2.1 | renegade effect (on hold until 2024)

07 | virago

v i r a g o : a wonderfully fierce woman who demonstrates heroic qualities

***

WALT IS KNOWN FOR BRUTALITY.

It lingers in the monotonous tone that everyone uses to pronounce his name, in the sticky sensation of fear sticking to the back of throats. Cohen knows this feeling all too well, but an assassin without a semblance of hesitation always dies right on the spot. It's a quick process. First, the breathing slows, and then: nothing.

Hesitation, he's learned, results in arrogance or murder. Waiting for the right moment to shoot a bullet into someone's chest is different than wasting precious time in order to steal their diamond-studded watch—it's an art that people like to think that they have perfected when in reality, they're just another fraud posing as a sculptor.

But mostly, the two roads sprouting from hesitation eventually merge again to form the deliverance of goodbyes. Cohen remembers those—he remembers Jimin tugging him close to his chest, silver hair almost brittle as it slid against the shell of his ear, remembers Lance's panicked inhales and hollow screams after looking down at his legs and seeing blood that wasn't his own. Off, he'd cried, hands tangled in metal. Fingers cold. Stomach twisting. Off, off, get it off, Cohen, I can't—I can't look, can't see. The subliminal message of goodbye has never truly left the three of them since they turned sixteen and instead travels whenever a pair of footsteps sounds away from the front door.

In another world, Cohen thinks that the three of them are soulmates, too. Linked through memories and bloodshed and nightmares and so much pain that he can feel it weighing down his whole entire body. Cohen thinks that even the afterlife can't break their bond.

In the streets, Walt is also known for his initiations. They're cruel things, a bloody process, and Cohen has slipped between the spaces between midnight and sunrise to see Walt's men branding his seal into the back of a kid's neck. The alleys are filled with people who eventually run back to whatever hell of a life they used to live before virtuous shit screwed them over again, but Cohen figured that there must've been another way to survive—a better way.

He doesn't get to talk, though. His palms flash red whenever they hit the exact angle towards the sun.

Walt's initiations are notoriously lengthy, consisting of the trials necessary to pass in order to become a runner. Cohen almost scoffs as he thinks about the undercover missions he'd had to survive as soon as he hit puberty and endured two entire growth spurts. And right now, as he curls around himself and shoots his arm out on instinct, the crimson liquid in his mouth almost tastes like burned sugar.

"Who do you think you are?" Walt's security hisses underneath his breath—Sigel, he remembers—and retracts his pointed foot just to slam it against the assassin's ribcage. Cohen wheezes, flashes of pain flickering across the expanse of his vision in brilliant bursts of nerves. He tries to keep his breathing heavy, but goddamn, it hurts, and he's used to pain, but it doesn't make him senseless.

(If only it could. If only.)

He, like everyone else, falls at what he can't control.

Cohen smiles a smile that looks more like a quick flash of teeth, blood dripping down the corner of his mouth where the man split his lip. He can hear the rustle of paper bags fluttering against the alleyway brick right behind the bar, can hear the heaviness of Sigel's gear shifting with each small movement. Cohen hears everything. Sees everything.

A broken laugh escapes him, and it sounds like a wheeze filled with laced arrogance. "Watch your fuckin' mouth," Cohen grins, chest hot and searing and almost burned, charred at the edges where it meets the tops of his obliques. "This how you treat all of your recruits?" He turns around to his other side as a hand clutches his side. "Thanks for making me pretty—fuck, your punches can't even break any bones. Just skin." Cohen's eyebrow quirks up. "Walt's lowering his standards?"