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In the span of her entire 20 years on this planet, jamie had never felt the feeling that is love.
Never to a another person her age, a parental figure or a sibling. She has had people that she finds more agreeable than others , and people she doesnt like , but its never been anything that she believes would fall under the emotion of love.
Her dad was a bastered, and she had no human mother, just a man made incubator, no parental unit had ever entered her life. She has acquaintances, not friends, there is no one in that basterd orphanage she likes. No one has ever tried to know her, and she has never tried to know anyone back. Her soul goes into her work, and her work alone, and shes never found anyone that was worth sacrificing that time for.
But theres a small part of her brain that thinks maybe she has now. But thats a dangerous thought to have.
She shakes her head as she picks up the pace. Those thoughts wont do, its to late to be having those now. Maybe when she was smaller, younger. Maybe when she still had a chance to back out of the millitry service and her position in the government.
Maybe when she still had a chance to be a actual functional person, before she was to tangled in the mess of politics and lies that corrodes this country.
The halls of the dilapidated Church she walks through are the familiar off white colour, dusty with time. She remembers going to Church as a child , a mandatory practice in the orphanage she grew up in. There where definitely nicer churches than this one, but jamie remebers this one quite clearly, the many hours upon hours she spent as a child in the pews , waiting for the service to end. She used to find a fair bit of comfort in it as a child, in the songs and the storys, in a particularly kind priest or somthing else lost to time and the days of her youth.
She finds less comfort now, even though she still attends. Not this Church, god no, but she will still make time to pop in to the occasional service when she feels like it, sit up the back by herself and reflect in silence. Its nice, provides a comfort she doesnt get much nowadays.
She stops at a set of doors, old dusty mahogany ones, the entrance to the chaple. The handels on the door are rusty also, however , there is the faint outline of a hand, cutting through the recently disturbed dust that tells her exactly what she needs to know. Shes here already.
With a deep breath and a shake of her shoulders, jamie opens the door, heavy , awful things. The chapel is dim, despite the rays of light being let in through the high up windows. Its freezing cold , even in her suit, the cold concrete floor echo's as she steps inside. The chaple is empty , besides one figure slouching against the wall to the left.
The ginger women stands a few pews down, slouched against one of the pillars. Shes terrifying. Even as a kid jamie was scared of her, five years older and in a league of her own, skills wise. Even as an adult, jamie herself now all grown up, Samantha Hadley still scares her, and not just because of her strength.
Samantha knows about her childhood, they have a shared past at the orphanage. Samantha is a unfortunate connection between her work and her past.
"I hate this place" sam mutters , her voice low and cross. "I always did. Stinks of mold and shit"
As Jamie's aproches her, sam turns to look at her , although remains slouched against the wall. Pathetic. Samantha might have been the stronger one, but if you were to look at them objectively, one of them is slouched and tattered, while the other is standing tall and clean. Samantha has let herself go.
" you never really were one for church , where you Hadley?" Jamie smirks and she pretends to look at the statue next to them.
"Neither you nore your brother"
At this sam scowls at her , eyebrows furrowed. "You keep scotts name out ya' fuckn' mouth-"
"I'm not here for scott" jamie interrupts, rolling her eyes, " I'm bairly even here for you, actually. I need to give you guys a message."
Jamie stares her down, and sam stares at her right back.
" you need to tell your gang, your messengers , your people, your WHATEVER , to get the fuck out of the city of Diana. NOW. They know where you are and they know how to find you. The parliament is already on edge, if they so much as suspect your people are in the capital territory they will kill you."
Samantha groans , pretending to roll her eyes and slouch over even further. Jamie's eye twitches.
"Right, cheers kids. Thanks for the reliable intel. Ill be sure to drop it off on the bosses desk at some point."
Jamie grits her teeth. "I didnt have to do this Samantha, I could rat you out in an instant, have you, your brother and that bitch your call your fíance dead on the street in an hour."
Samantha's face hardens.
"Then why dont you jamie! Why dont you do it! Call your boss or whatever warlord you work under to come down and kill us! Continue to stand on that sinking ship as our country dies around us! Then maybe, just maybe, when they finally decide to come for you too, you will question what all of this was for."
Samantha yells as she shifts off the wall , standing to face her properly. Sam towers above her, but jamie stands her ground. Samantha might be strong, but she is easy to manipulate, driven by emotion and loyal to a fault. Maybe thats why Samantha wasn't cut out to serve in the military. A women grown soft with emotion , grow weak with feelings. Pathetic.
Jamie continues to stare at her , although she has to look up at her now, a truly daunting sight. If it were a battel of strength and power, Samantha would win hands down.
The lab testing they both went through at a younger age made Samantha strong and powerful. It had increased her bodys ability and physical fitness way past what was normal for the average human. She towers at six foot two, and looks more like a machine than a twenty five year old women. She looks off putting too, her short ginger hair pushed back off her face to reveal grotesque scaring , a massive slash across her face, a crooked nose from a break healed wrong, and missing teeth to match. She looks the part of a monster.
Herself on the other hand, stood no chance. Jamie is smaller, similar combat training , just with a normal body. Her abilty to conduct static that the experiments gave her is nothing compared to what they made sam, her powers only useful if given a weapon to weild and store it. In comparison she is nothing , bairly a foot note in the production of humanity's test subjects for a stronger human.
Samantha's weakness is in her family, her home and her loyalty. Shes loyal like a dog, nothing but an attack hound for the rebellion, While Jamie's loyalty lies with her country , theres no one they can take from her, she has no one soul that she is loyal to now.
There's a small part of jamie that wonders that if it really comes down to it, maybe both of them are useless. Samantha has the power but no ambition, and jamie is ambitious with no power. Maybe both of them are broken
Jamie takes a step back, slow and controlled, trying to conceal the slight shake in her step. She takes a deep breath as she stares samantha right between the eyes, careful not to make eye contact, but enough to appear unphased.
"Fine, whatever. Tell your boss, keep it to yourself, I dont really care. If your informants are still on the street by Monday, I'll kill them myself."
Another step back. Jamie busys herself in dusting off her suit jacket, even though theres nothing on it. The smooth black fabric shines dully as she runs her hands over it. The slight shine of her cuff links twinkle back at her. She doesnt look up , but shes hear samantha shift slightly, and sees her feet disappear from the edge of her periphery.
"You can try. I can tell belinda, if that's what you want, but it wasn't even her idea. It was Percys."
At that, Jamie's hands still for a second, pause as they went to fix her suit. In horror , she notices her hands tremble slightly as she adjusts the buttons, and to her absolutely terror, she can tell samantha has noticed too. She hears a dry chuckle, low and mocking, as samantha shoves past her in the direction of the door.
"Hey, not so cocky now are you kid. Its such a shame you love that boy so much, because he fucking despises you."
Jamie stands still as she let's sam brush past her. As sam heads to the door , jamies brain races, to think of a reply. Somthing, anything.
"I do not love him" she spits as she hastily wips around to catch samantha, who is nearly at the chaple doors by now. She wants to throw things, she wants to scream. She wants to do somthing, ANYTHING other than stand alone in this cold ass chaple and be humiliated by a ex military reject.
Samantha only snorts at her in response.
"For your sake love, you better hope you dont."
And with that, samantha exists the chaple , massive mahogany doors bang shut behind her. Jamie is frozen in place , fists clenched and mind racing.
Percy. The first person who she ever really thought that she could more than tolerate.
She had met him more than a year ago, while she was still undercover in Samantha's rebelion , sending Intel back to the military base on traitors to the government. Percy was one of them.
Originally, jamie couldn't care less about him, but as the weeks went on, percy had warmed to her. He was wairy of this rebellion stuff at first , and when she seeked him out for information, he was quick to warm to her. But what she didnt expect was to warm to him to.
It wasn't enough to abandon her mission , but it was scarily close, the closest she ever been. She remembers the day she left , after signing out for the day , she originally intended to just slink out, never come back , but she made the mistake of hesitating. Before she left , she cornered him in one of the ally ways out the back of the libary, and asked him to join her.
It was stupid, she knows that now. Hell, she probably even knew it then to , but she did it anyway.
And for a second, he hesitated. Even if it was just for a second, he thought about it, thought about what she had asked. It was just a second, but she clings to that second like it was a life time. She could have a had a chance.
But then his brother walked around the corner. As his eyes trailed from hers to Adams, it was in that split second she knew she had lost any chance of him coming with her. Because percy had somthing she never had, a family.
It was then when jamie took her chance to run. Percy yelled out and adam went to reach for his jacket. If she where to redo the situation, she would have done it diffrently , if only she want acting on adrenalin.
Adam, while a physicaly intimidating opponent, was a terrible fighter. He didnt even carry a gun, he had some stupid moral code against them, and weilded only a small machete, which he had no control over. She should have just disarmed him and ran.
But in the moment, she was scared. Not scared of the combat, god no. Jamie has, and will go up against most people, or even groups of people , it wasn't adam that scared her, but somthing much more terrifying. It was her vulnerability. She bared her soul, she had dragged whatever scraps of normal human emotion she had in her out and then it on the payment only for it to be swiftly stamped out.
So when she turned to adam, she didnt see percys brother, she saw a threat.
It happened in a flash, a second so quick she can bairly remember. Within a blink, she had disarmed him and thrust the knife at him, a warning to back the fuck off.
But adam wasn't a trained soldier, he was bairly a fighter at all. Any trained soldier, or even a civilian with any weapons training would have known to move, known that what she did was a warning.
But Adam wasn't one of those civilians. Adam was a dock worker. He had never had the nessesery training to be able to weild a weapon. Or how to dodge one.
She didnt even register what had happened for a few seconds, she only braced for a responce , crouched back with the knife angled towards him.
It was only when adam went to touch him face, only when his mouth appeared to be melting did she realise what she'd done.
She had slashed his face open, a wide gash from the corner of his mouth to the middle of his cheek. She remembers it looked somthing akin to a demented grin, on half his face atleast.
The three of them stand frozen. Jamie had felt the adrenalin rush, making her dizzy and disorientated. A wave of nausea swept over her as she watched Adams pale bloody fingers shake as he removed them from his face, a string of bloody saliva snapping as he did so.
And then jamie moved. With out turning to even look behind her , she unclipped her batton and span to thrust it in percys direction, where ever he had previously stood. He was still there , when she turned around, and just before the electric current of the batton took effect , they made eye contact. It was a haunting look, one jamie remembers with a disturbingly haunting clarity.
She left after that, and knocked adam out with the batton too for good measure. She returned to her job and threw herself back into the work. She left a few details out of her report back to the board, mentioned an old lady recruiting young kids from the slums into some sort of messenger system through out the city, but apart from that , the mission was a dead end. They believed her, why wouldn't they? And then she went back to patrol. She wasn't lying to sam earlier, they know about military activity in the city of Dianna , but not who is behind it.
Shes still not sure why she did it, why she didnt just rat them out to the board. She doesn't think its love, at least she hopes its not. She can Reluctantly admit that she was fond of percy, but love is to much for her to consider.
After Samantha leaves, jamie is left alone with the cold silence of the chaple. Shes never found true comfort in the chaple, despite being religious herself. It was too cold, hollow and bare, definitely this one especially. The dull grey walls seam to look over her , even now being an adult, they where even worse as a child.
Disregarding the pews and the stage up the front, the only other decoration here is a statue , the mother, with her hands to her cheek and her eyes closed. Jamie rembers finding comfort in her as a kid, the closest thing to a parental figure she ever had, only a concept of a women. The statue seams to judge her from afar, even now as she stares dully ahead, she can almost feel it watching her silently.
"Don't you fucking start- " jamie whispers between her teeth, as she turns to look at it , in almost a mock defience. The statue, as statues often do, remains stationary.
With an air of ruffled embarrassment , jamie turns on her heal and leaves, the small click of her kitten heels the only sound that rings through out the chaple.