These are words to live by. Angry about your life turning upside down? Punch something. Haunted by the guilt of your own sordid and contemptible actions? Punch something. Spill coffee on your favorite shirt? Rear back an arm, thrust that arm forward and bask in the sweet electric shocks of pain through your knuckles. This intemperate advice finds its way to South Dakota, and by way of a miracle, she's coaxed into Carolina's yard for an impromptu spar.
The rest goes unsaid; that's if you can land a hit.
So, her yard. It's nothing special. You only need a few things to make a space like this function as a training floor. Namely, space. A dirt circle to step, old farm supplies hauled out of the way. A sandbag swings from the thick wooden branch its tethered to, currently occupied by a small, bipedal dog throwing punches like its life depends on it. Carolina doesn't know what this thing's problem is. She feeds it sometimes. She'll spot it in the early hours of the morning, hiding in a bush to watch her train. Whatever, it's doing its own thing.
"You can't lay around drinking booze all day and expect to feel better. So, you're bored? Do something about it. You have energy? Put it somewhere. Save your liver from giving out."
Carolina walks a slow back-and-forward line across the dirt. She's just finished wrapping her knuckles in tape; bends her neck and feels the vertebrae pop. There's an unmistakable focus to her; a lightness in each step. She's lethal. The best of the best. This is South's problem now.
"Sure you don't wanna fight as a matched set? I could call North."
(What's a spar without some friendly taunting as foreplay?)
She feels stupid for coming, now she's here. Mostly-sober and regretting that fact more with every passing second, South looks around Carolina's yard like it's going to bite her, somehow. Weird little blue dog thing over at the punching bag. Bunch of fucking farm supplies. Dirt. Lots of dirt. Just so much fucking dirt.
With so little to her name, she even has to borrow the tape to wrap her fists and she quietly resents that, too. She's used to that, piles upon piles of tiny little resentments that grow until they start to overflow and start hitting people. (Until she starts hitting people.) What's one more?
She steps into the circle anyway, stood firm at her chosen spot and just watches Carolina's slow back-and-forth with those ice-blue eyes that look equal parts sharp and exhausted. Rolls her shoulders. Cracks her knuckles.
"Ha, yeah, no—not unless you really want to lose a few fucking teeth in the next five minutes," she snaps back, bouncing loose on her heels, less preparatory than it is restless energy leaking out. "But maybe you're into that."
It's really not a good return zinger, but it's the best she's got right now.
"That's the spirit. Aspirations." The unrealistic kind, she means. The crayon self-portrait of yourself as president kind. Carolina shakes her legs loose. If South has retained any memory of how she fights, she'll know to watch out for those. Her fists are accessory; a pretty handbag you can break someone's nose with. "What, like you?"
I know you don't like me. That's fine. Utilize it.
South's big. She hits hard. Harder when she's angry, and twice as much with Carolina as an opponent. Another agent might choose to play defensive— wait for South to make the first move. Carolina isn't another agent. She's Carolina, and she strikes first and certain.
She charges. Dirt breaks under her heel. Where South Dakota is large, Carolina is fast, a blur of skin and red scalp against the shabby half-light of that afternoon. She siphons all her weight into her left heel, brings her opposite knee up and goes for a round kick, a one— two— three beat. Pelvis, ribs, face.
If the tips of South's ears go a little red (from rage or embarrassment? Yes) then no, actually, they didn't. Snorting air like a pissed off bull again, she refuses to rise to the bait, just raises her fists in a loose stance and waits for the strike she knows is coming. No chance in hell that Carolina lets her get in first. Nah. No way.
Carolina lunges, and South arcs back, reduces the strike at her pelvis to barely a brush and blocks her ribs with a cross-block, her face by throwing the leg away with the flat of her arm. Each point of contact brief and yet a flash of pain—sharp, and focusing, in the way it keeps her grounded in her own nervous system. (Maybe this is just what she needs.)
Her turn. She springs off her back heel, throwing herself back at Carolina fist-first—a wide swing to make her swerve, an uppercut aimed at the diaphragm, twisting on the ball of her feet to build momentum to backhand her in the face. Nothing held back. No holds barred. Pure, unrestricted strength and momentum, chaining one into the other with no sign of a break unless you force one.
Here comes the fists. They're an asset of South's, aside from the sheer size of her. They break air with the force of trains charging at full speed, squealing and spitting sparks on their tracks, and if she looked up to South panting out billows of steam, she wouldn't be surprised.
Carolina back-steps. The swerve meets air. South's on her again, ready to pulverize her organs, wreck her face— a bull rearing forward to spear Carolina's guard on her horns until it bleeds. She won't let her in so easily. Disengage and strike at a new angle. Ignore the pain flowering between her ribs, through her cheek. Carolina throws up her arms and dives into a back-handspring, drilling her toe up under South's chin, if she can catch her. A parting gift as she repositions herself a short distance away.
And forward again, using her shoulder to threaten South's guard. Jab upward with her elbow, strike at the throat, disengage with enough space for a hook kick and bask in the sweat sliding down her neck.
(When's the last time someone challenged you like this?)
One of those overdramatic, acrobatic flips of hers and South's teeth crack together so hard she'd be surprised if it didn't chip a couple, jaw throbbing and a shooting pain rocketing up the side of her skull. She spits, saliva tinted with the faintest hints of red, and barely looks back in time to throw her arms back up between them.
The block falls apart like Carolina's thrown herself through a brick wall and South avoids getting an elbow to the windpipe by millimetres, breathing hard and tasting iron. That's where her luck ends: Carolina's heel catches the side of her skull and the pain returns in a bright, burning starburst that blots her vision white for a half-second. Fucking hell, legs like fucking vipers—
Half-blindly, South grabs for Carolina's ankle on its way down and yanks—dirty fighting, technique and etiquette be damned. Throw her off rhythm, off balance, down to the fucking ground if she can manage it.
The impact of ankle to skull tolls like a bell through her leg. Carolina draws her tongue across her teeth, thoughtless gesture, wetting her mouth in the in-between. Good, she tells herself. Good. Just like that. Eight or so terrible months with nothing to do, no facilities to use, damned to sandbags and dirt circles and punching angry holes in her walls with no reciprocation— and she's fine. See? No worse-off than before.
(The stakes to this are larger than she's comfortable with. If she loses— unthinkable— it'll go in with the fast-growing mass of losses she's accumulated since she got here. Watch as it shoulders right up to her cold, dead body and the memory of that siege of black, come down on her like a wave. You can do this, she thinks— you're enjoying yourself— because if she doesn't, it's death all over again.)
Fuck—
Distracted.
Carolina yelps. Her stomach summersaults and her back hits the dirt with a force that squeezes her breath out like paste from a tube. There's one place you don't want to be in a fight, and that's on your back with someone on top of you. She tries her best to roll away.
The sound of the impact—body against the dirt, air forced from Carolina's lungs—is one of the most satisfying things South has heard in months—years, even. Not often you get the Number One (she never has really stopped thinking of her that way) on the ground at your feet, not often she's reduced to scrambling to get up and away before you can take advantage of it. And oh, South has every intention of doing taking every advantage.
Not as quick as she'd like, head still spinning from that last kick the way it is, but she's upon Carolina and throwing her back flat before she can roll all the way to her front. Knees in the dirt, weight blocking easy escape, she swings for Carolina's face yet again, the shock of bone against bone no deterrent at all. (Every shot of pain is another shot of adrenaline, another shot of feeling.)
Just when she thinks she's made it, South grips the back of her shirt and throws her down again. Carolina's lungs falter a second time (are they in a worse state, after the Desolation? She can't tell) and in a jerk of knees and weight dropped down onto her waist, she's pinned. Her guard is smashed to pieces. Her face will be too, if she doesn't find a way out of this—
South's fists come down in a sloppy fury. The cartilage forming the wide bridge of her nose crunches, a disgusting noise inside her head. One punch, two. Blood sprays in an arc. She snarls, bucks her hips upward in an attempt to throw off South's center of gravity, only to feel herself tamped back down in the dirt. She'll need to bridge high to get out of this; arch her back, thrust up through her legs, capture South's wrist in one fluid motion— tuck together and roll.
Carolina springs up— teeters. She's dizzy. Walk it off. Blood pools in the corners of her mouth. She spits a glob on the ground, captures South's shoulders in both hands and drives her knee up into her stomach.
Cartilage cracks against her knuckles and she feels her own skin split, fresh blood mixing with the splatter already painting her fists in red. It's messy and it's dirty and it would never fly in an unarmoured training room, back in the day, trying to mincemeat your sparring partner's face like this, but this isn't some friendly spar to get your damn rank up. This is a fight, this is the release of months upon years of tension coiled so tight that the only way it could ever come out was violently.
Carolina finds her opening, bucks South off like a bucking bull and throws them into a roll that she takes advantage of to throw herself back to her feet— only to get dragged back down, piston-like leg burying its knee in her gut and making her choke on air. Spit and blood erupt, spray the air, and South grits her teeth through the struggle to breathe. Fuck this—
She snaps her head forward to crack against Carolina's and yanks herself back when it connects, stumbling and dizzy but reclaiming space. Chest heaving, lungs still not quite full, she launches a jump kick at Carolina's torso.
Did she know, when she invited South to her front yard, that they would end up this way? Was the Project's watchful panopticon— the Director and Counselor, stood side by side— really the only gate keeping them from tearing into each other? Are these flat, packing punches a direct response to Carolina's existence, or is she just looking for skin to break? This was never going to be just a spar. You don't even know me. How can you possibly hate me so much?
She knows how.
Carolina feels somehow pathetic and ignited in her lack of self control. Freed by her desire to break something or else feel herself broken, when for so long she'd played by the rules.
South's forehead meets hers and stars explode into her vision, migrainous and vomit inducing. She grits an ugly noise through clenched teeth. Like hell she's going to throw up. Like hell she's going to do anything that isn't tossing herself to the side to avoid South's steam engine kick. She lands in a flip, clumsier than she'd like. Staggers to one knee, forces herself up. The tree line is soupy behind South's head. The little bipedal dog, one she hasn't bothered to name, makes a startled noise and flees for a bush.
Breathe. She's trying. She spits again, circles the mat like a fevered animal to stall for air.
Carolina's lip pulls up in a bloody snarl. "Still got my teeth."
I'm not slowing down.
(She is. She will.)
She bursts forward, meets her in a chest-to-chest collision, hands finding purchase on her shoulder— biceps— anywhere— to hook her leg around South's and knock her balance. She pivots, plants a kick squarely at the small of her spine.
The inside of her skull rings like an explosion went off right in her ear, vision fuzzy at the edges but clearing as the exhilaration strives to keep her on her feet. Everything hurts. It's amazing. It's dangerous. It's the most alive she's felt since she saw Dmitri's body lying there on the concrete and knew she would never feel whole again, never stop being aware of the empty space she'd carved in her own life with a rusted blade that left the wound festering and sick.
(Is she going to know when to stop? Are either of them going to know when to stop?)
Another burst of movement. South can't move fast enough, feels the leg around the back of her knee before she can even try, making the joint buckle and slip and give Carolina that opening she needs to slam into her spine. Her balance is shot and she stumbles, falls, topples like a damn skyscraper to hit the ground. Arms flying out to catch herself, the impact jars her shoulders and she can feel the bruises that will bloom later.
Shit. Groaning, she flips herself over as quick as she can and kicks out to keep Carolina from getting to her.
There's a beauty in beating the shit out of someone— in getting the shit beaten out of you. Carolina prefers the former. Detests pain for what it means, the body signaling failure, as if a drop on the leaderboard or lack of attention weren't already enough to make her want to scream. Now, she's starting to see the appeal, present in a way she hasn't experienced since she arrived. Her nerves and muscles tick frantically. Contract, go slack, pull tight again with every movement. Her pulse throbs in her nose (broken?)— in her knees. Everything is pain, everything is a struggle. Fighting for fighting's sake, not for survival.
Dying doesn't cross her mind, anyway. She isn't losing this.
South's on her back— she's up— which means she has the advantage. Good. Carolina catches the kick in her fists, biceps quivering with the effort to force her prone. She fights her way on top. South doesn't make it easy. When does she ever? She thrashes and bucks like an animal in the final fight for its life, kicking up dirt and dust with the effort.
Carolina drops all her weight onto the small of South's spine, driving her knees into the ground. If they're fighting like animals, fine. Etiquette doesn't matter. They might as well have trampled it into the dirt, spat on it and said fuck you simultaneously.
With this brilliant new philosophy in mind, Carolina hooks arm under arm to rend and yank the shoulder backward in its joint. If she incapacitates South's assets— her arms— this fight ends that much quicker. Sorry, not sorry.
Blood leaks out in a splash from her nose, pooling down South's back. (Yep. Definitely broken.)
With teeth gritted despite the way it makes her jaw ache and throb, South thrashes beneath her with all the frantic energy of a prey animal in the grasp of a predator. Like she's pinned with the jaws of a big cat struggling to wrap around the back of her throat and end her here and now. If she can just get her goddamn legs under her, she's got a couple dozen pounds on the wannabe puma on her back. Just gotta—
The sick pop of her shoulder wipes her mind blank and shocks a sharp shout out of her. "Son of a BITCH—!"
Holy fuck, okay, damn, shit shit shit— bone and muscle and tendon move against each other in ways they're not designed to and South hisses, breathing hard through her nose. Gotta get out of this fucking hold, gotta get her off—
Adrenaline pumping, South twists her good arm back to grab Carolina by the hair and yank her off. Rolls with her, all of her weight thrown against her, but deliberately pinning Carolina's leg beneath her hip, wrenching until she feels the joint start to bend the wrong way.
You pick up a few things, fighting non-lethally. What to pull and where to strike. How to make soldiers drop as dead-weight, scream themselves into an easy submission.
And there it is. The elastic draw and snap. The full, wet pop of the shoulder from its socket. She shivers over with memory— the white lip of a cliff, shrinking from view— her stomach, sinking with it; splitting ice with the steel teeth of her grappling hook and hoping it will catch; tether-line slack then snapped straight; a tremendous force and a pop! It hurts, doesn't it?
Carolina makes for her second shoulder. South intercepts, grabs her ponytail and pulls with a force that burns like fire across her scalp. She gasps, head jerked back into the dirt, victim to the crocodile roll South throws them both into. Fine. That's fine. She fought her way free once, she'll do it again. She'll—
Fuck. Fuck. Reposition. Get her off, get her off—
South drives her weight home, and Carolina's knee slips with the force. She screams— "Fuck—!" —two miserable octaves higher than normal. Beats the heel of her hand against South's chest in a useless attempt to get her away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. Probably going to wreck her other leg if she doesn't get her the fuck off—
But what can she do, with a boulder's weight on top of her?
Carolina arches upward, fights for freedom that can't be won. And it hurts. It hurts, hurts, hurts and how is she going to do her job, fix her house, if she can't fucking walk? She grabs fistfuls of platinum hair— shirt— skin. If she scratches somewhere along the way, fuck you.
(For god's sake, you cannot possibly be this off your game.)
Can't help but laugh, when that curse passes Carolina's lips—so much for the clean-mouthed leader, huh? Just takes the right application of the right kind of pain and she finally acts like a fucking soldier, rough and tumble as the fucking rest of them instead of some preppy little bitch who thinks she's so much better. Which she's not. Her knee joint slips and pops out of place like anyone else's would, she struggles and lashes out desperately like any else would, she yelps in pain like anyone else would. Nothing more, nothing less.
Being right has never been so fucking gratifying.
Carolina grasps and hits and writhes around, hands yanking at her hair and nails catching at her skin and the pain barely registers, beneath the sharp throb of her useless arm being jolted by every jostle. She ignores it easily, keeps her weight pressed down to keep Carolina in place, keep her from turning this around, but—
Ignoring the other thrum beneath her skin is a lot more difficult.
(Fuck, why is this turning her on? Between the pain, and this side of Carolina she's never seen, and the fucking writhing—)
South curses under her breath and rolls off of her, jarring her shoulder anew and barely able to catch herself on her good one. Can't keep fighting if Carolina can't move, right? That's the only reason. That's the only fucking reason.
It doesn't feel good, being at someone else's mercy. South's, of all people, who will probably stagger out of this fight with a shit-eating grin and self-congratulations at lassoing a curse from her. Pull it together. She's good at that, right? Fight through the pain, get up, walk it off and keep going. She won't stop here. She closes a fist around her integrity— refuses to let go. Stop acting like an animal. Stop acting like her—
Another attempted bridge. Carolina wrestles her hips, meets something with her thigh. Has gotten down onto the mat with York enough to know a hard-on when it happens— and knows South enough to piece two and two together. Is she really getting off on this? Did it have to involve obliterating her kneecap? No, that assumes she isn't getting off on everything else happening here.
South bowls to the side. Carolina picks herself up on her elbows, glances once at the state of her kneecap and feels briefly sick. The bone-cap juts like a pale shell beginning to surface in the sand. Okay. Okay. Up.
She stands up, weight trembling on her good leg. If she can't kick— and she can't, not unless she wants to blow the cap out completely— she'll punch.
(Yanked free from its tie at some point during their scrap, Carolina's hair drapes freely across her back and shoulders. Another feature of her strict outward appearance, gone. She huffs, hard and petulant, to clear stands away from her face. Stows the brink of tantrum behind something dubiously stoic.)
Carolina draws her fingers into tight fists and lunges.
One morning, South is caught outside by a familiar figure.
A teeny tiny cartoon-like person, dressed as a cowboy with a hidden face, toting around a weird little megaphone. South likely would have seen them without these face coverings at the Mittvinter party, being that they're close to Capochin and Hector as well as Carolina. Plus, they work closely with the Bizzyboys for similar reasons, so South would know them from work. They've just never spoken.
The primary reason for this being that they, in fact, generally do not speak.
Holding up that odd megaphone, they tweak a setting and pull the trigger, which prompts a "howdy" to emerge from the bullhorn in the voice of a rugged-sounding man. Then, upon pulling out a letter, they play another bit of audio, this time recognizably in Haley's voice. "Hey, this one's for you!"
They present her with the envelope, which prominently states that it is from North, addressed to her.
South stops short when they approach her. Of course she recognises them, they cut a pretty distinctive figure and she's vaguely aware that they run mail around thanks to their dealings with the Bizzies, but well, she doesn't get a lot of mail (any mail). And she really didn't socialise as much at Mittvinter as Carolina probably hoped she would. So she's a little caught off guard even before the megaphone starts speaking for them.
...huh. Sort of reminds her of her voice modulator, but that doesn't seem like what it actually is.
"Oh, uh— hey, thanks, Pokey." (That's the right name, right...?) She accepts the envelope as she speaks, turning it around to read it properly and— oh.
It's stupid, probably, but since they woke up from that weird nightmare she... hasn't reached out to North. The idea was always for him to call her when the time was right, and, even after everything they said in the caverns, she just couldn't bring herself to go against it. It's his call. It has to be his call. (And maybe she's been just a little scared she dreamed it all up.)
But this— Pokey will see a whole face journey happen in the split second before she tears the envelope open.
Pokey salutes, merrily and with poor form compared to someone actually in the military, before giving her a moment to read.
They linger, knowing what it is already, and that they will need to take something in return.
Within the envelope is what appears to be a legal form, marked with the "Pinhole Printing & Binding" label indicating who created it. The contents, however, are utterly ridiculous.
It comes with a similar fill-in-the-blank return form for South, and an envelope pre-addressed to North.
Once it seems like South has read it, Pokey is already on standby to offer her a nice red pen. How courteous!
"What the fuck...?" is the first thing out of her mouth as she pulls the form out, only able to tell that it is, in fact, a form of some kind before she looks closer. Which she does, squinting and muttering to herself as she reads part of it aloud under her breath, eyes slowly widening and expression shifting subtly until suddenly—
She just starts cackling.
"Holy fucking shit, he's such an asshole!" No one has ever made the word sound so fond, the grin splitting her face full as much relief as humour. "This is— this is so fucking stupid. This is so stupid."
And still, she immediately accepts the pen. "Thanks. No, seriously, thanks, this is... this is the best fuckin' mail I've ever gotten in my life."
Okay, that's stupid, but it feels true right now. This means something. This means a lot of things. Any fear that he's had second thoughts flew out the window about the time she read the stupid fart threat. He's— he's being his stupid, dork ass again. This is good. This is amazing.
She crouches down so she can use her own knees as a writing surface, chewing her bottom lip as she fills out her own return form.
She triple-checks the thing, then passes it in the envelope back to Pokey. "Okay, there."
Hooray! Mail success. They tuck the letter in their bag, give her a very enthusiastic thumbs up, and off they go back down the road to North's place. It's not far, after all.
Less than an hour passes, and they are back again, this time with yet another letter. They wave it over their head as soon as South can see them, picking up their pace to a jog and pressing it eagerly into her hands. This one's a good one.
Doesn't matter if she'd been planning to go back in soon, instead of stay out working some more on one of the odd jobs Lina's got her on; when Pokey leaves, South stays out in the snow, completely unable to focus on said odd job and mostly fidgeting restlessly. Sitting down, standing up again, pacing a bit—rinse, repeat.
She scrambles to her knees when she sees them coming back and opens the thing even more eagerly than the first, and—
South is not going to cry in front of the mail carrier that also happens to be one of Lina's closest friends. She is absolutely not going to do that. But fuck if her eyes don't get a little misty before she manages to blink the feeling back, sniffing in a way she'd blame on the cold if questioned. It's still so stupid. Stupid in that way North is when he's feeling like himself, stupid in that way he does to make people—make her—laugh, and it is the most reassuring, hopeful thing she's experienced in weeks.
"I-I gotta uh—" She clears her throat. Seriously, no crying. "—tell Lina, grab my shit, but uh— but you can tell him I'm coming home?" Again, less uncertain: "I'm coming home."
As the last sentence leaves her lips, South will feel a sensation of air and sound being tugged away from her as the megaphone seems to inhale softly. With a satisfied pop, almost like swallowing, it stops.
Godpoke taps the side of it. You'll tell him yourself.
For a second South looks very confused, by both the sensation of whatever just happened and what Pokey might mean—and then she remembers Haley's voice coming out of the megaphone, and it clicks.
"Oh. That's— really fucking cool, actually." Both in general, and, well— fuck, it does actually get her in the chest to think they're going to deliver that message in her own voice. "...thanks. Seriously. I owe you one."
Maybe this is their job, but they're a friend of Lina's and this is genuinely the best news she's had in... in maybe her life. Them helping it happen boosts them up in her subconscious social rankings immediately.
She clears her throat again and pushes the rest of the way to her feet, already backing up a few steps as she does. "Right, I need to uh— Lina. Gonna go tell Lina."
With a little lazy salute that's barely better form than Pokey's was, she turns to practically sprint back up into the house.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hit Me Once / Early November in Carolina's Yard
"What you need is to punch something."
These are words to live by. Angry about your life turning upside down? Punch something. Haunted by the guilt of your own sordid and contemptible actions? Punch something. Spill coffee on your favorite shirt? Rear back an arm, thrust that arm forward and bask in the sweet electric shocks of pain through your knuckles. This intemperate advice finds its way to South Dakota, and by way of a miracle, she's coaxed into Carolina's yard for an impromptu spar.
The rest goes unsaid; that's if you can land a hit.
So, her yard. It's nothing special. You only need a few things to make a space like this function as a training floor. Namely, space. A dirt circle to step, old farm supplies hauled out of the way. A sandbag swings from the thick wooden branch its tethered to, currently occupied by a small, bipedal dog throwing punches like its life depends on it. Carolina doesn't know what this thing's problem is. She feeds it sometimes. She'll spot it in the early hours of the morning, hiding in a bush to watch her train. Whatever, it's doing its own thing.
"You can't lay around drinking booze all day and expect to feel better. So, you're bored? Do something about it. You have energy? Put it somewhere. Save your liver from giving out."
Carolina walks a slow back-and-forward line across the dirt. She's just finished wrapping her knuckles in tape; bends her neck and feels the vertebrae pop. There's an unmistakable focus to her; a lightness in each step. She's lethal. The best of the best. This is South's problem now.
"Sure you don't wanna fight as a matched set? I could call North."
(What's a spar without some friendly taunting as foreplay?)
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She feels stupid for coming, now she's here. Mostly-sober and regretting that fact more with every passing second, South looks around Carolina's yard like it's going to bite her, somehow. Weird little blue dog thing over at the punching bag. Bunch of fucking farm supplies. Dirt. Lots of dirt. Just so much fucking dirt.
With so little to her name, she even has to borrow the tape to wrap her fists and she quietly resents that, too. She's used to that, piles upon piles of tiny little resentments that grow until they start to overflow and start hitting people. (Until she starts hitting people.) What's one more?
She steps into the circle anyway, stood firm at her chosen spot and just watches Carolina's slow back-and-forth with those ice-blue eyes that look equal parts sharp and exhausted. Rolls her shoulders. Cracks her knuckles.
"Ha, yeah, no—not unless you really want to lose a few fucking teeth in the next five minutes," she snaps back, bouncing loose on her heels, less preparatory than it is restless energy leaking out. "But maybe you're into that."
It's really not a good return zinger, but it's the best she's got right now.
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"That's the spirit. Aspirations." The unrealistic kind, she means. The crayon self-portrait of yourself as president kind. Carolina shakes her legs loose. If South has retained any memory of how she fights, she'll know to watch out for those. Her fists are accessory; a pretty handbag you can break someone's nose with. "What, like you?"
I know you don't like me. That's fine. Utilize it.
South's big. She hits hard. Harder when she's angry, and twice as much with Carolina as an opponent. Another agent might choose to play defensive— wait for South to make the first move. Carolina isn't another agent. She's Carolina, and she strikes first and certain.
She charges. Dirt breaks under her heel. Where South Dakota is large, Carolina is fast, a blur of skin and red scalp against the shabby half-light of that afternoon. She siphons all her weight into her left heel, brings her opposite knee up and goes for a round kick, a one— two— three beat. Pelvis, ribs, face.
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If the tips of South's ears go a little red (from rage or embarrassment? Yes) then no, actually, they didn't. Snorting air like a pissed off bull again, she refuses to rise to the bait, just raises her fists in a loose stance and waits for the strike she knows is coming. No chance in hell that Carolina lets her get in first. Nah. No way.
Carolina lunges, and South arcs back, reduces the strike at her pelvis to barely a brush and blocks her ribs with a cross-block, her face by throwing the leg away with the flat of her arm. Each point of contact brief and yet a flash of pain—sharp, and focusing, in the way it keeps her grounded in her own nervous system. (Maybe this is just what she needs.)
Her turn. She springs off her back heel, throwing herself back at Carolina fist-first—a wide swing to make her swerve, an uppercut aimed at the diaphragm, twisting on the ball of her feet to build momentum to backhand her in the face. Nothing held back. No holds barred. Pure, unrestricted strength and momentum, chaining one into the other with no sign of a break unless you force one.
no subject
Here comes the fists. They're an asset of South's, aside from the sheer size of her. They break air with the force of trains charging at full speed, squealing and spitting sparks on their tracks, and if she looked up to South panting out billows of steam, she wouldn't be surprised.
Carolina back-steps. The swerve meets air. South's on her again, ready to pulverize her organs, wreck her face— a bull rearing forward to spear Carolina's guard on her horns until it bleeds. She won't let her in so easily. Disengage and strike at a new angle. Ignore the pain flowering between her ribs, through her cheek. Carolina throws up her arms and dives into a back-handspring, drilling her toe up under South's chin, if she can catch her. A parting gift as she repositions herself a short distance away.
And forward again, using her shoulder to threaten South's guard. Jab upward with her elbow, strike at the throat, disengage with enough space for a hook kick and bask in the sweat sliding down her neck.
(When's the last time someone challenged you like this?)
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One of those overdramatic, acrobatic flips of hers and South's teeth crack together so hard she'd be surprised if it didn't chip a couple, jaw throbbing and a shooting pain rocketing up the side of her skull. She spits, saliva tinted with the faintest hints of red, and barely looks back in time to throw her arms back up between them.
The block falls apart like Carolina's thrown herself through a brick wall and South avoids getting an elbow to the windpipe by millimetres, breathing hard and tasting iron. That's where her luck ends: Carolina's heel catches the side of her skull and the pain returns in a bright, burning starburst that blots her vision white for a half-second. Fucking hell, legs like fucking vipers—
Half-blindly, South grabs for Carolina's ankle on its way down and yanks—dirty fighting, technique and etiquette be damned. Throw her off rhythm, off balance, down to the fucking ground if she can manage it.
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The impact of ankle to skull tolls like a bell through her leg. Carolina draws her tongue across her teeth, thoughtless gesture, wetting her mouth in the in-between. Good, she tells herself. Good. Just like that. Eight or so terrible months with nothing to do, no facilities to use, damned to sandbags and dirt circles and punching angry holes in her walls with no reciprocation— and she's fine. See? No worse-off than before.
(The stakes to this are larger than she's comfortable with. If she loses— unthinkable— it'll go in with the fast-growing mass of losses she's accumulated since she got here. Watch as it shoulders right up to her cold, dead body and the memory of that siege of black, come down on her like a wave. You can do this, she thinks— you're enjoying yourself— because if she doesn't, it's death all over again.)
Fuck—
Distracted.
Carolina yelps. Her stomach summersaults and her back hits the dirt with a force that squeezes her breath out like paste from a tube. There's one place you don't want to be in a fight, and that's on your back with someone on top of you. She tries her best to roll away.
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The sound of the impact—body against the dirt, air forced from Carolina's lungs—is one of the most satisfying things South has heard in months—years, even. Not often you get the Number One (she never has really stopped thinking of her that way) on the ground at your feet, not often she's reduced to scrambling to get up and away before you can take advantage of it. And oh, South has every intention of doing taking every advantage.
Not as quick as she'd like, head still spinning from that last kick the way it is, but she's upon Carolina and throwing her back flat before she can roll all the way to her front. Knees in the dirt, weight blocking easy escape, she swings for Carolina's face yet again, the shock of bone against bone no deterrent at all. (Every shot of pain is another shot of adrenaline, another shot of feeling.)
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Just when she thinks she's made it, South grips the back of her shirt and throws her down again. Carolina's lungs falter a second time (are they in a worse state, after the Desolation? She can't tell) and in a jerk of knees and weight dropped down onto her waist, she's pinned. Her guard is smashed to pieces. Her face will be too, if she doesn't find a way out of this—
South's fists come down in a sloppy fury. The cartilage forming the wide bridge of her nose crunches, a disgusting noise inside her head. One punch, two. Blood sprays in an arc. She snarls, bucks her hips upward in an attempt to throw off South's center of gravity, only to feel herself tamped back down in the dirt. She'll need to bridge high to get out of this; arch her back, thrust up through her legs, capture South's wrist in one fluid motion— tuck together and roll.
Carolina springs up— teeters. She's dizzy. Walk it off. Blood pools in the corners of her mouth. She spits a glob on the ground, captures South's shoulders in both hands and drives her knee up into her stomach.
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Cartilage cracks against her knuckles and she feels her own skin split, fresh blood mixing with the splatter already painting her fists in red. It's messy and it's dirty and it would never fly in an unarmoured training room, back in the day, trying to mincemeat your sparring partner's face like this, but this isn't some friendly spar to get your damn rank up. This is a fight, this is the release of months upon years of tension coiled so tight that the only way it could ever come out was violently.
Carolina finds her opening, bucks South off like a bucking bull and throws them into a roll that she takes advantage of to throw herself back to her feet— only to get dragged back down, piston-like leg burying its knee in her gut and making her choke on air. Spit and blood erupt, spray the air, and South grits her teeth through the struggle to breathe. Fuck this—
She snaps her head forward to crack against Carolina's and yanks herself back when it connects, stumbling and dizzy but reclaiming space. Chest heaving, lungs still not quite full, she launches a jump kick at Carolina's torso.
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Did she know, when she invited South to her front yard, that they would end up this way? Was the Project's watchful panopticon— the Director and Counselor, stood side by side— really the only gate keeping them from tearing into each other? Are these flat, packing punches a direct response to Carolina's existence, or is she just looking for skin to break? This was never going to be just a spar. You don't even know me. How can you possibly hate me so much?
She knows how.
Carolina feels somehow pathetic and ignited in her lack of self control. Freed by her desire to break something or else feel herself broken, when for so long she'd played by the rules.
South's forehead meets hers and stars explode into her vision, migrainous and vomit inducing. She grits an ugly noise through clenched teeth. Like hell she's going to throw up. Like hell she's going to do anything that isn't tossing herself to the side to avoid South's steam engine kick. She lands in a flip, clumsier than she'd like. Staggers to one knee, forces herself up. The tree line is soupy behind South's head. The little bipedal dog, one she hasn't bothered to name, makes a startled noise and flees for a bush.
Breathe. She's trying. She spits again, circles the mat like a fevered animal to stall for air.
Carolina's lip pulls up in a bloody snarl. "Still got my teeth."
I'm not slowing down.
(She is. She will.)
She bursts forward, meets her in a chest-to-chest collision, hands finding purchase on her shoulder— biceps— anywhere— to hook her leg around South's and knock her balance. She pivots, plants a kick squarely at the small of her spine.
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The inside of her skull rings like an explosion went off right in her ear, vision fuzzy at the edges but clearing as the exhilaration strives to keep her on her feet. Everything hurts. It's amazing. It's dangerous. It's the most alive she's felt since she saw Dmitri's body lying there on the concrete and knew she would never feel whole again, never stop being aware of the empty space she'd carved in her own life with a rusted blade that left the wound festering and sick.
(Is she going to know when to stop? Are either of them going to know when to stop?)
Another burst of movement. South can't move fast enough, feels the leg around the back of her knee before she can even try, making the joint buckle and slip and give Carolina that opening she needs to slam into her spine. Her balance is shot and she stumbles, falls, topples like a damn skyscraper to hit the ground. Arms flying out to catch herself, the impact jars her shoulders and she can feel the bruises that will bloom later.
Shit. Groaning, she flips herself over as quick as she can and kicks out to keep Carolina from getting to her.
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There's a beauty in beating the shit out of someone— in getting the shit beaten out of you. Carolina prefers the former. Detests pain for what it means, the body signaling failure, as if a drop on the leaderboard or lack of attention weren't already enough to make her want to scream. Now, she's starting to see the appeal, present in a way she hasn't experienced since she arrived. Her nerves and muscles tick frantically. Contract, go slack, pull tight again with every movement. Her pulse throbs in her nose (broken?)— in her knees. Everything is pain, everything is a struggle. Fighting for fighting's sake, not for survival.
Dying doesn't cross her mind, anyway. She isn't losing this.
South's on her back— she's up— which means she has the advantage. Good. Carolina catches the kick in her fists, biceps quivering with the effort to force her prone. She fights her way on top. South doesn't make it easy. When does she ever? She thrashes and bucks like an animal in the final fight for its life, kicking up dirt and dust with the effort.
Carolina drops all her weight onto the small of South's spine, driving her knees into the ground. If they're fighting like animals, fine. Etiquette doesn't matter. They might as well have trampled it into the dirt, spat on it and said fuck you simultaneously.
With this brilliant new philosophy in mind, Carolina hooks arm under arm to rend and yank the shoulder backward in its joint. If she incapacitates South's assets— her arms— this fight ends that much quicker. Sorry, not sorry.
Blood leaks out in a splash from her nose, pooling down South's back. (Yep. Definitely broken.)
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With teeth gritted despite the way it makes her jaw ache and throb, South thrashes beneath her with all the frantic energy of a prey animal in the grasp of a predator. Like she's pinned with the jaws of a big cat struggling to wrap around the back of her throat and end her here and now. If she can just get her goddamn legs under her, she's got a couple dozen pounds on the wannabe puma on her back. Just gotta—
The sick pop of her shoulder wipes her mind blank and shocks a sharp shout out of her. "Son of a BITCH—!"
Holy fuck, okay, damn, shit shit shit— bone and muscle and tendon move against each other in ways they're not designed to and South hisses, breathing hard through her nose. Gotta get out of this fucking hold, gotta get her off—
Adrenaline pumping, South twists her good arm back to grab Carolina by the hair and yank her off. Rolls with her, all of her weight thrown against her, but deliberately pinning Carolina's leg beneath her hip, wrenching until she feels the joint start to bend the wrong way.
Two can play at that game, bitch.
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You pick up a few things, fighting non-lethally. What to pull and where to strike. How to make soldiers drop as dead-weight, scream themselves into an easy submission.
And there it is. The elastic draw and snap. The full, wet pop of the shoulder from its socket. She shivers over with memory— the white lip of a cliff, shrinking from view— her stomach, sinking with it; splitting ice with the steel teeth of her grappling hook and hoping it will catch; tether-line slack then snapped straight; a tremendous force and a pop! It hurts, doesn't it?
Carolina makes for her second shoulder. South intercepts, grabs her ponytail and pulls with a force that burns like fire across her scalp. She gasps, head jerked back into the dirt, victim to the crocodile roll South throws them both into. Fine. That's fine. She fought her way free once, she'll do it again. She'll—
Fuck. Fuck. Reposition. Get her off, get her off—
South drives her weight home, and Carolina's knee slips with the force. She screams— "Fuck—!" —two miserable octaves higher than normal. Beats the heel of her hand against South's chest in a useless attempt to get her away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. Probably going to wreck her other leg if she doesn't get her the fuck off—
But what can she do, with a boulder's weight on top of her?
Carolina arches upward, fights for freedom that can't be won. And it hurts. It hurts, hurts, hurts and how is she going to do her job, fix her house, if she can't fucking walk? She grabs fistfuls of platinum hair— shirt— skin. If she scratches somewhere along the way, fuck you.
(For god's sake, you cannot possibly be this off your game.)
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Can't help but laugh, when that curse passes Carolina's lips—so much for the clean-mouthed leader, huh? Just takes the right application of the right kind of pain and she finally acts like a fucking soldier, rough and tumble as the fucking rest of them instead of some preppy little bitch who thinks she's so much better. Which she's not. Her knee joint slips and pops out of place like anyone else's would, she struggles and lashes out desperately like any else would, she yelps in pain like anyone else would. Nothing more, nothing less.
Being right has never been so fucking gratifying.
Carolina grasps and hits and writhes around, hands yanking at her hair and nails catching at her skin and the pain barely registers, beneath the sharp throb of her useless arm being jolted by every jostle. She ignores it easily, keeps her weight pressed down to keep Carolina in place, keep her from turning this around, but—
Ignoring the other thrum beneath her skin is a lot more difficult.
(Fuck, why is this turning her on? Between the pain, and this side of Carolina she's never seen, and the fucking writhing—)
South curses under her breath and rolls off of her, jarring her shoulder anew and barely able to catch herself on her good one. Can't keep fighting if Carolina can't move, right? That's the only reason. That's the only fucking reason.
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It doesn't feel good, being at someone else's mercy. South's, of all people, who will probably stagger out of this fight with a shit-eating grin and self-congratulations at lassoing a curse from her. Pull it together. She's good at that, right? Fight through the pain, get up, walk it off and keep going. She won't stop here. She closes a fist around her integrity— refuses to let go. Stop acting like an animal. Stop acting like her—
Another attempted bridge. Carolina wrestles her hips, meets something with her thigh. Has gotten down onto the mat with York enough to know a hard-on when it happens— and knows South enough to piece two and two together. Is she really getting off on this? Did it have to involve obliterating her kneecap? No, that assumes she isn't getting off on everything else happening here.
South bowls to the side. Carolina picks herself up on her elbows, glances once at the state of her kneecap and feels briefly sick. The bone-cap juts like a pale shell beginning to surface in the sand. Okay. Okay. Up.
She stands up, weight trembling on her good leg. If she can't kick— and she can't, not unless she wants to blow the cap out completely— she'll punch.
(Yanked free from its tie at some point during their scrap, Carolina's hair drapes freely across her back and shoulders. Another feature of her strict outward appearance, gone. She huffs, hard and petulant, to clear stands away from her face. Stows the brink of tantrum behind something dubiously stoic.)
Carolina draws her fingers into tight fists and lunges.
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cw: emeto metaphors
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Wrap?
wrap!
Gone Postal [Late January]
A teeny tiny cartoon-like person, dressed as a cowboy with a hidden face, toting around a weird little megaphone. South likely would have seen them without these face coverings at the Mittvinter party, being that they're close to Capochin and Hector as well as Carolina. Plus, they work closely with the Bizzyboys for similar reasons, so South would know them from work. They've just never spoken.
The primary reason for this being that they, in fact, generally do not speak.
Holding up that odd megaphone, they tweak a setting and pull the trigger, which prompts a "howdy" to emerge from the bullhorn in the voice of a rugged-sounding man. Then, upon pulling out a letter, they play another bit of audio, this time recognizably in Haley's voice. "Hey, this one's for you!"
They present her with the envelope, which prominently states that it is from North, addressed to her.
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South stops short when they approach her. Of course she recognises them, they cut a pretty distinctive figure and she's vaguely aware that they run mail around thanks to their dealings with the Bizzies, but well, she doesn't get a lot of mail (any mail). And she really didn't socialise as much at Mittvinter as Carolina probably hoped she would. So she's a little caught off guard even before the megaphone starts speaking for them.
...huh. Sort of reminds her of her voice modulator, but that doesn't seem like what it actually is.
"Oh, uh— hey, thanks, Pokey." (That's the right name, right...?) She accepts the envelope as she speaks, turning it around to read it properly and— oh.
It's stupid, probably, but since they woke up from that weird nightmare she... hasn't reached out to North. The idea was always for him to call her when the time was right, and, even after everything they said in the caverns, she just couldn't bring herself to go against it. It's his call. It has to be his call. (And maybe she's been just a little scared she dreamed it all up.)
But this— Pokey will see a whole face journey happen in the split second before she tears the envelope open.
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They linger, knowing what it is already, and that they will need to take something in return.
Within the envelope is what appears to be a legal form, marked with the "Pinhole Printing & Binding" label indicating who created it. The contents, however, are utterly ridiculous.
It comes with a similar fill-in-the-blank return form for South, and an envelope pre-addressed to North.
Once it seems like South has read it, Pokey is already on standby to offer her a nice red pen. How courteous!
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"What the fuck...?" is the first thing out of her mouth as she pulls the form out, only able to tell that it is, in fact, a form of some kind before she looks closer. Which she does, squinting and muttering to herself as she reads part of it aloud under her breath, eyes slowly widening and expression shifting subtly until suddenly—
She just starts cackling.
"Holy fucking shit, he's such an asshole!" No one has ever made the word sound so fond, the grin splitting her face full as much relief as humour. "This is— this is so fucking stupid. This is so stupid."
And still, she immediately accepts the pen. "Thanks. No, seriously, thanks, this is... this is the best fuckin' mail I've ever gotten in my life."
Okay, that's stupid, but it feels true right now. This means something. This means a lot of things. Any fear that he's had second thoughts flew out the window about the time she read the stupid fart threat. He's— he's being his stupid, dork ass again. This is good. This is amazing.
She crouches down so she can use her own knees as a writing surface, chewing her bottom lip as she fills out her own return form.
She triple-checks the thing, then passes it in the envelope back to Pokey. "Okay, there."
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Less than an hour passes, and they are back again, this time with yet another letter. They wave it over their head as soon as South can see them, picking up their pace to a jog and pressing it eagerly into her hands. This one's a good one.
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Doesn't matter if she'd been planning to go back in soon, instead of stay out working some more on one of the odd jobs Lina's got her on; when Pokey leaves, South stays out in the snow, completely unable to focus on said odd job and mostly fidgeting restlessly. Sitting down, standing up again, pacing a bit—rinse, repeat.
She scrambles to her knees when she sees them coming back and opens the thing even more eagerly than the first, and—
South is not going to cry in front of the mail carrier that also happens to be one of Lina's closest friends. She is absolutely not going to do that. But fuck if her eyes don't get a little misty before she manages to blink the feeling back, sniffing in a way she'd blame on the cold if questioned. It's still so stupid. Stupid in that way North is when he's feeling like himself, stupid in that way he does to make people—make her—laugh, and it is the most reassuring, hopeful thing she's experienced in weeks.
"I-I gotta uh—" She clears her throat. Seriously, no crying. "—tell Lina, grab my shit, but uh— but you can tell him I'm coming home?" Again, less uncertain: "I'm coming home."
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Godpoke taps the side of it. You'll tell him yourself.
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For a second South looks very confused, by both the sensation of whatever just happened and what Pokey might mean—and then she remembers Haley's voice coming out of the megaphone, and it clicks.
"Oh. That's— really fucking cool, actually." Both in general, and, well— fuck, it does actually get her in the chest to think they're going to deliver that message in her own voice. "...thanks. Seriously. I owe you one."
Maybe this is their job, but they're a friend of Lina's and this is genuinely the best news she's had in... in maybe her life. Them helping it happen boosts them up in her subconscious social rankings immediately.
She clears her throat again and pushes the rest of the way to her feet, already backing up a few steps as she does. "Right, I need to uh— Lina. Gonna go tell Lina."
With a little lazy salute that's barely better form than Pokey's was, she turns to practically sprint back up into the house.