A dick joke, really? That was what Alejandro dropped right before executing her? Ashe often joked to herself that the last thing she would probably hear would be a transphobic remark, but after everything she had endured, she refused to let that be the note she went out on.

“Hanabi, you have eyes on?” she said, projecting her voice so everyone could hear.

Alejandro arched an eyebrow, though it was upside-down from the angle she found herself looking from. His gold plated desert eagle was still pressed against her scalp, the heat of the barrel agonizing, but she endured it.

Silence reigned for several seconds before Keiko keyed up. “I can put one right through him. Mag’s full, but I can’t get everyone before they could get a shot off.”

Yeah, Ashe figured that much out. More men were coming out of the woodwork, and soon there were a dozen guns on her. Had they really thinned them out that much? Alejandro brought nearly thirty men with him, and she counted maybe twelve left. A laugh bubbled up, she couldn’t help it. Four girls and one big mother fucker had all but decimated the elite fighters of one of the worst gangs the city could offer up.

They’d still lost, in the grand scheme of things—

Her mind hitched, and she realized something. They weren’t out of the game just yet, there were still cards that she could play.

“Hanabi, if any of these asshats cap me, make sure Alejandro dies too,” Ashe said with a grin, looking deep into the man’s furrowed eyes. No answer came over the headset, but Ashe didn’t need one. “So, what will it be, want to die together? Ute.”

Alejandro blinked, the mask slipping for just a moment as he tried to parse what she had just said. Ashe rolled, his gun discharged, and the side of Ashe’s head lit up in blazing agony. Pressure washed over her like an explosion, her left ear popped painfully, her right ear was still in too much pain to tell much difference. The world fell silent and the battered hunk of car twisted in a shower of sparks all in the same instant. Ashe rolled onto her side, protecting the part of her head that hurt the worst. She barely had a moment to realize that Keiko must have caught her signal and taken the shot.

Then gore rained down on her.

Ashe curled up tighter, the warmth of the blood a morbid juxtaposition to the earlier chill of the downpour. She almost hadn’t noticed the rain letting up, but now she couldn’t help but realize that the blood was dripping off of her and she was hoping that the storm would resume in earnest. She blinked, and realized that the danger wasn’t over. She brought her pistol back up, snapping shots off that she couldn’t hear.

Concerning as that was, Ashe didn’t stop until the last round ejected and she could see it was empty. Ashe tossed it aside and looked around, taking the opportunity to get some semblance of feet back on the ground. Alejandro’s gold plated deagle was right there, with his severed arm still attached to it.

She was so buying Keiko something nice for that.

Grabbing the gun, she shook it loose from Alejandro’s hand, which almost sent her into another fit of deranged giggles. She kicked the severed arm away, it didn’t fumble like she expected, and sort of landed against one of the nearby corpses, not that she could tell who it might have been.

Another wave of pressure washed over her, and she ducked out of instinct. Right, she still hadn’t heard that, and her eyes ached. Fuck, that wasn’t a good sign. So much for avoiding injuries, but she hadn’t expected to survive once she had the barrel of Alejandro’s gun pressed to her skull..

Ashe shook her head, and then promptly regretted it as the world spun around her. Worse, blood fell in thick droplets from her drenched hair, no longer diluted thanks to the rain having ended entirely.

Her vision went black for a moment, but she couldn’t let that slow her down. The gun had slipped from her fingers, but she grabbed it once more. She needed to get on her feet, make sure everyone was safe, double tap Alejandro in the skull, assuming he still had one, even if it was just to make her feel better at this point.

She tried to stand, but everything was spinning. Ashe gripped the ruined car, pulling herself up, but her hand slipped, her good hand at that! Before she could fall, an arm hooked under hers. She looked up, and found Crystal’s smiling face looking back at her, the sky behind her slightly alight with the warm glow of the rising sun fighting to break through the fleeing storm.

“Hey,” her girlfriend mouthed, but she couldn’t hear shit.

Ashe tapped her ear, then cried out, the pain agonizing. Right, Alejandro had gotten that one shot off before everything went to hell. Exhaustion was creeping at the edges, blood loss, she knew that from experience, unfortunately. Crystal had a bundle of gauze out and was quick to press it against Ashe’s ruined ear. She bit back a scream, thumping her fist in the process.

“Did we get him?” she asked, unsure how loud her question had been.

Crystal winced, and Ashe didn’t miss it, then felt her heart drop when she shook her head. She pointed, but Ashe couldn’t hear the words, only felt the slight vibrations from their close contact. She didn’t need to hear the words, to know that he had gotten away despite losing a limb. He would probably bleed out, should, bleed out.

Something told her that he wouldn’t though, that the little roach would crawl into some dark hole and come back to bite them when they least expected it. She wanted to hunt him down, to make sure he couldn’t pick himself back up.

Instead, Crystal nudged her, helping Ashe walk as she directed her towards the bar’s entrance. Bodies littered the ground, most of the blood having been swept away by the storm. That did only so much to dilute the carnage of it all. Rifle rounds weren’t gentle killers, the scene before her attesting full well to that truth. Some of the Viuda were outside inspecting the bodies laying around them.

Her eyes swept over each fallen form, before stopping on one.

“No,” she muttered, pulling away from Crystal. She didn’t have the strength to break free, she wanted to curse her own weakness, but Crystal helped her along until they were beside Mercedes, Eric, and a battered and bloody Robbie.

“How bad is it?” he asked, chuckling through the obvious pain.

At least, she hoped she was reading his lips correctly, he wasn’t exactly moving his lips properly with how much they kept twisting. He was an absolute wreck despite the armor, and his leg… Had someone hit him with a fucking grenade?

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Mercedes smacked his shoulder, an angry scowl on her face as Ashe tried to follow her lips. “Keep laughing and you’ll bleed out.”

More vibrations from Crystal suggested she was talking, then Mercedes was gesturing with one hand, while the other ran a needle through Robbie’s exposed side. Crystal sighed, then nudged Ashe to move away. She didn’t want to, but complied. They walked towards the entry, their van absolutely wrecked, and smoking.

When she got there, Keiko and Brie were waiting, both soaked to the bone, but otherwise looking hale and whole. Ashe was glad to see the pair, and they brightened up when they caught sight of her. Brie’s mouth moved, but she could only catch every fourth word as she looked Ashe over, Crystal swatting her hands away.

Keiko looked her over, said something, and frowned. She then raised a hand past Ashe’s head, then moved it in front of her and snapped, and no sound came from it.

“Yeah, kinda deaf at the moment,” Ashe said with a dejected sigh. “Really hoping this isn’t permanent.”

Keiko’s hand dropped a bit, a complicated expression passing over her face for a moment, then she patted Ashe’s shoulder. Five minutes and she was already getting tired of the pity that everyone was showing her.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked, unable and uncaring of any other conversation.

Brie stepped back and opened the door of the bar. Crystal adjusted her grip and helped Ashe walk inside. The bar was almost emptied, though Yessina was still lying on the countertop, her chest rising and falling. Kyle wasn’t at her side though, he was glaring daggers at Ashe’s mom who was currently sitting at of the booths where he was attempting to tend to her leg.

Ashe sighed, the conversation lost on her as they approached. Her mom perked up, moving to rise before the man pushed her back down, his glare just a bit sharper than before. Ashe paused, unsure what to say, so she just pointed to her ear where she had been shot.

“Can’t hear shit,” she said in resignation.

Her mom blinked, then her hands rose up and she began to sign almost on impulse. Ashe couldn’t help but laugh, because she’d barely learned how to sign, let alone practiced the skill. Meanwhile, her mom was one of the department’s few interpreters.

Ashe signed out one of the few things she could recall off hand, the signal to slow way the hell down before remembering that she could still speak. It was amusing how that worked sometimes, when one person signed to you, it was all too easy to just sign back, assuming they couldn’t hear what was being said.

Getting used to being the deaf person in those conversations would take some work.

Linda waved her off her lips moving with her hands, though she was still speaking faster than she was signing. Ashe was grateful for that, the signing letting her fill in the gaps that she didn’t quite catch.

“That’s okay, we’ll figure this all out, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry?” Ashe asked. “Mom, everyone knows I’m Inferno, there’s no way I won’t go to jail at the end of this. Alejandro got away, he’s going to spread this.”

Linda frowned, then started back up again. “That bastard’s done. If he doesn’t die from his injuries, one of his backers will off him. That’s assuming he can even get out of the country. He’s a dead man walking.”

“I notice a distinct lack of mentioning me going to jail there,” Ashe said with narrowed eyes. “What are you planning?”

“Inferno died in the fighting,” Linda said, her expression dead serious. “It was Cat’s idea. Just get all your people to stick to that story and you’re golden.”

She felt Crystal tense, and that alone was enough to ignite that defiant spark within.

“What if I don’t want to fake my death?” Ashe demanded. “I’ve fought and bled for my people. I’m not just going to abandon them because it is convenient for me.”

“Ashe,” Linda said, reached out for her hands.

Ashe swatted them away. “No. You don’t get to just drop that on me like this! You didn’t even wait until the dust was settled, you just threw it in my face while one of my friends is barely hanging on outside. Fuck you.”

She glared with all the fury she could muster, despite her mom’s form wavering in her swimming vision. Ashe was not going to just walk away like that, she was not going to abandon the people that relied on her. She wasn’t going to subject others to the same thing that she endured when the system failed her.

“We can’t sit on this, Ashe,” Linda said, her hands moving once more. “Cat’s sending a car out here, either we come up with something, or you will be arrested. Think about it, you would lose your surgery date, and I know what that would do to you.”

“Everyone here knows my face,” Ashe said. “Your plan is bullshit and you know it.”

A hand entered her field of view, and Ashe was almost startled when Kyle’s thumb hooked back towards the bar where Yessina was awake, but not upright. He walked back over, leaning in to listen, before he too began to sign as he spoke.

He was probably worse at it than she was, but the gesture was appreciated.

“Yessina has a suggestion for that,” he said, gesturing at the woman. “Ashe is all but made, which means she can either embrace this life like Alejandro had, or she can take the hit to her reputation and lead a relatively normal life, but still maintain contact with her people. Is that the basics of the dispute?”

“There would be no contact,” Linda was quick to say.

“That’s not an option,” Ashe immediately snapped. “I can see the merit of going dark, but vanishing outright isn’t something I can do.”

Linda looked at her with an expression that Ashe had never seen directed her way. “You’re a criminal, you’ve murdered people in cold blood, from the Mayor and his son, to Kendall.”

The glare was piercing, and this time, Ashe didn’t deny the truth of the statement.

“Alejandro killed them,” Crystal interjected, though she didn’t sign it. Ashe looked from her to Kyle, and he signed what she had said. She could only snort at how ‘bastard’ ended up being his standing name in sign language. He then continued signing. “It keeps the focus on Inferno down, she can lay low, let the name go dark, but still be active in the territory, more of a helper than an active threat.”

Linda seemed conflicted about the idea, but didn’t dismiss it outright. It would certainly make it more difficult for Alejandro to operate in the city with those charges hanging on his head, but there was an appeal to the idea. It also kept her involved with her people, and gave her parents the out they were seeking.

She didn’t like it, but compromises rarely made everyone happy.

“Could you live with that?” Crystal asked, Kyle repeating it.

Reluctantly, Ashe nodded, the taste of it like bile in her throat. It would mean taking a hands off approach to anything that threatened her territory, which meant a change in how things were run.

“What about you, Mom?” Ashe asked. “Would this work?”

“It’s far from perfect,” Linda said, though reluctantly. “I don’t like it, but if you aren’t personally out on the streets gunning people down… I think we can safely see it all brushed under the rug.”

“Corruption wins again,” Kyle signed, though subtly.

Ashe had to repress a snort at that, but it seemed they had come to a tentative agreement. Ashe reached up, pulling the red bandana from her hair and looked at the thing. Who Inferno was, what she represented, that was something that Ashe had built all on her own, and just leaving it behind still felt wrong.

Rather than let it fall to the ground, Ashe shoved it into her pocket. Inferno might be going dark, meant to fade away into obscurity, but Ashe wasn’t about to discard her outright. If she was going to do this, she would need to have a meeting with her team, figure out what the future would look like.

For the moment, however, they all needed to rest and recover.

Ashe especially, because she was rather sure she had a concussion, not to mention being newly deaf. She had a lot of work ahead of her, but all she wanted to do was rest. So, she directed Crystal to sit down, and Ashe immediately curled up against her. No matter what came their way, she felt safe with her girlfriend at her side, and so Ashe relaxed for the first time in weeks, letting the world drift away.