Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, but I have plans tonight.”
“Come on! You don’t have to lie to me. Who makes plans on a weeknight? Just let me drive you home. I know you don’t have a ride.”
“I really do have plans tonight. I’m sorry.” You’re trying so hard to be polite, but it’s getting more and more difficult. He’s being way too persistent and at this point, there’s no way you’re going to get in a car with him.
Adrian rolls his eyes, listening to you try to gently let down the cook that’s on day six of trying to ask you out. You’ve been working as a waitress at Fennel Fields for the past month. You’re nice, too nice, which is why this guy isn’t taking the hint that you’re not interested in taking a ride in his lifted pickup truck.
He’s clearing a table during one of the slowest times of the day so he isn’t in a rush. He has his back to the kitchen, where you’re unsuccessfully trying to excuse yourself from the conversation. Adrian doesn’t even have to look back at you to know you’re smiling while you try to let the cook down.
You haven’t really interacted much since you got hired. You always say hi to him and smile at him, but you haven’t gotten past small talk. Which is fine with him. Adrian doesn’t need a distraction and you…you’d be a distraction if you tried to get close to him.
You’re cute, in an approachable way. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t think about you sometimes when he got off. Sometimes, he likes to think about what it’d be like to fuck you against the wall behind the restaurant. He wouldn’t ask you out, though. Hooking up, having a quickie in the bathroom, would be enough for him.
On his way into the kitchen, Adrian tries to go unnoticed. He’s walking fast, just trying to ignore the conversation taking place near the doorway, but his eyes happen to wander at the worst moment. They meet yours and seconds later, you’re putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“Adrian.” The way you say his name is too nice, it’s too warm, and you’re smiling at him again. “Let me take those. I have some free time.”
“Huh? No, I’ve got it.” He tries to argue, but you’re already trying to take the tub of dirty dishes from him. Your fingers brush against his, warm and soft.
When you carry the tub into the kitchen, he doesn’t thank you. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrow and he takes the opportunity to slip outside. The air is cold and the sky is gray.
You used him. You used helping him as an excuse to get away from that cook. Adrian isn’t stupid. He knows you didn’t do that just to be nice…even if you are too nice. Don’t you know what happens to people that are too nice?
He’s eager for his shift to end. Eager to be able to put on his suit and his mask, eager to stop being Adrian Chase for a while and be Vigilante. He has big plans for tonight. He’s spent the past week making a list of criminals to take out and tonight, he knows that at least five of those guys are going to all be in one place. He can’t wait to be able to kill them.
As soon as his shift ends, he’s gone. He doesn’t linger, he doesn’t say goodbye to anyone. After all, he’s just a busboy; no one says goodbye to him anyway. He has one thing on his mind and he’s focused on getting home, getting ready, and getting his hands dirty.
All week, he’s been looking forward to the adrenaline rush of a fight. He’s been planning, deciding what weapons to bring, daydreaming about how he wants to kill each of the criminals he’s targeting tonight. They’re just some shitty drug dealers, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go easy on them. They might even have some guys standing guard outside that he can pick off before he goes in.
From the information he gathered, they’re supposed to be meeting in an old auto parts shop just outside of town. It hasn’t been in business for years and there’s a scrapyard behind it. He’s already scouted it out, already planted some explosives earlier in the week that he’ll be able to detonate remotely. That way, if anyone manages to escape the slaughter in the shop and they try to hide, he can just blow them to bits.
Vigilante is giddy with anticipation. His only regret is that Peacemaker isn’t there to take part in the fun. His pulse is racing, adrenaline is coursing through his veins, as he approaches the auto parts shop. He’s using the cover of darkness as he crawls along the ditch, pausing when he hears a car drive by.
When he finally pushes himself up, he’s right across the road from the shop. The trees along the side of the street give him enough cover that he could easily prep to shoot one of the men standing guard outside of the shop…if they were alive. His shoulders droop when he sees the two buff guys slumped on the ground outside the main door.
“What the fuck? Are you kidding me?!” Looking around, he doesn’t see anyone else in the area. Jogging across the street, Vigilante can see the pools of blood glistening on the ground beneath the corpses. One of the men has at least a dozen holes in his chest, but they’re too crude to be bullet holes. The other guy…has half of his skull caved in. Vigilante can see bits of skull fragments in the viscera from the blunt force trauma.
“I went through all of that planning just for some asshole to come along and steal my kill?! Who does that?” He looks towards the front door just in time for a body to come crashing out through the window to his right.
The man isn’t exactly dead, but he’s on his way out. Convulsing on the dirt, clutching his chest and coughing up blood. Tears and snot are running down his face when he looks up at Vigilante, one eye a bright candy red and his nose broken. Vigilante tilts his head and crouches down. In one smooth move, he brings a handgun to the man’s face and presses the muzzle between his eyes. “Here you go.”
Vigilante looks at the window as he squeezes the trigger. The shot is loud and sharp, the sound clear in the otherwise silent atmosphere. His lips quirk into a smirk, knowing that whoever is inside will know that he’s here and he has them trapped.
You tense when you hear the sound, lowering yourself into a crouch as your head snaps in the direction of the front of the shop. Hearing broken glass crunch beneath someone’s foot, your eyes shift to the last living man in the shop with you. His breathing is ragged, there’s blood running down the side of his face and from the gash you opened across his gut.
Seeing him take a step towards the door, you turn your head toward him and glare as you try to make him freeze. He ignores your glare and lurches in the direction of the door, clutching his stomach with a blood-slicked hand. Immediately, you dart forward to stop him. You’re armed with a hefty meat tenderizer and one of your sharpest knives, ready to shut him up before he calls for help.
There’s a good chance that whoever is outside might be a cop. A cop or possibly someone working for another drug dealer, here to stick their nose into someone else’s business. Whoever it is, you can’t afford for this idiot to have backup. He has to die.
One strike of the tenderizer to his ribs has the man sprawling on the floor. You straddle his back and lift the tenderizer again, smashing it against the back of his head once, twice, three times. As you lift the tenderizer for a fourth strike, you hear movement near the window and look up just in time to spot a figure outside.
It feels like time slows down. You don’t immediately register that they’re holding a gun, but as soon as you do, a sharp impact hits you in the left side of your chest and sends you falling backwards. There’s an intense pressure inside your chest, an unbearable tickle as you cough and taste copper. Blood splatters your lips and it runs from your nose as you sputter, your right hand releasing the knife to press your palm against your wound.
You struggle to push yourself up onto your elbows, blood pouring down your chin from your nose and lips. Propping up your upper half, you can see the figure hopping into the shop through the broken window. Your vision is blurry, tears overflowing from the white-hot pain in your sternum. Before you can push yourself to stand up, before you can even prepare to attack this stranger wearing a suit and a mask, they aim for your head and squeeze the trigger again.
There’s a sharp ringing the instant before impact. When the bullet enters your skull, you don’t feel any pain. It’s like turning off a light. Everything goes dark, all sound becomes muffled, and your body goes completely limp on the bloody floor.
Vigilante approaches the corpse of the asshole who stole his kills. The large open space inside the auto parts shop is a bloodbath. Bodies litter the floor. Lifeless, soaked in their own blood, broken bones jutting through flesh, brains gleaming through holes in skulls. Some of them were gutted, one of them was disemboweled, a few of them had their heads smashed in.
He isn’t easily impressed, but this was a pretty thorough job. The kind of work an assassin would do. He hasn’t gotten a good look at the thief lying motionless in front of him yet. The thief is wearing clothes that cover them well, along with gloves, a gaiter mask to cover the bottom half of their face, and a pair of tinted goggles to hide the top of their face.
Vigilante crouches down, looking closely to make sure the thief is dead. There’s no sign of movement, no sign of breathing. Tilting his head, he decides to get a good look at whoever ruined his night. He slides his fingers beneath the edge of the gaiter to pull it down and pushes the goggles up.
“Shit.” He leans closer, staring down at your lifeless face. The blood paints your lips like a dark lipstick and runs down the curve of your cheekbones. “Oh, fuck! What the hell?! What were you even doing here?”
Hearing police sirens in the distance, he swears and moves on impulse. Vigilante scoops up your unmoving body and he rushes through the shop to the back. Bursting through the door, he runs deep into the scrapyard behind the shop and tucks himself into an old van with your body.
He props you against the door across from where he sits, watching blood drip from your lips and speckle the front of your black hooded shirt. Your head is lowered, your arms limply resting at your sides with your gloved hands curled into loose fists. Vigilante can’t believe this is happening.
What were you doing here? There’s no way that you seriously killed all of those men yourself! Why?! His thoughts are racing and he can hear the sirens cut as the police cars park in front of the shop. There’s enough ground between there and here, he could easily make it through the fence to the scrapyard and escape. The problem is that he’ll have to leave you behind.
You’re dead. It’s fine. He can’t haul your corpse around with him and he can’t bring you back to his place. Someone will find you here and he’ll see your face on the news in the morning. Everyone in Fennel Fields will be shocked by it, people are going to wonder how the cute waitress got caught up in a drug dealer massacre.
He’s not upset, he tells himself as he lifts your body into one of the back seats and arranges your hands to rest on your lap. His gloved fingers grip your jaw, positioning your head so your face won’t be looking towards the floor. The blood is drying on your skin, your eyelids slightly open and glassy eyes staring blankly at him. “This sucks,” he mutters, leaning closer. “Why’d you have to do it? Why’d you snipe my kills?!”
You can’t move, as consciousness returns to you. The damage to your body is slowly repairing itself, but you can’t move yet. All you can do is stare at the masked man in front of you, unable to even blink, and listen as he rambles. A numbness has settled over you, muffling the pain to a dull ache in your chest and head. You can feel each slow heartbeat, feel the pressure of his grip on your jaw as he positions you like a doll.
You don’t know who he is. You don’t know why he killed you. After he finally leaves, your body heals enough to let you move. With the red and blue lights at the front of the shop, you know that way isn’t an option. All you can do is hide and wait, to make sure you put plenty of distance between you and that masked man, before you’re able to leave the scrapyard.
The healing process is fairly quick, leaving behind faint scars where you were shot. Something that you easily hide with makeup the next day as you get ready for work. You step into Fennel Fields, settling that mask back into place. That sweet, cute, cheerful mask you wear as a waitress. When you spot your favorite busboy, you flash him a smile. “Hi, Adrian!”