She
makes a face at the drink, then belts another gulp back. One more
gulp, maybe two, lie in the glass when she sets it down hard on the
table. She looks across at him, her head cocked, surveying him. An
unknown face as familiar as his own stares at him, then she smiles,
and lays a deck of cards on the table, covering it with one hand.
"Game?"
"Sure. Always a pleasant way to pass the time until the end of the world. 'You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here'," Martin quotes. The music catches his attention for a moment: " ... Women seem wicked when you're unwanted / Streets are uneven when you're down ..." but he ignores it and turns his attention back to the cards and the woman dealing them.
She shuffles the cards like she was born with a deck in her hands. She sets it down for him to cut, then picks it back up to deal when he has done so.
"What stakes are we playing for? You have something in mind?" Martin asks. He picks up his glass, swirls it around, but doesn't take a drink yet.
She looks over at him, her fingers resting on the cards she's dealt herself. The backs are black, solid at first glance, then something visible in the texture of it beneath the paint as if fabric covered them instead of ink. "What stakes do we have left at this point?" Her grin widens. "I don't even know your name. What're you worth?"
"Depends on who you ask, sweetheart." He takes a small sip of the drink. It's thickly crimson and has an iron tang. "A father's care, but only after it was almost too late, and never a mother's. The love of a good woman, but not her hand in marriage. A shadow and the lives of everyone in it. But not the chance to remake the universe in your image."
She frowns at him for a moment, head cocked, seeking answers in his expression more than his words. He smiles at her, a shark's baring of teeth, and picks up the cards she's dealt him, fanning the faces of his family out into an easily-read hand. "You pay your money and you take your chances. Put your card down."
She cradles them close to her for a long moment, staring at the cards he has fanned before him. She reaches out to touch Random's irreverent grin. "We match, a king for a king," she says, laying down the first card. The next laid down in succession are unfamiliar, one woman, two men... then at the last a librarian he cannot help but know. Jordan's face stares out, tears creating grubby tracks in soot on his cheeks.
The images of Random turn slightly, facing each other as the cards lay on the table. First one winks, then the other.
Martin rolls his eyes.
The girl pushes the cards towards Martin. "Your hand." She belts back another gulp of her drink, leaving only a small amount in her glass. Her gaze falls on the crimson liquid in Martin's glass. "Take care you don't bleed out before you can pull yourself back together again," she murmurs. "It's too easy to fall to pieces in a place like this."
"It's not falling to pieces," Martin corrects. "It's the hole." He taps a card bearing a familiar face in the center of his spread. The body of the card has been pierced, and she can see the ink of the card dripping through to stain the tablecloth underneath.
From the next card over, a dark-haired giant eyes the dripping card unhappily.
"Besides, it's not supposed to be your job to tell me how not to die, is it? Or is this the scene where you say 'it's not your turn' and I stop drifting toward the light? I've already had one angel walk me back from the edge." From another of Martin's cards, a brown-haired girl--no, woman--no, girl narrows her eyes at Martin before eyeing the girl across the table suspiciously.
"You can go back from the light if you want," the woman says. "Right now, I'm thinking it's going to be the way out."
Jack is Kate Hudson