” She braced him by the elbows and eased him down. He grunted, waving his hand and sucking in a harsh breath. “Tom?” she pressed a cup of water in his hand, biting her lip as the fit seemed to settle down.

He eyed her blearily over the rim of the cup, wheezing slightly. “Where’ve you been?” He ignored her concern, and she followed his eyes to her swollen and bloodied knuckles.

She tucked them under her armpits and avoided his gaze. “Out.”

“Fightin’.” Tom said bluntly, and eased himself off the tin wall. They both winced at the sound of his joints popping painfully. “You joined a club?”

“What?” She shook her head, bemused. “No.”

“A gang?” Tom reached out, quicker than she could avoid, and caught her by the chin. He pushed back her hood, and turned her face into the light. She knew he was looking at the blooming lump on her forehead, at the fading black eye and healing cut across her cheekbone.

“No! Geeze-” she shook him off and stood back.

Tom’s eyes grew grave. “Ah.” He hummed, and she narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t like the knowing on his face. “Have you been… helping people, Alley Cat?”

She felt exposed, going hot and cold in a flash of nervousness. “I don’t- I just…” she trailed off, unsure what answer he wanted. “Look, it won’t happen again.”

Tom tilted his head, those cerulean eyes sharp like broken china. “Why not? Are you very hurt?”

“What?” Alley blinked at the man, more confused than anything else. “No, I’m fine.”

“And do you regret helping these people?”

Alley was not sure of much; but she was certain that whatever guilt she carried, it was not for helping the women. She lowered her head. “No.” It came out a low mutter, as if it were something shameful.

“What was that? Speak up!” Tom barked at her, and she jerked up to meet his eyes. She conjured all the frost and all the steel she could, and willed it to strengthen her spine and harden her gaze.

“No. I don’t regret it.” Whatever Tom had to say, whatever he would do – she would weather it.

For a long moment, they just looked at each other. And then Tom smiled. His silver fang glinted in the lowlight, and it made his chapped lips crack, but there was a genuine pride in the gesture. “Good, then.”

“G-good?”

Tom coughed again, and waved a hand at her. “Yes. Now go on and get cleaned up. You must be tired.” Though it was well-past the hour that they would normally retire, Tom stood with a sudden vigour. She stared, and it made him frown again. “Go on! Get to it!” She scrambled to her feet at the order, hurrying to get ready for bed.

As she burrowed into the nest, listening to the sounds of the city waking beyond the tower, Tom took a seat at the table, and pulled his mending kit towards him. She would have asked him what he meant to do, but the sound of his off-key humming, and the warmth of the tower pulled her into oblivion.