Work Text:
The wind whips against me, freezing even through my mask and suit. I’d planned to reinforce both tonight, but the alarms rigged to my phone started blaring the moment I got out my supplies and I had to rush inelegantly out of my window. Inconvenient, certainly, but this is my job, even though it doesn’t pay.
Speaking of my job… I squint through the built-in goggles of my mask and sure enough, god damn it, she’s still ahead of me. Her black suit blends perfectly into the dark skyline as she leaps with superhuman agility from rooftop to rooftop, but I’m the one flying, with the advantage of altitude, and I’m nowhere near as easy to outsmart as the cops.
I put on a burst of speed as she takes a running leap from a rooftop, landing on an impossibly thin ledge and scaling the building with the agility of a spider. She pulls herself onto the rooftop, rolls to her feet, and takes off running, but I land on the roof moments behind her. The adrenaline shrilling through my veins doesn’t exactly lend itself to eloquence, so the best I can manage, heart pounding with fury and elation, is, “Hey, asshole!”
She stops, like I knew she would, and turns. Her mask, black and featureless but for two dark lenses over her eyes, only covers the top half of her face, so it’s perfectly visible when her full, red lips curve into a smirk. What little I can see of her brown skin is unblemished from whatever crime she just committed, and her black suit clings to her lithe frame, glittering with silver scales to throw off security cameras.
There’s a bag over her shoulder, presumably holding whatever she’s stolen this week. One hand, in its usual cybernetic gauntlet, pulls the bag closer to her waist as she turns towards me, smirking, head tilted slightly to the side.
God, I can’t stand her.
“Hey, Paladin.” And her voice is just as insufferable, deep and melodic and specifically designed to piss me off. “Only two minutes behind me this time. I think that’s a new record.”
I entertain a brief fantasy of strangling her. “What’d you take this time, Phantom?”
Phantom pats the bag at her side. “A West African something-or-other that the museum stole.”
“Oh, you’re on that vigilante shit again. I was wondering what you were doing at an art museum. Seems a little highbrow for your usual haunts. Where was it I found you last week? GameStop?”
She’s unaffected, obnoxiously. “Someone hired me to steal and jailbreak a Ps5 for them. Just like someone hired me to steal this artifact.”
“And here I thought you were doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Yeah, my black, shriveled villain heart,” she replies dryly. “No, unlike you, I don’t work for free. How’s life as an unpaid police intern, by the way?”
“Nonexistent. I don’t work for the police, I work for the people.”
“I work for the people, sweetheart. You volunteer for the people.”
“You don’t work for shit. Who are you even taking that artifact to?”
She frowns, considering. “You know, I didn’t catch their name.”
“And what do you think are the odds that you’re giving it to some white millionaire who feigns a sense of vigilante justice to build a private art collection in their basement?”
“What, you want me to take it back the museum?”
“What I want from you is a moment of care and foresight for anyone’s interests besides your own.”
Her mouth curves into another smirk. “Sweetheart, you don’t know shit about my interests. Unless you care to find out.”
”I don’t care about your interests.”
“I mean, you’re the one chasing me halfway across the city every other night because of your repressed homosexuality and pathological need to feel special. I’m throwing you a bone here.”
Hm. As much as I’d like to, I can’t convincingly argue the second point, but the first… “I think you’re giving yourself a bit too much credit, Phantom. And trust me, there’s nothing repressed about my homosexuality.”
“Oh.” And of all stupid things, that seems to throw her, even if momentarily. “Good for you. Are we about to kiss? I’m getting some vibes.”
My stomach does this strange gymnastics routine that I determinedly ignore. I need to get the artifact to where it belongs, which certainly isn’t the museum or whoever hired Phantom. Right. “I’m getting more ‘beat the shit out of each other’ vibes, if I’m being honest.”
Phantom drops the bag and rolls her head to the side. Her neck cracks violently. “That’s fair. I’ve had kind of a week. I could use some catharsis.”
“What you could use is a chiropractor.”
“Yeah, maybe I can afford one after I kick your ass and sell this shit I stole.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
And in that same moment, both of us trying to take the other by surprise, we charge.
We’ve fought before, on dark rooftops and in back alleys. I’m stronger, hardier, my strength enhanced by both superpowers and training. Phantom is a technopath, and between the cybernetics in her suit and her superhuman speed and agility, she’s fast and incredibly unpredictable. So as she swings a gauntleted haymaker towards my head and I duck out of the way, I miss her foot as it plows into my knee.
It hurts, but they wouldn’t call me Paladin if I couldn’t take hits and dish them the fuck out. It takes a moment to get my feet back underneath me but I do, just in time to block Phantom’s next blow with my forearm and punch her in the chest.
She staggers backward, my knee aching, her breath wheezing in her throat, and her eyes meet mine and I just know that behind the mask, her eyes are blazing. I can see her mouth, though, so I know that we both smile, fierce and sharp, at the same time.
We charge again, this time pissed, this time grinning, and in the breath before she attacks, I forget everything I’ve ever known about fighting. There’s no room for training, as Phantom scores a hit with her cybernetic fist and I reel, no room for discipline. She fights like something out of a nightmare, disorganized and vindictive and ignoring every rule I know, and there’s no room for anything but instinct. I know better, I’ve learned better after months spent grappling with power and strength and responsibility, but I fight like a pissed-off high schooler, like a dude in a bar, and Phantom fights just as fucked-up and crazy as I do.
She’s faster than me, but I’m stronger. She lands a hit to my jaw that cracks my mask and makes me see stars, and now I’m stronger and pissed the fuck off. I duck under her next blow and kick her feet out from underneath her. Somehow, I catch her off guard, somehow, she falls, and by the time the haze of rage and victory fades, I’m on top of her, a knee on either side of her torso, one fist clenched in the fabric of her suit and the other above her, poised to strike.
“Shit,” she gasps, and clarity returns. My hands are shaking. I drop the fist poised above Phantom’s face, not really knowing why. “Shit, Paladin.”
“You…” My breath comes in harsh gasps. “You tapping out, Phantom?”
Her mouth twists in a grimace and she struggles, a halfhearted burst of motion, but my hand tightens in her suit and she subsides, panting. “God, you’re strong. Yeah. I’m tapping out. You got me. Do something responsible with the thing, okay?”
Her bag gapes open, next to my knee, and I spot a glint of burnished gold within. All I need to do is reach down and take it, but I hesitate. It could be a trap. She’s too smart to give up after one good hit.
In the light glaring down from a nearby billboard, as I crouch over her, I can almost see her eyes, just enough to see how wide they are as she stares up at me. There’s something important about that and I can’t move in the face of it, like I’m staring down something too big to see all at once.
I hesitate. Phantom frowns. “Paladin?” she asks, and her voice is quiet, so strange that it takes me a moment to identify its strange tone as uncertainty. And that—
The air, cold and thick with tension, is shattered by flashing lights and sirens. My mind reawakens from that haze and I leap to my feet and turn and shit, there are four police cars at the base of the building and someone is shouting inaudibly through a megaphone and fuck, I’ve turned my back—
I whip around, hand outstretched, but my fingers close around a rush of empty air as Phantom evades me by a fucking inch and vaults off the edge of the roof.
Shit.
I actually remembered to leave my bedroom window open before I left this time, so when I manage to pull myself back up to my apartment, police sirens long faded behind me, I land on my bed. It would be reassuring if my mattress was marginally thicker. Instead, I have to lay on my back wheezing for a while, wincing as every breath jars my various aches and bruises. Eventually, I manage to get up, toss my mask and suit into the nearest empty corner, and pull on my normal clothes.
My usual routine after coming back from a patrol is to meditate, to center myself in my body and breathe until I feel more like myself, less like Paladin. I sit down on my bed and close my eyes, reaching for the familiar place of serenity and calm, but my heart is still pounding, no matter how I breathe, and fury and shame are hot in my blood, just below the surface of my skin. I try, though, because I’m nothing if not stubborn, but it’s no use.
Fuck. Fuck. That went about as poorly as it possibly could have. The police almost found me, the artifact is in the hands of whoever the fuck, and Phantom—
I flop facedown onto my bed and scream into my pillow. God, Phantom. I know what she’s like and what she can do, but I still turned my back on her. I could have taken the artifact when she was still on the ground, but I hesitated.
I always seem to hesitate around her. I falter at the wrong moment. I slip. I make mistakes. And she gets away, leaving nothing more than a parting quip behind her. She’s infuriating, selfish and careless, powerful enough to cause real change but only concerned with herself. There has to be a reason for it. She’s too smart to throw her power away like this, to waste her potential as a hired thief. There has to be something more, something under the surface, something I’m not seeing.
That insistence digs into me like a fishing hook and pulls, impossible to ignore. There’s something strange about Phantom, something that I can’t see, and I have to know what it is. I have to know what she is, and the worst is that I have no idea why. No, the worst is that finding out what she wants means catching her. And tonight, if nothing else, I’ve proven that I can’t catch her.
I’ve been chasing her across rooftops for months, and she always gets away and there’s nothing I can do. I’m stronger, but she’s faster, and she just keeps getting away.
I keep letting her get away.
A knock on the door interrupts whatever the hell that thought was, thank God. I groan again. It’s 8:30, so it’s almost certainly my landlady “checking in” and making sure that the apartment is in one piece, since she seems to be convinced that I’ll wreck it if left unsupervised. I’m hurt and tired and upset, but I’ll be hurt, tired, upset, and homeless if I’m not careful. My part time, on-campus job doesn’t pay enough to cover my ass if worst comes to worst. So I force myself upright, adjust my shirt to hide the bruises, and gingerly make my way to the door.
When I open it, though, it’s not to the familiar face of Mrs. Hayes. Standing in the hallway, eyes wide and startled as I swing the door abruptly open, is a stranger. She’s petite, short and slim with a soft, pretty face, with brown skin and a halo of black curls held back by a patterned silk scarf. She’s wearing a thick turtleneck sweater, and her hands are stuffed into the pockets of her jeans. “Uh. Hi!”
“Hi,” I reply, a little colder than is strictly polite, trying not to look down at my paint-stained shirt and sweats. I feel suddenly underdressed.
The stranger smiles. She has, I note, a really pretty smile. “Sorry for barging in on you like this—I don’t think we’ve met, actually. I just moved in next door and I thought I heard a yell? Just wanted to make sure everything’s cool.”
My face heats. Great. Bet the dulcet tones of my pissed-off groaning made a fabulous first impression on the cute new neighbor. I summon a smile. “That’s sweet of you, but I’m good. I just stubbed my toe.”
She winces sympathetically. “Ooh, that’s the worst. But I’m glad everything’s okay. Oh, right!” She holds out a hand and I note her chipped blue nail polish. “My name’s Nancy Lupin, and my pronouns are she/her.”
Great. I fuck up the first impression, and now I’m getting vibes. The pronoun thing is thoughtful, though, especially since I left my pin on my jacket. “Pleasure. I’m Carmen Lugh. She/they.” And I reach out to shake her hand.
There’s something. It’s not electricity, not a spark like it’s described in stories, but there’s something, a jolt that runs through my arm and jogs my elbow. I look up at her, startled, because that wasn’t my imagination, that was something, and when I look up, Nancy Lupin is looking back at me.
Her brow is furrowed, her head cocked slightly to the side. She’s shorter than me, so she’s looking up at me with wide eyes. There’s something, now, about the shape of this stranger’s eyes, the puzzled smile on her lips, the glow of her skin in the light, the set of her jaw—
“I’m sorry.” Her voice interrupts me and I imagine it pitched lower, taunting, musical, and now that I’m listening, I can hear a familiar tone in it, but I must be imagining, there’s no way— “I really don’t mean to stare, it’s just… you look familiar.”
I nod, dazed. “So do you.”