desiderium | m. o'hara

thirty-one

TW: child trafficking, assault, blood, mention of guns

I'm on holiday overseas so i apologise that updates have slowed right down!

Jessica Drew slams her boot on the ground and kicks the back wheel of her motorbike into a man's face.

He drops like a rock and groans, covering his head with his hands. He writhes on the floor as Jess sits on the seat of her rumbling bike and glares at the carnage from behind her amber-tinted goggles. A circle of twitching bodies lay flush around her.

Satisfied, Jess kicks her bike stand up and rests her elbows on the handlebars. She taps on her Gizmo.

"That's the last of them," she says, and pushes away the reaching hand of a woman with the toe of her boot. She tsks in disgust. "Sick bastards."

Miguel O'Hara's deeper in the warehouse that they'd scouted the ring's location to. This wasn't a multiverse issue - it was the twisted operation born from Rapture addicts, selling kids to fuel their unnatural obsession. These are the kind of people that didn't want help. These are the kind of people that are just as bad as super-powered villains.

"Good," Miguel answers. He's using his talons to slice open the locks on the dog crates the kids had been crammed into. They flinch at each move the large vigilante makes. "Coming your way."

They file out of the cages, moving as a herd of scared children. They send weary looks over their shoulder at the large, imposing figure of Spider-Man and exit towards the large front room where Jess is waiting. He watches them limp away, skinny, scrawny, spiritless, with a heavy weight in his chest.

Miguel falters when he spots one last huddled figure cramped into the back corner of the last cage. A little girl with a tangled brown ponytail and wide, weepy eyes, frightened as a fawn. A little girl with a poorly-wrapped ankle, the bandage made of torn and bloodied pieces of shirt.

His heart stops at once. She looks so much like his Rosalina.

"Hey." Miguel crouches at the entrance and tries to soften his voice into something a little less scary. The girl's already crying, hiccupy and breathless and full of more terror than her little body can hold. "Hey, you're okay, kid. The bad guys can't hurt you anymore."

  She doesn't look like she quite believes him. Miguel can understand - she's faced the horrors of man no-one should ever see, felt the evils that none should ever be inflicted upon. Why would she trust adults, now? Why would she trust anyone ever again?

But still, he carefully stretches his hand into the cage. She slinks into herself and whimpers through her quiet sobs, clutching at her shirt. Her dirty face is only clean where she's cried.

Miguel's gut twists with fury at the sorry sight of her. He can never get over the vileness even unpowered men and women can become. It's an effort to act calm and not drill his fists into the concrete floor. It would only scare her further.

"What's your name, kiddo?" Miguel gently asks. "Can you tell me your name?"

She hesitates for a long, few seconds; contemplative, afraid. "... Sophia," she finally whispers.

"Sophia," Miguel repeats. "You're going home, Sophia."

"I c-" she sniffles loudly between her stifled sobs. "I can't walk. It hurts."

"You won't have to," he promises. "I can carry you, if you like."

  Sophie sniffles as she thinks over his offer. Then, after a few beats of silence, she shuffles forward and cautiously places a tiny hand in his large palm.