Lisbeth Salander

Dreamland sat dark and cold, and at its heart, Lisbeth Salander sat dark and cold. The place smelled of gasoline, and in Lisbeth's hand was a lighter.

--

She didn't remember the day it had actually come to be that four of the only people she had ever loved had been taken from her. While she was no stranger to loss, she had never lost something this immense all at once. As a girl, it had all been in tiny increments. Her father, evil from the start. Her twin sister, fighting toward normality. Her mother, eventually brain damaged.

Her freedom, a casualty of the attempt on Zala's life. Her future, a casualty of concerned government workers.

The ability to fucking get up and move, ended by two wrist restraints and two ankle restraints.

That had all been gradual, and the worst of it had been set in motion by her own hands.

Losing the Pinocchio family had been an A-bomb, compared to these small explosions.

--

She didn't know if she'd been in some kind of dissociative state or whether she'd just gotten as high and drunk as her body would take. She woke up wrapped in a rank blanket, her clothes wrecked, and empty bottles rattling in a hollow of dead grass in the Pinocchio's backyard. The house sat empty and cold, and Lisbeth managed to ascertain it hadn't been very long at all. A few stray belongings from inside suggested she had been in the house at some point.

A wriggling warmth at her side turned out to be the two cats, Cake and Puppy. When she walked far enough to be able to call a cab, she took them with her.

--

She didn't remember buying the red containers of gasoline that greeted her at the amusement park. They sat unattended for another day or two while Lisbeth watched the cameras.

No matter how many ways she cut the feeds, they weren't there. She would never fucking see them again.

--

It took all of the gasoline to douse the carousel, and by the time Lisbeth finished, she was panting and exhausted. She staggered back to the pile of red plastic canisters, only to be completely unable to find her lighter. "Fuck," she hissed, kicking them away, watching them skid and scatter over the pavement. No lighter.

"Fuck," she said, turning to punch the nearest wall, one belonging to a ticket booth. It wasn't enough. "FUCK!" she screamed, and she hit the wall over and over with both fists. She stalked around to the front of the booth, and slammed her elbow into the window, taking pleasure in the breaking glass, the blooming pain in her arm.

Her lighter fell from her jacket pocket to the ground, and she picked it up, her vision blurry and hot. She made it back over to the carousel. "I made this for you," she said, to two little girls that she would never see again. "I made this for you," she shouted to two men that she had loved.

Panting, she flicked the Zippo open and watched the flame spring into the night air. If this place wanted her to be a burned out wreck, then she would return the favor. The lighter dangled from her fingertips.

When I was twelve, I tried to kill my father.

Something bumped against her legs, nearly knocking her to the ground. She looked down.

The cats wound in and out between her boots, mewing plaintively. Lisbeth took a deep breath, and smelled the sharpness of fuel. The carousel horses gleamed wetly in front of her.

She sat down hard, closed the Zippo, and pulled out her cellphone.

'I am at the amusement park. Please stop me.'

She pressed send, and then she sat there, dark and cold, breathing in the gasoline.

The city was incredibly fucked.

Fortunately, it didn't seem like anyone who couldn't handle the place had arrived. Without her cameras there would be no way to know for sure, but everything she had seen and heard fit that just fine. It even seemed like most people weren't alone. They had someone come down with them: someone who loved them, it seemed.

As usual, Lisbeth Salander was not most people.

She crouched on a pile of carefully stacked debris and smoked, watching the tiny wisps of grey disappear into the massive clouds overhead.

She was alone.

If only she'd been born with a dick, she mused, thinking that the only people who might have cared enough to be dragged down here for her were men so deeply in love with other men that it didn't tip the fucked up scales of justice or whatever brought them here. Neil was down here with Mike and she knew that after the search she'd gone on, Kurt and Blaine were back there, together.

Maybe that wasn't fair.

If only she'd been born with a dick and some semblance of social skills.

She was content enough to sulk on top of her pile until the night came, anyway, and then she'd have to flee. But the light above her shifted and changed, sickly greens and a wind that smelled like disinfectant and latex. Hospital smell.

Lisbeth immediately hopped down, and with the change in the atmosphere growing more intense, she took off at a dead run. Her lighter fell out of her hand, rolling away into the ash.

Hard-soled boots rang out on the pavement as Lisbeth sprinted for the nearest building. She glanced up, only half-recognizing it was a hospital before she was inside. The light was still smoky-grey there, everything as broken down as it should have been. Trying to slow her breathing, Lisbeth looked around.

A hospital, yes. Wheelchairs. Broken TVs. Chairs turned over and emergency room doors ripped off their hinges. Lisbeth left the big glass doors in favor of better cover, all too aware that she'd left footprints in the ashes.

She had started to break into filing cabinets when she heard the first shuffling steps. Immediately she looked up, focusing on what looked like a small group of uniformed nurses drawing near. They were dressed as if from the past, she noted, and then one stumbled into the light.

It had no face.

As the strange overcast outside began to turn to night, Lisbeth knew heading back outside would be too dangerous. The nurse creatures were frightening, but they didn't seem to be able to see her. Their mobility was poor.

Lisbeth jogged down the nearest hallway that would lead away from them. Soon enough, she was further inside the hospital, in a darkening hallway with only the sound of her breathing in her ears. Her breathing and a crackle over the PA system. A quiet, barely there crackle--

--and then it blared. SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY

Reeling against a wall, Lisbeth reached down for the butcher knife in her shoe. "Vanger," she hissed. "What the fuck!"

In the direction she had come from, a huge crash sounded. A man howled in pain. She know that sound. She'd coaxed it out of him with a golf club.

Lisbeth ran again, bursting into the nearest room she could barricade. "Fuck, fuck," she whispered, her voice inaudible under the blaring of the PA system. That fucking Enya song. She backed away from the door until she felt the edge of a table meet the backs of her thighs.

Hands took hold of her ankles, hands from nowhere, hands from inside the examination table she'd just bumped into. Hands grabbed roughly at her hips and the back of her jacket; hands found her wrists with bruising strength. Hands pulled her down until she was on her back on that table, and they pushed her knees apart.

SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY

There was heavy breathing nearby and as Lisbeth swallowed her own screams, she twisted to look for the source.

Her father stood in the corner, burned, burning, on fire and bubbling. He trudged forwards with his arms outstretched, crooning in Swedish. His fingers burned away and were replaced with syringes.

Lisbeth pulled hard, strained against the hands, but they held tight with an obscene grip.

Her father came closer, loomed over her. Flakes of skin and drops of whatever was in the syringes pooled up on her t-shirt.

Finally, Lisbeth screamed.

Lisbeth Salander liked the empty city.

The city wasn't entirely empty, of course. There were others, others who had been taken out of worlds like and unlike her own. At this moment, Lisbeth had decided to follow the simplest theory she could come to: they were stuck there for no real reason, and just by chance.

Chance meant all manner of things could happen.

Chance had her the daughter of a war criminal. Chance had her fall in love, chance broke her heart.

By chance she'd found a punching bag in what looked to be a gym. She was much better than many of the others about looting the stores, and tended to leave money and as few broken windows as possible. The punching bag now hung from the frame of what had once been a set of swings. Lisbeth had uninstalled the swings with ease, and now she hit at the bag, her knuckles wrapped in athletic tape.

She didn't like gloves. They left out feeling.

Her usual bag and jacket were on a nearby picnic table, and the sun was slowly setting, casting shadows all around. Even so, she noticed quickly that one of those shadows didn't belong, and she turned with coiled muscles.

"Oh. It's you."