[Musical Vignette] "Too Much Blood on My Hands"

[Dr Archeville]

Taking place in her warehouse in Greenbank, in late November, shortly after her run-in with Blozan.

Dragonfly knew two things: first, that she was really, really annoyed; second, that whatever this little crystal pendant was, it wasn’t hers.

That latter bit was importantly mostly because she’d found it in one of ‘her’ cases - the foam-lined steel or black plastic security cases that usually held things of hers that had gotten shipped or sold to ne’er-do-wells around the country. This one, apparently, had been emptied out and the foam replaced to hold... something. Maybe a foot long, pure crystal as near as she could tell, and certainly nothing she’d ever made.

Picking the thing up, she tilted her head and scowled. It tingled a little to the touch. “Bad enough I have to track these down. Bad enough there are always more to find. Too much to ask for it to be what I’m actually looking for... too much to ask. Far, far too much to my mind--“

She slapped a hand over her mouth. what - was THAT She glanced around her warehouse but there was no one around; a quick query to her security system said that there was nobody within almost a block, and no strange anything in her warehouse...except for an energy spike from the crystal. Which she’d just touched. Bare-handed. fantastic - stupid stupid stupid - don’t even know what it does - hate magic

The longer she kept her hand over her mouth the more she felt like pressure was welling up inside of her, and when she finally couldn’t stand it anymore and removed the hand the music came back unbidden and in full force.

“Thought I was free, thought I’d made my mistakes,

Though the mistakes that were made were not mine;

Somebody else inside of my head,

Somebody with worms in my mind;

“And you cannot escape, you cannot run away,

No places to scurry or hide,

The sins of your past or the weight of the years,

The oceans of tears that you’ve cried.

“You can work, you can fight, you can toil

You can build justice from wire and foil,

Put the criminals away, shed some blood, save the day,

But it won’t tip the scales,

It can’t lessen your guilt,

It all simply pales

Next to the pain that you’ve built -

The mark lasts forever, as if burned with hot brands,

There’s so much blood on your hands....”

The building pitch of the song left her, and she sank down to the floor with legs up against her chest and her head down, voice cracking as the pace slowed and the last line echoed in the warehouse, almost a whisper.

“..... there’s too much blood on my hands....”