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They were all bad people, when you got down to it. Murder for pay works like that.
Messy band of fucks about things like ‘internal logic’ and ‘boundaries’. They ate, slept, trained, and killed as a unit. The wires were bound to cross. Beatrix was screwing Bill, who was screwing Elle, screwing Vernita, so on and so forth. The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, with names like ‘Snake Charmer’ and ‘Black Mamba’. Then again, ‘the assorted vipers and other sadistic snakes’ didn’t have the same ring, now did it?
Beatrix Kiddo is a real bitch. But then again, so is O-Ren Ishii. One does not become one of the world’s premiere assassins without catching that particular knife and whipping it back. Beatrix made for good company, quietly cheerful without machination. O-Ren could say with certainty that she liked her in a way that she’d never liked Bill’s other ‘hopefuls’. Budd was as serial a case as could be of nepotism, Elle was fixing to backstab her way into a better name, and Vernita still fought like she had something to prove. Sophie was new. Not nice, but not named either. O-Ren was undecided on her. But Beatrix she liked.
They had a standing ‘spar’ set for the nights they were booked in the same hotel room. Beatrix and O-Ren would push the furniture neatly into the corner and stretch. Then, they’d stand up and begin the ritual anew. No weapons, just bare fists. They fought with no affectation or artifice. Every punch and kick delivered a fragment of their story. They shared stories with silent crosses and counters, secrets swapped in spin kicks. It’s the most honest O-Ren’s ever been, the most honest she’ll ever be.
Beatrix hollered like a harpy on the downwind, a fierce flurry of full-contact punches and kicks. They’ve paid enough that no nightly neighbors will be concerned by two women screaming and knocking into the wall. O-Ren flipped her onto the mattress and grunted when Beatrix planted a foot in her gut. She went for a flying elbow drop purely out of spite. It just happened to be her mistake, because her squad-mate was feeling rather leg happy today. Kiddo locked her stubborn ankles around the other woman’s waist and pushed, levering the weight shift to put her fellow assassin on her back.
“Silly rabbit.” O-Ren lays resplendent in the sheets, hair artfully tousled for someone who took a flying punch to the face. Beatrix hated her, loved her, and envied her on the same edge. She was the beauty of a winter night, with the shine of cold steel. The dingy hotel lights halo’d her where they’d wash out any other woman. She carried the smug satisfaction of someone who couldn’t be made to go or do anything she didn’t want. It had a way of making wins feel like losses, of which O-Ren was well aware.
“Ugh. Fuck you.” Beatrix pants, because that elbow hurt. She’ll probably need someone (probably O-Ren…) to set her shoulder. The other woman leaned back on her elbows and smiled.
“You can try.” A defiant gleam danced in her eyes. She’s never been able to help her compulsion for challenges. She might not always play to win, but she plays. It’s the only way she knows how to be when not tapping the bottomless well of anger. When she’s not fighting private wars for the right price.
“And you can go to hell, O-Ren Ishii.” Then, Beatrix kisses her like a flame kisses a candle. O-Ren is ignited, throwing her arms around the woman and deepening the liplock. If she really focuses, she can chase the nitrogen spark buried under the mint and sake they shared at the downstairs bar. She swears she finds it in the pitched moan she gets when she bites her. In Beatrix’s hands under her shirt, under her bra.
They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, until O-Ren feels like her heart might burst from the threat of sentimentality. She really likes Beatrix, and when she’s reminded, she pivots, because it’s dangerously close to ‘love’ for someone like her. The last time she loved anybody, they were stolen from this world and charred on the way out.
So she lives a loveless life and shoves Beatrix back to shuck her pants down. The other assassin catches her signal like she catches fists, with the added bonus of a wet trail of kisses down O-Ren’s collar. They lock eyes for the next part, the handshake of their fragile trust. As Beatrix noses at the hairs along her pelvis, O-Ren sees the plea for what it is. Knowing it will ruin her, that this will burn her down on the way out, she returns it and slips her fingers into the crown of gold atop her friend’s head.
Beatrix ate O-Ren with abandon. Licked her way past the defenses of a disciplined body at the same pace she tongues at O-Ren’s swollen clit. She chased the white-hot flare of it and ground herself down on Beatrix’s tongue. In a place where there was one loyalty to rule them all: The truth that there was no honor among thieves, they had broken the oath and sworn themselves to something other than themselves. O-Ren cried out with blonde hair wrapped in her fist. Pleasure ripped through her like a jagged knife and she let it, knowing there’s only one way this can end. After all, there’s only one way to cement your name among the best, when alliances end and the rules of clean combat are out the door. And they were the kind of women that played for keeps. A special fire in hell burns for them both. If god has any sense of humor, they’ll go together in one clean cut.