[b]Lynn[/b]

There were so few situations in Lynn's life in which she had no idea what to do.

The first thought that flashed through her mind was that this was a trap, an underhanded attempt to pull one over on Lynn. Lynn wasn't surprised - with one arm out of commission, she was going to need one hell of a trick to be able to wrestle Lynn back down to the floor. She kept coming closer, low red flames flickering up and down her arms and legs, dancing across her naked form. The steam and smoke in the restaurant afforded Lynn some degree of privacy - it was difficult to see outside of the restaurant, which probably boded well if the lizard came slithering back in. Lynn figured she could try to scramble out and get a better angle on him while he sifted through the sauna. But Salamandra lay here, breathing like she was trying to give birth, her arm hanging uselessly out of socket. Lynn stopped and stared at her for a moment, thinking.

This was Salamandra. Salamandra. The woman who burned cops and stayed on the run. Lynn felt furious and small, like everything pounding in her skull was towering over her. She was livid, angry enough at Archie to burn stars and melt fires. He had hit with the fridge and knocked her on her ass. [i]I had her,[/i] Lynn seethed. [i]She was mine and you fucking took it from me. They'll all say Salamandra had her on the ropes until Archie came in. Weak Little Lynn getting her ass beat all over again.[/i] In her mind, behind the squeals and groans of the restaurant's walls, bending and succumbing to the intense heat, she thought she could hear the laughter - Salamandra's and everyone else's - as she stood there, naked as a baby and feeling roughly as strong. She was furious at Salamandra, too, for more than she knew how to express. [i]Megan and Clarita fucking needed you,[/i] Lynn wanted to say. She remembered the day they called [i]her[/i] Salamandra, when she'd gotten her ass beat halfway to hell for them. They never had any chance of being Wonder Woman, but they could be Salamandra. Salamandra killed anyone who fucked with them, and with her ribs pressing against her skin and her stomach cramping on empty, Lynn could only give them sunburns. And Clarita and Megan couldn't do anything. She'd been shaking with fury and fear the night Salamandra had been arrested. [i]If the Fire Worms can burn out,[/i] Lynn had thought, watching the shitty small television from behind two black eyes, the room full of anger and noise, [i]We all will, too.[/i] If Lynn had been as strong as her she wouldn't have gotten fucked so badly in life, not from the cops, not from all the girls in juvy, not from -

In all the other pain Lynn felt, in her jaw and her throbbing, swollen nose, and down her sides and her stomach, Lynn felt a flash of phantom pain in her knee, worse than all the rest.

She stared down at Salamandra. This was no trap. The woman was beaten like a dog, shaking and whimpering. Lynn had never seen something so pathetic. Lynn's fists were still curled at her side, flickering with coronas of heat and light. [i]She was going to rape him,[/i] Lynn thought, wanting to draw herself closer and crush her windpipe. [i]Leaving her in prison is breaking her enough.[/i] Lynn heard noises from outside, the sound of it slamming the ground with all its strength. [i]It could be out there killing someone,[/i] Lynn thought, wildly, in a voice she could've sworn was Lucy's, or a court-ordered psychologist, or maybe even Clarita's, once upon a time. Lynn looked back down. [i]They sent her to kill me,[/i] she knew, she knew down in her bones. [i]They knew she would set off the lizard. They wanted deniability. She's a fucking puppet for the same bastards who lock kids up without a trial.[/i] Lynn tried to process the broken woman's words. She wasn't going to fight? She was going to lay there and take it? Just go the fuck back to lockup? She didn't have anything to prove, or anything to accomplish? Lynn was shaking with anger at her. [i]Get up,[/i] she wanted to scream. [i]Get up and fucking fight me.[/i] In the flurry of thoughts in Lynn's mind she could not tell what was right or what was fake, which of her instincts she could follow. [i]If she gets out again she will come back for you, and they will say you were too big a coward to finish her off. If you're ever locked up with her, she'll shove a shiv between your ribs the first chance she gets. [/i] one side urged. [i]If you kill her and the lizard takes out someone else outside, their blood is on your hands.[/i]

Had someone been plotting to kill Lynn - in earnest, for once - and had that someone been behind her, they would've had as clean a shot as they would ever get. Lynn stood rooted to the spot for some full thirty seconds. 

The longer she stood, the quieter the second voice got. [i]Spoons is as broken a housedog as they come,[/i] she thought. [i]Archie is too nice, and they'll put a bullet in his head the minute the lizard stops being useful. Amelia deserves whatever they're doing to her in Gennedy's excuse for a precinct. And Keaton won't help you when the time comes. It's only you. It's only you and when they put you in a cell with her she will beat you to death with your own collar.[/i]

She walked closer to Salamandra, drawing her power back to her, siphoning what oxygen remained in the room. There was a part of Lynn that loved this feeling, the rush and thrill that was running through her, the knowledge she had put Salamandra where she was now, that Cordelia Lynn Holmes could take the best hits the worst criminal in L.A. could give out, and when the smoke cleared, Lynn could spit out her teeth and keep on swinging. That part of her wanted this. It wanted to snap Salamandra's neck and drag her outside to show Gennedy, and Narc Natalie, and Che, and - 

Lynn stopped again, her mind struck by a thought she had not expected to cross it again. [i]Did that girl going to the station, with the officers - did she make it? Who else is out there?[/i]

"Enough of this shit!" Lynn screamed, kicking the floor and driving a foot deep gash into the melted linoleum. She panted, flames coursing higher up her naked skin. She turned back to Salamandra, heaving with exertion and trembling with anger. She'd wasted enough time pussy-footing with all her feelings. This woman was a killer, and not for any good reasons. She sicc'd that skull fucker outside on that woman. She was going to rape Archie (and for a moment, flowers in a hospital room flickered through Lynn's head, and burned away as quickly as they came), she was going to kill Lynn as soon as she got the chance. And the longer Lynn stood here the less time she had to put down the lizard or help that girl. Or help them all. All the ones on the station right now, all the ones found by the killers nastier than Salamandra. They burned away in Lynn's head, too.

There were no cameras left unmelted in the room, and in the smoke and heat, you could've mistaken it for the doorway to hell.

Lynn strode forward, grabbed Salamandra by the hair and pulled her up. The woman threw a punch, a blast of heat that tickled Lynn's side, and slammed her working hand into her kidney, her thigh, her groin, each blow a little weaker than the last. Lynn smashed her head against the wall trying to stun her, but Salamandra had melted most of the damned thing, and Lynn only succeeded in irritating her. [i]Enough,[/i] Che said. [i]Do it.[/i] Lynn remembered how scared she'd been holding the bottle in her hand, not wanting to, not wanting to be a - [i]Fucking do it already. Are you a pussy? Are you going to let them die because you're a coward?[/i] the way the guns had gone off around her, louder and stronger, kicking like horses in their hands, melting the barrels as long as Lynn was nearby, but the tracer rounds lit like stars, and they seared holes in their cars, in the walls, in - 

Lynn blinked. Salamandra was limp. 

She stepped back and the woman slumped down. The room was spinning, a touch from the fumes, a touch from the lack of air, a touch from Lynn's soul flickering like a candlefire. She kicked Salamandra again for good measure, almost falling over from the effort. Lynn wanted to say something, to tell her she was a bitch, that she should never have laughed at Lynn or done what she did, that she couldn't believe Salamandra went out like a coward, that Lynn would have run with her, that they could've burned their way to the docking bay and gotten caught but fuck, they could have tried, they at least could have tried, but none of the words came to her. They felt as empty as the room. Lynn shook her head and strode back to the far side of the restaurant, where the temperature was still several hundred degrees, but markedly cooler than that side. Lynn forced herself to simmer down and grabbed her sweatshirt, putting it on clumsily as she exited the back of the restaurant. As the hoodie passed over her broken nose, another flicker of pain whited out Lynn's vision for a moment and she stumbled into the doorframe, pausing to catch her breath. Lynn glanced around the kitchen and found a gym bag tucked into a corner. Lynn threw on a pair of shorts - oversized for her, but when were they not - and grabbed a kitchen knife off the chopping block. She considered grabbing a gallon of grease, but hesitated. The light on her hands was flickering, dancing wildly and violently, and Lynn did not trust herself to hold steady as she had in the cafeteria. [i]I'll blow my hands off, and not be able to stitch them back to me.[/i]

Lynn had hoped ending it would qualm things down inside her head, but it had only made them more furious. [i]The girl or the lizard? Keaton or any of them? Fuck this, fuck all of this.[/i] Lynn stepped outside, only half aware of how haggard she looked, of the sharp crook in her nose and the swelling left side of her jaw, the purple bruises already forming on her pale skin. Lynn drew in as much air as she could, feeling as though she'd only gotten a minute in the corner before having to start another fight. [i]Whichever I find first,[/i] Lynn decided. [i]If Keaton goes, I've got no chance of unraveling this, and Archie's the one most likely to kill her.[/i]

Lynn came around the side of the building she saw Archie and Natalie having a staredown. Lynn would not admit it to herself on the conscious level, but she did not have the strength to contend with either of them, and knew somewhere deep down, somewhere that scared her and stripped off her clothes and made her a little girl shaking on the curb outside a burning home, surrounded by sirens and screams, that she was not sure if she could have beaten Salamandra if Archie had not intervened. 

Lynn had never been one to pick winning fights.

She stepped closer slowly, trying to assess the situation. [i]Where's Keaton? And what the fuck happened to Spoons?[/i] "Oy," she muttered, knowing the lizard could probably hear her heartbeat back on Earth, but trying to catch Natalie. [i]She looks gone,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]Like her mind snapped in half.[/i] For a second, Lynn thought she could hear Che agreeing with her. "Nat, get up. Back away. Get over here." They didn't have time for this. She'd have to try and lure the lizard back in or -

She frowned, remembering Keaton's words through the weariness. Against every instinct Lynn had, she forced her heat back down, as low as she dared, and put her hands - only barely glowing now - behind her back. "Natalie get the fuck over here. Move." Lynn did not take her eyes off the beast, but kept her ears out for another escaped convict coming up behind her. [i]I hate this fucking station,[/i] Lynn thought. Her mind whirled for a way to win against the lizard, or maybe even both of them, as rabid as Natalie looked, but it only showed her Megan and Clarita, and Lucy crying, and Che, and Salamandra's eyes bulging, and the feel of her nose right now, and her right knee splitting open, and the cold of a prison cell.

As she tightened her grip on the knife, she could feel Salamandra beating against her right side, each hit growing weaker than the last.