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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Ever since he'd woken up to discover his hone had a history that would give someone a lifetime of blackmail against him and friends telling him exactly how much of a fucking asshole he'd been as a modern Mexican, Vasquez has been spitting furiously mad, going to work at the range more than usual, drinking heavily, and trying to forget the bullshit wish that had turned him that way.

When his phone goes off, he nearly doesn't answer, but Sweeney...well, at least he's usually good for offering him some distraction. Vasquez barely even gets a chance to open his mouth to ask 'help with what' before he hangs up. "Puta," he exhales, but he still changes into clothes (decent calf-skin trousers and a linen with a vest, none of that modern shit he'd been wearing). He doesn't bother to shave, even if he does corral his hair.

He takes advantage of the walk to smoke his way through two cigarettes, pounding on Sweeney's door when he gets there. "Did you have to hang up? You know I fucking hate texting," he gripes, which is why he hadn't texted back to ask what he needed help with. "Open the door."

Spike didn't have the chance to even mutter, "What are you bloody on about?" The line was dead before that, and he was left staring at the phone, as if some sort of answer might spring up on its infuriatingly tiny screen.

In the middle of a closing shift, Spike considered sending his apologies, but there was something in Sweeney's flat, distant tone that told Spike that this was nothing to simply brush off. When he strode out of the club, he was uncertain whether or not he'd have a job later, but he wasn't too terribly broken up about it.

Perhaps it was time to move on.

He was there in under ten minutes, parking just down the block. As he climbed the stairs, turning the corner down Sweeney's hall, he could already smell the blood. The stench of death. The coming of rot.

"Bloody hell," he muttered to himself, startled when he tried the knob and found the door unlocked. Inside, the smell was stronger, his empty stomach giving a quiver of hunger.

Quietly shutting the door behind him, he took in the scene, his brow arched and his hands resting upon his hips.

"What's all this, then?"

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.

"For the love of Brân, could you be any fuckin' louder?" Sweeney hisses as he opens the door after Vasquez begins to pound on it. It's late and he sure as fuck doesn't want to wake his neighbours, not when he's got a dead body to contend with. Laura might not have a record in Darrow as having been a citizen, but that doesn't mean someone won't be willing to pin him with a murder if they catch him like this.

He's thinking about that. About getting rid of the body. About what it might mean for him if he can't do it successfully. It's a hell of a lot better than thinking about what it means that she's here at all. Here and dead, no less, not here and undead, which are very different states. This version of Laura is quiet.

"Get in here," he says, grabbing Vasquez and then shutting and locking the door behind him. "Fuck."

The last thing he wants to do right now is explain himself, but he figures there aren't many people who are going to let him get by without. Spike might, if he refuses to give the details, but he needs the help right now, he doesn't have the slightest fucking idea what to do with a body in a place like this.

She'll not be the first body he's had to get rid of, but those years are long in the past and they'd been in places he'd been familiar with in ways he's not yet with Darrow. Because he hasn't had to be. Not until now.

"Meet Laura Moon," he says, his voice rough and low. He'd gotten up after calling for help, he hadn't been able to sit there and let the fresh blood from some awful internal injury continue to drip onto his leg. "The bitch with my coin before she got hold of it."

Dead, dead, dead. Because he killed her. Caused the accident that did this to her. That's the bit he thinks he can get away with keeping to himself, at least for now, and he looks at Spike with an unreadable expression. "Don't know what happened, mate. I passed out, next thing I know she's here on the couch, her head practically in my fuckin' lap."

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?"

Vasquez rolls his eyes, because yes, he could be louder. At least he didn't kick down the door and start shooting, though if Sweeney were in trouble, he might have. He did bring the guns, though, because the cryptic phone message hadn't set him at ease, so he's here ready to fight.

When he gets hauled itself, though, Sweeney's demeanor is definitely strange, but what's stranger is the fucking body on the ground. Staring at Sweeney, then the woman, he gives him a wary look.

"Did you do this?"

It's late when the call comes in, but Harley knows that Sweeney wouldn't make the call if he didn't mean it, let alone hang up like that. He needs help and she's gonna deliver.

Luckily, he's just a couple floors up, so she books it to the elevator and wishes she'd taken the stairs instead, turning up a couple minutes later to knock at his door.

"Sweeney?"

"It was a car accident," he says. It's not a lie, because it was the car accident that killed Laura Moon. Mad Sweeney doesn't need to tell anyone he's the one who caused the accident, though, and he sure as fuck doesn't need to tell them he did it because Wednesday asked him to.

"This is the bitch with me coin," he continues, pointing at her. "Only this is before her idiot fuckin' husband gave her the coin, so she's just dead. Way this looks, this is right after the accident."

He remembers. This is exactly how she looked, quivering on the road as she died alone and afraid. At the end of it all, he feels like Laura hadn't wanted to die, not even after all the years she considered it and all the times she attempted it. Not after all the effort she made to keep herself busy.

"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."

There are a few people in Darrow he trusts to be able to help him and it's weird, given that they don't know each other that well, but he counts Harley among them without much consideration at all. If he lets her in this apartment, he doesn't think she's going to assume he killed Laura, which sure as fuck couldn't be said for everyone else in this city. He knows how most people see him and it's not like he's ever done anything to make them think otherwise.

It's his own bloody fault. All of this.

At the sound of her knock, he opens the door and gestures for her to come inside.

"I don't know where the fuck she came from," he says before Harley can say anything. Laura is still there, lying on the couch. He hadn't the heart to move her.

Cassius should have ignored the call. He should have just rolled his eyes and gone about his day but Sweeney doesn't really admit that he needs help at all. Ever. So, Cassius doesn't go there because he's looking to help.

He goes over there because he's curious. He takes his time, doesn't rush and soon enough, he's in front of Sweeney's door and knocking.

"You dead in there?"

"Oh, boy," Harley says, stepping inside. It's impossible not to see her there, a body just laid out, taking up a good portion of the couch, definitely dead. Not super dead yet, but definitely dead.

She was gonna ask where she came from, but since he's already beat her to that one, she changes tacks. "So what happened? She just appeared?"

Sounds crazy, but it isn't. Not in a city like this.

"Not me," he answers when he opens the door and pushes it wide enough only to let Cassius inside. The last thing he fucking needs is one of his neighbours seeing Laura's body and he's grateful, for nothing else, that most of the people on his floor seem to keep normal hours. They're probably all asleep right now and as long as they stay that way, maybe he has a chance of getting her out of here without being seen.

Laura would think it was fucking hilarious if he went to jail for her murder in a city where she's never even lived.

"Cassius, meet Laura," he says, sweeping his hand toward her where she's lying on the couch. "The bitch with my coin, before she got my coin."

Maybe it's because Harley doesn't know him that the words come out, but Sweeney finds himself sinking down into a chair where he scrubs his face over his hands before he begins to speak.

"Remember I told you about the woman brought back to life because she got hold of my coin?" he asks. "My luck? That's her. Before my coin. I was- me and her, we were traveling, trying to find her a true resurrection. She- fuck, she's a complete asshole, maybe one of the most fucked up people I've met in my very long life, but somethin' about her..."

He's not explaining this very well at all and he takes a deep breath, then looks at Harley. "I've been thinkin' about her a lot lately. Not just about getting my coin back, but just fuckin'... just seeing her, I guess. Been doin' a lot of drinking to stop thinking about her. I passed out on the couch a couple hours ago and when I woke up, she was just here."

Cassius steps inside and then stops short when he sees the body on the couch. He's seen dead people before, plenty of them, but this strikes him as being a little different.

A little more personal. He sends a look over to Sweeney before moving again, walking closer to the body and peering down at it.

"And how in the gorydamn hell did this get here?" Cassius asks, glancing over at Sweeney.

Vasquez has seen what cars do in the future and he lets out a low whistle as he takes in the scene in front of him. It's strange for him to feel more comfortable around a corpse than most things here, but as he lights up his cigarette, he starts to step around to evaluate the situation.

Dead woman. Apartment. Giant man who has a bit of a temper. He doesn't think it's such a mystery what the neighbours would think of this.

Glancing up from where he's circled to where her head is, Vasquez thinks that definitely, something needs to happen. "So, no coin?" he clarifies, because if she's going to come back to life soon, that changes what they do with her.

Harley finds a seat of her own, because standing when he's telling her this doesn't feel fair. These words matter. He says how awful the woman is, but, she realizes, there's something in it that doesn't sound anything like hate. He cares about this woman, cares deeply, and here she is, dead on his couch, nothing he can do about it, no coin to bring her back. It's heartbreaking.

"Do you think maybe you wished her here?" she asks. If he was thinking about her, it seems like a pretty big coincidence that she'd just show up like that. "I've heard this place sends stuff from home sometimes, but I never heard of a person showing up." A body. It's a particularly cruel way to answer someone's wishes. But then, the world isn't usually very nice.

"No fuckin' idea," he answers, which somehow makes it worse. If he knew how she'd gotten here, maybe he could do something about it, send her back somehow, but she's just here. Dead on his couch. Her eyes are still open, he couldn't even bring himself to touch her to close them.

"I fell asleep on the couch," he says. "Woke up a few hours later and here she is. Right fucking there."

He has to get rid of her somehow and the thought makes his stomach turn. He doesn't love her, he barely fucking knew her, but he's got an affection for her he can't fully deny to himself. She's a complete asshole, she has a shitty personality and a black hole where her heart ought to have been, but he'd liked her all the same. Grown attached, as it were.

"No coin," he says. "Shadow threw it in her grave, she was already buried when she got it. This is... however the fuck this bullshit works, this is only a few minutes after the accident."

At least she's dead. When he'd stood over her right after she'd been thrown from the car, she'd still been alive. Barely, but alive. He remembers watching the way her muscles hadn't quivered. The wet quality of her last few inhales and exhales. At the point she hadn't really been aware of anything, her body had only been going through the motions, but he remembers it well. He's grateful he doesn't have to witness that all over again.

"Even if she had a way of getting my coin again, she dug herself out of her grave before, I'm sure the stubborn bitch would do it again."

"Christ," he says, then sighs. "Maybe. I usually know better than to make idle fuckin' wishes, but..."

He trails off and shrugs. But he had been drunk. But maybe he really did wish he could see Laura again. But any number of reasons that might mean he'd made a wish without thinking. He should know better than that, he's lived with magic and fairies and gods for his entire long life and he knows what dangers are held in a wish.

But Laura Moon has fucked him up before. Maybe he shouldn't be all that surprised.

"Is that a thing this fuckin' place does?" he asks. "Answers wishes. Shit like that should be included in the welcome package."

"You need to get rid of her before someone starts smelling her and calls the police." The statement is firm but it's rooted in something like concern. There was no way she wasn't going to start stinking soon and who the hell knew how nosy his neighbors were?

"Get a blanket or something and I'll help you," he says, sighing. He doesn't want to stand here and look at a gorydamned dead body. It needs to be removed and buried. Luckily, he has some experience with that since Sweeney seems frozen.

"Now," he orders, glaring. "Come on."

Vasquez gives a mild snort as he inhales his cigarette, taking the time to form it into a few smoke circles as he leans his hip against one of the walls in Sweeney's place, near to the corpse. It doesn't smell like one of the dead corpses in the towns he visits, but then, this just happened, didn't it?

"So either she gets a coin and she walks out of here on her own or maybe I think you called me here because you want help to dig a grave," he estimates, giving Sweeney an expectant look, waiting for his confirmation. "At least tell me you have shovels somewhere." He knows Sweeney can carry her by himself, which means Vasquez is probably hauling earth.

Good thing he's done that before, too, plenty of times.

"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.

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