darker_london | Before moving on (Deirdre, Flynn) (Reply)

Before this past year, Flynn had never been out of the United Kingdom. Since joining Spectre's band, he had travelled all over Europe and then to the US, and now he found himself in Sweden again. The circumstances of this trip, however, made the vision rather less than pleasant. They were searching for little Mara Mors who had been taken from her school. Deirdre believed her to have been taken by a band of people who kidnapped supernaturals and auctioned them off to the highest bidder. The last place they had been known to have an auction was Helsingborg, Sweden. They had come back there, hoping to pick up the traders' trail and find where they were now, hopefully to find that Mara was not with them after all, but so far they hadn't even found a trail yet.

They had found nothing.

And, as the last time Deirdre had been here, she had been one of the Supernaturals being auctioned off, she held tight to Flynn's hand the entire time they walked through the streets of the city. To his credit, Flynn never once complained that Deirdre was clinging tightly. And Deirdre had demon strength. He wanted to cling back just as tightly in kind because as they walked the alleyways, Deirdre was explaining what she had been through both to get it out, and to warn Flynn of the state they might find Mara in. All of it made Flynn want to throttle things while being violently ill. Which would cause quite a spectacle for sure.

"They kept me in a cage." Deirdre whispered as they passed a shopfront with brightly coloured signs, making promises about thier products that neither Deirdre nor Flynn could read. "I couldn't even stand, though that was hardly a problem as I was drugged. But I couldn't stretch out. It was so cramped."

Flynn glanced at her with his steady, grey eyes, which concealed a great deal of the emotional turmoil he was experiecing upon hearing all of this. "How long were you like that?" He asked, because he found that Deirdre talked more easily when it was more likea conversation and less like a confession. It wasn't easy to ask questions about it, but anything that made it easier on Deirdre was something Flynn was going to do.

"I think...two days? Two or three. I don't remember because it all blends together. Rosa was there with me. She had been taken beforehand, but I remember seeing her and I called out to her and she said I wasn't her friend. That no one was friends there. I remember being hungry, but it felt like...experiencing someone else's hunger? Does that make sense? It was like it was through a wall of something. Well...drugs mostly."

"It makes sense." Flynn assured her. He wished it didn't, but it did. "And then they just...sold you?"

"Yeah. They brought me out there in front of the people and that's when I was so out of it I thought I was onstage and I sang. They probably laughed at me." Deirdre took a shuddery breath and she looked horrified that she could have been propped up there in front of dozens of people who laughed at her like she was some freak in a sideshow. Sure she was a demon, but she was surrounded by such people that she never felt like she was different. Or not in a bad way. Thanks to Peter and the people she loved, she had been spared that insult until she had been too drugged to notice.

"Their opinions mean less than nothing." Flynn said firmly. He sounded angry. Deirdre noted it, because Flynn hardly ever sounded angry.

And then Deirdre froze and she stared forward with an expression of absolute panic on her face. "We're almost there."

"Okay...Deirdre, it's okay." Flynn pulled her closer to him using the hand she was already attached to him by. "They won't recognise you." Flynn checked her 'disguise' again. Her bright red hair was hidden under a huge black hat and she was concealed behind dark glasses. Though someone might recognise her as a demon, they wouldn't necessarily recognise her as Deirdre. And there were some demons and angels who bought their own kind at these auctions so her attendance wouldn't be unheard of. If there was even anything there when they arrived.

"I feel like bloody Superman, relying on glasses to conceal me from everyone."

"And it worked for him." Flynn pointed out, though he rather thought everyone in Metropolis must have been exceedingly dumb not to figure it out when they saw both Superman and Clark Kent on a regular basis. "You have me with you."

"Are you Jimmy Olsen?" Deirdre joked in order to keep calm.

"A rather thick and violent Jimmy Olsen?" Flynn asked with a smirk referring to his days in the PIRA.

"Oh Flynn, you are not thick or violent! Well you know...not anymore."

"A formerly thick and violent Jimmy Olsen. Got it." Flynn stepped forward again now that they were smiling and he was proud when Deirdre moved beside him. "There you go, Superman."

"I'm having a heart attack." Deirdre hissed.

"No you're not, Gorgeous. You can do this. Just hold my hand. You're going to be fine." If Flynn felt half as sure as he sounded, he was doing pretty well. He didn't, but Deirdre didn't need to know that.

It was Peter who had told Deirdre where to find the grand building that had hosted the auction, as she had not seen the outside of it, being enclosed in a vehicle when arriving and leaving. She shuddered when she looked up at it, however, and she beheld what the people attending the auction would have seen. She imagined how they would have felt...so powerful. They would attend an auction and soon they would own something of such incredible power. It must have made them believe they could control the world if they just had the determination to do so. Fuckers. Sad little fuckers with borrowed power. Bought power.

Deirdre bristled as they tried the doors, but it didn't allow them admission to the building. This surprised neither of them, and they commenced a perimeter check of the building so Flynn could find a window he could break in to. Being rather gifted at that particular skill, it didn't take them long to find access to the building.

Deirdre could tell the second she set foot inside, that the building was empty. There were no supernatural vibes, nor could she feel anyone else in the vicinity. Nothing alive, anyway. And as much as she really didn't want to, Deirdre figured they should just check the area for anything else quite seedy. She and Flynn wandered the laybrinth of hallways that lay underneath the building, finding nothing of note until they entered a large open area and Deirdre closed her eyes in horror.

"This is where you were, isn't it?" Flynn asked, noting the change in his friend.

"Yeah." Deirdre replied, her voice barely audible. The cages that had filled the rooms were gone, but she remembered it clearly enough. "There." She pointed near the centre of the room and she gave Flynn a rather desperate look.

"Well then let's go. Prove to those people that they don't own Deirdre Gallagher. They can't keep you in a cage anymore. You're free. Come on." Flynn walked with her out the door and once out in the hallway, Deirdre let go of Flynn's hand for the first time in hours and she leaned hard against the wall, needing it to support her. Demon strength was, unfortunately, no match for the rather measly columns that created artsy arches all through the hallways, and one was shaken loose. It toppled and fell towards Flynn at an alarming rate and while Flynn was incredibly agile, it was only through Deirdre's reflexes that he was pulled out of the way in time. Both Deirdre and Flynn went crashing to the floor as the column careened down beside them, filling the hallway with dust and cracking the cement floor. As the column was merely decorative, the ceiling remained intact and Deirdre and Flynn lay there on the floor for several minutes, shaking with the realisation that Flynn had nearly just died.

When his heartbeat had returned to normal, Flynn glanced over at his friend and said, with his normal utilisation of understatement, "well...that almost sucked."

Deirdre let out a breath, which turned to a cough in the still dusty hallway. "I think we should take that as a sign and get the hell out of here."

"Yeah. Yeah. Mmm." Flynn nodded and then he climbed to his feet and, still shaking, he helped Deirdre to hers.

Once outside, Deirdre and Flynn seemed to regain the ability to converse with each other in a normal fashion, though the topic was still dire. "I don't know if we'll find them here, Flynn." Deirdre admitted. "They could be anywhere, really. And we've seen absolutely no one...I...I think we should go to Paris..."

Flynn knew exactly what that meant to Deirdre. If Deirdre had suffered in Helsingborg, she had been ten times more worse off in Paris. The people who had bought her for work in a supernatural brothel, called Madam Butterfly's, had used her and abused her in ways she still had nightmares about and woke up screaming. For Deirdre to offer to go there was beyond brave. "Deirdre..."

"I'm serious. It'll be easier to ask where to find Madam Butterfly's than it is to find these people. And if she's not there, god willing...then we can ask about the auctions. They will know for sure. And we can start again. It's better than wandering the streets here."

Flynn watched Deirdre's face closely and then he asked, "is it?"

Deirdre took a moment to answer, and while she wanted to say no with everything in her, she got her head to nod twice and that was enough.

"Alright. But if we find that place, you're going nowhere near it."

While Flynn's tone invited no argument, Deirdre didn't like to think of him going in there by himself any more than he liked the thought of her going in there. "Flynn, I-"

"Don't argue. They won't want anything to do with me. And I'll bring money and ask the right questions. If I get in to trouble, you'll know where I am. You can bring help if necessary. It's settled."

Deirdre couldn't argue with that. "Okay. Settled."

"Right. Now come with me. I almost died and I need a fuckin' drink." He said, just like a true Irishman.

Deirdre didn't laugh like she normally would have, but she did give him an apprecitive smile. And, being Irish herself, she added, "yeah. Me too."