She hates milk.
She stares at the viscous white liquid trembling at the lip of the tin cup, unblinking. There is a reflection, metal against metal, of the knife buried a centimetre into the burnished walnut table, and the red pooling at its base flickers at the feather of her breath.
The long, smooth barrel of the gun lies against her arm, still cool, though it's been pressed against her overheated skin for nearly half an hour.
Damn that milk.
There are beads of sweat on her forehead, and her finger-tips twitch, her only sign of life. Her eyes are dry, and she closes them, just for a moment.
So fucking tired.
She sighs, defeated finally, and raises her left hand, reaches for the cup.
Milk is good for you.
Raises it to her lips, drains the cup, swallows evenly, the kick of bourbon swirling adding both a mellow colour of honey and the flavour of decadent spices and strength. She stands, now possessed of the energy to move, just a little, and the gun clatters to the floor. The safety's off, but there aren't any more bullets inside. She's pumped them all into men who are nothing more than cadavers now, and the sweat produced by the heat and effort is clogging her pores.
She has enough life, now, after killing, to walk to the bathroom, slough off her clothing like an old reptilian skin, to stand beneath a hail of water so hot she could swear each drop is a bullet hitting her skin. She could swear, and she does.
'Fucking holy bastard on a stick.' the words convulse against her plush, warm lips unnaturally, throb against the tiles of the shower, as the water, pink with blood, swirls clockwise into the drain. She sags against the wall, finger-nails chipping on the tile grout as she tries to hold herself upright, and then it doesn't really hurt anymore. The pain is white-hot, and she loses herself in it, so that she can't remember when it wasn't like this. She can't remember being whole, inside or out, and she wants to scream, but she's forgotten how to do that, as well. If she concentrates hard anough, she can hear her heart beating, one-two, one-two, one-two.
She knows there's no one to call, no one to ask for help.
One-two.
She's going to stitch herself up, because it's all she knows how to do.
One-two.
She's going to pull herself together, order a lot of delivery pizza or Chinese or something.
One-two.
And keep drinking milk.
She turns the shower off. She doesn't have the balls to use soap yet, doesn't want to wheeze at the sudden sting. Water's bad enough on its own, on knife wounds. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and suddenly she's standing upright, what's left of her hair is dripping into her eyes, and she doesn't want to move, but there's something swirling in her throat, a cool, light sensation, that tells her she's going to throw up very soon.
She makes it to the toilet just on time, pitching forward onto her knees and expelling the milk, an apple, half a bag of Doritos, and a cheeseburger. She's sure that if it competed in the Olympics, her stomach would win gold for the acrobatics it's performing.
Oh, God.
Help.
She's never looked up to anyone for anything for so long. She's had the money, had the means, had the steel-plated rhinoceros skin, and all these things have brought her so fucking far. She can't end here. And she won't. It's been worse before, but not in a long time. It's so easy to forget how much it hurts.
So
fucking
easy.
It wasn't always like this, you know. There was someone, a lifetime ago, before she became this, before she knew what it was. There was someone taking care of her, even though it was only for a little while. Only a few precious weeks. And how precious they were. She loves him, still. Maybe it's because she never saw him dead, never saw the cold, lifeless meat of him being laden on a cart in a black, waterproof bag. Maybe she can only see him as she knew him.
He was quiet, never wasted a word, a breath. A little bit compulsive, of course, but gentle, methodical, and clever. His eyes, so deep and languishing and always half-hooded, were never so stark as the last time she saw him.
She shuts her mind to the image. She's had to, in order to be strong.
Seventeen years.
Has it been so long since he was made a corpse? She must be getting old, and her lifestyle doesn't exactly encourage eternal youth. It's been that long since she's had someone to take care of her, and she should be used to it by now.
She gets shakily back to her feet, stumbles toward the sink to rinse her reeking mouth with stinging cold Listerine. She counts thirty seconds before she spits and does it again, without enough energy to throw her head back and gargle, so she just swishes it round in her mouth. It tastes like ashes.
Everything does, when it hurts this much.
Except for that goddamned milk.
She can't even taste the bourbon in it, just the heavy, room-temperature thickness of it lying against her tongue, and she can feel the fatty cream separating from it, her saliva mixing with it before she swallows it down.
The thought of it makes her want to vomit again, but she doesn't have anything else in her stomach.
She feels so small and vulnerable, nothing like the Valkyrie she was earlier today, when she charged into a mêlée, guns blazing, eyes bright with the gleam of killing. She always knew when she was going into battle, understood the difference between fighting and cleaning. A hit was different. You walked in, did your business, finished up, left quickly. A battle was another matter entirely. It was a clash of wills, two titan forces colliding and destroying everything in between, up to and including one another. She was a titan that morning, a goddess, an avenger.
It had gotten personal again, even though she had promised herself over and over that it would never be like that, could never, because she just didn't fucking care anymore.
No such luck.
The couch gives beneath her slight weight, just enough. She's stopped bleeding, that's a good sign. Means she won't have to use stitches. She's only been grazed by the knife, and she can use iodine later, after she's slept off this sudden weakness.
It's been a long time since she was weak, or let herself relax. Now, she doesn't have too much to worry about, and she feels every muscle uncoil in apathy, knows exhaustion is seeping into her bones. She won't wake up for at least twenty hours. Everything is going grey, like a murky wash of lampblack over the soaring skies of a Delacroix. There are gunshots going off, but only in her memory, and she knows her dreams won't be good tonight.
So she gives in, and reaches for the only memory that can keep her safe in her own mind, reaches for the solid, steel arms, the low-pitched voice with its rich, underlying hum. The voice that expressed so much, even when all it was saying was her name. And she reaches for the name she's denied herself for so Goddamned long.
Oh,
Leon.
(finis)