Falcon & Jaguar

I've got another scene that precedes this one that I haven't written yet. Well, it's written, it just in my journal, meaning it might get typed up between now and Christmas. Hopefully sooner than later. I was lounging around when this little bugger hit me and I figured I'd better get it down somewhere before I forgot it.

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It had been a long time since she'd been able to let herself remember that night. Usually it came to her in her dreams, flashes of glassy eyes, the sound of a body hitting the pavement, but today she recalled it willingly, letting the explanation flow out of her like a dam opening its floodgates.

It had nearly been dark, that much she remembered clearly, because the air was warm and kind of muggy - the type of oppressing heat that precedes a summer rainstorm - and the weather had been toying with the idea of raining all day. Falcon had just gotten out of her evening dance class, a requirement of the family that she was fostered with this time, and was heading home. Large buildings loomed overhead, towering into the shadowy, slate colored sky, and she had started to jog, knowing that if she got home late, it would mean no dessert. Oh sure, the other kids would get some, even after the oldest girl Brittany had broken curfew - again - and the younger one Alex had failed yet another Biology test, but those were their biological kids. Exceptions were made for them. They weren't screw-ups. A painful flash of something like jealousy flared in her chest as she passed the alley marking the halfway point home. 


To this day, she wasn't sure how she had ended up in the alley, maybe she'd been grabbed, or maybe she'd decided to use it as a shortcut, despite being told not to. Either way, she found herself with large, sweaty hands on her upper arms, dragging her into the shadows. She screamed. High-pitched, squealing, the type that commonly come from the mouths of terrified damsels in distress. 


She had no idea what he wanted with her. Well, at the time she didn't. Now she knew better. Now she knew exactly what he had been after when he'd grabbed her off the street. The man, large, maybe six-foot, two-hundred-thirty pounds, drove her backwards until her body thudded against the red brick of the building behind her. She should have been terrified. In that instant, she should have been screaming and scratching and clawing and fighting for everything she was worth, but she wasn't. 


It was shock, the police would tell her later, but Falcon knew better. It wasn't shock. It was instinct. 


"What do you want?" she'd demanded. Her voice had wavered, and was higher pitched than normal, but it was still fairly stable.


The man grunted and let go of one of her arms to bring his thick forearm across her chest, up near her collarbone, to pin her against the wall. The other hand dropped her arm and went for her  pants. 


Falcon should have figured out what he wanted then, but something had blocked that part of her brain from functioning. It was probably the adrenaline that was coursing through her system, keeping her steady and clear headed, knowing that if she figured out why the man had her pinned against the wall and his hand messing with the belt on her jeans, her ability to stay focused under the stress would disappear. 


"What do you want?" she'd demanded again, this time saying it louder, more definitively. "What do you -"


His hand dropped her belt buckle, which he'd managed to get undone, and clamped firmly over her mouth. 


"Shut up!" he'd hissed, his breath hot and nasty against her ear. "Shut up or I'll kill you after I'm done."


Kill. It was the word that she was sure had done it. Her teeth came down hard on his hand, making him howl in pain. He yanked his hand away to see if it was bleeding and Falcon had taken that time to scream. It wasn't like the terrified cries one heard in the movies. It wasn't even really a scream. It was more of a war cry. 


She had screamed, letting the adrenaline flow from her bloodstream through her vocal cords, and shoved off the wall, driving the man backwards. His eyes were wide, surprised, at the small girl's sudden strength and determination. She managed to slam him bodily against the opposite wall of the alley and bounce back, stumbling until she stood in the middle, facing him. 


She didn't remember his face. It might have been surprised. It might have been angry. He could have had clown paint on and she would have never noticed, because her gaze had fallen to his chest. Training had taken over her body. Six years of training, of learning, of memorizing everything with her mind and her muscles, so when she saw his body lurch forward, she didn't think twice. Her leg shot up, her hip twisted over, and she drove her foot outward, away from her body, somehow knowing that if she didn't throw her body weight into the mix, what little of it she had, the man's size would invalidate the kick.


Her foot collided hard with the man's gut and he doubled over. The second kick she delivered was swift and accurate; a roundhouse slammed hard into the man's head and he toppled sideways, hitting the ground with his shoulder first, rolling onto his back, and finally coming to rest after the back of his skull smacked the pavement.


She stood shaking, the adrenaline filling her body almost too much to handle, as she watched the blood pool. Dark and crimson, it spread in an eerie sort of halo around his head. His eyes stared at the sky, glazed over, unseeing. Something deep inside Falcon knew that he was dead. Maybe someone else would have double checked, making sure that he was past the point of saving, but she didn't. She knew he wasn't going to be sitting up ever again.


A brief roll of thunder was the only warning Falcon got before rain started to fall from the sky. She continued to stare at the body in front of her, watching as the water disturbed the previously peaceful lake of red and started to make it run. The rain came faster, stinging her face, and the blood quickened its pace, starting to race down the quickest path to the gutter. 


Somewhere along the line, the police had shown up. She wasn't sure who called them or if they had just happened upon the scene. The hours that followed were a haze of blue uniforms, and surprised expressions as she recounted her story, explained in detail what had happened and why she was sitting in the police station with the smallest stains of red on the white soles of her tennis shoes. 


She'd fractured his skull with the second kick. The cause of death was officially ruled as a bleed in the brain caused by the fracture on the left side of his skull, exacerbated by his head hitting the ground and splitting open. Officially, it was ruled a tragic accident. Despite Falcon's testimony about kicking him in the head, the doctors and officers didn't think twice about her being the cause for the break in the first place. Not after hearing that the man had gotten himself into a fist fight behind a local bar. After all, Falcon was small, still under five feet tall, and weighing nearly a hundred pounds; there wasn't any way she could have caused such damage. 


But she knew better. She knew that despite what physics and common sense said, she was the reason the man's corpse was laying in a refrigerator in the local morgue. She knew that at twelve years old, with only a blue belt in karate, she had managed to kill a man. Part of that knowledge scared her. It made her terrified of what she could do and it made her seriously start to reconsider her martial arts training. But the other part, the part that she refused to acknowledge, was excited. It told her that there was something different about her. That there was a chance she was good at something, really good, and might someday be important. That was the part that Falcon stamped down and smothered. She was twelve years old. She had killed a man. As far as anyone else would have been concerned, that should have been the end of her life. 


But it wasn't.Falcon continued her training, pursued it more determinedly than ever, but never let her emotions get the best of her. She never worked harder than absolutely necessary, still secretly frightened by what might happen if she were to lose control again. 

Now she was here, sitting with Jaguar in the courtyard of the training facility, recounting the story for him as the sun rose over another beautiful and tragic day. He didn't interrupt her once, instead, letting her talk herself out, finally coming to an awkward stop.

His dark eyes found hers as she looked up at him.

"Okay," he murmured.

That was all he said. One word, with little meaning, and yet it conveyed everything that Falcon needed to know. He understood.