#; hell is empty all the devils are here. / alex & lillian

[danviers]

@daxamight asked: "Is that why you came? To insult me?" (from lillian)

" I don't have to, " Alex offered, a stony retort, the venom in those four words no less unmistakable for their cold restraint.

The Luthor matriarch's drab prison garb, like the iron bars she'd spent the last few months behind — like the flaking cell block numbers stenciled onto the cold, slate grey of the room's cinderblock walls — seemed just about bleak enough to denigrate her on its own. And rightfully so; And yet, since Alex's emergence through the interview room's two - man - guarded doors, Lillian had never lost her seemingly unaffected half - smirk. Had never quite shed the ingratiating outward affectation of perhaps knowing something that might help her leverage her way to freedom.

So, whatever Alex's stolidness suggested, she'd never be completely above wanting to twist the proverbial knife.

" But I know how you operate. So forgive me if I don't take your bait. "

#daxamight #danviers ; asks #; hell is empty all the devils are here. / alex & lillian

[danviers]

' 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄  𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 '

@amazonluthor​ asked:   'do it! pull the trigger, do it do it do it!' for some angst snsjah

There was no tiptoeing around the fact that  Alex had wanted to — that, for as long as she’d known of Cadmus’ existence, despite the Luthor matriarch’s initial admissions of innocence, she’d sincerely craved the satisfaction of putting a bullet through her kneecap, just to impose some authority;  Or perhaps one through the chest, to more cleanly put an end to everything she’d ever stood accused of.

It would only take the pullback of one finger, the steadying draw of a lungful of damp - tinged air, the practiced brace of her tac - vest padded shoulder against the violent recoil to sever the strained tether of their standoff.

Discharging any weapon designed with lethality in mind, at its core, was a learned aptitude like any other, like rappelling from a moving chopper or disarming someone with nothing — a skill acquired in DEO training.  But of everything J’onn had taught her over the years, every fine grain of wisdom he’d shared, he’d never taught her to beat down suspects in holding, or to let the personal bleed into the professional.  

He’d never taught her vengeance.  

The anger seething in the grit of Alex’s jaw, in the tremor of her hands and the rueful, shame - filled gun - barrel of her stare, was all her own.

“ You don’t get to make demands. ”   Measuring the heft of the firearm in her grip with the hesitant flex of her fingers,  Alex’s unsteady, overwrought adjuration incised the space left between them with its thinning, folding steel edge.  Killing her now, in an unsanctioned execution out by the water, would make her no better than the organisation that’d transmuted her father into a shell of himself.  

#amazonluthor #danviers ; asks #; hell is empty - all the devils are here. / alex & lillian

[danviers]

Mirrored in the oil spill gathering in the grooves of her boot soles, its prismatic slick lifting the smell of gasoline and damp, and peeling rust into the frigid early evening air, Alex caught the flare of white sunlight streaming in through a fissure in the door she’d slipped through;  The shift of her own desperate, nearly silent shadow, helmed by the service weapon she held outstretched in her steady hands.

After days, weeks, months spent tracking every inconsequential lead that’d led the DEO’s alpha team to dead end after dead end, impasse after impasse, Alex had felt every iota of hope begin to leave her, the way nearly every last stitch of confidence that some arcane, unknowable trace of the elusive Cadmus’ whereabouts had.  As hopeless as she’d begun to feel, as unachievable as the mission had seemed after the last onslaught of raids she’d led on more than a dozen abandoned agrarian outposts, something in her gut, to say nothing of Winn’s intel, had told her they were close.  

Close, in the abstract, had so far been evidenced by abandoned vehicles still full of gas and open gates, flickering bulbs illuminating recently vacated hangars ---- the indistinct feeling that someone had just left.  

Now, it seemed tangible.  Someone was still here, within hearing distance, in defiance of the rumble of a motor running.  Alex could hear footsteps between the wide, measured pace of her own guarded strides, between tense, protracted breaths, through the echoing, repetitive drip of stagnant water plummeting from the roof above.  Someone was here, lurking just out of sight and shooting range, and come hell or high water, gunfire or hellfire, she wouldn’t let them slip through her fingers without a fight.

“ I know you’re in here, ” Alex barked, the steel in her voice sharper than the hammer of her glock biting into the arch of her thumb.  “ You’re surrounded.  Come out with your hands up.  Right now.  Or swear, I will light you up. ”

@amazonluthor​   gets a starter

#amazonluthor #; hell is empty - all the devils are here. / alex & lillian #/ oop this is long

[danviers]

‘ WAYS TO REACT TO AN INJURY  '

@amazonluthor​ asked:   ‘ here, let me help you. ’

Yielding a sharp and involuntary breath, a knee jerk response to the first attempt she’d made to drag her limp, awkwardly angled left arm in and across her soot-stained armoured chest,  Alex lifted her chin to meet her unlikely savior’s eyes with grit jaw and taut, tense shoulders ;  a glower, locked somewhere between hesitant and dubious, that began to wane just as quickly as it’d flourished.

For what felt like eons, in her eyes, Lillian had been the devil, or close to it  — a spectre of furtive infamy and terror, all hidden in the ever roving shadow ( the living, ever shifting source of so much pain )  that had been Cadmus.   To trust her now, when, in spite of her numerous attempts at proclaiming her innocence, her unwillingness to do any of the things she’d done... it seemed to go against Alex’s very nature, her instincts, her every staunch belief in justice.  

Still, there was a lingering kernel of J’onn’s wisdom she couldn’t block out;  That people inherently changed.  That, whatever their past sins, people could change.  That without giving people the room to absolve themselves of their mistakes, without giving them a chance to do better, to do the right thing, what was the point in trying to save everyone?

In contempt of her hesitation to shake off her distrust, Alex extended her uninjured hand in irresolute assent.  Sceptical or not, the agony radiating through her ostensibly broken arm made it difficult to discern just where the pain began and ended, let alone pick herself up off the parking lot asphalt.

“ Look —  I know that you are trying to convince me that you are on our side, ”  she rebuked.  “ But I can take care of myself. ”

#amazonluthor #danviers ; asks #; hell is empty - all the devils are here. / alex & lillian