A/N: Right. Mari and Kresnik scene. Because Mari clearly had a darker side to her despite her normally pleasant attitude and it was a desire for revenge that got her involved. Had to edit out all the references to power being out though. Since I think that her contract began before the lockdown. I'm actually pretty sure it did. Played through three times and don't remember...
She met Kresnik in a dream, she thought sometimes. It seemed to her like one.
She had been sitting in her office at the school, face set in a frown that her students would be startled at. The air conditioner was turned off, despite the atrocious heat. The lights were similarly untouched. The only source of illumination came from the window, in little bars, through the blinds. She was nearly in a trance-like state in her brooding. Dark flashes of a man she knew, reduced to a bloodless corpse. A strong man, a fighter, who faced something he couldn't take. She had thought there was no man he couldn't take in a fight. That no matter what the circumstances, he would always show up on her doorstep, scratched but alive, sheepishly asking to be bandaged.
Her fists clenched and she hunched over her desk, carelessly knocking a cordless phone to the ground. The ringing claps as it hit the floor echoed in her head.
There was no man. Just a monster. There was no other explanation she could see, not even with the denial of the police and the hasty assurances that certain devices would make these murders possible. It was a monster.
And monsters needed to be hunted.
Silently she shook, not in fear, but in an uncharacteristic display of rage. If her lover, Daemon that he was, could not face a monster, than what hope did she have?
Only a man can kill a monster.
"I want to kill a monster." She whispered to the room.
She brought her hands to curl into her hair. It was already a mess. Tangled and frizzed and spilling over her gloomy face. She hardly noticed. She would hardly have noticed if she had pulled the hair straight from her scalp.
"I want to kill a monster." She repeated, louder.
So that those bloodless murders would stop. So that the man she loved could rest in peace. So that his younger brother wouldn't need to dirty his hands. So that... so that she could selfishly horde the morsel of satisfaction that revenge would bring.
She bit back a sob and instead focused all of those frustrating feelings inward. Jailing them. The muscles in her face tightened under the strain of holding everything within her. Releasing the tears that burned behind her eyes would only release the resolve she was struggling to build.
Your powerful desire to end Kudlak summoned me to you.
"I am going to kill a monster." She choked.
Her eyes were squeezed tightly and her grip on the desk was like an iron clamp. Through her intense concentration, she didn't even twitch as papers were cast into a flurry and curtains billowed.
"I am going to find it." She claimed; her voice was steadier. "I am going to find it and I am going to kill it."
A filing cabinet tipped over and crashed to the floor. The din of metal hitting hard tiles snapped her out of her trance. She spun around quickly to find the room a mess, and it left her baffled. Forms were scattered and files overturned. The window curtains collapsed on the ground. Notes and posters were ripped from the walls, some dangling precariously and ready to drop with a breath. It was this numbing state of surprise that caused her to not react with a violent flinch to the sudden feeling of hands on her shoulders. Or when a man's voice whispered in her ears.
"Then will you form a contract with me?"
I fight for my duty, and you for revenge. This is the key difference between us.
The mirror she looked into hours later, following a lengthy explanation, persuasion, and bargaining, showed two people. Herself and another. A man. One with dark hair that tumbled to his shoulders, contrasted by an alabaster complexion and glowing green eyes. If she physically looked behind her, however, he would not appear to be standing there. Silently she took a comb from her purse and raked it through her hair until it was in pristine condition, as always, and tied it back.
"Do you want to start at the most recent scene, or from the beginning?" She asked.
Her voice was firm, with a lilt of darkness, and radiated determination, with a newfound confidence. She straightened her white overcoat and smoothed it down, eyes flickering to the face reflected over her shoulder. They were both dyed red-orange in the setting sun.
"The most recent," he told her after a thought. "For the most uncontaminated scene."
She nodded and shouldered her purse. Her heeled footsteps resounded ominously in the empty halls of the elementary school.
However, we are both hunters, stalking the same prey, and because this prey is a monster, there should be no competition.
"Kudlak." The syllables left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue as she tested it.
She felt the demon, Kresnik, stir restlessly within her body at the sound of his enemy's name. Her enemy's name. Their enemy's name.
We are both going to kill a monster.