Title: let the bad girls bend
Fandom: barely lethal
Rating: teen
Length: ~700 words
Author notes: new fandom, gen- heather & victoria knox, title from metric's gold guns girls


“84!”

“Yes sir,” she answers quick, ready. She’s finally top dog, finally going to get her own mission. No more playing second fiddle to the emotional wreck. Maybe an assassination, or a heist, or-

“Knox isn’t talking. Tend to her wounds and see if you can get anything.”

She keeps the frown off her face, but can’t help hesitate a moment. Hardman naturally picks up on it instantly. “Well? Out with it 84.”

“Sir- if she’s as smart as you say, won’t she know what I’m doing?”

“I’m counting on it.”

.

“Here for round two then? It’s taken long enough.”

She doesn’t respond to Victoria, checking her restraints before sitting beside her.

“This Hardman’s new move? Bore the torturee until they crack?”

Eleven neat stitches up her arm, four on her knee. Thirteen on her stomach, and nine for her thigh. They’ve been avoiding Knox’s beautiful face and hands, not that she should be noticing her face at all. She’s deadly and gorgeous and poised even bleeding, and 84 doesn’t know if she wants to grow up and be her one day or marry her.

She swallows, “You asked my name earlier. It’s 84.”

“That’s a number, not a name.”

Her lips thin and she doesn’t answer. It isn’t as if she knows what those two fools named her, the ones that couldn’t even stay alive long enough to-

“I’m not calling you a number that’s ridiculous. I’ll call you Heather.”

She nearly reacts- Heather’s the name of a silly rich girl who drinks all her problems away- when she sees Victoria’s smirk. “It’s 84.”

“If I tell you my favorite candy, can I call you Heather?”

Her breath catches, eyes wide with the realization. “You went to Prescott.”

“Gold star Heather.”

She puts the thread and needle back in the medkit, thoughts racing. “I don’t understand. How can you sell weapons after working so hard to stop people like you?”

“Well Heather,” she starts, and 84 can’t keep hearing the name. It feels too good, sinfully so, but she doesn’t ask Knox to stop. Because that would give away how much it’s affecting her. (And because she’d stop saying the name, and a dark corner of her mind is already whispering my name.)

“Living is expensive darling. You’ll learn that once you’re out of here.”

Her cheeks are burning and fuck maybe she should just leave. There’s no saving this, only-

“That and I like killing people,” Victoria finishes.

She laughs, accidental and unscripted and the only way to describe Knox’s smile is smug.

The door beeps, and she jumps to her feet.

“Dismissed 84.”

Hardman sits on the table, far too close to- the prisoner- didn’t even check her security. 84 leaves, can’t help a final glance at her.

(She’s like a trickster god, all ease and amusement and destruction.)

.

She- 84- isn’t used to failing. She’s always been objectively better than 83, has always deserved to be the favorite. That Hardman promoted the little brat for so long, even when her compassion and empathy and attachments kept coming back, was madness. She’s spent many a night dreaming up different ways to kill 83- some more painful, others ironic, some humiliating- they’re all wonderful ideas. A pity she’ll never get to do them, but she’d much rather a world without 83 than needing to indulge in revenge.

The point, is she didn’t get any new information from Knox. She expected a slap on the wrist- he couldn’t possibly expect real results given the woman’s past- and a new assignment.

Instead Hardman sent her to take over guarding her cell.

“Be familiar with her,” he said. “Use the name thing.”

Blood pounds in her ears, and she stiffly nods. Hardman has a name, to be so flippant about it, sometimes she wants to-

She takes a deep breath, walking downstairs. She’s misdirecting her anger. Anger is for enemies, not mentors.

“Heather! And here I was worried they’d let me rot alone down here.”

“Were you really?” she says, nearly snorts.

Knox winks, “Valuable goods like me? Nope.”

“Oh we don’t need that,” she says, a positively evil idea coming to mind.

“Why else would I be alive? Try harder dear.”

“For reprogramming of course. Hardman says you were first for a reason.”

But Knox doesn’t look terrified at the possibility, merely smiles. An odd smile that sends a shiver down her back, and Heather decides this is enough for the day, leaving abruptly.

(Victoria smiles all night- the girl offered reprogramming like a curse- she can be turned.)