Wraith & Kennedy

[Wraith]

"Nothing I can tell you about that one," Wraith said, honestly enough--she wasn't claiming she didn't know anything, after all. "We really should sneak around together sometime...see what we can learn..."

[Kennedy]

"Probably nothing terribly interesting, though," Kennedy sighed.

[Wraith]

Wraith raised her eyebrows and lowered her voice dramatically. "Really? 'Cause I heard of this girl...rumor has it she's a vengeful whore who killed two cops, and she's planning to kill again!"

Only when she was drunk--and trying rather hard to impress someone--did Wraith have the power to make her own traumas sound like one of Tag's thrilling novels.

[Kennedy]

Kennedy gasped, immediately intrigued.

"Really?? Why??"

[Wraith]

"They did something bad to her," Wraith explained, partly reluctant to delve into an incident so ugly she hadn't even told Ershey about it, and partly because she didn't really care to darken Kennedy's sunny demeanor--Wraith had more than enough angst for the both of them.

[Kennedy]

"Sounds like a horror story," Kennedy said, curling up as she listening to Wraith. She was completely absorbed.

[Wraith]

Damn the alcohol. And the cozy hiding place. And pretty girls who showed flattering interest, if not quite the right kind. "It is," Wraith confessed, and launched into the story.

"Once upon a time, there were these two kids, a young girl and her brother--he was a little bit older--and they lived with their parents. The mother and father were always fighting, though, and the little girl would get scared and hide under the bed. It was her brother who looked out for her, and she loved him a lot, but he was kinda overprotective. The girl never really learned to take care of herself.

"Well, the father left the mother, and she wasn't the type who could be alone for long, so she brought another man home. He was just as loud and drunk and rude as the father, and he even used to beat the kids up now and then. So the boy decided to run off, and he took his sister with him. And they weren't doing so bad for a while...squatting in abandoned buildings and under the docks, staying in boardinghouses when they could afford to. He would steal for 'em, see, and gamble and make bargains--the girl didn't know what all he did, but he kept 'em both fed and clothed. But one day, he got caught stealing and thrown in the Refuge. And the girl was on her own.

"She didn't know what to do. She thought about stealing like her brother, but she'd never learned how, and she was terrified she'd get caught too. So when she met another girl who said she could make easy money down by the docks, and the bulls always looked the other way--well, she thought it was her only option.

"That's how she became a whore," Wraith added, kind of unnecessarily. "And, God, she hated it. Especially when a girl from her old school spotted her one day...someone she used to be...real close with. That embarrassed her so much that she decided she would learn how to not be seen. How to disguise herself, sneak from place to place, go unnoticed in a crowd. And she did. She really mastered it. She finally knew how to look after herself.

"Until she got a customer one night who wasn't willing to pay. A cop who took her back to this seedy hotel room where two of his buddies were waiting." Wraith paused, seemingly for dramatic emphasis, though she was actually steeling herself. "They beat her up and...hurt her. Lots of ways. Finally, they just left her there. Never figured she could be a threat. Just a whore, after all, and only fourteen years old."

She drummed her fingers on the rafter and kind of rushed through the ending. "Well, like I said, this girl was supposed to be a master of stealth, someone who could sneak in and out of anywhere and never get caught. I dunno if it's true. All I know is, two of those cops got killed within a few months, and no suspects were ever named. And they say that now she's got her eye on the third."

[Kennedy]

Kennedy was staring at Wraith, breath caught in her throat.

"And that's how you became a ghost, Wraith?" she could barely whisper.

[Wraith]

((Oh my goodness, so dramatic, I love it.))

It wasn't like she hadn't known Kennedy would figure it out. "That's how."

[Kennedy]

Kennedy smiled sadly at Wraith.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She leaned in and kissed the corner of Wraith's lips.

[Wraith]

((Dude, this is probably her first moment of happiness since I created her. ^_^))

Wraith stared at her for a long moment with absolutely enormous eyes, then leaned forward and kissed her again, soft but lingering, because there comes a moment when you really have to make sure that no one's misinterpreting anything.

[Kennedy]

Kennedy's lips quipped up into a smile against Wraith's. She pulled away and was still smiling.

"Do you feel a little better now?" she asked hopefully.

((YAY! XD ))

[Wraith]

"Much," Wraith squeaked. She actually felt a little dizzy and in danger of falling off the rafter, but better, for sure. In fact, she suddenly looked and felt exactly like a tipsy fifteen-year-old girl with a crush, as if the pain and fear that always haunted her eyes, and the sheer emotional distance, had suddenly and shockingly gone away.

"Y-you're not gonna tell anyone, right?" she stammered, totally unclear on whether she was referring to her harrowing tale or the kiss, or both.

[Kennedy]

Kennedy frowned, looking guilty.

"I know I'm really bad at secrets. I don't think much before I speak. But I'll try."

[Wraith]

Wraith laughed a little bit hysterically at the irony of all this. She, the most elaborately cautious, guarded, unforthcoming newsie in Manhattan, had just confided all of her secrets, all of them, in a girl who had just gotten done blabbing the secrets of practically all the newsies in two boroughs.

And she'd done it for a kiss.

"If you have any deep, dark secrets of your own, now would be a good time to tell me so we can blackmail each other," she said half-seriously.