"Doctor! Doctor!" Every harsh cry cut straight to Mia's core as the Paramedics flew through the hospital, her lover stretched out, still as death between them.
The noise of the hospital seemed to fill everything, seeping through the cracks in Mia's mind, striking down her defences, but the doctor still heard them coming. Her coffee fell from her hands, bleeding out its dark life on the tiles; forgotten as she joined the melee, pushing through to reach the dark haired man, lifeless on the trolley.
But his heart was still beating, and soon they had him hooked up to a machine, beeping away his heartbeats for him. Nothing else said that he was living; no happy, carefree smile, no mocking, teasing laugh. Diego was gone, but so long as that machine kept beating, Mia's world would go on turning.
The young doctor was flummoxed. It looked like poison, she said, but not one she had ever seen before. If his poisoner had intended to kill him, they'd failed. The new toxin wasn't strong enough. Or Diego was stronger, Mia though privately, but she didn't say it. He hadn't won yet.
The woman leant over him, peeling back one coffee coloured eyelid, and shining her light straight into his unseeing eyes. Her red hair brushed his forehead, tickled his cheek. It filled Mia with an inexplicable, senseless rage. Her hands balled into drained white fists, her teeth bit down, and metallic blood trickled through her mouth.
As calmly as she could, she turned on her heel to leave, but before she had even quit the room she was running. She burst through the doors, knocked over a nurse, kept running. Running away, her mind said, but her body wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. At last, one thought became clear. An answer, pushing to the front of her mind. Revenge.
She was there. Mia knew she would be. Sitting demurely on a bench just outside the hospital, pure as the driven snow. And she smiled. Smiled prettily up at Mia, who stood before her, flustered and torn, knowing that anybody who saw her would only see the white of her dress, her innocent eyes and her perfect teeth. They would never she how stained she truly was.
"You…" Not for the first time in her life, Mia was utterly speechless.
"Oh! Miss Fey." She covered her mouth with delicate hands. "Are you alright? You look awful."
"How could you?" Mia spat, longing to grind her into the dirt but knowing she wouldn't.
"I don't know what you mean." She coloured lightly, the picture of innocence. Then she gasped. "But Miss Fey? You think I did……that I would…."
"I know you did" Mia growled.
"But can you prove it?" She giggled nervously.
"No, of course you can't. After all, there isn't any evidence." Her smile was back, wider than before, and just a little bit more dangerous.
She rose to her feet and started to move towards the hospital. Unthinkingly, Mia's hand came out and pushed her away. Away from herself and away from Diego. The smaller girl stumbled back, and kept falling. She hit the ground without so much as a whisper.
She sprang back to her feet easily, but where she had fallen, a dark smear of mud splattered her dress. Stained it. Mia looked to see the anger that had been burned so terribly into her mind cross the little demons face, but the innocent façade never slipped.
She was laughing.
"I've won." Her tinkling laughter was wind chimes, bells on the breeze as she danced away.
"Dahlia Hawthorne." The name was a curse on Mia's lips. "One day, I will kill you."