Let's have a drink with Scarlet

”I guess I’ll let you pay off this overwhelming debt you now owe me,” you tell Scarlet, liking the unwinding sound. Wherever Arabella and the others were, they’d unlikely need help anyway. So far, you’ve been given no reason to suspect trouble.

Scarlet swings her arms as her upper torso twists. You hear her bones, joints, and air bubbles pop all along her spine before she moans in deep satisfaction. “Thank the good Lord. I wasn’t looking forward to drinking alone.”

Once you are seated inside, you find the saloon well-positioned with drinks and a good bartender, a middle-aged man who doesn’t speak unless spoken to. The others inside keep to themselves, too. So you and Scarlet order drinks as you talk, not giving much of the previous events any attention.

Your glasses clink in a quiet celebration. Scarlet smiles at you, her dark blue eyes twinkling with happiness you hadn’t seen in her. Despite the mystery of who she is or her crimes, you can’t help but find her as friendly now. She tilts her chin down. “To your safety and my success.”

”Cheers.”

The drink, specifically your Gold Rush Cocktail tasted incredible. Tasted as good as Delilah used to make them… “Shit.”

Scarlet took a sip from what she got and looked at you. “What’s the matter?"

You wanted to avoid the topic of Delilah, but tasting what she almost always made you make your memories jog together. You didn’t intend to, but you started to talk about Delilah. This topic seemed to interest Scarlet, so she listened intently to your ex-lover.

”Good you ended it,” she says. “You would’ve made it worse for her in the long run, especially if you were already getting sexual with the others.”

”Doesn’t make any better,” you explain. “Who knows what I ruined because of what I did.”

Scarlet makes a face. “Worse ways to break a heart. However, you might have saved her from additional heartache if she had never dated again. Love is complicated when you’re searching for more than just sex, but I doubt I have to explain that one to you.”

”Yeah,” you murmur, taking another drink. “I wish I just…handled it better still. Delilah was a good girl, a better person than me in more ways than one.”

”Don’t sell yourself short. You’re still clearly capable of making some good decisions. I might be biased, but you helped me a lot, and you seem to be doing more good with those mutants of yours,” she chuckles slightly for some reason.

”What?”

”Nothing,” she promises. “Just a sudden thought.”

You pressed.

”Bartender,” Scarlet calls out. “Another round over here.”

You quickly drank what you had left over before your second drink could be served. In the meantime, you and Scarlet shared some more stories: first kills and unfortunate outcomes from botched contracts. You tried to get some information about her life before her profession, but she dodged these advances.

The second drink was downed, and a third round was coming in. You gathered that her name wasn’t Scarlet, and she avoided telling you her real name, too. You gave her some details about your life before becoming a contractor. She perked up when you mentioned being able to play the guitar; apparently, she did, too.

A third set of glasses settled on the bar, and a fourth-round was coming in. Scarlet kept her lips sealed about her last contract in Montana and carefully spoke about Amara and her time with Arabella. She expressed no regret about her mistreatment of her but also took no pride in it. Overall, her opinion of mutants was neutral. She admitted that she typically treated anyone in their position differently. Scarlet couldn’t have cared less about their tails, ears, and animal-like characteristics.

Eight empty glasses were on the counter, and the subtle buzz behind your head was raging into a hard vibration. Your fifth round was already half downed in your stomach, but the conversation was still enjoyable.

”I don’t feel bad about anything I’ve done,” Scarlet says after a dry spell.

”Where’d that come from?” You swallow, signaling a sixth drink to come in.

Scarlet sighs. “I mean… look at how many people I’ve killed. Combined, we probably have the blood of about 200 people on our hands, give or take. I’ve spoken to some contractors that have some hard regrets about what they’ve done, but I can’t relate. How about you?”

You shrug. “Yeah, there are some I wish I could have taken back. Smoked some idiot back in Wyoming but botched the shot, so he choked on his blood. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve to die like that. I don’t know why, but I let him **** and bleed…I just watched.”

Scarlet mumbles. “Even that, though. Can’t relate… I remember stabbing someone once, and he just…collapsed, you know? Didn’t fight me or anything. He just laid down, holding his wound, and embraced it. My at-the-time partner freaked out and couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

”You don’t get freaked out about getting that close to your contracts all the time? I couldn’t keep doing that, and I’m saying that after taking care of Hetch the way we did.”

She bubbles with gitty laughter. “Don’t put Hetch into this conversation. What we did to him is entirely different!” The bartender slides you your drinks.

”How?” You say, smiling slightly to match her energy.

”People say that **** is never satisfying, but that’s clearly because they never delivered it the way they really wanted to… I’ve cut many people for ****, and let me get this shit straight while we’re together… There is nothing better than ****, alright? I’d do what we did to Hetch 1000 times and never think evil of it once,” Scarlet downs her whole 6th drink in one swallow and covers her face with her palms. “My only regret as a human being is remembering why I wanted **** so badly.”

She hesitates, her face hidden. “We make decisions as human beings, don’t we? I made mine to get where I am, and they fucking made theirs. The only difference between us and them is our ability to see the outcome we want. When I get my hands on the people I hate, I make sure they squirm because I want them to feel the pain they dealt to me… and that’s satisfying… it’s orgasmic sometimes. Hetch got what was coming to him… Trigger, too.”

”Trigger?”

”Forget it,” she says. “Just an old acquaintance of mine.”

When she looks at you, you notice a line of tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. She forces a long yawn and wipes her eyes. “What are we doing, Warren? We’re almost 30, and we’ve wasted our youths on ****, drinks, and morbid pleasure. Should we get a room together and forget about our fucked up lives and fuck each other instead? I won’t be offended if you say we shouldn’t.”

You blink. “Do they even have rooms here?”

”We do,” the bartender chimes in. “I’ve got keys to some of the houses in the back that you can rent.”

”You got any other visitors here?”

He nods, smiling slightly. “I try not to listen much to conversations while at work, but it sounds like some recent fox-visitors might interest you.”

”See?” Scarlet laughs. “I brought you exactly where you should have been. So, what do you think? Should we sleep together?”