A/N: I needed to get out of doing something other than Assassin's Creed fanfiction. :)
Disclaimer: I own nothing, get it?
If anyone should not be able to prick her fingers as she darned, it would have to be Emma Bayliss.
She was just as good as any professional seamstress, a mistress at her craft, something that belonged to her when she had nothing. She received constant praise from her clients, and had even once been paid five shillings instead of the one shilling she had normally charged. So you could imagine her silent embarrassment when she pricked her finger with her needle.
No one, except for she, couldn't have seen her do that to herself. It was almost midnight, foggy, and no one would be awake, save for the stupid, impractical drunkards in the local pub, but she doubted they would have seen the scarlet on her white piano-key-finger.
Emma scowled. She knew she was past making petty mistakes like this. Why, even Martha or Harriet would never make such a trivial blunder! She had been supporting her family for most of her life, sewing and sewing until her eyes grew heavy and her hand cramped. How could she commit such an error!
Then she sighed and sucked the blood from her finger. She knew she was overreacting. She was tired and sleepy and she didn't want to work anymore, she wanted to go back home and go to bed and not work the next day.
But she could not. She had four younger siblings to support, now that Papa was dead, and Mama was having a hard time as she was, selling and making peppermint water and having to raise six children on her own, with the youngest, Jane, being only four, Martha sick and Tom crippled, leaving Harriet, Harry and herself to work.
She continued to sew after she reasoned with herself and sighed once more. In, out, pull. Repeat. In, out, pull. Repeat. It was tedious work, and the steady rhythm calmed her. It reminded her of clocks. Tick, tick, tock. Tick, tick, tock. Her eyes grew blurry. Tick, tick, tock. She yawned, not lifting her hands to cover her mouth. Tick, tick, tock. Her hands began to still. Tick, tick, tock. Her eyes drooped. Tick, tick, tock...
She was half-asleep when a shadow hung over her. Something forcefully pulled her shoulders back, and she gasped as she dropped her tools and it fell to the ground. As she watched it fall, she couldn't help but think how beautiful the needle looked in the yellow gas light, sparkling, before she was abruptly pulled out of her thoughts by the force behind her.
She screamed, dearly hoping the drunkards in the pub that she had been insulting before would come to her rescue and save her from whatever was to come. Alas, her hope was in vain. A short second after she began to yell, the creature assaulting her pulled her ribboned hair, causing the bows to fall out as well, and her scream to stop halfway. She wriggled in her captor's grasp, but she couldn't budge. The thing behind her shouted something unintelligible angrily, a deep, almost masculine sound, and the flash of metal was the only warning she was given.
Then, suddenly, a coldness in her shoulder. Pain blossomed from it, and she gasped. Then another stab in her side, her back, her chest. She watched blood flow out from where the blade had made dents in her dress. What did I do? What did I do? She moaned to herself mentally. What did I do to deserve this? She'd never felt so much pain, so much burning, burning pain, and terror and dread overwhelmed her and she kicked the animal with all her might.
She was surprised when the dagger fell right into her hand and felt its grip release. As soon as the blade was in hand, she fought the urge to retaliate with the knife and ran as fast as she could, stumbling along the way, feeling the hot wetness from her wounds spread on her clothes.
She wasn't going to make it, she knew. But she didn't want whatever it was to kill her itself. But when she heard the hissing scream, the heavy footstep like sounds pounding behind, she ran faster, faster, almost tripping, and salty tears came to her eyes as the pain worsened and images of Papa came to her mind, how peaceful his corpse looked, and the little angry red baby that Mama had given birth to when Emma was nine, and it was born dead, and the midwife had stirred her out of the room at the sight of it as Mama's wailing cries for her stillborn child rang out, and death hung in the air-
She stumbled, and this time she fell. She closed her eyes and waited for death to come. Or for the creature to reach her. When they discover her body, will Mama cry like she did when her sibling came out of the womb, dead? Or will she be silent and unmoved, as she had become after hardship became harder still? Will Jane remember her when she was grown? Will Martha become the family's seamstress when she was gone?
She took in a shuddering breath as the darkness behind her lids began to feature lights dancing behind her vision, and enough blood had come out of her to enter her open mouth. She sputtered and forced the muscles in her face to close her mouth with some of the small energy she had left. Where was the monster? Didn't he want to finish her off? She was becoming numb now, and she was embracing the numbness and the lightness she was feeling that she knew death was causing.
She heard a voice, somewhat muted to her ears. Too late, she thought as she slipped away, her soul's hold on her body relaxing until there was nothing at all, except for the body of a girl and a pool of blood, and a blade with a distinctive Ouroboros.
Death was peaceful after all, and it was the first time she knew peace.