Johnny, angry Johnny, this is Jezebel in Hell
I wanna kill you, I wanna blow you… away

Molotov is like a coin flip in slow motion, unable to decide whether or not she wants to kill Brock, and he is the same, because he cannot decide whether or not he would mind. Every time they do this little dance, he dies some more inside, and he knows that there is only so much longer he can go before he is just a shell.

It has been twenty-three years, twenty-three long and painful years, and Brock knows it would be easier if he could just stop, if he could take back his heart and pretend she never existed, but it is impossible, because Molotov is like some slinking black panther, camouflaged in the dark recesses of his mind until she springs, unannounced, and attacks, all fists and blades and impatient bruising kisses, and then at the end of it, she is just as hidden as she was before.

He growls, yanks a dagger from his shoulder and stops thinking.

She catches the dagger when he throws it back at her, tossing it carelessly to the ground and then moving to grab him by the waistband, already tired of the fight. He may be turning into a shell but she is becoming a black hole, hungry and encompassing and so very tired of waiting for him to grow up and admit that he doesn’t just want sex, he wants her, because she knows he does and that he is just too thick-headed to take the necessary steps to get what he so desires.

Brock doesn’t know where they are; he thinks it is an old abandoned church, judging by the stained glass windows and the dust rising from the ground every time they move, but he doesn’t care, and drops them both to the floor, on the carpet between the sets of pews. Molotov reaches up and takes the back of his head in her hands, fingers curled in his hair, and stretches up to press her mouth roughly to his for several moments, and he doesn’t waste time while she kisses him, just pulls her clothing off savagely.

When he has her catsuit halfway off, around her hips, he realises that he can’t feel chains under it. Breath bated, he pulls away from her mouth to glance down, tugging the spandex a little further.

Pelvic bones. Bare pelvic bones.

“No way,” he says softly, unconsciously.

“Da,” she responds.

“You sure?”

“Do you want me to change my mind?”

Then everything is moving quickly, and he kisses her violently, tongue immediately pressing into her mouth as he finally, finally strips her naked, her clothes in a pile behind him. She wraps her legs around him and tears his shirt right off his chest as his hand snakes down to open his jeans, which she promptly pushes down with her feet.

Molotov bites down hard on his lip, groaning, as he thrusts into her, and he hopes he isn’t hurting her, but really he is too far gone to care that much. He moves one hand down, pushing her legs further apart, and her eye is squeezed shut but he can’t close his, viciously kissing her until she pulls her mouth away to arch her neck and swear loudly, panting. Brock is still for a moment inside her, giving her time, but she murmurs for more and he gladly gives it to her, grunting as her nails dig deeply in behind his shoulders, his pelvis slapping loudly against her thighs.

She is noisy and the dust that rises with every move is stinging his eyes, but he just curls his hand against the carpet, reaching back with the other to shove her leg up by the thigh, fingers pressing hard enough into her flesh to leave bruises. Molotov moans again, louder, and calls out his name, then rolls them over so that she is on top, leaning back as her hips roll in figure-eights.

Thrusting back against her, Brock reaches up to grab her breast, as she is too far away for him to take it into his mouth, his thumb roughly brushing over her nipple as he watches a single ray of sunlight come down through the face of an apostle in the window behind her, Brock can’t tell which one, but she is illuminated like some kind of angel, and he comes when she does, hot and pounding while her muscles flutter around him tightly, and she arches back, her hands moving behind her as she continues moving her hips.

And then, just when it is almost over, when Brock is lost completely in the strongest orgasm he has ever had, Molotov leans forward to look at him, her hand moving to press the barrel of her revolver between his eyes.

Judas.

“Da,” she says softly, and he is still coming when she pulls the trigger.

But either way
Either way, you know where it stands
I wanna kill you
I wanna blow you… away

Brock rockets up in a cold sweat, damp and scared, his stomach sticky with his own semen. When his eyes adjust to the dark and he realises it was just a dream, he looks to her eye for a second, then lays back down and hopes she will be there when he closes his eyes again.

The sound is actually quieter than authors and TV like to portray it as — it’s more of a quiet snap than a sharp one, like the sound a green branch would make if you broke it.

Molotov’s bones are even quieter, he notes as he crushes her hand in one of his, her punishment for being an unbearable pricktease who lets her fingers wander more than she should.

She pulls her mouth away from the crook of his neck to howl in pain, though she cannot move away from him, since he has her pinned against the wall, her leg between his, her thigh against his crotch, slowly grinding though Brock is more than aware that she would never let him finish. Her hand, still twitching in his, had been inching toward his knife, and he had only noticed in time to grab her by the hand and wrist, resulting in her broken bones. Molotov tries to jerk her leg up, but Brock squeezes her thigh with his legs, so that she is trapped there as well, and sneers at her.

“I don’t think so, Cocktease,” he says, though he is not really sure if he is actually using her surname or just calling a spade a spade. She is unable to do much besides shoot him a furious, if incredibly pained, look. Brock continues to sneer. “Move your leg.”

“Go to hell,” she returns.

“Move your leg,” he commands, teeth bared, “or I’ll snap your wrist, too.”

“Like that would fix the problem.”

“I’ll snap your wrist and then make you move,” he says, tightening his grip threateningly.

Molotov glares hatefully, and then starts to move her leg against him again, agonisingly slow and just a touch harder than he prefers. He’s still got her leg locked between his, of course, otherwise she would have already kneed him so hard that his testicles would have permanently retracted into his body, he knows this.

It feels good to him, but not right, because now she is angry, he can see, and she’s also pretty humiliated, if the way she has her face turned away is any hint, her eye pressed against the wall so that all he can see is her eyepatch. Brock grits his teeth, frustrated, and presses his forehead against her temple, eyes closed.

“Molotov… Molotov, stop,” he says, voice soft, then sighs wearily. “Just… stop.”

She immediately does, and he lets go of her to take a few very highly uncomfortable steps back. “Sorry,” he tells her vaguely, mumbling, then waves indirectly at the front door of the motel room, rubbing at the back of his neck with his other hand.

Glaring again, Molotov swears venomously at him in Russian, then leaves, clutching her crushed hand to her chest.

Brock sighs, punches through the wall closest to him, and then sits on the edge of the bed, placing a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, staring angrily at his lap. He smokes his cigarette down to the filter, then flops backward on the bed to look at the ceiling, lifting his hips as he unzips his jeans, taking care of things alone, like he always does when Molotov shows up.

It’ll be a long time before she shows up in his life again now, he knows that.

And the next time, he already can tell, it’ll be his bones that snap.

It was that he disliked Molotov’s animals. In a twist he had never expected, Molotov actually loved animals, but had never owned one before; when she was young, her father didn’t allow pets, she explained, and then she had never really had someone to keep watch over a dog or cat while she was off killing people in different countries.

So it made perfect sense that, as soon as she got Brock to move in and take care of her daily life, she got a dog, a massive Black Russian Terrier that she named Beria. Fittingly, this dog hated Brock with a passion, even though Brock was the one that fed and cleaned up after it. Beria would regularly attack Brock, snarled if he got within ten feet of Molotov, and was just generally a furious creature.

Molotov was none too happy either, not when Brock locked the dog out of the bedroom because it had bit him on the leg as he fucked his own wife. “He thought you were hurting me!” she exclaimed, shoving Brock off of her to go into the hall and cuddle with her dog. “He is a good boy, da, a good boy,” she cooed, her arms around its neck and her back to Brock as she scratched the dog’s back. Sighing frustratedly, Brock went to the bathroom to take care of things himself; he swore he saw the dog smirking as it panted, tongue out. When he came back, Molotov was asleep in bed, and the damn dog was lying in Brock’s spot, softly growling as he neared it.

Brock went to sleep in the guest room.

After a few months of this ridiculousness, Molotov decided it was time for a change. The problem, as she saw it, was obviously that Brock was jealous of her relationship with Beria. And of course he was! She could honestly kick herself for not realising it sooner. Brock was used to being her dog! His position had been usurped, and it was completely understandable that now he felt lonely and abandoned. And so, she decided to make it right.

“Brock!” she howled one afternoon, walking back into the house, tightly clutching a large purse.

“Huh?” he answered, walking out of the kitchen, wiping his hands off with a dish rag. “I’m fixing the sink, thought you went shopping.”

“I did,” she answered, smiling.

“What’d you get, you don’t have any bags…”

Molotov turned and unzipped her bag, then reached in and drew out a small kitten, grey with tiger stripes, a collar with a bell around its neck. “His name is Krushchev,” she said happily, thrusting the animal towards her husband. “For you.”

Confused, Brock accepted the cat, which meowed and placed its front paws in the centre of his chest. “Um, where did you get him?” he asked.

“From a woman,” Molotov answered vaguely, placing her purse on the table.

“Uh-huh. And why?”

“Because I don’t want you to be lonely and jealous,” she said, crossing her arms. “I have Beria, and now you have Krushchev, you should be happy.”

“I don’t even get to name my own cat?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she answered. “Of course you do… but this one is already named, so I suppose you are stuck with it.”

Krushchev meowed again, then curled up in Brock’s palm and started purring. Brock sighed. “Mol,” he started slowly, looking first at the cat and then at his wife. “I’m not… I’m not really a cat person.”

“Of course you are,” she said brusquely, lighting a cigarette. “Look at you, you are getting along splendidly with him.” She turned around and walked back into the living room .

Brock sighed again — Molotov was so difficult sometimes! “No, baby,” he started again, pacing his words. “Look… you can’t just take animals from strangers. He’s real cute and all, and I appreciate where you were going with it, but he might have worms or fleas or something horrible, do you want Beria to get a disease from him?”

Molotov shook her head, then pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Nyet, he was seen by the vet. Krushchev is completely healthy. A little underweight, but healthy.”

Of course. Brock frowned, then went the other route. “Well, we don’t have the right stuff for a cat, babydoll…” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “You need like, a litter box, and a scratching pole, and cat food, and all kinds of other stuff, he won’t be happy here.”

She shook her head again. “It’s all in the trunk, I went to the pet store right after I went to the vet. You can go get his things while he sleeps,” she told Brock, taking Krushchev from him and clutching the kitten to her chest. “He will be very happy here,” she said, voice growing softer as she looked down at the cat and scratched behind its ears.

Brock was getting desperate; if there was anything he didn’t want, it was a cat. “What about Beria?” he asked, believing that there was no way she could already love the cat as much as she did her precious dog. “I bet Beria won’t like having a little kitten around, what if they fight? The cat’ll die, Beria’s too big.”

Molotov looked thoughtful for a moment, then whistled for Beria. The dog bounded in from the backyard, his tongue hanging out. Smiling, Molotov scratched under his chin for a moment before sitting down on the floor and placing the cat in front of the dog; the cat stirred from sleep when the dog stuck its snout in his face. They sniffed at each other for a moment, nose to nose, then the dog licked the top of the cat’s head and lumbered off.

Grinning at her husband, Molotov went back to petting the kitten. “Nyet, it will be fine,” she said, still sitting on the floor. “Go get Krushchev’s things, and then you can play with him until it is time to make dinner.”

Brock gritted his teeth — she was talking to him like he was a damn child — but turned on his heel to go out to the garage and get cat stuff out of the trunk of the Viper. He heard a bell jingling behind him. The cat had followed.

Of course. With Brock’s luck, it only made sense.

While it was not exactly an uncommon occurrence, it still upset Brock when Dean cried (so he was upset a lot). However, he was more puzzled than upset when he walked into the kitchen on a Tuesday morning at noon, where Dean sat sniffling at the table, a variety of crafts supplies in front of him.

“What’s wrong, Dean?”

“It’s Triana’s birthday tomorrow,” he snivelled, “and I was trying to make a card, but I can’t think of anything that’s just right!”

“… And you’re crying because?”

“It has to be just right, Brock! I l-love her, and I don’t want her to think I’m a spaz!”

It took the majority of Brock’s strength not to inform Dean that he was, in fact, a spaz. “Well, what do you have so far?”

Dean cleared his throat, then began to read from his card. “ ‘Dear Triana.’ “

Brock waited a moment before realising that Dean was not continuing. “And?”

“That’s it,” he said, defeated. They sat there in silence for a moment before he turned to his bodyguard. “Can… can you help me, Brock?”

Anyone who had sat through even the shortest conversation with Brock would have known that poetry and flowery language were not his strong suit, and Brock almost told Dean this, but something about how dejected the kid looked, and the way his lip was quivering made Brock just sigh and pick up a magic marker.

“Okay, Dean. Give me that glitter pen, too.”

Triana Orpheus better appreciate this.

002. Heartbreaker | Pat Benetar (21.08 – 21.17)

Brock is running, running like mad down a New York subway car roof. It is dark as hell, and if not for the red hair waving a hundred feet in front of him, he’d think she had escaped.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” Molotov calls over her shoulder, laughing. “No wonder the Americans can’t keep up with the war!”

It is 1988. Brock doesn’t bother telling her that it’s her people who are losing. Growling, he leaps to the next car, following her. When she reaches the edge of the engineer’s cabin, Molotov glances at the tracks below for a second, rushing by with sparks flying, then turns and fires her gun blindly at Brock, as fast as she can.

He is hit once, grazed on the shoulder, but keeps coming towards her. “Why are you here, Molotov?” he yells, over the roaring sound of the air rushing past them. “You should have stayed on your side of the world.”

“I took out three OSI agents in Moscow last week,” she answers, “so I can say the same to you.”

“Do we have to fight, or can we just skip to the part where we fuck?” he asks, unsheathing his knife to throw at her.

She laughs derisively, mocking him. “You think it’s that easy, don’t you?”

Before he can respond, the train screeches to a halt, and they both slip a little, the smooth roof hard to balance on. He blinks and she has leapt to the platform, running away from him. She is lost in the crowd, and he is still standing on a subway car, and people are staring.

Brock sigh, turns and climbs down a ladder to enter the train proper and take his seat.

003. Shiver Me Timbers | Tom Waits (01.49 – 01.53)

People don’t call him by name, just ‘Captain’, occasionally with the qualifier of Pirate. He’s not a pirate anymore, and it sucks, but it’s okay. He likes the new boss, and he likes sleeping on the X-2. Sally makes him lemonade while he works, and at least it’s not that damn sargasso, he was going crazy there.

He should have been born about two hundred years before he was, he’d have been one of the greats, he just knows it.

Instead, he is the Captain, the nameless, faceless man in a Venture Industries uniform.

He could have been great.

004. Bratislava | Beirut (01.58 – 02.01)

Culture has never been Brock’s favourite subject to study, and particularly not in the all-night cram-style way the OSI has him learning it. Hunter screams and babbles about blending in with the enemy, but Brock can never connect histories with ways of living, the way the German Unification influenced how people in that country do things, why the Chinese celebrate only certain birthdays, why they drown their baby girls in the river. It’s confusing and frustrating and he hates it, but they keep making him learn. Like he’d ever really fit in down in Zaire anyway.

005. Ding Dong Song | Gunther and the Sunshine Girls (02.04 – 02.07)

Hank is in love. He is in love and, though he’s never been in love before, he knows it’s real, he just knows it. And the only thing left to do is persuade Miss Coqtiz to love him back.

He can do it. He has his sure-fire lady killer outfit on (the one that well-built guys on TV wear when they dance for ladies), he has half a bottle of his Pop’s cologne, and he is going to make her love him.

Hank didn’t even mind waking up at seven AM to make her breakfast! And she’ll love him for it, and they’ll run off together, and get married so that they could tongue kiss, and he’ll get a job jumping buses on a motorcycle, and everything will be just swell.

It only makes him love her more when she almost crushes his windpipe.

006. Her Father and Her | Adam Green (02.10 – 02.16)

It had always been Molotov and her father. From the minute her mother died, an hour after Molotov was born, it was just the two of them, against the world, in a little dacha in the freezing Arctic tundra of Siberia, at the top of the world.

They moved to Moscow when she was eight, for both gymnastic training, and to be closer to the KGB, where her father had resumed his job as a captain in the secret intelligence division that she would later join herself. He took her to compete in the Olympics when she was eleven. She was twelve when he let her back into the house, after she lost.

Her father wasn’t the one who trained her, but he did call in every favour he had to make sure her training went his way. He was her sometimes partner, her normal superior, and always her father.

Until Brock Samson stabbed him to death in an alleyway. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that maybe Brock believed, in some distant way, it would free her, because she knew for a fact that he hadn’t been assigned to kill her father.

He was more wrong than he ever could have known. Well, at least more then he knew until he got her clothes off.

And holy god, was this assignment boring. Brock spent most of his time avoiding the assignment’s kids, and the robot. His job was to keep the guy in the lab safe, not to babysit a pair of little kids with nothing better to do than ask him a million questions.

That day, Brock was in his room, sifting through audio tapes, when there was a knock at the door. Opening the door, Brock wasn’t very surprised to see Hank standing behind it, though the whole ‘being-covered-in-bubbles’ thing was a bit of a shock.

“B.. Brock?” the boy started hesitantly, looking at his feet. “Um… I was trying to do the laundry and…”

“Why wasn’t HELPeR doing the laundry? I thought that was one of his chores.” Brock crouched down to Hank’s level.

“HELPeR was making lunch for Pop, but I really wanted to wear my Batman costume, and it was dirty, but now…” Trailing off, Hank buried his face in his palms.

Brock sighed, then stood back up and placed a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go take a look.”

In the kitchen, HELPeR was panicking, the floor flooded with water, bubbles and sopping clothes. Beeping loudly, the robot spun in circles, claws covering its eyes. Brock watched it freak out as he splashed through, following Hank. A grilled-cheese sandwich sat, forgotten, on the stove; it was far beyond edible now. Brock switched the stove off as he passed.

The doorway to the laundry room was completely blocked off by the bubbling foam that was pumping out of the washing machine. Hank stopped about ten feet from the door, then looked to Brock questioningly. Looking back at him, Brock nodded, then walked through the wall of froth.

Wiping his eyes clear of soap, Brock looked around at the absolutely swampy room, standing ankle-deep in water. An empty detergent container floated by, followed by a shirt, a pair of Green Lantern-themed briefs, and Hank’s Batman mask. He watched them for a moment, then reached out and turned the washer off.

When Brock emerged, damp and covered in bubbles, he handed Hank the mask. “From now on, just let me do the laundry, okay?”

Hank nodded sullenly, staring at the plastic replica of Adam West’s face. “Hey, Brock?”

“Yeah?”

“Is my outfit clean enough to wear yet?”

One side of Brock’s mouth quirked up. “If you don’t mind the wet, yeah.”

Hank raced into the laundry room, and Brock went to find a mop.

He was engaged.

To Molotov.

Who was totally crazy.

Just that morning, she had smashed the glass top from the coffee table over his head because he had asked if she really needed to leave her wet towels on his pillow.

Then she tackled him and they had sex on the broken glass.

Twice.

And when she was done, she stabbed him in the shoulder with his own knife.

He was engaged.

Brock wasn’t sure, but he felt like he had stopped breathing. Molotov was smiling at him, people were staring up at the rooftop where they were standing, and Brock was considering suicide.

“You know, Samson,” she said, breaking him from thoughts of pitching himself to the street. “When you said you wanted to come back here, my immediate thought was that you wanted to do something embarrassingly feminine and I would have to put up with your idiotic ideas of romance. But this,” she continued, gesturing vaguely around, “could be worse, my Samson.”

Aware that this was the closest thing to a compliment he was going to get, Brock forced himself to smile at her. “Guess I could have saved myself a trip, huh?”

She hooked a finger under his belt buckle. “That depends. Is Paris for me, or for you?”

Brock’s thoughts began racing again, but none of them were terrified anymore. “For us.”

“Then this was necessary.”

“You sure? Sounds like you would have said yes if we stayed at home.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she answered, pulling him toward the door. “Come, my Samson. I will show you exactly how necessary it was back in the suite.”

Grabbing her by the waist, Brock could not help grinning. “You’re not gonna hit me with anything else, are you?”

Molotov’s smile widened as she bumped the door open with her hip. “Only if you ask very nicely, my Samson.”

“Devotchka,” her father started, using the closest to a term of endearment he ever had. Molotov instantly knew that the day would not be particularly pleasant. “You cannot refuse what you will be ordered to do. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Then go brush your teeth and meet me in the courtyard.”

Molotov scrambled out of the closet, and back to her bunk. Down the hall, a radio was playing – a woman cheerfully singing about the joys of love. The happy tone of the music was in direct contrast with the compound’s overall mood.

Molotov did not like it one bit.

After brushing her teeth and pulling her hair back, she sped to the courtyard, where her father, and all the high-ranking officials were standing in the snow. They were arranged in a circle, backs towards her. She could not see what they were surrounding.

“Here I am,” she called hesitantly. All of the men turned to look at her, and a soft rumble emerged from the circle. They were excited, she could tell.

Shtolnisky stepped out of the circle and stood in front of her. Shtolnisky had personally trained Molotov, had become family to her, but his normally jovial face was set in a grim expression.

“Molotov Aleksandrovna,” he said loudly. “Today is your last day as the daughter of Aleksandr Ivanovich.”

She glanced at her father, his green eyes staring down at her from his place in the circle.

“If you pass your final test on this morning,” Shtolnisky continued. “You will become a daughter of the party. Do you understand?”

Molotov nodded stonily.

“Then we proceed. Your final test is one of loyalty – loyalty to your country and to your government.”

He handed her a gun. The circle opened. On the ground knelt three people, clearly a family: mother, father and child. They wore black hoods.

“These people have been convicted of crimes against your nation. You are to execute them.”

The hoods were removed, and a soft gasp escaped her. The family was that of her former gymnastics coach. His daughter, who was looking pleadingly up at Molotov, had been a teammate.

“Molotov, on the count of three,” the Major announced.

She stared at the people on the ground, people who had taken her in and treated her as one of their own.

She aimed her weapon.

“One.”

The girl kneeling on the ground let out a sob behind her gag.

“Two.”

The muffled pleading was growing. Molotov felt a twinge of adrenaline surge through her.

“Three.”

And within seconds, there were three matching trails of scarlet staining the snow. The officers who were standing behind the family glanced at their shoes, checking to make sure that there was no blood on the shiny leather.

As Molotov lowered her weapon slowly, cheers of congratulations and happiness rose through the group of military men, who came to surround her, to pat her on the back and head and tell her how proud they all were.

Molotov stared at the holes in her friends’ heads.

“Are you all right?” Shtolnisky whispered in her ear. Her father was across the courtyard, grinning at the men who were loudly telling him what a fine daughter he had.

Molotov returned her eyes to the Major. “I’m hungry,” she announced calmly. “Let’s go eat.” Shtolnisky smiled at her, and they walked together to the cafeteria.

She was sixteen, and had just become one of the youngest full agents in the KGB.

That’s if you never visited their bedrooms.

Take a peek into the master bedroom of the penthouse in Moscow. Looking around, it looks normal, almost like no one’s ever lived in it. After all, she spends most of her time abroad, and the maid’s great at making beds. Open the closet, nothing seems out of the ordinary – that is, until you notice the shoe box hidden under a pile of fur coats. A box filled surveillance pictures, stolen documents, and half-smoked cigarettes. Pictures have notations scrawled in Russian, notations that you’d note (if you could read Russian) are filled with stupid and meaningless observations. “He changed his brand of cigarettes.” “Where did this black eye come from?” She knows they’re stupid. She never said she didn’t. Dig a bit more into the box, and you might come across a few fabric scraps: part of a concert shirt, half a belt, bloody denim. She has copies of his birth certificate, a copy of his license, a picture of his mother, and even more things that she’s managed to steal and buy on the black market.

It’s not a full-time thing, you know. Once a year, maybe less, she’ll get a picture of him, or (if she’s lucky) find herself close enough to grab just one more piece of him for her little box, cardboard that once held boots.

It’s okay. He’ll never know.

Millions upon millions of miles away, in Colorado, he makes it a bit more obvious. He’s never needed to reduce himself to her methods, but then again, he has more than she does to work with. After all, the heart he let her keep isn’t physical; she can’t keep it in a jar to assure herself he’s real. He likes to watch her eye float around, morbid though it may be. It keeps her fresh in his mind, helps him remember that he has somewhere to go when he finally gets tired of this life. Someone who doesn’t have to rely on him to keep them alive. Sure, she may wind up being the death of him, but at least she’s not going to bitch about the bloodstains.

He doesn’t hate them, you know. It’s just that he needs that thought, that reminder that there’s more out there for him. He doesn’t seriously consider taking her up on her offers. Often, anyway. They’re his family.

It’s okay. She’ll never understand, so the offer will always stand.

And as one goes to bed and the other wakes up, they each look at their reminders and know that somewhere on the other side of the globe, someone else is doing the same.

She was eight, and he was forty-two. They sat across from each other at the kitchen table on her first night in Leningrad, eating silently. Every so often, a piece of silverware would clink on a porcelain plate, and they’d both look up sharply, green eyes meeting, then quickly looking away. The clock on the wall ticked away the seconds, and he told her to clear the table.

As Molotov washed the dishes by herself, he came and stood in the doorway, watching her work, red ponytail bobbing up and down as she stretched to put bowls in the cabinets she could barely reach. He considered her for several moments before brusquely asking, “So, what do you like to do?”

She turned around, cocked her head and thought for a moment. “I can do a backflip. Want to see?”

He nodded. She carefully put the plate she was holding down, took a few steps forward, and sprang up in the air, contorting for a split second, then landed on tile.

There was a brief pause. He nodded, turned and walked away. Molotov turned back to the dishes.

Two weeks later, a man came to the apartment and told Molotov that he was going to train her, that if she worked hard, she could go to the Olympics. Her father stood in the doorway and nodded, handed her a brand-new pink leotard and informed her that in the morning, her would drive her to the gym and watch her practice.

Three years later, Molotov was the youngest member of the Soviet Olympic gymnastics team, but she broke her wrist a month into practice, and was forced to sit on the sidelines in Moscow, waving her cast around while she cheered for her teammates. Between their events, girls in red windbreakers came to doodle hearts and happy messages on the white plaster.

Watching a Chinese girl take the gold medal that Molotov wanted, she decided that she didn’t want to do gymnastics anymore. When she broke the news to her father, he yelled until he was red in the face, and sent her to her room. Her coach swore and slapped her.

It didn’t matter. On her twelfth birthday, Molotov didn’t want another leotard, and she didn’t want a pet kitty. She wanted a gun.

She got one.

Okay, so where there hell was Molotov and who were these people?

A man approached Brock. He was small and non-threatening, and, far from being concerned about the fact that a massive blond man with a knife on his hip was parked in front of the house, was smiling pleasantly. “Hey neighbour!” he called. “I’m Jim, and that’s Suzy, and we’re new. Great to met you!”

Brock nodded absently, not altogether capable of stringing together words.

“Yeah, we got a great deal on this place. Woman who sold it said it needed to go fast, wouldn’t tell us why, but that’s fine, we –”

“What woman?” Brock interrupted, though he knew exactly what the answer would be.

“Redhead with an eyepatch, real pretty,” Jim responded. “Russian, I think. She had a weird name though, I think it was –”

“Molotov Cocktease,” Brock sighed, interrupting again. He put a hand to his forehead and sighed again.

“Yeah, how’d you know? She the realtor for this community?” Jim asked, referring to the subdivision that Molotov had hated but not cared enough about to move out of, since the house had been practically free once she’d killed the developer.

“Not exactly,” Brock said. He was turning to get back in the Charger and leave when Jim called out again.

“What house do you live in, neighbour?”

Brock turned and looked at the house. “Um… I don’t really know anymore,” he answered, leaving before Jim could talk some more.

–

Pulling into a parking lot three miles away, Brock killed the engine and called Molotov’s cell phone on his watch. He was not sure she would answer, since she was clearly angry with him, but he didn’t know where to go and he really wanted to change his shirt.

The line rang six times, and Brock was about to hang up when she answered. “Well hello, my Samson. Are you done playing house with your idiots?” she said.

Brock stared at the static on his watch face. “What the hell did you do, Mol?”

“I decided that it was time for a change,” she answered simply. There was a clattering in the background.

“What’s that?” he asked her, squinting.

“I am putting away the cutlery,” she answered snidely. “Did I need to ask permission?”

“To put away forks? No. To move? Yes.”

“Forgive me, but it was my house. I believe that allows me to do as I please without consulting anyone.”

“Mol.”

“Samson.”

“I… where are you?”

“At my new home,” she replied airily. “It’s very nice.”

Brock bit his lip for a second, furious. “And where is our new home, Mol?”

“My new home is on a small lake. The dog likes it.”

“The dog?”

“Well, I had to find something to fill your place. And it’s so much smarter than you, too.”

Brock’s vision flashed scarlet. “Where are you, Molotov, and don’t give me any bullshit.”

She snorted. “Or what? You’ll find me?”

“I’m fucking serious, Mol.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Keep speaking to me like that and I will cancel your credit card.” Then there was a click and the line disconnected.

Brock groaned loudly and let his head fall against the steering wheel with a thud. He sat there for a moment, trying to figure everything out. Molotov was pissed because he left to help the Ventures for a week. In that week, she had sold the house and moved to a new one on some unnamed lake, and adopted a dog. She had taken all his clothes and stuff, and was refusing to tell him where she was, and she was threatening to cut him off financially, which was not good news if Brock decided he wanted to eat more than like, six bucks worth of food.

For a full five minutes, Brock had to sit and take deep breaths to stop himself from getting out and killing the first person to walk by. He looked up and sat still for a minute, then called Dr. Venture on the two-way.

“Doc,” he said when the call was answered. “I’m coming back.”

Dr. Venture looked at him quizzically. “I thought you said that your little psychopath was going to get her panties in a knot if you stayed any longer.”

“I might have overestimated her patience,” Brock answered, turning the ignition. “I’m not gonna be there long, I just need a place to do a little research.”

“Why can’t you do that at your place?”

“Because… It’s a long story, Doc, just don’t ask. And hey.”

“What?”

“Do you still have that shirt that I found in that box that time?”

“… Yes. I can’t wear it now, it’s huge.”

“Yeah, I need to borrow that.”

–

Four hours later, Brock was sitting at the kitchen table of the Venture Compound with every single map of Colorado he could find spread out in front of him. Several of the maps had lakes circled in red marker (Crayola, as Brock was unable to locate any Sharpies), but none of the circles were particularly helpful, as he had no other clues to go on.

Utterly regretting never putting a tracer on his wife, Brock sighed for what was surely the umpteenth time that day. Dr. Venture passed by and looked at the maps.

“Still nothing?”

“No.”

“… Did you try just calling her again?”

Brock looked at the doctor for a minute. “… No, I didn’t.”

Dr. Venture turned away and opened the refrigerator. “Well, maybe you should try that,” he said, taking out a can of soda. “And since you’re here, can you make dinner or something? I’m getting kind of hungry,” he added, leaving the kitchen. Brock glared for a minute, then stood up and filled a pot with water for spaghetti.

While he waited for the water to boil, he tried Molotov again, since he did not have any other options. She did not pick up the first three times he tried, but on the fourth attempt, she picked up immediately. “Stop calling,” she snapped.

“If I were at home, I wouldn’t have to call,” he growled. “Where are you?”

“On the porch,” she said. “I do not know why you are so upset, you made your choice.”

“I… You… Supervillians, Mol! They can’t really defend themselves from guys with guns and lasers!”

“That is not my concern,” she sniffed haughtily. “And it shouldn’t be yours.”

“They’re my family.”

“Nyet, they are dependent buffoons, and since you appear to enjoy their charms more than you enjoy mine, you are free to stay with them.” The line went dead again, and it was all Brock could do not to submerge his head in the now-boiling pot. Instead, he dumped a handful of pasta in the water and went back to the maps.

At midnight, Brock fell asleep on top of the folded-up Greater Denver Metro Area. He dreamed that Molotov was drowning in her stupid lake and that her stupid dog was drowning with her, and he smiled in his sleep.

–

Brock woke up the next morning with a crick in his neck and bad attitude. While making breakfast, he decided to call in a favour from an old friend, a reconnaissance expert he’d been stationed with in Pailin, and by ten, he had a list of four lakehouses sold in the past two weeks. He plotted the search trip on a map, making the route circular so that if he didn’t find her in any of the houses, he’d be close enough to the Compound to avoid renting a motel room.

At eleven-thirty, Brock headed to the hangar to leave. All three Ventures seemed particularly unhappy to see him go, albeit all three had different reasons.

“But if you go, who’s going to protect us? Every time you leave, we get attacked!”

“Aw, why can’t I go with you? I bet I could help you so much! I’m probably invaluable at tracking people!”

“Honestly Brock, that woman has made it perfectly clear she doesn’t want you around, and I can never get the windows as clean as you can.”

Brock spun around, fifty feet from the Charger, and spread his arms. All of the Ventures stopped in their tracks. “Dean,” Brock started. “Dr. O is right next door, and if he can’t handle it, I’ll come back. Hank, I’m just knocking on doors, it’s not something you’d be interested in. Doc, I told you, don’t use paper towels on glass, use a cotton cloth and wipe in straight lines. Now, I’m going.” Brock had been hoping this would have the effect of making them calm down.

It did not. It only made them clamour more and louder. Brock rolled his eyes and turned back around, then proceeded to get in his car and leave.  Within the following twenty minutes, he received eighteen separate calls from the Ventures, all overlapping, and all believing their calls were the most important. After finally convincing Hank not to make HELPeR hold bricks while he tried to punch them in two, Brock turned his comm-watch off and headed for the first house on the list.

–

This was it. It had to be, she wasn’t at any of the other three houses, and Brock wasn’t sure what he’d do if she wasn’t here. He drove down a dirt path that came off the main road, through a wooded area. Even though it was nearly two in the morning, Brock could see the lights in the house shining like a beacon at end of the path.

When he reached the house, he immediately noticed that the house was directly on the lakefront, and a red Viper was parked near the shore. Entirely relieved, Brock exited the Charger and approached the front porch. The front door was open, though the screen door was closed and locked; light and music poured onto wood through the mesh. Brock crept up the front steps and pressed himself into a dark corner, then kicked the screen door open.

Then he was knocked backward as a huge black blur attacked him, barking furiously, the deafening noise drowning out everything else. Pinned to the ground with an angry dog’s teeth an inch from his jugular, Brock was faced with several options.

He could kill the dog and get up, but Molotov would probably never fuck him again. He could try to get up without killing the dog, but he might have his trachea torn out. Or he could admit defeat.

Brock weighed these options for a few seconds, then called out at the top of his lungs, “Mol, a little help?” The dog growled viciously.

Her voice was disturbingly close when she answered. “There is no need to yell, Samson, I am right here.” She leaned over and he could see her behind the dog’s head.

“Can you get your goddamned beast off me?”

She snorted loudly. “How long before I am asking you the same thing?”

If the massive dog hadn’t been on top of him, Brock would have beaten Molotov’s face into the wall. “Mol.”

He was relatively sure she rolled her eye, but then she grabbed the dog’s collar. “Beria,” he heard her say sternly. “Proch‘. Eto prekrasno.” The dog climbed off him, but continued growling.

Brock stood and looked at Molotov, leaning in the doorway, fantastically large Chornyi standing next to her. “Beria?” he asked, squinting at the dog.

“Da, that is his name.”

“You know Beria was a rapist?”

“Did you come here just to spew negative propaganda?” She turned and walked into the living room. The dog followed her. Brock did too.

“No, I came because you’re my wife, and you moved.”

“Am I your wife? I ask because you spend more time with your precious doctor than with me. He must give better head than I do,” she said, back to Brock. She snatched a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table and lit one. He reached out and grabbed her hair, then pulled her close. The dog immediately began barking again, but he ignored it and smacked her. “Did I hit a nerve?” she sneered at him.

He popped her again, and she kicked him in the knee with her bare heel. It was at this point that the dog attacked Brock’s leg, sinking its teeth into his thigh. Brock swore loudly and punched it in the head with his free hand. Molotov punched him in the eye in response.

“You do not punch my dog!”

Brock grabbed her by the throat and punched her in the jaw. “Don’t punch me!”

“Fine,” Molotov snarled, then twisted away from his grip and sprang up, kicking him in the face. He caught one of her ankles and she was stuck with her face at his shins. He was going to just haul her away like that, but she stretched out and caught the cord of a lamp, which she pulled down and used to bat at his ankles. The lightbulb shattered and Brock fell backwards. Molotov dropped the lamp as she fell with him, and they landed together in a heap, dog still barking relentlessly.

Sighing, Molotov extracted herself from Brock’s hands, and sat on top of him, facing his feet. She lit another cigarette, her previous one squashed in the fray. After a few seconds, Brock sat up and looked over her shoulder at the wall. He heard her snort.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“The house is nice.”

“You have only seen the living room.”

“I hate your dog.”

“He is trained to attack you.”

“You didn’t have to move.”

“I do as I please.”

“What would please you right now?”

Molotov didn’t answer, just turned around and grabbed Brock by the collar, and pressed her mouth to his. He kissed her back hard, a hand on the back of her head and the other on the small of her back. She began to pull his shirt up, but drew away from his mouth and stared for a moment, hands on the bottom hem.

“Samson?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“… What the hell is on your chest?”

Brock realised that he was currently wearing a shirt that had belonged to Dr. Venture. In the 1970s or 80s. That had a cookie on the front. There was silence as he tried to figure out how to explain this.

“Well?” she asked, looking back up at his face.

“I… needed to change my shirt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You took all my stuff.”

“So you found a seven-year-old girl to steal clothing from?”

“I… it didn’t belong to a little girl.” Brock rolled his eyes and pulled off the offending garment. “Can we let this go?”

Molotov snatched the shirt from him and tossed it to Beria, who eagerly caught it in his mouth and began to shred it. “Now we can.”

Brock squeezed her waist. and leaned back against the arm of the sofa. “I liked that shirt.”

She smirked and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I know,” she replied, shifting closer to him. “Close the door.”

Brock grinned, reached out and slammed the front door shut.