not a happy reunion

who: eris and patrick
where: one more round
when: late night

Eris hadn't exactly had a good day. There had been the encounter with Brett, which had been heart wrenching to start with, but afterwords, she was faced with the idea that she wasn't allowed to finish things off like she wanted. Not if she planned to keep her word, and so far she did. She didn't like it, but she would. After she'd pulled herself together, she'd taken a trip to the bank. There she set up a separate account in Brett's name, and set up proceeds for the business to be dropped into it, and checks to be mailed to him every Monday. If he wasn't going to give a damn about the business they'd set up that was fine, but that didn't mean she had to just let it sit there, either. She'd just set things up differently for him.

After that, she'd taken a little bit of the fairly decent chunk of money they did have in the bank, and she figured she needed a drink. Possibly a lot of drinks. And the only place she wanted to have them was at the Round. She'd headed in there, sat in one of the back corners by the bar, and started working her way through a bottle of vodka. There were people around her, of course, but she was paying no actual attention to who they might be. Knocking back another shot, she set the glass down harder than necessary, and tried not to feel like she was teetering on the edge of a cliff--something easier said than done.

By now, Becky had allowed him another drink or so, and he was damn thankful for it. Nothing too interesting had gone down at the Round so far, but the late night crowd was in, and Patrick was ready. The air in the place was getting a bit stuffy, and he’d rolled the sleeves of his work shirt up around the bulging muscles of his biceps. He took a quick swipe of the bar area with his eyes to see the regulars and a new face - except it wasn’t really new, was it? Patrick felt something strong, his fist clenched hard and it took everything in him not to grab a pool cue off the wall and go right for her. He’d seen her too many times at Babylon not to recognize her, strolled right past her into meetings with the rest of the O’Malleys at the establishment. He’d always given her a wink with the dip of his hat... the usual O’Malley fake charm. Stockard.

Forgetting the pool cue, Bull thudded his way over to the back corner where she’d settled herself for the night and picked up the bottle of vodka in front of her to eye the label. “Mind if I join you?” he asked. It wasn’t really a question, but he was interested in her reaction nonetheless.

When she realized her space was being invaded, she tensed--something that was normal for her these days. That sort of thing happened when people had tried to kill you and such. It was a Thing. And hey! It so didn't help that she recognized the voice, then confirmed it when she looked sideways at Bull O'Malley. Fabulous. Absolutely goddamn fabulous. But, in her current state of mind and the fact that she was possibly just a little self destructive at the moment, she fixed a smile on the man, something that had a dark undertone to it. "Why not." she said. "Sit down and have a drink, Bull." she invited, making a gesture towards the seat next to her.

He sat opposite her, and proceeded to pour himself a drink into her shot glass. He downed it almost immediately. As far as he was concerned, all his damn problems stemmed from her business, her establishment that his family took over and then got sucked out from them almost just as quick. Patrick didn’t know much about what happened in the in-between, but he really didn’t care. His Patrick-logic put together an equation that only ended in a shit-ton of anger directed at her. Eris. He wiped his face with his hand and sighed, deeply. “What you doin’ here, Stockard?” he asked. He had to start somewhere. And he did want to know.

"What, you mean aside from still breathing when your family tried to ensure I wasn't anymore?" Eris asked, pouring another shot and she knocked that back as well, setting the glass back down. "A little of this, a little of that." she said. "How're things going, anyway? You lot have a nice family reunion planned for the summer? For the scraps of you that are left?" She was aware that she was antagonizing the man. That she wasn't helping her case at all, but there was something to not giving a damn about your own life that made one a little fearless. So, in Eris' case, she didn't have the self preservation button anymore. It had stopped working quite a while ago, in fact. She'd just had someone else to help her out with things, and she didn't anymore. So, it was far more pronounced.

It was funny how easily ideas started formulating in his head, terrible, violent ideas of exactly everything he could do to her and how he would do it if he really wanted. It was a shame, too, since she was so damn beautiful. He could see what the other O’Malleys had started from the scar around her neck. In a weird twisted way, it made him long for his family more than ever before. And yet, in his line of work, he’d seen this kind of thing before. She was making things too easy, jabbing at him like that. Sitting there, drinking her miseries away. He wasn’t quite sure if she had a death wish, but she was obviously playing on the reckless side tonight. “Things are shit,” he admitted. “As you could prolly guess. You wanna tell me exactly how y’are still breathing? That scar is pretty nasty.”

"Obviously your man missed." Eris said. "I wasn't quite dead. Got tossed in the river, and woke up when I hit the water.” She was keeping Brett out of it. “The rest is history, really. Like you and yours." Like Babylon, which she'd burned to the ground herself, both figuratively and literally. "And mm. Yes, it is pretty nasty. You know just what to say to make a girl feel all fluttery, Bully." she told him, batting her eyelashes at him, though it was more in a mocking fashion than anything else. She poured the shot glass full again, and set it in front of him. "What are you doing here? Just scraping by, waiting for someone to wander along and give you orders?" she asked.

“Missed” was putting it lightly. This was the biggest fuck-up of the century. The O’Malleys were better than that, they got their shit done. Damn, it was hard not to hit something. He downed the second shot and proceeded to throw the shot glass at the wall behind her. The shatter caused the room to go quiet for a second, but the sound of broken glass was nothing new at the One More Round and the chatter started up soon after. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked. “I’m a member of society now, working here at the Round.”

She didn't react to the motion, but did a little to the shattering of the glass behind her. She guessed that was tame, considering her current company. She tsked, shaking her head. "Temper temper." she said, tone a little too sweet to be nice. "That all you got?" she asked. And it echoed in the back of her head. That was a question she'd asked Brett upon occasion, and it was in entirely different circumstances. "You're just going to pout, and throw things like a toddler?" she asked, looking at him skeptically, and she drummed her fingernails on the tabletop.

He knew it now. Someone only asked that all you got when they wanted it. He watched her fingers, so much smaller than his, and reached out to take her hand. It was a hard, firm, grasp that gave the intention of not letting go anytime soon. “You know who you’re dealing with,” he confirmed. “But I have to wonder why you’re playing this game with me, Eris. You used to be hot shit, you know? And now you’re in here at the Round with all the other street scum, askin’ for me to kick the shit out of you like any other dirtbag that wanders in.” He gave a shrug and leaned forward in his chair a bit. “Not that I mind, sugar. But you’re all broken now. Doesn’t look too good on you.”

"Used to be." Eris said. "Then some assholes decided they wanted to take what was mine and had me 'killed', remember? That was you. Now, I know it might be hard for you to think back that far, and to even understand what happened," she said in a mock sympathetic tone, "The real question is what do you care? Why do you want to know? What does it matter to you if broken doesn't look good on me?" she posed. She didn't try to take her hand back, knowing that he'd be able to overpower her entirely on that score, so why bother?

He laughed, mainly because that was the first instinct he had. Of course she would insult his intelligence, he was used to it. Insult the big beefy guy that never finished high school. Very, very original. “Don’t get me wrong,” he started, and increased the pressure of his hand on hers by a smidgen. “I like an easy fight. I live for an easy fight, and I’ll fight an easy fight any fuckin’ day of the week. But you? I got a real problem with you, and you’re just makin’ this too damn easy for me.” Patrick chuckled again. “Hell, I like you all shiny. I think it’s sad you’re not you anymore. ‘Cause that woman you used to be? That’s what I wanna fight.”

Eris rolled her eyes. "Well maybe you killed her." she said. "Nasty side effect of y'know, having someone killed. You don't get to fight them later. And what 'real problem' could you possibly have with me?" she asked. "You fucked me over, remember? If you got what was coming to you, that's just karma, heading back your way, dearest. But maybe I did have something to do with it. Maybe I took you down much more efficiently than you did me." It was her turn to lean forward, and she patted his cheek with her free hand. "Maybe, I burned my own empire just to watch you all go up in flames with it." Which happened to be true on some levels, even if it wasn't her entire motivation. She gave a dark smile.

“Except you ain’t dead.” he tried to reason. She was very much there to fight, she was just... weak. If she was still the Eris he used to know, she’d be at some fancy party, ruling the city elite like nobody could. Nah, he didn’t like this version. The dead one, as she liked to put it. Her “confession” was what peaked his interest, and brought him back to her first question. “And it looks like you’ve answered that yourself. You’re sayin’ you killed my family. I’d say that’s a pretty big problem.” He’d ignored the pat on the cheek, but she wasn’t going to get away with touching him for long. Patrick didn’t work that way.

"What makes you think that I wouldn't spend my energy taking your lot apart after what you did?" she asked, not sitting back at all. "And no, I'm not dead. And just because I'm here, means that I'm laying low for the night. That's all. You don't know anything about me anymore, sweetie. And maybe if you had even a little bit of your contacts left, you'd not have been surprised that I'm around. I've been back out for a while. And everyone knows that you messed with me, and now you're a pathetic band of nobodies, just trying to scrape by like the rats you are."

Well, she at least knew where it hurt, he could give her that. She certainly wasn’t wrong, but Bull knew he had the upper hand here in the end. He’d been trying to calculate the exact moment for awhile now, and yet, he kept letting her take a swing at him with every word. Maybe on some strange level he wanted it, too. After all, he was a nobody now. Shit he needed more alcohol. But first! Violence. Violence he could do, and it was something in which they weren’t evenly matched. And in a way, her claws had come out and stayed out. For starters, he stood and swiped the table away from them, the bottle of vodka crashing to the floor. “You’re right, Eris,” he told her. “I don’t know anything about you. I say we get to know each other outside.” Not that he expected for her to go willingly. So he pulled her up by the hand he still had and started out the back door.

That was what she'd been waiting for. That was the Bull she knew. Patrick O'Malley--only good for one thing. He'd never had a single other thing going for him. And people were looking over at this point, though considering the guy was the bouncer, it was possible he was just tossing her out. He just wasted the remains of a perfectly good bottle of vodka while he was at it, apparently. She walked along with him, not wanting to give the satisfaction of dragging her. She trailed behind, though, not walking alongside with him, so when they got out into the side alley, she quickly kicked as hard as she could into the back of his knee--not really wanting to get into this without at least putting up a fight of her own. Some internal switch in her head dictated she had to, and she had left Brett's gun at the apartment they'd shared, so she was a whole lot of unarmed.

Patrick almost felt like laughing through the pain. It had hurt, slightly, but what did she weigh, barely over one hundred pounds? He gave props for her trying, though. A fight was a fight, after all. He turned quickly and retaliated with a swift but heavy jab to her cheek, figuring that would at least throw her off guard while he decided what he would do next. It wasn’t his greatest idea of a good time, hitting a woman, but this wasn’t any woman, as they’d established. Their history in his mind made it acceptable to use her as a punching bag for the time being.

It had been a long time since Eris had been hit. She'd grown up in a home where it happened frequently, though she'd gotten out of there. Then she'd had a bodyguard when she'd had Babylon, not that that had done her any good when the O'Malley's had sent a man to kill her. He'd hit her. He'd done a lot of things to her. Then she'd had Brett in her life--a man who swore up and down he'd never hit her, and while she expected that to be untrue, he never had. But here she was again, taking a hit, and the pain that rose up was duller than she knew it was meant to be. But that was the alcohol talking. She'd been drinking pretty heavily, and one never felt pain like they were meant to when they had as much pumping through her system as she did. Still, the force of it knocked her back, and her back hit the wall of the building, which at least kept her on her feet. She just fixed a glare on Patrick. "Anyone ever tell you you're a weak, pathetic son of a bitch?" she asked him, rubbing the back of her hand against her cheek, just to be sure he hadn't cut her or anything.

Bull nodded and spat a wad of saliva onto the floor. “Weak pathetic son of a bitch? Yeah, I think so. Few times.” He stood back for a second, knowing she wasn’t stupid enough to try and run. “Didn’t you used to have some big special body guard watching your every move? I remember the guy, standin’ next to you when we’d meet at Babylon. I guess you lost him, huh. Shame.” He removed a small blade as he spoke, a tiny thing concealed with a black handle, and fumbled it from hand to hand. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to use it. Decisions, decisions.

She didn't so much glance down as she was aware he had something there. She could feel heat on her cheek as she knew it was going to swell up. She didn't really have a desire to be knifed in the alley here, but oh well. She'd gotten herself into this. She wasn't going to go groveling now, especially for a life that was pretty devoid of anything remotely resembling merit. She kicked at his knee again, this time the side of it. Really, the thing was, regardless of how big and strong a man was--people couldn't stand if their knee was blown out. End of story. So she picked the same one she'd kicked the first time. She was at a disadvantage, and didn't know if it would work--she would guess it wasn't, but still. "He was dead weight." she told him. Which wasn't true. And she was still hurt over the entire mess with Clayton. She still didn't know if he'd even been in on it, taking her down. She'd not seen him since before her untimely 'death'.

Okay, so she was smart. He growled, a low guttural sound and the fact that he was in intense pain ticked him off more than ever. Patrick doubled over, and raised the small combat blade as he went. Once he was close enough in range, he got up close - too close - and first pinned the back of her right hand to the wall she leaned up against with his own. Then came the blade. He stuck it into her palm with extreme force in an effort to pin it there with her against the alley wall of the Round. “Stop kicking me,” he hissed, close enough to her face so she could feel the harsh scruff of his beard. Oh hey, blood.

Eris had done that to someone before--pinned their hand to the wall with a blade. She'd done it to the first person who had ever tried to break Babylon's rules about no violence that wasn't fully consensual. It had made it's point. And regardless of the alcohol running through her system, there wasn't anything for a knife getting jammed through your hand and stuck to the wall behind it. That had her letting out a short little shriek, and her breathing got labored immediately. she could definitely feel him there, his beard against her cheek. "Pathetic. Son of a bitch." she said, voice shaking, but she said it anyway. And she went to knee him in the groin, even if she didn't have enough leverage to make it the hardest hit in the world. There was still enough oomph behind it to make it hurt.

Patrick’s downfall had been not stepping back after he’d stabbed her, apparently, and felt it full force as he literally experienced a downfall, dropping to one knee in pain. His hand let go of the knife as it stayed put through her hand in the wall. Bull looked up at her and choked out another laugh. He was having fun now, more so that she was bleeding. “You asked for it.” he pointed out. Technically, his family had started the whole thing, but his mind only went back far enough to tonight’s encounter. Patrick stood, slowly. “Too bad I don’t have another blade on me. I think both hands would make some sort of a statement, y’think?” He stood back - far back - to admire his handiwork.

Eris reached up to try and get the knife out, though that required moving it back and forth, which just hurt all the more. But she couldn't exactly stand there bleeding, hand pinned all night, and she didn't plan on it. "I think you're a idiot who wouldn't be able to even put together what kind of a statement it would be making." She snapped, that helping her through the intense pain. She was shaking, she could feel that much. And there was blood, which she knew from experience would get worse when she got the blade out. She couldn't tell yet if she was going to lose the use of fingers or not, and really wasn't even thinking that far ahead.

“Eh, The Echo would come up with something for me, I’m sure.” Patrick told her. As much fun as it would be to leave her there, Bull had a better idea. Besides, he wanted his knife back. He was mostly a hand-to-hand kind of guy, and didn’t exactly have access to the biggest weapon collection since his family was all gone. So, Patrick reached his hand back on the black handle of the blade and yanked, hard. The blood that flowed out of her palm was all the more delightful, and he wiped the blood from the blade of the weapon onto his shirt before replacing the knife back in it’s proper case. Now all he needed was... aha. Perfect. After doing a quick scan of the alley, he spotted it: the dumpster.

She was dripping. and she slid down a little on the wall, pulling her hand in to cradle in against her in an automatic reaction to the pain. Closing her eyes for a long moment, she actually just shut everything out. Him, the sounds she could hear from inside, the rapid blood loss she was going through, all she held onto was the pain, bright, sharp. Giving herself a second, she drew in a breath, and let it out. Then she let her eyes fall on him again, dark. "You never were all that creative." she told him, voice shaking.

“Nope.” he agreed. His job with the O’Malleys had never been to be creative. It was exactly what he was doing now: inflicting pain, and Patrick was sure Eris and her hand would agree that he was good at it. Bull could tell she wasn’t going to last much longer with her snide comments, anyway. “This move, however, is a classic.” he started, and reached down in an effort to throw her over his shoulder.

That had her kicking in to overdrive. She didn't want to be picked up and brought anywhere, period, and that was when she started to actually struggle, to rake the nails of her good hand at his cheek and eye, where she kicked hard at his stomach and groin. It was fast, and fierce, as much as she possibly could manage in an attempt to get away from him, and she grabbed for the nearest thing she could find--a broken bottle that she used to slash at him too.

She caught him in the eye pretty good with both her nails and the bottle and Bull dropped her hard on the concrete to reach up and cover his now bloody face. Shit. That? Had hurt, as did the rest of him from her struggling. It was officially time to take care of this bitch, in his opinion. He immediately bent down to recapture her into his arms as best he could, punching everywhere and hoping one would land hard enough to knock her senseless.

She slashed at him as much as she could, at his leg, his side and stomach with the broken bottle, but in the end he was a lot bigger than she was, and she didn't have the constitution she used to. Eris didn't stop struggling immediately, a few of the blows hitting in various places, but it wasn't till he cracked her in the head again that it stunned her, sending the world swimming. There was a brief thought about her already prominent brain damage, and wondering if Brett would keep his promise not to let her land in Bedlam should this make it worse. But things slid into the black after that, and she went limp.

And now he was bleeding well... everywhere. That was just great. Why did broken bottles have to be in alleyways, anyway? Patrick cursed every word of Irish slang he could think of, but at least she was out. He would definitely have to do a massive clean-up on himself later that night, which hadn’t happened too often, but wouldn’t be too much trouble. He was more pissed at himself that he’d let her injure him, though he had said that he’d wanted to fight the old Eris, the Eris with spunk. Or in this case, the Eris that could cut him up pretty darn good. Wonderful.

Patrick, breathing heavy from struggling with her, eventually managed to compose himself and headed towards the dumpster. The lid came off easy as pie, and next was Eris. He scooped her up with no problem, her bloody hand only getting him more dirty, and dropped her in with a thud. The top went back on, and Bull dusted his hands as if he’d actually just disposed of the late night trash from the One More Round. And Eris was trash, as far as Patrick was concerned.