When Lightning Strikes. [Drabble format]

Author: PhantomeLily

Warnings: Gore, violence, nothing too graphic.

1. She isn't entirely quite sure who she is. She's not that innocent girl anymore, with a silly crush and dreaming with her head in the clouds. She's seen things- things she wishes desperately she hasn't and is equal parts apathetic and too emotionally attached to her situation.

2. The polished blade strikes through her stomach and she feels skin and muscle giving way to a cold, unforgiving steel blade. Slowly a smile spreads across her face. Pain, glorious pain blooms like a grotesque flower, petals unfurling and wracking her body with tremors. The first time anything has pierced through the fog that surrounds her, numbing her skin and heart, and it is glorious. A wetness blooms under her ribs, thick crimson life-blood dripping from her ruptured stomach. A deep, piercing pain. And she laughs and laughs and laughs till her throat is raw and bleeding, because the only other option is to cry- and she doesn't have any tears left to spend.

3. She watches her slender hand bring the sharp edge of a blade to her pale flesh, pressing just enough to make beads of crimson well up, and then decisively presses it down and pulls. She's distant, almost as if she's just an outsider witnessing this, and watches her hair stain with red. It's a pretty colour, much prettier than her own hair colour, this beautiful crimson, and she contemplates keeping it this way. She wonders if she can get a long lasting red dye of good quality in a place close to her? Then it occurs to her that this is the most mundane thing she's thought about since that night, and she feels laughter bubble against her throat and spills forth, splitting the still air with a haunting echo.

4. She stands before him, the only thing separating them a gaping chasm. Her face shows no emotion, eyes like chips of ice. She thinks maybe she should have felt something- sadness, anger maybe. But instead she feels nothing at all, like someone's taken her still-beating heart and the space between her ribs is unbearably empty. She doesn't feel angry. Just tired. She wonders how he's fallen this far, the once brilliant boy that she loved and mourned for, turned into this man with bleeding eyes and a crazed smile as he charges towards her. It's disappointingly easy to stop him, to catch his wrist and swing him around, feeling his shoulder pop out of it's socket and the crunch and grind of delicate bones under her hands. And she watches as his life fades away from his eyes and he spits out blood, gurgling and eyes boiling with animosity, until they don't anymore, and she's left all alone on the edge of the chasm, holding his rapidly-cooling body in her lap and wondering when he started falling apart.