onlythebranch | (no subject)

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The worse Mad Sweeney's luck gets, the more he thinks about Laura fucking Moon.

It's fucked up, he's very aware of it, because when he thinks about her, he's not just thinking about how badly he wants his bloody coin back. He's thinking of that moment after the second accident, when he'd stood on that highway with his blessed coin between his fingers and just stared at her and known. He's thinking about that creeping insistence inside him that he do the right thing, whatever the fuck that means, and he's thinking about how angry he'd been, how badly he'd wanted to turn and walk away and leave her rotting there on the asphalt.

He's thinking of how gently he'd placed the coin back on her chest, how her dead, skinned muscles had felt under his fingertips.

She didn't deserve the gift he'd given her, but then, he knows he had never deserved it either.

These days he's drinking more than he usually does, which is saying something. Chances are nobody really notices, he's drunk more often than not even when times are good. It's just that drinking makes the rest of it sort of blend into the background and he can forget all this shit he keeps thinking about. It starts with the coin, but it ends up at Laura, and over and over he finds himself wandering back to the idea that it's not the coin he wants to see again, but her.

And that idea can go fuck itself.

He drinks straight from the bottle, Southern Comfort minus the fucking coke, drinks enough that he's stumbling when he moves from the kitchen to the living room. There's a moment's consideration when he thinks he ought to call someone, but then he just collapses on the couch with the bottle resting against his thigh and he turns on the TV. What he gets is some reality show about body painting, which is fine, which is good enough for him. It's brainless and he doesn't have to think, he can just get lost in the alcohol and the colours and when he finds himself drifting off, he thinks he's never been so thankful for a little bit of sleep.

The last thought he has before he slips into a dreamless black is that he wishes he could see her.

It's late when he wakes again. The TV is still on, but it's a different show now, some late night bullshit that never quite makes any sense and it's made worse by the fact that he's still drunk. The lights are off, the room is dark, but all at once he's aware of some change. There's pressure against his thigh other than the bottle of whiskey, something cool and slightly damp.

The air smells like blood.

Carefully, he sits up and sets the bottle aside, then reaches for the lamp he knows is beside the couch. The room floods with warm, yellow light and he looks down into the pretty, dead eyes of Laura Moon.

She's wearing the same clothes she was the night of the accident. The one that killed her. The one he caused. She's lying on the couch beside him, her head propped up against his thigh at a perfect angle that he's staring down into her face. There's blood on her lips, dripping gently onto his jeans, leaving a dark red smear he can feel against his skin.

This isn't Laura with his coin. This is Laura quivering in her death throes on the side of a highway. This is Laura after deciding to suck Robbie's cock one last time, after Sweeney had swerved his truck into their lane on Wednesday's instructions. This is Laura before the coin, the Laura who should have been left to rot in her grave, but instead she's here. On his fucking couch.

He can't stop looking at her. He takes his phone out of his pocket and dials the first person he thinks might be able to help. It's late, he's not sure they'll answer, but when they do -- or maybe it's their voicemail, he's too drunk and too fucked up to think about it -- he just says, "I'm at home. I need help."

Then he hangs up again. Hangs up and stares at Laura staring back at him.

"Fuck," he whispers.

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Mad Sweeney doesn't call her. These days, he doesn't seem to acknowledge her at all, and if it weren't for the fact that her offerings continued to disappear, she'd be inclined to wonder if he'd gone home, or if she'd angered him somehow (though she doesn't think his anger would be the subtle, is-he-or-isn't-he sort). But he's been keeping his distance.

Not calling her. And certainly not asking for help.

She murmurs an explanation to Thomas as she dresses in the dark, and then hurries over to Mad Sweeney's apartment building. Outside of his door, she hesitates for a moment, wondering -- belatedly -- if he misdialed. Well, he got her out of bed, at any rate; she's not going home without finding out what's going on. She knocks briskly, and waits.

When he opens the door, it's not Greta he expects to see on the other side. He must have called her by mistake, because he's been trying to keep his distance from her, trying to keep her from getting wrapped up in all of this bullshit bad luck of his, but he supposes it was only a matter of time before she was dragged into it.

He hadn't meant to call her. Of course his luck would twist it this way.

"Fuck," he says when he sees her. Laura is still there on the couch behind him, though at least she's not visible from here, and he doesn't know what to do. To keep her out of this, he should probably slam the bloody door in her face. But it's probably too late for that.

"C'mon, get in here," he says. "And don't fuckin' freak out. This is some bullshit from home."

The smell of alcohol hits her like a slap, and she takes him in, from his startled expression to the blood on his trousers, in a single, sweeping glance. Her eyes narrow incrementally. "Hello to you, too," she says, unimpressed. But when he invites her in -- in a matter of speaking -- she doesn't hesitate before stepping inside. There's no question of whether he meant to call her, anymore, but that doesn't assuage her curiosity in the least. She still wants to know what on earth is going on.

That feeling lasts right up until she sees the body on the couch. To her credit, she does not 'freak out,' as he so charmingly puts it. She can't help an instinctive flinch and an 'ugh,' as if she'd stumbled upon the desiccated remains of some pest or other in the back of the pantry, but she doesn't scream or swoon or anything else inconvenient like that.

It's not the first dead body she's seen.

It is the first dead body she's had to truly bother herself about, though (with all due respect to the memory of Jack's Mother), and she grimaces. "What happened?"

"Car accident," he says, which is the true. He can get around the fact that he's the one responsible for her death so long as Greta's questions don't get too specific and really, a car accident was the beginning and the end of it.

It's a relief that Greta doesn't do much more than flinch. He's pretty sure he couldn't fucking deal with her screaming and throwing a fit right about now and she's never struck him as the type, but he's also never dragged her into a shitty situation with a dead body before either, so he's not sure if he's really got a good grasp on how she might react.

"Before Darrow," he adds. "This is- she's the one with my coin. Laura. Only right now she sure as fuck don't have my coin. This is before that. And before you ask, I got no fuckin' clue how she ended up here. I passed out on the couch and when I woke up, there she fuckin' was."

"Once upon a time, I would've thought you were making that last part up," she says. But she knows better; she's seen the awful things Darrow just bestows upon people for no apparent reason. Demelza had received the belt her father beat her with. Tris was gifted her own urn. Of course Darrow would present Sweeney with the corpse of a woman he knew, ironically absent the lucky coin he's so desperate to get back.

For a moment, she imagines another version of Darrow: one that pulled in her husband, and not her, and how likely it would be that her own mangled body might end up in his lap. Sans scarf. It's not a helpful thought, and she banishes it with a brisk shake of her head.

"I don't suppose you have some sort of leprechaun magic that can just..." she flaps her hand in the body's direction, the implicit clause being take care of it. Probably not. She's seen him make coins pop into and out of existence, but never anything more than that. If it was that simple, he wouldn't have called for help in the first place.

"Would that I could," he answers, but shakes his head. If he was able to do something like that, he would have done it straight off instead of calling Greta. Instead of accidentally calling her. She's one of the ones he's not supposed to drag into shit like this.

Not that he ought to drag anyone into it, but if he'd gotten Spike or Vasquez down here, he'd feel a hell of a lot less guilty. Greta has to already be suffering the ill effects of his shitty luck and now he's just gone and made it worse. Probably due to his shitty luck.

"No, I've got to get rid of this the old fashioned way," he says. "You don't need t'be here. I shouldn't have gotten you out of bed."

Greta gives him a sharp look at the attempted dismissal. Maybe he shouldn't have got her out of bed, and no, she probably shouldn't be here. But she's here now, and it's not as if she's going to crawl back into bed and sleep soundly after all this. Being confronted with a corpse has a way of jolting people into wakefulness.

"Oh, for god's sake," she says, all in an exasperated exhale. "I'm not just leaving you to it. I can at least..." she falters for a moment, because she's never disposed of a body larger than a rat before, but then blusters on: "... hold the door for you, or something. Make sure half the neighbors don't see." Which is unlikely, given the hour, but if he's thumping about with a body slung over his shoulder, he might start rousing people besides just her.

All that almost makes him smile. Almost. He can tell this is something Greta's never done before and he's not the least bit surprised by that. She doesn't strike him as the type to be moving bodies around at all hours and the fact that she'd come at all when he'd called and hung up in the middle of the night speaks to her character.

He'd known she was a good woman right from the start. And now he's dragging her into something worse than his shitty luck.

"C'mon then," he says. "I'll get a blanket. There's a shovel in the hall closet."

He even has it for possible body burying purposes. He'd bought the damn thing when his luck started to go from bad to worse, just in case something unavoidable happened and it looked bad for him. He just hadn't expected it to be this. To be her.

She half-expects to be dismissed again, and it’s a strange sort of relief when he doesn’t shoo her out. Strange because she has no real desire to hide a body, but a relief to be taken seriously, and to have even a dubious offer of help accepted without excess hemming and hawing.

God forbid she venture into the Woods for any reason, but sure, grab a shovel and help dispose of this bloody corpse, why not?

“I’ll carry the shovel,” she says, half to herself, as if it’s the obvious next step. It isn’t until she’s fetched it out of the closet that it occurs to her to wonder why he has a shovel in the first place. She doubts he meant to do any gardening with it. She gives it a slightly nervous examination, as if to make sure it isn’t sporting any stray bits of viscera, before leveling a look at Sweeney.

“You own a shovel,” she deadpans. “Tell me you weren’t anticipating something like this.”

"My luck's for shit, lass," he answers. "I've been anticipating a hell of a lot worse than this."

He gets the blanket and spreads it out on the floor, then stands over Laura for a moment, just looking at her. It feels indecent to touch her like this, but he must, so he drops toward the couch and scoops her up into his arms. She weighs barely anything at all, even in death, and he sets her carefully on the blanket, then begins to roll her in a way that mostly disguises it's a body.

They're still lucky it's late. This isn't the sort of thing he needs anyone to see and he's sure Greta needs it even less.

Actually handling the body seemed like something best left to Sweeney, if only because he's the one who's seven feet tall and strapping. Nor does she want to mishandle the remains of someone who clearly meant something to him, given the way he looks at her.

But as he starts to roll her up, Greta sets down the shovel -- on the floor, out of the way, because if his luck is that terrible, leaning it against the wall might be an invitation for it to fall over with a clatter and wake the neighbors -- and moves to crouch next to him.

"Here," she says quietly, helping to tuck the blanket around the body, secure enough that it won't unravel the moment he goes to lift her. It's not so different from swaddling a baby, at least in theory.

It's nothing like swaddling a baby in practice, of course. But her hands are sure and gentle, and she's distantly pleased to note that they're not shaking. She can shake later, when the job's done.

It's the sort of kindness he doesn't fucking deserve. Laura would probably say she didn't deserve it either. Mad Sweeney watches as Greta carefully helps him wrap Laura and his nostrils flare as he does his best to keep a straight face. He helps as best he can, breathing steadily, and when they're done, he looks down at Laura and nods.

It's just a short jerk of his head. He still feels like shit, maybe even worse now, but it's the kind of worse he thinks he deserves. He'd done this, after all, he's the reason Laura is dead, even if she doesn't think so.

"Thanks," he says. It's not something he says very often and she'll probably not hear it from him again, but she deserves it now. None of this is within the realms of actual friendship and it's not as if he's been good to Greta lately, either as a friend or as a leprechaun, but she's still here.

Greta might not call it a kindness; it lands too near to decency -- not to mention necessity -- to deserve the extra credit. But it means enough to Sweeney for him to thank her for it. It might be the first polite thing he's ever said to her (it might also be the last), and she isn't sure if she ought to be flattered by it, or concerned that he's nearing some sort of breakdown.

She also isn't sure if it calls for a token of support, or the suggestion that he get ahold of himself. What she winds up offering is a bit of both. Her hand briefly rests on his arm, the gesture just long enough to not count as a pat, and in a deliberately dry tone, she says, "No time to get sentimental."

That's probably about all the acknowledgment either of them can bear, and she goes to retrieve the shovel. Its firm solidity is a sort of comfort, though she's keenly aware of how suspicious she'll look if anyone spots her carrying it. God, if anyone spots them at all, she has no idea what they'll do. This is a terrible idea.

"I'll check the hall," she says. "Make sure no one else is up and about." Listen to her; it's almost as if she has the slightest clue what she's doing.

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