The Stroke of Midnight

Stuffed inside a wagon, Ripley watches as the city of Saint Denis passes her by. The last time she’d seen the city it was painted in blood of her own making. It was chaos; everything stacked against them in a bid to save Leon. More than once the thought of them dying crossed her mind and it was a miracle when everyone was accounted for afterwards. It seems almost years ago, even though it was less than a couple of months.

Now she wishes for rescue, one for herself and those she held dear. She knows it’s impossible with everyone who cared about her either in the wagon with her or tied up in the depths of Ambarino. Instead of waiting for some knight in shining armour, she keeps Jake’s words in an endless cycle inside her head; play it safe, do as they say and don’t get yourself killed.

It’s easier said than done. Their chaperones, a wall of masculinity that bowed to Leanna’s every order, watched their every move. One wrong word earned them a slap and Ripley found that the line to cross was closer than expected.

The first time Ripley experienced their control was over a series of wolf whistles and wandering eyes when herself and the women in her company changed into their attire for the night. Dresses and corsets that pinched waists and made breasts almost burst from their clothes. They were fine clothes; made from silks and ribbons that she would have begged to own once upon a time. Now a hot flush stung against her skin while she wore them.

It had taken Mia’s soft, yet stern voice in her ear to calm her. Listening, she let the older woman guide her away, trembling with closed fists. She kept herself quiet until they were manhandled into the wagon by rough hands. One slip of her tongue and Isabella spent the beginning of their trip reapplying Ripley’s make-up.

She catches sight of her reflection and Isabella’s handiwork in the wagon’s window. Stained lips, flushed cheeks and dark charcoal eyeshadow. She’d forgotten she could look like this. Touching her face, she wonders if this truly was herself she was looking at or her past-self reappearing one last time, echoing a history that seemed to be coming true once more. Makeup coats her fingertips and Ripley chokes on the thought of her life crumbling around her. She drops her gaze to the cobblestone roads with orange lit puddles from burning lampposts. It does little to shake her mind.

All they had to do was listen to Leanna and they’d one day get to go home, back to the life they were living before all this. As far as Ripley believes, it’s a sugar-coated lie to bend them into obedience. There’s only one outcome and that’s with Jake six feet under. Whether they join him is simply a test of luck, a game of Russian roulette. There’s only so many chances they can take, so many bullets they can dodge.

With each job they do, it brings them closer to Jake’s death day. Every time they listen to that bitch, they help her tie the noose around his neck. There’s no coming back from that.

A hand touches her knee and Ripley jumps as if shot.

“What?” She snaps.

"Jesus, easy," Isabella gripes, splaying her palms to Ripley in surrender. "Are you okay?"

Ripley scoffs and folds her arms over her chest, slouching in her seat. Under any other circumstance, it would be a grave injustice to the ornate ultramarine gown she wore. "That's the dumbest question you ever asked."

Isabella had forgotten how oppressively humid the state of Lemoyne is, and fans her face with her hand as they roll through the industrial district of Saint Denis and toward the main promenade. She can feel the makeup caked on her skin melt and seep into the lines of her face, and a bead of sweat trickles from her temple to her chin.

She's reminded of just how greatly she despises the city as they pass the docks and the filthy factories belching black smoke into the sky. Coupled with the iron awnings displayed over the bridges leading into town, proudly welcoming weary travelers to the hedonism and debauchery Saint Denis is famous for, it's precisely what she imagines the gates of Hell to look like.

The carriage bumps over a set of train tracks and jostles its passengers. Mia sits across from Isabella and Ripley, quietly attempting to soothe a petulant Valerie who's disappointed in the color of the evening gown she's been forced to wear.

"It's supposed to be black," she pouts, fussing with the lavender satin of her skirt . "Or white. Or black and white. White and black would be okay, too."

It's oddly comforting, and as she gazes down at the sheath of scarlet silk cascading from her waist to the floor, Isabella lets herself imagine that the greatest threat to their well-being tonight is to be looked down upon for their fashion choices. She thinks about Leon waiting for her back in Ambarino, taking refuge from the merciless cold, but she's glad he's a hundred miles away from the city that almost stole him from her.

"I'm not the only one who thinks this plan of Leanna's is a few bricks shy of a load, right?" She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, casting her gaze outside the window to her right. Streetlights line the the partition running through the center of the road, monstrous mansions looming over them from both sides.

"That's by design," Mia chimes in, smoothing out a wrinkle in her sage green satin bodice and adjusting her corset.

Isabella's brows knit a question. "I don't follow."

"I don't think she's gives a good goddamn whether any of us make it back up north after tonight."

There's a finality to Mia's tone that Isabella doesn't like. She can't determine if Mia's history with Leanna and her unique insight into what the madwoman is capable of is a boon or a bane to the situation.

"You think this is a setup?" she clarifies.

They hear the wagon driver holler at the horses to stop, and the carriage slowly rolls to a halt. Leanna's subordinates hop down from their mounts flanking the carriage and yank open the door, unceremoniously beckoning to the women inside to climb out.

They step onto the cobblestone streets and into the shadow of the mayor's mansion, a spectacular monument to affluence and splendor. With its ivory columns and scopious balconies, lush green landscaping and wrought iron gate, it's a veritable temple and there's no question in Isabella's mind who God is.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and cranes her neck to meet Mia's gaze.

"Keep your eyes open, hon," the redhead warns. "That's all I'm sayin'."

Entering the manor house feels almost like walking into a crowd naked. Flashes of Smithfield’s cross her mind; the fine marbled interior replaced with rotten wood; the smell of rose-tinted perfume is suffocated with the pungent stench of sweat; the violins pluck the notes of a out of tune piano.

She shakes the image from her mind as she parts through the crowd. Eyes drift over them, but Ripley learnt a long time ago to ignore the downward glances of good-to-do women. She wonders how many of them judge them but wish for the life they live? Free to make whatever choices they want. Well, the life they used to have.

Separating herself from the others and finding a table with multiple glasses of champagne, Ripley helps herself to one, downing it before one can blink. It doesn’t have the same burn as whiskey and leaves Ripley with a bad after taste.

She lifts another to her lips.

“Don’t overdo it.” Isabella slides next to Ripley, who glowers at her over the rim of her glass.

“Fuck off.” Ripley wrinkles her nose as she finishes her champagne. She sets down the glass and begins to walk away.

“Ripley.” The tips of Isabella’s fingers ghost over her arm.

It’s a single snap of her gaze that freezes Isabella in her step. Ripley doesn’t know what the older woman sees in her eyes, nor does she care. She doesn’t need a babysitter coddling her every move. This was closer to her domain than hers. If you replace the finery with mud, and the champagne to whiskey, then it’s the same as before. Men with coin are the same no matter where you go.

“I’m fine.” The words squeeze through thinned lips. She doesn’t allow Isabella another word before disappearing into the crowd. She knows what they have to do.

And she already has her target.

A soldier, a few years older than herself, surrounds himself with friends, sipping champagne and laughing over humourless jokes. She knows nothing of rank or military personal, other than Leon once belonged to this club. She can’t imagine him laughing over bubbles and mingling with feather hat women. It brings a smirk to her lips, and that’s when he spots her.
Their stares linger for a second before she drops her gaze to the floor, adopting a flush of red across her cheeks. When she lifts her eyes, he finds him looking at her. She tucks a stray curl around her ear.

And the next second has him excusing himself from his gaggle of friends and crossing the room towards her.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” He smiles at her, an eyebrow quirked.

“How can you be sure?” She throws him a line.

He bites.

“I’d remember a face like yours.”

She suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she offers her outstretch hand with a limp wrist.

“Miss. Locke.”

He takes it and presses a kiss to the space above her knuckles. And then pauses. For a second Ripley wonders if her name is some sort of ticking bomb ready to explode. No one knows who she is. She a fabric of her own imagination. Ripley Locke’s as real as Robin Hood.

“There was once a famous criminal that plagued Saint Denis with that surname.”

“I assure you it a common name.” Ripley feels a drop of sweat run down the back of her neck.

The smile on his face dances with the twinkle in his eyes.

“You sure you aren’t related to our Charlotte Locke?” He asks. “I’m sure a girl like you knows danger.”

After all these years, it clicks. The day she remade herself, found a new identity within a newspaper article of an outlaw that always evaded the law. She remembers the ink dried on a fresh piece of paper; a bandit, blonde and beautiful, a vixen to the hounds of Saint Denis. Ripley had no clue then how small the world really was.

She can’t help the snort that escapes her as she laughs. Doubling over herself, she tries to muffle the sound with her fist, but it does nothing to hide the ridiculous of it all.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the joke,” the man says, thankfully with a smile.

Collecting herself, Ripley wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. Her cheeks flush at the idea of revealing this information to Charlotte. That a seventeen Ripley had stolen her surname in an attempt to become someone like her.

“It’s nothing.” She assures him. “Though, what makes you think I’m dangerous?” She asks through half lidded eyes. Hopefully, it’s enough to salvage her attempts to woo him. Thankfully, alcohol made it easy to forget hiccups in stupid conversations.


She feels him against the curve of her jaw, his lips soft against her ear.

“I’m sure you can show me?”

The words are locked behind a wall of memories, so she takes his hand. If he was smart, he’d wonder why a woman in such silks would have calloused hands and scars that no amount of makeup could hide. Alcohol did wonders to idiots.

It’s no surprise that he jumps the gun. She wonders if she’s the first women he’s spoken to since he joined the military, or his masculinity allowed him to skipped chivalry.

Either way, they find a room, though neither of them have any idea who it belongs to. He doesn’t care as he leads them through and locks it behind them.

And then they’re kissing as though they’re teenagers hiding from every adult in the world. He’s desperate and messy, and Ripley matches it, smearing lipstick over his chapped lips.

Memories push against her barriers, but she pushes them somewhere far away, like stories that belong to another writer. All she has to do is wait for his guard to drop and she can take the uniform.

A hand runs the length of her waist and cups it, bringing her closer to him, squeezing it. And everything she’d held back all night comes unravelled. A whimper of a sound escapes her as she pulls back from him. He tries to follow him, but she plants a firm hand on his chest.
“What’s wrong?” He asks with gravel in his voice.

She can barely keep her head up as it sways under the weight of her past. And then it hits her. She has no choice. She can’t stop it. Vomit erupts from her, splashing over the Private’s uniformed chest. It keeps coming in a wave of bubbles and chunks.

Once it stops, Ripley’s hanging onto the Private’s arms, her fingers digging into his sleeves as she takes deep breaths. He’s holding onto her elbows, a look of shock slapped onto his face.
“I’m sorry.” She rasps, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Lipstick comes away on her skin.

“Well, I, uh, didn’t expect the night to end like this.” He looks down at his uniform, picking out a chunk.
She knows there’s a goal to them coming to Saint Denis. But for the life of her, she can’t stop the way the room ripples like a pebble tossed into a pond.

“You still look pale.” The man grabs her elbow and guides her to the bed. She allows him this sliver of control, not that she has a choice. He sits her down and pulls her hair away from her face. “Too much to drink?” He asks before standing back, looking down at his uniform again. He begins to unclip his buttons, the blue of his jacket slipping from his shoulders and revealing a union shirt underneath. Her heart picks up speed.

“I’ll go fetch you some water,” he says as he drapes the uniform over the back of a chair.

“Okay.”

He gives her a once over before disappearing from the room, closing the door with a quiet click.

She knows she has to get going before he comes back. Despite his gentleman like actions, she knows that the night is ending between sheets if he gets his way. She lifts herself from the bed and wastes no time grabbing his ruined jacket. She does her best to wipe off the vomit with the bed sheets, but a stain lingers.

There’s no second chance for her to grab another, and lifts up her skirt, ties the jacket around her hips and under the layers her petticoat. She smooths out her skirt and looks around herself, the jacket carefully concealed, before stepping out back into the main party.

- -x - -

Elsewhere in the luxurious mansion, Isabella navigates her way through the throngs of politicians and millionaires, nursing the glass of champagne clutched in her hand. She spots Mia's shock of red hair as she passes the ballroom, laughing effortlessly at some corporal's self-important anecdote, and wonders if her ill-fated relationship with Kilgrave was much the same. Valerie is following around a waiter carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres, her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel hoarding acorns for the winter; Ripley is nowhere to be seen, absorbed and consumed by the crowd.

She feels a hand in the small of her back, and she has to smother the knee-jerk compulsion to liberate it from its owner's wrist. She turns and meets the gaze of a blue-eyed soldier, the corners of his lips curled in a devil-may-care grin.

"I'm not normally this forward..." he claims.

A more blatant lie, Isabella has never heard. Men like him, who look at women like obstacles to be conquered -- precisely the way he's looking at her now -- aren't used to hearing the word no.

"... but I saw you arrive and I have to say, you wear that dress like you're doing it a favor."

It's a line so practiced, so meticulously curated, that she wonders how many other women he's used it on tonight alone.

Playing the part, she smiles bashfully and turns her face away to hide the roll of her eyes. "Well, for someone who isn't forward, you certainly have a way with introductions."

It isn't a compliment, but he greedily laps it up like it's the greatest adulation he's ever received.

His eyes roam, starting at her carefully coifed hair and ending at the toes of the suede boots peeking out beneath the hem of her skirt, peeling away her layers of silk and petticoats one by one.

"Your name?" It's a command; not a request.

She nearly gives herself away, gritting her teeth and clenching her jaw to hold the verbal onslaught dancing on the tip of her tongue at bay. Her mind drifts back up north, to snow-capped mountains and biting winds, and the members of her family she left behind.

Jake's bruised and battered face is burned into her memory, one eye swollen shut and the delicate skin around it an unnatural shade of purple. She pictures Yuliy, frightened and confused, asking for the whereabouts of the children so frantically that his fingers can't keep up.

The day she and the rest of the women embarked for Saint Denis, Leon gathered her up in his arms and pressed his lips to her temple, breathing her in like it was the last time he'd ever see her.

He told her how much he loved her, and promised that everything was going to be okay.

"You don't know that," she said, a wistful smile on her face.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her good bye. "I swore I was gonna marry you one day," he reminded her. "Ain't nothin' gonna stand in the way of that. Not the U.S. Army, not the law in Saint Denis, and certainly not Leanna Harper."

The memory brings the faintest of smiles to Isabella's face, and when the soldier offers her his hand, she takes it.

"Miss Valentine," she supplies. "You can call me Miss Valentine."

- - x - -

Forty-five minutes later, she's racing down the staircase with the soldier's jacket concealed beneath her skirt. Hastily tied around her waist by the sleeves, she can feel it inching down her thighs with every step she takes.

She passes Mia by the parlor entrance an seizes her by the elbow, steering her towards the entrance of the mansion.

"We need to go," she hisses in the redhead's ear.

Her knuckles are raw and scuffed from their introduction to the soldier's glass jaw. He folded like a cheap suit, but it was only a matter of time before he came to and realized she had pilfered his uniform.

Mia's brows knit together in concern. "Why, are you all right? I saw you head upstairs with that man. He didn't...?"

Isabella soothes her fears with a flick of her wrist. "Never laid a hand on me. The second I got him alone he got nicely acquainted with the floor tiles." Head on a swivel, she surveys the foyer. "Where's Val and Ripley?"

"We gotta go!” Ripley comes running, throwing two heeled boots behind her, smacking a gentleman in the face and the other smashing a pyramid of wine glasses. Valerie is next to her carrying a load of military jacket in her arms, her two blue eyes popped over the top them.

“Valerie? Wha-? How?” The two older women’s jaws slack and their eyes bulge.

“Ain’t got time.” Ripley grabs Isabella’s arm, dragging her towards the exit.

“That’s the one!” Two set of voices boom over the crowd. Looking over their shoulders, they see two men pointing at them. One with a purple jaw and the other in his undershirt.

Isabella and Ripley both grimace, before looking at each other eyes wide before grinning.

"See ya later, sluts!" Ripley calls back as the four women burst out of the mansion, the clicking of their heels echoing through the Saint Denis streets as they race towards their carriage. The driver snaps to attention as he sees the women step into the orange glow of a streetlamp.

They clamber into the carriage, almost throwing themselves into the opposite door. It takes off as the women smooth out their petticoats and frills, letting out a series of relieved breaths, slumping into their seats. They check each other over silently, looking for bumps or grazes, but find none.

“How many did we get?” Mia asks as she begins to fold the multiple uniforms in Valerie’s possession, busying herself from memories the night brought back to her.

“How did you even get so many?” Isabella asks.

“I just asked for them.” Valerie shrugs simply.

“That’s one way to do it.” Ripley snorts, ignoring the taste of bile in her mouth from her extraction. “Hang on.” She reaches underneath her skirt and pulls out a jacket.

It’s then that Isabella starts to laugh. Quiet at first, a giggle at the absurdity of it all. Then, she pulls the jacket from underneath her skirt, mirroring Ripley.

And then one by one the others follow until the carriage is loud with laughter. It’s a sound none of them have heard in a while, and it’s welcomed. A tiny sliver of humour that conceals the fear and worry that haunted them all night.

It dies quietly as they hug their ribs, smiles dancing on their faces.

Ripley sighs.

“If this was our own doing, and the lives of our friends weren’t in danger and we weren’t going back to that bitch’s lair, this’d be funny,” Ripley says, and the mood shimmers down into an accepted, gloom silence. The weight of their situation lands on their shoulders.

Ripley leans against Isabella’s shoulders, gnawing on her bottom lip. She goes to nip at the whites of her nails but finds them long gone and raw where she’s bitten too close to the skin. Instead, she wraps her hands into her lap, hiding the way they tremble.

None of them know what they were riding back to. If the boys were still there, if they were okay…or even if they were still alive.

“We’re all gonna be okay, right?” Ripley asks, gazing up at Isabella, eyes swimming, desperate for an answer to soothe her.

Isabella has always known that she has the capacity to be a liar. She grew up lying about what she wanted out of life, bending to the expectations of other people, and when they didn't live up to their end of the bargain, she lied and cheated to get the things she wanted.

All of it had failed spectacularly, of course, beginning with her pledge to dedicate her life to God. The glimmer of pride in her father's eyes and the tears in her mother's almost made it worth being shipped off to Mexico, spending her days withering under the scrutinizing gaze of the nuns at Las Hermanas Convent.

The arrangement lasted only a handful of weeks before she realized she had the capacity to lie to herself, too. Miserable and homesick, she violated every rule and pushed boundaries until the Mother Superior pushed back.

Excommunicated and sent home, a disgrace to her family, what was best for other people no longer factored into her decisions. It hardened her into taking what she wanted when she wanted it, whether it was a nice new blouse from the tailor in town, a drink left unattended at the saloon, or even her sister's fiance, she lied about stealing every single one.

Sitting in the carriage that evening, her past feels like a hundred lifetimes ago; the woman she used to be a stranger that she's glad to have left behind. It's why she hesitates when Ripley asks if everyone is going to be okay, glassy blue eyes pleading for the right combination of words to mitigate the dread tying their stomachs in knots.

The old Isabella would have told her to grow up; that happy endings only existed in fairy tales, and that every last one of them was already dead the moment Leanna found them in the mountains -- they just didn't know it yet. All they were doing now was biding their time, treading water until a hungry gator snatched them up in its jaws and swallowed them whole.

But the old Isabella didn't have half as much to lose as she did now, and to abandon even the faintest glimmer of hope felt like a betrayal to all the people she held dear. Hope that they would live to see the children grow and thrive, hope that they could carve out a life for themselves where they law couldn't find them, hope that she could take Leon's name one day and dedicate the rest of her life to loving him.

In a cruel and unforgiving world, hope was the only currency they had.

Wrapping her arm around Ripley's shoulders, she rests her temple against the younger woman's crown.

"We've beaten the odds before," she reminds Ripley, stroking her shoulder with her thumb. "If the law in Saint Denis and even the army couldn't take us down, Leanna and her henchmen don't stand a chance."

Ripley is quiet for a moment, absently fiddling with a hangnail on her thumb. "Do you really believe that?"

Isabella sighs and casts her gaze to Valerie and Mia sitting across from them. One a girl of only eighteen years old, whose life beyond the walls her father built around her had only just begun; the other a mother grieving the disappearance of her child, who had only just gotten a taste of what it was like to live life for herself. And then there was a Ripley, a firecracker and a wild card with a reckless streak a mile long, destined for more adventure than the rest of them combined. Their stories couldn't end here.

She can't lie to Ripley; not about this. So she doesn't.

"I do believe it," she confirms in a quiet murmur. "If hope is all we have to hang onto, then we don't let go. Not for anything."