after, and also before, "a fillette of chinon red, so dark, almost purple"

[solarbird]

"I've made him," said Venom, subvocally, over coms. Her goggles shifted in place, forming lenses, zooming in. "Right on time. He's got his best three bodyguards with him, too - guess he wanted the A team along for the ride."

"Acknowledged," replied Widowmaker, coolly - all business, inside, and out. A small part of her could still scarcely believe this was happening, but she kept it in check - pleasure before pleasure, no? "I am in position."

The three bodyguards scouted the empty restaurant storefront as a stocky man in his late 40s sat behind very strong and very darkly tinted glass. C'mon, you bastards, thought the former pilot, everything is just fine, everything is just like you expect. Take the bait.

They'd arranged a small trade, of course. A trade of extremely important data about Omnics captured from a murdered engineering delegation, in exchange for an attractively low, but still quite substantial, amount of money. Intelligent machines for cash, slaves for Renminbi on the barrelhead, who is going to be the wiser?

A job for the police, Oxton had said. We can give them what we know, a trial would be better for relations anyway. And then Amélie showed her the list of the dead from a previous investigation, and Lena knew it wouldn't.

A blink, and she's half a block away, on another rooftop. C'mon already, give your boss the all-clear and open the bloody door.

One of the guards looked up at where she'd been, seeing nothing, and looked again, and saw a subtly different nothing. Just in time, she thought, but she was wrong.

The bodyguard turned towards the car, quickly. Widowmaker's voice, on the coms: "Merde! Now he's made you. Plan B."

Bugger!, thought Venom, False start. Don't let's cock this up twice!, and she dove in, using all of her teleport charge, taking three tenths of a second to close the distance. Stinger bomb under the car, right on target. "Gotcha!" she shouted, as Widowmaker's first shot took out the first guard, and she simultaneously emptied both clips of her pistols into the second. The third - Pilar, the best of them - had her semiautomatic at the side of Venom's head, the trigger half-pulled, when the younger assassin jinked backwards in time, just far enough to reload and shoot the third down exactly as she'd shot the second.

Her stinger exploded as the car started to move, throwing the vehicle into the air, compressing it, the windows shattering outwards. "One shot..." called Venom, as she flew backwards on her grappling hook. Magnified through her vizor, she saw the shocked look on the target's face obliterated, as Widowmaker laughed delightedly in the coms, "...one kill."

"Nice one," Venom said over coms, as she reset vision.

"Get back here. This got noisy, and we need to leave - quickly."

"Already here, love." Venom leaned forward from behind the senior assassin, and gently kissed the back of Widowmaker's neck.

Amélie gasped - no one surprised the spider. No one.

Except her.

[some months earlier]

"Is this some kind of would-I-kill-baby-Hitler question?"

Amélie laughed, lightly, putting down her glass of dessert wine. "Don't talk nonsense, of course not. A bébé is a bébé, innocent, and easily redirected." She picked the glass back up, and with a cool smile, said, "Although perhaps you might choose to kill its parents. Perhaps they are assholes."

Lena stabbed her fork into a second slice of bananoffe, cut a portion with a knife, and stuffed it into her mouth. It takes a lot of calories to fuel her biology now, thought the spider. "And if they aren't?" Lena asked through crumbs, voice muffled.

The blue woman shrugged, perhaps a little disappointed the ever-so-earnest Lena didn't seem to see the humour. "It doesn't matter. To elaborate, following along the lines of your question - I am not asking, 'would you kill baby Hitler;' I'm asking, perhaps, would you kill Reich Chancellor Hitler, in, say, February of 1933.'"

"Not good with dates, luv," she said, with just a trace of irony. Ah, there is hope for you yet, thought Amélie.

"I should have known, it is fitting. So," she took another sip of her Chateau d'Yquem white, "in 1933, his goals were stated, and he was just appointed the position he needed to follow them through." She gestured aimlessly with her glass. "Oh, there were arguments about what he 'really' meant, perhaps - he was an extraordinary liar. And there were those who insisted he would moderate with power. He, himself, swore his restraint. But - to a clear mind, one that can see the strands of history - everything was laid plain."

Another sip. Lena toyed with her slice of pie, cutting it into smaller pieces, thinking, and took another bite.

"A single death," said Amélie, "could've changed everything..."

Lena looked up, asked, "Had he actually killed anyone yet?" and looked back down, seemingly deeper in thought.

"Does that matter? I don't think so. But fair enough, let us say that it does. March, then, of 1933. The first concentration camp opens, in Oranienburg. All perfectly legal, all perfectly murderous, the first rendering of the first blueprint of the great slaughter to come."

Lena poked at the remaining pieces of her pie, smaller and smaller.

The assassin leaned forward. "Now it is April. The Enabling Act has passed, a bill gracing the Reich Chancellor with unlimited power - but there are still other political parties, to resist. Do you take the shot?"

Bananas. Cream. Toffee. Crust. Divided. Tracer, quiet, focused on the mess before her.

Windowmaker leaned in, still further, speaking quietly. "May, the tenth. Jewish-owned shops are boycott. The first book burnings, targeting 'degenerate' works, science. Perhaps not yet, at Oranienburg, the first death, but they will come. All legal, at least, to some degree."

"And at the heart of it all, one man. There are many others with him, but he is the genius, the crux - the one who truly matters."

With one finger, she appropriated a dollop of cream from Lena's dessert plate, lifting it from the plate. "The one whose death could change everything."

The younger woman looked up, earnestly, into the assassin's eyes. "If I know... if I really know..."

Venom took Widowmaker's hand with her own, and, with an unfocused half-grin, licked the cream off the other woman's finger.

"Everyone seems to forget..." she said, distantly, savouring the sweetness, "...I'm ex-military." She smiled broadly, eyes suddenly bright. Gotcha. "Fighter planes don't shoot kisses, luv," she laughed. "Of course I take the shot."

The assassin's refined pose collapsed completely, and a single, quiet, ha! escaped her lips. "Oh, you horrible woman! I thought we were having a meaningful conversation."

"Gotcha."

"Yes," said the spider, smiling, and feeling it, almost - but not quite - giggling as she leaned back into her chair. "You did. You have me."

Completely, she thought, sipping from her glass.

Damn you. You have me.

Completely.

Comments

[stickmaker]

People keep focusing on Hitler. While he was arguably the worst of the lot - in terms of actually getting horrible things done - he wasn't alone. Even outside Germany.

Early on Hitler and Stalin enabled each other, but later they were antagonists. How many more of his own people - including Jews - would Stalin have murdered if he hadn't finally realized Russia needed every available hand to fight Hitler?

Kill both of those and you still have Tojo, Mussolini (though he was admittedly ineffective at war) and so on. The attitudes, the mindset, were widespread, even in Britain and the US.

Where do you stop?

Normally, actually, I pick Stalin.

[solarbird]

Normally in my personal life, when I talk about mass-murdering dictators, I actually talk about Stalin. But more people are more familiar with Hitler's arc. Fewer people know the details of Stalin.

I'm about to talk about Pol Pot. No, that overstates it - invoke him.

But in terms of arguments - are you arguing with Widowmaker - or me? -_^;

Re: Normally, actually, I pick Stalin.

[stickmaker]

Yes. :-^)

Actually, not arguing. Just adding some details people usually don't consider.

Re: Normally, actually, I pick Stalin.

[solarbird]

It's okay to be arguing. I am - indirectly - asking people to think about this stuff.

One of the things I'm actively trying to do here is take an organisation in-universe that is presented as unambiguously evil and write a version that could be them, but which... they're not a "hero" organisation, because I do not want to woobify them, but they're one where you get their point. And if you don't agree with what they're doing - even if you hate it - you can still see good from there.

I've done a lot of thinking about Slytherin in the same way. Slytherin can not just be evil, it makes no sense. Slytherin is ambition and shaping history and grand (in the sense of large, even monumental) goals; and in my thinking about it, sometimes, necessity. Slytherin is those who do what is needed.

I don't know if you've watched all of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, but in the finale of Series 5 [...spoilerrific as hell...]

SPOILERRRRRRS

The Big Bad of the year keeps disappearing, because she shares a body with a human host, of sorts. He's her entry into the world. At a critical point in the finale, the Big Bad's human host re-emerges, and takes back over.

And the thing is, none of this is his fault - he's completely innocent of all of everything, just caught up in it with no control. I think he's even a doctor or something, I forget - he's a good man who wants to save lives.

But, eventually, the Big Bad will re-emerge. But - even knowing that - Buffy backs off and turns to other threats, because, as Gyles says, she can't kill him. I think his words are, "She's not like you and me. She's a hero."

And then Gyles kills him, the innocent man, quickly but decisively, ending the threat.

To me, that is Slytherin. That's the kind of thing they're for, and why Gyles in my headcanon is Slytherin, not Ravenclaw or anything else.

He killed an innocent man. It was an "evil" act, in a lot of definitions. And it was necessary. You can see good from there, and you can make a real good argument that it wasn't just necessary, it evil in the service of actual good.

That's the territory I'm exploring here, with my Talon.