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When you want to fly quickly at night and not be noticed much? It's good to be a bat. It's also ironic to be following someone's cellphone transmission as a means of locating them and be a bat also.
So this is a flying fox. A bat. You get the joke. They're closing in on the location of one Jackie.
Said location really is the tallest building she could find. Less chance of getting potshotted from a nearby rooftop. She's leaned against a titanic rooftop AC unit with very little to do so early in spring after hours, left arm curled round her middle to, presumably, apply pressure, and her right holding a... very well crafted piece of cutlery clearly designed for someone as likely to throw a punch as stab a bitch. Autumn leaves sprinkle the rooftop, and the shadows feel... threatening. Unsurprisingly like wounded beasts or a pack protecting the injured.
The bat flutters until it gets to a spot over top of the building, and then - perhaps spotting the riled-up shadows - turns into a fox mid-air, some short distance above the AC unit. She lands on her black sock feet, leaps down from the unit, and sits down in front of Jackie, slowly blinking her wide gold eyes.
Jackie smells like blood. Like a lot of blood smeared under a lot of leather. She's got a brave face on, but she's about two or three inches short of gutshot and she knows it. "Hey." Her tone's surprisingly level. Expression, too, for that matter. There's things the body does when damaged and in pain, things she can't override, but aside from the faint pallor and light sheen of sweat, she could be kicking her feet up in someone's parlor.
The vulpine form melds upward into the human side of Fox: she watches her for a moment. "We should take you out of the world for a minute," the Thyrsus begins, inserting herself under one of Jackie's noodly arms. The look on her face is concerned, but not 'don't tell the patient the bad news.' So there's that.
"I- nnh." She shakes her head. "Shouldn't. I go places he can't, he starts killing people."
A sharp little snap in her eyes, and Fox follows that with a snarl. "Fuck that dude in particular," Fox answers. "You can lean on me. Or sit the fuck down. I'll get us some guards."
A gentle pat on her arm, and Fox moves away again, stretching her arms up into the evening air.
"Oh, yeah, no, absolutely fuck that guy in particular. He'd be on My People's asses if he could. There's rules though. My people're safe 'til spring's over."
Jackie explains, melting to the ground and managing not to wince save the slightest, faintest, daintiest little crease around the eyes.
She snarls into the air, a long, distended animal sound that ends in a smart crrrk!
It starts as a soft flutter, the velvet sound of feathers stirring the air. The presence begins more felt and heard than seen, though soon enough they're easily seen.
Crows.
Fox stands with her hands raised above her head, face tipped back, as thirty-two crows and ravens scatter across neighboring rooftops. One of them alights on her shoulder, and Fox talks to it for quite a while, chattering and crrrk!ing.
"There," she says, as that crow takes off to make the rounds of the others. "Now we have guards."
"Mmmh." Jackie nods. "I'm gonna have to start enchanting my gear every time I leave the house. I mean, I can't really be sure he won't be there either. But at least the next sniper round won't try to take a rib to make Eve with." She watches the crows, but it's her ears and nose she's focusing on, those lovely, less-directional senses.
Just in case.
"It isn't a bad idea," Fox agrees. "I'd offer to help you there, but I can't really... we've got... I can't be carrying spells too much." Her smile is apologetic as she pads back over barefoot. "But. I can do some mending." Crouching in front of Jackie, she wiggles her fingers. "Do I have your consent?"
"Oh. Yeah." She undoes a couple very tight buckles around the middle and opens her coat, pulling a wadded white-and-red cloth that was probably her undershirt away from... well.
The bullet wound that would have done for her if she hadn't nearly dodged it.
"And it's okay. I'm not looking to drag anyone else into this. You're not covered by Spring's bargain. Just us. Or- everyone but me. Technically."
"Why just you?" Fox asks, as she crouches in front of the Darkling, her fingers spreading across that ugly wound. Jackie doesn't need to ask her how bad it looks - the way Fox's face pales says enough - but that lasts only a moment. A soft curl of sound in the back of her throat, something that Jackie might be best able to describe later as 'den noises,' curls out of her throat. The sound seems to sing through Jackie, down her nerves and along her veins. Warmth soothes muscle fibers as the Elemental's body knits itself back together under Fox's touch. A rush of painkillers and then the feeling of waking up after a truly restful night.
"Because every Deal needs a loophooooooooooooWOW," Johnnie explains- then exclaims, eyes wide beneath the shadows of her bangs. "GEEZ, but that beats a kick in the twat with a steel-toed boot. That's amazing. Ye gods, look upon these works and be amazed. Ah. So. Once upon a time, as all stories begin, there was a flower. And like many flowers, it grew in a field, but unlike the others, it was white. A single white flower in a field of red. And over and over he watched his flower friends picked by the elves that lived in the woods, to weave crowns to woo each other. But never did they pick the white flower." Johnnie reclines against the metal again, reciting the story easily, as if from memory alone.
"One day, the white flower spoke up. He called to the elves and said, "Elves! Stop, please! My friends deserve to live, to flower and bloom and wither and fade, to have more to them than for their corpses to adorn your crowns." The elves paused and looked at each other, for never before had a flower spoken to them, much less with such compassion and conviction. "Very well, then, oh Prince of Flowers, you tell us: for what reason should we pick your kind and pluck them from their homes? We cannot simply stop, for it is our nature to pick and yours to be picked. How would you have us pick?"
The Prince of Flowers thought to himself for a long moment, so long that the elves reached for his friends again, and he called out once more. "Elves! Stop, please! I have an answer. I know when it is that you should pick us."
The elves stopped and waited, for surely, an answer so thoughtful must be worth hearing.
"It will not do for us to be plucked idly, to die for your whims and whimsy. If you must pick us, let you each pick the flower you desire most, and leave the others for another season."
The elves looked between each other, considering. It would fit their nature, and the flowers. "You know, of course, that you will be the first to be picked?"
"I knew before I spoke."
She crouches, listening to the story, reaching her hand to poke at the hole in Jackie's coat as she does. At the end, Fox nods solemnly. "Foxes know all about bargains," she agrees.
"So whatever this thing is wants you best, so right now it's just you but it won't always be. Can it not do anything to the others, but then in Summer it can?"
She does smile to herself a bit, quite satisfied, at that reaction.
"Mmm. Exactly. It can only reach for the flower it wants the most. And that's me, because- I don't know. Because it changed its mind and decided that now that I'm a big, powerful witch and not just some scared kid with a knife, it wants to drag me back. So that's me, with a bullseye on my back, and I can't go anywhere that'd be truly safe or it goes after everything I adore. And I can't just kill it. Even if I did, it'd just... come back. I can't bargain with it because it doesn't have a heart to bargain with. That's what it wants back. That's what they all want back. So either I find that and talk it into making a deal... or I run away from everyone and everything and keep running until-"
She goes quiet. There's no winning that way. No freedom, no piece, no rest.
And she knows it.
"But you're not going to safe places outside the world because it said it would kill people if you do, except it can't, and you're saying it'll kill them anyway come Summer so ... " Fox pauses.
"I mean I get it. That's the string it could pull on me, too."
"Not exactly. I'm saying it'll kill anyone it wants if I leave. Just, whoever. Innocent people with nothing to do with anything. Like, if I'd fled to Twilight to get out of that shooting gallery? It'd have started to shoot the people on the Mall until I came back. And that'd be on me. It's MY people it can't touch. You'd be fair game, you're not covered by Spring's Bargain, it's- everyone else."
Jackie explains as best she can.
"It could already attack me anyway," shrugs Fox. "And maybe it will. I will turn it into an ant and let one of the crows eat it."
She pokes the coat again. "Did it like... promise you it wouldn't, or did it just threaten you?"
"I can clean your coat, but my mending isn't as good as yours long term. Just cheeseburger your coat."
"It can't make real promises. But it wants a game, and it's not a game I'm entirely disinclined to play? I just needed a chance to reset the board after learning a new rule. For which I owe you big-time thanks," she adds. "And I will. It'd be different if the bullet holes were through the frocky bit at the bottom but. Not a big fan of an obvious gaping hole with access to my liver."
"And that's- relieving. At least going after you or yours is a mistake it wouldn't get to make twice. Or. Well. It COULD. But it'll probably find less suicidal ways to chase me down after the first try."
As she talks, Fox's fingers slide over the leather of the coat, the cloth Jackie packed against her side. The blood disintegrates, falling into tiny particles and disappearing for all practical purposes.
"So you'd keep them for aesthetic purposes? Hmm." Fox looks... amused, slightly.
"What do you mean, he could. You've seen what my people do to problems."
"This problem comes back. It doesn't matter how many times it's beaten. If- and yes, it'd be very clever to feed the ant to your crows- if it's beaten, it just... comes back. There's no killing it. It doesn't have a way to die, it's that Wyrd. It'd just keep coming. That's the hell of it. That's why you have to convince it to stop," Jackie mutters.
She sits on her heels, still crouching, and mutters to herself something about 'stick it in a time loop' and 'I'll unkillable YOU' and 'stupid Seers' while scratching her cheek with her stubby fingers. "How do you do that?" She finally asks.
"Oh, it's super easy. Barely an inconvenience," Jackie drawls. "First, I have to find the one person- who is somewhere in the city of Philadelphia if I'm anything close to lucky- who has had the Viscount's heart hidden in their dreams, and then go in, and then get it, and then bring it to the Huntsman, and make it agree to stop hunting me if I give it back. Then, even if its heart gets taken again later, it already swore not to hunt me. So it can't come after me."
Her gold eyes glitter, then. "Oh, is that all? And you need to get it done by Summer?" Fox bares her teeth in amusement, resting her forearms on her knees lazily as she crouches contentedly. "Super easy. Barely an inconvenience." The crows sussurate, and she peers off toward the murder, listening. "Just two women arguing on the street," she assures Jackie.
"I mean, I could totally laze around and take longer. If I wanted the thing to start taking shots at my polycule. And the rest of us, probably." Jackie fingers at the healed patch of flesh and shakes her head slowly. "I- really... don't want anyone else taking a bullet like that. I'm -juiced- right now. I shoulda been able to just no-sell some potshot from a rifle. And instead... this. This's the first time I've been remotely seriously injured in a long time." A long pause. "Really shoulda been ready for it."
"Right, and that's not you, so."
She scratches the back of her head. "In what way could you possibly get ready for your insides taking a sightseeing tour of the city? That's not really a thing one prepares for, is it?"
"Coulda reinforced my coat before I left the house, for one. Gone and packed some fruit in case I got hurt, for another. Got Sigknifr ready for the fight, for a third." She scowls. "It's not like I didn't know it was out there."
She gives Jackie sort of a strange look aside at the mention of fruit. But it passes. Fairies are weird, right? "Hindsight," Fox answers him. "If I hadn't, then. Well, then what? It's the sort of thing only people like Vasha answer with much clarity."
"Well, fair. But me criticizing my own hubris to find ways to improve is a good thing, trust me. And a rather humble thing for someone who once believed themselves a god to do, if you ask me," she boasted idly. "So while I appreciate the healthy take on not scouring myself for flaws- trust me, it's honestly good to give my ego a good pruning now and then. That bout of arrogance nearly killed me."
She scratches her cheek again and thinks about that. "Far be it from me to tell anyone to stop considering their own hubris," Fox offers with a shrug. "It's a Problem for mine sometimes."
"So what now?"
"Now?" Jackie draws a deep breath. "Lotta things. Need to check and make sure I was discrete enough while getting gunned down in the middle of Independence Mall to avoid being more interesting than the gunfire and actual fire. Need to see if it was identifiably me- and if so, let Mine know I'm alright. Need to make some traction on hunting down the Viscount's heart. Need to just... relax in my room a while. I still haven't had a chance. This all happened right after saving the Woods, so my head still- hurts isn't the right word, but."
"Self care is important, especially if you've got like... stuff to take care of," agrees Fox thoughtfully. "If you need help tracking down video or whatever, I know a few people." She watches Jackie carefully - studying her, maybe.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Honestly, no idea. Trying to avoid using any tricks he can blackmail me into avoiding. He wants a Hunt, a Chase. That's my territory. If I can keep him interested, I can buy time for people better at hunting through dreams to find what we need. Just... have to survive, and evade, him long enough for that."
She scratches her cheek. "Hmm. Do your people have tricks for getting faster, or not being surprised?"
"Both. The former is something I could learn with work. The latter's a trick of Summer. I don't know it but one of Mine does. Usually there's a little leeway to learn a trick of another season.
Usually." She shrugs. It's not something she's looked into.
"You got surprised today, yes or no?" Fox queries. "Normally I would drop some shit on you the way I did on Lux, but like... our magic is a little tougher right now. Plus people are trying to murder us extra. So like. I can't really unless it's an emergency. But I am a fox and I think like a fox."
"Well, sort of. I was caught unprepared. I have a trick that lets me react to things that should surprise me. It was the lack of preparation that was the issue. What'll be the problem long-term is the amount of sheer magic it'll take to stay defended and prepared. If I expend it, I'll drain predictably, and open myself to attack when I run dry. If I don't, I invite ambush sooner rather than later. That's really the difficult part. Being faster though... that might help."
"What can you do that'll give you extra juice for magic? I can prepare stuff that I can carry with me, if I think that I'll run out." This is Problem-Solving Fox. There is a henhouse. It needs gotten into. So Fox is here. For Problems.
"Mm. Point. I could stockpile fruits. It'd possibly be even easier to evade him in the Thorns, odd as that sounds. Well. Not as easy to LOSE him. But less restricted while doing so. I'd be easy to find. But with enough fruit, possibly brewed down to tinctures or something. I could store a pretty respectable amount of... well. Juice. That way," Jackie mused, nodding a little. "The initial trip would be risky. But it'd have a pretty solid payoff."
She wrinkles her little nose up in delight. A solution! And so Fox spreads her hands, smiling a little at Jackie. "It's all just problems. You gotta think your way through a little bit."
"Mrgh." Jackie grumps. "I'm still new at that. I usually just stab problems and they go away. It was a very effective problem solving strategy for quite some time."
"I get it. I know lots of people like that. But I am just a little creature, I cannot just stab everyone." Fox smiles an almost angelic smile. Not actually angelic, that would be Mei.
"Imagine, sideways thinking and stabbing. Then what, Neverland Terminator? Then what?"
Jackie smirks- laughs, sincerely. "I am getting good at sideways thinking. I will consult the Book of Leaves, as well. See if there are any other options besides killing it temporarily, or returning its heart. Though... if I am honest," Jackie admits. "I would prefer to give it back its heart. I do not dislike the Viscount's methods. A threat is not an attack. That he forgoes leverage he could use- mortal hostages- to do little but keep the game on boards he can reach... I don't hate that."
"Meh, I mean. I disagree. He brought the mortals into it at all, and any kind of threat like that is inherently abusive. It's like the step right before 'look what you made me do.'" Fox rolls her shoulders there, frowning. "Okay. So you have your to-do list, anyway. And that's good!"
"I'm glad you called me. I prefer insides staying that way."
"You're not wrong, but he's not a person. He's not even a Faerie. They're something else. There'd be nothing stopping it from leaving me a note to turn myself over by X time or it's going to start killing orphans. They are, themselves, inherently abusers. Their entire purpose is to be slavecatchers. So while you're right, I still reserve the right to be mildly relieved at the lengths to which it is not going."
"I'm glad, too. I was hedging on it. I didn't know if it'd be smart or safe to bring you into it at all. It'd be immediately safer to go to my own, but. It'd compromise their future safety to do it. I don't want it knowing where we live."
"Oh, well. Right, that's good, then." It is not good. Fox just doesn't know what to say.
She tips her head back and laughs loudly. "If whatever that thing is decides to show up at my house, I hope it likes its little trip to download city. Vasha turns into a 1980s cartoon character when someone threatens me. And that's just him."
"If it DOES try. I would DEARLY love to see your memory of the proceedings," Jackie offers with a dry laugh. She means it.
"... you know the hardest part for me?" Jackie offers quietly. "I don't- remember. Being anything special when I was there. I just did what I had to. That's all any of us could do. Try to survive. Try to be the candle half melted in the back of the cupboard instead of the ones burned to dust. I don't even remember how I broke my cord. Or how it broke. I just- woke up. Someplace new, and- weird, with phones that didn't need cords any more and televisions that weren't just in color, but huge and flat, and the fucking internet. No- heroic escape story like my girls. Not even something I know to be ashamed of. Just- no explanation."
"All I can think is that word got back I was doing well and now. Now I'm wanted back."
She snorts. "Or maybe I'm just like that goofy Japanese show with the monkey kid that hit his head. Maybe I was supposed to come back and destabilize everything and I just fucking forgot. It's as likely as anything else."
She laughs at first, then settles in to listen. Her gold eyes blink slowly. The crows gently chatter to each other.
"That sounds Terrifying. Both what you went through there and what you had to adjust to when you came back. And maybe you were something special over there, or maybe it's just your turn. Or maybe there's some arcane reason you could never understand even if the Thing told you."
"What's important is that you did survive and I don't think any of your people will let you be taken back."
"Have you talked to them yet? What's their plan?"
"Spent a lot of time finding answers to questions. Stings that the one I find myself wanting to answer most is... unanswerable. At least not without going Back. And- I mean, forgive the language, but fuck that straight to hell." A shake of Jackie's head. "But yeah. I guess that way lies madness."
"A little. Most just seemed generally concerned, and willing to help however I needed. There was the moment of realization that it could be any of us our Keeper sincerely wanted back, so some worrying over one of Mine. She was hers' cupbearer so... that's a Concerning reminder about how tense Spring usually is for us. I didn't lean on anyone too much. Just gotta... find the right person to start engineering a way out."
She goes quiet a moment. "... part of me's scared if I do convince it to stop, it'll go after the only other person I know from that place."
She is very, very good at listening, and so she does, just... slowly blinking. Fox scratches her cheek. "How can you possibly be responsible for what an abuser does to others?"
"A thing can happen as a result of a thing I did that is not my responsibility, but that does not preclude the possibility that it could be prevented if I do things the right way, right? A lack of responsibility does not preclude ability to influence. Right?" Jackie lays out her thought.
"Sure. But that's never your responsibilty. If you can, do. But someone else's abuse doesn't make you responsible for stopping it." Fox tilts her head and blinks slowly. "Leta is asking for me. Are you okay for me to go home?"
"Yeah. Okay, I get that." Which she does. It doesn't change her personal commitment to put herself between people and harm, responsible or not.
"I'm okay. Better than this morning, technically. I feel super rested. Go on back to Leta and tell her hi. I'm gonna see if I can't scrounge up some info on how to locate a dreamer holding a Huntsman's heart."
She pushes up to her feet, leans down to kiss Jackie's forehead. "Good. That's what I'm here for." She stretches her back and then crrrk! once & loudly.
Her body folds itself up neatly into a crow, and thirty-three corvids rise like steam from summer pavement and make a black river across the midnight sky.
Vorpal sits a little longer, and then- there's just leaves, wafting into the breeze to find a way home.
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